Our Ranks are Growing

In this brief statement issued by the Communist press following the convening of the Congress of the Federation of Maritime Workers in January 1925 in Moscow surfaced some of the contradictions that lay at the center of the Communist-led pan-Pacific revolutionary trade union movement.²

In approaching the subject of the pan-Pacific revolutionary trade union movement, it is important to recognize that the history of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU or Profintern) has been largely neglected as a focus of scholarly inquiry. Moreover, when studied it has been generally viewed as no “more than a footnote in the history of the international labour movement.”³

In this article, I will offer a glimpse, drawn from a limited set of materials in the archives of the Communist International (Comintern), of the contours of pan-Pacific revolutionary trade union internationalism from the mid-1920s up through the early 1930s. In particular, I will trace the networks of communication, exchange and solidarity forged by Chinese and Japanese seamen together with Chinese and Japanese immigrant Communists working in ports up and down the Pacific Coast of North America as well as in the ports of New York and Philadelphia. In doing so, I will grapple with the question of rank and file autonomy. What were the connections between the activists engaged in the practice of proletarian internationalism in the harbors and on board the ships and the hierarchy of Communist authority? Did authority descend in a clear unbroken line from the leaderships of the Profintern and Comintern in Moscow to the regional representatives of arms of the Profintern such as the International Propaganda Committee of the Transport Workers (renamed in 1928 International Propaganda and Action Committee of the Transport Workers) (IPCTW)? And did it continue on down to cadres working with regionally-based Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) bureaus and Port Bureaus, and local International Seamen's Clubs?⁷

In seeking to make sense of these dynamics, I am drawing upon geographer Neil Smith's insight, which derived from the ideas developed by Henri Lefebvre in his study of the production of space, that societies produce scale. Furthermore, events are not necessarily confined to a single scale; and, crucially, the hierarchy of geographical scales is “produced and reproduced in the landscapes of capitalism.”⁸

The years 1928 to 1934, commonly understood in Comintern historiography as the Third Period, are typically viewed as being characterized by “a loss of influence” on the part of the Profintern in the industrialized countries of Europe and America as a result of the Comintern's “left” turn.¹¹

Second, were the Chinese and Japanese immigrant Communists who, also at great personal risk and with their efforts also always subject to repression and failure, sought to “jump” scales by boarding ships that came into North American ports and on which Chinese or Japanese seamen worked. Momentarily claiming enough control of some part of the deck to make contact with the seamen, they aimed at the very least to hand over revolutionary literature for distribution among the crew as well as back in China, Japan and across the Western Pacific and at best to recruit the seamen into the movement as organizers and couriers.¹²

Establishing the Apparatus for a Pan-Pacific Revolutionary Trade Union Movement

At the beginning of the twentieth century, international trade unionism took institutional form in two kinds of organizations, the International Trade Union Secretariats (ITS) and the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) (better known in the aftermath of the Second World War as the Amsterdam International). Founded in July 1921, the Profintern immediately stood in opposition to the IFTU, not only on an organizational level but also in terms of tactics (such as its espousal of an “industrial strategy”) and its recognition of the importance of organizing workers in colonial and semicolonial and so-called Eastern countries. Among the most important vehicles formed by the Profintern for carrying out its aims were the International Propaganda Committees (IPCs) whose function was “to act as a revolutionary pressure group working to force a corresponding secretariat [ITS] to admit revolutionary federations.” The first IPC was formed by the transport workers at a conference held concurrently with the founding congress of the Profintern in July 1921. This would become the most important IPC in the field of pan-Pacific organizing.¹⁴

Also of special importance in relation to the Pacific field was the executive committee of the Profintern's resolution on January 5, 1923, to establish port bureaus in Rotterdam and Vladivostok.¹⁵

Right from the beginning the Communist organizers charged with running the Port Bureau and the International Seamen's Club in Vladivostok emphasized that their efforts should be concentrated on producing literature in Chinese and Japanese and attracting foreign seamen, and in particular the large numbers of Japanese seamen, to the club. Unfortunately, although “the meetings and entertainments at the club were well attended by foreign seamen, Japanese and Germans, principally the latter,” Port Bureau head Iosif Feinberg acknowledged that, “There were not enough helpers at the meetings who spoke foreign languages, consequently the main purpose was not achieved.” Thus, already organizers had identified what would emerge as one of the main challenges confronted by Communist leaders of the pan-Pacific revolutionary trade union movement, that is, the lack of personnel conversant in “foreign languages” and in particular in Japanese and Chinese.¹⁸

