Japanese American history

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Japanese people's migration to the Americas started with migration to Hawaii in the first year of the Meiji era in 1868. The total of the migrant population is about 1 million. About 750,000 people emigrated before World War II, and about 250,000 emigrated after the war. But, in late years the number of person who emigrate from Japan is very small. According to the Association of Nikkei & Japanese Abroad, there are an estimated 2.5 million Nikkei people living in their adopted countries other than Japan, many of them in Brazil and United States, in 2000. They have participated in the many fields, and made contributions to economic and social development in their adopted countries. And they have played an important role in promoting mutual understanding and progress in the friendly relationships between Japan and their adopted countries.
The largest communities are in the Brazil (mainly São Paulo and Paraná) and United States (mainly Hawaii and the West Coast). There are also sizable communities in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Peru, and other.

The term Nikkei (日系?), usually refers to people who live outside Japan, who either emigrated from Japan or are descendants of a person who emigrated from Japan.

Contents

[edit] Timeline

The history of Japanese Americans begins in the mid nineteenth century.

  • 1841, June 27 Captain Whitfield, commanding a New England sailing vessel, rescues five shipwrecked Japanese sailors. Four disembark at Honolulu, however Manjiro Nakahama stays on board returning with Whitfield to Fairhaven, Massachusetts. After attending school in New England and adopting the name John Mung, he later became an interpreter for Commodore Matthew Perry.
  • 1850, seventeen survivors of a Japanese shipwreck were saved by the American freighter Auckland. They became the first Japanese people to reach California. In 1852 the group was sent to Macau to join Commodore Matthew Perry as a gesture to help open diplomatic relations with Japan. one of them, Joseph Heco (Hikozo Hamada) went on to become the first Japanese person to become a naturalized US citizen.
  • 1861 The utopian minister Thomas Lake Harris of the Brotherhood of the New Life visits England, where he meets Nagasawa Kanaye, who becomes a convert. Nagasawa returns to the US with Harris and follows him to Fountaingrove in Santa Rosa, California. When Harris leaves the Californian commune, Nagasawa became the leader and remained there until his death in 1932.
  • 1869, A group of Japanese people arrive at Gold Hill (El Dorado County), California and build the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony. Okei becomes the first recorded Japanese woman to die and be buried in the US.
  • 1890, First wave of Japanese immigrants to provide labor in Hawaii sugarcane and pineapple plantations, California fruit and produce farms
  • 1893 The San Francisco Education Board attempts to introduce segregation for Japanese American children, but withdraws the measure following protests by the Japanese government.
  • 1900s, Japanese begin to lease land and sharecrop
  • 1902, Yone Noguchi publishes the The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, the first Japanese-American novel
  • 1907, Gentlemen's Agreement between United States and Japan that Japan would stop issuing passports for new laborers. Also, the passage of the Immigration Act of 1907 allows the President to forbid immigrants to enter the US if he determines that it would be detrimental to working conditions.
  • 1908, Japanese picture brides enter the United States
  • 1930s, Issei become economically stable for the first time in California and Hawaii
  • 1945, 442nd Regimental Combat team awarded 18,143 Medal of Valor decorations and 9,486 Purple Heart decorations becoming the highest decorated military unit in United States history
  • 1980, Congress creates Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate World War II policies over Japanese Americans
  • 1983, Commission reports Japanese American internment was not a national security necessity
  • 1999, Gen. Eric Shinseki becomes the first Asian American U.S. military chief of staff
  • 2000, Norman Y. Mineta becomes the first Asian American appointed to the U.S. Cabinet; worked as Commerce Secretary (2000-2001), Transportation Secretary (2001-present)

[edit] Immigration

People from Japan began migrating to the U.S. in significant numbers following the political, cultural, and social changes stemming from the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese immigrants were sought by industrialists to replace the Chinese immigrants. In 1907, the "Gentlemen's Agreement" between the governments of Japan and the U.S. ended immigration of Japanese workers (i.e., men), but permitted the immigration of spouses of Japanese immigrants already in the U.S. The Immigration Act of 1924 banned the immigration of all but a token few Japanese.

