About this module: This is one of six modules created for DMRS-El Paso's immigration history project. The modules focus on the people and agencies that helped (or tried to help) immigrants to the United States.
Immigrants from Japan were considered aliens, ineligible for American citizenship—without the right of naturalization—until 1952, when the McCarran-Walter Act. Japanese immigrants entered the USA (mostly via Hawai’i) before they were entirely shut out by the US Immigration Act in 1924. Significant Japanese immigration to the US did not begin again until the Immigration Act of 1965 ended 40 years of bans against immigration from Japan and other countries.1
Japanese Immigration
For 214 years, between 1639 and 1853, the Japanese islands were Sakoku—“closed country”.2 After brief encounters with Europeans, Japan cut itself off from the rest of the world. They had no relations or trade with other countries, foreigners were barred from entering Japan, and common Japanese people were kept from leaving the country. The Sakoku policy ended when US Navy ships under Commodore Matthew Perry forced the Japanese to open the country to foreign trade in 1853.3
Student-laborer immigrants
Beginning in the 1860s, a very small number of Japanese men, with the help of Christian religious organizations, left Japan for the United States, where they became student-laborers. Almost all went to California, where they took menial jobs to support themselves and lived in cheap boarding-houses or dorms provided by the Christian organizations. Evenings they took classes in English. Some finished high school and a few went on to graduate from college in the US.4
Emigration to the Kingdom of Hawai’i
In the 1800s, Hawai’i was an independent kingdom where foreigners were permitted to own land where they grew sugar cane. A shortage of labor led Hawai’i to allow Chinese laborers to immigrate and work in the sugar cane fields. To work the big new sugar cane fields, the sugar plantations brought in Chinese contract workers.
Immigration from China to Hawai’i ended for several reasons. The Chinese workers’ contracts expired after three years, at which point they were free to return to China, go to California for work, or stay in Hawai’i and start their own farms and businesses which would compete with locals.
Americans did not want Chinese workers coming to the USA because of racism and the belief that the Asians would be taking jobs away from White Americans. To stop the Chinese from coming, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization. In 1892, that law was extended for another ten years.
This law shut off all immigration to the US from China and the Hawai’ians were eager to demonstrate their connections to the USA, so in 1883, the Hawai’ian government decided to follow suit by restricting Chinese immigration to 600 people in any consecutive 3-month period and then, in 1886, all immigration of unskilled Chinese was cut off. 5
With no access to Chinese workers, the sugar plantations turned to Japan, which was suffering from an economic depression.6 People from southern Japan in the 1880s suffered from drought, flooding, crop failures and economic policies which led to currency deflation. With the help of the Japanese government, many took jobs in Hawai'i where they could earn comparatively higher wages.7 Thus a trickle of workers arriving in 1868 turned to a flood by 1886.8 In Hawaii, “the search for additional labor led to the recruitment of approximately 45,000 Chinese and 86,400 Japanese between 1876 and 1900.”9
White Hawai’ians looked down on the Chinese as “coolies,” a word which is now considered a racial slur. Japan did not want Japanese men to work in Hawai’i, where they would be looked down on like the Chinese were, so Japan officially barred emigration in fear that Japanese laborers would be seen as degrading the reputation of the Japanese people.10
It wasn’t until 1885, with the approval of the Japanese government, that the Hawai’ians brought in Japanese laborers.11 To keep the Japanese laborers from being perceived as lowly indigents, Japan decided to require any Japanese who wanted to work in Hawai’i to put down a security deposit to pay for the trip back to Japan. They also required them to have a contract for employment in Hawai’i or the USA before they left Japan.12
Hawai’i and Japan, in 1885, signed an agreement letting Japanese workers into Hawai’i under 3-year contracts. Many Japanese took advantage of this to move to the US once they had fulfilled their contracts. The first Kanyaku imin, or contract laborer immigrants, arrived on February 8, 1885, as contract laborers for the sugarcane and pineapple plantations.13
From 1885 to 1907 laborers (called dekaseginin) left Japan temporarily to work in Hawai’i14 or the United States.
Emigration to the United States
The Chinese Exclusion Act led to a shortage of labor and increased demand for Japanese workers in the United States.15 Unfortunately, race hatred of all Asians led to the enactment of discriminatory laws against the Japanese, especially in the western states. The situation got worse when, in 1906, San Francisco tried to remove Asian students from the public schools.16 Anti-Japanese riots occurred in California and the northwest. The Japanese Navy sent warships to the Pacific coast to show support for the Japanese living in America.17
A diplomatic solution was found in 1908: the US and Japan reached the Gentleman’s Agreement: Japan would not issue visas to Japanese laborers, but the wives, children, and families of Japanese already living in America were permitted to go leave for the USA.
