Immigrants Like Me Essay

In the late 1880s, Japan was experiencing a famine which led almost 200,000 Japanese men to migrate to Hawaii where sugar cane and pineapple plantations needed laborers. The Japanese knew that America was doing quite well by then and Hawaii was part of American territory. The men traveled by boats and arrived in Hawaii a few weeks later. Japanese women didn’t accompany them because the only jobs that were needed required hard labor in the fields.

The Americans didn’t know the difference between the Japanese and the Chinese people. They originally brought the Chinese over to America because they needed cheap labor to build railroads. The Chinese were good workers and Americans believed Japanese would be the same. Therefore, it was easy for the Japanese to come to America because they were following in the Chinese workers' footsteps. (Back then the Chinese were like the Indian foreign workers here in Singapore, doing all of the dirty 

work.)

Once their labor was no longer needed in Hawaii, Japanese men began to settle on the west coast of America and wanted to start families. So in the 1910s Japanese women began to come to America. All Japanese marriages back then were arranged. With the husband to be in America, another man would stand in for him at the altar for the marriage ceremony in Japan. These brides were then given a picture of their husbands and traveled to America by themselves on a ship and to unite with them. That's how they acquired the name “Picture Brides.” Many couples thought that they would stay in America until they made enough money to return to Japan rich. Because of that, the women would send their American-born children back to Japan to go to school and stay with their relatives. 

My great grandmother and grandfather had a different story. They also had an arranged marriage, but my grandmother was not a picture bride. Beginning in 1910, my grandfather would travel back and forth from the US to Japan shipping pottery for his family’s import/export business. In between one of his trips he was introduced to my great grandmother. The families liked each other so the couple married on May 23, (the year is unclear), and about a month later they started their voyage to America. On July 3, they boarded the Osaka-Shosen Line ship. My grandmother’s sister also went on the trip with her little baby. The exact reason why my great grandpa had to go to the US was unclear but I think they went for a new start and more money. Fifteen days later, they arrived in Seattle where they spent the day in immigration. That night they stayed at a hotel. 

On November 26, 1922, they had my grandfather, John. He was the oldest of 14 children. When he was around 7 or 8, he and his two brothers were sent back to Japan to go to school where they stayed with their aunt and uncle. When my grandfather was 13, he was brought back to the United States. His parents wanted him to return because they knew that World War II was beginning and they wanted him with them. So he went to high school there and later fought in World War II on the American side.