Title: Japanese immigrants » Immigration to the United States
Headings: Japanese immigrants
Japanese immigrants
Profile of Japanese immigrants
Life in Hawaii
Journey to the Mainland
Immigration from Japan, 1860-2008
Pressure Builds to Exclude Japanese
World War II and Japanese Immigrants
From the 1950’s Through the 1970’s
Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-first Centuries
Jonathan L. Thorndike
Further Reading
scot phlander 0 answers 9 сентября 2019 05:03
RB 0 answers 6 января 2021 19:08

Content: The working conditions were not good in Hawaii, but Japanese laborers were lured to the islands by the prospects of earning ten times more than was possible in their home country. Profile of Japanese immigrants
Country of origin
Japan
Primary language
Japanese
Primary regions of U.S. settlement
Hawaii, West Coast
Earliest significant arrivals
1880’s
Peak immigration period
1900-1920’s
Twenty-first century legal residents*
62,096 (7,762 per year)
*Immigrants who obtained legal permanent resident status in the United States. Source: Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2008. Life in Hawaii
During the 1880’s, Hawaii was technically still a monarchy but was mostly controlled by American businessmen and plantation owners who farmed sugar cane, coffee, and pineapple on large estates throughout the islands. This required huge workforces. The native Hawaiians had fled or died out due to the diseases brought by American and European missionaries and white settlers, thus creating a labor market for the Chinese and Japanese. As a part of its new openness to foreign trade, the Meiji government formulated an agreement with Hawaii that made it easier for agricultural workers to leave Japan to work in the plantations. The agreement took the form of a labor contract that allowed American plantation owners to pay for transportation costs to Hawaii. The Japanese were required to work for up to a year to repay the debt.