The Salvage: Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement

By Dorothy Swaine Thomas

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1952.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520323117

Dorothy Swaine Thomas

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JAPANESE AMERICAN EVACUATION

AND RESETTLEMENT

The Salvage

By Dorothy Swaine Thomas

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF

Charles Kikuchi and James Sakoda

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley, Los Angeles, London

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES

CALIFORNIA

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD.

LONDON,ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

CALIFORNIA LIBRARY REPRINT SERIES EDITION, 1975

ISBN: 0-520-02915-1

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

T

AN 1946, the University of California Press published The Spoilage, by Dorothy Swaine Thomas and Richard S. Nishimoto. Publication of The Salvage completes the plan, announced at that time, for a two-volume work on social aspects of the wartime evacuation, detention, segregation, and resettlement of the Japanese American minority. As stated in The Spoilage:

The first volume analyzes the experiences of that part of the minority group whose status in America was impaired: those of the immigrant generation who returned, after the war, to defeated Japan; those of the second generation who relinquished American citizenship. It is, thus, concerned with the short-run spoilage resulting from evacuation and detention; the stigmatization as disloyal to the United States of one out of every six evacuees; the concentration and confinement of this group in the Tule Lake [Segregation] Center; the repressive measures undertaken by government agencies, including martial law, incarceration and internment; the successive protest movements of the group against these repressions, culminating in mass withdrawal from American citizenship. …

The second volume will include analysis of the short-run salvage, i.e., the experiences of that part of the minority whose status in America was, at least temporarily, improved through dispersal and resettlement in the East and Middle West. This group includes one out of three of the evacuees who left the camps [by the end of December, 1944] to enter new areas as settlers, many participating directly in the war effort." (p. xii.)

The Spoilage was a case history, focused upon the disorganizing effects of the evacuation-detention crisis of 1942 and of the administrative effort to assess the loyalty of the detained evacuees and to segregate the disloyal in 1943. Its primary data were day-by-day records, obtained over a three-and-a-half- year period by participant observers and field workers on the staff of the Evacuation and Resettlement Study, and these were supplemented by copious contemporary documents (surveys, questionnaires, petitions, minutes, and so on) from evacuee or administrative sources. Because of possible implications for policy formation, it was considered desirable to publish an analysis of this *‘continuing process of interaction between government and governed" as promptly as possible. The authors of The Spoilage, therefore, did not attempt to place the segregation phase of the evacuation-detention crisis in historical perspective or to delineate social and demographic base lines.

The Salvage is focused upon evacuee migration from War Relocation Authority camps to the Middle West and East during 1943 and 1944. Its primary data are derived from official censuses of evacuees, from transcripts of segregation transfers and of leave permits, from participant observation, and from interviews with resettlers in the Chicago area. To develop a context for analyses of these primary data and to provide a historical frame of reference and a prewar base line for placing the evacuation-detention crisis in perspective, data from a variety of secondary sources are utilized in Part I. Wherever possible, the period of reference is from the turn of the century to 1945. The first ten sections chronicle the main political events and administrative actions that impinged upon the Japanese American minority group during the course of immigration and settlement; define group trends and intragroup differentials in demographic, economic, and cultural terms; and piece together fragmentary data bearing on social organization and political orientation. A section on forced mass migration includes a summary of The Spoilage as well as statistical analysis of the differential incidence of segregation; and a section on selective resettlement evaluates the factors that facilitated and impeded resettlement and culminates in statistical analysis of the nature and extent of demographic, economic, and cultural selection in the outmigration from WRA camps during 1943-1944.

PREFACE

Part I deals with mass phenomena; Part II. with the train of individual experience as exemplified by career-lines and life histories. The section on social demography synthesizes the results of the historical, institutional, and statistical analyses of Part I and provides a frame of reference for Part II. The next section describes how the experiential records were obtained and outlines their content, and the section following defines the basis of selection. Detailed life histories are presented of fifteen resettlers, whose prewar careers covered the range and represented most of the types of occupations open to second- generation Japanese on the West Coast, and who came from diverse communities of origin and family backgrounds. Each of these histories indicates how an individual lived his life within the context delineated in Part I and complements the treatment of mass phenomena by adding specificity of detail, emphasizing the continuity of experience, and portraying the subjective (attitudinal) as well as the objective (behaviorial) aspects of experience.

The authors of The Spoilage acknowledged indebtedness to a large number of individuals and organizations whose encouragement, support, and cooperation were essential to the launching of the Evacuation and Resettlement Study. (Ibid., p. xiv.) The author of The Salvage reaffirms this indebtedness and is especially grateful for the continued generosity of the Rockefeller, the Columbia, and the Giannini Foundations; for the cooperation of the War Relocation Authority; and for assistance received from the Universities of California and of Pennsylvania.

Like the authors of The Spoilage, the author of The Salvage drew heavily upon the work of colleagues and research assistants on the Evacuation and Resettlement Study. Of the two whose names appear on the title page of this volume, Charles Kikuchi prepared the first draft of all of the life histories used in Part II, and James Sakoda was primarily responsible for collecting, evaluating, tabulating, and analyzing details of the characteristics of approximately 24,000 evacuees whose statistical histories are synthesized in Part I. Richard S. Nishimoto, coauthor of The Spoilage, gave invaluable advice and prepared several basic economic analyses. Research reports by Frank Miyamoto, Tamotsu Shibutani, and Togo Tanaka were used extensively. Donald Kent helped select and abridge the life-history material; Daphne Notestein prepared most of the charts; Georges Sabagh, Everett Lee, and Himeko Nichols, among others, helped on the statistical phases; and Louise Suski, Mary Wilson, and Helen White were the principal secretarial assistants.

Finally, it must be stressed that the data in Part II of The Salvage represent the contribution of hundreds of resettler- hours by the fifteen Nisei whose abridged life histories are utilized; and that purposeful selection of these fifteen documents was possible only because scores of other resettlers made similar contributions to the Evacuation and Resettlement Study. We are grateful for their willingness to relive, for the record, the traumatic period following Pearl Harbor, to reconstruct the details of family and community background, and to particularize their experiences and attitudes with so few reservations.

