Many people who had been born in America with their families residing there for a few decades did not feel too kindly to the Japanese emigrating to the United States in the large numbers that they did, especially since the Chinese had just been prohibited from entering the United States in search for jobs. The Japanese had began to emigrate to America─more often California, Oregon and Washington─in large numbers during the 1890’s and early 1900’s, many of them coming for job opportunities presented to them by American employers; the large numbers of emigrating Japanese was referred to as the “yellow peril”. With this influx of Japanese immigrants coming to America, nativists─those born and raised and white in the United States─felt that it was some sort of ‘invasion’ and feared its ‘consequences’, as said by the author of an article written in 1905, “If Americans were invading Japan as the Japanese are invading America, and absorbing Japanese industries as Japanese will absorb American industries, nothing could prevent the Japanese from reverting to their ancient policy of exclusion” (“Japanese cheap Labor...”, Page 6). So, a little less than forty years before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and putting aside the anti-Japanese sentiments, native-born Americans felt that with them coming into the United States, it would come to only put a strain on America’s prosperity. For someone who did not share the same aversion to Japanese Americans to understand this, the author of “Japanese cheap Labor...” switched the roles so someone who did not feel the ‘threat’ of the mass Japanese emigration could understand.…
