Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses…
As Long As They Are Not Asian Women!

Leah G. Stambler
Western Connecticut State University

General Introduction of Topic Area
     The United States is characterized as being a nation of immigrants who historically have come from a multitude of lands, cultures, and ethnic groups to form the conglomeration of peoples who call themselves Americans.  The Statue of Liberty has stood at the Atlantic gateway to this country since 1886, welcoming those who have sought entry into this land with the words of Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus. (http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm)
     In contrast, the immigration station at Angel Island, situated off the Pacific coast of California, did not greet newcomers to “the golden mountain” with equal enthusiasm.  Angel Island was known alternately as the “Ellis Island of the West” and “The Guardian of the Western Gate” since its inception in 1905, when it was “designed [to ] control the flow of Chinese into the country, who were officially not welcome with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,” an early restrictive measure to prevent the entry of Asian men and women into this country. (http://www.angelisland.org/immigr02.html)
Rationale for Choosing This Topic
Three waves of immigration took place on the American scene, bringing millions of people to these shores: (1) from 1841 to 1890: fifteen million; (2) from 1891-1920: more than eighteen million; and, (3) from 1965 to the present: more than sixteen million.  A hiatus in restrictive immigration policies occurred from 1920 to 1960. (Vecoli, 1996)  One of the prominent historians of the American scene, Oscar Handlin, wrote in 1951 in The Uprooted: "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America,"…… "Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history."  (Handlin, 1951 & Handlin as cited in Tichenor, 2000) Unfortunately, Handlin and his historian peers wrote about immigration to the United States without appropriate inclusion of women in America’s story.  Another historian, Donna Gabaccia, wrote that “Most histories of immigrants in the United States begin as experiences of migratory men disguised as genderless humans,” and that women are mentioned incidentally to “highlight the crisis that traditional family relationships undergo.”(Gabaccia, 1992 & Gabaccia in Schneider, March 2003)
     The focus of this study was chosen for several reasons: (1) xenophobia toward Asians historically has been a factor in the creation of American immigration policy and legislation; (2) the social, economic, cultural, and political experiences of the Asian population in the United States have been affected by the laws that restricted and later permitted Asian immigration; (3) Asian women have been a minimal part of the recorded testament of the events that are America’s history, and (4) if Americans accept multiculturalism and pluralism as the guiding force for interpersonal relations, it is important to become culturally competent about ethnic and under represented gender groups whose voices have gone unrecorded in texts, and whose narratives about their national deeds have been omitted from the nation’s history. (http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html#Russell_539)
Statement of the Problem
     Multiple factors have contributed to the invisibility of Asian women in the written history of Asian immigration to the United States: (1) societal attitudes toward Asians in general, and Asian women in particular; (2) the paucity of female representation in policy making governmental agencies; and (3) national and state legislative acts that restricted Asian women’s immigration to the United States.
     The issue under examination in this study focuses on the circumstances that contributed to the invisibility of women in the written history of the Asian immigration experience to the United States.  Well known historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has written that “Women have made up half the human race but you could never tell that by the books that historians write.” (http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/)   The essential problem in this study is “What were the contextual factors that discriminated against and restricted Asian women’s immigration to the United States between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries?”
Question #1 Which restrictive and exclusionary federal immigration policies and laws, directed towards Chinese and other nationals, were established between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries?  Why were those policies and laws created by the U.S. government?

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS: #1

     American anti-immigration policies and laws, as well as anti-immigrant court decisions, were formulated against Asians from the mid-nineteenth through the first three decades of the twentieth centuries.  Chinese and Japanese aliens, non-citizens, and residents were the most prominent of the Asian groups singled out for exclusion; separation within society, and banning from cross ethnic intermarriage; thereby being deemed not worthy of entry to the United States, nor for American citizenship and the rights and privileges that come with it.  “….racialist thinking, and in particular white supremacy, was neither questioned nor challenged among the white-dominated intelligentsia of the time.” (Quigley, 1995)
     It was the belief systems of Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement that fueled xenophobia pertaining to the Chinese and Japanese among the American supporters of anti-miscegenation and school segregation laws in various states, as well as for federal anti-immigration legislation. 