D. S. T. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

October 15, 1951

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

CHARTS

Part I PATTERNS OF SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

Introduction

Immigration and Settlement1

Demographic Transitions

Urban Enterprise

Religious Differentials

Educational Differentials

Forced Mass Migration™

Selective Resettlement

Part II THE COURSE OF INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE

The Frame of Reference: Social Demography

*5* Fifteen Life Histories

STATISTICAL APPENDIX

INDEX AND GLOSSARY

CHARTS

I. Japanese immigration to and from United States, 1891-

1942 4

II. Age-sex structures of Japanese American population in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, 1900—1940 10

III. Age-sex structures of Japanese American population in

California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, 1920—1940, compared with expected survivors. … 14

IV. Age-sex structure of Japanese American evacuees, born

in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, compared with expected survivors in 1942 … 16

V. Age-sex structures of Japanese American evacuees by generational-educational classes, 1942 18

VI. Distribution of foreign-born Japanese in nonagricul- tural pursuits in California and Washington, 1940, compared with population norms. ….. 38

VII. Distribution of American-born Japanese in nonagricul- tural pursuits in California and Washington, 1940, compared with population norms 39

VIII. Distribution of Kibei and Issei evacuees, 1942, by education in Japan 64

IX. Distribution of male evacuees in selected WRA camps, 1942, by religion 68

X. Distribution of female evacuees in selected WRA camps,

1942, by religion 69

XI. Distribution of American-born Japanese in California and Washington, 1940, by school grade completed, compared with population norms 72

XII. Distributions of Nisei and Kibei evacuees who had completed their education in 1942, by school grade completed 74

XIII. Distribution of Nisei evacuees in WRA Camp I at Poston, by school grade completed 76

XIV. Distribution of Nisei evacuees in WRA camp at Mini

doka, by school grade completed 77

XV. Spoilage: Percentage of segregants among male evacuees

at Tule Lake, in 1943, by characteristics. … 96

XVI. Spoilage: Percentage of segregants among female evac

uees at Tule Lake in 1943, by characteristics… 98

XVII. Spoilage: Percentage of segregants among male evacuees at Poston and at Minidoka, by characteristics. 100

XVIII. Spoilage: Percentage of segregants among female evacuees at Poston and at Minidoka, by characteristics. 104

XIX. Outmigration of evacuees from all WRA camps, June,

1942-March, 1946 114

XX. Age-sex structures of segregants and outmigrants and residua] population, all WRA camps, 1944-1945 . 116

XXI. Early Salvage: Percentage of outmigrants among male evacuees at Tule Lake, March-September, 1943, by characteristics 118

XXII. Early Salvage: Percentage of outmigrants among female evacuees at Tule Lake, March-September, 1943, by characteristics 119

XXIII. Early Salvage: Percentage of outmigrants among male evacuees at Minidoka and Poston, March-September,

1943, by characteristics 120

XXIV. Early Salvage: Percentage of outmigrants among female evacuees at Minidoka and Poston, March-September,

1943, by characteristics 122

XXV. Late Salvage: Percentage of outmigrants among male evacuees at Minidoka and Poston, October, 1943- December, 1944, by characteristics 126

XXVI. Late Salvage: Percentage of outmigrants among female evacuees at Minidoka and Poston, October, 1943-

December, 1944, by characteristics 128

Part I

PATTERNS OF

SOCIAL AND

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

Introduction

IN 1880, there were fewer than 200 alien Japanese in the United States. Between 1885 when Japan legalized labor emigration and 1924, when Oriental exclusion was incorporated in the Immigration Act of the United States, more than 200,000 Japanese aliens entered this country as direct migrants from Japan, and thousands of others were admitted as secondary migrants from Hawaii. By 1940, cumulative admissions of Japanese aliens had probably exceeded 300,000, and at least 125,000 children had been born to Japanese parents residing in the continental United States. But the net result of half a century of immigration and of three decades of family building, as shown in the census of 1940, was only 47,000 Japanese aliens and 80,000 Americanborn descendants. And, as of 1940, almost 90 per cent of this total Japanese American population of 127,000 lived in the four western states of California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona.

During the spring and summer of 1942, the Western Defense Command ordered the exclusion of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the whole of California, from the western third of Washington and Oregon, and from the southern quarter of Arizona. For a short period, voluntary exodus with free choice of destination outside the exclusion areas was permitted and even encouraged. So much hostility developed in the receiving areas, however, and so few evacuees were able to find destinations for themselves that by the end of March, 1942, voluntary evacuation on an individual basis was superseded by controlled mass evacuation. Centers, originally set up for reception or assembly purposes to provide temporary refuge for the displaced evacuees were superseded by more extensive, barbed-

[3]

Chart I. Japanese immigration to and emigration from continental United States, by fiscal years,

1891-1942, and index of United States business cycles, by calendar years, 1900-1906. (See Appendix, tables 1 and 2. Note that business cycles index, though referring to calendar years 1900-1906, is plotted for fiscal years ending 1901-1907.) wire-enclosed camps, called relocation projects but designed for war-duration occupancy. During the summer and fall of 1942, more than 110,000 evacuees were moved under federal supervision from homes and assembly centers to relocation projects.

In December, 1944, orders excluding the Japanese from the West Coast were rescinded and the evacuees were free to return to their former homes. But, by this time, one in three had migrated eastward from camps to American communities outside the exclusion areas or had entered the armed services, one in six was confined in a segregation center for the disloyal, and the population remaining in relocation projects had dwindled to 62,000. In the frame of reference to be developed in the following sections, these three groups are defined, respectively, as the salvage, the spoilage, and the residue of a historical process culminating in evacuation and resettlement. This process is appraised and, where possible, analyzed quantitatively in terms of the social demography of the prewar period, the impact upon disparate population segments of the forced mass migration that followed exclusion from the Pacific Coast, and the selective nature of wartime dispersal from relocation projects.

Immigration and Settlement1

Year-by-year variations in the course of migration between Japan and the continental United States are shown in Chart I, in the series of alien admissions which were recorded first in 1890—1891 and in that of alien departures for which records are available only from the fiscal year 1907-1908.

