Immigration and Education in a Culturally Pluralist Society
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The enactment of the Bilingual Education Act (1968) and the Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols (1974) dismantled the assimilationist ideology that had shaped public-school policies on the education of immigrant and non-English-speaking children. Public schools and teacher-education programs began to emphasize bilingualbicultural and multicultural education. However, these programs remain controversial. Some states have reduced or eliminated bilingual education programs.78
Japanese Americans Japanese immigration began in the 1860s when American labor contractors recruited Japanese men to work on sugar and pineapple plantations in Hawaii. Later, Japanese workers also immigrated to California. The largest Japanese immigrant communities were in Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California.79 Japanese immigration continued until 1910, when it declined because of economic and political issues between Japan and the United States.80 Of the 27,000,000 immigrants who came to the United States between 1881 and 1930, only 275,308 were Japanese.81 The Japanese called the immigrants, Issei, and their children, Nisei. In Los Angeles and Seattle, Japanese American communities developed as Japanese entrepreneurs operated hotels, restaurants, and grocery stores. Like the European and Chinese immigrants, Japanese Americans established Japanese-language newspapers, religious and benevolent societies, and recreational organizations. Seeking to maintain their language and culture, Japanese Americans established private Japanese-language schools that taught Japanese language, history, and geography.82 As with other immigrant children, state compulsory school-attendance laws required Japanese American children to attend school. The Issei, the first generation immigrants, were familiar with the schools that the Japanese government had established. Unlike some immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Mexico, and China, who had limited experience with compulsory schooling, the Japanese were more familiar and receptive to it. Japanese American children encountered racial segregation and the assimilationist ideology in public schools. In 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education required Asian children to attend segregated schools. When the Japanese government protested, the Board rescinded its segregationist policy. Japanese Americans faced strong anti-Japanese hostility after Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Suspicious that Japanese on the West Coast might commit acts of sabotage, the US Government interned 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, many American citizens, in relocation camps. Located in remote areas in California, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas, the internment camps, called relocation centers, lacked adequate housing and other basic services. Over time, the internees established social and recreational activities. Japanese American teachers organized schools for the children and adult-education classes. The suspicions that led the US government to intern the Japanese Americans proved groundless. Not a single act of sabotage was committed by a Japanese American during World War II. Despite resentment over the government’s repressive action, twenty thousand Japanese Americans (the majority from Hawaii but six thousand were recruits from the camps) served in the US armed forces during World War II. Guadalupe San Miguel, Contested Policy: The Rise and Fall of Federal Bilingual Policy in the United States, 1960–2001. 79 Paul Spickard, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), p. 11. 80 David J. O’Brien and Stephen S. Fugita, The Japanese American Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 4–17. 81 Spickard, Japanese Americans, p. 22. 82 Spickard, Japanese Americans, p. 79. For Japanese-language schools, see Agato Noriko, Teaching Mikadoism: The Attack on Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii, California, and Washington (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006). 78
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