Teaching Instructions:
- Read the article below to provide historical context for this lesson plan. You can create a PowerPoint presentation using the images and primary sources provided, or you can assign the reading to your students.
- Have students listen to the Ship History Radio podcast episodes or watch the films where Education Director Aimee Bachari interviews Dr. Kelli Nakamura about Asian and Japanese Immigration and the practice of Picture Brides. ** This interview touches on sensitive topics like racism, gender-based violence, child death, and prostitution. Listen first and assign with sensitivities in mind.**
- Have students answer the discussion questions in small groups or as a written assignment to be graded. If your students are working in groups, have them answer one question at a time and have groups share their responses with the larger class.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
—Emma Lazarus
Rhode Island Social Studies Standards
- SSHS.CVC.3.4 Civil rights and civil liberties Argue the impacts of interpreting and using the Constitution of the United States to expand freedom and opportunity
- c. Analyze challenges to civil liberties (e.g., segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans, discrimination against people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity), and argue their impacts
- SSHS.USI.5.5 Westward movement of white Americans Argue the impacts of western expansion on Indigenous peoples, immigration, and reshaping the United States
- b. Analyze the effects of the Gold Rush (e.g., on Indigenous peoples, on immigration of people from China, on the environment, on the economy), and argue who benefited
- SSHS.USII.1.4 Second-wave immigration to the United States Argue the influence industrialization had on second-wave immigration in the late 19th century, and the impacts of government responses
- a. Analyze the similarities and differences in the backgrounds, cultures, and lived experiences of U.S. immigrants after the Civil War (e.g., those from Italy, Poland, Russia, Portugal, Greece, Armenia, China, Japan, Korea, Punjab, Bengal, India, Mexico)
- b. Analyze the policies and practices of the U.S. government toward immigration (e.g., Chinese Exclusion Act 1882, Alien Land Act 1913, Immigration Act of 1924), and argue who benefited from those policies and practices
- c. Analyze the relationships among immigration, urbanization, and industrialization, and argue the impacts of those relationships
- d. Analyze the patterns of immigration and urbanization during the late 19th century, and explain the formations of ethnic neighborhoods in cities and their benefits
- SSHS.USII.4.1 Isolationism and the eventual involvement of the United States in World War II Analyze the United States’ attempts to remain isolated from global crises and the reasons for its eventual involvement in World War II
- d. Explain the conditions of and factors leading to the United States entering WWII (e.g., Pearl Harbor, German militarism)
- SSHS.USII.4.2 The effects of the War on American society Argue how World War II impacted different groups of people in the United States
- e. Analyze the rationale for Japanese internment policies World War II, and argue the short and long-term impacts of those policies on Japanese communities
- SSHS.WHII.4.3 Imperialism, expansion, and influence Argue how political and economic interests of western states impacted non-western territories in Asia and Africa
- b. Analyze the Meiji Restoration, how fear of western powers lead to it, and argue how it impacted the political and social structure of Japan
Common Core Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.2 – Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1 – Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2 – Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
Lesson Plan
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” We have all heard these words as written for the opening of the Statue of Liberty by American-Jewish poet Emma Lazarus. We’ve heard of America’s Golden Door, where Ellis Island served as the doorway to America for more than 12 million immigrants over 62 years. But when and why did the Golden Door begin to shut for certain immigrants? Ellis Island in New York was built with the purpose of processing European immigrants seeking a better life in America — the American Dream. Angel Island in San Francisco, sometimes referred to as the “Ellis Island of the West,” did not live up to that idealistic name. Angel Island was established to impede Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Japanese and other Asian immigrants. Laws imposed on Asian immigrants demonstrated the racism of the era. Though the Italians and Irish were indeed discriminated against, Asians were the only group in America that was denied citizenship based on genetics until the 1940s, with some remaining ineligible until the passing of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 when naturalization was made color blind. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified on July 9, 1868, granted citizenship to all persons “born or naturalized in the United States,” including former slaves. To understand modern anti-immigration sentiments, prejudices, and policies like the Muslim ban, students must understand the root of modern immigration legislation, which has its history legally and politically in Chinese exclusion. Before we dive into the history of Asian immigration, we will first examine the myth of the immigrant nation and discover the distinct anti – immigrant sentiment that existed throughout the history of the United States, and even before gaining independence from the British.
