An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants. Ethel V. Kosminsky
of family members allowed entry following the 1908 agreement between Canada and Japan that regulated Japanese immigration.
The immigrants settled in British Columbia, where they found work in fishing, forestry, and mining. They were able to live well because the climate and geography were similar to their own country. In the 1920s, after years of working as laborers, they were able to save enough money to buy farms, stores, fishing boats, and houses. By 1941, Japanese–Canadians had reached a steady financial situation, although they faced discrimination and prejudice. There were 23,149 people of Japanese origin; among them 22,096 or 96 percent lived in British Columbia. They lived in a segregated community based on Japanese mores, as self-protection due to the harsh social environment. From their arrival, they experienced prejudice. Canadians were afraid of the “yellow danger,” afraid of this population, who had different phenotypes and mores, and who might threaten their way of life. Canadians also believed that Japanese immigrants would never assimilate into Canadian society.
The fact that Japanese immigrants and their descendants had to live apart from the social environment in a cohesive colony increased the anti-Japanese feeling. In 1907, there was a rebellion in Vancouver, which damaged Chinatown and Little Tokyo. In 1902, the provincial British Columbia Congress approved a law that prevented all Asians from getting British citizenship. Those who had already been granted citizenship had it revoked. Those born in Canada and those who had arrived from Japan had no right to vote. This restriction lasted until 1949.
The revocation of citizenship excluded Japanese immigrants and their descendants from several occupations, such as ownership of fishing and timber businesses. This discrimination, whether according to law or custom, prevented them from holding certain jobs and from adjusting to Canadian society. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor greatly increased discrimination against Japanese immigrants and their descendants. Canadian wartime policy removed all “foreign enemies,” people of Japanese origin and Japanese Canadians, from British Columbia. The eviction and confinement signified the destruction of the community, familial life, business, and personal properties. This measure was intended to keep the nation safe, according to the Canadian government.
Japanese immigrants and their descendants were sent to work in road construction, agriculture, state industries, or to internment camps. This situation lasted for more than four years. After the war, the government scattered Japanese Canadians across Canada to prevent future colonies. Only after 1949 were they authorized to settle back in British Columbia. At the same time, the Canadian government pushed Japanese to return to Japan instead of remaining in Canada. Therefore, 4,000 people went back to Japan. Among them, more than half were born in Canada and two-thirds held Canadian citizenship. In 1948, the Canadian government granted citizenship to people with Japanese ancestors (Makabe 1980: 195–213).
Japanese Immigration to Latin American Countries
Japanese emigrants considered Latin America a less attractive destination than Hawaii and the United States due to Latin America’s agrarian-based economy and low level of industrialization. Japanese immigrants who were dekasegi (migrant workers) expected to make money more easily in the United States than in Latin America, which was their second or third choice. Thus, they considered Latin America much like Hawaii, a place of passage while they waited for acceptance into the United States (Endoh 2009: 18).
Japanese migration to Latin America was unusual due to the fact that emigrants flowed from a developing economy (Japan before World War II) to less-developed ones, such as Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Argentina was at the time more economically advanced than the rest of Latin America (Endoh 2009: 19). In the 1920s, at a time of increased anti-Japanese sentiment in Brazil, Japan was able to maintain and even expand its emigration by directing immigrants to rural, unpopulated hinterlands, such as the northern and western interior of São Paulo state and northern parts of Paraná, or to the Amazon rainforest, where neither Brazilian people nor European immigrants wanted to move. This strategy was sought to avoid any conflict of interest with local Brazilians and also to weaken the ethnic presence of Japanese people (Endoh 2009: 31).
Despite the precarious and hostile immigration environments in Peru and Brazil, Japanese proponents stimulated migration with a new approach, sending the immigrants to remote hinterlands while upholding Japan’s responsibility to protect its citizen-migrants at a minimum level. This decision led to the death of many immigrants from malaria and yellow fever in the Brazilian Amazon region and in São Paulo State. Why did the Japanese government have this attitude? It was a “result of a marriage of convenience between the different interests of the sender (Japan) and host states” (Peru and Brazil) (Endoh 2009: 34).
Japanese Immigration to Peru
Japanese immigration to Peru began in 1899 as a labor migration organized by a Japanese migration agency through an agreement with Peruvian sugar plantation owners. The Japanese government approved this contract despite inadequate information about local environmental and labor conditions. Seven hundred and ninety immigrants went to work on eleven sugar plantations on Peru’s Pacific coast, where they faced “harsh working and living conditions in the haciendas and an unfamiliar tropical climate” (Endoh 2009: 20).
Disputes quickly arose between Japanese laborers and Peruvian employees. Feeling the competition of the labor market, townspeople and Peruvian unions did not welcome the newcomers, and Japanese laborers felt exploited and mistreated. Some Japanese workers “fled the quasi-slavery of the plantations” (Endoh 2009: 21), appealing to the Japanese company for repatriation, while others went to Bolivia looking for better jobs. Those were the luckiest ones, because after the first year, 143 of the 790 migrants died from malaria. Due to increases in the settlement rate and the immigrants’ remittances, the Japanese state took over the migration business in the early 1920s.
By 1923, there were 20,630 contract migrants in Peru. The agreement between both countries ended that year. However, the Japanese government sent 12,440 immigrants as late as 1941, including new brides in arranged marriages and employees of Japanese-owned plantations in the Peruvian countryside (Endoh 2009: 22).
Japanese immigrants and their descendants improved their lives by moving to cities and finding jobs in the service sector, such as in barbershops, restaurants, tailor shops, and general merchandise stores. Nevertheless, urban Peruvians were hostile to their presence. They were concerned that the Japanese “would ‘Asianize’ their cities as Chinese immigrants had threatened to do half a century earlier” (Endoh 2009: 22). Therefore, in 1903, the first bill to eliminate Japanese immigration was proposed, but it was defeated in the national legislature.
The Peruvian government continued trying to prevent the entrance of Japanese and other Asian immigrants and enacted a bill in 1906 in favor of European and American immigrants, whose travel expenses would be subsidized. In 1918, the Peruvian Congress defeated another bill that proposed to exclude “people of color,” as Japanese and other Asian people were classified. The Peruvian population’s racist and discriminatory attitudes continued through World War I (Endoh 2009: 22–23).
The return to power of a former president (1919–1930), who was a sugar plantation owner and favored Japanese immigration, diminished the anti-Japanese movement and increased immigration. During the 1920s more than 9,000 Japanese arrived. However, the Great Depression of 1929 jolted Peru, which was heavily dependent on raw material exports. The following year, the president fell to a coup d’état, and the new leaders were far less sympathetic to this ethnic minority. The coup and the political instability of 1930–1931 involved physical assaults and looting against Japanese residents.
Despite the vehement anti-Japanese sentiment expressed by the Peruvian government and public, Tokyo did not suspend its emigration policy; it redirected its emigrants to the interior. But the new administration responded to public sentiment by increasing restrictions on Japanese immigration and the freedom of immigrants living in Peru. In April 1932, the government approved an Act that required all businesses to employ a workforce that was at least 80 percent Peruvians. The law’s intention was to prevent Japanese immigrants and Nikkei from achieving prosperity in Peru.
A trade dispute aggravated the bilateral relationship between the two countries in the 1930s. Peru felt disadvantaged in the cotton trade