Gist response
Japanese workers built unions and relied on their communities for food, money, and medical care so they could stay on strike. Like Mexican workers, they gained power by organizing together and supporting families through long struggles for better pay. They also built alliances across communities: Japanese workers joined Filipino strikers in Hawaii and formed a union with Mexican workers in California, making it harder for employers to keep workers divided.
Use OPT 243–246 and the comparison in OPT 174–175.
Hawaiian plantation organizing: OPT 243–246. Read OPT 237–239 for employers’ use of ethnic divisions and unequal job opportunities.
Mexican and Japanese organizing in California: OPT 174–175. This comparison is in OPT Chapter 7.
| Case | How workers built power | Response and outcome | OPT source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaii, 1909 | Japanese workers organized for higher wages and equal pay; businesses, physicians, and workers on other islands supplied aid. | Planters arrested leaders and recruited strikebreakers. Workers returned after four months; afterward planters raised Japanese wages and eliminated the differential wage system. | OPT 243–244 |
| Hawaii, 1920 | Filipino workers struck and Japanese workers joined them; 8,000 strikers, 77% of Oahu’s plantation workforce, stopped production. | Planters promoted division, recruited strikebreakers, and evicted families. The strike ended amid illness and hunger; wages rose 50% three months later. | OPT 244–246 |
| Oxnard, 1903 | Mexican and Japanese workers formed the JMLA, conducted multilingual meetings, and struck together against wage cuts. | They won a piecework rate of $5 per acre for thinning beets. Mexican members then refused an AFL charter that excluded Japanese workers; the JMLA disappeared within a few years. | OPT 174–175 |
Compare a mechanism, not just a similarity: workers combined their ability to stop production with organizations that sustained participation. Broader solidarity increased their power, but employer repression and exclusion within organized labor limited it.
Explain the choices connecting these steps. Solidarity was built through organizing; it was not automatic.
Read the surrounding paragraphs and look for evidence that helps you explain both sides of the comparison.
“It is not the color of skin that grows cane in the field. It is labor that grows cane.”
Japanese strikers’ argument, quoted by Takaki · OPT 243
Workers challenged racial pay differences by identifying labor as the source of production. Their argument connected equal work to equal pay.
How does this idea challenge the way planters classified and paid workers?
“the Japanese Physicians Association gave free medical service to the strikers and their families.”
Takaki’s narration · OPT 243
Medical care, food, and strike funds helped workers and their families withstand the loss of wages. Community organization made withholding labor more sustainable.
Why does supporting families increase workers’ ability to stay on strike?
“a big, powerful and non-racial labor organization”
Takashi Tsutsumi’s description of the needed union, quoted by Takaki · OPT 245
The proposed organization would unite workers of different nationalities around shared class interests. This challenged the planters’ use of ethnic division.
Why might a broader union make strikebreaking more difficult?
“if the machines stop, the wealth of the valley stops”
Joint JMLA statement by Yamaguchi and Lizarras, quoted by Takaki · OPT 174
The statement compares workers with machinery: production depends on both. It explains why a coordinated refusal to work could give Mexican and Japanese farmworkers bargaining power.
How does this reasoning resemble the plantation workers’ strategy in Hawaii?
“We would be false to them and to ourselves and to the cause of unionism if we now accepted privileges for ourselves which are not accorded to them”
J. M. Lizarras, writing for the Mexican union, quoted by Takaki · OPT 175
Mexican workers rejected an AFL charter that excluded their Japanese coworkers. They defended solidarity even though losing national union support carried a cost.
What does the decision reveal about the relationship between principle and organizational power?
Economic forces shape history: planters wanted labor at a low cost, while workers wanted better wages and conditions. Explain how the ability to stop production changed bargaining power. OPT 243–246
Race is socially constructed: unequal wages and restrictions on jobs made ethnic classifications consequential; workers challenged those arrangements. OPT 239; OPT 243
Ideas are weapons: contrast workers’ claims about equal pay and shared interests with employers’ claims that Japanese strikers served a foreign government. OPT 243; OPT 245–246
-ization · Japanese-Mexican Labor Association · organization · solidarity · strike · unionization
