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Q: Let's go back a little bit and talking about the Japanese immigrant experience, what was it like for them to come here. What kinds of things did they face when they tried to set up a life here? In particular, with the alien land laws.

RD: Well, the first thing we have to remember about Japanese immigrants to this country, the Issei, is that they were immigrants and that they had the same kinds of problems that other immigrants had who came at the same time. Immigrants from Europe, Japanese Americans had the same, and immigrants had the same kinds of problems that Italian American immigrants had, Jewish American immigrants had, Polish American immigrants had, but there were differences. One difference was that most of the other immigrants came to the east and were urban, because we're talking about the 1890s and the first decade of the 20th century. Japanese Americans, of course, came not across the Atlantic but across the Pacific, and came to California and to other western states, but primarily California. And large numbers of them went into agriculture fairly quickly. In addition to all the other problems -- and most immigrants to this country faced problems, most immigrants were discriminated against in one way or another -- all of them had that kind of wrenching sense of leaving one place and entering another, leaving a familiar world and entering an unfamiliar world. But in addition, Japanese Americans were non-white; they were entering a region which was already prejudiced against Asians; there'd been a long, bitter and successful anti-Chinese movement.

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Q: Would you tell us about the Japanese immigrant experience, the Issei, and the problems they encountered trying to set up a life here, particularly in regard to the alien land laws.

RD: Well, the Japanese immigrants to the United States, the Issei, most of whom came between 1890 and the First World War, had all of the kinds of problems that other immigrants had. In addition, since they came to the west, which had a long anti-Asian tradition stretching back to the Civil War period, where they had already discriminated against Chinese and the whole country discriminated against Chinese by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, they faced a special brand of prejudice over and above that. Interestingly enough, Chinese had been attacked because they didn't have families, because they didn't settle down, allegedly. Japanese were attacked because they brought wives over, they began to have children, they did settle down on the farms. And one of the things that western states, starting with California in 1913 attempted to do was to stop Japanese Americans from having, owning farms, and they passed a series of alien land acts in California in 1913 and 1920 and in ten other western states in that period. These acts discriminated against Japanese not by mentioning them by name, say, Japanese can't own land, as the Chinese Exclusion Act had said, Chinese can't come here. What these do, they say, aliens ineligible to citizenship cannot hold land. Those Japanese Americans who had children born here, however, those children were citizens. And without going through the long legal processes and fights involved, the courts eventually ruled that it was perfectly legal for these farms to be placed in the names of citizen children, some of whom were babies. And that although California tried to stop this by saying in the second act that no alien ineligible to citizenship could act as a guardian, the federal courts don't allow them to do that. Because they say, not protecting the rights of the alien Issei, who were not allowed to become citizens because they were Asians, but that the children, the baby Nisei, as U.S. citizens, had certain rights, and one of their rights was to have their property held by their natural parents, whether their natural parents were aliens and citizens.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.