Although Japan’s abandonment of a two-century long seclusion policy in 1868 eased restrictions on free movement from the country and an edict in 1885 removed barriers to labor emigration, the number of aliens entering American ports before the turn of the century oscillated only slightly around a slowly rising trend, from a level of about 1,000 a year in the early ’nineties to not much more than 2,000 a year toward the end of the decade. During this early period, Hawaii, rather than the continental United States, was the destination preferred by Japanese emigrants,2 and the sharp rise in admissions to the mainland in 1900 reflects a fortuitous diversion to San Francisco of Hawaiian-bound immigrants whose ships were turned away from Honolulu because of an outbreak of bubonic plague in the Islands. Between 1901 and 1907, the curve of admissions ebbed to troughs of 4,000-5,000 and rose to a crest of almost 10,000, in response to the slackening and quickening of the demand for labor on the West Coast, and during these years, as Chart I indicates, there was a striking covariation in curves of immigration and of American business cycles. From 1908 onward, however, the limits of fluctuation in admissions were set primarily by political restrictions.3

Following the establishment of territorial government and the abolition of contract labor in Hawaii, secondary migration from the Islands to the continent began to assume numerical importance. The bulk of secondary and direct migrants alike sought California as a destination, and though the numbers involved were still small in the first few years of the twentieth century, the increasing tempo of the movement stimulated demands for complete cessation of immigration. Boycotts and other discriminatory measures were instituted against the resident Japanese in many California localities and in 1906, the San Francisco School Board passed a resolution requiring all Japanese then in the public schools to attend a segregated school for Orientals. Denouncing the action as a wicked absurdity, President Theodore Roosevelt finally persuaded the School Board to rescind its resolution on the understanding that the President would bring Japanese immigration to an end.4 5 6 7 In March, 1907, Roosevelt issued a proclamation, prohibiting remigration to the continental United States of Japanese laborers who had received passports to go to Mexico, Canada, and Hawaii, and in the same year the Japanese government agreed to undertake measures to end direct immigration of Japanese laborers to the United States. Under this, the Gentlemen’s Agreement, Japan would issue passports only to such of its subjects as are nonlaborers or are laborers who, in coming to the continent, seek to resume a formerly acquired domicile, to join a parent, wife, or children residing therein, or to assume active control of an already possessed interest in a farming enterprise located in this country.8 Following enforcement of the Agreement, admissions fell from an annual level of 10,000 in 1907-1908 to about 2,500 in each of the two following years, and return-migrants to Japan numbered some 5,000 annually.

The renewed upswing that began in 1910 and culminated in 1920 reflected an unexpectedly enthusiastic response of Japanese settlers to the Agreement’s provision permitting entry of relatives, and the liberal interpretation immigration officials made of the somewhat ambiguous provision. Husbands who had left their wives and children in Japan now sent for them, and bachelors made hurried trips to their native villages, married, and brought their brides to America. Soon a more economical method of family-building became popular: relatives and friends in the mother country helped find brides for Japanese living in the United States, photographs were exchanged, and, if the arrangements proved mutually agreeable, marriage vows were taken by proxy, and bachelors were thus spared the inconvenience and expense of trips to Japan. Until 1920 passports were freely issued to picture brides.

As the influx of women⁹ gained momentum, the birth rate rose. There were repeated protests against the alarming increase of the Japanese American population until Japan discontinued the practice of issuing passports to picture brides. The number of alien arrivals dropped sharply after 1921, and return-migrants again exceeded immigrants, but regional groups persevered in their demands for complete cessation of Japanese immigration. Finally, the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed (effective July 1, 1924), giving California what she wanted. … This act abrogated … the Gentlemen’s Agreement and provided for the exclusion of all aliens ineligible to citizenship.¹⁰ Among those ineligible on racial grounds were the Japanese, and with the enforcement of the Act, their immigration to the United States was effectively ended. After a short-lived rush to beat the deadline, arrivals declined sharply. Immigrant settlers who had failed to call their wives and children from Japan were no longer free to do so. Visas were now issued only to visitors, students, treaty merchants, and similar classes, and to returning residents. It was this last class which accounts in large measure for the slowly rising trend in arrivals from 1925 to 1930, but the increase was too slight to offset the drainage of alien Japanese from this country, and a negative balance in the population movement between the United States and Japan persisted to the eve of World War II.

Settlement proceeded slowly, and at no census year did Japanese immigrants and their descendants represent as much as 3 per cent of the total population of any one of the states. About

As Strong pointed out female immigration would undoubtedly have dropped very materially in a short time anyway. About twelve thousand more in 1925 would have supplied all the Japanese bachelors with wives. (Op. cit., p. 86.) three-quarters of the 2,000 aliens enumerated as residents of the United States in 1890 settled near ports of entry in California or Washington. The other quarter, consisting mainly of students and businessmen, dispersed widely, passing through the mountain states toward the eastern seaboard. By the end of the next decade, tendencies both to dispersal and concentration were apparent. The movement to eastern states did not keep pace with immigration. Only one in twenty-five aliens was recorded as an eastern resident in the 1900 census, and 21 per cent of the total were enumerated in the intermountain states—many of them in Montana and Colorado. On the Pacific Coast, Washington expanded its proportion from 18 to 23 per cent of the total alien residents, and Oregon, with 10 per cent, emerged as an important area of absorption. After 1910 dispersal practically ceased, and settlement became more and more concentrated on the Pacific Coast; within the Pacific Coast area, in California; and within California, in Los Angeles and vicinity. In 1900 California’s share of the country’s alien Japanese was 42 per cent, and in 1920, 63 per cent. By 1940 the California proportion had risen to almost 75 per cent, with Los Angeles City accounting for no less than 25 per cent.

In the continental United States 44,000 Japanese aliens were added by 1910 to the 24,000 who had settled by 1900. There was an increment of only 14,000 in the next decade, and in the intercensal periods, 1920-1930 and 1930-1940, there were decrements of 11,000 and 23,000, respectively. The maximum foreign-born population of 80,000 was reached in 1920, and the drop to 47,000 in 1940 represented a decline of almost 40 per cent in the course of twenty years.11

Decreases in the number of immigrant settlers were, for a time, more than offset by increases in the number of their

Chart II. Age-sex structures of the Japanese American population in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, by decades, 1900-1940. (See Appendix, table 4.) descendants. In 1900 there were fewer than 300 American-born Japanese, and their increase of about 4,000 in the next decade was only one-tenth as great as the corresponding increment of immigrant settlers. During the next decade the absolute growth of the second generation was double that of the first, and the ratio of American-born to foreign-born was almost one to three by 1920. In 1930 the two generations were approximately equal, at about 70,000 each. By 1940, the American-born had outstripped the immigrant group and, totaling 80,000, were two- thirds again as numerous as the 47,000 aliens. Their rate of growth, however, had not been sufficient to stabilize the size of the minority group as a whole, and the total Japanese population in the United States declined from 139,000 in 1930 to 127,000 in 1940.