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS: #2

     Those who believed that the ideas of Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement should be applied to the new Asian immigrants favored policies and legislation that excluded Chinese and Japanese from entry to the United States. (Vecoli, Nov. 1996)   They viewed the two immigrant groups, older Anglos and newer Asians, as divergent in quality: the first group superior to the second one.  Consequently, it was thought that the unwelcome inferior ethnic groups were not worthy of American citizenship, and threatened the purity of the older Anglo stock.

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS: #3

     Chinese were looked upon as people who could not be assimilated into the American system of mores and values.  An example of the effects of Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement on the minds of Americans was played out in the events that foreshadowed enactment of the landmark 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.  Anti-Chinese hostility on the part of independent small farmers and workers in California grew steadily until the late 1870s.  Oppositional viewpoints to Chinese immigration were expressed by Anglo laborers and artisans, lawyers, doctors, small proprietors, judges, and newspaper reporters: (1) Chinese immigration led to increased American unemployment; (2) Highly skilled European immigrant laborers were deterred from entry to America; and (3) Apparent economic prosperity produced by Chinese labor was deceptive, unwholesome, and a threat to free institutions in the United States. (TSAI, 1988, p. 38)  Opponents defended the immigrants as people who were capable of assimilation into American society. (TSAI, 1988, p. 38)
     The 1882 Exclusion Act has been labeled as “the ethnic Pearl Harbor for Chinese Americans,” since it was “racially motivated,” and allowed only 39,579 Chinese into the United States compared to 102,991 British and 250,630 German immigrants. (TSAI, 1988, p. 38) Harsher restrictions on Chinese immigration were included in later American legislation. (TSAI, 1988, p. 39)  Nonetheless, special admission consideration was accorded to certain classes of Chinese and their families::  (1) teachers, ministers, missionaries, newspaper editors, and other public instructors; (2) students; (3) travelers for curiosity or pleasure; (4) merchants and their lawful wives and children; (5) government officials, their families, attendants, servants, and employees; (6) Chinese previously lawfully and permanently admitted, returning from visits abroad; (8) American-born Chinese and their children; (9) Chinese citizens lawfully admitted to the U.S. who were later in transit; and, (10) bona fide seamen. 
     It was not until the 1880’s that the newcomers’ lives were disrupted by anti-Chinese actions, exemplified by the riots in Tacoma and Seattle in 1885 that forced the immigrants to move to Portland, Oregon for safety and employment when Tacoma’s Chinatown was set afire. ((http://academic.evergreen.edu/s/saknat11/antichinese.html)  Anti-Asian hostility toward the first generation Issei workers was not different from that experienced by the Chinese immigrant laborers;  especially, when “they tried to better their lot” and “they became the targets of hostility from organized groups of labor, farmers, veterans, and later the general public, urged on by the newspapers, mainly those owned by William Randolph Hearst.” (The Balch Institute, n.d.)
     Negative reactions against Japanese labor in the United States peaked by 1907, with passage of a “Gentleman’s Agreement” to preclude Japanese men from entering the United States, and allowing Japanese women to immigrate to America from 1908 to 1924. (The Brown Quarterly, spring 2000)  Therefore, family life among the Chinese and Japanese males differed, and allowed the earlier development of Japanese families in America: “As women arrived, followed by the birth of children who were U.S. citizens by birthright, the character of the ‘Japan towns’ changed. (The Balch Institute, n.d.)
     A chronology of U.S. immigration legislation, a “thumbnail” of its contents, and who was affected by it, is an informative clarifying mode to learn who was to be included in or excluded from American society. The chart is a compilation of information from multiple sources. (Allerfeldt, 2003; Chan, 1991; Frank, 1995; Haus, 1998; Randall, 2001, Tyner, Jan. 1999; Wey, 1988.)

