Strangers from a Different Shore

“To satisfy their demand for labor, planters scoured the world—mainly Asia, but also Europe—in search of workers. Planters viewed laborers as commodities necessary for the operation of the plantation.”

This passage explains how plantation owners in Hawaii helped to initiate the first wave of Asian immigration to those islands by sending labor agents to Asia. By explaining planters’ perception of Asian workers as “commodities” Takaki foreshadows the stories of dehumanization and abuse which he shares later in the book. This discussion also encourages the reader to consider how local and global economic conditions precipitated immigration from Asia to the US.

“Even if they had to become debtors to get to America, they thought the promise of getting ahead in the new land was worth the sacrifice. Paid ten to fifteen cents a day in India, they were told they could earn two dollars for a day’s work in America. A Sikh migrant later recalled how California seemed ‘enchanted.’”

In this passage Takaki explains the personal and economic situations which prompted farmers from the Punjab region of India to seek work in Canada and the US. This quotation highlights the similarities between Indian migrants and other Asian laborers, as people from India also took financial risks to access new opportunities and also shared a romanticized stereotype of the US as a wealthy and idyllic place.

“We were packed into the ship in one big room. There was no privacy, no comforts, no nothing. We were like silkworms on a tray, eating and sleeping.”

Takaki quotes a Korean immigrant named Yang Choo-en to explain the conditions on board the ships from Asia to the US. He emphasizes the danger and discomfort passengers experienced on these boats, where malnutrition and illness were common. Throughout the book, first-hand accounts like this one encourage empathy.

“The Chinese constituted a sizable proportion of the population in certain areas: 29 percent in Idaho, 10 percent in Montana, and 9 percent in California. Virtually all adult males, they had a greater economic significance than their numbers would indicate: In California, the Chinese represented 25 percent of the entire workforce.”

The author shares census data from 1870 to illustrate the distribution of the 63,000 Chinese laborers in the United States. This passage shows that these newcomers made up a significant part of the West’s population. Their overrepresentation in the workforce illustrates the value employers placed on their hard work—which the employers were eager to profit from by paying them less than white workers.

“Determined to accelerate construction, the Central Pacific managers forced the Chinese laborers to work through the winter of 1866. The snowdrifts, over sixty feet in height, covered construction operations. The Chinese workers lived and worked in tunnels under the snow, with shafts to give them air and lanterns to light the way. Snowslides occasionally buried camps and crews; in the spring, the workers found the thawing corpses, still upright, their cold hands gripping shovels and picks and their mouths twisted in frozen terror.”

This passage reveals the terrible conditions which Chinese workers endured as they worked on the railroad. In this discussion Takaki adds detail to his theme on Labor and Exploitation, showing how railway owners commodified Chinese people and profited from their labor while endangering them. These abuses have parallels with Takaki’s other examples of Asian labor, such as working on plantations or in brothels, providing a more complete picture of how Asian workers had no legal rights and were exploited by employers.

“Within this context of economic crisis and social strife, Congress voted to make it unlawful for Chinese laborers to enter the United States for the next ten years, and denied naturalized citizenship to the Chinese already here. Support for the law was overwhelming. […] The Chinese Exclusion Act was in actuality symptomatic of a larger conflict between white labor and white capital: removal of the Chinese was designed not only to defuse an issue agitating white workers but also to alleviate class tensions within white society.”

Takaki explains the cultural and economic conditions that prompted the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. In their racist depictions of Chinese people, many white social commentators, authors, and politicians blamed them for the economic problems and unemployment plaguing the US at the time. Takaki argues that white workers and white employers were entrenched in conflict, with workers complaining about the lack of rights and low pay while employers resisted these negotiations and instead exploited Asian laborers. This economic relationship encouraged lawmakers to scapegoat Chinese laborers through the Exclusion Act.

“The Chinese protest went beyond words. Time and again they took into court their struggle for civil rights.”

Takaki explains how people in the Chinese community refused to be victimized by racist depictions which insulted them and scapegoated them for economic problems. They also resisted the oppression of the legal system and labor system by filing court cases over citizenship rules, unfair taxation, and immigration freedoms for newcomers and permanent residents. This passage emphasizes how Asian Americans used their agency to advocate for themselves, and, over time, reshaped the legal and cultural landscape of the US.

Takaki’s analysis of the Hawaiian sugar cane plantations reveals the additional discrimination that women faced within the population of Asian laborers. This description helps the reader understand a bit about the daily life of women on plantations, and is a reminder that they were among the most exploited workers, earning even less than the men.