By 1908, the labor shortage created by anti-Chinese laws made it easier for Japanese workers to find jobs. “Chinese workers had taken many of the lowest-paying jobs in railroad construction, farming, logging, mining, and fishing, but now those jobs were available to new immigrants. Some Japanese looked for work in cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, but many had grown up on farms in Japan or Hawaii, so they decided to pursue agricultural work. They were especially keen on the possibility that they might eventually be able to buy the land themselves. The large and productive valleys of California presented unlimited possibilities.” 18
Japanese immigrants to America were in for a shock when they discovered how big the US is. The land area of all the Japanese islands is 145,914 square miles, about the size of the state of California, which is 163,696 square miles, but the entire USA is 3,797,000,000 square miles.
After 1908, Japanese immigrants—issei19—began settling down as farmers and small business owners.20 The Gentleman’s Agreement made it possible for married men to send for their wives to join them.
Some unmarried men went back to Japan to marry and then returned to the US. Other unmarried men used the “picture-bride” method—the man sent a photo of himself and a short bio to his family in Japan, they would select a bride for him, and they would be married in Japan simply by completing a form. The picture-bride would then travel to America, where she might (or might not) find her husband to be as advertised. In 1900 there were only 410 married Japanese women in the US. By 1910, there were 5,581 and by 1920 22,193.21
In 1913, California passed a law prohibiting “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from owning land. The Japanese were deemed “non-white” and thus denied the right to become naturalized citizens, so this law prevented Issei from owning land.
In 1924, Congress passed the Immigration Exclusion Act, which ended all Japanese immigration. Japanese were not allowed to immigrate again until 1965.
Racism in America: the Exclusionists and the “Yellow Peril”
One result of more Japanese traveling to America to work was in increase in anti-Japanese racism. Racism was not new22, but it took on different dimensions when it came to the Japanese workers who came to the US and their families. The Anti-Japanese racism of the “exclusionists” was based on cultural differences, religion, economics, and fear of Whites being outnumbered if Japanese immigration were allowed.
The cultural differences were based on the belief that the Japanese could never assimilate into American culture.23 As prominent newspaper publisher V.S. McClatchy (1857–1938) testified before Congress:
“The yellow and brown races do not intermarry with the white race, and their heredity, standards of living, ideas, psychology, all combine to make them unassimilable with the white race.”24
“They select the better and richer districts, and they con- centrate there, secure possession and control of communities and industries, and make their presence felt, so that in those communities they succeed in time in becoming the paramount influence.”25
“…it is our duty, as I see it, to protect our race and our people and our Nation, with all its faults, rather than to sacrifice it by letting in an unassimilable alien people at their request or demand.”26
Religion also played a role in anti-Japanese sentiment. The Japanese brought their traditional religious beliefs with them to America, with most practicing Buddhism and Shintoism.
A small group of issei were Christians who struggled with the contradictions between their culture and their faith. In Japanese culture the Emperor was worshipped as a divine being—a concept that was completely unacceptable to Christians who believe in a single, omnipotent God. When news spread that some Christian Japanese in America refused to bow before a portrait of the Emperor27, Japanese communities in California and other parts of America were torn apart. A long, bitter struggle over religion and assimilation continued for years among the Japanese. Christian converts were accused of being disloyal to Japan and to the Emperor. Japanese who were not Christian were suspected of being disloyal to America.28
Because the exclusionists raised questions about the issei’s loyalty, religious organizations, which had helped other immigrant groups, chose not to help the Japanese.
When Japan defeated Russia in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, the exclusionists drummed up fears that Japanese immigrants were a vanguard for an impending Japanese invasion of the Pacific coast.
A large part of anti-Japanese racism stemmed from a false theory of economics that blamed the immigrants for taking jobs away from White Americans and European immigrants. As the economy went through cycles of ups and downs, the Japanese became the target of baseless racist propaganda that blamed them for unemployment, currency fluctuations, commodities manipulation, and other shady practices.29
Anti-Japanese exclusionists attempted to convince Whites that Japanese immigration—the “Yellow Peril”— threatened the very survival of the White race. They made up stories about nefarious and devious Japanese to show the unsuitability, criminality, and deviance of Japanese immigrants. They used fear-mongering of racial obliteration of Whites, fanning the flames of popular suspicions with vivid images of the specter of an eventual takeover of America by “Asiatic hordes”. California newspapers, like the San Francisco Chronicle, drew on White fears about “racial mixing”, suggesting that Japanese men could not be trusted with White women and that Japanese schoolchildren would morally and culturally contaminate White children in public schools.30
As the Japanese-American population steadily increased, through immigration of picture brides and the birth of nisei (second-gemeration Japanese) children, anti-Japanese forces warned that Whites would soon be outnumbered in America. The exclusionists spread lies about how many Japanese babies were being born and used false comparisons to show that the Japanese birth rate was three times higher than the general population’s.31
The low point in the Japanese-American experience came after the 1941 attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor. Americans distrusted the loyalty of the Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. There was almost no evidence that the Japanese-Americans planned any kind of espionage or sabotage, but racism and fear lead the military to press for action.32 Japanese-Americans living in the West were rounded up and taken to concentration camps far from the Pacific. They lost their homes, businesses, communities—everything.