At the same time, organizing efforts lagged far behind on the other side of the Pacific in the United States. The difference in level of organizing was a clear illustration of Harvey's “simple rule.” It was not until January 1927 that the American Communist Party began “taking steps toward the formation of a Seamen's Club” in New York City.¹⁹

Confronting the Challenges of Organizing Seamen who “are always traveling all over the world,” Tan Malaka, January 15, 1925

According to “a report on the revolutionary movement among the transport workers of the Pacific” produced by the Profintern in February 1924, Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian transport workers were said to “have established the largest organizations in the Far East.” Four months later transport workers from the Pacific gathered for a six-day conference in Canton. Out of this gathering was issued a manifesto addressed to the “toiling masses of the east” as well as “the workers of Europe and America.” It urged an organized fight “against world imperialists” as well as against those “who compromise with the imperialists,” and called upon the so-called “Eastern masses” to form trade unions and peasant unions, and for transport workers of the East to “affiliate with the revolutionary transport workers of the world.” In addition, the conference resolved to “create in Canton a Bureau of Transport Workers of the Pacific,” which would “be composed of five members, one from China, Phillipines [sic], Dutch India, British India, and Japan, respectively.”²¹

These efforts raise the knotty question of autonomy and to what degree the leaderships of the Profintern and, or Comintern controlled the movement to organize transport workers in Asia. My research demonstrates that those who were actively involved in efforts to further the pan-Pacific revolutionary trade union movement at the local and regional levels from bases in Vladivostok and across the Western Pacific were often either unwilling or unable to carry out directives issued by the center. First, Communist functionaries confronted impossible odds, including often working in environments dominated by legal and extralegal forms of repression, which necessitated operating largely underground and at great personal risk; coordinating work at local, regional and international scales, which entailed communicating across vast distances, bridging linguistic, national and cultural barriers, negotiating a maze of shipping and immigration laws, and grappling with age-old prejudices such as Russian workers' perception of “yellow labour;” and being obligated to act in accordance with a centralized hierarchy of authority in spite of the remoteness of the periphery from the center. In addition, there were the familiar problems of chronic shortages of funds and personnel resulting in burnout and illness, the lack of trained staff including in particular persons fluent in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and troubled relations between the Party and Korean cadres. With regard to the latter point, what was of concern was the “question of the national movement.”²²

Moreover, the authority of the leadership of the Port Bureau of Vladivostok did not remain unchallenged. According to Port Bureau head Feinberg, whereas the city's geographical proximity “to the countries of the Far East” should logically have facilitated easy communication, in practice the latter was hindered not only by “the secret nature of the work and the strict regime at present existing in the various countries” but also by “the marked unwillingness of the parties in the respective countries to deal with and take instructions from an intermediary body like the Vladivostok Bureau and prefer to deal directly with Moscow.”²³

In this regard, correspondence by the Communist organizer Tan Malaka (also known as Abdul Rachmann, Avon Rachmanoff, and Hassay) who was the Indonesian representative of the Profintern in the Far East, offers a glimpse of organizing at the local and regional scales. What is striking is the level of interaction between Malaka and seamen as well as other workers of different nationalities that resided in or temporarily entered port cities such as Hong Kong and Canton. Moreover, it would appear that rank-and-file seamen who were notorious for their mobility were paradoxically better able to communicate with and organize fellow workers from many different places. Even as Malaka emphasized that the “mean [sic] difficulty is for us, that the seamen are always traveling all over the world,” his own and other seamen union leaders' accounts gave evidence of both the difficulty and the “subversive” potential of this dimension of maritime labor.²⁶

“Fellow Seamen!” organize “your fellow seamen in Europe and America! We, as the elected executive committee of your union, will stop at nothing to organise our seamen within and without the country,” —Declaration of the Chinese Seamen's Union to the Chinese Seamen, ca. August 1928.

