Japanese-American History - Timeline

Timeline

Although Japanese castaways such as Oguri Jukichi and Otokichi are known to have reached the Americas by at least the early 19th century, the history of Japanese Americans begins in the mid nineteenth century.

• 1841, June 27 Captain Whitfield, commanding a New England sailing vessel, rescues five shipwrecked Japanese sailors. Four disembark at Honolulu, however Manjiro Nakahama stays on board returning with Whitfield to Fairhaven, Massachusetts. After attending school in New England and adopting the name John Manjiro, he later became an interpreter for Commodore Matthew Perry.

• 1850. Seventeen survivors of a Japanese shipwreck are saved by the American freighter Auckland off the coast of California. In 1852, the group is sent to Macau to join Commodore Matthew C. Perry as a gesture to help open diplomatic relations with Japan. One of them, Joseph Heco (Hikozo Hamada), goes on to become the first Japanese person to become a naturalized American citizen.

• 1855: On February 8, the first official intake of Japanese migrants to a U.S.-controlled entity occurs when 676 men, 159 women, and 108 children arrive in Honolulu on board the Pacific Mail passenger freighter City of Tokio. These immigrants, the first of many Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, have come to work as laborers on the island's sugar plantations via an assisted passage scheme organized by the Hawaiian government.

• 1861: The utopian minister Thomas Lake Harris of the Brotherhood of the New Life visits England, where he meets Nagasawa Kanaye, who becomes a convert. Nagasawa returns to the U.S. with Harris and follows him to Fountaingrove in Santa Rosa, California. When Harris leaves the Californian commune, Nagasawa became the leader and remained there until his death in 1932.

• 1869: A group of Japanese people arrive at Gold Hills, California and build the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony. Okei becomes the first recorded Japanese woman to die and be buried in the United States.

• 1885: The first wave of Japanese immigrants arrives to provide labor in Hawaiʻi sugarcane and pineapple plantations and California fruit and produce farms.

• 1893: The San Francisco Board of Education attempts to introduce segregation for Japanese American children, but withdraws the measure following protests by the Japanese government.

• 1900s: Japanese immigrants begin to lease land and sharecrop.

• 1902: Yone Noguchi publishes The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, the first Japanese American novel.

• 1906: The San Francisco Board of Education successfully implements segregation for Asian students in public schools.

• 1907: Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 between United States and Japan results in Japan ending the issuance passports for new laborers.

• 1908: Japanese "picture brides" enter the United States.

• 1913: The California Alien Land Law of 1913 bans Japanese from purchasing land; whites threatened by Japanese success in independent farming ventures.

• 1924: The federal Immigration Act of 1924 banned immigration from Japan.

• 1930s: Issei become economically stable for the first time in California and Hawaiʻi.

• 1941: Attack on Pearl Harbor: Japanese forces attack the United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. Japanese community leaders are arrested and detained by federal authorities.

• 1942: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 on February 19, beginning Japanese American internment. Over the course of the war, approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived on the West Coast of the United States are uprooted from their homes and interned.

• 1943: Japanese American soldiers from Hawaiʻi join the 100th Infantry Battalion of the United States Army. The battalion fights in Europe.

• 1944: Ben Kuroki became the only Japanese-American in the U.S. Army Air Force to serve in combat operations in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II.

• 1944: U.S. Army 100th Battalion merges with the all-volunteer Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

• 1945: By war's end, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team is awarded 18,143 decorations, including 9,486 Purple Hearts, becoming the most decorated military unit in United States history.

• 1959: Daniel K. Inouye is elected to the United States House of Representatives, becoming becomes the first Japanese American to serve in Congress.

• 1962: Minoru Yamasaki is awarded the contract to design the World Trade Center, becoming the first Japanese American architect to design a supertall skyscraper in the United States.

• 1963: Daniel K. Inouye becomes the first Japanese American in the United States Senate.

• 1965: Patsy T. Mink becomes the first woman of color in Congress.

• 1971: Norman Y. Mineta is elected mayor of San Jose, California, becoming the first Asian American mayor of a major U.S. city.

• 1972: Robert A. Nakamura produces Manzanar, the first personal documentary about internment.

• 1974: George R. Ariyoshi becomes the first Japanese American governor in the State of Hawaiʻi.

• 1976: S. I. Hayakawa of California and Spark Matsunaga of Hawaiʻi become the second and third U.S. Senators of Japanese descent.

• 1978: Ellison S. Onizuka becomes the first Asian American astronaut. Onizuka was one of the seven astronauts to die in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.

• 1980: Congress creates the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate internment during World War II.

• 1983: The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians reports that Japanese-American internment was not justified by military necessity and that internment was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." The Commission recommends an official Government apology; redress payments of $20,000 to each of the survivors; and a public education fund to help ensure that this would not happen again.

• 1988: President Ronald Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, apologizing for Japanese-American internment and providing reparations of $20,000 to each victim.

• 1994: Mazie K. Hirono is elected Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii, becoming the first Japanese immigrant elected state lieutenant governor of a state. Hirono later is elected in the U.S. House of Representatives.

• 1996: A. Wallace Tashima is nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and becomes the first Japanese American to serve as a judge of a United States court of appeals.

• 1998: Chris Tashima becomes the first U.S.-born Japanese American actor to win an Academy Award for his role in the film Visas and Virtue.

• 1999: U.S. Army General Eric Shinseki becomes the first Asian American to serve as chief of staff of a branch of the armed forces. Shinseki later serves as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

• 2000, Norman Y. Mineta becomes the first Asian American appointed to the United States Cabinet. He serves as Secretary of Commerce from 2000–2001 and Secretary of Transportation from 2001–2006.

• 2010: Daniel K. Inouye becomes the highest ranking Asian American politician in U.S. history when he succeeds Robert Byrd as President pro tempore of the United States Senate.