SEE FIGURE #1 CHRONOLOGY OF SELECTED AMERICAN IMMIGRATION
LEGISLATION AND TREATIES

     San Francisco was the main entry port to California for the immigrants, who had to pass through the rigors of two to three weeks of inspection and interrogation at the detention center on Angel Island, located in San Francisco Bay  Living conditions at the Wooden Barracks on Angel Island were stressful for the detainees, separated from their families, confined to crowded communal arrangements, sleeping in three high stacked bunk beds, and in rooms filled with one hundred people in one thousand square feet.  The walls of the Barracks were covered with the scribbled poems of the detainees, protesting their harsh physical and mental treatment by the American examiners. . (http://www.angelisland.org/immigr02.html)
     “The exclusion laws were not insurmountable and Chinese were willing to go to great lengths to live and work in Gam Saan [Jinshan, which means Gold Mountain].” (Lee, 2005)  Once Chinese and Japanese men were cleared for entry into the United States, they set about finding employment to support themselves.  Frequently, the only jobs open to the Chinese were looked upon by the local communities as “women’s work.” These were restaurant and laundry occupations, and non-competitive low wage jobs like mill workers and gardeners. (http://academic.evergreen.edu/s/saknat11/arrived.html) 
     It is clear that legislation passed by various State legislatures discriminated and restricted the ability of Chinese and Japanese immigrants to earn their livings, marry, and create new families. States’ laws limited the immigrants’ possible marriage partners, land ownership, and prospects of earning mining profits.

SEE FIGURE #2 STATES’ DISCRIMINATORY RESTRICTIVE LEGISLATION

     The exclusion era was an important example of Chinese activity in American society between 1854 and 1923; since they “simultaneously resisted exclusion and defended the communities they had established in the United States; claimed America by fighting for the same rights that other immigrants enjoyed; and maintained demographic, economic, political, social, and cultural ties to their ancestral land.” (Chan, 2005)

SEE FIGURE #3 SELECTED COURT DECISIONS RETURNED TO CHINESE LITIGANTS

Question # 2 Which restrictive and exclusionary federal immigration policies and laws, directed towards Chinese and other nations’ women, were established between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries?  Why were those policies and laws created by the U.S. Congress?
     Followers of Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement not only influenced exclusionary legislation aimed at Chinese and Japanese men, but on immigration legislation pertaining to women of those ethnic groups, as well.  Chinese laborers were viewed as important only for the maintenance of an underclass of cheap workers for the American economy.  It was believed that the potential birth of their American children could be stopped as long as Chinese women’s immigration to the United States was put to an end.  The Page Law of 1875 and the Immigration Act of 1907 accomplished that goal by labeling Chinese women “potential threats:” equivalent to criminals in the former law, and immoral prostitutes who would pollute the American population in the latter law.
     The Page Act was “not as effective as many had hoped,” but “it did reduce the number of Chinese women entering the country” prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. (Wong, 2000)  The reasons for the paucity of Chinese women immigrating to America in the early years were the result of “patriarchal cultural values, financial considerations, and anti-Chinese legislation.” (Yung, 1995, p. 18) Important immigration legislation demonstrates the sweep of exclusion intended for Asian women by the United States’ Congress, until the reversal of that mindset in 1945.

SEE FIGURE # 4 LEGISLATION ESPECIALLY FOCUSED ON ASIAN FEMALES

     The impact of these laws was far reaching and long lasting, as evidenced by the development of what was considered to be a “bachelor society” of male laborers (http://www.psr.edu/pana.cfm?m=201) “Merchants could bring their wives to this country, but laborers could not.  Chinese American workers were forced to decide whether they should return to China, or remain in this country to work and possibly never see their families again.” (Wey, 1988)  Frequently, men in the Chinatowns would compose songs about their loneliness for their wives, sisters, mothers, and children.  Some of those songs would be in the voices of their women in order to disguise their own manly feelings. (Hom, 1983, p. 135)  In addition to the national government’s exclusionary legislation aimed at Chinese women immigrants, a series of decisions in three court cases upheld the constitutionality of those laws