First, during the 1922 mass strike in the port of Hong Kong and then in the eighteen-month-long Canton-Hong Kong Strike of 1925–1926, Chinese seamen had proved to be among the most militant.²⁸

Still, rhetoric aside, the leadership was faced with the formidable task of having to organize under extremely repressive conditions. On a more pragmatic level, in July and August of that year the Seamen's Federation representing Chinese seamen prepared reports detailing the weaknesses of their efforts thus far and proposing ways to improve their organizing tactics. One of the issues singled out for special attention was the “close relation between the seaman and nationalism.”³¹

A few months later, Chinese delegates to the Profintern Su Chao-jen, Dunn Chun-Shia, and Ju Je-ei addressed the situation in a letter addressed to the Executive Committee of the Profintern. On top of “financial difficulties,” was the language problem. They pointed out that “[m]ost of the Chinese seamen workers do not understand foreign languages.” Nor was this simply a local concern: “Now our connection with the seamen workers in other countries has been delayed by the ignorance of languages which means a great loss to the international trade union movement as well as to the Chinese seamen.” Indeed, once they'd “mastered the language, then we can send them to different countries.” But without this knowledge of “a foreign language,” even those “who have experience . . . cannot be active.”³³

Here was evidence of Chinese seamen leaders' growing realization that the growth of the unions at home depended at least in part on the growth of the pan-Pacific trade union movement and support from overseas. Interestingly, as critical as the three delegates to the Profintern were of the Executive Committee's past actions, they never mentioned the issue of autonomy. This despite the fact that the month before, the All-China Federation of Labor had criticized the All-China Seamen's Federation on this very issue: “[Y]ou are still indifferent toward the attraction of non-comrades into the unions. The party still dictates too much in matters affecting trade unionism, leaving no chances for the masses to participate.”³⁴

At the same time, the leaders of Chinese seamen were not silent on the matter of alienating workers through too radical forms of agitation. For example, the Seamen's Federation report for July 1928 noted that the plans for work in the area of Hong Kong-Canton had “failed to accomplish anything because the workers dreaded our propaganda.” In addition, the July and August reports repeatedly singled out for criticism the fact that “too much attention was given to politics, too little to the masses,” and at the same time, not enough emphasis was paid on the importance of “nationalistic aspirations” and antiimperialist struggles in their work.³⁵

In the meantime, from the other side of the Pacific, Chinese immigrant members of the American Communist Party were making efforts to develop ties with Chinese seamen, recognizing that such mass “organizations like . . . the Chinese Seamen's Club, etc. really have tremendous possibilities for developmet [sic] and work.” However, by the middle of May 1929, ties with the seamen's clubs remained weak to nonexistent. The Chinese Bureau reported that among “NONE [sic] PARTY ORGANIZATIONS WHERE WE HAVE FRACTIONS AND INFLUENCE,” was the Chinese Seamen's Club in Philadelphia, but that out of a total membership of eighty, only two were Party members. Furthermore, at that time they had no fraction at all in the larger “Chinese Seaman Club in N.Y.C.” whose membership totaled 200. (Although the term “fraction” generally referred to small groups of Party members working within non-Party “mass” organizations such as fraternal and cultural organizations, it was also applied to members of a foreign-language group working within the Party as a local Party unit.) However, they had by no means abandoned the effort. In the report adopted by the Buro of the Chinese Fraction at the Second National Conference of the Chinese Fraction of the Workers (Communist) Party of America held February 19–21, 1929, it was noted, “Our comrades are still working within the old organisations like the Seamen's Clubs in Phia. [sic] and N.Y. and the Unionist Guild in San Francisco.” Most frustrating was the fact that in spite of efforts to “make connection with the Chinese seamen working on the foreign ships along the West coast,” the fact was that “due to strict vigilance of the ship owners and them immigration offecers [sic], we have not been yet successful.” Still, the report's list of “Concrete Tasks” to do as part of its “Worke [sic] among Masses,” included the following item: “Work within the reactionary Seamen's Clubs and attempt should be made to organise new progressive seamne [sic] unions.”³⁶

“[T]here is no mention that the left should give particular attention to the seamen's movement, since the latter has great significance,” —Yamamoto Kenzo, December 14, 1928.

Back in Vladivostok Japanese cadres working with the Port Bureau had long been grappling with the challenges of organizing Japanese seamen and other seasonal workers in the area and through this work at the local and regional levels furthering the larger aims of the pan-Pacific revolutionary trade union movement. On top of the mobility of workers, spying by the Japanese government, conditions of poverty and a severe lack of funds, there was also the problem of having to answer to Moscow. As Port Bureau head Yano Tsutomu remarked in a letter to veteran Japanese Communists Katayama Sen and Omura K. in late October 1927, “Unless Moscow approves something, we can't do it, and Moscow doesn't give permission that often.”³⁷

Finally, on December 14, 1928 head of the Eastern Department of the Profintern Leo Geller, Chairman of the IPCTW and Secretary of the Executive Bureau of the Profintern T. Achkanov, H. Eidus, Japanese Communist leader and representative to the Profintern Yamamoto Kenzo, African American Communist leader and member of the Executive Bureau of the Profintern James W. Ford, and two Japanese seamen from the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV), met in Moscow under the auspices of the Bureau of the IPCTW to discuss “questions regarding the organization of Japanese and Negro sailors.” Yamamoto leveled his criticism:

Like the Chinese labor leaders, here was another voice—this time belonging to one who had entered the ranks of the Profintern leadership—calling for “new, more flexible tactics” in the “left wing's” relations with the international seamen's movement, and for “particular attention” by the “left” to the seamen's movement.