The US incarcerated some 120,000 Japanese-Americans (62% of whom were American citizens) in “relocation centers.”
According to the US National Archives, “Because of the perception of “public danger,” all Japanese within varied distances from the Pacific coast were targeted. Unless they were able to dispose of or make arrangements for care of their property within a few days, their homes, farms, businesses, and most of their private belongings were lost forever. Relocation centers were situated many miles inland, often in remote and desolate locales. Sites included Tule Lake, California; Minidoka, Idaho; Manzanar, California; Topaz, Utah; Jerome, Arkansas; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Poston, Arizona; Granada, Colorado; and Rohwer, Arkansas.”33
Conditions in the internment camps were rough, with four or five families and their possessions, sharing tar-papered army-style barracks. Worse yet was the psychological impact on the internees. They were dislocated, depressed, felt betrayed, and suffered horribly from losing their homes and communities. It would be forty-five years before those interned were given an official apology and received reparations.34
Motives for Japanese immigration
The “push” to emigrate from Japan came from natural disasters—food shortages and crop failures, floods, and landslides, ruinous monetary policies made worse by the loss of outside income.
Natural disasters led to food shortages
A major drought in 1883 was followed by terrible flooding in 1884 and 1886, which led to deadly landslides. Crops were wiped out, so there were food shortages and widespread hunger.35
Taxation plan destroyed livelihoods
In 1873, the Japanese government implemented a new land tax to pay for huge growth in military spending. To keep the government from running out of money, they printed more, which triggered runaway inflation. To fight inflation, the government deliberately drove down prices, which led to small farmers having less income and driving some into bankruptcy.36
Loss of outside income
In addition to growing their own food, many farmers made money spinning cotton at home for cash. When modern textile mills opened in Japan in the 1880s, this source of income dried up.37
The “pull” to emigrate
The “pull” to emigrate to Hawai’i and, eventually, to the United States was primarily based on the opportunities emigration offered. The idea of leaving home to work, with the intention of returning home at some point, was called kaigai dekasegi. The Japanese thought of kaigai dekasegi as having three components: starting out in extreme poverty, getting wealthy from working abroad, and returning to Japan as a rich man.38 These dekaseginin always intended to return to Japan.
The Japanese had an entirely different concept of emigration. To them, Japanese subjects belonged to the soil of Japan. Japanese who went abroad to work were, by definition, temporary migrant workers who were required to return to Japan. Japanese political leaders worried about migrants’ behavior once overseas, concerned that it should not to dishonor the country as a whole. The Japanese government did not want penniless Japanese wandering the streets of a foreign country.39
Education
For the early student-laborer emigrants and for many of those who followed, going to the US was seen as a chance to improve their prospects in life. Japan, they knew, had fallen far behind the west during two and a half centuries of isolation. The Japanese saw learning English as an important step to joining the modern world. Getting an education in America would help them to acquire skills they could use when they returned to Japan.40
Help from Christian institutions
The first immigrant organization in the US was the Gospel Society in San Francisco, composed of Methodist and Congregationalist converts. Christian institutions began by providing the immigrants with a place to meet and went on to offer English classes, dormitories, and help finding employment.41
Lure of jobs in prostitution
Unlike the US, prostitution in Japan was not shameful and was a government-regulated industry. Japanese women had different reasons for emigrating and becoming prostitutes in America. Some viewed overseas prostitution as just another form of dekasegi labor migration. They hoped that work in American brothels would bring in enough to pay off their debts, including any cash advances, passage, and other costs, and maybe make enough to save or send back home. Some naive young women fell for exaggerated tales of good-paying jobs or educational and marriage opportunities. When they arrived, they were forced to work in brothels or bar-restaurants. Traffickers would sneak women out of Japan and into the US, hiding them in trunks or passing them off as their wives to leave Japanese ports. If American immigration officials caught the women, pimps got their lawyers to submit habeas corpus petitions to the federal court, demanding their release. Weak law enforcement and a sophisticated network of procurers made prostitution in the U.S. West a thriving business.42
Availability of farm land
Land was a precious commodity in Japan, and the opportunity to own a farm was a big draw to immigrants. Thousands of Japanese were drawn to the West, particularly to California, to buy farmland.43
Help For Japanese Immigrants
Japanese immigrants got very little help from outside their own community. Those who converted to Christianity got help from religious organizations. the earliest student-laborers got job placements, English lessons, and temporary housing. Later immigrants got these and other social services. But because of racism, most American immigration agencies did not want to get involved with the Japanese. What help they got came from Japanese associations, prefectural associations, the Japanese government, and Japanese-American business associations.