SEE FIGURE #5 COURT DECISIONS FOCUSED ON CHINESE WOMEN IMMIGRANTS

     Generally, it is believed that the impact of restrictive laws created and passed by the U.S. Congress created a gap between the Chinese females and males who immigrated to the United States during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. (Ling, 1998)  Numerically, there was a discrepancy between Chinese immigrant males and females to the United States for many years.  The number of Chinese women in America by the 1860s was 1,784, concentrated mostly in the western states of California, Nevada, and Idaho.  Harsh living conditions and the desire to return to China reduced the number of Chinese women in America by 1890 to 3,868 persons.  Only 4,000 Chinese women resided here between 1870 and 1920, questionably because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In contrast, it is possible that more than 9,000 women came to America between 1910 and 1924.(Lee, 2005)  A veritable wide gap in numbers existed between Chinese men and women. http://www.cetel.org/viewer_guide2.html
     A federal agricultural release in 1870, expounding on the gap between Chinese males and females in America, reported that Chinese women did not immigrate to the United States because they were uneducated and without mental development; therefore, they held “exaggerated terrors” of “outside barbarians” and “tempestuous seas.” (Lyman, 1968, p. 324)  Contradictory perspectives about the accuracy of the gender gap in Chinese immigration focus on laxed enforcement of exclusionary laws and negative attitudes of Chinese men in curtailing the number of Chinese women who came to America between 1875 and 1943. (McKeown, 1999)
     The Japanese immigrant population in America also suffered an imbalance between males and females as a result of Congressional legislation.  There were twenty-four women for each Japanese man in the United States by 1900.  Men with the funds to return to Japan to marry were able to do so, but those who were financially unable to travel across the Pacific Ocean used the matchmaking system to select their picture brides.  Approximately twenty thousand Japanese women immigrated to the United States between 1900 and 1920, of which five thousand were picture brides. (The Balch Institute, n.d.)
     Not only was the entry of Chinese and Japanese to the United States a subject for legislative action, but the question of naturalization as American citizens of those nationals took center stage in laws such as the Exclusion Act of 1882.  The right to become a naturalized American citizen in the 1850s was reserved constitutionally for ethnic European immigrants to this country, even though non-citizens were required to pay taxes. (Wey,1988)  Denial of the route to American citizenship meant that a Chinese or Japanese immigrant retained his or her original citizenship; thereby being precluded from participation in basic American rights and privileges of voting, holding governmental office, employment by a State, owning land, and filing mining claims. (Wey, 1988)
     Women could be granted “derivative citizenship” or totally be barred from naturalization, according to laws since the mid-nineteenth century that “worked to keep certain women out of naturalization records.” (Marian Smith, 1998)  Chinese and Japanese women’s ability to become naturalized citizens was tied to their husbands’ citizenship status; but since, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 denied naturalization to the men, their wives and children were not eligible for the aforementioned derivative naturalization.  In addition, the Amendment to the Exclusion Act in 1884 denied entrance of these wives to the United States.
     Just as immigrant women’s citizenship was determined by their husbands’ status; according to the 1922 Cable Act, U.S.-born women could be deprived of their American citizenship if they were married to any alien.  However, these women could regain their citizenship in the event that their husbands became naturalized.  American courts held that women could not file for naturalization since their citizenship always would be determined by their husbands’ nationality. (Marian Smith, 1998)
Question # 3 Who were the unseen and visible women who did not or did immigrate to the United States between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries?  What were their distinguishing profiles?
Historian George Anthony Peffer, commenting Asian women’s historiography of the 1980s, indicated that “Accounts of Chinatown’s prostitution industry had so completely dominated the primary sources that the historiography of the early 1980s had rendered other classes of female immigrants invisible. (Peffer, 1999).  However, there were other women who came to Gold Mountain: wives of merchants, students, and diplomats; picture brides, and “paper daughters.”  Nonetheless, “The absence of women set the Chinese immigration pattern apart from that of most other immigrant groups.  In 1850, there were only 7 Chinese women, versus 4,018 Chinese men, in San Francisco.” (Yung, 1995, p. 18).
GoldMountain Widows
     An important demographic factor kept the Chinese immigration numbers comparatively low between men and women coming to America during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.  This factor was related to the familial traditions that held women at home while their absentee husbands “sojourned” abroad seeking their fortunes at “Gold Mountain.”  These women, called “Gold Mountain Widows,” were expected to live with their in-laws during their husbands’ absence, and tend to the burial and mourning rites that their husbands would have had to perform for their parents.  These women were supposed to abide by the “Four Virtues” of propriety in behavior, speech, demeanor, and household duties. (Yung, 1995)  It is probable that at least half of the Chinese men who immigrated to America in the 19th century were married; especially since they customarily were required to marry prior to their departure from their home villages and towns, as well as pledge their financial support for family members during their absences. (Lyman, 1968)
     The very nature of Chinese traditional society and the extended family structure precluded women’s travel outside of their domestic environs.  Males were esteemed more than females, who were less valued by society, not formally educated, and “were sold, abandoned, or drowned during desperate times.” (Cheng, 1997)  Historian Judy Yung described the cloistered existence of the traditional Chinese woman at the time that Chinese men came to America.

