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: If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we’d never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we do not want them back when the war ends, either.” Dorthea Lange/Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
Exclusion Order posted at First and Front Streets directing removal of persons of Japanese ancestry from the first San Francisco section to be effected by the evacuation. Seen through a tribal lens, it’s not hard to understand this resentment. The economics of West Coast farming did seem to cleave eerily along ethnic lines—and not at all in favor of “the white man.” 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.