Not a month later, at a meeting of the Executive Bureau of the Profintern, Achkanov hammered home the point, declaring in his report on the activities of the IPCTW that the drive to organize the unorganized “brings forward with all insistence the question of the organisation of the coloured seamen.” Apparently, in New York following the tragedy of the sinking of the British steamship Vestris on November 12, 1928 and the “campaign of the shipowners' press against the coloured seamen,” the Interclub there had begun “to develop a campaign for the organisation of coloured seamen.” However, there was in “the USA insufficient support by the Party to the work of the International Seamen's Clubs and amongst the railwaymen.”³⁹

Oddly, Achkanov failed to acknowledge the initiative taken by the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers of the R.I.L.U. in the wake of the Vestris tragedy. This committee put forward an “organisational programme and programme of action,” which called for the convening of an international seamen's conference focused on “the organisation of ‘coloured' seamen,” and spelled out demands for the abolition of the many existing forms of discrimination against seamen generally and “coloured seamen” in particular. Moreover, regarding the use of the term “coloured,” representative of the committee James Ford remarked that, “The question of ‘coloured' seamen in general (Chinese, ‘orientals,' Indians, etc.) has also been raised in all its international implications.”⁴⁰

“First steps being taken” by the American Bureau—PPTUS, January-May 1932

When next the “question of ‘coloured' seamen” was raised at an institutional level in the United States “in all its international implications” was two years later and on the West Coast of the United States following the establishment of the American Bureau—PPTUS in San Francisco. At the outset, the bureau was instructed that it “should particularly concentrate on active work among the Japanese sailors (this is fundamental) and also develop work among the Chinese, Indian and other nationalities of sailors who come to American and Canadian ports on the Pacific Coast.” At the same time, one issue was to be of “paramount importance.” That was “the development of systematic work and a sustained struggle against military threat, especially against the military activities of Japanese imperialism in China and the feverish preparation for a military attack against the Soviet Union.” It should come as no surprise, then, to discover that Japan was the primary focus of the bureau's efforts. Moreover, in an unusual move that gave weight to the words of the Profintern leadership in Moscow, Yano Tsutomu (alias Takeda) was sent to San Francisco at the beginning of 1932 to assist Harrison George in launching these new efforts. By contrast, it was not until mid-March that the bureau minutes recorded “that after interview and investigation, the Chinese comrade, [Ol]den Lee, has been drawn into the Bureau and will attend the next meeting, thus completing the Bureau organization.”⁴¹

In early June, George submitted a report on the work accomplished during his five-month tenure, including an evaluation of the immigrant comrades' efforts to make contact with seamen.

Given these circumstances, what is surprising is the fact that the activists had any success at all in getting names—to date “over 300 Japanese seamen”—and “developing friendly contacts with seamen on about eight or ten Japanese ships,” and in obtaining addresses of and, or potential contacts with “revolutionary organizations” in Japan, China, and the Philippines. Apparently, “Pending the development of reliable contacts among seamen,” they had “had to rely upon the mail for getting the magazine into Japan.” Here, a cautionary note is called for with regard to the veracity of such progress reports. In this instance, doubt is cast on George's assessment that “perhaps half of the amount printed have so far reached Japan” by the reported experience of Japanese immigrant Communists. The activists who handled the publication of the organ of the Japanese Workers Association, the Rodo Shimbun (Labor News), in San Francisco had earlier communicated to George that they sent only “several copies through the post” rather than trying to mail the newspaper “to Japan in large quantities.” More crucially, they “couldn't say” to him “whether these copies were received in Japan or not.”⁴²

Eddy and George Report on Meetings with Leading Japanese and Chinese Comrades while These Comrades Seek to Learn From their Own and Each Other's Experiences, June-October 1932

The importance of scale emerges with new clarity at this next stage in the development of the activities of the American Bureau—PPTUS. Following reorganization, the San Francisco bureau no longer included among its staff either a Chinese or Japanese immigrant cadre. As a result, beginning in June 1932, information about the visiting of ships came in the form of newly appointed chairman Eddy's reports on his meetings with Japanese and American comrades, and George's reports on meetings with Chinese comrades.⁴³

