Japanese-Americans: The 1913 Alien Land Law

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Farmers
Of all of the Japanese-Americans that lived in America about half of them ended up as farmers. When Japanese immigrants came over to America, many of them came from farms, going to Hawaii to work on sugar plantations. Eventually starting families and staying or moving to the mainland. The children of these immigrants also worked on the plantations at young ages, learning from their parents who had a life time of working on their family farms.
When moving to California many immigrants took up lands in deserts and other low quality lands, until the 1913 Alien Land Law, prohibiting non US citizens from buying or leasing land, even though they were barred from naturalization, the law ended up being ineffective as the parents could by and lease the land under their children’s names who were US citizens. As a whole Japanese farmers owned about roughly half a million acres of farm land in California, though still a lot of it was considered poor quality, this wasn’t much of a problem. The Japanese farms were prosperous, having experience working with the generally lower soil quality in japan, farmers used techniques brought from japan, and introduced new crops, and created a great many orchards, mainly citrus fruits. The value of what in the past was
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As a result what was considered a necessity for the war was a detriment. The initial notices for relocation happened right before harvest season. In rage some farmers destroyed their crops, then tried for sabotaging the war effort, others were forced to sell or giveaway their crops. Farming equipment was sold, vandalized, or stolen. When white farmers moved in on the farms, crops grew poorly. So in order to regain production, likes other evacuees, Japanese farmers could be permission to leave the camps and work on farms. As a whole agriculture in California was severely damaged as a result of the