When the US turned to Japan for workers in the late 19th Century, they probably never foresaw that one day soon they would imprison those who arrived, their successors, and their families, en masse in camps around America.To hear about the Japanese American experience through history, Don is speaking to Kristen Hayashi. Kristen is Director of Collections Management & Access and Curator at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.Together, Kristen and Don explore the initial migration from Japan, the work offered, and the treatment of these first generations of Japanese Americans in life and under the law. They also discuss the contradictions of the Second World War - when some 120,000 people were forcibly moved to internment camps whilst, in Europe, an all Japanese American unit became the most decorated unit of its size in US history.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 MediaAmerican History Hit is a History Hit podcast.
What is the historical context of Japanese immigration to America?
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...
Just, you know, the labor that they were providing, the hours that they were working, their pay. But what was interesting is that a portion of their salary was withheld for return passage to Japan, which sort of shows that their labor was seen as temporary. But, you know, it wasn't the case that all, you know, Japanese immigrants could return to Japan for various reasons.
And so many of them did end up continuing to live in the United States. Yeah.
I have an interesting number here, Kristen. It's 1886 to 1911, 400,000 Japanese leave their homeland and go to the United States. By 1900, 24,000 or so are living in America. Not all who traveled see it as a permanent move. So you see this mass amount of people, actually only a small sector of them actually end up living here. And only 410 of these 24,000 are women. Isn't that interesting?
It really is, yeah. Yeah, that comes later. I mean, this is the phenomenon we're talking about. It's really a labor force being imported in and all the repercussions of that happen.
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