In 1914, Takao Ozawa applied for citizenship after living twenty years in the United States, where he completed his high school and college education in California before moving to Hawaiʻi, marrying, and starting a family. He petitioned for naturalization, a process for immigrants to apply for and to become citizens based on the years they have resided in a country. However the courts denied Ozawa’s application, and he spent the next eight years challenging the court system.

Ozawa wrote his own legal briefs where he often emphasized his “Americanness,” asserting he only spoke English in the household and had zero connection to Japan. “In name, General Benedict Arnold was an American, but at heart he was a traitor,” he reminded the court. “In name, I am not an American, but at heart I am a true American.” ¹

Racialized as inassimilable foreigners, Asian immigrants in fact had no legal pathway to citizenship until the mid-twentieth century. Systemic discrimination through municipal, state, and national laws affected the everyday lives of Asian communities. Mob attacks and other forms of violence further sought to drive out Asians from local communities and from work sites. Asian groups therefore deployed several strategies to survive, including taking cases to court and circumventing restrictive policies through other tactics.

This module explores how government authorities employed the legal category of “aliens ineligible to citizenship” to discriminate against Asian Americans. It also focuses on late nineteenth and early twentieth century restrictions on immigration and land ownership that targeted Asian groups, who continually faced residential segregation, barriers to land ownership, and prohibitions from naturalizing and accessing rights to housing and property.