WHY THE JAPANESE LEFT SIGNAL HILL

 ANTI-ASIAN HATE 

      At one time Japanese farmers thrived on Signal Hill, growing cucumbers which made Signal Hill the cucumber growing capital of California.  Many believe the Japanese were forced off their Signal Hill land because of the discovery of oil in 1921.  That is not the case. They were required to leave when the Alien Land Law was passed by California voters in 1920. Since owning land was one of the qualifiers for U.S. citizenship, this law prevented them from becoming true Americans.

     Today we are again facing anti-Asian hate, thrust at all who happen to have a face that looks different from white and black Americans.  Perhaps the anti-Japanese movement which started in California in 1905 is best forgotten.  It's not something we're proud of, but I bring it up here because it was part of our history and it helps to understand patterns and events that were to influence life in later years. It’s a story with a long history, as this blog points out.

     Looking back, the anti-Japanese movement was in many ways merely a continuation of the long-standing agitation against the Chinese which began in the early 1850s.  At first the Asian immigrants had been welcome, but later when the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad threw most of these Chinese workers into an already depressed labor market, there was an outcry against them.  In 1920 the same thing began to happen to the Japanese, but it had earlier roots.
    In May 1905 the Asiatic Exclusion League was formed in California.  The League's immigrant leaders felt Europeans such as themselves could be assimilated into the American melting pot, but were convinced that assimilation could not cross the color line.  From 1905 on the League continued to introduce legislation excluding Japanese immigration to America.  In 1920 they were successful in getting the matter of land ownership to a public vote in California. There was much debate surrounding the issue, including the following from Samuel M. Shortridge, candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. senator from California.  He spoke at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in August 1920 before an audience of more than 350 persons:

               “Let the bona fide Japanese travelers pass through our territory, let their students attend our universities, if they desire, and return to their own land to enlighten their own countrymen, but let them not make their permanent home among us.  We do not need them; we do not want them; they are in no sense industrially, morally or politically, a benefit to us; they will but irritate and breed discontent and add to our domestic and international problems.  Let them remain at home, cultivate their own soil, develop their own resources or migrate to other lands whose people will welcome them.  We do not want cheap labor. We want well-paid labor. We want intelligent, patriotic, contented labor. We want homes and schools, libraries and churches.  We want boys and girls with hope in their hearts and smiles on their faces.  We want men and women erect, proud, self-sustaining, happy, and ready to die for their country, glad to give their first-born to the defense of the flag. We want no antagonistic races, we want no hostile classes, we want no castes, we want no aliens incapable of republican government.  We want an intelligent, self-respecting, prosperous and loyal American citizenship which shall guide this nation upward and onward and make of this republic the greatest, grandest brotherhood the world has ever seen. We want no alien people in our midst.” LB Press 8/23/1920.

      In September 1920 the Long Beach Press indicated there was a real possibility of a general exodus of Japanese from Long Beach if the general public voted for what was called Proposition 1.  Many farmers had already left their farms on Signal Hill to investigate living conditions in Mexico and Texas.  On October 21st the Japanese issue was again debated at the Municipal Auditorium.  James D. Phelan, U.S. senator for California took on the Reverend U.G. Murphy in an interesting contest.  Phelan was angry that there was an effort to create a “pro-Jap” sentiment in Los Angeles to try and defeat Proposition 1.  He felt this was being spearheaded by the Japanese, “persons who are on our shores simply by sufferance, guests of the nation, organizing a movement to obtain defeat of a measure initiated by the rightful citizens of the state."
     Phelan went on to point out that in Japan foreigners could not own land so why should Japanese here own American soil?  Phelan remarked that of the 3,856,000 acres of tillable land in California, 456,000 were in control of the Japanese.  This was one of every nine acres.  The money made from the land did not go into the usual trade channels, but went into the shops of Japanese, for they only traded with their own people.  Phelan claimed they were setting up a colony for Japan in the United States, destined to create a commercial rivalry with America.  They had already doubled prices by their monopolistic control of certain crops and they could dictate prices of food.   
     The Reverend Murphy defended the Japanese, claiming they were peaceable immigrants and their American born children loyal to the teaching of American idealism.  He asserted the Land Exclusion Act was one of "hysterical race prejudice."  He pointed out that Californians refused to tolerate the Japanese because it could not assimilate them but permitted the Jews, who for 4,000 years had refused to permit marriages outside their own race, to have every privilege.
     Frequently Murphy had to stop speaking because of the cat-calls, hisses and heckling from the audience. 