The Japanese Government
The Japanese government provided some help, mostly in terms of assisting immigrants in compliance with the rules for visas, spouses, and navigating American laws. They supported the Japanese Associations, which were primarily concerned with protecting the image of Japanese in America. They also fought, with little success, against racism and discrimination in US. The Gentlemen’s Agreement enabled the Japanese government to save face while permitting the United States to continue to discriminate against Japanese immigrants. In 1894, the Japanese government issued a set of regulations to Protect Emigrants from predatory agents. These laws controlled the emigration companies and helped the immigrants. The government also benefited from the huge amount of money sent back to Japan by immigrants in America. These remissions helped the Japanese economy.44
Japanese Associations
Japanese Associations were political organizations and moral watchdogs hoping to protect the public image of Japanese immigrants and to make them more “American.45” They aimed at those Japanese who were involved in prostitution, gambling, drinking and other immoral (and sometimes illegal) activities. The Associations urged the Japanese-Americans to avoid scandals, particularly adultary and desertion, that would embarrass the Japanese community.46
They also worked to end Japanese prostitution because as many as a thousand Japanese women were working as prostitutes in the last decades of the 1800s. Most were apparently tricked into leaving Japan and trafficked to brothels in California and in other west coast cities.47
The Japanese Associations also tried to educate the American public about Japan and the Japanese people.
Prefectural associations
Prefectural associations—Kenjin kai—linked immigrants from the same prefecture48 in Japan. Based initially on shared dialects and common cultural experiences, these associations provided social interaction, economic assistance, and a modicum of social security among immigrant laborers. Kenjin-kai aided bereaved family members when a loved one passed away.
Given the small number of immigrants in interior communities and the large number of prefectures in Japan, it might be assumed that prefectural origin might go unnoticed as immigrants focused on a shared national identity that was considerably different from that of the recipient community.
Although Americans couldn’t identify subtle differences among Japanese immigrants, the immigrants themselves noticed variations in dialect and custom based on prefectural origin and sought to associate themselves with others from the same cultural background. A kenjin, someone from one’s own prefecture, was considered trustworthy. In Arizona, for example, early immigrants gravitated to others who spoke the same dialect, and met together to reminisce and share news about home.49
The Tanomoshiko
From 1906 to 1941, the Sacramento Hiroshima Kenjin kai was actively supportive in various forms of assistance ranging from rotating credit associations to social outings. By 1910, Sacramento had the third largest Japanese population (following Los Angeles and San Francisco), but many Issei men found difficulty in establishing sufficient credit. As a result, many kenjin sought another alternative—forming a tanomoshiko—a rotating credit association in which Issei men pooled their money each month so that a large sum of money would be available to lend out. The borrower would repay the tanomoshiko over a designated period and soon someone else would be able to borrow a large sum of money. The Issei men dealt strictly with cash, so they were very cautious to organize their tanomoshiko among Kenjin kai members, who were considered loyal and trustworthy. A member who defaulted, taking the money without intending to repay the loan, would lose face and disgrace his Kenjin kai and the entire Japanese community. This was the ultimate rejection for an Issei with traditional Meiji-era values.
However, the type of cooperation usually seen in a tanomoshiko allowed many immigrants, who would otherwise have been unable to start a business, an opportunity to make a decent living as an entrepreneur.50
Job Assistance
Another type of financial support which the kenjin-kai offered was through job assistance. Many Japanese immigrants faced difficulty in finding work; some were too proud to ask for government welfare or the assistance of outsiders (non-Japanese), others strugggled with English. When an immigrant couldn’t find a job on his own, a kenjin, who oftentimes felt obligated, tried to help him find a job. An immigrant, even a proud one, would usually accept help from a fellow kenjin more graciously because of the closeness felt between their prefectural ties.51
Boarding Houses
Kenjin-kai also ran boarding houses for Issei immigrants. In Sacramento, California, the houses were “clean and orderly” providing a night’s lodging for 10¢ and 15¢. For $5–$15 a person could get a room for a month. Meals cost 10¢–15¢.52
Funerals
When single Issei men died leaving no family members in the U.S., the kenjin-kai acted as a surrogate family, arranging the funeral service and taking care of any financial matters. In Sacramento, for example, the Kenjin-kai sent an annual census to Japan, and whenever an Issei (Japanese citizen) died, the kenjin-kai would notify the Japanese Consulate. The Kenjin-kai collected koden donations (money to help pay funeral expenses or other debts), arranged for public notices, served tea and food at the widow’s house after the funeral, and sent out thank-you letters.53
