His last name was well enough exploited for a pun on <CG> however.

Believe it was a sacrifice Frank felt he needed to make. Seems coming over at a relatively old age of around 30 years, guessing he took on his American name early on. Especially given he married an American early on as well. It was probably vitally important that he fit in. And if that meant jettisoning his historic culture, so be it.

Probably not the only sacrifice his birth nationality forced. Guessing after 1941, he wasn't very welcome at chess clubs or tournaments. Necessitating only play through mail. A situation that may have lasted until at least 1960.

It was pretty routine for immigrants, including Europeans, to "Americanize" their names at that time. And yes, people leaving their natal country and moving to a different one usually felt that it was not only necessary, but meritorious to adopt the culture of their new country. That was certainly my grandfather's opinion.

<Probably not the only sacrifice his birth nationality forced. Guessing after 1941, he wasn't very welcome at chess clubs or tournaments. Necessitating only play through mail. A situation that may have lasted until at least 1960.>

What's the source for that?

His Japanese name, according to the 1930 + 1940 census forms I looked at was more like Kotaro.

Name Events Relationships
Frank K Ouchi
Principal
United States Census, 1920

Census 1920
New York City, New York, United States
Birth 1891
Japan

SpousesRosalind Ouchi

Kataro Ouchi
Principal
United States Census, 1930

Census 1930
Bogota, Bergen, New Jersey, United States
Birth 1893
Japan

SpousesRosalind R Ouchi
ChildrenFrank Ouchi, Harry Ouchi, Constance Ouchi

Kotero Ouchi
Principal
United States Census, 1940

Census 1940
Bogota, Bergen, New Jersey, United States
Birth 1887
Japan

SpousesRosalind Ouchi
ChildrenFrank Ouchi, Harry Ouchi, Constance Ouchi

Kotaro Ouchi
Groom
New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829-1938

Marriage 10 July 1919
Bronx, New York, United States
Birth 1891
Japan

I believe the census works on a 72-year seal, with the 1950 census becoming public in April of 2022.

Our chess player was an <Issei>, i.e. a first generation Japanese born ex-pat who migrated to N. America. It's a Japanese word, as noted in this wiki page:

<The first members of the issei emigrated not directly to the mainland United States, but to Hawaii. These emigrants—the first of whom arrived on board the steamship City of Tokio in February 1885—were common laborers escaping hard times in Japan to work in Hawai'i. Their immigration was subsidized by the Hawaiian government, as cheap labor was needed for important commodity crops, especially its sugar plantations. Numerous Japanese eventually settled in Hawaii.[6]

Emigration of Japanese directly to the mainland began in 1885, when "student-laborers" landed on the West Coast of the United States.[7] The earliest of these emigrated to San Francisco. Their numbers continually increased in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Their purpose in moving to America was to gain advanced knowledge and experience to develop the modern society at home. Both students and laborers were attracted by the image of the United States as a country that welcomed foreigners. When they first arrived in the U.S., they had not intended to live there permanently, but rather to learn from Americans and to take that knowledge back home. While they encountered discrimination, they also made opportunities, and many settled in California, and later in Washington and Oregon as well as Alaska (to a lesser degree).>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issei

If one wonders why <K. Ouchi> might not have naturalized, despite leading almost an entire lifetime in the USA, paying taxes and raising children, well, he might have wanted to, but we don't know. We do know that discriminatory laws in the US prevented him from doing so for many years, even before WW2. I don't think <K. Ouchi> was interned during WW2, but I don't know. It's clear that he was a family man, married to an US citizen, and well integrated into the communty (a shopholder in 1930, and a respected member and office holder of his local chess club). But this section, describing some aspects of Japanese internment, talks about immigration and citizenship laws briefly (and introduces the term Issei):

<Most Japanese Americans interned during World War II were held in facilities run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and Wartime Civilian Control Agency (WCCA) described in previous chapters. However, other facilities were also used to imprison Japanese Americans during the war. In all, over 7,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese from Latin America were held in internment camps run by the Department of Justice and the U.S. Army. Eight of these facilities were visited for this project.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor and prior to Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, about 4,000 individuals from all over the U.S. were detained by the FBI. Over half of these were Japanese immigrants who were long-term U.S. residents denied U.S. citizenship by discriminatory laws. These Issei, now classified as "enemy aliens," were first sent to temporary detention stations, then transferred to locations known generally as "Justice Department Camps." The camps were run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, part of the Department of Justice. After hearings, most of the Issei were then sent to U.S. Army internment camps where they remained through May 1943. After that time the internees were returned to Department of Justice control for the duration of the war.

Published literature provides few details about the Japanese American experiences at these facilities. Weglyn (1976:176) notes that most of the U.S. Army and Department of Justice internment camps were considered temporary, and even a complete listing of the camps and internees is not available. >