"These Japanese continuously violated the alien-contract labour laws": The Gendered Paths of Labourers, Farmers, and Housewives from Japan Traversing the Canada-U.S. Border in the Early Twentieth Century

Histoire Sociale

Volumn 40, Issue 80, 2007, Pages 297-322

  Takai, Yukari ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 47849112914     PISSN: 00182257     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.00182257/2007/40/80     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. David Thelen, "The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History," Journal of American History, vol. 86, no. 3 (December 1999), as well as articles presented in the forum on transnational history;
2. Ian Terrell, "American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History" and "Ian Terrell Responds," American Historical Review, vol. 96, no. 4 (October 1991), pp. 1031-1055 and 1068-1072;
3. Michael McGerr, "The Price of New Transnational History," American Historical Review, vol. 96, no. 4 (October 1991), pp. 1056-1067.
4. Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002);
5. Joe W. Trotter Jr., "The Great Migration, African Americans, and Immigrants in the Industrial City," in Nancy Foner and George M. Frederickson, eds., Not Just Black and White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, Ethnicity in the United States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), pp. 82-99;
6. Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992);
7. Donna R. Gabaccia, "Is Everywhere Nowhere? Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of United States History," Journal of American History, vol. 86, no. 3 (December 1999), pp. 1115-1134;
8. Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser Ottanelli, eds., Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001);
9. Peggy Levitt and Rafael de la Dehesa, "Transnational Migration and the Redefinition of the State: Variations and Explanations," Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 26, no. 4 (July 2003), pp. 587-611.
10. On the Canadian-U.S. border, see Randy William Widdis, With Scarcely a Ripple: Anglo-Canadian Migration into the United States and Western Canada, 1880-1920 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998);
11. Bruno Ramirez, On the Move: French-Canadian and Italian Migrants in the North Atlantic Economy, 1860-1914 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990);
12. Bruno Ramirez with Yves Otis, Crossing the 49th Parallel: Migration from Canada to the United States, 1900-1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001);
13. Stephen J. Hornby, Victor A. Konrad, and James J. Herlan, eds., The Northeastern Borderlands: Four Centuries of Interaction (Orono, ME: Canadian American Center, University of Maine; Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press, 1989);
14. Robert Lecker, ed., Borderlands: Essuys in Canadian-American Relations (Toronto: ECW Press, 1991);
15. John J. Bukowczyk, Nora Faires, David R. Smith, and Randy William Widdis, Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650-1990 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press; Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005).
16. Far more voluminous work has been written about the Mexican-U.S. border. Among these titles, see, for example, Carlos Vélez-Ibánez, Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1996);
17. Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996);
18. John Mason Hart, "The Evolution of the Mexican and Mexican-American Working Classes," in Hart, ed., Border Crossings: Mexican and Mexican-American Workers (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1998), pp. 17-18;
19. Oscar Martinez, ed., U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1996).
20. Gabaccia, "Is Everywhere Nowhere?" See also Gérard Noiriel, La tyrannie du national : le droit d'asile en Europe, 1793-1993 (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1991).
21. Also pertinent is Richard White's critical comment that the concept of the nation-state tends to dominate recent literature that places North America within a larger spatial scale or that employs comparative approaches. See Richard White, "Is There a North American History?," Revue française d'études américaines, vol. 79 (1999), pp. 8-28.
22. Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001);
23. Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003),
24. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004);
25. Dorothy B. Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919-1941 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003);
26. Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History and Transnationalism in Japanese America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
27. Henry Yu, "Los Angeles and American Studies in a Pacific World of Migrations," American Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 3 (September 2004), pp. 531-543.
28. For an earlier work on Asian labour migration in the Pacific Northwest, see Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned Salmon Industry, 1870-1942 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).
29. For studies on Asian migrants in Latin American countries, see Evelyn Hu-Dehart, "Coolies, Shopkeepers, Pioneers: The Chinese of Mexico and Peru (1849-1930)," Amerasian Journal, vol. 15, no. 2 (1989), pp. 91-116;
30. Robert Chao Romero, "Transnational Chinese Immigrant Smuggling to the United States via Mexico and Cuba, 1882-1916," Amerasian Journal, vol. 30, no. 3 (2004/2005), pp. 1-16.
31. Erika Lee, "Orientalisms in the Americas: A Hemispheric Approach in Asian American History," Journal of Asian American Studies, vol. 8 (October 2005), pp. 235-256.
32. An important exception to this general tendency is an anthology of conference papers presented at the University of Washington in May 2000 on the Nikkei, or people of Japanese descent, in the Pacific Northwest. Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura, eds, Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).
33. Gary Y. Okihiro, "Theory, Class, and Place: Introduction," in Gary Okihiro, Marilyn Alquizola, Dorothy Rony, and K. Scott Wong, eds., Privileging Positions: The Sites of Asian American Studies (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1995), pp. 1-9;
34. K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan, eds., Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).
