Takaki chapter ten

PACIFIC CROSSINGS-Seeking the Land of Money Trees
in this chapter, Takaki writes about how many Japanese and Chinese people moved to America with a view of excaping the high taxes that were implemented in their countries. they moved to America because they could get better wages and pay less tax than they did in their own countries.They had a lot of dreams of the new world because of different stories they had heard. Some of the stories were that wages in America were far much better than in their countries. “To prospective Japanese migrants, money grew on trees in America” (247). At first, it was mostly Japanese and Chinese men that left their country. But eventually, there was a significant number of Japanese women that added to the immigration number. Because Japanese believed in arranged marriages, they would arrange marriages between daughters in Japan and Japanese men who were in America. This was done through picture sharing and hence the Japanese women that got married this way were called ‘picture brides.’ Takaki states that the “emigration of Japanese women occurred within the context of internal development” (248). But it was also influenced by the needs of receiving courtiers. For example, “in Hawaii, the government initially stipulated that 40 percent of the Japanese contract labor emigrants…were to be women” (250). Takaki states that “furthermore, they [planters] promoted the Japanese family as a mechanism of labor control” (250). The planters believed that Japanese men worked better with their women around.
Looking forward to the dreams of the new world that they had, most immigrants left with joy though some were disheartened by separation anxiety. But to their surprise, money did not grow on ‘trees’ in the new world. It had to be worked for in the plantations owned by whites that were hungry for labor. Therefore, the immigrants became a cheap labor supply for these planters. The planters requested for laborers from different nations. Laborers included people from Japan, China, Korea, Philippines. There was a strategy to this as Takaki points out that “the employers were systematically developing an ethnically diverse labor force in order to create divisions among their workers and reinforce management control” (252). The laborers from different nations developed a competition attitude to prove that their race did a better job. However, despite leading to great productivity, this competition mind created race border lines.
The laborers working conditions were hostile under the supervision of whites. One of the plantation workers complained that “field work was brutal. We worked like machines” (255). The employers fostered discrimination by paying different wages for the same labor based on color and by assigning most supervisory positions to whites. Takaki states that “a Japanese worker told an interviewer how he was frustrated by racial discrimination. ‘I haven’t got a chance to get ahead in employment. You can’t go very high up and get big money unless your skin is white’” (254). This is an evidence of white privilege were people are treated better than others because their skin is white.
To protest to the harsh working conditions, Japanese workers formed strikes. These strikes saw most of them going without pay for several months. However, they Filipinos also could not contain the working conditions any longer and decided to unite with the Japanese in striking. Their goals were frustrated by leaders that lacked integrity by accepting bribes from the planters to call the strikes to an end. Little success of these strikes was that at least the laborers got a few cents increase to their pay.
“Coming to Hawaii with extravagant dreams, Japanese immigrants experienced disillusionment.” (254). Their only hope rested in their children. Most of them decided to send their Japanese American children to school with the hope that education will narrow the bridge of difference between races. However, they learned that what mattered was the color of the skin and not the education. Learning about democracy and freedom, the Japanese American children thought they would enjoy better opportunities than their parents. But their hopes were frustrated by the discrimination they received in employment.
If education and wealth attainment does not put people of color at the same level with whites, what is it that will put them at the same level? The only solution is to dismantle this so called white privilege. No matter how hard we try to make all people equal, if we still embrace that whites should have better opportunities than anyone else, racism will always exist.
As I read the article, I felt sorry for the poor immigrants that came with high hopes, only to be greeted by hostile conditions which were worse than in their own countries.The saddest thing is that most of them could not go back to their countries maybe due to the fears of going through the consequences of the deteriorating statuses of their countries.