1 The main sources used in the discussion of Japanese immigration are H. A. Millis, The Japanese Problem in the United States, Macmillan, New York, 1915; Y. Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States, Stanford University Press, 1932; E. K. Strong, Jr., The Second-Generation Japanese Problem, Stanford University Press, 1934; U.S. Congress. Senate. Reports of the Immigration Commission, Immigrants in Industry, Japanese and Other Immigrant Races in the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain States, 61st Congress, 2d Sess., S. Doc., 85, Part I, Washington, 1911.

2 There are no accurate statistics on the movement of Japanese between Hawaii and the mainland. We have used estimates, from the sources cited in footnote 1 above, based on various reports of the Commissioner General of Immigration and of the Board of Immigration of Hawaii.

3 • A positive relationship between business cycles and immigration had been, and continued to be, characteristic of wave after wave of European migrants to the United States. (See Harry Jerome, Migration and Business Cycles, National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, 1926.)

4 R. L. Buell, Japanese Immigration, World Peace Foundation Pamphlets, Vol. VII, Nos. 5-6 (1924), p. 287.

5 •The Agreement was not published. The above interpretation is that of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. (See Annual Report of the Commissioner-

6 General of Immigration for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1909, p. 121.) This interpretation is worded ambiguously. A clearer statement is that of Ambassador

7 Hanihara to Secretary of State Hughes in a letter dated April 10, 1924, viz. "The Japanese government will not issue passports good for the Continental United States to laborers, skilled pr unskilled, except those previously domiciled in the

8 United States, or parents, wives, or children under twenty years of age of such persons." (Buell, op. cit., p. 359.)

9 Females accounted for close to 40 per cent of all arrivals in the upswing from 1910 to 1920, and more than three-quarters of them were wives of residents. The proportion of females in the total fell slightly to 35 per cent in the next four years, and fewer than three out of five of them were classified by Immigration authorities as wives. [Calculations based on U.S. Immigration reports which include immigration to Hawaii.]

10 Strong, op. cit., p. 48.

11 Hawaii’s aliens, increasing by immigration from Japan but yielding later to the pull of the mainland, as well as to return migration, showed even narrower margins. The base of 56,000 aliens in 1900 was augmented by less than 4,000 in the next decade, and by less than 1,000 between 1910 and 1920; and diminished by 12,000 and 11,000, respectively, in the next two intercensal periods. Thus, Hawaii, which had started in 1900 with a cohort of Japanese immigrants more than twice as large as that of the mainland, had by 1940 some 10,000 fewer Japanese alien residents.

Demographic Transitions

Concomitant with shifts in the numerical importance of immigrant settlers and of their American-born descendants were far- reaching transformations in age-sex structures, as shown in Chart

II. At no census from 1900 to 1940, did the age-sex structure of the Japanese American population attain the form either of the classical, tapering pyramid, characteristic of the increasing population of the mother country or of the bulging pyramid with eroded foundation, characteristic of the areas of settlement. They were always unstable and transitional between the Oriental and the Occidental patterns. Their irregularities and imbalances recapitulate immigration history and at the same time suggest the extent and rapidity with which the Japan minority was assimilating Western population patterns.

The structure of 1900 consisted almost exclusively of young males: it had no foundation of children, no apex of old people, and a barely discernible number of females. By 1910 the male lateral had increased enormously and was covering a greater agerange, the female lateral had begun to swell, and a narrow base of children was forming. The 1920 structure, with its wide base of children, its large segment of potential reproducers, and its tapering apex implied future development of the true pyramid toward which populations with high natural increase tend. By 1930, however, the foundation had contracted sharply and by 1940 the age-sex pyramid consisted of a series of bulges and hollows. The attenuation of the foundation had sharpened even further, and age-classes 0-4 through 15-19 now formed a pyramid-in-reverse. Ages 30-34 were markedly deficient for males and females alike, and there was another hollow class for males at ages 45-49. Both laterals had primary modes within the age- group 15-19, whereas there were secondary modes for males at 50-54 and for females at 40-44 years of age.

The structures of 1900 and 1910 show the immediate effects of age-selective immigration of laborers prior to the Gentlemen’s Agreement; those of 1920 and of 1930, the changes that followed the influx of picture brides. The structure of 1940, while still reflecting the timing, magnitude, and selective force of these great waves of immigration, reveals also the transformation caused by transition to patterns of high survival and controlled fertility and by reversals of the migration balance.

Even in 1920 the Japanese in America were superior to the Japanese in Japan in their ability to survive, their advantage—as measured by expectation of life at birth—amounting to some eight years. They were, however, inferior to the whites on the Pacific Coast, the expectation of life at birth of Japanese males being 51 compared with 56 for whites; and for females, the Japanese expectancy was 50 years whereas that for whites was 59. During the next two decades, their transition to the high-survival pattern proceeded so rapidly that by 1940 the expectation of life at birth for males had increased from 51 to 63 years and for females from 50 to 67 years—approximately the level then attained by whites in the Pacific Coast states.

The crude birth rate of Japanese Americans rose sharply after 1910, and in California reached a maximum of 68 per 1,000 population in 1920—a rate four times as high as that of the whites. Popular fear of invasion by immigration gave way to concern over the phenomenal fecundity of the settlers. State Senator J. M. Inman, for example, interpreted the birth level of 1920 to mean that all Japanese women in California between the ages of of 15 and 45 are bearing children at the rate of one every other year,¹ and J. S. Chambers, writing in 1921, predicted that there would be 150,000 American-born Japanese in California in ten years and that by 1949 they would outnumber the white people.2 Other observers, noting the unusual concentration of females in the childbearing ages, took issue with these alarmist conclusions. For example the State Board of Control pointed out that among the Japanese … most of the adults are comparatively young and of the family-raising ages, while among the whites … there is necessarily the usual proportion of elderly persons.3

But even if measured by rates that are independent of the age distribution, the fertility of Japanese Americans in the early ig2o’s was extraordinarily high. For example, the gross reproduction rate—the number of daughters imputed to the average woman passing through the childbearing ages, on the assumption of a continuation of current age-specific fertility rates—was 3.4 for Japanese Americans in 1920. This was one-third again as high as the gross reproduction rate of 2.6 for Japan in 1925 and three times that of the rate for West Coast whites in 1920. By 1940 the rate for the Japanese in Japan had declined only slightly to 2.1, but that of the Japanese Americans on the West Coast, falling to 1.1, had practically converged with the rate of 1.0 for whites in the same area.

