Japanese Immigration to the US 1890-1940

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Japanese Immigration
(1890’s- 1940’s)
The Japanese emigration to the Americas began rather late in the nineteenth century but eventually took on sufficient volume for Japanese-Americans to become the largest ethnic group of Asian origin in the U.S. by the 1970s. One of the unusual characteristics of Japanese immigration was the extremely uneven geographical distribution of settlers who mostly remained in the two states that saw the first arrivals—of the 600,000 or so Japanese-Americans in 1970 over a third still lived in Hawaii and another third in California. Until American ships lead by Commodore Perry reached Japan in 1853 the country had been in self-imposed isolation from overseas contacts for over two hundred years. The Emperor Meiji, restored in 1868, introduced a period of dramatic modernization and openness to western culture. Ordinary Japanese became free to travel abroad for the first time, and the hardships that accompanied the dislocation of traditional feudal society in the countryside encouraged growing numbers to see' better opportunities abroad. The generational aspects of Japanese society were echoed in the naming of migrant generations in America, the first being called Issei, the second Nisei.
Hawaii was both the earliest destination of pioneering Japanese migrants and later an important staging post on the way to America.. By the 1890s some Hawaiian Japanese began to seek alternatives to the harsh life of the sugar plantations by moving on to California but the number of Japanese residents in Hawaii itself continued to rise, reaching over 150,000 by 1940 and in excess of 200,000 by 1960. By the turn of the century however migrants were also moving in significant numbers directly to California, part of a larger exodus that also took Japanese to Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Canada.
By 1890 there were a little over 2,000 Japanese recorded in mainland United States, the majority probably merchants, students and diplomats. This figure had multiplied to over 24,000 a decade later, and in total the arrival of almost 300,000 Japanese immigrants was recorded before 1924. Taking into account returnees, deaths, and multiple entrants, the census bureau found only 111,010 Japanese residents in 1920, with a modest rise to 138,834 ten years later. Unlike in Hawaii, Japanese never comprised even one percent of the population in California or any other state. As with the Chinese figures for annual immigration were tiny compared with arrivals from Ireland, Germany, Italy or many other European countries at the same period. The reaction of American nativists was to be similarly out of all proportion.
Important insights into the early Japanese presence on the West Coast have been uncovered in contemporary Japanese consular reports from San Francisco which relayed home the concerns of the small Japanese elite over what they perceived as the disreputable activities of most of the fellow countrymen and women. Anxious that Japan should not suffer the humiliation that had recently been visited upon China by the Exclusion Act of 1882, the reports perhaps over stressed the negative in their efforts to persuade the home government of the need to restrict or at least improve the "quality" of the migrants. As reported by Roger Daniels in his 1988 history of Asian immigration, the consul was particularly upset by what he regarded as the excessive number of Japanese gamblers, pimps and prostitutes. However his inquiries in the Pacific Northwest also revealed day laborers in lumber camps, saw mill operatives, and restaurateurs. Small restaurants serving cheap meals to working men became something of a specialty among this first group of Japanese immigrants—there were reported to be sixteen such establishments in Los Angeles in 1896, probably employing a majority of the city's 100 or so Japanese residents.
Despite the aspirations of the Japanese government it was as substitutes for Chinese contract labor that the first major influx of Japanese workers into California occurred in the 1890s. Many of these were agricultural workers from Hawaii whose contracts with the plantations had ended. Some of them had acquired sufficient English to be able to negotiate as labor contractors, recruiting work gangs of their fellow countrymen for seasonal jobs on California farms. The first groups were obliged to compete with the Chinese, often by undercutting their day or piece work rates, but by the end of the decade with many of the remaining Chinese having found urban employment they were able to push up their earnings, attracting inevitable complaints from the employers. According to one estimate by 1909 there were as many as 30,000 Japanese working in agriculture in California. The rapidly expanding economy of California at this period had an urgent need for cheap labor in a whole range of industries, allowing initially unskilled Japanese migrants to find employment in canneries, on the railroads, in meat packing, logging, salt-refining, mining and numerous other occupations. Japanese enclaves developed in many towns and cities, with the largest forming at the main entry port of San Francisco. Within these was a network of small businesses supplying the needs of the community rooming houses for new arrivals, laundries, small restaurants, shops selling imported produce, letter writers, money lenders, and inevitably brothels and gambling houses. Others ran businesses in the wider community, such as restaurants, groceries, and laundries. Many Japanese found work as domestic servants. However it was in agriculture that Japanese immigrants were most successful.
Anti-Japanese discrimination
Perhaps not surprisingly the increasingly conspicuous success of Japanese farmers was a factor in inflaming nativist and racist opposition to continuing Japanese immigration. The first significant anti-Japanese sentiment arose as early as 1891 when San Francisco newspapers began to mock and criticize the shabby state of the few hundred arrivals, with pro-labor journals such as the Bulletin and anti-Chinese politicians soon attempting to stir up nativist sentiment against the new "threat." In response the San Francisco school board passed a resolution in June 1893 requiring all Japanese pupils to attend the segregated Chinese school. Opposition to this arbitrary measure was led by the Japanese consul Sutemi Chinda, who noted that there were less than fifty Japanese in the school system, all of the well behaved young men. After appeals from white notables orchestrated by the consul the decision was reversed and anti-Japanese sentiment appeared to have subsided. This respite was however all too brief as criticism of the Japanese resumed at the turn of the century as a side effect of campaigns throughout the West for the renewal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. By the middle of the decade, despite the minuscule numbers of Japanese in America, press agitation for Japanese exclusion, lead by the San Francisco Chronicle, had reached a pitch that demanded action from state legislatures. Even more nakedly racist than the campaign against the Chinese (since the handful of Japanese at that time could pose no credible economic rivalry) labor unions spearheaded the anti-Japanese movement. At