You've Come a Wong Way 2/4 | Asian American Features

YOU'VE COME A WONG WAY, BABY!
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he fortunate few who came to the U.S. as students also increased in numbers. More than 30 students were sent from China in 1872 and they were not barred by the Exclusion Act of 1882 and the National Origins Act of 1924. Until World War II, however, most returned to China. For years Chinese outnumbered any other single group of foreign students.

"Men who claimed to be owners of large stores turned out to be running small fruit stands. Big farmers turned out to be share-croppers of five or six acres."
     As more and more white settlers arrived on the West Coast, they became increasingly resentful of competition from Asian laborers. Besides the almost daily taunts, beatings and hangings of Chinese that took place up and down the coast, the settlers successfully lobbied the federal government to close the borders to Asian immigrants. The Exclusion Act of 1882 barred the continuing influx of Chinese laborers but did let in wives of those who had already attained U.S. citizenships. In 1890 the male:female ratio was 26:1. By 1920 it had shrunk to 7:1. Laws prohibiting wives from entering the U.S. were overlooked in the case of wealthy men. Until the early 1900s their wives and daughters were about the only respectable Asian women in this country.
     The laws that prevented unmarried women from immigrating created a small boom in prostitution. Criminal tongs made huge profits by kidnapping Chinese women and bringing them to the U.S. to work in brothels. Stripped of their names and dignity, such women were simply called "China Mary" or "China Polly" by contemptuous whites. Most had never seen Whites before coming to America. They saw the odd-looking, unkempt men who flocked to Chinatown bordellos as devils or ghosts.
     The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 provided the city's Chinese immigrants a way to evade the exclusion laws. By burning all municipal records, it erased all legal evidence of citizenship. Nearly everyone in Chinatown took advantage of the opportunity to claim American citizenship. Many took advantage of the provision of the Chinese Exclusion Act that exempted family members of citizens by visiting China, marrying and claiming the birth of a son, even if there was no such birth. The extra entry slots were sold off or given to relatives. These so-called "paper sons" led to a tremendous increase in California's Chinese population until the National Origins Act of 1924 reinforced the prohibition to include families of Chinese immigrants.
     By this time large numbers of Japanese had also entered the U.S., but again, virtually all were male. As part of what was called the "Gentlemanšs Agreement" of 1908 the U.S. government persuaded Japan to stop issuing passports to its citizens. The agreement exempted parents, wives and children of U.S. residents. Thousands of Japanese men who had begun to understand that they wouldn't be able to make their fortunes overnight and return home became anxious to secure wives. The easiest way for a Japanese man living in America to find a wife was to send letters and photographs to an intermediary in Japan, who would research the backgrounds of prospective mates and induce them to send their own letters and photos back. That set off a boom in picture brides that would last until the Japanese government stopped issuing passports in 1920. The Japanese population had been 2,000 during the 1890s. By 1910 it grew to over 130,000.
     Because it was nearly impossible to go back once a woman had made the long ocean crossing, both sides to these trans-Pacific matches gave in to the temptation to enhance their resumes. Some men sent photos of handsome friends or grossly exaggerated their wealth. Mei Nakano, author of Japanese American Women: Three Generations 1890-1990, quotes from a letter written by picture bride who came to America in 1917:

Men who claimed to be owners of large stores turned out to be running small fruit stands. Big farmers turned out to be share-croppers of five or six acres. And many of those men who had sent us splendid letters written in a fine hand, had had their letters written for them.

Prospective grooms who were duped sometimes abandoned the women at dockside.
The lives of those pioneering Asian women who arrived before World War II were extremely difficult and characterized by almost inhuman self-sacrifice. Two Japanese phrases eloquently sum up the philosophies that were the key tenets of life for almost all Asian American women in that period: "Kodomo no tame ni," (for the sake of the children) and "Shikata na gai," (it canšt be helped).
If you were stuck in a marriage to an abusive alcoholic and couldn't escape because you didn't speak English and couldn't afford the passage home, Nakano writes, it was shikata na gai. If you worked until your hands bled from dawn to well after nightfall, it was kodomo no tame ni.

orean laborers began arriving in 1905 to work at Hawaii's sugar plantations. Students and dissidents also began to come in small numbers in order to escape the Japanese occupation of Korea. This included Syngman Rhee, Korea's first president.
Career options open to Asian men or women were limited to low-income, labor-intensive enterprises most whites avoided, like farming, gardening, restaurant ownership and laundries. Laundries became an almost exclusively Chinese industry; if a Chinese person appeared in an American film during that period, he was running a laundry.
White families usually observed a division of labor in which the man went off to work outside the home and the woman concentrated on housework and child-rearing. The nature of Asian businesses demanded that Asian women work to contribute to the survival of the enterprise. Most Asian women were expected both to work alongside their husbands and perform all domestic chores. PAGE 3

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