     On November 2, 1920, California voters went to the polls to decide on passage of an act which excluded native born Japanese, the Issei, from owning land, a qualifying factor in becoming a citizen.  Their children, the Nisei, born in the United States were exempt from the legislation. Despite ads in the Long Beach Press asking Californians to vote NO on election day, and attempts of women like University of Iowa educated Mrs. Tatsu Kondo to Americanize the 1024 Japanese residing in Long Beach, the Alien Land Law passed.

Fish Harbor

     Stories about the Japanese and their clannish ways continued to appear.  In November 1920, following the passage of the Alien Land Law, Japanese fishermen at the Long Beach harbor were subject to several harassing allegations.   White fishermen asserted the Japanese fishermen monopolized the wharves and docks at Fish Harbor to the absolute exclusion of the white men.  Another accusation was that the Japanese agreed to pricing among themselves, driving up the cost of fish.  As a result, a bill was introduced in the California Senate making it unlawful for Japanese to engage in the fishing industry in California waters. 
    In January 1921, Long Beach contractor W. Jay Burgin suggested restrictions against Japanese merchants in Long Beach.  He reported that in Brawley the entire business district of the city was in the hands of Asians.  The anti-alien land law had driven Japanese farmers into the city, and the same thing might happen in Long Beach, Burgin stated, if action was not taken now.  Burgin suggested a charter revision refusing business licenses to aliens not eligible for citizenship.  

    The Japanese were being forced out of their livelihoods.  Many Japanese farmers on Signal Hill were unable to renew their leases and forced to move out of California. There were rumors of a Japanese plot to control the coast of Lower California by purchasing land holdings worth $5,000,000 from the Mexican government.  Local landowner W. L. Porterfield, who had never supported the Alien Land Law, attempted to lease eighty acres of land to Y. Mazino, the foreman at the Bixby ranch.  The matter was taken to United States District Court which ruled that any land contract with a Japanese alien was illegal. 
    What was left for the Japanese was garbage. Literally.  They contracted with the city to collect Long Beach's waste, paying the city for the privilege.  Mr. Sakomoto paid the city $1.05 a ton for the garbage which he fed to hogs on land he got to use free from the city .  But there were complaints from Japanese workers that homeowners were not obeying the rules about sorting garbage.  When the men found refuse mixed with broken glass, or liquids dumped into the garbage cans, making the garbage unsuitable for hog feed, they refused to take it.  This brought verbal insults from residents.  Public Service Director A.L. Ferver looked into a number of complaints and found the Japanese completely justified in not taking the garbage because of broken glass and other injurious substances deposited in the cans.  He advised that rules be followed or the garbage would not be picked up .     

     In November 1922, the United States Supreme Court simplified matters for the exclusionists by validating their long-standing contention that Japanese were "aliens ineligible to citizenship."  They based their decision on statutes limiting naturalization to "free white persons and aliens of African nativity."  In 1924, the quota system limiting immigration was extended and the California congressional contingent was successful in getting Japanese exclusion included in the legislation.
     The Japanese government was seriously upset at this exclusion legislation.  When two Japanese were found murdered near Point Firmin on June 20, 1924, the Japanese Consul requested an official inquiry into the deaths. The bodies of M. Yoshioka and Kachema Igarashi were found lying in a pool of blood on the Point Firmin road leading to White’s Point with a 32-caliber pistol lying nearby.  Several bullet holes punctured Yoshioka’s body, while Igarashi appeared to have been shot once, through the right side of the face just above the mouth.  The third finger of his left hand was nearly severed. Detectives disclosed both men were well known gamblers, with a reputation of being crooked, who preyed on the Chinese community.  They were last seen alive with four other Japanese, who could not be found. Police surmised the slaying was solely the result of a gamblers’ feud and had no bearing whatever upon them being Japanese.

