CHAPTER 10 · The Japanese and “Money Trees”
Why did plantation owners treat cooperation between Filipino and Japanese workers as a threat?
A practice question that prepares your thinking for the aim. Study how the model works, then build your own answer to your assigned question.
The model paragraph
Plantation owners feared Filipino and Japanese solidarity because cooperation reduced their ability to replace one group of workers with another. Hawaii’s sugar planters, employers who depended on a large plantation workforce, deliberately recruited workers from different countries. Takaki explains that these divisions “made it easier for management to control them” (YPT 192). This says differences among workers could strengthen the employer’s authority. It shows why recruiting a diverse workforce did not necessarily express respect for different cultures: planters could use divisions to obstruct joint demands. However, Japanese and Filipino workers began recognizing their shared interests. The 1920 walkout, a joint stoppage involving eight thousand workers on Oahu, “brought sugar production to a standstill” (YPT 198). This says the combined strike stopped the plantations from producing sugar. It shows that workers gained bargaining power by interrupting the economic activity on which their employers depended. Their control over production illustrates the Key Idea that economic forces drive history. Planters’ earnings depended on workers’ labor, so organizing across nationality turned that dependence into pressure for change. In response, planters promoted distrust and used propaganda to portray Japanese strikers as agents of a foreign government. Although hunger, illness, and repression eventually ended the strike, the owners raised wages three months later. The conflict shows why a shared identity as workers could threaten employers who had benefited from keeping those workers apart.
1 POINT TO NAME IT · 1 POINT TO EXPLAIN IT
How this model earns its key idea points
Gist
People make choices to get land, money, and the things they need. Those choices can change other people’s lives.
Check your understanding
Academic definition
Economic interests shape historical change when people use power to control resources, organize labor, and distribute wealth. Explain the decisions connecting an economic goal to its consequences.
Check your understanding
Elaboration
- Name the idea
- Key Idea 1: Economic forces drive history
- Point to the evidence
- Managers used ethnic divisions to control workers; the joint 1920 strike halted sugar production (YPT 192; YPT 198).
- Explain how it works
- Sugar profits depended on a continuous labor supply. Cooperation made replacing strikers harder and allowed workers to interrupt production, creating pressure on employers.
- Make the connection explicit
- The naming point comes from explicitly identifying economic forces. Earn the explanation point by tracing the dependency: employers needed labor to produce sugar; a joint strike withheld that labor; interrupted production increased workers’ bargaining power. The later wage rise shows an outcome without erasing the strike’s human costs.
Check your understanding: explain how this model’s evidence shows its key idea without looking at the explanation above.
Compare your explanation
Sugar profits depended on a continuous labor supply. Cooperation made replacing strikers harder and allowed workers to interrupt production, creating pressure on employers.
How the argument builds
Follow what each move adds to the answer. Then map your own paragraph in your notebook.
- Claim
Cooperation threatened a management system built around divisions.
- First quotation
Employers used differences among workers to strengthen control.
- Coalition
Filipino and Japanese workers acted on shared interests.
- Second quotation
Their combined stoppage interrupted sugar production.
- Key Idea
Withholding necessary labor created economic pressure.
- Limits and consequences
Repression ended the strike, but a later wage rise showed that the conflict had consequences.
Build your own sentences · Chapter 10
Choose the relationship your argument needs. These are sentence models to study; your paragraph should use your own reasoning and your assigned four words of the day.
Appositives · rename a noun precisely
A noun phrase between commas renames the noun before it. It adds useful information, not another sentence. You need two.
Check: remove the phrase between the commas. The main sentence should still work.
The Japanese Physicians Association, a community organization that provided free medical care, helped strikers and their families endure the 1909 plantation work stoppage.
YPT 197The Japanese union, an organization that joined Filipino strikers in 1920, proposed bringing laborers of all nationalities into a single union to overcome ethnic divisions.
YPT 198The Gentlemen’s Agreement, the 1907 arrangement governing Japanese immigration, restricted labor migration while permitting family members to join Japanese immigrants already in the United States.
YPT 190 YPT 208California’s Alien Land Law, a 1913 restriction tied to citizenship eligibility, barred Japanese immigrants from buying land by using their exclusion from naturalization.
YPT 208The Issei, the first generation of Japanese immigrants, invested in their children’s education even though racial restrictions denied them citizenship and access to landownership.
YPT 209–210The Nisei, the American-born children of Japanese immigrants, held citizenship but still encountered racial hostility and job discrimination despite their educational achievements.
YPT 209–211
The nine connectors · choose a relationship
But
Adds a contrast.
Japanese immigrants helped build Hawaii’s sugar industry, but plantation rules reserved skilled positions for workers who qualified under racially restrictive citizenship requirements.
YPT 192–193So
Shows a result.
Japanese and Filipino workers joined the same strike in 1920, so their combined refusal to work brought most of Oahu’s plantation workforce into action.
YPT 198Because
Gives a reason.
Planters recruited workers from different countries because they hoped ethnic divisions would prevent united strikes and keep laborers from making stronger demands.
YPT 192If
Names a condition.
If we compare organizing strategies across communities, Japanese businesses and physicians offer a clear example of how food, money, and medical care sustained strikers.
YPT 197Unless
Means if not.
The planters’ claim of victory gives us an incomplete account unless we also consider the wage increase that followed the workers’ return to their jobs.
YPT 199When
Means if with expectation.
When plantation owners replaced crowded barracks with family cottages, they expected healthier workers to become more efficient, linking improved housing to the pursuit of profit.
YPT 200Despite
Takes a noun phrase.
Despite Japanese farmers’ success in California agriculture, white hostility and citizenship restrictions limited their access to property and challenged their hopes of being accepted.
YPT 206–208Although
Takes a subject and a verb.
Although Japanese women performed many of the same field tasks as men, plantation employers paid them less, making gender another boundary within the labor system.
YPT 194However
Starts a new sentence.
Planters wanted workers to learn English so they could understand commands. However, Pidgin became a shared language that helped different communities communicate and form connections.
YPT 200–201After despite, use a noun phrase. After although, use a subject and a verb. In your rubric’s pattern, put a period before however and a comma after it. The contrast must make sense in context.