Takaki’s analysis of the Hawaiian sugar cane plantations reveals the additional discrimination that women faced within the population of Asian laborers. This description helps the reader understand a bit about the daily life of women on plantations, and is a reminder that they were among the most exploited workers, earning even less than the men.

“Gradually, however, workers of different nationalities began to acquire a common language. Working on the plantation required cross-ethnic communication, and planters used English as the ‘language of command.’ Over the years a plantation dialect called ‘pidgin English’ developed: incorporating peculiarly Hawaiian, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, and other elements, it grew out of management’s need to give commands to a multilingual workforce.”

Takaki explains the emergence of “pidgin English,” a unique dialect borne of English and a variety of Asian languages, illustrating the diversity of ethnic groups in Hawaii and their need to communicate with each other. In this discussion Takaki adds detail to his analysis of how different Asian ethnicities in Hawaii overcame their cultural and linguistic differences and established commonalities as working class Hawaiians.

“Though they had been soundly beaten, the workers learned a valuable lesson from the 1920 strike. Filipinos and Japanese, joined by Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese laborers, had participated in the first interethnic working-class struggle in Hawaii. […] On April 23, the Japanese Federation of Labor decided to become an interracial union and to call the organization the Hawaii Laborers’ Association—a new name trumpeting a feeling of multiethnic class camaraderie.”

In this passage, Takaki explores the development of working class solidarity amongst laborers of different Asian and European ethnicities in Hawaii. Conditions of Labor and Exploitation created both tension and solidarity among workers, initially agitated within their own ethnic and cultural groups, but over time realized that they were struggling against the same oppression and could do so more effectively by joining together.

“And as Asian workers transplanted their customs and traditions and foods to the camps, as they erected new churches and temples and planted gardens near their cottages, as they spoke to their fellow workers from other countries in a new language, and as they watched their children grow up and play in the camps, they began thinking of themselves as settlers and of Hawaii as their home.”

Takaki explains how many Asians in Hawaii grew to consider the islands their home, even though they had originally intended to work there temporarily before returning to their homelands. This passage encourages the reader to consider how economic and personal factors prompt people to live and work in certain areas, and how these choices can influence their identity.

“Japanese workers found that their employers had virtually no interest in their welfare. The labor contract arrangement and the migratory nature of work precluded paternalism and employer responsibility. […] They did not live in permanent camps where they could build stable communities: they were literally here today and gone tomorrow.”

The author explains how migratory work, such as moving farm-to-farm or working on the railroad, was often more precarious and abusive than more stable jobs, exacerbating problems of Labor and Exploitation. This quotation provides insight into the challenges Japanese laborers faced as they worked in canneries, farms, and railroads in jobs arranged by labor contractors.

“They did not share the white workers’ ‘God,’ their ‘hopes, their ambitions, their love of this country.’ Unable to be ‘assimilated,’ the Japanese could not become ‘union men.’ Carrying to America a different culture and coming here only to make money, they would remain ‘strangers.’”

The American Federation of Labor, in its publication The American Federationist, argued that Japanese laborers should not be permitted to join their union because of their cultural differences from white workers. This quotation illustrates how authorities tried to justify their racist policies by employing ethnocentric logic that emphasized religious and cultural differences. These perspectives perpetuated stereotypes of Asians as “foreigners” or “strangers” in American culture.

“Separated from their families in China, the men missed the company of their own small children—their sounds and laughter. […] Back home, Chinese women fingered and studied old yellowing photographs of their men, so young and so handsome. Look at these dreamers and the twinkle in their eyes, filled with possibilities and promises, they said proudly. But, aiya, what did they look like now, after twenty years in Gam Saan?”

In this quotation, the author uses intimate imagery to emphasize the loneliness, homesickness, and disappointment that Chinese immigrants and their families experienced. Takaki humanizes Chinese Americans by emphasizing their experiences as family members rather than focusing on their work as laborers. In this passage he adds to his theme on Competing Visions of the United States by showing how many immigrants’ experiences in the US fell far short of their initial perceptions and dreams.

“Asian Indians were especially feared as labor competitors by white workers and were often victimized by white working-class antagonism and violence. In September 1907, several hundred white workers invaded the Asian-Indian community in Bellingham, Washington, and drove seven hundred Asian Indians across the border into Canada.”

