Chapter 8 Of Takaki's A Different Mirror

In Chapter 8 of A Different Mirror Takaki talks about the experience and the reason why The Chinese immigrated to the U.S in the late 1800’s. He also talks about the work and jobs the Chinese people were able to produce. While some did experience the same discrimination and racism as many other immigrant groups during this time such as Eastern Europeans, Irish, and, later, Mexicans, the United States seemed to welcome the Chinese immigrants and their labor. Takaki talks about a time when the Chinese workers were praised by a company president Laland Stanford and him referring to the Chinese workers saying, “They prove nearly equal to white men in the amount of labor they perform, and are much more reliable,”(p181). This same company had
The Sioux Indians began to form a sprit dance that was known as the ghost dance. The Indian prophet, Wovoka, called for Indians everywhere to dance the Ghost Dance and said it would bring back all games of every kind and return their dead relatives while causing the white people to perish. “Wovoka’s vision of a world without whites spread like prairie fire through the Indian country. Ghost dancing became the rage, seizing Indian imagination and mobilizing frustrations.” (229) All the Indians began to participate in this dance hoping to get their land back. When the government got wind of this Ghost Dance they set out to put a stop to it. The government, out of fear, “quickly identified the Ghost Dance ‘fronteners of disturbances’ and ordered the army to arrest them,” (229). When the army caught up with the Indian dancers they ordered them to hand over their weapons and after they handed them over they ordered a search looking for more weapons to collect. During the search a shot was fired within the crowd causing the soldiers to fire and brutally kill men, woman, and children who were mostly unarmed. The Indians tried to get back to their weapons that were stacked but lost their lives alone the way. Massacres like this were accruing at many Indian villages, leaving hundreds of Indians laying dead or wounded. The aftermaths of these massacres was brutal, leaving
in the 1819’s the Japanese. He writes the Japanese were pushed here by external influence like the Irish. One of the main reason they set out to pursue the “new world” was because of their frustration with the taxes in Japan and economic hardship for farmers. Although initially the immigrants from Japan were all men, there was a significant number or women crossing the seas as well. This is what made the Japanese different from the Chinese. The Japanese were able to find a loophole that allowed the women immigrants from Japan entry because they were considered “family members” This is where Takaki starts to describe the term “picture bride”. This is a term given to women leaving Japan coming to America to be married. This form of arranged marriages were only allowed pictures of each other until the day they meet in person. The woman would be allowed to go to America depending on which son she married within the Japanese family. The woman who married the first son would be required to stay in Japan where she would have the responsibility of tended to his parents and take over the inheritance. If the woman was to marry the second son, she would be allowed to move to America because the husband would be the one who had the responsibility to leave the family and find employment. Around this same time thousands of Japanese were relocating to Hawaii. The Japanese