ARE JAPANESE CAUCASIANS?

THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY CASE ever presented the Supreme Court of the United States is due to come up for argument in the coming fall.

Takao Ozawa has asked that august tribunal to decide the racial composition of the Japanese people, he assuming the attitude that their "root stocks" are Caucasian.

Into this remarkable cause enters the question of a fabled continent, "now submerged in Northwestern Polynesia, of which the capital was Ponape, in the Carolines -- the stone remains showing the ancient city of 100,000 inhabitants." From the aborigines who inhabited this continent, it is asserted, sprang the Polynesians, including the Japanese, the earlier Mediterranean races and the forefathers of "later Baltic peoples of Europe."

The Japanese specifically are declared to be of Caucasian descent. "The root stocks" of the race, according to Ozawa, "are the Ainu of the North and the Yamato in the South, each Caucasian -- the latter of Mediterranean stock."

The case arises from the desire of the petitioner to obtain citizenship, despite the legal provision barring persons of the Mongolian race. It involves international relations, for the decision will be scanned with particular interest by those Japanese who feel that America's attitude toward them has raised the question of racial inferiority, rather than that of racial difference, as claimed by observers in the United States.

Probably never at any time in history has so extraordinary a cause been laid before any judicial body. The court's ruling will settle the legal phases of the case, so far as this country's immigration and citizenship laws are concerned, but if adverse to Ozawa will not settle the controversial point in his mind or in the mind of those of his fellow countrymen who hold to the same opinion as he concerning the ancestry of their race.

In view of the paucity of real information on the subject and the disagreement among authorities, the court may content itself with a decision that Ozawa has failed to prove his case. This would be a negative ruling at best, but it may be the only one that the justices, in the light of the facts, may feel that they can hand down.