The scholarship on the “Yellow Peril” looks at Japanese immigrants (Issei) as an object of anti-Asian racialization in domestic politics or as a distraction in U.S.-Japanese bilateral diplomacy. Seldom do historians consider its ramifications outside those contexts. They also lack perspective on the impact of Issei practice on the geopolitics of Yellow Peril, which spread from California to the U.S.-Mexican borderlands and beyond. This article examines the role of Issei settler colonialism, as well as its unintended consequences, in the formation of discourse on the transborder Yellow Peril. That discourse propelled white America to reaffirm its commitment to the Monroe Doctrine, shifting the nature of U.S. diplomacy from the endeavor to keep European rivals out of the Western Hemisphere to one that sought to exclude the Japanese racial enemy from America’s “backyard.” It culminated in the construction of a hemispheric national security regime.

Chick sexing---the work of separating baby pullets from cockerels---was an important mode of employment for second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei), who dominated the trade between the late 1930s and 1950s. Since their wartime internment experience symbolized the denial of their national belonging on racial grounds, the Nisei politics of identity has been characterized in terms of single-minded assimilation into white America. Yet, instead of suppressing their ancestry, Nisei "chick sexors" took advantage of it to preserve control of the trade during and after the war. Drawing on notions of "science," "professionalism," and "citizenship," these Nisei manipulated their corporate identity, replaced negative connotations with contrived ideas of racial desirability, and made their race acceptable to white America and to themselves. This article examines the complex strategies behind the process of Japanese American integration and identity formation---one that entailed a constant reformulation of racial meanings and boundaries.