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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That really limits your economic mobility. There was a loophole in the alien land law. So there were some Issei who purchased land in their American-born children's names so that they could own land. But you're right, for the most part, Japanese Americans did not own the land that they were working on or the homes that they lived in either.
Let's name this. I mean, prior to 1940, one third of truck crops were coming from those farms in California. Is that a statistic you're familiar with?
I believe it. Yeah, I think Japanese Americans were very influential.
Good farmers and therefore viewed probably as a threat to other farmers in those communities. At the same time, you have the communities building Buddhist temples and Japanese Christian churches are established. There's a whole, you know, now we're here. Now we're living here. Now we're parts of the society. And that begins very early in the 1900s.
This whole process after those wives and children started to arrive.
That's true. Although the Japanese American population was pretty insular because of racial housing covenants, redlining, Japanese immigrants, other immigrants of color were not able to live just wherever they'd like. They had to live in areas that didn't have these restrictions.
And so that's why you have these ethnic enclaves forming in places like Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, because this area did not have the restrictions. But Japanese Americans are sort of working within the community. They're not really working too much outside of the community. All our activities are really within the Japanese American community. They're not really part of the mainstream.
And that's really because of the prejudice and racism that existed at that time.
And violence, I would imagine, right? There must have been lots of conflicts.
Right.
Yeah. How did they fight back? How was this resisted? Because, you know, as far as they're concerned, they were invited here legally and encouraged to do so, had done very well. What was the upshot as far as the government's concerned?
Well, you know, I think we can look at resilience during this time period.
I think just the fact that they were forming these vibrant communities before the war, they were establishing the Buddhist temples, the Shinto shrines, the Boy Scout troops, the baseball leagues, you know, the continuing Japanese language, education, martial arts, you know, all the cultural things that continue and really proliferate in the early 20th century, I think is a sign of resilience.
But there are cases that we can point to where Japanese Americans really fought outside of their communities. So, for example, here in Los Angeles, there were five Issei doctors who felt the need to create a hospital for the community, especially because of the effects of the 1918 influenza pandemic.
The fact that Japanese immigrants and other people of color didn't have the same access to health care, they wanted to create this hospital. doctors. They filed incorporation papers to create the Japanese hospital of Los Angeles, and they were denied by the California Secretary of State, saying that they violated the alien land law.
So remember that these, you know, Issei did not have the rights and privileges of citizens, and yet they used the democratic system. They took their case to the California State Supreme Court. They won. The California Secretary of State opposed this, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1928. And the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling.
The doctors were victorious, and they were able to build the hospital, which opened in 1929. And I think that's a real civil rights victory that we can point to and say, that's really incredible how brave they were, considering they didn't have the rights and privileges of citizens. So there's certain, you know, there's examples like that.
There's also the example of, you know, purchasing land in your American-born children's name. I mean, I think that's a way of working the system to, you know, the unfair system, I think, that they were sort of operating in. And so I think it's those examples that really show resilience within the community.
Sure. And so much of this happens in the realm of labor. 1920, the Hawaii Laborers Association is founded to push back against these sort of typically Euro-American businesses who are regulating things. And this results in strikes, big organized strikes, 1900, 1906, 1909. All of these, this whole period between basically 1907 and 1923 is really when these communities are being developed.
The Nisei generation is growing up. Expectations at that point, I suppose, are for full citizenship and let's get on with this, I would imagine.
Showing 61–80 of 189 · page 4 of 10
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