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Shipwrecked sailors, samurai seeking a material and sometimes
spiritual education, and laborers seeking to better their economic
situation: these early Japanese travelers to the West occupy a
little-known corner of Asian American studies. Pacific Pioneers
profiles the first Japanese who resided in the United States or the
Kingdom of Hawaii for a substantial period of time and the
Westerners who influenced their experiences. Although Japanese
immigrants did not start arriving in substantial numbers in the
West until after 1880, in the previous thirty years a handful of
key encounters helped shape relations between Japan and the United
States. John E. Van Sant explores the motivations and
accomplishments of these resourceful, sometimes visionary
individuals who made important inroads into a culture quite
different from their own and paved the way for the Issei and Nisei.
Pacific Pioneers presents detailed biographical sketches of
Japanese such as Joseph Heco, Niijima Jo, and the converts to the
Brotherhood of the New Life and introduces the American
benefactors, such as William Griffis, David Murray, and Thomas Lake
Harris, who built relationships with their foreign visitors. Van
Sant also examines the uneasy relations between Japanese laborers
and sugar cane plantation magnates in Hawaii during this period and
the shortlived Wakamatsu colony of Japanese tea and silk producers
in California. A valuable addition to the literature, Pacific
Pioneers brings to life a cast of colorful, long-forgotten
characters while forging a critical link between Asian and Asian
American studies.
Far East, Down South: Asians in the American South offers a
collection of ten insightful essays that illuminate the
little-known history and increasing presence of Asian immigrants in
the American southeast. In sharp contrast to the "melting pot"
reputation of the United States, the American South-with its
history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement-has
been perceived in stark and simplistic demographic terms. In Far
East, Down South, editors Raymond A. Mohl, John E. Van Sant, and
Chizuru Saeki provide a collection of essential essays that
restores and explores an overlooked part of the South's story-that
of Asian immigration to the region. These essays form a
comprehensive overview of key episodes and issues in the history of
Asian immigrants to the South. During Reconstruction, southern
entrepreneurs experimented with the replacement of slave labor with
Chinese workers. As in the West, Chinese laborers played a role in
the development of railroads. Japanese farmers also played a more
widespread role than is usually believed. Filipino sailors
recruited by the US Navy in the early decades of the twentieth
century often settled with their families in the vicinity of naval
ports such as Corpus Christi, Biloxi, and Pensacola. Internment
camps brought Japanese Americans to Arkansas. Marriages between
American servicemen and Japanese, Korean, Filipina, Vietnamese, and
nationals in other theaters of war created many thousands of
blended families in the South. In recent decades, the South is the
destination of internal immigration as Asian Americans spread out
from immigrant enclaves in West Coast and Northeast urban areas.
Taken together, the book's essays document numerous fascinating
themes: the historic presence of Asians in the South dating back to
the mid-nineteenth century; the sources of numerous waves of
contemporary Asian immigration to the South; and the steady spread
of Asians out from the coastal port cities. Far East, Down South
adds a vital new dimension to popular understanding of southern
history.
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R398
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