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS # 4

     Cantonese songs about the husbands who traveled to Gold Mountain conveyed their wives’ sorrow at being made young widows who never would see their spouses again.  The lyrics recorded the women’s morose attitudes, even though the prospect of wealth was possible for them.  The emptiness of each spouse’s life hung heavily on the wives’ minds.  Emotional loss overwhelmed the women, who saw the seasons change in their villages and could not share the joys of life with their men for many years.

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS # 5

Wives Who Accompanied Their Husbands To GoldMountain
“Asian immigrants began to come to Hawaii and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.  Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians and other groups went to Hawaii, California or Washington to work in agriculture, lumber, mining, and many other industries.” (La Botz, 2006, p. 12)  Both single men from the peasant class and merchants comprised the Chinese migrants who went to California via the Hawaiian Islands.  It was these two groups who brought their women with them to Hawaii, but did not do so when traveling to California.  Some Chinese girls and women, sold as prostitutes, migrated to California in the late nineteenth century.  This type of movement of single women was ended with the 1875 Page Law, whose purpose was the exclusion of all Chinese and other Asian women, in response to Californian employers’ reluctance to hire male laborers burdened with women and families. (Takaki, 1998)
Peffer has postulated that the burden of caring for daughters-in-law in China, while their men were at Gold Mountain, could have been reduced if the families had encouraged the women to join their sojourner husbands. (Peffer, 1999, p. 6)  Yung pointed out that prior to the exclusion of laborers’ wives; many women from economically distressed southern Chinese villages did accompany their husbands to America. (Yung in Peffer, 1999)  Wives of merchants, teachers, diplomats, and students were permitted to enter the United States, even though laborers’ wives were excluded from doing so, according to the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882, 1892, 1902, and 1904.  Historian Erika Lee’s investigation of government records enabled her to provide extensive information about the economic class, number, and percent of Chinese women who came to America during the exclusion era.  She indicated that changing attitudes about gender roles enabled women to more easily leave China, as well as favorable court decisions in America that benefited wives and children of Chinese merchants and American citizens.  “In 1910, women were 9.7 percent of the total number of Chinese immigrants entering the country.  Ten years later, they were 20 percent, and by 1930, the proportion of women immigrants had risen to 30 percent.” (Lee, 2005)  A change in the exclusionary laws and their restrictions on Chinese women’s migration to America took place when Congress, in 1930, passed legislation allowing Chinese wives who had been married to American citizens before May 26, 1924 to come in to the United States. (Chinn, 1969, p.28)  An estimated forty thousand Chinese women entered the United States between 1882 and 1943. (Lee, 2005)
The few Chinese women, married and unmarried, who came to America in the early 1880s had limited life options:  Language differences between the immigrant women and the larger Anglo community, as well as racial and gender discrimination, increased the difficulty of Chinese women’s lives.  “Chinese women were considered only able to do domestic work,” and the Chinese tradition of foot binding limited women’s activities.  A situation frequently documented in the literature. (http://academic.evergreen.edu/s/saknat11/chinesewomenoly.html)
Several cultural practices reinforced women’s status and further submerged their social condition.  Traditional family relationships allowed males to dominate females.  This resulted in women’s undisputed paternal obedience; which was transferred to their husbands, brothers, and sons. (http://academic.evergreen.edu/s/saknat11/chinesewomenoly.html)  The painful and deforming custom of foot-binding limited Chinese women’s independence of movement and kept them home bound.  In essence, women with bound feet were unable to walk without assistance or being carried on someone’s back.  The historian Judy Yung described her Great-Grandmother’s life experience as an immigrant in San Francisco, and as a woman with bound feet in the author’s bookUnbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco; its contents excerpted for the PBS program “The Chinese Experience.; EYEWITNESS,” is edifying. (http://www.pbs.org/becomingamerican/ce_witness16.html)

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS # 6

     A second example of the life of a woman with bound feet was written by Connie Young Yu in the essay "The World of Our Grandmothers" fromMaking Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women. (http://www.pbs.org/becomingamerican/ce_witness18.html)