The ban on immigration produced unusually well-defined generational groups within the Japanese American community. Initially, there was an immigrant generation, the Issei, and their U.S.-born children, the Nisei. The Issei were exclusively those who had immigrated before 1924. Because no new immigrants were permitted, all Japanese Americans born after 1924 were--by definition--born in the U.S. This generation, the Nisei, became a distinct cohort from the Issei generation in terms of age, citizenship, and language ability, in addition to the usual generational differences. Institutional and interpersonal racism led many of the Nisei to marry other Nisei, resulting in a third distinct generation of Japanese Americans, the Sansei. Significant Japanese immigration did not occur until the Immigration Act of 1965 ended 40 years of bans against immigration from Japan and other countries.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted naturalized U.S. citizenship to "free white persons," which excluded the Issei from citizenship. As a result, the Issei were unable to vote, and faced additional restrictions such as the inability to own land under many state laws.

Japanese Americans were parties in two important Supreme Court decisions, Ozawa v. United States (1922) and Korematsu v. United States (1943). Korematsu is the origin of the "strict scrutiny" standard, which is applied, with great controversy, in government considerations of race since the 1989 Adarand decision.

In recent years, immigration from Japan has been more like that from Western Europe; low and usually marriages between U.S. citizens and Japanese. The number is on average 5 to 10 thousand per year, and is similar to the amount of immigration to the U.S. from Germany. This is in stark contrast to the rest of Asia, where family reunification is the primary impetus for immigration. Japanese Americans also have the oldest demographic structure of any ethnic group in the U.S.; in addition, in the younger generations, due to intermarriage with whites and other Asians, part-Japanese are more common than full Japanese, and it appears as if this physical assimilation will continue at a rapid rate.

[edit] Internment

Main article: Japanese American internment

Image:JA internment.JPG

One of the darkest parts of American history were the Japanese American internment camps; an estimated 120,000 Japanese were sent to eleven different camps across the US, mostly in the west. During World War II, Japanese Americans were interned in special camps. Americans of Japanese ancestry living in the western United States, including the Nisei, were forcibly interned with their parents and children (the Sansei Japanese Americans) during WWII.

Despite the treatment, many Japanese Americans served in World War II in the American forces. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team/100th Artillery Battalion is the most highly decorated unit in U.S. military history. Composed of Japanese Americans, the 442nd/100th fought valiantly in the European Theater even as many of their families remained in the detention camps stateside. The 100th was one of the first units to liberate the Nazi extermination camp at Dachau. Hawaii Senator Daniel K. Inouye is a veteran of the 442nd. Additionally the Military Intelligence Service consisted of Japanese Americans who served in the Pacific Front.

For the most part, the internees remained in the camps until the end of the war, when they left the camps to rebuild their lives in the West Coast. Several Japanese Americans have started cases against the U.S. government against their internment, which dragged on for decades.

[edit] Farming

Japanese Americans have made significant contributions to the agriculture in the western United States, particularly in California and Hawaii. Nineteenth century Japanese immigrants introduced sophisticated irrigation methods that enabled cultivation of fruits, vegetables, and flowers on previously marginal lands. While the immigrants prospered in the early 20th century, many lost their farms during the internment, although Japanese Americans remain involved in these industries today, particularly in southern California.

Detainees irrigated and cultivated lands nearby the World War II internment camps, which were located in desolate spots such as Poston, in the Arizona desert, and Tule Lake, California, at a dry mountain lake bed. These farm lands remain productive today.

[edit] References

Text of the Immigration Act of 1907

[edit] Further reading

Encyclopedia of Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present. Ed. Brian Niiya. Updated Edition. New York: Facts on File, Inc, 2001.

Chin, Frank. Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947. Lanham and others: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2002.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore. Updated and Revised Edition. New York: Back Bay Books-Little, Brown, 1998.

[edit] See also