Takaki Ch. 10 Pacific Crossings

In “A Different Mirror” in Chapter 10, Takaki describes the Japanese and other Asian cultures and their migration to Hawaii and eventually part of America. Takaki writes about the reasons for the Japanese in specific to why they came to America. Their frustration with the taxes in Japan and economic hardship for farmers is what made them pursue a “new world” the most. Initially the immigrants from Japan were all men, but what was significant was also the number or women crossing the seas. This is what made them different then the Chinese. The women immigrants from Japan were allowed entry because they were considered “family members” (248). This is where Takaki starts to describe the term “picture bride”. The women coming to America were given this term if they were leaving Japan to be married. This was a form of arranged marriages and the ones engaged were only allowed pictures of each other until the day they would meet. Whether the Japanese woman was to go to America depended on which son she married within the Japanese family. If she were to marry the first son, she would stay in Japan where he would tend to his parents and take over the inheritance. If she were to marry the second son, this is where she would move to America because he would be the one to leave the family and find employment. This is around the time when thousands of Japanese were relocating to Hawaii. The Japanese then settled within the sugarcane business and farming. The management control decided to “Keep a variety of laborers, that is different nationalities, and thus prevent any concerted action incase of strikes, for there are few, if any cases of Japs, Chinese, and Portuguese entering strike as a unit.” (252). By going this, the management of the crops will have no problem with being overthrown because those nations despised one another. They wanted to “diversify and discipline the labor.”

Takaki then graphically describes the awful work conditions and how they workforce were living in dormitories and worked from dusk till dawn. The field work was punishing and brutal. The workers were never even called by their name, they were given numbers. The Japanese then began to protest. They organized themselves into “blood unions” (258). The Japanese and the Filipinos had come together and Takaki describes it as the “Hawaiian version of the ‘giddy multitude’.” (260) Planters then granted them equal pay and tried to improve their living situations knowing that the workers who are married and have families are the ones who work the best. The workers were now happy and began to plant their roots in Hawaii, but they did not want their children to live the same lives as they did so they pushed the dream of an education. The Japanese thought if you were Japanese and you had a great education the Americans would accept you. But this was not the case. Takaki concluded with the racial segregation of Asians, specifically Japanese descent and how they were never accepted. People in America THOUGHT that racism were only between the blacks, but it was with the Japanese as well. Takaki ended with the sentence “but their hope to be both Japanese and American would be violently shattered on a December morning in 1941.”

The racism between blacks and whites was happening all over again, but this time it was with the Japanese and the whites. Takaki makes great distinction between the African Americans and the Japanese and how they were both treated by the Caucasians.