The margin between immigration of Japanese to the United States and emigration of Japanese from the United States was consistently a very narrow one after 1908. Many arrivals were canceled by departures, and the migration and remigration of a relatively small number of highly mobile people inflated the figures of both immigration and emigration without any effect on numbers of settlers. During the years 1908-1914, 97 out of every 100 alien arrivals were offset by alien departures, whereas from 1915 to 1924 the ratio was 86 departures to every 100

Chart III. Age-sex structures of the Japanese American population in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, by decades, 1920-1940, compared with structures expected on the basis of survivors of residents at preceding census and of intercensal births. (See Appendix, table 9. Note that all ages over 65 are cumulated at ages 65-69.) arrivals.4 After 1924 when there was a consistent net migratory loss, departures per 100 arrivals numbered 146. Included in the currents and countercurrents of migration were appreciable numbers of repeaters, who visited and revisited the mother country after their initial immigration to the United States. Thus among the foreign-born evacuees enumerated by the War Relocation Authority in 1942, no fewer than 40 per cent had returned to Japan and remigrated to America at least once, and about one in ten had made three or more trips to Japan.5

As suggested by Chart III, return migration to Japan was selective of aging immigrants in general and of males in particular. So heavy were the losses of the middle-aged and the old that males enumerated in the age-groups 50-59 in 1920, in 1930, and in 1940 were only three-quarters as numerous as those expected as survivors of males aged 40-49 who were enumerated in 1910, 1920, 1930, respectively. Correspondingly, the deficit of those 60 years of age and older amounted to a third or more of the expected survivors of residents aged 50 and older, ten years earlier. Although percentage divergences between expectation and enumeration were, in 1930 and in 1940, almost as great for older females as for comparable age-ranges of males, the absolute losses of males aged 35 years and older were almost twice those of females. This discrepancy was due, in the main, to the departure of alien bachelors who, after the immigration restrictions of 1920 and 1924 became effective, found it difficult to establish families in America. Return migration to Japan between 1920 and 1940 depleted their ranks by 50 per cent or more, while the comparable migratory loss of those who had married and established families in the United States before 1924 was only of the order of 15 per cent.6

Chart IV. Age-sex structure of Japanese American evacuees, 32 years of age and younger in 1942, who were born in California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, compared with structure expected on the basis of survivors of births to Japanese in these states by years, 1910-1942. (See Appendix, tables 10 and 11.)

Chart III suggests also a heavy migratory loss of young children, in the discrepancy between the expected survivors of births to Japanese parents in the Western states, decade by decade, and the number of children of Japanese ancestry actually enumerated in decennial censuses. Thus at least 28 per cent of the expected survivors of the birth cohorts of 1910-1919 had been lost through migration, and corresponding deficits in the expected number of children under 10 years of age in 1930 and 1940 (birth cohorts of 1920-1929 and 1930-1939) amounted to 24 per cent and to 16 per cent, respectively.⁷ To some extent, these losses represented the family component in the stream of return migration to Japan, that is, the dependent, American-born children who accompanied their immigrant parents to the homeland. Toa greater extent, however, they probably reflected the practice—initiated during the early family-building days and culminating in the 1920’s— whereby many immigrant parents, who themselves remained on the West Coast as workers or entrepreneurs, sent one or more of their young children to Japan for foster care and education. An appreciable proportion of the Japan-educated American- born Japanese came back to their own native land, particularly during the 1930’s. By 1942 they numbered almost 10,000 and represented one in seven of the American-born Japanese of California, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. That the majority were still in Japan at the outbreak of World War II is suggested by the cumulative deficits to January 1, 1943, in survivors of annual birth cohorts from 1910 through 1942 in the four western states. These averaged 18 per cent for the cohorts of 1928—1942 (the survivors of which were under 15 years of age at the end of 1942), but more than 40 per cent for the cohorts of 1910—1927 (aged 15-32 in 1942) and exceeded 50 per cent for several of the single-year cohorts within the latter range. (See Chart IV.)

By 1942 when the Japanese were evacuated from the Pacific Coast, bimodality was a striking characteristic of their age-sex structure, as shown in Chart V. The modes differentiate the population sharply in terms of nativity, generation, and citizenship: Issei, the foreign-born, first generation immigrants from Nisei, literally the second generation but including, by usage, all of the American-born8 except the Japan-educated Kibei, a

Chart V. Age-sex structures oí Japanese American evacuees by generational- educational classes, 1942. (See Appendix, table 5.) marginal class comprising the regained fraction of the cohorts of young children earlier lost to Japan.9 Nisei and Kibei, being American-born, held American citizenship. Issei, however, could not become American citizens by naturalization,10 and with few exceptions, foreign-born Japanese were aliens. In 1942 the median age of Nisei was 17 years, of Issei males 55, and of Issei females 47. Kibei were divided about equally above and below 26 years of age, with more than 80 per cent of them crowded into the narrow range of ages between 20 and 35 years and only 6 per 1,000 younger than 15.

The significance of these age disparities of the 1940’5 was vividly anticipated by a writer in the vernacular press around 1920. Commenting on the birth rate of this period, he says:

What invites our attention is the great discrepancy in age between the father and the babe. In many cases the father is a half-old man of fifty, while his children are only four or five years old. When the latter reach the age of twenty the former will be approaching the grave, if not actually in it. Time will come when our community will be made up of weak, half-dead old men and immature and reckless youths. Who will guide the young men and women of our community twenty years hence? There is no answer.

It is true that the "Gentlemen’s Agreement’* permits the parents in this country to send for their sons and daughters in Japan that are under age, and we see a small influx of boys and girls in their teens into our community. … Our community of twenty years hence will have to depend on these few young newcomers of today. These are a most precious handful. … They form the link between the decaying age and the immature youth, and twenty years hence they will serve as the bridge over an inevitable and dangerous gulf in our community.¹¹

Agricultural Adjustments

The early Japanese immigrants entered the rural labor force of the Pacific Coast and intermountain states as seasonal or as casual workers. In many activities and localities they merely replaced the aging Chinese who had been gap-fillers—assuming the menial, petty and laborious work which white men would not do.12 In some they were themselves soon replaced by Mexicans and by newly arrived immigrants from southeastern Europe. The number employed on the railroads, in the mines, and in the lumber industry began to decline by the end of the nineteenth century, but the number engaged in agriculture increased markedly throughout most of the first decade of the twentieth century and kept pace with population change up to 1940.