    What must be realized in looking at the treatment of Japanese during this time is that it wasn’t merely the work of a minority of Americans.  If the matter had been put to a national vote in the 1920s there is little doubt that it would have been approved by the vast majority of United States citizens.  The discriminations against the Japanese which I’ve mentioned here are clearly blots on the democratic ideals which we so highly prize today.  But the consequences of the anti-Japanese movement were more than moral.  The existence of this prejudice helped to poison relations between the United States and Japan and create the foundations of World War II.  

Sources:

"Bar Japanese is urged by Shortridge speech." LB Press 8/23/1920, 111: 3
"Bids open for removal of garbage." L B Press 10/15/1921, 1:3
"California facing ultimate Japanese control, says Phelan." LB Press 10/22/1920, 21:7
"Japanese farmers on Signal Hill in movement to Texas." LB Press 4/6/1921, 13:4)
"Japanese tell of trouble." LB Press 8/12/1921, 25:1

The Signal Hill Cucumber War

Japanese Settle on Signal Hill

        For many years Signal Hill was part of the vast rancho of Los Cerritos settled by Japanese who established wonderful berry and cucumber farms on its heights.  Like many settling in the Long Beach/Signal Hill area, the Japanese were relatively new arrivals, many came via Hawaii.

         In the latter part of the 19th century, Hawaii began luring Japanese laborers to work on its booming sugar plantations. This was because native Hawaiians, introduced to the diseases of white men, were dying faster than they were being born.  There was a severe labor shortage on the Pacific coast when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was implemented. Wages were substantially higher than in Hawaii.  As a result, many of the Japanese left Hawaii for California when their contracts ran out.

         In all of Southern California there were only 58 Japanese in 1880,  but by 1900 that number had increased to 481.  Among those 481 were twelve men from Wakayama, Japan, who had arrived in the San Pedro area in March of that same year.  One of the men happened to turn over a boulder, near the beach, and, to his astonishment, found an abalone.  From this find sprang a Japanese community that eventually thrived on Terminal Island.

       Japanese farmers came to the area around 1905, many of them tilling the soil in small plots of land around and on Signal Hill.  Not content to remain farm laborers, the Japanese began to buy up agricultural lands, which the Chinese had rented for years, and to organize the industry on a highly efficient basis.  By 1913 the Japanese population of Los Angeles County was listed as 11,500. Farm land owned in California by Japanese, 12,726 acres, assessed in 1912 at $609,605. Farm land leased by Japanese was 1800 acres (LA Herald 4/22/1923).

        Whites, threatened by Japanese success as independent farmers passed the California Alien Land Law of 1913 which banned those born in Japan (known as Issei) from purchasing land in California, but it did allow them to lease acreage for up to three years and keep the land they held if under a corporation.  Subsequent state laws in 1920 and 1923 did away with this corporation loophole, and in 1924 the Federal Immigration Act of 1924 banned all immigration from Japan.

New Method of Raising Winter Crops Originates on Signal Hill

    

Plasticulture, shown here, originated on Signal Hill

        Many of the Japanese who farmed  Signal Hill lived between Orange and Temple and Orange and Cherry.  Their surnames included Kato, Ujeda, Niito, Yamada, Shimizu, Uyemotto, Shimazu, Nishimurri, Suzuki, Uehero, Horano, Minesake, Tanaka, Yasadeke, Kodayashi, and Ogimatsu, according to the U. S. Census. In 1912 these Signal Hill gardeners decided to implement an idea given them by A. G. O’Brien who had come up with a novel way to make money during winter.  The Los Angeles Times (3/24/1912) described the scene on Signal Hill:

            As fast as long strips of sheer cotton can be stitched together, the sides of Signal Hill are being clothed with white. Already thirty-eight acres are screened from chilling dew and a sometimes too-ardent sun for the growing of tender vegetables and strawberries for the winter market. In the past two weeks 132,920 yards of cloth have been sewn together and tacked to frames over seed and plants in the ground. The areas of whitened gardens present a strange sight. It does not require a very great stretch of the imagination, passing the gardens in the moonlight, to liken them to snow-covered hillsides.

