Exhibition Script - Museum on Main Street

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The Way We Worked scriptFINDING A NEW HOMEUya Anma (My Mother Dear)Let me take my leave, my mother.Earn money and come home, my child.As I stay home and pray to the gods.To this Hawai’i from the faraway OkinawaWe have come all the way for the sake of money.Thinking it’d only be a few years we came,But we have now grown our roots deep and with green leaves.-Nae Nakosone, Japanese poet who immigrated to Hawai’iEarly Asian Pacific immigrants were recruited for labor-intensive jobs infactories, fields, or private homes in western states and Hawai’i. Manylived under harsh restrictions with little pay, such as the Japanese inHawai’i. But Asian Americans built strong communities where theyworked and carried on cultural traditions.Laborer of Japanese descent packing cauliflower on large-scaleindustrial ranch a few days prior to evacuation,--by Dorothea Lange, Centreville, California, April 1942.National Archives, Records of the War Relocation AuthorityNakosone poem (1880) “Uya Anma (My Mother Dear: A Dialogue)”-- University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Center for Oral HistoryESCAPING POVERTY“I came looking for a way to send them money. . . . I always thought aboutmy mother and my brothers. I never thought about making my life just forme.”- Jesus Martinez, worked as a bracero for nine years until he was able tobring his widowed mother and siblings to AmericaMore than 4.5 million Mexican workers were the heart of the largest guestworker program in U.S. history called the Bracero Program (1942–1964).(Bracero is the Mexican term for seasonal laborer.) When it began,workers were only guaranteed a minimum of 30 cents per hour eventhough the national minimum wage was 45 cents per hour.Mexican irrigator works year round on large-scale farm,--by Dorothea Lange, Eloy District, Pinal County, Arizona, Nov 1940.National Archives, Records of the Bureau of Agricultural EconomicsMartinez interview (2000)--from Bracero History Archive, The Institute of Oral History at theUniversity of Texas at El Paso22
The Way We Worked scriptHOME FRONT OPPORTUNITIES“It was in ’42. My husband just came home one evening and said thatthere was work in Richmond, California, in the shipyards. ‘They’reopening up the Kaiser Shipyard, and I would like to go.’“So I said, ‘Why sure!’“. . . The trains were so full of the people coming out to California. . . I hadto stand up on the train. . . .”- Lucille Preston, joined the Great Migration out of MississippiWorld War II created new jobs that were filled by 15 million Americans.Women and minorities entered the workforce to help with the war effort.A Chinese-American worker at U.S. Navy Yard, Mare Island,California, 1943.-National Archives,Records of Naval Districts and Shore EstablishmentsPreston interview (1985)--from “A World War II Journey: From Clarksdale, Mississippi, toRichmond, California, 1942” by Judith K. Dunning. The BancroftLibrary, University of California, Berkeley.A MOBILE LIFE“I cried when I left, but then I also felt that there was a new day for us inCalifornia because wages were better . . . .“When we left Oklahoma coming out here . . . I had $2 left over when wegot to Bakersfield. Just $2 to feed myself, my husband, and my son andthat’s awful close. We went right on out to the ranch . . . . We got outthere [and] we started work the next day.”- Juanita Price, was a sharecropper and domestic servant beforemoving her family to California in 1936A migrant farming family may move two or three times during the year tofollow crop cycles. Before government camps, Great Depression migrantsbuilt makeshift shelters on land they had to rent weekly.African American cotton pickers ready to go to work in the field,--by Dorothea Lange, Eloy District, Pinal County, Arizona, Nov 1940.National Archives, Records of the Bureau of Agricultural EconomicsPrice interview (1981)--from “California Odyssey: The 1930s Migration to the Southern SanJoaquin Valley,” Oral History Program, California State College,Bakersfield23
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