Strangers From A Different Shore: Chapter 2

"Slavery is nothing compared to it" oddly contrasts with the positive light that Chinese labourers are cast in while being described by William Hooper as very efficient.

Takaki takes foreigners and puts them up with the idea of American Prosperity, making the claim that the transformation of the American West into a "locus of 'industry and national prosperity'" would not have been possible without foreign labour.

It's interesting that Takaki provides a more complete history of what he's talking about rather than focusing solely on the role of Asian Americans.  This aids in the understanding of exactly how Asian Americans fitted in.

The labourers were treated as commodities so much to the extent that they had to be "controlled" via maintaining a diverse labour force, translating to "ordering" a specific number of each kind.

The managers of the plants effectively developed social engineering techniques to maximise output, such as encouraging racist remarks to "encourage" the Hawaiians to perform better.

It's funny how the immigration laws of the United States clashed with the hiring practices of Hawaiian plants, when to an immigrant both of them could be seen as the enemy.

It's odd that Takaki doesn't elaborate much on the actual success of the "control through diversity" practices.

Takaki describes the "Push" and the "Pull" of Asian labourers, which has recently been criticized.  What better ways are there to describe the immigration and emigration factors?

The type of industry impacted social conditions for immigrating labourers.  There was a higher demand for cheap, mobile labour in "frontier" industries (California), which translated to larger amounts of discrimination.  In effect, Chinese immigrants were treated only as nicely as could be afforded.

The differences in the ruling bodies of China and Japan led to significantly different relationships between said country and the U.S.  While Chinese immigrants entered into Hawaii and the U.S. largely independently, the Japanese government encouraged individuals to either move further North to more industrialized centers, or to profit in the U.S. while representing their country (regulations in emigration were put into place for this purpose.)  While to China the U.S. was the other end of a floodgate to escape hardship, to Japan the U.S. was a stepping stone to better living conditions and industrialisation.

The U.S. was viewed universally in Asia as a "dream land."

It's very interesting to contrast the perspectives and relevant history of the Asian immigrants with those of the managers and business men who saw the labourers as commodities.

Each nationality's section in this chapter reads like its own chapter.  The repeat of main ideas, such as the value of women in Hawaii makes each "section" largely independant from the others.