        The cost of covering the ground with the muslin cloth was around $200 an acre. O’Brien, the Times reported, had made a profit of $4000 on two acres of cucumbers and strawberries under cloth within the last two months alone. This new idea required hardly any cultivating. After irrigation, the ground kept in moisture. The process of covering the ground was fairly easy:

•         A one-inch plank was placed around the area to be enclosed and at intervals of every six feet, cross pieces were placed to support the cloth.
•        Eyelets were then placed along the edges of the cloth, fitting on hooks in the planking, to help remove the muslin during irrigation, cultivation and picking.

           

        When O’Brien took his cucumbers to the Los Angeles market in late January, his produce was snapped up at prices four times greater than during the summer, when cucumbers were normally being harvested. He kept his secret for over a month before a Japanese farmer who had leased six acres adjoining O’Brien’s decided to copy him. The idea soon spread.  By March 1912 there were about 25 acres of cucumbers, and over ten acres of strawberries under cloth. (Muslin would later be replaced by plastic, aka plasticulture) 

       In August 1916 the Los Angeles Times reported the Signal Hill Cucumber Association was asking for bids on 20,000 yards of muslin and 300 cucumber crates. This would make Signal Hill the largest agricultural district in the country growing crops under cloth.  The Times went on to reveal that Signal Hill growers had furnished more cucumbers the previous year than any other area of the country with the exception of the Imperial Valley. However, during the coming winter Signal Hill farmers were expected to exceed Imperial Valley’s record when they put seventy additional acres under muslin for the raising of cucumbers.  When this was done the south slope of Signal Hill would be almost completely covered with muslin. This additional covered acreage would allow Signal Hill farmers to increase the previous year’s output of 320 carloads of cucumbers to 500.

         The July 4, 1920 Los Angeles Times pronounced Signal Hill the cucumber capital of the state.  In 1920 alone 60 acres produced 55,000 boxes.

        How was the cucumber crop harvested? It took between 50-70 days from planting to picking. Several crops could be planted on the Hill during the year with the use of muslin.  During the heat of the day they would lift the edges of the cloth to provide ventilation. During harvest Japanese pickers would go through the fields with sacks capable of holding 40 pounds of cucumbers draped across their shoulders. A packing shed was set up at the edge of the field with Japanese women doing most of the packing, in addition to helping in field work.

The Cucumber War

        Like other communities, the Japanese settlement on Signal Hill had disagreements that often resulted in violence.

       In May 1917 ten armed guards were ordered by Sheriff Cline to watch the ranch of Tsuchisaburo Kato, a Japanese Signal Hill farmer, who claimed that $20,000 of damage had been done to his crops by enemies who employ "poison plotters.” Investigators for the district attorney sought evidence against those who allegedly poisoned Kato’s cattle and ruined his crops by spraying the plants with poison and tearing acres of plants up by the roots. Kato charged that other Japanese had formed a blackmail syndicate and that unless he joined their organization the poison war would be continued against him. Kato claimed that efforts were made to have him join the Signal Hill Cucumber Growers Association and that when he failed to comply he was told that he would be ruined financially. (LA Herald 5/17/1917)

      At issue was the fact that Kato’s cucumbers grew so well on Signal Hill that they were the first ones to make it to market.  As a result his produce commanded top prices.  Other retailers were upset that he would not hold back on selling his produce so all could share equally in the profits. Kato preferred to remain independent, particularly since his soil and location made it possible for him to harvest the earliest cucumbers.

    After a search which lasted for more than two weeks, H. Kanzaki, was arrested in Coachella Valley. S. Fujishimi, president of the Signal Hill Cucumber Growers Association, and J. Inukai, secretary of the body, were called as witnesses before the grand jury. Following a grand jury investigation, Kansaki, director of the Signal Hill Cucumber Growers’ Association, was charged with having participated in the $20,000 destruction of the crops and fined.

Farmland 1924

       Life was not easy for the new immigrants.  In January 1917, the body of Nagiach Nishizaun washed ashore in Long Beach.  Nishizaun, a well-educated member of an aristocratic Japanese family, had left notes indicating he was going to commit suicide.  His friends said he brooded over the fact that he could never be anything but “a little brown man” in America.