American Attitudes Toward Immigration
In 1819, Congress ordered every vessel that entered an American port to provide a list of passengers. Although this statute was put in place to deal with import duties, it was the first legislation that dealt with immigration to America. No other laws would affect immigration to the United States until after the Civil War. Political elites’ positive view of immigration at the time and the absence of legislation restricting immigration did not necessarily mean that all Americans favored newcomers. Nativism, or “an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of its foreign (i.e. ‘un-American’) connections,” can describe individuals, organizations, or movements. Nativism is older than the United States itself, when settlers in Boston attempted to stop the landing of Irish Protestants in the early eighteenth century. Later in the century, Benjamin Franklin wrote Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind in 1751, which targeted the burgeoning German population in Pennsylvania. His concerns echoed the often-stated negative view of immigrants that we still hear today: they have bad habits, they are clannish, they do not speak English, and/or they are going to take over. The same arguments were used against the Italians, Irish, and Jewish immigrants to America and can still be heard today in reference to Mexicans or Latinos.
When thousands of poor Irish Catholics began arriving on the East Coast to escape the famine that killed over one million, Massachusetts and New York passed laws taxing immigrants and creating other impediments to immigration. These were appealed to the Supreme Court, which struck them down in the Passenger Cases of 1849, ruling that in the absence of federal legislation, state governments could not regulate immigration. Growing concerns over the increasing immigration and the dilemma over slavery frustrated Protestant nativist groups and the first anti-immigration mass movement in America began. In the 1830s and 40s, violent anti-Catholic riots occurred in Boston and Philadelphia.
By the early 1850s, a new political movement was formed directly opposing immigration. Contemporary opponents and historians have called them the “Know Nothings” because when asked about the organization, they were instructed to say, “I know nothing.” Native-born, white members of a secret Protestant fraternal organization called The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner made up this new movement. The movement gained in popularity, and in 1854 through 1855, elections saw anti-immigrant candidates winning local, mayoral, gubernatorial, and congressional elections. In 1856, the movement formed the American Party and ran ex-President Millard Fillmore for President on an anti-immigrant platform that ignored the slavery issue. The American Party got twenty percent of the vote but carried only the state of Maryland. By 1860, the American Party and the Know Nothings had crumbled; and during the Civil War, many immigrants fought for both sides in ethnic regiments, creating a respite in anti-immigration sentiment.
Anti-Chinese Sentiment
As time passed and significant numbers of Chinese laborers immigrated to California and the West Coast during the Gold Rush, nativism and anti-immigration sentiments in the United States focused on the Chinese, some calling it a “Mongolian invasion.” From 1849 –1853, during the Gold Rush, there were approximately 4,000 Chinese immigrants in the country. During the building of the Transcontinental Railroad from 1863 – 1869, estimates suggest that the number of Chinese workers were between 15,000 and 20,000. After the completion of the Union-Central Pacific Railroad in Utah in May of 1869, some 10,000 Chinese who had worked on building the railroad entered the labor market in California. More than 60,000 Chinese, of which three-quarters were in California and almost all of them men, were recorded as part of the 1870 census. At the same time, anti-Chinese sentiments rose in America, in part because of Henry George, a radical reformer and economic theorist, who warned of the “Yellow Peril” – an invasion of the United States by an Asian army. Michael Keevak, a professor at National Taiwan University and author of Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking argues that early European anthropologists used “yellow” to refer to Asian people because “Asia was seductive, mysterious, full of pleasures and spices and perfumes and fantastic wealth.” It had a negative connotation, becoming a racial slur.
Chinese and other Asians were the only persons genetically excluded from citizenship. After former slaves had been granted citizenship with the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, Congress passed the Fifteen-Passenger Bill, which limited ships from bringing any more than fifteen Chinese immigrants to the U.S. in 1876. The federal government renegotiated its treaty with China in 1880, resulting in the Angell Treaty that scrapped the “open door” policy of the Burlingame-Seward Treaty and granted the U.S. the power to “regulate, limit, or suspend” the immigration of Chinese laborers who might enter the country after the signing of the treaty, but protected the right of those already in the country to freely travel to and from the U.S.
