Title: Japanese internment camps during World War II are a lesson in the scary economics of racial resentment — Quartz
Headings: The dangerous economics of racial resentment during World War II
The dangerous economics of racial resentment during World War II
The economics of racial resentment
A new way of farming
Ripple effects

Content: Despite bans on land ownership, citizenship, and immigration—passed partially in response to earlier white farmer agitation—Japanese-Americans succeeded in farming in a way West Coast white farmers simply didn’t. A new way of farming
To understand the factors that led to the racialized rift in West Coast farming, it’s necessary to understand why Japanese immigrants turned to farming in the first place. The initial rush of Japanese immigrants to California took place in the first decade of the 1900s. The Meiji Restoration’s opening up of Japan to global markets had created economic turmoil in their home country, driving waves of emigration. Meanwhile, across the Pacific, completion of the national railroad network and advances in railroad car refrigeration techniques drove demand for Californian fruits and vegetables from the rest of the country. At the same time, a ban on Chinese immigration and the shift of white workers into manufacturing meant that the country needed more farmers to supply Americans with “truck crops” like strawberries, celery, and peppers. Dorthea Lange/Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
Farmers in San Leandro, CA, transplanting young tomato plants under canvas about 10 days prior to evacuation of residents of Japanese ancestry. Japanese immigrants filled the void. As historian Ronald Takaki details in his book, A Different Mirror, most had been farmers back in Japan, where they followed generations of ancestors in working small plots that required intensive labor. But in the US they also had limited job options, facing open discrimination from white people in industrial labor markets.