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS # 7

     Immigrant Chinese communities in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries in America were characterized as predominantly “bachelor societies,” composed of male laborers and the few Chinese women who were “paradoxically both valued and victimized.”  It is noteworthy that there were women across the nation, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, sensitive to the gender related issues confronting Chinese immigrant women, who worked to provide safe spaces for them in local Chinese communities. (http://www.psr.edu/pana.cfm?m=201) 
Chinese Women Brought to America for Prostitution
     The importation of Chinese women to America, transported for prostitution, was justified with a variety of rationales pertaining to:  cultural customs, U.S. immigration laws banning wives of Chinese laborers, and financial reasons. (Holman, 2001-2002)  Wives of laborers who left China to seek the “Gold Mountain” were required to live with their in-laws and fulfill the responsibilities of their spouses, who would be gone for many years, and may not even return before their parents’ deaths to perform the required rituals.  American immigration laws forbade the entry of Chinese laborers’ wives into the U.S. with their husbands.  Consequently, these men lacked female companionship and the conjugal joys of being with their wives and families.
     In the late nineteenth century some girls and women who had been sold into prostitution also migrated to California, perhaps as many as two-thirds of them were women who went, until  the Page Law of 1875 took effect. (La Botz, 2006)  Poverty stricken parents in China sold off their girl children into slavery and/or prostitution as a way of supporting their families.  Consequently, enterprising businessmen saw this situation as one in which they could profit from the trafficking of prostitutes destined for the American market.  “The demand for Chinese prostitutes by both Chinese and white men intersected with an available supply of young women sold into servitude by impoverished families in China.” (Holman, 2001-2002)  “Single women in China were fearful that their parents would conspire to have them kidnapped, sent off to America to work in brothels as prostitutes, and provide finances for their families back home.” (http://academic.evergreen.edu/s/saknat11/chinesewomenoly.html)
     Chinese prostitutes, sent to the United States prior to the enactment of legislation that banned their presence in America, were viewed by the then contemporary Americans as the “archetype of female bondage and degradation.” A Chinese prostitute was considered to be “exotic, beautiful, submissive, a slave to her evil master, kidnapped from China, and has a man to marry her, civilize her, and bring her back to moral purity.” (Holman, 2001-2002)  The perspective that was held by the American press, immigration officials, census enumerators, prosecutors, and judges about Chinese women was that they came to the United States for “lewd” reasons, since they inherently were “inclined toward prostitution.” (Wong, 2000)  A collateral effect of this perspective, according to George Anthony Peffer, was the inflation of the number of prostitutes included in government records. (Wong, 2000)  Chinese women were the focus of law enforcement and legislative actions "not so much because they were prostitutes as such (since there were also many White prostitutes around) but because -- as Chinese -- they allegedly brought in especially virulent strains of venereal diseases, introduced opium addiction, and enticed White boys into a life of sin.” (Shah, 1997)
     A multitude of myths and stereotypes about prostitutes circulated among the ethnic European Americans, whose deficient knowledge of Chinese cultural mores and kinship rules led them to believe that an unmarried man and woman living together necessarily was an illicit relationship, and that the area of sexual gratification on a Chinese prostitute’s body was different in physical shape from that of an American woman’s. (Holman, 2001-2002)  Another example of the stereotypes circulated about Asian women at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries was the use of the term “Dragon Lady,” and all of its connotations about intrigue.
     Historian, professor emerita, and former chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Sucheng Chan’s writings stand as scholarly insights into the actual condition of Chinese women in the nineteenth century:  “Far from being predatory, many of the first Asian women to come to the U.S. in the mid-1800s were disadvantaged Chinese women, who were tricked, kidnapped, or smuggled into the country to serve the predominantly male Chinese community as prostitutes.” (Chan in Shah, 1997)  “Prostitutes, who were at the bottom of the social order, had the least freedom and opportunity to change their lives.” (Yung, 2003)  The impression that allAsian women were prostitutes, born at that time, "colored the public perception of, attitude toward, and action against all Chinese women for almost a century.” (Shah, 1997)

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS # 8

     The story of Lalu Nathoy, known as “China Mary” Polly Bemis, is representative of a woman who was brought to the United States in 1871, having been sold into slavery in China..  Most of the women living on the western frontier were brought to the area expected to serve as prostitutes.  She was put to work as a “sing-song girl,” or a bar hostess, in one of Idaho’s makeshift mining towns.  Lalu later engaged in a wide range of occupations including cook, gardener, boarding house operator, goldsmith, and nurse.  Charlie Bemis "won" her in a poker game, after which they became business associates. They married in 1894, and by the end of her life, Lalu Nathoy was Mrs. Polly Bemis, an American pioneer.
     It is necessary to return to the 1875 Page Act, in order to summarize the impact of American discriminatory legislation on Asian prostitutes.  A turning point in the number of Chinese women who entered the United States as prostitutes occurred after the enactment of this federal law, which forbade the entry into America of “Oriental” contract laborers, prostitutes, and criminals; and, repeated the provisions of an earlier 1870 California Act that prevented "any Mongolian, Chinese or Japanese females.... [admission] without first presenting to the Commissioner of Immigration evidence satisfactory to him that such a female desires voluntarily to come into this State, and is a person of correct habits and good character." (http://www.cetel.org/1875_page.html )  The implementation of the exclusion acts’ provisions
was the onus carried by women who were not prostitutes.  The comparative significance of the 1875 Page Act and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act has been the subject of discussion by scholars. (Wong, 2000)