Some Japanese working or living away from home today can still find Kenjin Kai online. For example The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme has a list at https://jetaany.org/resources/japan-related-resources-archives/prefectural-associations-kenjin-kai/
Many Japanese organizations in America today hold “kenjin kai picnics where multi-generation Japanese Americans attend and speak a mixture of Japanese and English, sing popular tunes and folksongs, play favorite games and pastimes, and celebrate an ever-evolving Japanese American culture.”54
Business Organizations
In addition to prefectural associations, early immigrant farmers and businessmen in interior communities developed occupational organizations to reduce economic competition within the ethnic group, organize labor resources, and create opportunities for purchasing and sales outside the ethnic group. In cities like Denver, numerous organizations promoted or protected business interests and regulated competition. These included the Japanese Business Men’s Association, the Japanese Restaurant Keepers Association, and the Japanese Boarding and Lodging House Keepers As- sociation.7 In rural areas these economic associations could be as simple as two or three farmers joining together to rent land, share labor, and market their crops, or they may have extended to more sophisticated organizations where independent farmers joined together to negotiate rental contracts, disseminate the latest information on farming practices, or gain the advan- tages of cooperative purchases and sales. These occupational associations were patterned after farm and business associations in Japanese villages, including farmers’ cooperative societies, but they also responded to local conditions.55
Local Japanese Associations
Later more sophisticated associations were designed to enhance social life and foster economic success, much like the prefectural and economic associations, but they also served to maintain social and political connections with Japan, provide moral and educational opportunities for the Nisei generation, and foster, enhance, and mediate relationships with the host society. Among these, the Issei-led Japanese Association was one of the earliest. In Colorado, the Fort Lupton Japanese Association was organized in 1908; in both Phoenix, Arizona, and Rexburg, Idaho, the Japanese Association began in 1910, and in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, the Japanese Association formed in 1918.13 The fact that the organization of the Japanese Associations overlapped the existence and functions of the prefectural and economic associations indi- cated that all three performed useful functions within the community. Walz 114 prefectural associations were based on relationships that existed prior to immigration whereas the Japanese Associations were based on relationships and concerns that developed in America.56
Japanese American Citizens League (JACL)
Founded in 1929, the Japanese American Citizens League is the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization in the United States. Through the decades, the JACL has advocated issues to benefit the progress of Japanese Americans and Asian Americans in combating prejudice and bigotry. <https://jacl.org/about/history/>
The Japanese American Citizens League, an organization of Nisei professionals, declared in its creed:
I am proud that I am an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, for my very background makes me appreciate more fully the wonderful advantages of this nation… I pledge myself… to defend her against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
These words were published in 1940. Before the next year was out, the Japanese American community would find its resolve, its resilience, and its faith in the nation put to a severe test.57
The Anti-Discrimination Committee is the lobbying arm of the (JACL) set up in 1946 to spearhead the organization's legislative and legal efforts to attack discrimination against Japanese Americans and other minorities.58
The Japanese American community after WWII
Some Japanese-Americans were serving in the Hawaii National Guard when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The government made them turn their weapons in, but, as the war progressed, the War Department permitted Japanese-Americans to join up in defense of their country.59 During WWII, second-generation Japanese-American Nisei joined the U.S. Army and became part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. They volunteered at a time when the US Government had moved many Japanese-American families from their homes to internment camps. The 442nd fought in Italy and France and were described (in Unit History - 442nd Infantry Regiment) by more than one commander as, “The finest assault troops he’d ever led.”
In the years after the war ended, the Japanese-American community became more fragmented and diverse. Moving Japanese Americans from the West Coast to concentration camps during the war led to the dispersal of Japanese-Americans, as uprooted internees chose to try their fortunes in different areas of the country. Prof. James I. Matray of California State University (Chico) wrote:
“Among Sansei (third generation) and Vonsei (fourth generation), there was declining participation in Japanese American institutions and a lack of cultural connection to things Japanese. Rejecting assimilation, some younger Japanese Americans criticized the JACL for supporting cooperation with internment and opposing wartime draft resistance to strengthen its power position.
