Abstract
Most of the Tatar migrants who lived in the Far East before and during World War II migrated to the USA or Turkey after the war. They and their families are still living in these countries. In this paper, their lives in prewar and wartime Japan, as well as their migration processes and their current situation living in the San Francisco Bay Area (Bay Area), will be discussed. The main sources on which this paper is based come from my fieldwork in the Bay Area from April 25 to May 7, 2012.
Tatars of the Volga-Ural region immigrated to Japan, Manchuria, and Korea after the 1917 Russian Revolution. More than 1000 of them settled in prewar Japan, primarily in Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, or Kumamoto. The Tatar community in Tokyo formed under the initiative of Kurbangali from the 1920s to 1933. This community split into two groups after Ishaki arrived on the scene in 1933. Although most of Tatar migrants gathered under the Idil-Ural Turk Tatar Cultural Association led by Ishaki, there was a struggle among the migrants in Tokyo. Thereafter, from 1938 to 1945, change in the Tatar community was dependent on the political situation in Japan. The Japanese Islam Policy at the time was to unify the Tatar community and put it to use for Japanese propaganda. After Ishaki and Kurbangali left Japan in the late 1930s, Abdurresid Ibrahim was chosen as the Tatar community leader. The number of Tatar migrants in Japan began to decline in the post-World War II era. Many of them moved to Turkey, the USA, and so on after being granted Turkish citizenship in 1953.
The migration to the USA after the World War II can be divided into two groups. The first is those who directly migrated from Japan, Manchuria, and Korea to the USA, and the second is those who passed through Turkey on their way to the USA. In either case, most of the Tatar migrants immigrated to the USA from the Far East in the 1950s and 1960s.
The American Turko Tatar Association (ATTA) was established in 1960 in the Bay Area. As of May 2012, the number of Tatar migrants from the Far East and their families, including partners of non-Tatar, who are ATTA members living in the Bay Area numbers 187. The ATTA bought and is managing four Muslim graveyards at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California, to serve the needs of its community.
In total, three generations of Tatar migrants are living in the Bay Area. The first generation, who initially immigrated to the Far East because of the Russian Revolution, are all now deceased. Therefore, the oldest of these generations consists of people ranging in age from 60 years old into their 80s; this is, in fact, the second generation that emigrated from the Far East. Their children, who are from the third generation, range in age from 30 years old into their 50s. There is also now a fourth generation, who are the children of the third. The language acquisition level of the third generation is not high when compared to that of the second generation. A decline of interest in being identified as “Tatar” and a low rate of participation in ATTA meetings can therefore be found among this third generation.
Future research issues are to: (1) conduct further interviews with those in the second generation of Tatar migrants, and (2) collect additional materials related to Tatar migrants.