On May 6, 1882, the Golden Door – meaning the lack of legislation limiting immigration in the United States – began to swing closed. The Chinese Exclusion Act ushered in an era of increasing immigration restrictions that lasted until 1943, when the act was repealed under special circumstances. The act forbade the immigration of new Chinese laborers for a period of ten years. It also barred Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens, though the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark protected the birthright citizenship of their children. The years following the act saw a distinct decline in the Chinese American population, but anti-immigrant sentiment continued. Even after the Exclusion Act was passed, racial tensions continued, erupting in violence like the 1871 Los Angeles Chinese massacre. Another example is the 1885 massacre in Rock Springs, Wyoming where white coal miners killed 28 Chinese, wounded 15, and looted and burned all 79 of the shacks and houses in Chinatown. And in May 1887, at what is now known as Chinese Massacre Cove, a gang of horse thieves and schoolboys from Wallowa County Oregon killed as many 34 Chinese gold miners.
The Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Persons into the United States of May 1892, known as the Geary Act, allowed Chinese laborers to travel to China and reenter the United States but other provisions were more restrictive than earlier immigration legislation. It required Chinese immigrants to register and secure a certificate as proof of their right to be in the United States. Imprisonment or deportation were the penalties for those who failed to have the required papers or witnesses. Even though many Chinese, in protest, refused to register for the certificate of identification, and many anti-Chinese on the West Coast hoped for deportations, the government concluded that it would cost too much money. Instead, Congress passed an act in November of 1893 that gave the Chinese six extra months to register. Around 105,000 ended up registering to remain in the United States, but also having been registered, now they could leave and return. This act, though, placed additional restrictions on merchants, stating that any “Chinaman” trying to enter had to prove they were a returning merchant with an affidavit or evidence from “2 credible witnesses other than Chinese.”
Japanese Immigration to the U.S.
In 1841, William Whitfield, a whaling captain on the John Howland from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, rescued Manjiro, a shipwrecked, fourteen-year-old Japanese fisherman, and four other fishermen from a deserted island. Captain Whitfield understood they were Japanese, but with the country’s closed-door policy, it was impossible to return them there. For the next several months, he traveled with the crew in the north Pacific waters, catching whales and processing their oil and blubber. They reached Hawaii (Native spelling: Hawaiʻi) and the other sailors stayed, but Manjiro accompanied Captain Whitfield back to Massachusetts, where he learned English, and became the first Japanese person to live in the United States.
Manjiro went to school, learning English and navigation. He looked for an opportunity to return to Japan to find his family. Manjiro went to sea on the whaler Franklin with Captain Ira Davis on May 16, 1846. They sailed from New Bedford and traveled east and eventually came to the area of Japan. They did meet other fishermen and Manjiro tried to communicate with them but was unsuccessful and returned to New Bedford. On the way back, they stopped in Hawaii, and he saw his former crewmates, minus one who had died from his injuries from the shipwreck.
Even though the whaling industry was declining, Manjiro still tried to think of ways in which he would return to Japan and see his mother. The Gold Rush was in full swing and Manjiro hoped to take advantage and earn enough money to take him and his companions back to Japan. He sailed on the Stieglitz for San Francisco on November 5, 1849. The journey took about three months of sailing and Manjiro soon went to Sacramento, spending 70 days to earn the $600 needed for his journey. Returning to San Francisco, he booked passage to Hawaii on the steam-powered merchant ship Eliza Warwick. He found his former companions divided as regards returning to Japan. They raised money and purchased a boat they named Adventurer. When the ship passed near the Loo Choo Islands (Ryukyu Islands) the small boat would be lowered and the three mates would row to their native land. Aboard the American ship, Sarah Boyd, the three and their boat left the port of Honolulu on December 17, 1850. After about three weeks the ship approached the island of Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu’s. In a raging sea Captain Whitmore brought the Sarah Boyd around to the leeward side (the side that was away from the wind) of the island. Then, the Adventurer was lowered, and the three mates made it back on Japanese soil.
Manjiro and his two companions, brothers, Denzo and Goemon, awoke on the beach in January of 1851. The citizens of this remote area were wary of the three strangers. Soon enough they were accepted, and the word went out quickly to the surrounding areas about their stories. Local officials took them into custody to interrogate them about their time away from Japan. The three went to Naha, the capital of the Ryukyus, where Satsuma officials asked more questions. Finally, they went to Nagasaki on orders from the Shogunate where their last formal interrogation took place. After they finished the questioning, they were finally allowed to return to their homes. Manjiro headed for Nakanohama where he arrived on October 5 after being missing for 11 years and 10 months. His mother was still alive and thankful that her son was not dead as was presumed. His family reunion was short-lived because the Lord of Tosa to Kochi summoned him after only three days to teach English to samurai and others.
