The story of the Issei — the 100,000 Japanese immigrants who traveled to Hawaii and the United States during the turn of the 20th century — is an epic of survival amid hardship. Through the efforts of labor contractors backed by the Japanese consulate, the majority of the newcomers were recruited to undertake heavy labor on Hawaiian plantations. Others settled on the mainland, predominantly on the nation's Pacific Coast, where they worked as farmers, fishermen, railroad workers, and agricultural laborers. Smaller contingents of students, artists, and professionals also crossed the ocean and scattered through the United States. As the immigrants became established, many brought over “picture bride” wives and started families. Through careful saving of wages and communal self-help, numerous immigrant laborers bought farms and established small businesses, churches, and community institutions. At the same time, they were victimized by widespread racial prejudice and discriminatory legislation. Like other Asian immigrants, they were barred from naturalization by federal law, and therefore from voting, and in many states the Issei were forbidden to marry whites or to practice certain professions. In Hawaii, the white planter class limited educational opportunity and kept Issei in menial labor positions. On the West Coast, white laborers and political leaders, who rigidly excluded Asian workers from unions, organized movements to exclude the Issei from residence on the grounds that they depressed wage scales through their willingness to work for lower pay. Following the “Gentlemen's Agreement” of 1907–8, the entry of Japanese laborers into the country was largely restricted. Shortly thereafter, in response to demands by white farmers enraged by competition from their Issei counterparts, California and neighboring states enacted alien land acts, which forbade all Japanese and other “immigrants ineligible to citizenship” from owning agricultural land. As a result, the Issei were forced to take short-term leases on land or to put their holdings in the names of white colleagues or of their own children, the Nisei (American-born citizens of Japanese ancestry). Exclusionist pressure, founded on nativist opposition to the alleged racial danger posed by the Issei to the American population, flared up again following World War I and climaxed in the Immigration Act of 1924, which outlawed all Japanese immigration to the United States.
Nikkei Literature in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil