Navigating Transpacific Passages: Steamship Companies, State Regulators, and Transshipment of Japanese in the Early-Twentieth-Century Pacific Northwest

• Published in: Journal of American ethnic history Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 07 - 34
• Main Author: Takai, Yukari
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Champaign University of Illinois Press 01.04.2011
• Subjects: 20th century; Borders; Boundaries; Business structures; Commerce; Emigration; Ethnic Studies; History; Human migration; Immigrants; Immigration; Immigration Policy; International borders; Japanese (Asian people); Japanese Americans; Labor Migration; Laws, regulations and rules; Migrants; Migration; Passengers; Passports; Regulation; Social aspects; Steamships; Transportation; Transshipment; Twentieth Century; Western States; United States; Canada; United States > US; Japan
• ISSN: 0278-5927; 1936-4695
• DOI: 10.5406/jamerethnhist.30.3.0007

Japanese migration across the Pacific and along the Canadian-US border occurred at a critical time when the formerly porous land border between the US and Canada was gradually and selectively being closed and national efforts to exclude selected groups of foreigners at seaports of entry were being enhanced. Given the illegal nature of the practices, no available sources show exactly when the transmigrants began to arrive in Canada and the US; nor do they give an accurate number of such arrivals. Takai discusses the familiar interpretive binary of state regulators versus migrants and attempts to shed light on the agency of a third party in migration, the transpacific steamship companies, which transshipped Japanese and other migrants from Yokohama and Kobe to Hawaii, to Victoria and Vancouver, and finally to Seattle and San Francisco.