Title: The U.S. Mainland: Growth and Resistance | Japanese | Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress
Headings: The U.S. Mainland: Growth and Resistance
The U.S. Mainland: Growth and Resistance
The Nisei

Content: Japanese cooperative societies, such as the Japanese Associations, provided financial support and advice to many such enterprises. Many Japanese farmers, using the labor-intensive growing methods of their homeland, were able to buy their own land and launch successful agricultural businesses, from farms to produce shops. By 1920, Japanese immigrant farmers controlled more than 450,000 acres of land in California, brought to market more than 10 percent of its crop revenue, and had produced at least one American-made millionaire. Newspaper article, 1905
Even at the peak of immigration, Japanese immigrants never made up more than a tiny percentage of the U.S. population. However, by the early years of the century, organized campaigns had already arisen to exclude Japanese immigrants from U.S. life. Sensational reports appeared in the English-language press portraying the Japanese as the enemies of the American worker, as a menace to American womanhood, and as corrupting agents in American society-in other words, repeating many of the same slanders as had been used against Chinese immigrants in the decades before. The head of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, denounced all Asians and barred them from membership in the nation's largest union. Legislators and mayors called for a Japanese Exclusion Act. Anti-Japanese legislation quickly followed. In 1908, the Japanese and American governments arrived at what became known as the "Gentlemen's Agreement";