The Rise and Struggle of the Japanese in America
Author's Note: This essay was the second of three assigned by my former Sociology instructor, Leonard (a proponent for "values" and a conformist of cloying political correctness), in the Fall Semester of 1999 at WWTC. Leonard had simply assigned our class an essay on the topic of any racial issue of our choice. I chose racism against the Japanese as my emphasis partially to make a point to Leonard; earlier in the course he had implied that Asians have it "easier" in American life than blacks, so for the corresponding assignment I dug up a little bit of history to make the point that such a generalization cannot be passed off as a "fact" as Leonard had tried to convey to our class.
��� In awe of these exotic American goods, Japan launched into an era of rapid industrialization. To aid the economic growth of their nation, Japanese students were sent to the United States initially for the intended purposes of absorbing ways and philosophies of the American culture and eventually bringing it back with them to their homeland. Some of these students came from wealthy, well-to-do Japanese families with great monetary resources; but other students had families with limited incomes, and needed to find ways to financially support themselves while maintaining an American education. Such students would often be employed by American families as part-time servants. They were commonly given menial jobs of servitude including meal preparation, washing, cleaning, and laundry. Unfortunately, this type of demanding labor would leave many Japanese students without adequate time or energy to study or concentrate on lectures.
� ��� By the 1880s, the independent kingdom of Hawaii was in need of additional agricultural laborers to work on plantations producing sugarcane, pineapple, and other Hawaiian crops. Since Japan�s population was overcrowding, the emperor lifted emigration sanctions to allow Japanese citizens to leave the country. In densely populated areas, emigration was logically encouraged to alleviate the population influx due to increasing urban industrial opportunities. Traditional agricultural workers embraced the opportunity to emigrate, as they were resistant to change from farming to industry with the rest of Japan.
��� As more Japanese began crossing the Pacific into California and Hawaii, American employers took advantage of the extra labor. For example, Yasumaza Employment of San Francisco offered wages of $1.50 per day to Japanese workers. This was a great differential compared to the average salary of $0.14 per day which they had made in Japan. Agricultural laborers would be hired for a variety of duties such as picking strawberries and tomatoes, planting beets, mining, gardening, domestic service, and working on the railroads. The largest condensation of Japanese emigrants settled in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, where new Japanese-oriented communities nicknamed �Little Tokyo� were established. �Little Tokyo� was a community composed primarily of Japanese people, for purposes of preserving their ethnic language, and selling authentic Japanese clothing, dry goods, groceries, and specialty foods. Gambling and alcohol consumption also became sources of diversion for many young men within �Little Tokyo.�
��� At the turn of the century, more than 25,000 Japanese emigrants had settled on the West Coast. Several had brought their families over from Japan to set up residence with them. Thus more and more Californians began to view the Japanese as respectable, hard-working, and intelligent. Still, racists were out in full force calling for Japanese emigrants to be added to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which had banned Chinese immigration to America. They felt threatened by the ambition and economic potential of the Japanese, who had been traditionally groomed by their culture to not tolerate failure. Japanese laborers intended to make a fortune, and saw much land being wasted in California. Strategically, they underbid white workers when negotiating for labor contracts, therefore monopolizing the farm labor market. Soon they had the power to demand higher wages and subsequently use saved money to buy and lease land as independent farmers.
��� The Japanese brought very conservative, resourceful knowledge to their utilization of Californian farmland. Along with their tactics of acquiring agricultural wealth, they purchased and used swamplands in California to grow rice, celery, strawberries, potatoes, peppers, grapes, and tomatoes. It was actually the Japanese who introduced rice production to the West Coast. As astounding masters of agriculture, there were, in fact, only about 125,000 immigrants from Japan during the first decade of the Twentieth Century - - compared to the millions of European immigrants concurrently pouring into the East Coast.
