Essay On Japanese Immigration To America

Introduction The group I have decided to write about are the Japanese-Americans living in the mainly in the west coast, in the years in and around World War II . Emigration from Japan started in the 1868, soon after Commodore Matthew Perry came to Tokyo Bay with a warships, “negotiating” a treaty with Japan to be open to the United States, which had long been closed and isolated from the rest of the world . Japan being clearly behind the western world, and started adopting western technology and ideas from America. In 1868 Japans feudal system was overthrown and replaced with a more modern government, this came to be known as the Meiji restoration, under the new government Japan went through industrialization, militarization, and a lot of
Workers decided that they, like many in other countries, would travel overseas to America, earn money then move back. Japan heavily restricted emigration and it wasn’t until 1885, that Japan made an agreement with Hawaii to supply contract labor to Hawaii’s sugar plantations, many workers signed up to go to Hawaii , Japan sent mostly young male farmers who were neither poor nor rich, they had an education. At the Same time Emigration to the mainland of America Rapidly increased from 200 a year to up to 100,000, until America entered in to a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” limiting migration of labors/men from Japan in 1907 due to complaints from American laborers, those who went to the main land were both men and women, both farmers and city workers. After the gentlemen’s agreement Japan continued to send Japanese women, picture brides, and some families, until the 1924 when immigration from Japan was stopped through American immigration laws, and Japanese immigrants could not become naturalized citizens. By 1924 about %55 of the Japanese Immigrants that had come to America, left to go home, after earning the money they had came for, the rest having established families and having