The second generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who grew up in the Los Angeles area before the Second World War had two primary cultures seemingly competing for their attention: that of their parents (Issei) and that of the dominant culture surrounding them. However, the generation gap between the Issei and Nisei was extreme, with the former being raised right in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution in Japan while the latter was raised in America during the Revolution's consolidation into the modern that stressed science and intellect over tradition and organization over instinct. An examination of the lives of Nisei who were children and adolescents before the Second World War demonstrates that binary enculturation oversimplifies the transnational links between Japan, United States, and modernity, particularly true in the Greater Los Angeles region which was one of the most ethnically diverse, least dense, and proudly progressive regions in the United States between 1918 and 1942.