Announcements
 History and Memory is a required text of the class
 2/14 - Midterm Papers Due @ start of lecture!
 Office Hours – 11:15-12:45 in Lit 354
 2/28 – Community Event Reflection due!
 3/1 – Email description of creative project to TAs!
 What medium? Prose? Poetry? Film? Music? Visual?
 List key questions, themes, and texts your project will explore.
 2-3 sentences max
 3/13 – Creative project due!
Lecture 7:
The Yellow Peril
WWII & Executive Order 9066
Issei & Nisei
 1880s – begin arriving in HI as Chinese immigration
prohibited  were Japanese Mongolian or white?
 62% of HI’s total population in 1920 = Asian immigrants
 42.7% of HI’s Asian population in 1923 = Japanese immigrants
 1890s – first waves to mainland
 1882 – only 2,039 Japanese
 1902 – 72,257 – majority Issei (first generation)
 1922 – 138,834 – Issei and Nisei (second generation)
 Pre-WWII – 70% of all mainland Japanese live in CA; largest
Asian group in CA
Issei: Meiji Sojourners

1853 – Commodore Perry forcibly opens Japan to western trade

1868 – Meiji Restoration unites Japan; high taxes imposed on agriculture to
fund Westernization and modernization programs

1884 – Japan allows Hawaiian labor recruiters

1885-1924  200,000 to HI; 180,000 to mainland


Predominantly young males - 60% younger than 30

Better educated and literate than most immigrants at that time because of Meiji
compulsory education

Farming but not peasant class
Meiji immigration policies:

Required immigration application & review process

Active encouragement of female immigration to curb problems Chinese
encountered
Picture Brides & Female Sojourners
 1911-1920:
 46% of immigrants to Hawaii = female
 39% of immigrants to mainland = female
 Conditions of immigration:
 Women defined more by ties to husband than ties to home
 Tradition of arranged marriage & picture bride system
 19th century industrialization in Japan
 Meiji compulsory education of women
 Hawaiian contract labor policies
Japanese American Labor
 Hawaiian plantation labor = Inter-ethnic antagonism and panAsian unionization
 Early 1900s – majority of mainland immigrants = migrant labor
& cannery workers
 By 1910 – development of mainland Nihonmachi and Japanese
businesses
 By 1925 – 46% of mainland Japanese were farmers
 Contract, share, lease, and ownership methods
 Kenjinkai - prefectural-based association; tanomoshi – credit-rotating
association; kobai kumiai – farmer cooperatives; nogyo kumiai –
farmer associations
 Technological advance of refrigerated cars = increase in demand for
fruit & vegetables nationwide
Anti-Japanese Backlash
 1902 – push to renew Chinese Exclusion Act to include Japanese
 Oct 11, 1906 – SF Board of Education attempts to segregate
school system; Pres. Theodore Roosevelt intervenes
 1908 Gentleman's Agreement  No segregation but Japan agrees
to limit # of new immigrants; families can still be reunited
 1913 – Alien Land Law passed in CA
 1920 – land laws tightened so that American born children of
aliens ineligible for citizenship could not lease land
 1921 – Ladies Agreement – Japan prohibits picture brides
Issei & Nisei – Alien & Citizen
 1922 – Ozawa v US – Takao Ozawa attempts to prove
fitness for citizenship; denied because non-white
 1924 – National Quota Act – targets Japanese
immigration; reaffirms exclusion of previous Asian
immigrants