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he was welcomed into the Japanese community, and achieved an unusual measure of integration for a non–Japanese. After being hired as professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal in 1940, LaViolette further distinguished himself as a scholar of Japanese Canadians and defender of their citizenship rights. During World War II, he returned to the United States and volunteered for service as a social analyst at the Heart Mountain camps. LaViolette's dedication to action for racial equality in the public sphere, which made him stand out among his colleagues, poses important questions about the role of outside “interpreters” in struggles against discrimination. At the same time, his belief in assimilation at all costs, which led him to welcome mass dispersion and resettlement of ethnic Japanese citizens and residents, and his subsequent withdrawal from Japanese North American connections are puzzling and deserve scrutiny.

      Little is known about LaViolette's early life. He was born on January 9, 1904, in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. His father, John Emmanuel LaViolette, who was of mixed English and French-Canadian ancestry, grew up in Montreal. His mother, Isabella, was an immigrant from Scotland. His older brother was Dr. Wesley La Violette, later a noted composer and teacher of jazz in Los Angeles.¹ Forrest moved to Spokane, Washington, as a baby. In 1918, he moved to Portland, Oregon. After completing a year of high school, he enrolled at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Portland. After receiving a radio certificate in 1920, he joined the merchant marine as a radio operator on ocean liners. During this period, he sailed around coastal Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia, interacted with native peoples, and made at least four trips to the Far East, including Japan.² After giving up his seafaring and returning to Portland, he graduated from Franklin High School, then enrolled for a year at Willamette University in Salem. He then spent three years as an executive for Montgomery & Co. In the end, he decided on a scholarly career, and in 1930 he enrolled at Reed College in Portland.³ At first LaViolette was interested primarily in anthropology. His senior thesis, written in 1933 under the direction of P. K. Roest, a professor of sociology, was entitled “Japanese Nationalism: A Social Study.”⁴ LaViolette then enrolled at the University of Chicago in sociology. His original concentration was in social anthropology, and it was primarily as an anthropologist that he wrote his M^A. thesis, submitted in 1935, and entitled “Some Problems Relating to the Concept of Culture.”

      Over the following two years, as LaViolette completed the coursework for his doctorate and began to think about how to structure his doctoral project, he realized he was attracted more by sociology and by American society. At that time, under the leadership of Robert Park plus such stalwarts as Louis Wirth and Robert Redfield, the University of Chicago's Sociology Department was the brain center of race relations research in the United States. In particular, Park and his colleagues had undertaken a series of studies of minorities, notably “oriental Americans.” LaViolette thus began to turn his attention to the experience of Asians in the United States and to accumulate research for a doctoral thesis covering the “problem dealing with assimilation of the American-born Japanese.” While exactly why he chose to concentrate on Asian Americans is unknown, doubtless his decision reflected both his own West Coast roots and the influence of his professors.

      In fall 1936, LaViolette was appointed to an instructorship in sociology at the University of Washington (where he was joined soon after by his wife, Vera). He was dissatisfied with traditional research methods and strove to include himself among Japanese American communities to absorb his subject firsthand. LaViolette was drawn to Shotaro Frank Miyamoto, a Nisei graduate student in sociology eight years his junior. He relied on Miyamoto not only for professional discussions and insights into Japanese American life but also for introductions to others in the community, of which Miyamoto was a native. Miyamoto later affirmed that LaViolette was an enthusiast whose highly intuitive and spontaneous thinking and frankly unstructured method complemented his own more formalized and systematic approach.⁵ The two men became such close collaborators that LaViolette invited Miyamoto to share a house with him and his wife. The unorthodox living and professional arrangement persisted for some three years and worked to the advantage of all concerned—by 1939, LaViolette had completed his dissertation, while Miyamoto had written a long essay, “Social Solidarity Among the Japanese in Seattle,” the first scholarly article by a Nisei social scientist.⁶ Meanwhile, the LaViolettes hired a Nisei undergraduate, Michi Yasumura, to join the household as an au pair, although Vera LaViolette continued to do much of the actual work of caring for Forrest (whose ulcer required him to eat a limited diet; Yasumura recalled that he used to throw parties and buy all the food he could not eat to have the pleasure of seeing others devour it).⁷

      Frank Miyamoto and Michi Yasumura meanwhile introduced LaViolette to James Sakamoto, editor of the Seattle-based Nisei newspaper Japanese American Courier.8 LaViolette soon became a semiregular contributor—the only non-Japanese to be so honored. His columns reflected the assimilationist views and antiracist vision of chief editor Sakamoto.⁹ In summer 1938, LaViolette published serially in its pages his first “scholarly article”—the text of a manifesto he had delivered before the National Conference on Social Work on the citizenship activities of American-born Japanese. In the speech LaViolette stated that the task was fundamentally one of applying social science knowledge to the service of race and cultural pluralism. “Our nation's problem,” he stated, “is no longer that of the melting pot, but of the symphony orchestra.”¹⁰ He described in detail the social structure of Japanese communities, and examined the various restrictive immigration laws, job discrimination, and social stigma they faced.¹¹ In order to prepare for the inevitable crisis that would ensue in Japanese communities as family units broke down, LaViolette urged the government to abolish unequal laws and fund social service organizations (on the model of the National Urban League) to aid the development of a mature political consciousness among young Nisei.¹²

      LaViolette completed his dissertation, “Types of Adjustment Among Second-Generation Japanese,” early in 1939. In it, he analyzed the development of Nisei society and its impact on character. As in his Japanese American Courier articles, LaViolette suggested that external factors would determine progress toward the ultimate (and desirable) goal of complete absorption of Japanese Americans into the larger society. He concluded that the acceptance and social integration of the Nisei was a complex matter, since it was not simply an interracial problem, like that of the Negro, but also an international one, as a function of the larger relationship between the United States and Japan and American hostility toward Japan's foreign relations.¹³ In an article summarizing his findings, LaViolette noted that Japanese Americans strongly distanced themselves from the Japanese culture of their parents and were not welcome in Japan (those who went to Japan for education, he explained, had experiences that were “usually not satisfactory”), and so were ripe for absorption into America. He added that Japanese Americans were as individualistic as other Americans and likely would not turn into a “racial bloc” like the Negroes. Conversely, he made clear that the Nisei, given an opportunity to prove themselves, would be completely loyal to the United States in case of war with Japan. “If the Japanese of the second generation are given an opportunity there is no question where their loyalty and patriotism would place them, either in peace or war.…This loyalty to the United States was shown clearly in Hawaii when the question of boycott came up.”¹⁴ Once the dissertation was accepted, LaViolette began on the work of transforming it into a book. However, because of the looming war situation and the widespread suspicion of Japanese Americans, two different publishers who had previously agreed to publish each cancelled his book contract.¹⁵

      In fall 1940, LaViolette was hired as assistant professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal. Once settled in his ancestral French Canadian homeland, he was able to make use of his French-language fluency (in tribute to his roots, LaViolette would thereafter sometimes sign his name using the more French “La Violette”). He also declared himself attracted to the job because he could continue his studies of Native communities on the Pacific coast of Canada. Montreal newspapers reporting his arrival described him as an expert on “the yellow peril,” adding that in addition to his five years of study of Japanese on the Pacific coast, he had already visited the Vancouver area in order to make preliminary studies of the “Japanese problem” in British Columbia as well. LaViolette warned that a Pacific war would be deadly for those communities:

      The

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