AUTHOR: Masao Suzuki

PAGES: 34     DATE: August 2000

ABSTRACT: Opposition to immigration from Japan led a number of states to pass Alien Land Laws, which barred Japanese immigrants from buying or leasing farmland in the early 1900s. While there is general agreement that California's first Alien Land Law in 1913 had little impact, historians and social scientists that study Japanese Americans have long differed over the effectiveness of California's 1920 Alien Land Law, which closed many of the loopholes in the earlier law. Using data on farm tenure, farm product prices, and land prices, this paper argues that the agricultural downturn of the 1920s cannot fully explain the decline in Japanese immigrant agriculture following 1920. Further Census data shows that the 1920 California Alien Land Law did indeed have negative consequences for Japanese American agriculture over both the short and long run.

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