“Japanese American political agitation grew during an era of greater social, economic, and political opportunities, focusing especially on gaining compensation for relocation and internment. Congress had offered a token payment in 1948, but it was not until the 1980s that several Japanese Americans convicted of wartime offenses successfully reopened their cases. The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were forced to release files showing how prosecutors withheld evidence proving that no danger existed to justify wartime civil rights violations. Civil organizations, political activists, and congressmen then lobbied successfully for passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, resulting in the U.S. government apologizing for wrongs done to Japanese Americans during World War II and authorizing monetary redress in the amount of about $20,000 per surviving internee. After determining terms of payment and definition of eligibility in 1988, over 82,000 received payments.”60
“Today, the Japanese-American community is hundreds of thousands strong, and can be found in all corners of the nation, as well as in prominent roles in most fields of endeavor. Similarly, the generations since the war have sought success in the full range of American career fields, from politics, academia, and the arts to business and the skilled trades—as well as farming, which first drew the Issei across the Pacific more than 100 years ago.”61
What you may not know about Japanese immigration - Internees moved to New Jersey
On February 19, 194262, Pres. Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066—by which Japanese-Americans of draft age were declared “enemy aliens” and the Secretary of War and military commanders were ordered to evacuate all persons deemed a threat from the West Coast (where it was feared they might help Japan) to internment camps, that the government called “relocation centers,” further inland.63 While the Japanese-Americans were living in camps, the US was gearing up to fight a war against Germany, Italy, and Japan. After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, millions of Americans joined the armed forces or started working in war production, resulting in a shortage of workers in farming and food processing
Hundreds of miles distant from the camps, a businessman and his sons ran a frozen foods business in Seabrook, New Jersey. Charles Franklin “CF” Seabrook owned and operated Seabrook Farms after taking over his father's sixty-acre farm during World War I. By utilizing the newest technology to increase production, such as installing overhead and movable irrigation pipes and using tractors and trucks, Seabrook Farms became the first commercial growing enterprise in America with more than 250 acres devoted to intensive growing. Seabrook also built thirty-five miles of roads, and constructed power and food-processing plants, a cold storage warehouse, several shops, a sawmill, dams for water storage, and pipelines and pumping stations to supply the vast irrigation system he had designed. Additionally, Seabrook built houses for an increasing number of employees and two railroad connections that could compete for Seabrook Farms' business.64
During World War II, the Seabrook company faced a severe labor shortage for their food processing plants. This led Seabrook to recruit interned Japanese Americans starting in late 1943. Throughout 1944, Seabrook officials brought in trial groups from the camps, sent recruiters to the camps, advertised for workers in camp newspapers, and placed favorable articles about Japanese Americans in local papers to calm the fears of residents about the arrival of a formerly incarcerated population. Within a year, nearly 1,000 workers had relocated to Seabrook from internment camps, and the total number of Japanese-Americans resettled reached close to 3,000. Seabrook was a company town; the company owned the housing workers lived in, provided social services, ran the local school system, and sponsored sports teams, dances, and scout troops for its labor force and their families. But the large number of new arrivals created housing shortages for the laborers and many internees were unhappy about the poor quality of housing.
After the war, many transplanted families remained at Seabrook and the company continued to grow and prosper.
Seabrook also recruited Latin Americans of Japanese ancestry who had been rounded up and transported to American internment camps run by the U.S. Justice Department. These Latin American internees were offered relocation to Seabrook and many eventually became naturalized American citizens.65
By August 1944, there were almost 300 Japanese Americans at Seabrook; 831 in December 1944 and by 1946 there was an average of 2,500 residents. The January 1947 estimate was between 2,300 and 2,700 persons and included 178 Japanese Latin Americans from Crystal City (internment camp approximately 110 miles southwest of San Antonio, Texas operated by the INS from 1942 until 1948.66
By the end of 1946, over 2300 Japanese, in some 500 families, had settled in Seabrook, where they processed acres of spinach, peas, asparagus and lima beans.
About 600 Japanese Americans and their families live in Seabrook, NJ today, and the Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center presents the stories of relocated Japanese Americans and Japanese Peruvians from United States incarceration camps.67 Seabrook was an authentic “global bootstrap Village” where people of many cultures lived and worked together and still celebrate their heritage. Seabrook Farm was called the “largest vegetable factory on Earth” by Life Magazine in 1955, and Charles F. Seabrook, was known as the “Henry Ford of Agriculture” for his industrial approach to farming.68
What you might not know about Japanese immigration - Help for Chinese Republic
The Japanese men who came to America were lonely, had money, and needed diversions when they weren’t working. Some patronized prostitutes or drank alcohol. For many, their favorite pastimes were gambling and playing games of chance. The Chinese immigrants saw an opportunity to meet that need, with unexpected consequences. Japanese Christian journalist Kiyoshi “Karl” Kawakami, writing in 1914, describes what happened69:
“DR. SUN YAT-SEN," said a California friend of mine, “ought to be thankful to the Japanese gamblers in California for his success in establishing the Chinese Republic.”
“What!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “What did the Japanese gamblers do for him?” And this is the story which my query elicited from my friend:
The Chinese revolution of two years ago was financed mostly from the United States. Not by the money kings of Wall Street, as one may imagine, but by the apparently impecunious Chinese living in various parts of this country. Sun Yat-sen, the star in the drama of revolution, was long an exile in many lands, and while in America he visited every village and town where Chinese were found in any considerable number. Inspired by his ardour and patriotism, every Chinese who came in contact with him pledged support for the cause of liberation. Thus the revolutionary fund was raised.
Among the Chinese who contributed to this fund were merchants, farmers, domestic servants, camp cooks, and what not, but the most liberal contributors were the keepers of gambling dens in California and those deriving benefits from them, for money easily acquired is also easily parted with. Now the patrons, or rather victims, of these dens were mostly Japanese. In California alone these gambling dens used to levy from the Japanese a toll of several million dollars every year! So the revolutionary fund raised in America virtually came from the pockets of the Japanese."