On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay with four ships seeking to reestablish trade and discourse between the U.S. and Japan for the first time in over 200 years. Even though he is credited with the opening of Japan to the West, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch traders had been engaged with Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Japan expelled all foreigners in 1639 because of Western attempts to convert the Japanese to Catholicism and for engaging in unfair trading practices.
At the time of Perry’s trip to Japan, America hoped to establish a relationship that would benefit them after the opening of China and the annexation of California, creating West Coast ports in the United States. Traders were also replacing their sailing vessels with steam power at this time, and they needed to secure coaling stations for fuel and provisions on the long voyages from the U.S. to China. American whaling had also pushed into the North Pacific by the mid-eighteenth century and likewise sought safe harbors and supply stations. The same combination of economic interests and the belief in Manifest Destiny that drove settlers to expand into the West Coast played a role in American beliefs of the day that they had a special responsibility to modernize and civilize the Chinese and Japanese.
Commodore Matthew Perry brought with him a letter from President Millard Filmore to the Emperor of Japan. This demonstrated their lack of knowledge about the Japanese as the Emperor at the time was merely a figurehead and the true power of the country lay in the hands of Tokugawa Shogunate. His small squadron of Navy ships would display America’s firepower, but he also brought gifts to the emperor like a model of a steam locomotive, a telescope, a telegraph, and wine from the West. His mission was to secure an agreement for the protection of shipwrecked or stranded Americans and to open a port of two for supplies and refueling. The Japanese received the letter, and the following spring Commodore Perry would return with a larger squadron to hear their answer.
After Commodore Perry left, the Shogun called for Manjiro who, in December of 1853, was appointed as a samurai (jikisan) in direct service to the Shogunate. Because of this honor, he could take a second name, an honor seldom afforded to an unschooled peasant. He adopted that of his home village of Nakanohama and became Manjiro Nakahama. He indirectly influenced the treaty negotiations with Commodore Perry, which ended the 250 years of Japanese isolation from the world.
In the following years Manjiro was to share his knowledge of western technology in several ways:
- He translated Bowditch’s The New American Practical Navigator into Japanese.
- He became Professor of Navigation at the Naval Training School.
- He wrote Eibei Taiwa Shokei (A shortcut to Anglo-American Conversation). This was the first English text published in Japan.
- He initiated the first whaling industry in Japan based on his experiences
- He was the official translator for the delegation which crossed the Pacific to San Francisco on the Kanrin Maru (the first Japanese ship to do so).
The Japanese agreed and they signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, which provided protection for seafarers and the opening of two ports at Simoda and Hakodate for supplies and refueling. It also gave the Americans the right to appoint a consul to live in one of those cities, a privilege given no other foreign nations. The treaty did not guarantee the right to trade.
The Americans appointed Townsend Harris, a New York merchant dealing in Chinese imports, as the first consul of Shimoda who arrived in 1856. The Japanese had heard about the way that the British had opened China with force and eventually, in 1858, signed the Harris Treaty, which established the first commercial trading treaty between the United States and Japan.
In 1868, an American businessman sent around 148 Japanese contract laborers to Hawaii. With the modernization efforts of the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868, farmers in Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Fukuoka, and Kumamoto were hit hard with government taxes. On February 8, 1885, 943 immigrant laborers from Japan disembarked the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s City of Tokio onto the dock at Honolulu Harbor in the Kingdom of Hawai’i. The 1891 Immigration Act created the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration in the Treasury Department; and the opening of Ellis Island in 1892 marked the real beginning of the Immigration Service, which grew rapidly.
The United States overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and annexed Hawaii in 1898. Approximately 200,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast between 1885 and 1924. In addition to the push factor of the economic situation in Japan caused by modernization and a formalized tax system that impacted already impoverished Japanese, immigrants were pulled to America because of a labor shortage caused by the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1896, the Japanese government passed the Emigrants Protection Act to regulate emigration companies, requiring each Japanese emigrant to have someone responsible for his/her financial support in the country of destination. Many Japanese were recruited to work in sugar plantations in Hawaii and strawberry fields in California. The American Civil War (1861-1865) left in its wake the decimation of sugar plantations in the South. Cane production in Hawaii filled the gap in the market, but because of Chinese exclusion, the Japanese entered the labor market. Between 1885 and 1907, thousands of Japanese came to Hawai’i in numbers so great that by 1897, they made up the largest single ethnic group in the Islands and by 1900, they numbered around 40 percent of the population in Hawai’i.
