Strangers from a Different Shore

Takaki develops a theme explores conditions of labor and exploitation as he explains how first wave Asian immigrants were viciously exploited by labor contractors and employers. Takaki demonstrates how Asians from different countries and professional backgrounds became entangled in an exploitative dynamic, sometimes even before they reached the US. Working for American employers, such as plantation owners, American labor contractors traveled to Asia, where they used pamphlets to advertise a romanticized vision of the US as a land of abundance where “rich people” would “want the Chinaman to come and make him very welcome” (34). The author’s analysis shows that rich people did want Asian immigrants to come, but only because of the profits their cheap labor generated for their employers.

Indeed, with no workers’ rights guaranteed to them, and no minimum wage to demand, employers could pay Asian workers poverty wages that were lower than white Americans’ salaries. Takaki explains, “Employers developed a dual-wage system to pay Asian laborers less than white workers and pitted the groups against each other to depress wages for both” (13). This strategy of “ethnic antagonism” allowed bosses to reap huge profits from their workers’ grueling labor—all while tacitly encouraging white Americans to blame the Asians themselves for this labor market dysfunction. This toxic dynamic entrenched Asian immigrants in an impossible situation in which they had to accept whatever low wages employers offered while coping with anti-Asian racism from competing white workers.

Takaki’s exploration of labor and exploitation reveals the extent to which employers commodified and dehumanized their Asian employees, whether they laid railroad tracks, canned fish, or harvested crops. Among the worst of these work environments were the Hawaiian plantations of the 19th century, in which Asians were forced to labor until the end of their work contracts. William Hooper, an employee of a Honolulu mercantile firm, observed Chinese laborers working on a Hawaiian plantation in 1835, writing, “They have to work all the time—and no regard is paid to their complaints for food, etc., etc. Slavery is nothing compared to it” (21). Indeed, like enslaved people, Asian workers were commodified by their employers, who “viewed laborers as commodities necessary for the operation of the plantation” (24). One employer asked for “Japanese laborers” and “a Chinaman” on the same order as “bonemeal” and “macaroni” (24). Plantation life, according to one worker, was “much like a prison,” since they labored under the watchful eyes of abusive supervisors (140). Takaki’s exploration of labor and exploitation shows how Asian workers generated profits for their employers while toiling in dangerous and exploitative conditions, putting Asian labor strikes and civil rights movements into context.