   The Signal Hill Japanese community suffered another setback in December 1918 when a devastating fire hit the residence of cucumber farmer T. Kiama who resided at Summit and Temple on Signal Hill. The Japanese custom of using direct heat applied under the tub for heating bath water caused the tragedy. The floor of Kiama’s home caught fire. He was nearly caught in the conflagration, but managed to escape from his home scantily clad, arousing neighbors. The flames from the house soon spread to the other buildings, consuming three small cottages and a barn before they burned out. In addition to the houses and furnishings a quantity of hay and $l500 worth of new cloth, to be used to protect cucumbers from frost, was burned. Situated outside the city limits, the local fire department could not get to the fire very quickly.  Fortunately no one was injured.    (LA Herald 12/28/1918)

     However, there were frequent joyous moments in the Japanese community.  In July 1918, for example, 30-year-old H. Imamura, who had lived at Pine and Nevada for 16 years, left for San Francisco to claim his bride.  They had grown up together in Japan, and vowed when 14-year-old Imamura left Japan, that they would wait for the other.  Imamura arrived in California penniless.  He worked hard, saving enough money to buy a truck.  He then used the truck to gather fruits and vegetables selling them at a profit. In 1918 he leased 40 acres of land north of Willow Street on Signal Hill to grow potatoes.  He decided he was now settled enough to ask his girl to join him.

           

Cucumber Patch Becomes America’s Richest Town

       The July 6, 1924 Los Angeles Times featured this headline: “Cucumber Patch Becomes America’s Richest Town: Signal Hill, Garden Plot of Three Years Ago, Now Marvel of Petroleum World.” In 1916 sunrise Easter services began to be held on the summit of Signal Hill, worshipers climbing or driving up the winding roads and narrow trails to sing praise to the risen Christ.  But in 1921 things changed.  Black gold was discovered.  Houses, streets and sidewalks were covered with sticky black tar; rocks that came up with the gushers broke through roofs and windows.  The time to leave had come.  Fortunately, many left rich, having leased or sold their Signal Hill real estate.  Yet things remained the same in the adjoining gardening district for a while.  In the shadow of the derricks, farmers in 1921 were still tilling the land and planting their crops.  Celery was the big cash crop of the year, grown along with berries to the east of the hill where the soil was favorable to such produce.  To the west of Signal Hill acres of muslin could be seen covering acres and acres of cucumbers.  The thin material helped diffuse the rays of the sun and accelerated the growth of the vine. Recent rains assured the farmers of a plentiful year and they were wearing smiles just like those of their new neighbors whose oil wells had just “spudded in.”

Discovery well, Signal Hill

     But by 1924 things had changed. In 1921 there were 11,000 square yards of muslin protecting the shoots in the cucumber beds, and Signal Hill was one of the most noted cucumber growing areas in the country.  All this was before the farmers and home owners who loved the beauty of the Hill were aware of the oil that lay beneath them.  Soon the Japanese farmers were displaced, their farm leases not renewed, many moved to Torrance, Downey and Artesia. Within three years of the oil bonanza the farm fields were gone replaced by oil wells and a new city---Signal Hill.

     The 3-square-mile city of Signal Hill was born April 22, 1924. The vote on incorporation was 334 in favor and 211 against. With an assessed valuation of $35,000,000 it was the wealthiest city, per foot, in America. Having only 1500 population, the town’s per capita wealth, based on the assessed valuation, was $23,333.   Mrs. Jessie Elwin Nelson was the new city’s mayor---the first female mayor of Southern California. Trustees included Dr. Arthur E. Pike, Lloyd Williamson, Vernon W. Vore, Ray J. Miller, George H. Cooper, who was also City Clerk; and Anna Goodyear, Treasurer.

       City Attorney Don C. Bowker explained their goals: “We want a good modern town when the derricks are gone. We contemplate building a city hall, a fire department, a library, schools and a jail, maybe.”

        Oil operators said their wells would be producing for fifteen years or a little longer. When the oil derricks were gone even a small lot which sold for $20,000 or more when the oil boom came would be worth a handsome amount as home sites. Reporter Syl MacDowell described the future city: “Homes in a hilltop city, set apart like an Andes kingdom and overlooking a panorama of harbor and industrial activity such as early settlers never imagined.”