ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to fill this gap, offers a brief sketch of the involvement of the Japanese in California agriculture during the half century before the Second World War. It considers two related issues in the economic history of discrimination against the Japanese in America: the discrimination against them in the agricultural labor and land rental markets; and the legal discrimination against them required by the alien land laws of California. The Japanese, in the eyes of the California whites, were indistinguishable from the Chinese, and hence the whites' longstanding anti-Chinese hostilities inevitably descended on the newcomers from the Orient. With a high rate of self-employment, considerable ownership of land and other property, and a comfortable standard of living, the Japanese of rural California could look back with well justified pride. The chapter concludes with broad view of and offers some generalizations about this historical experience.
