Working Conditions for Japanese and Mexicans

1. Raku Saka Morimoto recalls what her parent said about work on a sugar plantation in Hawaii 1885.

You know, Chinese, they used to have a queue, long hair. The luna, the overseer, when he's not pleased with their work, he just got hold of the hair, wind it around his palm, and just drag them here and there....it's so pitiful to see the Chinese almost crying and asking to let them go.

If a man stays away from work, he has to pay six dollars and a half or six dollars fine. They were getting only nine dollars a month, working ten hours a day.

2. Baishiro Tamashiro went to Hawaii from Okinawa in 1906. Several years later, he recalled his hard times in the cane fields.

It sure was hard work. We had no time to rest. We worked like machines. For 200 of us workers, there were seven or eight lunas (overseers) and above them was a field boss on a horse. We were watched constantly. They would not give us good knives. After work they just threw the knives around. If I didn't go to work early enough the good knives were all gone. Only small or dull knives were left. They were not sharp enough.

3. Chinzen Kinjo, who came to Hawaii in the early years of the 20th century, described the cruelty of the lunas.

The life on Ewa Plantation was very hard; getting up a 4 a.m., breakfast at 5, starting to work at 6, and working all day under the blazing sun. We worked like horses, moving mechanically under the whipping hands of the luna. There was no such thing as human sentiment. At night, instead of a sweet dream of my wife and child left in Okinawa, I was wakened up frightened by the nightmare of being whipped by the luna.
Because of the perpetual fear of this unbearable whipping, some other workers committed suicide by hanging or jumping in front of the on-coming train.....

4. Sueko Nakagawa in 1924 work at the Alaska Junk Company.

This was the biggest of the junk companies, dealing in old iron, burlap sacks, used clothes and rages, and old newspapers and magazines. I was put in the old magazine and newspaper section.....More than twenty Japanese men and women were working there.....Since there was no heater during the winter, we had to put on so many sweaters that if we happened to tumble over, we couldn't get up without help. Once entering the room, we felt the dust irritate our nose, and during summertime swarms of fleas swarmed up our legs.

5. Matsato Uyeda came from Japan in 1915 and worked on a sugar beet farm in Ogden, Utah.

Finishing the morning work, when I tried to each lunch I could neither sit down on a chair nor bend forward, so, standing, I just poured the food down.....Sharp pains ran up and down my legs and hips so that if I accidentally dropped my chopsticks on the ground, I could scarcely lean over to pick them up.....In mid-summer the temperature went up to from 80 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

6. Frank Enseki was born in Hawaii. In 1932, he visited Los Angeles to see the Olympics. He decided to stay but found it difficult to get a job.

I saw a lot of homes going up so I asked if I could get a job as a carpenter. The man told me that no matter how good I was, he was sorry abut he could not give me a job. He said his other men would sit down. The wouldn't work with me.
I asked him why, and he said because I was not white.

7. Miguel Lozez Silvas came from Mexico to work as a miner for the Magma Copper Company. His daughter recalls her father's 43 years of work in the copper mine.

Almost all of the miners of my dad's era died of silicosis; silica is a very fine glass dust that gets into the miners' lungs. Eventually it digs a hole in the lungs. It's a very wasting disease. There was a lot of anger. They couldn't breathe, they coughed up blood, and they choked on blood. It was a horrible way to go. Many of the wives of the old-timers took care of their husbands. By the time they died, the wives were ready to die from exhaustion.

8. Lucia Martinez and her family arrived in the United States in 1916. They found work through a work contractor.

A labor contractor sent us to a small Texas town. On that trip we only had sardines and crackers to eat. Throughout the three months that we were in that town, my father never as paid more than fifty cents at a time. My sixteen-year-old brother, who worked on the railroad tracks, only received twenty-five cents. The bosses kept a list of what people bought to eat. When a check came, they gave us no money because they said that it had all gone for food.

9. Labor contractors exercised great power over the Mexican workers, as Ernesto Galarza explained.

There was never any doubt about the contractor and his power over us. He could fire a man and his family on the spot and make them wait days for their wages. A man could be forced to quit by assigning him regularly to the thinnest picking in the field.
The worst thing one could do was to ask for fresh water on the job, regardless of the heat of the day; instead of iced water, given freely, the crews were expected to buy sodas at twice the price in town, sold by the contractor himself.

Resources:

The Japanese American Family Album and The Mexican American Family Album by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, Oxford Press, New York.