While recent historical studies of transnational processes, persons, and events within and across the Pacific Ocean have proliferated, they have yet to cohere as part of a single scholarly field. Instead, they stand as hybrid studies bridging two or more conventional fields, including histories of the American West, U.S. immigration and ethnicity, U.S. diplomatic and international relations, Asian American studies, East Asian studies, and Pacific Islander studies. This special issue of the Pacific Historical Review explores important possibilities for the emerging research area of “transpacific history” to interweave these conventional fields in ways that can better explore the social, economic, political, and transnational complexities of developments within and across the Pacific Ocean.

Studies of California’s anti-Japanese movement in the first half of the twentieth century invariably focus on processes of racial bigotry and misunderstanding. This article instead examines the emergence of an important discourse of racial accommodation, as well as the organized opposition to anti-Japanese policies, that was both consistent with and in opposition to the dominant racism of the day. The analysis focuses on three prominent Californians—John P. Irish, David Starr Jordan, and Chester H. Rowell—who, as early adopters of racial tolerance and transpacific identity, pioneered the defense of Japanese in the Golden State.