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Steven B. Zwickel, 2020
1 wikipedia.org entry for “History of Japanese Americans”
2 wikipedia.org entry for “Sakoku”
3 US Library of Congress: Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History “Japanese” https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/japanese/
4 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrant, 1885-1924. (1988 Free Press, New York) p.22
5 Takaki, Ronald. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983) p.25
6 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrant, 1885-1924. (1988 Free Press, New York) p.42
7 Working in the Hawai’ian canefields, a man could make $15 a month, which was four times as much as he’d earn in Japan as a carpenter and six times as much as a day laborer. (Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.46)
8 “Japanese laborers arrive” Library: Short Stories at HawaiiHistory.org
9 Liu, John M. "Race, Ethnicity, and the Sugar Plantation System: Asian Labor in Hawaii, 1850 to 1900." (In Labor Immigration Under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States Before World War II, by Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich, 186-210. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). p.195
10 Takaki, Ronald. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii. p.25
11 Takaki, Ronald. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii argues that the plantation owners deliberately recruited different groups—Chinese, Portuguese, and Japanese—so they could play them off against one another. p.24
12 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.4 The labor contract requirement created problems, because, in 1885, the US Congress passed the Foran Act, prohibiting unskilled laborers from coming to the US if they had a labor contract. Opposition to labor contracts stemmed from the belief that they undercut the market for white American workers.
13 Consulate General of Japan in Honolulu: “About Us: Brief History” <https://www.honolulu.us.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_en/ryoujikan_history_en.html>
14 The independent kingdom of Hawai’i ended in 1893, at which point Hawai’i became an American Territory, governed by American law.
15 Ueda, Kaoru “A Brief, Cautionary, History of Japan-US Immigration” The Diplomat https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/a-brief-cautionary-history-of-japan-us-immigration/
16 Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California “A History of Japanese Americans in California: DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES” (National Park Service) <http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/5views/5views4d.htm>
17 Sprout, Harold and Margaret The Rise of American Naval Power: 1776-1918 (1939, 1967 Princeton Univ. Press); P. 263 Tensions between Japan and the US ran so high that there was a possibility that Japan would go to war over the racial discrimination and boycotts that swept California in late 1906. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, while negotiating with the Japanese, increased his budget request from one battleship per year to four of the new, all-big-gun ships (dreadnoughts). This request touched off a huge battle in Congress. p. 264. One reason for sending the American Navy’s Great White Fleet on a round-the-world tour in 1909 was to impress the Japanese with the might of American naval power. p.265
18 Immigrant groups: Japanese immigrants <https://immigrationtounitedstates.org/immigrant-groups>
19 Issei (一世, “first generation”) = Japanese people who were the first generation to immigrate; Issei are born in Japan; their children, born in the new country, are Nisei (ni ‘2’ + sei 'generation'); and their grandchildren are Sansei (san ‘3’').
20 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrant, 1885-1924. (1988 Free Press, New York) p.5
21 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.164
22 See, for example Kendi , Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016, Bold Type Books) ISBN 9781568584638 and Lewis, Bernard “The Historical Roots of Racism”. The American Scholar, (Winter, 1998). 67(1), pp.17-25. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/41212711>
23 Anderson, Emily. “Anti-Japanese exclusion movement”. (2020, Oct 8). Densho Encyclopedia. <https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Anti-Japanese%20exclusion%20movement>
24 McClatchy, Valentine Stuart “V. S.” testimony in JAPANESE IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION HEARINGS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION; UNITED STATES SENATE; SIXTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ON S. 2576 “A BILL TO LIMIT THE IMMIGRATION OF ALIENS INTO THE UNITED STATES, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES” MARCH 11, 12, 13, AND 15, 1924 (WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, 1924) p. 4
25 McClatchy, Valentine Stuart “V. S.” testimony p. 6
26 McClatchy, Valentine Stuart “V. S.” testimony p. 11
27 Disrespecting the sovereign is sometimes referred to as lèse-majesté
28 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.180
29 Anderson, Emily. “Anti-Japanese exclusion movement”.
30 Anderson, Emily. Anti-Japanese exclusion movement. Targeting the “Yellow Peril” (2020, July 29). Densho Encyclopedia.
31 Waugh, Isami Arifuku; Yamato, Alex; & Okamura, Raymond Y. A History of Japanese Americans in California: Discriminatory Practices Online from US National Park Service at <https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/5views/5views6.htm>
32 Zacharias, Capt. Ellis M., USN. Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer; (1946, G. P. Putnam's Sons), alleges that he was told by Japanese living in California that they had been visited by Japanese Navy officers and told that, if they didn’t help Japan, their relatives back in Japan would suffer. The Japanese in California reported these threats to the authorities and reported a handful of cases where they suspected people of giving in to the threats.
