Kristen Hayashi
speaker
189 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Kristen Hayashi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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The Japanese American immigration story begins roughly in what year, what era?
Japanese immigration really started first to Hawaii in the 1850s, and then later to the continental United States in the 1860s, 1870s, as the United States was industrializing and really needed a source of cheap labor to help build infrastructure in the United States.
I can't help myself, but I always go back to the other stories that are fundamental to this. You have a whole bunch of history happening in Japan, a changeover to the Meiji Restoration. There's a whole bunch of industrialization and everything happening there, people moving to the cities. Much of what is happening in America is happening elsewhere.
It's the result of the Industrial Revolution, really. But that has prompted, along with economic conditions, a lot of Japanese who are coming to Hawaii for what industry are we talking about? Agricultural, I imagine.
That's right. Yeah. So many Japanese immigrants were recruited to go to places like Hawaii for agriculture. So they're working in the plantations in Hawaii, sugar and also coffee plantations. And then on the mainland or continental United States, they're also working in agriculture, but also in infrastructure like building railroad and those types of industries.
Exactly. In some of the ways, this is paralleled by what had happened with the Chinese coming to America, right? I mean, there's a similar track, no pun intended, taken where the railroads, the need for laborers out West was downright advertised. I mean, it was encouraged that these laborers were coming. So that's the beginning of all of this.
That's correct. Yeah. So in the United States, you need this cheap source of labor. As you mentioned, they look towards China. And so Chinese laborers are coming to help build transcontinental railroad. And then in 1882, that's when the U.S. Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. And that's the first piece of immigration legislation that's based on race. But the U.S.
still needs a cheap form of labor. So they look to Japan and other countries. But, you know, in Japan, these laborers were recruited to come over. They came over legally. But because they were non-white, they weren't eligible for naturalization until much later, until 1952.
So how are these people who are so necessary then met with resistance? Is it the same old thing of just prejudice and fear?
Yeah, I think, you know, exactly. It's prejudice and fear. It's a lot of blue collar, working class, you know, white laborers who are fearful of this cheap labor source that's competing for jobs. Or at least that was, you know, the argument that they made.
And so there was a lot of lobbying of elected officials to try to restrict immigration as a way to sort of, you know, counter this threat that these Japanese immigrant laborers were posing. And so in 1907, the U.S. and Japan, they... They signed the gentleman's agreement, which essentially says that Japan agrees to no longer send laborers to the United States. But there was a loophole.
Family members could still come. Or if you were coming for a purpose other than to be a laborer, you could come. And so Japanese immigration continues. And that's where you start to see the formation of families because you see more women coming over and starting communities here.
The Gentleman's Agreement of 1907 is what you're referring to. It's a handshake rather than a treaty and understanding, hence the Gentleman's Agreement, that this is about restricting immigration. But we understand that the people who are here, those Issei that we have first named.
have the needs for their families to come over and so that begins this real migration which is going to lead to another generation and so forth and and this begins this sort of dichotomy that inevitably every immigrant population encounters of on one hand you're being welcomed and you're needed on the other hand a certain sector of society fears and and even hates you in some regard this has happened to everybody who's moved to america
In the Japanese case, it's so interesting because it's a proximity question, right? You have Japan right across the ocean, so it's different than the Europeans encountering it in the East. But the same old thing's happening. How large is this immigration that we're talking about in this first Issei era?
That's a good question. I don't know exactly what the population is, but I will say that while it seemed like there was this Japanese problem, quote unquote, and that so many immigrants were coming from Japan, if you look at the numbers of Japanese immigrants in comparison with immigrants from Europe, I mean, it was a tiny percentage.
And so I think it's very similar to, you know, things that you're hearing now where there's this kind of like misconception that there's so many immigrants, you know, flooding our borders. I think it's very similar.
Like, it's true that there were, you know, a significant number of Japanese coming over as immigrants in the early 20th century, but it was nothing in comparison to immigrants from other countries.
Yeah. A very important factor is many of these people who came, came to work. They weren't planning to live here. It was because they had been asked to come in a way. I mean, it was opportunity that they were chasing and the desire to make a living, but they had every reason to think they were going home after this.
Exactly. I think there are quite a few immigrants who thought they would come to the United States for a short amount of time, really strike it rich, and then go back to Japan. And that wasn't a reality. Yeah. But it's interesting because we have a labor contract in our collection from 1899 between this Issei man and his wife with the plantation that he's working for. And it outlines...
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