Rei’s Newspaper
Feb 17, 2012
The Deep History of Japanese Immigration
In these days, a great number of Japanese go to the United States. It depends on people why and how long they go to the US. Business trip, study abroad, traveling for 5 days, 2 weeks, one months, and some people live in the US for their entire life. In this way, Japanese freely travel back and forth between the two countries, Japan and the US nowadays. However, there is a long, deep, and dark cultural background to overcome trials and tribulations. I found an old newspaper from about 100 years ago on New-York tribune (April 16, 1905) about “Japanese Immigration” on the website, Chronicling America Project from the Library of Congress. For Activity1, I am going to analyze and explain the history of Japanese immigration by using several old newspapers, and information from my own research. In 1885, 127 years ago, Japanese started to emigrat to Hawaii under an agreement between Japan and Hawaii. In those days, Japan was at the bottom of an economic depression, and also Japan had concern about surplus population. Young Japanese went to Hawaii to work and make money to support their family in Japan. As it mentioned in other old local newspaper, El Paso herald in Texas (from July 29, 1920 ), several years later, some Japanese went back to Japan, and others moved to the West Coast America. As it says “Washington, Oregon and California is particular seem to represent an earthly paradise to the Japanese because of their favorable climate and fertile soil. As a result, about four-fifths of the total Japanese population in the United States live in these three states.” Same as in Hawaii, Japanese were treated as contract labors, and worked for small wages as working on the rail roads, in canning factory, clear away forest, fruits picking etc. Chinese and Portuguese used to do these hard jobs, but it is falling
mainly to Japanese laborers. It is because wages for Japanese labors were so small, and cannot even compare to the poorer classes of European such as Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese. Japanese labors couldn’t become US citizens, so they stop even desiring to assimilate with American people. Eventually Japanese labors started to work for Japanese immigrants in the US to stabilize the environment for Japanese immigrants. For example, they set up several new companies such as newspaper publisher for Japanese, phonograph parlors, billiard rooms, beer cellars, and social clubs. They succeeded with new companies. However American people had a bad impression of Japanese labors because Japanese labors worked for less than minimum wage so many American people lost their jobs because of Japanese labors. Gradually, American people’s bad impression of Japanese was escalated into serious race discrimination. The more the number of Japanese labors had been increased, the more American people felt an increasing anger. In San Francisco in 1905, agitation has begun against unregulated immigration of Japanese labors, and also employment of Japanese labors. This movement of anti-Japanese agitation spread over the West coast. It was almost same problem with Chinese immigration about 25 years earlier. In 1908, two of the state laws about Japanese immigration finally went into effect. One is about prohibiting Japanese immigrants from purchasing and owning own agricultural land in the US. The other one is about restricting the immigration of Japanese male laborers to the US. This law is only for male immigrants who go to the US to work, but allowed their wives and kids, and also students and diplomats to move the US.