Strangers From A Different Shore Essay Research

Strangers From A Different Shore Essay, Research Paper

Struggling Strangers

Strangers From A Different Shore by author/professor Ronald Takaki has brought a new perspective of my growing knowledge of the hardships and endless obstacles that Asian-Americans have struggled with through their immigration experience. Immigrants of Asia represent many countries and many different situations that have brought them to this “better” country with hopes for “more opportunities” to succeed. Asian-Americans are those whose roots are from Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, China, Cambodia, Korea, and Hmong to name the most common. Asian-Americans have overcome drastic situations to carry the status that they do today. Currently Asian-Americans represent the fastest growing minority group in the United States. Half of all immigrants that enter the U.S. annually are Asian. Asian-Americans come from the same part of the world, the same continent, yet their struggles have left them in different situations. Although the commonalities of hardships that exist between the Asian ethnic groups are greatly the same that can also be separated from likeness just as easy. A common ground brings these people together but their separate countries and even within a country different regions will strive and be defeated or surpass the others in their separate historical ways.

Takaki, a professor at U.C. Berkeley in Ethnic Studies and the grandson of immigrant plantation laborers from Japan has both the knowledge and personal passion of Asian-Americans that allows him to go into great details of the history and diversity of this ethnic groups struggle to become recognized in America for who they are and why they are here instead of what they did for this country. Takaki goes in depth on nearly many occurrences that each Asian country has overcome and currently deals with.

Longing for gold wasn’t just an American issue. The topic of gold affected many people including the Chinese. About the same time gold was discovered in California, famine hit the Guangdong Province in southeast China. Hearing about California’s gold, many Chinese men left for America hoping to make a fortune and return home a few years later to their loved ones. Few struck it rich and the rest fought to survive. The Gold Rush in California and the Pacific Northwest increased the demand for railroads to connect these remote parts of America. Building railroads required lots of low-paid labor, which hungry immigrant Chinese provided. By 1880, there were about 300,000 Chinese in America, but American accepted few once the railroads were completed. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time in American history that immigration restrictions were aimed at one ethnic group.

Some Chinese were forced onto boats returning to China and some left on their own. Discriminatory practices by real estate agents and homeowners prompted Chinatowns to develop, which were basically the Chinese ghetto. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 and immigration laws were changed. Now, the Chinese could bring their women from home because the population was mainly males. Today, strong Chinese communities exist in the West, especially in Los Angeles, which has become a contemporary Ellis Island for the Pacific Rim. Descendants of the first wave of Chinese immigrants now excel in engineering and the sciences instead of the fields from which their fathers were barred.

When America’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred the Chinese from providing America with cheap labor, the Japanese arrived to fill the void. Japanese immigration to America began in 1882 with Meiji Restoration. Many rice farmers in southwestern Japan were heavily taxed and hoped to make their fortunes in America. More than 30,000 Japanese went to Hawaii to work on sugar plantations between 1885 and 1894. In the 1890’s until 1924 there was many Japanese immigrating to America. These were what the Japanese called “Issei,” or first generation immigrants. Unlike the Chinese who first went to California to do railroad work, many Japanese went to the Pacific Northwest where they could work in the fishing and timber industries that needs their labor. Unlike the Chinese, Japanese immigrants included more women, so families could be started. Some women came with their husbands; others arrived as “picture brides,” met by unknown future husbands in America. Their children, the second generation, are called “Nisei.”

The 1924 Immigration Act cut the flow of Japanese immigration. Eventually Japantowns emerged, otherwise known as the Japanese ghettos. In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and introducing war, which led to the signing of “Executive Order 9066.” This gave the Issei and Nisei 10 days to sell everything they had. None of their rights were protected because although the 2/3 of the 120,000 people who were thrown in the internment camps was U.S. citizens by birth it did not matter. Today Japanese-American communities exist, especially in Pacific Coast cities like Seattle and Los Angeles, where Nisei Week celebrations continue and so does strong economic power that Japanese-Americans withhold.

Many Filipinos replaced the Japanese as laborers in Hawaii and on the mainland, especially after the 1924 Immigration Act. They worked in fields doing seasonal work and migrated throughout the west following t