Japanese Peruvians ( or nipo-peruano; , Nikkei Perūjin) are Peruvian citizens of Japanese origin or ancestry.
Peru has the second largest ethnic Japanese population in South America after Brazil. This community has made a significant cultural impact on the country, today constituting approximately 0.1% of the population of Peru. In the 2017 Census in Peru, only 22,534 people self reported Nikkei or Japanese ancestry. The Peruvian Congress indicated that the emigration of Peruvian Nikkeis to Japan began in the 1980s, and it is estimated that of the almost 100,000 members of the Peruvian-Japanese community, 40,000 Nikkeis went to work in Japan.
Peru was the first Latin American country to establish diplomatic relations with Japan, in June 1873. Peru was also the first Latin American country to accept Japanese immigration. The Sakura Maru carried Japanese families from Yokohama to Peru and arrived on April 3, 1899, at the Peruvian port city of Callao. This group of 790 Japanese became the first of several waves of emigrants who made new lives for themselves in Peru, some nine years before emigration to Brazil began.
Most immigrants arrived from Okinawa, Gifu, Hiroshima, Kanagawa and Osaka prefectures. Many arrived as farmers or to work in the fields but, after their contracts were completed, settled in the cities. In the period before World WarII, the Japanese community in Peru was largely run by issei immigrants born in Japan. "Those of the second generation [the nisei] were almost inevitably excluded from community decision-making."
Japanese schools in Peru
Peru's current Japanese international school is Asociación Academia de Cultura Japonesa in Surco, Lima.
World War II
Although there had been ongoing tensions between non-Japanese and Japanese Peruvians, the situation was drastically exacerbated by the war. Rising tensions ultimately led to a series of discriminatory laws being passed in 1936, the results of which included stigmatization of Japanese immigrants as "bestial," "untrustworthy," "militaristic," and "unfairly" competing with Peruvians for wages.
Fueled by legislative discrimination and media campaigns, a massive race riot (referred to as the "Saqueo") began on May 13, 1940, and lasted for three days. During the riots Japanese Peruvians were attacked and their homes and businesses destroyed. Despite its massive scale, the saqueo was underreported, a reflection of public sentiment towards the Japanese population at the time.
By 1941, there were around 26,000 immigrants of Japanese nationality in Peru. In December of that year, the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, would mark the beginning of the Pacific war campaign for the United States of America in World WarII. After the Japanese air raids on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), formed during World WarII to coordinate secret espionage activities against the Axis Powers for the branches of the United States Armed Forces and the United States State Department, were alarmed at the large Japanese Peruvian community living in Peru and were also wary of the increasing new arrivals of Japanese nationals to Peru.
Fearing the Empire of Japan could sooner or later decide to invade the Republic of Peru and use the Southern American country as a landing base for its troops and its nationals living there as foreign agents against the US, in order to open another military front in the American Pacific, the U.S. government quickly negotiated with Lima a political–military alliance agreement in 1942. This alliance provided Peru with new military technology such as military aircraft, tanks, modern infantry equipment, and new boats for the Peruvian Navy, as well as new American bank loans and new investments in the Peruvian economy.
In return, the Americans ordered the Peruvians to track, identify and create ID files for all the Japanese Peruvians living in Peru. Later, at the end of 1942 and during all of 1943 and 1944, the Peruvian government on behalf of the U.S. Government and the OSS organized and started the massive arrests, without warrants and without judicial proceedings or hearings and the deportation of many of the Japanese Peruvian community to several American internment camps run by the U.S. Justice Department in the states of Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Georgia and Virginia.