on behalf of the U.S. government and authorized a payment of $20,000 () to each former detainee who was still alive when the act was passed. The legislation admitted that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." By 1992, the U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated. Background Japanese Americans before World War II Due in large part to socio-political changes which stemmed from the Meiji Restoration—and a recession which was caused by the abrupt opening of Japan's economy to the world economy—people started to emigrate from the Empire of Japan in 1868 because they needed to get jobs which would enable them to survive. From 1869 to 1924 approximately 200,000 immigrated to the islands of Hawaii, mostly laborers expecting to work on the islands' sugar plantations. Some 180,000 went to the U.S. mainland, with the majority of them settling on the West Coast and establishing farms or small businesses. Most arrived before 1908, when the Gentlemen's Agreement between Japan and the United States banned the immigration of unskilled laborers. A loophole allowed the wives of men who were already living in the US to join their husbands. The practice of women marrying by proxy and immigrating to the U.S. resulted in a large increase in the number of "picture brides." As the Japanese-American population continued to grow, European Americans who lived on the West Coast resisted the arrival of this ethnic group, fearing competition from it and making the exaggerated claim that hordes of Asians were keen to take over white-owned farmland and businesses. Groups such as the Asiatic Exclusion League, the California Joint Immigration Committee, and the Native Sons of the Golden West organized in response to the rise of this "Yellow Peril." They successfully lobbied to restrict the property and citizenship rights of Japanese immigrants, just as similar groups had previously organized against Chinese immigrants. Beginning in the late 19th century, several laws and treaties which attempted to slow immigration from Japan were introduced. The Immigration Act of 1924, which followed the example of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, effectively banned all immigration from Japan and other "undesirable" Asian countries. The 1924 ban on immigration produced unusually well-defined generational groups within the Japanese-American community. The Issei were exclusively those Japanese who had