��� Several whites became horrified and envious of the Japanese domination of American farmland. Some Californians also tended to resent Japanese immigrants moreso than they resented European immigrants because the Japanese �looked different,� as did the Chinese. Attempts at segregation were made. In 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education segregated all Asian students into their own schools. While Chinese residents would typically comply with segregation, Japanese residents stood up for themselves and pointed out that they could not assimilate with American society if segregated from it. Japan, concerned for the welfare of its people in America, complained to the U.S. government. President Theodore Roosevelt finally signed the �Gentlemen�s Agreement� in 1908. This compromise stipulated that California would integrate Asian students into their schools if Japan limited its emigration to those who already had relatives in the U.S.
��� Further racist movements against Asians progressed. When California passed the Alien Land Act in 1913 prohibiting land ownership by foreign aliens who were ineligible for citizenship, Japanese immigrants got around the restriction. First-generation Japanese, also known as the issei, cleverly purchased land in the name of their American-born children who were automatically citizens. By 1919, over 74,000 second-generation Japanese, known as the nisei, owned land and considered America their home. As nisei men grew up and tried to build lives for themselves, white racists feared losing jobs to the �Yellow Peril.� With increased complaint from politicians, the Asian Exclusion Act was passed in 1924, making all Asian aliens unconditionally ineligible for citizenship. Japan, angered and resentful toward this American law, turned its back on the West and began building up aggression against other nations on the continent of Asia. Hawaii, on the other hand, became a haven for Japanese immigrants who blended comfortably into the diverse Hawaiian population composed of whites, Japanese, Chinese, and Polynesians. While working on the sugar and pineapple plantations of Hawaii, Japanese laborers became subject to racial equality as did other Hawaiian residents, cared for by inspectors, interpreters, and doctors.
��� Nevertheless, prejudice on the mainland still continued for years. Finally, the dam broke on the fateful day of December 7, 1942 when Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii was bombed by warplanes from Japan. For years the U.S. had been trying to hinder Japan�s exploitation of China and Southeast Asia. As a defense of its imperial growth, Japan went to war with America and the Allies. The U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor was destroyed, and a relentless media frenzy against Americans of Japanese descent commenced. Rumors quickly spread that Japanese fishing fleets off the coast of California were being readied for conversion into war vessels. Another rumor claimed that Japanese farmers were cutting arrow-shaped markers in California sugarcane fields so warplanes from Japan could be aerially led to appropriate targets.
��� Although such rumors would never be proven true, the FBI arrested more than 5,000 Japanese issei and nisei based on sheer racial suspicion of sabotage and espionage. Community leaders, organization heads, and anyone of authority possessing Japanese heritage was interrogated. Their homes were searched and ransacked. Any person who remotely looked Asian was fair game to be apprehended. Chinese residents often wore buttons that said �I Am Chinese,� in order to avoid arrest. While most of the arrested citizens were set free, mistrust from the American public still existed. People of Japanese descent were fired from their jobs, had their law or medical licenses revoked, and were denied service at grocery stores, banks, hospitals, restaurants, gas stations, and barbershops. Japanese fishermen were restricted from boating or frequenting the coastal waters. Anti-Japanese rhetoric or slogans became commonplace. The public was reacting against the fear of mainland invasions from Japan.
��� Partially due to their own political and economic greed, California farmers pressured the federal government to take action. Coupled with widespread public agitation, the discrimination and prejudice took its toll. On February 9, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, allowing for persons of Japanese ancestry to be moved away from the West Coast into special relocation camps. Overall, some 117,000 people of Japanese descent fell victim to this executive order; approximately 70,000 of those people were nisei - - actually American citizens! Families with Japanese heritage were ordered by the government to assemble in designated locations. They were permitted to bring only belongings that they could carry with them, and were sometimes given less than 48 hours to evacuate their homes. These families had no idea where their destination would be or how long they would have to remain there. In the midst of evacuating, they were frequently forced to give up their homes, business, and personal possessions - - unless they could find trustworthy individuals to care for their property while they were gone.
��� At first, the Japanese prisoners were sent to racetracks, fairgrounds, and stadiums for temporary shelter. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army hastily built ten relocation camps around the country: two in California, two in Arizona, two in Arkansas, one in Wyoming, one in Idaho, one in Colorado, and one in Utah. The prisoners were then transported to these internment camps by train. Each camp basically consisted of empty, poorly-built barracks surrounded by barbed wire. The populations of the different camps ranged from 8,000 to 20,000 residents, and all camps were located in the desert except for the two in Arkansas.
