Anti-Asian Sentiment on America's Pacific Coast
Asian immigrants have been a part of California since the Spanish first colonized it. Filipinos and Chinese arrived via the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade.
What is remarkable about Asian immigrants is they were the first group to be specifically excluded from immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade Chinese from entering the United States, with the exceptions of merchants, diplomats, students, travellers, and their families. It was impossible for first-generation immigrants to become citizens, since they were non-whites. The Act was finally repealed in 1943, since white Americans saw Chinese Americans as allies in World War Two. Shortly after the end of the Chinese Civil War, however, the entire Chinese American community was viewed with suspicion. The FBI and INS, fearing a Chinese fifth column of communist sympathizers, were a constant presence in California's Chinatowns. They stopped Chinese on the street and demanded that the hapless citizens show their papers. Homes were invaded and many careers were ruined. Many more were deported, despite having never been to China.
The Japanese American community was treated even worse. They were specifically forbidden to own property in the state of California, since that right was reserved for United States citizens. Some Japanese married American women in order to circumvent the law. The United States government responded by stating that any American woman who married a Japanese would have her citizenship revoked. Anti-miscegenation laws in California, Oregon, and Washington were just as harsh as those found in the Jim Crow South. Since the Japanese prospered as truck farmers, their success bred resentment in the white and Hispanic communities. In 1942, anti-Japanese sentiment (along with a good dose of war hysteria) culminated with the forced removal of 120,000 Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent from the West Coast. The FBI and military intelligence could find no evidence of potential saboteurs in the Japanese American communities, but John DeWitt and others insisted that the Japanese would act as a fifth column and sabotage the war effort. Most of them had less than a week to prepare, so they were compelled to sell their homes and businesses for a song. After the internment camps were demobilized more than two years later, the evacuees were simply given $25 each and a train ticket home. Even returning Nisei soldiers fresh from the European theater were often told, "Go home, you damn Jap."
The Japanese communities on the West Coast were interned under the pretext of military necessity, although racism and economic resentment were obviously the main causes. In Hawaii, where over 150,000 Japanese made up one-third of the population, there was no mass detainment. Hawaii was much more vulnerable than California or Oregon, yet there were no acts of sabotage.
As for the Filipinos, they possessed a somewhat unique status. They were classified as nationals, which meant they could immigrate to the United States. Most of them went to California to work in menial jobs. They were mostly young and single, and there was a huge public outcry that "little brown men" would interbreed with white women. There was a number of anti-Filipino race riots in the 1930s. This image softened in World War Two, although it took many Filipino soldiers and sailors fifty years to receive their citizenship.
Do you think there is still anti-Asian sentiment in the United States today? Just about twenty years ago, a Chinese American man was beaten to death by Detroit auto workers. They thought he was Japanese, and were angry that Japanese cars were better. People are more open-minded now and I don't hear anybody shrieking about a new Yellow Peril. As economic competition with China intensifies, however, do you think we will see old-fashioned racism against Asians again?
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by bushbush
until the 1960s.
