Strawberry_Days

Strawberry days Many Americans thought the Japanese came to steal America. Miller Freeman which was a man that hated Chinese and always thought negative about them. He saw the Japanese competition in Alaska’s salmon fishing; Japanese and Caucasians did the same job but most of the time the companies chose Japanese because they were paid less for the same results. James Phelan was in charge for the local Red Cross and other communities. By being in charge this was a plan to remove Chinatown but his plan didn’t work. The San Francisco school board determined that Japanese children, who previously were attending public schools, get transfer to Chinese-only schools. San Francisco school board came to this conclusion because of the pressure of the Asiatic Exclusion League (was a racist organization). Because of the decision of the school board there might have been a war but President Roosevelt negotiated which was known as “Gentlemen’s Agreement”. This agreement of this negotiation were that Japanese children won’t be send to Chinese-only schools, and stay at public schools; if Japan agreed to stop sending laborers to United States. “That’s why the guys [who] get on the train late, they don’t go too far”. The author uses a metaphor to describe how a typical American who goes to school in the U.S. all his life had success however people who weren’t born neither educated in U.S. aren’t has successful. An example is Kanju Matsuoka which began growing strawberries but it was a failure and went broke. After farming the only choices he had was being a mill worker. Japanese brought a more productive way to farming. Truck farming was important because now you can sell at a much larger-scale not only local. The author gives this claim so the reader could see how America was being unfair to them. Most Japanese went to the U.S. for the same reason: to work, make a quick profit and then come back home wealthy. Has they started working there plan faded away, they realized there wouldn’t be a lot of possibility to get back home. Freeman still thought that Japanese were trying to invade U.S. by owning land and spreading. On May 20, 1942 Japanese Americans with just one suitcase were transferred to a place where they couldn’t imagine.