News Article:

The History of Japanese Immigration to the United States

by Laura Ichise

In recent years, foreign nationals visiting Japan and Japanese nationals going abroad are rapidly increasing, due to the progress in internationalization of the world community. There are various histories about Japanese immigration to foreign countries.

First of all,  the start of the great period of Japanese immigrantion  to the United States was in the 1880s. On May 17,1868, the Scioto set sail out of Yokohama for Hawaii, carrying 153 Japanese migrants bound for employment in the sugar plantations. These adventurers constituted the first mass emigration ofJapanese overseas. As theJapanese arrived, discrimination toward the new immigrants. AsJapanese immigrants willing to work hard for low wages, many American people were afraid Japanese would take away jobs from American people.         

Between 1886 and 1911, more than 400,000 men and women left Japan for the U.S. Over 28,000 Japanese migrated to Hawaii. Main reasons for this, were because immigrants said the relationship between different races was better in Hawaii, like the Chinese immigrants in Hawaii. The white people understood how a diversity of ethnicities could cause major competition and change their present success rate.

Also, the reason why a lot of Japanese migrated to foreign countries was a dream for better opportunities for others and to search for peace and prosperity, and they left unstable homeland for the life of the demanding job and a chance to provide a better future for their children. Also people thought the immigrants would discover a new and radically different way of life.

Next, a very significant matter occurred to the history. The attack of Japan to the Pearl Harbor was set in the history of the American of Japanese on December 9, 1941. And the stage was set to traumatic sign. In retaliation for the attack, which occurred in the midst of negotiations seemingly aimed at peace, anti-Japanese feelings ran high, especially on the US mainland. In Hawaii. The attack happened, the American of the Japanese of less than 1,500 people was detained as enemy aliens, compared to the 100,000 on the mainland were interned. And after that, a lot of broken careers were not able to be restarted easily afterwards.

Thus, there are various history about Japanese immigration. The old Japanese people who migranted to US experiensed many difficult things like discrimination, low wages, war and so on. But they migrated for new development and for the following generation.

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