Unfortunately, more often than not efforts to obtain assistance from American marine workers proved unsuccessful. This fact surfaced at the same meeting. The issue that was front and center in the minds of both the “Chinese seamen and the National Seamen's Union of China” and the Chinese comrades in San Francisco, was the Jones-White Act of 1928. The Jones-White Act, George explained, “among other things calls for the discharge of a number of Chinese born members of the staff and replacing them with American born Chinese, so that two-thirds of the entire staff on the ship are American citizens.” Apparently, the “SF Chinese comrades have four times tried to get our Marine Union in SF to send a delegate to the SF ‘Yuen Lee' to speak to them but so far our Union failed to do anything.” The Yuen Lee (also known as Lien Yi) was the seamen's union controlled by the KMT.⁴⁵

Yet, even in the face of this lack of concern on the part of the MWIU, the Chinese comrades in San Francisco continued to struggle to build the union by carrying “on much propaganda among the members of the ‘Yuen Lee' for affiliation to our Union,” and by pressuring the union into acting on their behalf. In this regard, they “suggest[ed] that our Marine Union in SF establish a Chinese bureau or department, so that proper work can be carried on among the American Chinese marine workers.”⁴⁷

Similarly, on the East Coast Chinese immigrant comrades had taken the initiative in seeking to recruit Chinese seamen into the MWIU. In a report submitted to the Central Committee of the CPUSA in May 1932, the Chinese Bureau described their success:

Furthermore, the Bureau had already gone ahead with efforts to extend this success in Philadelphia to other ports in the United States. The report noted, “A Chinese Bureau of the Union was created to be responsible to the Executive Committee of the Union to work among the Chinese seamen. This has been done in New York and Phila.,” adding that “San Francisco comrades are taking steps towards this direction.”⁴⁸

An understanding of the importance of scale was key. Indeed, one of the ways both Chinese and Japanese cadres sought to further their work in this arena was to coordinate efforts at the local, regional and, or national, and international scales. For instance, as reported by Eddy in early August, after learning that “on one Japanese boat the entire engine department were members of the Sassinkai (left trade union opposition in the seamens [sic] union)” but that “the comrade who visited this boat” was unaware of the political orientation of the Sassinkai and therefore “failed to give them our literature,” the Japanese comrades in San Francisco “immediately wrote to Los Angeles, the boat's next port of call, telling them to immediately get in touch with this group.” Nor did the effort to cooperate and build alliances at more than the local scale end there. Eddy further noted,

In addition, it would appear that in some instances Chinese and Japanese comrades sought to learn from one another's experience. For instance, in organizing “a committee of 4 to be in charge of the distribution of the Chinese Marine Worker and the visiting of Chinese ships” the Chinese comrades participated in a “joint meeting” and looked to the Japanese comrades' prior experience as a model. Since they had to date “no connections with any other port in [reg]ards to this kind of work,” they decided “that they would have to start making connections the same as the Japanese comrades are doing.”⁴⁹

Not two months later, the Chinese comrades were reporting some success in extending their network of contacts at both the local and national levels as well as internationally across the Americas and the Western Pacific. PPTUS Bureau member Jones relayed the specifics following his “conference with our Chinese translator and the secretary of the committee for work among Chinese seamen.”

The Chinese immigrant activists based in San Francisco had thus provided the bureau with the means to begin building an apparatus that operated at the local, national, and international scales and could thereby facilitate the spread of pan-Pacific networks of communication and solidarity among Chinese maritime workers that could include South as well as North America.

That same fall, the Japanese cadres had arrived at a new strategy for making contact with seamen.

Critically, it was in sharing their experiences as immigrant workers in America who nonetheless continued to feel bound to their fellow compatriots as well as to ideals of internationalism, that the Japanese immigrant comrades succeeded in creating the possibility at least of dialogue with Japanese seamen. At the same time, the risks entailed in carrying out this work remained unchanged.

Here was made clear the paradoxical and highly insecure position of the Japanese immigrant Communists as they endeavored to communicate with Japanese seamen on the waterfronts and decks of Japanese ships in the ports along the Pacific Coast of North America. On the one hand, the fact that the activists were Japanese immigrants fluent in Japanese enabled them at least at the outset to approach and possibly board the ships under the guise of being like any other Japanese compatriots. On the other hand, the activists' political beliefs and aims made them vulnerable at any and all times to discovery and being barred from ever again boarding the ships. In addition, the risks of discovery could jeopardize the livelihood and even life of the Japanese seamen with whom the activist had been in contact and could also result in the activist's arrest by immigration authorities and eventual deportation.

