The Japanese Problem, also referred to as the Japanese Menace or the Japanese Conspiracy, was the name given to racial tensions in Hawaii between the

European-American European Americans are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes both people who descend from the first European settlers in the area of the present-day United States and people who descend from more recent European arrivals. Since th ...

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...

owners and the Japanese immigrants hired to work in the cane fields.

Origins

The term "Japanese Problem" came into use during the 1920 Oahu Sugar Strike. Following the strike, powerful

s like Walter Dillingham and Harry Baldwin were vocal about their concerns regarding the increasing Japanese population in Hawaii. They worried that the increasing Japanese population would eventually affect politics in Hawaii as the voter base changed. Ultimately, they were most concerned that the Japanese were loyal to Japan, and would allow the

Japanese Empire The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From 1910 to ...

to claim Hawaii. Wallace Farrington pointed out in a speech in 1920 that even though the strikes were caused by "malcontents and agitators", the Japanese had to be given the chance to

Americanize Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of the American culture and economy on other countries outside the United States, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology ...

. This notion was pushed back against by people both within Hawaii and on the U.S. Mainland, like Valentine McClatchy, who claimed that the Japanese could not integrate into American culture because they held on to their own culture and religion too fervently.

References

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Origins

Further reading

References

See also