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The Double Burdens of Immigrant Nationalism: The Relationship between Chinese and Japanese in the American West, 1880s–1920s
JOAN S. WANG
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SINCE THE ARRIVAL of Japanese immigrants in the American West during the late nineteenth century, the relationship between the Chinese and Japanese there has been complex, marked by suspicion and, at times, direct conflict. Such antagonism between two marginalized minority groups would seem incongruous, given the discrimination they both faced in the New World. Indeed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, as in the previous century with Chinese immigrants, discriminatory treatment of Japanese took root in the western United States and spread throughout the region. A diplomatic agreement between the United States and Japan in 1908 temporarily curbed Japanese immigration. In 1924 the U.S. Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, which excluded, among others, Japanese immigrants—hearkening back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.1 From 1882 to 1924, as American society gradually embraced a nativist outlook toward the Asian groups, relations between them became strained. Increasing competition for a limited supply of jobs, combined with racial prejudice and anti-foreigner sentiment, sharpened estrangement between the groups, leading to mutual hostility that would dominate relations between Chinese and Japanese immigrants for much of the twentieth century. Admittedly, some Chinese and Japanese immigrants empathized with each other's plight, particularly in the context of their shared experiences of discrimination; unfortunately, such feelings did little to bridge the gap between them. |
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The history of interethnic relations under white racism within the United States is a topic deserving of further exploration in Asian American history. Much of the research on this topic has centered around external political crises, particularly the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s.2 One of the few studies that has dealt with this subject is Eiichiro Azuma's book, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (2005). The work investigates the interethnic tensions among Asian immigrant groups (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they competed for work and respect within a white-dominated racial order.3 Nevertheless, a careful consideration of this subject that traces its historical trajectory, provides a foundation for understanding the tumultuous relationship between Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and intertwines the local and international contexts of these groups is still sorely needed. |
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This study focuses on the specific challenges that faced Chinese immigrants in the American West. The conditions of that region, acting within the context of a fledgling Chinese diaspora, created emergent Asian communities accompanied by racial segregation and persecution. Wang Gungwu notes that when studying the history of global migration, one should be concerned with "what people who move out of their countries do to the spaces they leave behind and to the spaces they come to occupy."4 Moreover, according to Wang, the establishment of nation-states (e.g., those in the Americas and Southeast Asia) constitutes an enemy of international migration, with regard to the paradoxical role restrictive institutions play within modern nation-states and the global nature of migration. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants in the United States encountered a dilemma: should they keep one foot squarely in the motherland or step boldly with both feet into their adopted homeland? My research explores the dynamic interplay of the local and international dimensions of Chinese nationalism that gave rise to unique social practices. |
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