“Our motto is to not overlook one boat, but there's about 151 boats that anchor here, and there's 129–130 wharves, so there are times when I see the same customs officer or some such person, and I'll have to cancel or put off going on board,” —No. 1 Organizer in San Pedro, December 7, 1934

I have been unable to locate cited reports from 1933. What I have found, however, is the handwritten “Fourth Report of No. 1 Organizer in San Pedro” in Japanese for the period of November 25 to December 14, 1934, which offers a rare glimpse of this work from the point of view of a Japanese organizer. Organized by date and ship visited, the report includes both recorded conversations between “Me” and “Him” and commentaries by the organizer. Significantly, the organizer did not omit those interactions that indicated a lack of support for, and thus his personal failure in advancing, the Communist cause.⁵²

Overall, three themes stand out. The first was the transpacific and two-way nature of communication between the immigrant organizer and the seamen. On occasion, the exchange of information, news and literature was ongoing, following the schedule of arrivals and departures of ships on which the seamen regularly sailed. For instance, on the “Lapulata-Maru” ship, which followed a South American route to Japan, the organizer reported “hav[ing] 4 or 5 friends on this ship which I've talked to and obtained pamphlets from many times.” At the same time, others could develop, perhaps most often on a ship on which there was a core group of sympathetic seamen and a strong sense of worker solidarity. Such was the case on the Lapulata-Maru, where there was general support for the union and for “a general strike” in the face of any effort on the part of the companies “to destroy the union.” In this instance, the organizer added, “One sailor looked like he really wanted publications from SF/LA.” The organizer quoted him:

This kind of comment was enough to offer the possibility of a new connection. The organizer responded at once: “I handed him my address in SF/LA and got his address in Japan.” For the moment, the interest was mutual: “He promised to send me something from Japan.”⁵³

At times, however, even with the existence of a contact, communication could go awry. The second theme raises the question of extreme effort involved as well as high risks undergone by both the organizers and seamen who participated in these kinds of interactions. First, a huge number of ships docked in the port of San Pedro. Second, on board the ships the seamen were often kept “busy,” such that the organizer might have to hang around for several hours to have a brief conversation, sometimes to no avail. Third and perhaps most importantly, both the seamen and organizers on board ship were subject to extremely tight security. The seamen themselves occasionally requested meetings off the ship, in the belief that they would be less likely to be apprehended on shore and therefore have the opportunity for a more extended conversation. Even then, however, the meeting might not take place. For instance, the organizer reported:

And even if no seaman was fingered, the publications themselves might be discovered and destroyed. Apparently, when at least some of the seamen found “these kinds of advanced publications” placed by someone “in the lavatory, and around that area,” the seamen “just play dumb,” knowing already that if they were found, “they would be thrown away.”⁵⁵

The third theme highlights the lack of support on the part of “Caucasian” comrades in the United States. At two points in his report, the organizer made reference to this fact and to the negative impact upon his ability to carry out his work. On the first occasion he wrote: “Not receiving any assistance from my Caucasian comrades, I was unable to get any publications into the ship.”⁵⁷

What we have, then, is a story of persistent, creative, and daring efforts on the part of both Japanese and Chinese immigrant Communists and Japanese and Chinese seamen to engage in transpacific dialogue and exchange of information, news and literature. Acting at great personal risk and with any approach however tentative continually subject to obstruction, both the immigrant comrades and individual as well as small groups of seamen initiated and furthered transpacific communication and in some cases forged bonds of comradeship and solidarity. Remarkably, even as they remained “aliens” at home in the United States, the Japanese and Chinese immigrant Communists managed to extend their political activism at the local scale to participation in pan-Pacific trade union and Communist activism at the international scale on the waterfronts and the decks of ships temporarily docked at the principal ports on the Pacific Coast of North America and in the ports of New York and Philadelphia.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank editor Michael Hanagan for his detailed comments and for giving me the opportunity to contribute this paper, and editor Peter Nekola for his assistance. Thanks also to David Roediger, Deirdre Murphy, Steve Garabedian and Paul Jones for suggestions, and to Sara Evans, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Erika Lee, Josephine Lee, Peter Rachleff, and especially David Roediger for their comments on earlier drafts and support.