Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast: Their Legal and Economic Status

1928.

This is a very hard-to-find and old book that deals primarily with legal matters surrounding the issue of Oriental immigrants to the American Pacific Coast. This includes a general introduction, treaty rights, constitutional guarantees, naturalization, exclusion, personal relations, property rights, occupational status, mining, fishing, agriculture, manufacturing and mechanical industries, trade, domestic and personal service, professions, public service, segregation, community contacts and resume.

Backing this up are numerous charts, graphs, tables of information, and quotations from other sources. One of the advantages in looking at old books like this is that they are more comprehensive than modern books on the same subject, generally, plus they strongly reflect the actual feelings of that time.

In the General Introduction, the book says that “practically 80% born in America have parents who came from Hawaii.” This is something that I have not read about anywhere else.

Then it goes on to say something about where California initially got its racial prejudice, and, again, it's something I haven't seen in any newer books. The author says “Californians have inherited a distinct color prejudice from the early conquerors, who found the territory peopled with dark-skinned Indians and Spaniards.” He says that some of the anti-Indian (Native American) prejudice was extended to the later Chinese immigrants.

Then it adds: “...the Americans who object to the Japanese are largely those of the leisure and semi-leisure class.”

(1) An explanation for anti-Japanese sentiment from a Japanese.

Later, he talks about California anti-Japanese groups, and mentions the California Joint Immigration Committee, which was the successor to the “defunct exclusion leagues.” The main person cited is McClatchy, owner and editor of the Sacramento Bee.

The next couple of chapters are legalistic in nature, talking about treaty rights and Constitutional guarantees.

Within that section the author discusses “Theoretical equality of aliens and citizens.” I think this is a good analysis. (By the way, some scans will be blurry on one side; the book was small and tightly bound, and it was hard getting scans without running a chance of damaging the book, which I didn't want to do.)

He also points out that the term “alien” is not actually defined in the Constitution.

This is something he clears up that I had seen referred to elsewhere. Apparently, part of the law which was to stop aliens from buying land held that, if a child of an alien (a Nisei, for example) bought land (or it was arranged for land to be bought in his name), then that child would be removed from the household. One of the things some Japanese immigrants had done when the initial laws went into place was to allow their children to buy land (and, I assume, have it done in their name) since their children were actual citizens by virtue of being born here (most of them were born here, that is). This technique was to try to stop that totally.

The Sacramento Bee was strongly anti-Japanese, so it's not surprising it would run an article like this.

The writer points out very specific problems that the anti-alien land laws could cause. This is a very good idea, to be this specific.

There's a section where he includes a table of how many Chinese and Japanese are in specific occupations. Virtually all the occupations are lower-level type ones; no white-collar positions, as would be said today. The immigrants were barbers, billiard and pool-room keepers, janitors, laundry operators, porters, bell boys, butlers, cooks, waiters, working in restaurants, “charwomen” and cleaners, and so forth.

In relation to this, he notes that, in 1919, the Oregon legislature considered a bill to bar women and girls from restaurants run by Orientals.

Later he talks about schooling, and how Chinese and Japanese “...who come to American bring over with them their traditional respect for culture and ambition to learn. Oriental pupils are always popular with their school teachers because of their diligence, attentiveness, and excellent application to their work.”

In a chapter called “Community Contacts” he takes a look at newspaper coverage of the Japanese in America. Sections A and B deal with articles relating to Japanese in the U.S; sections C and D deal with Japan itself, where, according to this chart, 100% of the coverage was negative. There was a very high proportion of negative articles dealing with Japanese in America, although there were some positive articles, and some neutral. Again, this is an advantage of getting a book written at the time of the events or shortly thereafter, since it might go into much more detail than a modern-day book about the same topic.

The Asiatic Exclusion League's constitution.

An examination of the situation by a group of Japanese who came here to study the problem and try and determine its causes and what could be done to make it better. (1)The Japanese people were upset at what was hap

pening in the U.S.

(2)They summarize the objections to Japanese immigrants. (2)Labor unions were anti-Japanese. (3) America is already heterogeneous, consisting of many different cultures. (4) They say Japan is not a warlike nation. This was not that long before the Japanese invasion of China, though.

(5) They are saying that it is fine if the U.S. restricts immigration as long as it treats are nationalities equally. The Japanese were being singled out for exclusion (as had been the Chinese earlier) and this is what is actually bothering them, that they are the specific targets for exclusion. (6) There's a lot of unused land in the U.S., and it doesn't harm anything to let Japanese buy some of it. (7) They deal with “the Japanese work for next to nothing” argument. (8) The argument that the Japanese live in a very simple matter is met by the basic answer that everyone has to start out somewhere, and it's usually at the bottom. They work their way up, and then can afford to get more things. (9) The argument that Japanese women do hard work in the fields. It's a matter of Japanese culture that things were done that way, but Americans hadn't studied Japanese culture to see how they approached things differently. (10) The argument that the Japanese are immoral is met by saying that a few are, but so are a few of any other group of people.

(11) Assimilation is discussed. (12) If blacks can be citizens, then why not Japanese? (12) They say there needs to be a better understanding of the entire situation, and there is no doubt that they were right. The problem is, though, that those who were strongly anti-Japanese were “true believers” and didn't care about obtaining an “understanding” of Japanese and their customs. These people simply hated the Japanese, and believed every rumor that arose.

The rest of their report.

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