By emphasizing the white, working class perception of Indians as competition, Takaki makes a clear connection between economic tension, scapegoating, and racist abuse. This shocking incident demonstrates how, unprotected by the law, Asian immigrants were vulnerable to violence at the hands of racists and had no recourse for abuses they suffered.

“In an effort to bring all the workers together, the Trade Union Unity League formed the Agricultural Workers Industrial League. But the growers used the government to smash this new interethnic labor unity. Arresting over one hundred workers and setting the bail at $40,000, the authorities broke the strike.”

This passage describes how in 1930 Mexican and Japanese workers collaborated in a shared union to protest reduced wages at their agricultural jobs in California. Takaki explains how the government and police acted to prevent a union from agitating for better pay and conditions by criminalizing striking workers. This passage shows the significant obstacles Asian workers faced to securing a stable life and fair remuneration from exploitative employers.

“When the season was over, Bulosan returned to Seattle, where he was paid. The labor contractor handed him a slip of paper, and he was amazed at the neatly itemized deductions he had supposedly incurred in Alaska: twenty-five dollars for withdrawals, one hundred for board and room, twenty for bedding, and another twenty for miscellaneous expenses. His take-home pay turned out to be only thirteen dollars.”

In this quotation the author provides insight into how, with little cultural know-how and no legal recourse, Asian Americans were tricked into exploitative contracts that seemed high-paying but were not. By using this specific example from a real person, Takaki illustrates the plight of workers who contributed their labor but received little in return.

“Filipinos wanted to get back to the Philippines to fight for the liberation of their homeland. ‘We wanted to be there’—in the Philippines, they later declared […] Filipinos made unique and valuable contributions to the war effort in the Pacific. They operated behind enemy lines, engaging in sabotage to destroy Japanese communications.”

In this quotation, the author explains how Filipino Americans were motivated to join the war effort to help free their homeland from Japanese occupation. This passage shows how Asian Americans fought against racial discrimination to risk their lives in military service, adding to the author’s theme on Asian American contributions to the US.

“Two photographs—one of a Japanese and another of a Chinese—were used as illustrations. Previously maligned as the ‘heathen Chinee,’ ‘mice-eaters,’ and ‘Chinks,’ the Chinese were now friends and allies engaged in a heroic common effort against the ‘Japs.’”

Quoting a Time magazine article which advised white Americans on how to differentiate Chinese and Japanese people, Takaki reflects on how World War ll prompted shifting allegiances which informed new racial caricatures in white American society. This quotation reinforces Takaki’s observation that politics informed racist rhetoric, with some white Americans warming to Chinese people while blaming the Japanese for their country’s aggression. This passage reveals how negative generalizations in the media fueled discrimination against certain Asian groups.

“The war stirred unrest and agitation among them: as the laborers were told that America was defending democracy against Fascism, they became inspired to gain influence in the workplace through the exercise of democratic power.”

In this passage the author explains how the United States’ efforts in World War ll inadvertently aided the worker’s rights movement, as workers felt that agitating for better wages and conditions was a democratic endeavor. This quotation adds to Takaki’s theme on how Asian Americans have shaped the US.

“The civil rights movement offered a countervision: the time had come for revising America’s immigration policy and the old notions of who could become an American.”

The author credits the civil rights movement with helping to create a discourse around racial discrimination in the US, challenging the notion that the US could privilege European immigrants and white citizens over others. This passage adds to Takaki’s theme on Competing Visions of the United States.

“‘This is a good life here,’ said an ethnic Lao refugee. No war. No death. No hunger. We like to stay here—for now.’ These last two words carry apprehension for their future here. Many Lao find the culture here nearly incomprehensible. ‘It is easier to move the mountains than get used to American culture,’ one of them observed.”

Takaki relates the challenges that many Asian immigrants face as they adjust to a completely new life in the US. This passage underscores the different ways immigrants experience the US as both a refuge of safety and a foreign and confusing place they try to call home.

“But in their celebration of this ‘model minority’ the pundits and the politicians have exaggerated Asian-American ‘success’ and have created a new myth.”

Takaki grapples with the modern stereotype of Asian Americans as a ‘model minority,’ noting that this assessment is often based on simplistic analyses of income that do not accurately reflect most Asian Americans’ professional status or quality of life. Instead, he argues that Asian Americans are continuing to try to reach economic parity with white Americans and that the model minority myth prevents some Asians from accessing the help they need as it promotes the assumption that they will be financially successful.