The United States considered the Japanese and all other Asian immigrants “aliens ineligible to citizenship.” They could not vote or work in occupations requiring U.S. citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 had granted naturalization right to “free white” immigrants. And, in 1868, this was extended to “people of African nativity or descent.” Japanese and most other Asian immigrants were ineligible for citizenship until 1952. As a result of China’s assistance during World War II, the Chinese became eligible to citizenship in 1943.
The Angel Island immigration station opened in 1910. While Ellis Island was primarily used for processing immigrants entering the United States, Angel Island was founded to limit Asian immigration. Because Japanese workers could not make enough money to return home, after some years, many wanted to start a family in Hawaii. The practice of picture brides, or arranged marriages based on a photograph and a recommendation from friends of family took hold. Upon arriving by steamship, spouses had to find each other, and they were often surprised to find out the pictures did not match up to reality. Learn more by listening to our two-part interview with Dr. Kelli Nakamura for Ship History Radio or watching the films.
The Chinese Exclusion Act laid the foundation for other racially motivated laws targeting the Japanese. For example, in California in 1913, The Alien Land Law, though not specifically mentioning Japanese immigrants, barred “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from owning land or leasing it for more than three years. These laws from 1913 through the end of World War II were passed in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. In 1952, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Alien land laws were ruled unconstitutional.
The Japanese community in Hawaii made up 40% of the population when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred on December 7, 1941, spurring the United States to join World War II. Following the attack, government suspicion arose to include immigrants who came from enemy nations and all persons of Japanese descent, whether foreign born (issei) or second-generation American citizens (nisei). Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, issued Executive Order 9066 that resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans. In 1943 and 1944, the 442d Regimental Combat Team, a segregated combat unit of Japanese Americans fought in the European theater and gained fame as the most highly decorated of World War II. On September 2, 1945, World War II ended, and internment camps were slowly evacuated. More than 60 years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, on August 21, 1959, Hawaii officially became America’s 50th state. In 1988, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed, Public Law 100-383 – the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 – that acknowledged the injustice of “internment,” apologized for it, and provided a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated.
Today, you might hear Asian Americans described as the “model minority.” Post World War II, fears of the “Yellow Peril” dissipated and white opponents of racial integration turned their attention to black and brown communities that migrated to the cities of the North and West in search of work and opportunity. Prejudice toward Japanese Americans and other Asias did not disappear completely, but inner-city Black and Mexican Americans endured various forms of segregation, discrimination, and police abuse. “A lot of us are congratulating ourselves on working for and securing wide acceptance in the community at large,” stated a Nisei (second generation Japanese) protestant minister in the early 1960s in Scott Kurashige’s The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles. “But I suspect that we have been bailed out by the Negroes. They moved in and frightened the whites, who then found that we Japanese weren’t so bad after all. They could stop hating us and start hating the Negroes.” Characterizing Japanese Americans as the model minority stemmed from an article that University of California sociologist William Petersen authored for the New York Times Magazine in 1966, where he cited a mix of history, statistics (on education, crime, and life expectancy), and shared cultural traits. He wanted to show that Japanese Americans, even after exclusion and internment, had risen to a level of accomplishment that surpassed non-Asian minority groups.
Discussion Questions:
- How was Asian immigration similar to European immigration to the United States?
- What were some differences between the two?
- Explain the push and pull factors for the Japanese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
- Were these push and pull factors similar or different to European immigrants at the time?
- Explain how Commodore Matthew Perry and Manjiro’s story plays into the larger picture of the modernization of Japan.
- How and why did the modernization of Japan lead to emigration?
- Discuss the practice of Picture Brides. Why did it occur? Provide some examples of good outcomes and negative outcomes for families.
- How did Japanese women fare differently than the male immigrants? Provide specific examples.
- Explain Japanese internment in the United States. Why do you think Germans and Italians were not placed under the same system of detention?
- How and why did Asian Americans become considered the “model minority?”