35. Scholars have referred to the cross-border movement of Japanese who went from Vancouver or Victoria to destinations in the United States. Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), pp. 102-103;
36. Iino Masako, Nikkei Kanadajin no Rekishi [A History of Japanese Canadians] (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1997), pp. 21-35, 29-37.
37. Ramirez with Otis, Crossing the 49th Parallel, chap. 5.
38. Daniels, Asian America, chap. 4;
39. Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991), pp. 35-41;
40. W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia, 2nd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990), pp. 75-76;
41. Fiset and Nomura, eds., Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest, pp. 5-7.
42. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, Soundex Index to Canadian Border Entries through the St. Albans, Vermont, District, microfilm copy housed at the Salle Gagnon, Bibliothèque municipale de Montréal. My analysis is based on a 5% random sample of individuals derived from the Border Entries. Gathered from the entire collection, this primary source lists approximately 43,000 individuals. From this primary group, all the Japanese who crossed the border from Canada to the United States were selected. In addition to providing such information as name, age, gender, birthplace, last permanent residence, port of disembarkation, and U.S. destination, the Border Entries also allow one to determine the length of time between immigrants' entry into Canada and their departure for the United States, the identities of persons accompanying them, their former occupations, and their travels prior to arrival in the United States. I gratefully acknowledge Professor Bruno Ramirez for allowing me to use part of the data collected from this primary source.
43. In their research report on French-Canadian immigration to the United States, Ramirez and Otis point out that these entries were not recorded rigorously in the Border Entries in the initial period and that only after 1909 was this recording procedure consistently followed. This was not the case for Japanese immigrants I examined in this study. The number of Japanese entries recorded is scarce until 1895, but from that year onward the overwhelming majority of my sample of Japanese were listed as crossing the border southward. For the years 1917 and 1918, my sample does not list any Japanese admissions. Such disparities in the same source may result, as Ramirez and Otis hypothesize, from the partial loss of these early border records. The lost records more likely related to the eastern part of the continent, thus including a far greater number of French Canadians than Japanese. I have concluded, therefore, that the Border Entries data for my sample of Japanese in the last decade of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries are indeed valid. See Bruno Ramirez and Yves Otis, "French-Canadian Immigration to the USA in the 1920s: A Research Report" (Université de Montréal, 1992).
44. This study is part of a larger project in progress that seeks to re-centre Japanese and other migrants in transpacific and transcontinental perspectives. I explore Canadian and Japanese sources more extensively in this larger work.
45. For views supporting the link between American and Canadian restrictive measures, see Ramirez with Otis, Crossing the 49th Parallel, pp. 41-44,
46. and Lee, At America's Gutes, pp. 152-157.
47. Iino Masako, on the contrary, provides a more cautious interpretation of the issue with her analysis of the Hayashi-Lemieux Agreement of 1908, following the 1907 Vancouver Riot (Nikkei Kanadajin no Rekishi, pp. 31-32).
48. Cited in Masako, Nikkei Kanadajin no Rekishi, chap. 2: Gaimushô, Nihon Gaikô Bunsho [Tokyo], vol. 39, no. 2, p. 1235;
49. vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 1737, 1780, 1778.
50. See also Ward, White Canada Forever, pp. 75-76;
51. Howard H. Sugimoto, "Vancouver Riots of 1907," in Hilary Conroy and T. Scot Miyakawa, eds., East Across the Pacific: Historical and Sociological Studies of Japanese Immigration and Assimilation (Santa Barbara, CA: American Bibliographical Center - Clio Press, 1972), p. 93.
52. The Canadian government issued a continuous journey Order-in-Council on January 8, 1908. After the defeat of this order in court, the Laurier government issued a new continuous journey order, supported by an amendment to the Immigration Act (P.C. 23) on May 27, 1908, and added a $200 requirement order (P.C. 24) on June 3. Following the passage of a new Immigration Act in 1910, the Dominion government re-issued these orders as P.C. 920 and P.C. 926. Hugh Johnston, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada's Colour Bar (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1989), pp. 4-5, 8, 9, 58-59.
53. The U.S. Immigration Act of March 3, 1903 (32 Statutes-at-Large 1213) reaffirmed the act of February 23, 1885 (23 Statutes-at-Large 332). U.S. Immigration Act of February 20, 1907 (34 Statutes-at-Large 898); U.S. Immigration Act of May 26, 1924 (43 Statutes-at-Large 153). Following the Order-in-Council of January 1923, the Canadian government issued an Order-in-Council (P.C. 2115) in September 1930 that prohibited the entry of "any immigrant of any Asiatic race" except the wives and minor children of Canadian citizens Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 53-56;
54. Patricia Roy, J. L. Granatstein, Iino Masako, and Hiroko Takamura, Mutual Hostages: Canadians and Japanese during the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990);
55. Ken Adachi, The Enemy That Never Was: A History of the Japanese Canadians, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991);
56. Ann G. Sunahara, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1981).
57. Washington, DC, National Archives, Subject Correspondence 1906-1931: Records of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85 [hereafter Subject Correspondence], File 51630/44f.
