“In Pursuit of an Anti-Racist Cosmopolitanism: An American Missionary Daughter’s Settlement Work in Japan and Hawaii in the Interwar and Wartime Years”

American Protestant women in Japan in the interwar years were engaged in transnational activism in the context of Japanese imperialism and made efforts to push the U.S. to embrace cultural and religious diversity upon their return to the U.S.  Building upon David Hollinger’s 2017 call for attention to the understudied role of the missionary children in the shaping of postwar American East Asian policies, the paper discusses the role of American Protestant women, particularly Alice E. Cary, in Japan and Hawaii during the interwar and wartime years, focusing on their efforts to promote anti-racist cosmopolitanism and cultural diversity. Alice E. Cary, a missionary daughter, was actively involved in the settlement house movement in Japan, particularly in Osaka, where she co-founded the Yodogawa Neighborhood House to assist Japanese and Korean factory women and children. Her work gained support from Japanese government and business leaders as well as from Kagawa Toyohiko, a Christian labor reformer. During wartime, she continued her efforts in Hawaii, working at the Church of Crossroads, an inter-racial church with diverse membership. Drawing on missionary and church archives in U.S. and Japan, the paper argues that missionary daughters like Alice E. Cary played a significant role in shaping radical notions of Christian cosmopolitanism within the Protestant missionary movement, influencing understandings of race, class, nations, and religions. This paper was presented at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities in July 2023 at Santa Clara University.