��� Every camp would be divided into sections. Each section contained 12 barracks, a dining hall, a recreation building, and a communal sanitation building for hygiene purposes. There was virtually no privacy in the bathroom facilities, which horrified a large number of the modest Japanese prisoners. Each barracks was divided into 6 rooms (one room per family), with every room containing a stove, light, and beds. Internment camp prisoners built churches for their family worship, and organized activities such as baseball, basketball, and swimming. They established their own schools taught by nisei prisoners who had been high school or college educated. Other prisoners worked as waiters, waitresses, cooks, and dishwashers in the dining halls, while some taught adult education classes so issei prisoners could learn to read and speak in English. Some prisoners spearheaded gardening or carpentry, and former doctors and dentists set up community clinics free of charge. However, the barracks were cramped and the walls were thin, making families� conversations easily overheard by others. The desert nights got cold, and this restrictive life of captivity became stagnant and tedious. Some of the prisoners would end up spending close to three years there!
��� Throughout this oppression, the Japanese issei and nisei maintained their strength and loyalty to America. For many of them, the United States had been the only home they�d ever known. Nisei men requested to serve in the U.S. military, and the government declined until 1943. At the age of 20, nisei males in the relocation camps had a bleak choice to make: either stay entrapped behind the barbed wire, or fight for the country that had imprisoned them against the nation of their ancestral heritage that had betrayed them. Over 26,000 young nisei men chose the latter to prove their patriotism to the American public.
��� ��� Mitsuye Endo was a young nisei woman imprisoned in a Japanese relocation camp. In 1942, Endo filed a writ of habeas corpus. She contended that as a loyal American citizen who could not read or speak Japanese, detention based on her heritage alone was illegal and her constitutional American rights were being violated. Finally on December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that Endo was right, and therefore the internment camps were constitutionally unjust. The U.S. Army had closed the relocation camps on December 17, 1944, one day prior to Mitsuye Endo�s legal victory, in anticipation of the court�s decision.
��� Yet, even as the war drew to a close, wartime propaganda had conditioned many Americans to mistrust people of Japanese descent. Encountering verbal and physical violence, over 50,000 Japanese ex-prisoners left the West Coast to live in other states. About 5,000 more ex-prisoners returned to Japan in disgust. Former prisoners who remained on the West Coast experienced prejudice and hostility from whites, blacks, and people of Mexican or Hispanic descent alike. Houses of Japanese families had been looted during the families� absences, and people were confronted with gang violence. Several nisei were forced to lie and say they were Chinese. The American government partially compensated survivors of the internment camps by awarding them an average of $0.10 for every $1.00 lost.
��� Fortunately, positive progress was made. More Americans began accepting people of Japanese descent as the years wore on. Voters defeated an incorporation of the Alien Land Act of 1920 into the state constitution by California legislation. The McCarron-Walter Act of 1952 repealed the 1924 Oriental Expulsion Act and allocated an immigration quota from Japan, also eliminating race as a factor regarding citizenship. As Japanese citizens were still denied housing in places and often prejudicial harassment in schools or the workplace, third-generation Asians began participating in the civil rights movement of the 1960s to gain racial equality. Quota restrictions on emigration from Japan were removed in 1965, bringing in a new wave of Japanese immigrants to America.
��� While some racists will never view any race other than their own as equals, Americans of all races have become more accepting of Asians as their fellow Americans over the years. As new generations of Asians balance Oriental traditionalism with assimilation into American pop culture and the mainstream normalcy of American life, they are seen less as �foreigners� and more as ordinary Americans. The reprehensible treatment of Asians by society during the 1940s should remind people everywhere how any person can be susceptible to racism no matter what their skin color. This historical account only reinforces the notion that specific groups, regardless of race, gender, religion, disability, or sexual orientation, must not be socially persecuted by society.
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