58. United States Industrial Commission, Reports of Industrial Commission on Immigration, including testimony with review and digest and special reports, and on education, including testimony, with review and digest (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900-1902; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1970), p. 755.
59. Alan Takeo Moriyama, Imin Gaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and Hawaii, 1894-1908 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), p. 152, n. 43.
60. Subject Correspondence, File 51931/149, no. 6102.
61. Subject Correspondence, File 51686/17av, no. 677.
62. Sugimoto, "Vancouver Riots of 1907," p. 112.
63. Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 52;
64. Masaaki Kodama, Nihon iminshi kenkyû josetsu (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 1992), p. 524;
65. Azuma, Between Two Empires, p. 30.
66. Kodama, Nihon iminshi, p. 524;
67. Azuma, Between Two Empires, p. 30.
68. Azuma, Between Two Empires, pp. 29-31;
69. Bangaku Mizutani, Hokubei Aichi kenjinshi (Sacramento, CA: Aichi Kenjinkai, 1920), pp. 264-270;
70. Jesús K. Akachi et al., "Japanese Mexican Historical Overview," in Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas, pp. 206-210.
71. Subject Correspondence, File 51893/53.
72. Subject Correspondence, File 51893/87.
73. Subject Correspondence, File 513893/85.
74. Ramirez with Otis, Crossing the 49th Parallel, pp. 49-55.
75. Daniel M. Masterson with Sayaka Funada-Classen, The Japanese in Latin America (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), p. 27.
76. Lee, "Orientalisms in the Americas."
77. Border Entries, 224-097-K600.
78. Border Entries, 364-059-T253.
79. Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 107-108.
80. Masako, Nikkei Kanadajin no Rekishi, chap. 2;
81. Sasaki Toshiju, Nihonjin Kanada Iminshi (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1999), pp. 169-185;
82. Chan, Asian Americans, p. 108; Tomoko Makabe, Shashinkon no Tsumatachi: Kanada Iimin no Joseishi [Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada] (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1983).
83. Daniels, Asian America, p. 131.
84. As historians have shown, picture marriage, or shashin kekkon, was a transpacific version of arranged marriage, a common custom in Japan at the time adapted to the difficulties encountered by single Japanese male migrants attempting to find a marriage partner in turn-of-the-century United States and Canada. First, there were few Japanese women in North America, and miscegenation laws prohibited Japanese men from marrying white women. In addition, a return trip to Japan not only would cost more than most Japanese male labourers could afford, but would also have meant that they would lose their deferred military draft status from the Japanese government. Many thus resorted to writing to relatives in Japan, asking them to find a wife and send her to the United States. Such arrangements were rooted in a common practice in Japan at the time - marriage by proxy - which was thus adapted to meet the needs of transpacific migrants. This gave rise to the phenomenon of marriage by photograph and the arrival of hundreds of brides. Ichioka, The Issei, chap. 5;
85. Alice Yun Chai, "Picture Brides: Feminist Analysis of Life Histories of Hawai'i's Early Immigrant Women from Japan, Okinawa, and Korea," in Donna Gabaccia, ed., Seeking Common Ground: Multidisciplinary Studies of Immigrant Women in the United Stales (Westport, CN: Praeger, 1992), pp. 123-138;
86. Eileen Sunada Sarasohn, Issei Women: Echoes from Another Frontier (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1998);
87. Eithne Luibheid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), chap. 3;
88. Masabuchi Rumiko, "1910-Nendai no Hainichi to 'Shashin Kekkon'" [Anti-Japanese Sentiment during the 1910s and "Picture Marriage"], in Togami Soken, ed., Japanizu Amerika: Iju kara Jiritsu e no Ayumi [Japanese American: The Path from Emigration to Independence] (Kyoto: Minerva Shobô, 1986);
89. Kei Tanaka, "Japanese Picture Marriage in 1990-1924 California: Construction of Japanese Race and Gender" (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2002).
90. Border Entries, 224-070-K533. The Border Entries specify prefecture of origin of Japanese immigrants without providing information on the city of origin. Hiroshima thus refers to the Prefecture of Hiroshima. Unless otherwise mentioned, the same applies for other localities mentioned hereafter.