SEE QUOTATIONS & SONG LYRICS # 9

Japanese Picture Brides
Japanese immigration to America increased during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and, with it appeared a reactionary anti-Japanese movement that joined the established anti-Chinese sentiment.  Japanese numbered less than 3 percent of the total population in California during the early 1900s, but still engendered virulent and sometimes violent racism. The Japanese "picture brides" who emigrated to join their husbands in America were "another example of Oriental treachery," to racist Californians, according to historian Roger Daniels. (Shah, 1997)
The two governments, American and Japanese, negotiated a two part “Gentleman’s Agreement” during the 1907-1908 year in order to limit Japanese male laborers from immigrating to the United States on the one hand, and allowing Japanese women to join their husbands in America on the other hand.  The treaty provisions were disbanded in 1920 when Japan voluntarily stopped sending picture brides to America.  Japanese and Korean women were known as “picture brides” when they participated in an arranged marriage system, omaiai-kekkon.  Asian men in the United States, the intended husbands, exchanged their photos with those of Japanese and Korean women who had placed their names on their spouses’ family registers and who had applied for passports to the United States to join their “husbands.”(Smith, Steinem, Mink, Navarro, and Mankiller, 1999)  This “picture bride” practice was an abbreviated form of traditional matchmaking among families in Japan and Korea, which replaced the careful matching of economic status, personality, and family background of the couple.  The Japanese custom of entering the bride’s name in the groom’s family register legally constituted marriage. (http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/specials/korean100/timeline/)
“Many Issei women were disappointed with their new homes, far from families and friends, which often required enduring discrimination and hard work to survive.”  Actual life experiences of Issei women in the Columbia River Basin area of Oregon evidenced the reasons for their disappointments and sadness: (http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/crbeha/)

SEE QUOTATIONS & LYRICS # 10

     “Linda Tamura found in oral history interviews with Hood River Issei that immigrant women, who hoped for adventure and prosperity, were often disappointed with American food, their dirty and uncomfortable surroundings, and their much older husbands. They were overwhelmed with loneliness as well as strenuous physical labor.”( http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/crbeha/ & Tamura, 1993)
Epilogue: Overview of the 1930s, the Home front in the 1940s, and immediate post-World War II
Earlier in this study it was mentioned that Chinese women “were paradoxically both valued and victimized.” (http://www.psr.edu/pana.cfm?m=201)  The Great Depression of the 1930s limited Chinese women’s employment, as it did for others in the American population; but, Chinese women immigrants had somewhat more of a hard time.  White males, females, and other male immigrants did not have jobs, but immigrant Chinese women did not have opportunities to gain employment:  “They experienced less discrimination than other Asian women populations, alternating between cycles of absence from the American workforce, and contributing valuable service to the economy.” (http://academic.evergreen.edu/s/saknat11/chinesewomenoly2.html)
     Once the nation entered World War II in 1941, the condition of Chinese and Japanese women was drastically different.  Japanese women were confined to the detention centers or concentration camps with their families as potential threats to national security in the war between Japan and America.  Chinese women were in a better situation.  All women became workers on the home front, and replaced their male counterparts serving in the armed forces.  “For the first time Chinese American women took on jobs as welders, riveters, burners and flangers.” (http://www.kued.org/chineseamerican/resources/pressphotos.html)
     Chinese women benefited in the long run from this World War II experience by proving themselves worthy of higher social standing than before the War.  The story of Toy Kay, Chinese immigrant to Olympia, Washington, exemplified the continuation of cultural mores from the homeland to America in the realms of family life and women’s work. (Kay, n.d.)  A series of Congressional legislation in post-World War II America opened the immigration doors to Asian women, and removed the discriminatory and restrictive national and state laws that had been in operation against Asians since the nineteenth century.