the same time the success of Japan in the Russo-Japanese War (1904—05) drew world attention to the country's claims of great power status. Although there is little evidence to suggest that President Roosevelt felt any more favorably disposed to the Japanese than other Americans of the day, he was aware of the Japanese government's sensitivity over the treatment of its citizens abroad. Prompted by concern over a renewed school segregation row in San Francisco, in a controversial and widely criticized speech of December 1906 he called on Congress to permit the naturalization of Japanese immigrants, noted the recent military achievements of Japan, and pointedly warned that "the mob of a single city [might] at any time perform acts of lawless violence which would plunge us into war." In fact no such naturalization proposal was ever presented to Congress (which would never have passed it anyway) and the President authorized immediate negotiations with the Japanese government on a "voluntary" restriction of immigration. Concerned above all to avoid the humiliation of another exclusion act the Japanese government readily agreed that it would cease issuing passports valid for continental United States to skilled or unskilled laborers. However those laborers who had already lived in America were permitted to return, and, crucially for the future of the Japanese-American community, new passports could still be issued to the parents, wives, and children of existing residents.
Rather than simply ending the flow of Japanese immigrants altogether as the nativist agitators had expected, the so-called "Gentlemen's Agreement" transformed it from an overwhelmingly male phenomenon to a predominantly female one. In the years before the agreement only a few of the more settled migrants had begun to form families, but in its aftermath many more followed suit. For some this involved bringing existing wives and children from Japan, while for many others proxy weddings arranged by their families brought so-called "picture brides" to America. Unlike the Chinese, who as we have seen were condemned to a shrinking bachelor society for many decades, this provision allowed the gender balance of the Japanese community to move from around ninety percent male at the time of the agreement to approximate parity by the late 1920s.
Nativist hostility to all immigrants had received a significant boost via American participation in World War I, creating a backlash against "foreigners," which we have already seen had far reaching consequences in all immigrant communities. Momentum towards general restrictions on immigration was gathering pace. In 1917 an act was passed barring all Asian immigration except that of Filipinos (who were the American citizens) and the Japanese. Calls by western politicians for the Agreement to be rescinded gathered support nationally. However when the continued, albeit restricted, immigration that had been permitted under the Gentlemen's Agreement, was finally cut off in 1924 it was by the passage of the Immigration Act, which for the first time limited the influx of migrants to the United States through the imposition of a system of national quotas. Yet there was a final triumph for anti-Japanese hysteria when they were denied the minimum quota of a hundred persons a year to which the country should have been entitled by the addition of a clause, primarily targeted at Japanese, barring from entry all persons "ineligible for citizenship."
As might be expected when there was a general pressure towards assimilation, language retention among the second generation was not high, and their social activities were adapted to their situation as American citizens widely seen as alien. Anti-Japanese sentiment throughout the West continued through the 1920s and 1930s, stimulated by elements of the press and by hostile labor organizations and civic groups. Brought up to be hard working and respectful, many Nisei were excellent students, with some achieving professional qualifications. Nevertheless, like their parents they were still held back by widespread discrimination in employment forcing the majority to seek work within the community in Japanese owned small businesses or agriculture. Others worked as lawyers, doctors, dentists, nurses, but rarely with clientele drawn from wider society. 
Japanese-Americans in World War II
Life in the small but relatively prosperous Japanese-American community throughout the west coast states was transformed by the events that followed the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. More than 110,000 men, women, and children, some 70,000 of whom were American citizens, were forcibly incarcerated in detention camps without trial or due process, simply on the basis of their ethnic origin, in what has since become regarded as one of the biggest violations of constitutional rights in American history. Yet war against Japan need not have spelt disaster for the Japanese-Americans. After all no comparable measures were taken against the far larger number of German or Italian Americans, nor were their loyalty to the United States seriously questioned. 
Although historians investigating military records have subsequently established that the armed force were quite relaxed about any potential threat from Japanese-Americans, political leaders cited wartime "military necessity" as justification for the mass detention that followed. Beginning on January 19, 1942, the U.S. Attorney General issued a series of orders which defined security areas along the Pacific Coast which had to be emptied of "enemy aliens." A month later the definition had been widened to "dangerous persons," implicitly including American citizens, and on February 19th, President Roosevelt signed an executive order ordering that they be removed and that relocation camps be built to house them. Over the following six months a total of over 110,000 Japanese-Americans, almost two thirds of them American citizens, were brought to temporary assembly centers then transferred to permanent camps. They were to be imprisoned for up to four years in these barbed wire ringed camps, built in desolate and inhospitable areas such as Tule Lake and Manzanar in California;

 When did Japanese emigration to the Americas begin to gain significant volume?

What were the two states that saw the majority of the early Japanese settlers remain?

What were the generational names given to Japanese immigrants in America?

What was the primary occupation of many early Japanese immigrants in California?

What agreement transformed Japanese immigration from predominantly male to predominantly female?

 What event led to a backlash against immigrants in general, including the Japanese, in the United States?

 What was the Immigration Act of 1924 primarily aimed at achieving?

 How were Japanese-Americans affected by the events following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?

 What justification did political leaders cite for the mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II?

What executive order signed by President Roosevelt authorized the removal and internment of Japanese-Americans?

Which two camps are mentioned as examples of the places where Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War II?

What was the general sentiment towards Japanese-Americans during the 1920s and 1930s?