Title: Asian Americans, Impact of the Great Depression on | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Asian Americans, Impact of the Great Depression on
Asian Americans, Impact of the Great Depression on
ASIAN AMERICANS, IMPACT OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION ON
THE IMPACT OF RACISM
ASIAN-AMERICAN RESPONSE TO THE DEPRESSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Content: By the beginning of the Great Depression, these groups formed the largest Asian populations in the country. According to U.S. census data and other published reports, there were close to 75,000 Chinese, 140,000 Japanese, 56,000 Filipinos, and several thousand Asian Indians and Koreans living in America in 1930, most residing on the West Coast. Like most other Americans, Asian Americans endured hardships related to and caused by the economic fallout of the late 1920s, with its effects lasting well into the 1930s. Stories of massive unemployment, housing evictions, lost savings, starvations, and in some cases suicide, were reported throughout Asian-American communities in the United States. In her autobiography, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (1990), Mary Paik Lee, a Korean immigrant, describes the devastating impact of the Depression on her and her family. She recalls how her family's savings, generated from over a decade of operating a fruit stand in southern California, were completely wiped out during those years, forcing the family to move from place to place in search of available land to support a minimal level of subsistence. Preexisting levels of racial hostility in most industries in California led many Asian immigrants, such as the family of Mary Paik Lee, to be disproportionately represented in agriculture as laborers, farmers, and small entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, as the Depression dramatically reduced the demand for specialized agricultural goods (agricultural profits in California dropped by more than 50 percent from 1929 to 1932), the economic fallout of the Depression led to particularly harsh consequences for Asian Americans in the region. The economic effects of the Depression were also felt by Asian Americans on the East Coast.