91. Border Entries, 199-008-H600.
92. Ramirez with Otis, Crossing the 49th Parallel, pp. 81, 114, 146, 160-161.
93. Yukari Takai, "From Canada to the U.S.A.: A Continental Perspective on the Migratory Itineraries of Japanese, 1890-1916" (paper presented at the Nikkei conference in Seattle, University of Washington, May 2001).
94. Calculation based on data drawn from the Border Entries.
95. Mike Dunning, "The Southern Perception of the Trans-Mississippi West, 1845-1853" (PhD thesis, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1995),
96. and "Manifest Destiny and the Trans-Mississippi South: Natural Laws and the Extension of Slavery into Mexico," Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 35, no. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 111-127;
97. Chris Enss, Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier (Guilford, ON: Falcon Publishing, 2005);
98. Meg Greene Malvasi, "Freedom's Women"[online article], retrieved February 29, 2000, from http://www.suite.101.com. I would like to acknowledge Colin Coates for suggesting the parallel between Japanese picture marriage and mail-order brides in the American West.
99. Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 108-109.
100. Azuma, Between Two Empires, pp. 47-60;
101. Andrea Geiger, "Cross-Pacific Dimensions of Race, Caste and Class: Meiji-era Japanese Immigrants in the North American West, 1883-1928" (PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 2006), pp. 94-96.
102. "Nosse in Montreal," Victoria Daily Colonist, March 28, 1897,
103. cited in Geiger, "Cross-Pacific Dimensions," pp. 94-96.
104. Daniels, Asian America, p. 132.
105. George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 137;
106. Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power, p. 122.
107. Chan, Asian Americans, pp. 37-42.
108. The view held by many white westerners that all Chinese female migrants were prostitutes was among the factors that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Lucie Cheng, "Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in 19th Century America," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 5 (1979), pp. 23-29;
109. Benson Tong, Unsubmissive Women: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994);
110. Sucheng Chan, "The Exclusion of Chinese Women, 1875-1943," in Chan, ed., Entry Denied;
111. George Anthony Peffer, If They Don't Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration before Exclusion (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999),
112. cited in Lee, At America's Gates, p. 93.
113. For discussion of the migration patterns of African American women, see Darlene Clark Hine, "Black Migration to the Urban Midwest: The Gender Dimension, 1915-1945," in Joe W. Trotter, ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 127-154, especially p. 132.
114. Daniels, Asian America, p. 131.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid.
118. Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power, p. 83.
119. Ramirez with Otis, Crossing the 49th Parallel, Tables 5 and 9, pp. 92, 125;
120. Takai, "The Family Networks and Geographical Mobility," pp. 370-380,
121. e siècle," Francophonies d'Amérique, vol. 11 (2001), pp. 183-193. Not included in the figures above is the large proportion of nuns. According to Ramirez and Otis, nuns accounted for 8 per cent of the French-Canadian female migrants and 13 per cent of the Anglo-Canadian female migrants in the period between 1906 and 1930.
122. Chan, Asian American History, pp. 107-108.
123. This may well have been the case not only among a goodly number of women of all ethnic backgrounds who were indeed secondary wage-earners within a household and thus worked intermittently, but also among women who were the sole breadwinners in their households. The federal manuscript census provides ample examples of cases in which a husband was purportedly the only wage-earner in a household, but was listed as working as a day labourer or unskilled worker in a textile mill, making it difficult to imagine how he could have supported a family with a large number of children under working age. Unless these men's wives were engaged in paid work at least irregularly, it would have been impossible for these families to avoid starvation. Bettina Bradbury, Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993), n. 38, pp. 282-283.
124. Sheba Mariam George, When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
125. Ibid., chap. 3, especially p. 98. Historical and sociological studies on non-migrant families also suggest that family relations did not automatically alter when changes occurred in the wage-earning capacity of the household. See Mark Rosenfield, '"It was a hard life': Class and Gender in the Work and Family Rhythms of a Railway Town, 1920-1950," Historical Papers/Communications historiques (1988), pp. 237-279;
126. Mira Komarovsky, The Unemployment of Man and his Family (New York: Arno Press, 1973).
127. Ito Kazuo, Hokubei hyakunen zakura [North American Hundred Years Flowering Cherries] (Tokyo: Hokubei hyakunen zakiura jikko iinkai, 1969),
128. and Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America, trans. Shinichiro Nakamura and Jean S. Gerard (Seattle: Executive Committee for Publication, Japanese Community Service, 1973), pp. 428-429,
129. quoted by Gail M. Nomura, "Tsugiki, a Grafting: A History of a Japanese Pioneer Woman in Washington State," in Karen J. Blair, ed., Women in Pacific Northwest History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988; 1990), pp. 284-307, especially 287-290.
130. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986);
131. Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor, pp. 116-120;
132. Nomura, "Tsugiki, a Grafting," pp. 207-229.