By 1908-1909, two out of every five of the Japanese immigrants who had settled in the western states were engaged more or less continuously in farming operations, and among those who became railroad laborers and miners, there… [was] a strong ‘back current’ into agricultural pursuits, especially in California.13 By the time the Gentlemen’s Agreement had become effective, they had penetrated almost all of the intensive branches of California agriculture and were already a major element in the seasonal labor supply. To paraphrase the Immigration Commission’s summary of the situation at that time: the Japanese numbered 4,500 out of 6,000-7,000 handworkers employed in the beet industry during the thinning season, and predominated and controlled the handwork in the beet fields of all except three districts in the state. They were the most numerous race engaged in grape picking. They did practically all of the work in the berry patches, and much of the work on truck farms near the cities. They did much of the seasonal work in most of the deciduous- fruit districts, and in Southern California they comprised more than 50 per cent of the total number of citrus-fruit pickers during the busy spring months.14

At first they worked in small, unorganized groups, but as their numbers increased and they were more extensively employed, they soon became organized into ‘gangs’ under leaders or bosses.15

Bosses channeled their gangs to localities where their services were in demand, and, under their auspices, various organizations were developed. Ichihashi described typical cases of these Japanese labor organizations as follows:

In 1892 [a Japanese immigrant] took with him a dozen of his countrymen to Watsonville, California, and worked on a farm in the district, he acting as their boss. His employer gave him a bunkhouse in which to lodge his men. But soon other Japanese appeared in the district, and their number kept on growing. Whereupon [the boss] effected in 1893, what he called a club for these Japanese by renting a house and having each man pay annual dues of $3, for which he was allowed to cook his meals or lodge at the club or both whenever he was out of work. In time this club became a general rendezvous for the Japanese in the district, and when employers needed extra hands they went to the club and secured the men they wanted. … [Other clubs were organized.] Each club had a secretary whose function it was to find jobs and arrange them so that its members could work most advantageously. His compensation consisted of a five-cent commission collected from each man per day, but he had no fixed salary. When the demand for men was more than the members could supply, he sought outsiders, who obtained jobs by paying him the same commission,…

When the season of the district began to slacken, the outsiders first withdrew, and some of its members also migrated whenever it was found advantageous to work elsewhere. To assist these migratory members, the secretary … often arranged with employers of such districts for the employment of his men … [or] communicated with the bosses of such localities, who were more than glad to furnish the information because they had to secure a labor force fluctuating with the seasonal needs of their respective districts. …

[There were also] the so-called Japanese camps. … In the Santa Clara Valley [for example]… the term camp was applied by the local farmers to the headquarters where they could secure Japanese laborers to work for them. These headquarters were in all cases bunkhouses of the cheapest sort managed by the local Japanese bosses. … The bosses received orders from the local farmers for so many men, and distributed them accordingly, receiving for this service a five-cent commission from each man for each daily job but charging nothing to the employers. …

Larger farmers, as a general rule, kept in permanent employment, what they styled Jap bosses who were paid from $40 to $60 a month, varying widely with the size of farms. … The Japanese bosses possessed a knowledge of the whereabouts of Japanese laborers and succeeded in gathering together the men needed by their employers. …

All the employer needing help had to do was simply to telephone or write to a club or a camp to tell his Jap boss how many men were necessary; he then settled wages to be paid to the men with the laborsupplying agent, to whom money was paid, and he, in turn, paid the men after deducting a commission, except in the case of the Jap boss.16 For some years bosses offered the services of their gangs at rates well below prevailing wages. Before 1900 underbidding of Chinese was said to be very general, and in some localities day rates for Japanese were only half of the prevailing rate for Chinese. At the same time, their underbidding of white laborers was all but if not quite universal. By 1908-1909, however, they were reported to have ceased to greatly underbid other laborers, and their wages were estimated to have risen by more than 50 per cent in fifteen years.17

After the turn of the century, tenancy and sharecropping arrangements began to supplant the boss-gang system, and in California Japanese-leased farms increased in total acreage from fewer than 4,000 in 1900 to 60,000 in 1905 to 177,000 in 1910.¹⁸ Some of the tenants continued to operate as bosses and to supply owners with the extra labor required during busy seasons. This, in turn, facilitated the spread of tenancy, for owners having no Japanese tenants found it increasingly difficult … to obtain desirable laborers of that race.19 In some areas, the tenants cleared, drained, and leveled waste land and reduced it to cultivation. They installed pumping plants and introduced irrigation systems. They transformed land from extensive farming to the more profitable intensive cultivation of vegetables, berries, and fruits, and they pioneered in developing new crops. They accepted inferior housing—often constructing rude shelters on the leaseholds or utilizing the Asiatic bunkhouses, which had been erected for seasonal laborers, for their own families. Above all, they paid high rents, such high rents, in fact, that leasing his land [gave] the owner a better return than farming it himself, allowance being made for the diminished risk.20

In general, the Japanese operated very small holdings21 and specialized in types of farming that required little capital outlay. Although their dealings with Caucasian firms were often on a cash basis, many of them received liberal advances for operating and marketing expenses from the large shippers and packers. At the same time, they bought food and other necessities on credit from Japanese firms, kept their wage bills low, and drew heavily on the unpaid labor of wives and children. When failures occurred, they bore heavily on the Japanese merchants who had extended credit and made for an unstable financial structure in many of the Japanese communities.

