In Chapter 10 of A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki, many Japanese people were lured
to America with stories of high wages as plantation laborers compared to earnings in Japan
Unfortunately, plantation owners created tactics to appeal to Japanese families to willfully work
the plantations under harsh circumstances. Yes, the pay was better than in Japan but with the pay
came the long 12 hours of work, unsanitary and crowded living spaces, and above all, much
discrimination. To plantation owners, Japanese were nothing more than a requisition of supplies.
Planters asked for specific nationalities when requesting workers in order to create diversity in
the work force so no unified group would strike together, making Japanese strikes of unified pay
meaningless.
1
“In 1904, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters‟ Association passed a resolution that
restricted skilled positions to „American citizens, or those eligible for citizenship.‟”
2
This meant
that the Japanese people would never work to be more than field hands and mill laborers. Not
even Takao Ozawa could gain the respect of citizenship after living in America for 20 years and
attending UC Berkley due to him obviously not being Caucasian.
3
Caucasian didn‟t care how
long Asians lived in America or how rich they became, they simply didn‟t want them as citizens.
The Japanese workforce did not let these citizen laws stop them though from fighting for
equality in the work field. During the Filipino and Japanese strike that began in December 1919,
the two nationalities realized the only way to gain success and the attention of the plantation
owners was to create a union that included everyone, regardless of race, and thus formed the
Hawaii Laborers‟ Association. This unity of minorities created a movement of equal respect
throughout the work field. The color of skin was no longer a sense of division and thus plant
owners raised their pays and created united camps. When it came down to the workers‟ children,
parents raised them to learn to take advantage of the opportunities they never had. Being that
they were born in America, nisei (2nd generation) were able to go to college and obtain Bachelor
Degrees to be something more than farmers. Sometimes though, farmers themselves were able to
be successful individuals in America. Such a case was with George Shima who learned to
purchase undesirable land and create lush farmlands out of them. Shima eventually became
wealthy enough to purchase an attractive home in a neighborhood close towards the University
of Berkley despite being Japanese.
