Takaki Chapter 10 extra credit

1. The main point of this article was the hardships that Asian Americans faced in the Pacific islands as well as the Pacific coast of the United States and how the degree of the hardships was different with both locations.
2. Takaki begins Chapter 10 by telling the reader the main reasons that the Japanese were encouraged to go to Hawaii and the United States. The main reasons were because of higher wages, hard taxation, and the policies where they emigrated to. Then Takaki describes how woman were influenced to emigrate also when he says, “Initially, most of the migrants from Japan were men, but what became striking about the Japanese immigration was its eventual inclusion of a significant number of women. These “picture brides” were products of arranged marriages. At first Takaki explains how the Asian population in Japan received lower wages and had to work in worse conditions than other ethnicities. The Asians were given the unskilled jobs while the whites took advantage of the skilled jobs. Another tactic that Takaki mentioned in this chapter was that the land owners would hire workers of many different ethnicities so they wouldn’t band together and strike for better working conditions. He states this when he wrote, “Planters explained that they preferred to divide the work force ‘about equally between two Oriental nationalities.’ Takaki explained how wrenching the work was when he said, “Harvesting the cane was dirty and exhausting work. As the workers mechanically swung their machetes, they felt the pain of blistered hands and scratched arms.” Eventually though all the ethnic groups banded together to wage a strike. The white land owners made the conditions better for the Asian immigrants. The conditions got good enough that the Asians had no desire to go back to Japan. But it was much harder for the immigrants that emigrated to the U.S. They were a huge minority as they only accounted for two percent of the population. In America the Japanese found themselves working on the railroads and starting farms. They became successful because at the time the United States was going through economic expansion, so more agriculture was needed. But life was tough. The Asians were refused citizenship. They thought their children would fare better since they were by law citizens. But this was not the case as Takaki writes, “Japanese children were often attacked by white boys throwing stones at them.” Finally just as conditions were beginning to get better the attack on Pearl Harbor set the whole process back and the Japanese were discriminated against even more.
3. I think Takaki does an excellent job of showing the differences between what the Japanese in Hawaii faced and what the Japanese in America faced. I think it’s weird that at first the Japanese in the United States were involved with agriculture. Now we always think of them making electronics. I’d never envisioned a Japanese American farmer before.
4. It’s interesting to wonder if Pearl Harbor had never happened, whether the discrimination of the Japanese would have carried on as long as it did. It’s too bad that our government and nation during World War II made things so bad on the Asian Americans, because very few of them supported Japan in that war.