Tenancy continued to increase—for the most part profitably— until 1913, when, with the passage of the first of California’s alien land laws, Japanese aliens could no longer legally purchase land or hold leases for terms exceeding three years. An Initiative Act in 1920 and a statute in 1923 restricted even short-term leases and proscribed sharecropping and shareholding in agricultural corporations.²²

Strict enforcement of the land laws would have driven the Japanese back to the status of laborers or out of agriculture altogether, for the vast majority of tenants and owners were foreign born, and their American-born children were still too young to exercise citizenship rights. But these laws were inherently difficult to enforce, and they were extensively, continuously, and collusively evaded.²³ Farms were bought or operated by aliens who acted as guardians of their minor American-born children; land was leased under names borrowed from older Japanese American citizens; and corporations were formed for the sole purpose of undercover leasing of land. Tenants sought legal refuge by assuming the permissible status of farm managers, foremen, and laborers. In these and other evasive practices the Japanese had the active cooperation of the many Caucasian ranchers, shippers, and merchants to whom their tenancy was profitable and expedient. In the few cases which were brought to court, it was difficult to obtain and introduce evidence of criminal conspiracy, and defendants could refuse, on constitutional grounds, to testify about their citizenship status.

Evasion became less necessary and less frequent during the 1930’s, when appreciable numbers of Nisei came of age and could appear openly as owners of or leaseholders for the parent-operated enterprises. The increase in the number of Japanese manageroperated farms from 113 in 1920 to 1816 in 1930 suggests the probable extent of evasion that followed the 1920 and 1923 laws. Correspondingly, the expansion in the number of tenant-operated farms from 1,580 in 1930 to 3,596 in 1940 may be more apparent than real, reflecting in many instances the assumption of tenant status by citizens on farms operated by their alien fathers under some legally permissible status. The fact that the total number of Japanese-operated farms was approximately the same in 1920 and in 1940 indicates that the foothold in agriculture was maintained in spite of legal restrictions.24 25 (See Appendix, table 12.)

Japanese farmers in California participated in the general shift of intensive agriculture to the southern vegetable-growing areas, and in 1940 one in three of their farms was located in Los Angeles County. Concomitant with this shift, and as a result of their well-established patterns of specialization and intensification, they obtained virtual monopolies in the production of many of the important truck crops. During 1941, for example, they produced 90 per cent or more of all snap beans grown in the state for marketing, of spring and summer celery, of peppers, and of strawberries; and 50 to 90 per cent of the artichokes, snap beans for canning, cauliflower, fall and winter celery, cucumbers, fall peas, spinach, and tomatoes. Operating only 3.9 per cent of all farms, and 2.7 per cent of all the cropland harvested, on holdings* that averaged only 44 acres in size compared with a state total of 230, they were then producing between 30 and 35 per cent by value of all commercial truck crops grown in California.⁸⁸ Their place in the state’s agricultural economy seemed assured.

Japanese agricultural operations iu Washington were similar in many respects to those in California. The farms were small and represented insignificant proportions of the total acreage under cultivation in the state. They were highly localized, almost half of them being in Seattle’s hinterland, the White River Valley. They specialized and intensified, and their productive contribution in a few truck crops reached similar monopolistic proportions.

Getting a foothold in Washington agriculture had, however, been more difficult. There was no ready-made labor demand of the sort existing in California, where the withdrawal of the Chinese had coincided with a tremendous expansion of intensive agriculture at the height of Japanese immigration. Restrictions on alien land ownership were embodied in the Washington state constitution as early as 1889, and strengthened by statute and procedural devices for enforcement in 1921.26 27 Anticipation of further restrictions, comparable to those in California, may well have accounted for the increase in farms operated by managers from 5 in 1920 to 180 in 1930. As in California, there was approximate equality in the total number of farms operated in 1920 and in 1940.

1 ¹² The Grizzly Bear, THE TIME HAS ARRIVED TO ELIMINATE THE JAPS AS CALIFORNIA LANDHOLDERS. June, 1920, p. 4.

2 J. S. Chambers, The Japanese Invasion, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Jan., 1921, p. 36.

3 State Board of Control of California, California and the Oriental, Sacramento, 1922, p. 37.

4 The increase in numbers directly attributable to net migration was much less for the Japanese than for other immigrant groups. On the basis of data presented by W. F. Willcox (International Migrations II, National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, 1931, pp. 88-89) the ratios of total alien departures per 100 total alien arrivals for 1908-1914 and for 1915-1924 were computed as 49 and 54, respectively.

5 United States, Department of the Interior, War Relocation Authority, The Evacuated People, Washington, 1946, p. 84.

6 Expected survivors, at each census, of residents aged 5-9 and over, at the preceding census, were estimated by applying 10-year survival coefficients derived from life-tables constructed for the Japanese population as of 1920, 1930, and 1940. (See Appendix table 9.) The procedure used is essentially that described and evaluated by E. P. Hutchinson in D. S. Thomas, Research Memorandum on Migration Differentials, Social Science Research Council, New York, 1938, App. C2.

7 ¹⁸ The expected American-born population under 10 years of age at each census was computed by the application of appropriate survival coefficients to births for each year during the preceding decennium. (See Appendix tables 10 and 11.)

8 Among the American-born, a third generation (Sansei) was beginning to assume importance: at the end of 1942, 88 per cent of the American-born under 3 years of age were of native or mixed parentage, compared with 25 per cent of those aged 3-19, and less than 2 per cent of those 20 years of age or older. (Births to Japanese, by nativity and parentage, in the four western states, 1940-1942, were collated with data on parentage of American-born evacuees, by sex, for ages under and over 20, to obtain an estimate of Sansei. See Appendix table 6.)

9 Kibei are, by definition, American-born Japanese who had had some education in Japan and then returned to America.

10 See pp. 43-44, below.

11 ²² Hoku-Shin-Juho, San Francisco, undated, cited by R. E. Park, The Immigrant Press and its Control, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1922, pp. 163-164.

12 M. R. Coolidge, "Chinese Labor Competition on the Pacific Coast,’* Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Sept., 1909, pp. 120-121.

13 Millis, op. cit., p. 79.

14 Reports of the Immigration Commission (U.S. Congress, Senate, op. cit.), pp. 62, 64 passim.

15 Ibid., p. 62.

16 Ichihashi, op. cit., pp. 172-175.

17 Reports of the Immigration Commission (U.S. Congress, Senate, op. cit.) p. 63.

18 ²⁹ We have used data reported in the Japanese-American Yearbook cited by Millis (op. cit., pp. 137-138), by Ichihashi (op. cit., p. 184), and by the Immigation Commission. The Commission evaluated the data for 1909 as follows: The agents of the Commission were able to check these figures in several localities and found them to be fairly satisfactory, except that in some instances not all holdings were reported. The figures presented, therefore, should be regarded as somewhat smaller than the propèr figures would be. (Op. cit., pp. 76-77.) Millis, under whose direction the Immigration Commission reports were prepared, however, later decided that these figures and the growth of Japanese farming indicated by them are exaggerated. … (Op. cit., p. 132.) In spite of biases, they probably give a more accurate picture than the U.S. Census, which failed to enumerate many of the farms operated by sharecroppers and contract tenants. Thus, the census for 1910 showed only 99,254 acres owned or operated by Japanese for the whole United States, while the Japanese-American Yearbook reported almost 195,000 acres in California alone including 37,000 under contract tenancy, and over 50,000 under share tenancy.

