Chinese and Japanese Immigrants and the California Dream

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Recommended: A reflection about diversity

In the 1850’s, Chinese immigrants began entering California in search of gold and the California dream. They had heard that California was the new frontier, a frontier that would provide them with the opportunity for economic riches. Young and ambitious, many of these Chinese immigrants quickly married in their homeland and set out for the gold rush, promising to return (with wealth). Likewise, in the 1880s, when the state of California was undergoing rapid economic transformation, Japanese immigrants — just as young and ambitious as their Chinese counterparts — set out for America where they had heard the streets were “paved with gold.” But little did these Chinese and Japanese immigrants know that what they would discover in California would not be gold and riches, nor wealth and opportunity, but a hostile land that would accept them as half-humans and treat them as slaves. In the end, faced with systematic oppression, societal discrimination, racist laws, and outright violence, these immigrants would be forced to inhabit various ethnic enclaves and communities to protect themselves from the dominant culture that would eventually strip them of their identity, sexuality, and family. In essence, they would be stripped of all the building blocks of a true community.

Immigration

In 1852, attracted by the discovery of gold, more than 20,000 Chinese immigrants passed through the San Francisco Customs House to the gold fields in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Between 1867 and 1870, partly in response to recruitment efforts by the Central Pacific Railroad Company, which was building the western section of the first transcontinental railroad, some additional 10,000 poured into California (Chan 1991). The added presence of so ma...

... middle of paper ...

...g how far removed from the Californian dream of wealth and well-being Asian immigrants had become.

References

Book, S. W. (1976). The Chinese in Butte County, California, 1860–1920. San Francisco: R and E Research Associates.

Chan, S. (1991). Asian Americans: An interpretive history. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Cole, C. L. (1973). A history of the Japanese community in Sacramento, 1883–1972. Diss. California State University, Sacramento.

Gillenkrik, J. and Motlow, J. (1987). Bitter melon: Inside America’s last rural Chinese town. Berkeley: Heyday books.

Lukes, T. J. and Okihiro, G. Y. (1985). Japanese legacy. California History Center.

Matsui, S. (1919). Economic aspects of the Japanese situation in California. Diss. University of California at Berkeley.

Nee, V. G. and Nee, B. D. (1974). Longtime Californ’. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

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