SEE FIGURE # 6 TIMELINE OF LEGISLATION POST WORLD WAR II

Concise Description of Findings
     The reasons why Asians voluntarily and involuntarily left their homelands to make their fortunes in the United States during the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries may be classified as the “push-pull” motivation of immigration.  The impetus for transnational movement that impelled the Chinese and Japanese immigrants in this study was similar in nature to other peoples, at other times, in other locations.
The Chinese and Japanese immigrants who came to the United States between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries came from different socio-economic backgrounds, with and without their women as circumstances dictated.  Both nationals sought to seek their fortunes in America in a variety of ways: as miners, railroad construction workers, merchants, students, and entrepreneurs.  Most men, sojourners, expected to return to their homelands and families, while others brought their families with them and expected to settle in the United States.
It is not unusual for immigrants to be met with hostility and fear by the older immigrants and settled population of the country to which the newer immigrants travel and seek admission.  Usually the hostility and fear are based on concern that new immigrants will displace the older population by accepting lower wages, diminished benefits, and poor working conditions.  Another factor was operational in this study of Chinese and Japanese immigration to the United States between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries: racism and genderism produced by the belief systems connected with Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement.  Both nationalities were viewed as a “yellow peril” that would contaminate the societal framework established by the earlier Anglo peoples.  Both Chinese and Japanese immigrants’ economic successes engendered overt outrage that led to physical attacks on them, burning of their enclaves, riots, and pressure on politicians and government officials to restrict their freedoms and exclude them from America.
National and states’ legislation first discriminated against Chinese male and female immigrants between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries concerning their entry into the United States, taxation on their endeavors, limitations on their choices of spouses, and naturalization rights.  The precedents set with laws and court decisions against the Chinese eventually were applied to the Japanese and other Asian immigrants.
Legislation restricting entry of certain Chinese and Japanese women into the United States produced different results, but for both nationalities there was a gender gap between the males and females in America.  Chinese males were sentenced to lives in Chinatowns which essentially were bachelor societies, and to frequent the brothels serviced by prostitutes brought from China by local businessmen.  The preponderance of laborers was limited in its ability to bring Chinese wives and sisters to America, as well as to visit their Gold Mountain Widows in China.  Chinese merchants and students were allowed to have their women with them, and to produce families who were American born.  The bachelor society that was produced among the Chinese males was different from the various Japan towns.  Japanese women were permitted to immigrate to America until legislation was passed to exclude them, too.
The legislative limitations on immigrant Chinese and Japanese women were changed after World War II.  Not only Chinese and Japanese women entered the country, but other Asian nationalities took advantage of the open doors to America.

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.APPENDIX A. NOTES,QUOTATIONS, AND SONG LYRICS

APPENDIX B. FIGURES

Figure 1 Chronology of Selected American Immigration Legislation and Treaties

Figure 2 Selected States’ Discriminatory/Restrictive Legislation

Figure 3 Selected Court Decisions Returned To Chinese Litigants

Figure 4 Selected Legislation Especially Focused On Asian Females

Figure 5 Selected Court Decisions Focused on Chinese Women Immigrants

Figure 6 Timeline of Legislation Post-World War II
(A selected and brief list of laws, in chronological order, follows below) (http://us_asians.tripod.com/timeline.html)

1945 War Brides Act and its amendments in 1946 and 1947
1948 Interracial marriage ban is lifted by the State of California
1948 Displaced Persons Act gave permanent resident status to 3,465 Chinese
             students, visitors, and seaman who did not want to go back to China.
1949 United States granted refugee status to 5,000 highly educated Chinese in the
             country after China intituted a Communist government.
1952 Immigration and Nationality Act began to eliminate some of the anti-Asian racism.
             The act reunified families, protected the domestic labor force, and called for
             immigration of people with needed skills. It also made Asians eligible for
             citizenship.
1965 Immigration and Nationality Act or Hart-Cellar Act abolished the national-origins
             quota system and created an annual quota of 20,000 Asians eligible to enter the
             United States
1967 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional
             in Loving vs. Virginia. That ruling invalidated laws in 16 states that prevented
             Whites from marrying "colored" spouses, including Asians. Until then many
             Asians had been forced to move to more liberal states in order to marry.