19 Millis, op. cit., p. 141.

20 Idem.

21 In 1910, 38.9 per cent [of all California farms] contained 100 acres and over. The average was 316.7 acres. Most of those held by Japanese, however, [were] small. Almost an eighth of those investigated by the Commissioner of Labor [in 1909-1910] contained less than five acres, more than one-fourth less than ten acres,... and only 14.3 per cent, one hundred acres and over. The average … [size] reported by the Census was only 54.7 acres. (Ibid., p. 144.)

22 Most of the restrictions were phrased in a backhanded fashion. The laws affirmed rights to aliens who could become naturalized citizens, and denied them to aliens ineligible to citizenship. The latter class, of course, included the Japanese. The laws did not mention agricultural lands but denied rights to real property except for purposes prescribed by any treaty. The only treaty then existing between Japan and the United States (that of 1911, which was abrogated in 1940) secured the Japanese in rights to own and lease certain sorts of buildings and to lease land for residential and commercial purposes only. (See D. O. Mc- Govney, The Anti-Japanese Land Laws of California and Ten Other States, California, Law Review, March, 1949, pp. 7-60.)

23 See Strong, op. cit., pp. 212-213, and E. G. Mears, Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast, Chicago, 1928.

24 Data collected by the Japanese Association of America (Zaibei Nippon-jin Shi) show that there was, in 1929, over twice as much acreage under ownership and tenancy as the corresponding figures from the U.S. Census for 1930 indicate. They suggest that the drop in 1930 was real, though greatly magnified by Census reports. The tremendous recovery between 1930 and 1940 was, however, not real, in the sense that most of these farms had been held all the time by the Japanese. There was, in fact, some loss rather than gain in acreage during the depression of the 1930’s.

25 U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, National Defense Migration, Fourth Interim Report, 77th Congress, 2d Sess., Washington, 1942, pp. 117-118.

26 The Washington restrictions on ownership differed from those in California in that they were not exclusively racial in their discrimination. (McGovney, op. cit., p. 43.) The proscribed classes were all aliens who had not, in good faith, declared intention to become United States citizens. Since Japanese could not become declarants the restrictions made it impossible for them, as well as for other groups racially ineligible to citizenship, to own land.

27 Many who later became proprietors spent their first years in America in domestic service or other menial work. Of 439 business men interviewed by Immigration Commission investigators in 1908-1909, less than one-sixth engaged in business on their own account as their first gainful occupation in this country.

Urban Enterprise

Entrance to the urban labor force in California was often achieved by way of domestic service. In this sphere as in agriculture, the early Japanese immigrants found an active demand created, in part, by a decline in the number of available Chinese. Many of the more ambitious worked for room and board in Caucasian households to learn English and to familiarize themselves with American ways, while devoting part of their time to classes and study. Known as schoolboys, they became a prominent feature of the San Francisco life of the early twentieth century.⁸⁵ Others obtained full-time, highly remunerative work as cooks, butlers, and houseboys for the upper classes. But the greatest number entered service on a contract basis as day workers for middle-class households. Through employment offices established in Japanese boardinghouses or behind shops, day workers were on call for a great variety of jobs, including housecleaning, window washing, laundry, cooking, and gardening. During the housing boom of the 1920% the demand for gardening services expanded rapidly, and through the advantages of group organization and family enterprise, the Japanese almost monopolized this type of work in the Los Angeles metropolitan district and in the suburban areas around San Francisco.1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The Japanese alone … made an organized effort to meet the demands of those in need of temporary and irregular service and in California especially a large number [were] thus occupied. … By organization to meet this need of service, perhaps the Japanese … added more to the comfort of the housewives who [did] not keep regular servants than to the comfort or profit of any other group in the population.⁸

Trade and nondomestic service enterprises developed along two lines: (1) proliferation of small businesses designed to meet the needs of the ethnic group, and (2) specialization in a few activities catering to the general public. The demand for Japanese-operated enterprises was acute among the newly arrived immigrants and the rural laborers. Many of them spoke little English and were unfamiliar with American wTays. They found it difficult to obtain service in Caucasian-operated hotels, lodginghouses, restaurants and barber shops, and they were denied access to places of public recreation. To meet their immediate needs, Japanese-operated lodginghouses, hotels, restaurants, and food shops sprang up in many localities, and around this nucleus, laundries, cobbler shops, bathhouses, pool halls, and other service enterprises and recreational facilities were established. With the arrival of wives from Japan, many of the immigrants sought living quarters in or on the periphery of these trade-service centers, and Little Tokyos thus developed in most of the larger cities.

A few service enterprises operated by Japanese for Japanese were in existence as early as 1890 in San Francisco and Seattle. For some years, especially after 1904, the number of places of business increased considerably more rapidly than the Japanese population.⁹ By 1909 there were about 500 Japanese establishments in San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles;¹⁰ scores of others in Sacramento, Fresno, Portland, and Tacoma, and a few … in almost every town of importance near which [Japanese were] employed.¹¹ Their proliferation and range are suggested by the fact that in San Francisco alone Japanese then operated 76 shoe stores and cobbler shops; 52 cleaning, dyeing, and tailoring establishments; 51 hotels, boarding and lodginghouses; 17 restaurants serving American and 33 serving Japanese meals; 42 art and curio shops; 18 barbershops; 13 bathhouses; 19 laundries; 37 grocery and food shops; 28 pool and billiard parlors; 24 employment agencies; and a variety of other small enterprises.

In general their plants were small and their equipment meager. Workers formed partnerships and there were few wage employees. A single enterprise often performed several functions, for example, according to the Immigration Commission: labor contractors, in addition to running employment agencies, almost invariably operated hotels and boardinghouses as a further source of profit and as a means of assembling laborers, and frequently conducted provision and supply stores as well. Billiard and pool halls and cigar stores were often connected with barbershops, and bathhouses were operated behind