33 US National Archives “Japanese-American Internment During World War II” https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation
34 wikipedia.org entry for “Civil Liberties Act of 1988” A Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians appointed by Congress held hearings and, in 1983, published a report called Personal Justice Denied <http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Commission_on_Wartime_Relocation_and_Internment_of_Civilians/>. They recommended monetary reparations to former internees. A bill to issue a formal apology and implement the CWRIC's recommendations, it was signed into law on August 10, 1988. In 1990, a ceremony was held to present the first reparations checks. Payments to surviving internees or their heirs continued until 1993. A Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II was dedicated in Washington, DC in 2000.
35 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.45
36 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.42
37 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.44
38 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.3-4
39 Ueda, Kaoru “A Brief, Cautionary, History of Japan-US Immigration” The Diplomat https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/a-brief-cautionary-history-of-japan-us-immigration/
40 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.8
41 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.16
42 Oharazeki, Kazuhiro “Anti-prostitution Campaigns in Japan and the American West, 1890–1920: A Transpacific Comparison” Pacific Historical Review, May. 1, 2013, Vol. 82, No. 2 University of California Press, p.183 http://www.jstor.com/stable/10.1525/phr.2013.82.2.175
43 In the early 1900s, anti-Japanese hysteria led to the California Alien Land Law of 1913. This law (later ruled unconstitutional) disqualified anyone who was not eligible for citizenship from owning land or renting land on a long-term lease. Japanese families found way around the law by creating corporations to buy land on behalf of Japanese immigrants, to buy land through white intermediaries, or to buy land in the names of the immigrants’ U.S.-born citizen children. Lyon, Cherstin M. Densho Encyclopedia “Alien land laws: Targeting Japanese Immigrants” <http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Alien_land_laws/#Targeting_Japanese_Immigrants>
44 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.47
45 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.5
46 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.171
47 Ichioka, Yuji The Issei p.29
48 Prefectures are governmental bodies in Japan, similar to American counties, and larger than cities, towns, and villages.
49 Walz, Eric. Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community Building, 1882–1945 (2012; Tuscon: University of Arizona Press) http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctt1bmzk8d.11 p.111
50 Noguchi, Janice E. “Kenjin-Kai: Overlooked in Nikkei History” Discover Nikkei (1985 Hokubei Mainichi) reprinted Sep 2009 http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2009/9/2/kenjinkai
51 Noguchi, Janice E. “Kenjin-Kai: Overlooked in Nikkei History”
52 Noguchi, Janice E. “Kenjin-Kai: Overlooked in Nikkei History”
53 Noguchi, Janice E. “Kenjin-Kai: Overlooked in Nikkei History”
54 Nakamura, Kelli Y. “Kenjinkai” entry in Densho Encyclopedia; https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Kenjinkai/
55 Yoder, Fred R. “The Japanese rural community.” Rural Sociology (Dec 1, 1936) 1: 420–429
56 Walz, Eric. Nikkei in the Interior West p.111
57 US Library of Congress “Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History—Japanese” https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/japanese/
58 Niiya, Brian. “Anti-Discrimination Committee, JACL”. (2020, October 8). Densho Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Anti-Discrimination%20Committee,%20JACL.
59 https://www.fold3.com/title/1055/unit-history-442nd-infantry-regiment
60 Matray, J. I. “Japanese Americans” in S. I. Kutler (Ed.), Dictionary of American History (3rd ed., Vol. 4, pp. 462-465). (2003, Charles Scribner's Sons). https://ink.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3401802172/GPS?u=wikipedia&sid=GPS&xid=cde839c9
61 US Library of Congress “Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History : Rebuilding a Community”https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/japanese/rebuilding-a-community/
62 In many states, February 19 is called The Day of Remembrance, to remind people of the day the US unfairly sent Americans to internment camps.
63 US National Archives “Japanese-American Internment During World War II” https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation
64 Nakamura, Kelli. “Seabrook Farms”. (2020, June 10). Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:41, November 6, 2020 from https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Seabrook%20Farms.
65 wikipedia.org entry for “Seabrook”
66 Mitziko Sawada, "After the Camps: Seabrook Farms, New Jersey, and the Resettlement of Japanese Americans 1944-47," Amerasia 13:2 (1986-87): p.119.
67 Nakamura, Ellen Japanese Resettlement in Seabrook, New Jersey http://www2.hsp.org/exhibits/Balch%20exhibits/japanese/seabrook.html
68 Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center http://seabrookeducation.org/
69 Kawakami, Kiyoshi “Karl” Asia at the Door: A study of the Japanese Question in Continental United States, Hawaii, and California Ch. VII THE JAPANESE IN OUR CITIES (1914, Fleming H. Revell Co.) p.116-117
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