Japanese Immigration : Japanese American Immigrants

and U.S. controlled lands. “The turn of the century saw the beginning of a great twenty-five-year surge of immigration, in which more than 100,000 Japanese nationals arrived in the U.S., and during which many of the foundational institutions of the Japanese American community were established.” These newcomers at first found much of their employment in migratory labor, working the farms, mines, canneries, and railroads of the American West, sometimes becoming active in the labor agitation of the period.

A driving force in the economy was the new potential immigrants looking for jobs on the sugarcane farms. The sugar export industry didn’t surge until the 1860s, when access to Southern sugar was cut off during the Civil War. In order for this industry to be commercially profitable, it was necessary to import foreign laborers due to all the external, Western diseases that had wiped out the native population, and the remaining natives were not enough to keep the workforce profitable. The sandalwood trade had already established a relationship between Hawai‘i and China. Furthermore, civil unrest and natural disasters in China made the country difficult to earn a living. Thus, Hawai‘i became an attractive destination for Chinese immigrants — mostly married males who set out to earn money for their families back in China.

The Issei (first generation) Japanese came to the United States during the first years of the Meiji era after the Tokugawa system of economics and politics collapsed in the 1850s and 1860s. One contributing factor was the visit of an American fleet commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry whose fleet of “tall ships” demanded Japan open its doors to trade and contract with the outside world. Merchants, students and the lower economic strata of tenant farmers, agricultural labourers and owners of very small plots of land were among the first to emigrate to the U.S., mostly through Hawi’i.

Economically, they filled a significant need for cheap labor in booming American industries. The large numbers of immigrants helped keep labor cost down for Big Business and different groups were often put against each other in competition for the cheapest workers. Politically, different immigrant groups became active members of various labor organizations and unions, pushing to change pro-business laws and establish regulations governing working conditions and wages. And socially, American culture as it is known now was formed by this influx of immigrants. People from all over the planet brought with them not only their labor but also their cultures, helping to contribute to the mosaic that is the American way of life. These immigrants, as shown by the prejudice and discrimination directed towards them, were not always welcome. In economic hard times, immigrants were blamed for job shortages and family hardships, used as scapegoats for larger problems. Nativist movements were directed against the Chinese, Japanese, Italians, and others, especially during the 1880s and 90s. As evidenced by the Chinese Exclusion Act and later legislation that limited immigration from Japan and other regions, this anti-immigrant sentiment went as high up as the nation's capital. This history was simply a repeat of the nativism and hatred directed against the Irish and Germans of the 1840s and 1850s and is similar to that experienced in America today by immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. In the area of immigration, history repeats

During the later half of the 19th century, Japan was rapidly growing their imperial power across Asia. As soon as Japan was seen as an imperial country, the United States started to reevaluate its trade relationship with Japan. The United States stopped all sale of material that would have been beneficial towards Japanese expansion , angering Japan. Later, on December 7, 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy had attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On February 19, 1942, president Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Executive Order 9066, ordering the internment of people of Japanese heritage. The executive order was determined by economic issues, national security threats and, the most influential, racism towards Japanese.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Japanese immigrated to the United States and started new

In the late 1800s, people from other countries across the world choose to leave their homes and move to the United States. United States was seen as the land of economic opportunity at this time because of famine, land and job shortages, and rising taxes in their countries. Many others desired personal freedom or to escape political and religious persecution. Between 1870 and 1900, over 12 million immigrants arrived in hopes of a promising future. The majority of these immigrants were from England, Ireland, and Germany. Immigrants from Europe commonly entered from ports on the East Coast and settled nearby. However, there were a few immigrants who were attracted by lands for farming and moved inland.

Many came from eastern and southern Europe such as the Irish, Germans, Italians and Polish. Immigrants came to America with hopes and dreams of prosperity, freedom of religion, freedom from fascism and dictatorship with the possibility of wealth and security. Many if not all of the immigrants encountered the complete opposite. Hard labor, poor living condition, low wages and illnesses were the problems often faced by the

A large number of Japanese initially migrated to Hawaii in the late 18th and early 19th century as a result of enormous boom in Hawaiian sugar industry. They also entered

After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific, escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Many more Chinese immigrants began arriving into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived did not plan to stay long, and therefore there was no push for their naturalization. The immigrants left a country with thousands of years of a “decaying feudal system,” corruption, a growing

In the 1850’s, Chinese immigrants began entering California in search of gold and the California dream. They had heard that California was the new frontier, a frontier that would provide them with the opportunity for economic riches. Young and ambitious, many of these Chinese immigrants quickly married in their homeland and set out for the gold rush, promising to return (with wealth). Likewise, in the 1880s, when the state of California was undergoing rapid economic transformation, Japanese immigrants — just as young and ambitious as their Chinese counterparts — set out for America where they had heard the streets were “paved with gold.” But little did these Chinese and Japanese immigrants know that what they would discover in California

For instance, Joe R. Feagin states, “By the early 1900s agricultural and industrial expansion created an increased demand for low-wage labor in the Southwest. White employers recruited large numbers of Mexican Laborers for farms and factories, with federal assistance [...] employers and their allies in government have sought Mexican workers to do low-wage agricultural; and manufacturing jobs, even as growing numbers of political groups have agitated against such immigrants. By bringing in large numbers of Mexican workers, employers have helped to change the U.S. demographic and political landscape in often dramatic ways” (Page 242). Latino migration was often very common; workers would stay for a few years, and then go back to their country with more money than they could have made in their country of origin. Like African Americans and Native Americans, they were seen different and discriminated against. Furthermore, Asian Americans have come to the United States in waves, at different times, and for different reasons. For example, like Latino Americans, Asians also came to the United States by employers to use their labor and later Asians began to immigrate to America because of the Gold

There are two phases that Japanese community undergoes in the United States. In the first phase, as the United States steadily progresses in the 19th century, there was a rise in the arrivals of the immigrants in particularly the Japanese Immigrants, which are found to have migrated to Hawaii and subsequently the west coast area in the States for better opportunities. Although it was quite difficult for Japanese immigrants to take up the citizenship, the offsprings of these immigrants that were born in the United States were considered citizens. The second phase begins at the start of the World War II that resulted in the relocation and internment camps for the Japanese-Americans.

Pocky, Anime, manga, kanji. Have you heard of any of these? If not… where have you been? All around us teenagers, children, and even adults are being drawn into Japanese culture through TV, books, and even food. Japanese comics, called manga, take up more and more space on American bookshelves, and they've infused new life into the publishing industry. Japanese animation, anime, is on more and more movies and TV screens and influencing popular toys and games.

This was went with, starting in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, by a progression of Asian relocations (overwhelmingly of contracted workers) to the USA, Canada and European states. More than 40 million individuals moved along these lines in the quarter century before the First World War.