Vietnamese and Japanese Americans in California: A Teaching Guide

Introduction

This paper reviews two subcultures in the State of California: Vietnamese Americans and Japanese Americans. Each subculture has had distinct reasons for emigrating to the United States, arriving at different times and under specific circumstances. The paper argues that the relative success of these two subgroups stems from the cultural characteristics they brought from their home countries, combined with particular freedoms available to them in the United States.

The paper also addresses the different receptions each community encountered. Vietnamese Americans arrived primarily in the 1970s and 1980s to a largely receptive country, while Japanese immigrants came in the early twentieth century to a nation harboring substantial prejudice against Asians — prejudice that culminated in the "Jap scare" of World War II and the disgrace of Japanese internment camps throughout the Western United States.

Vietnamese Sub-Culture in California

Most Vietnamese came to the United States at or shortly after the 1975 end of the Vietnam War. Many were middle-class professionals, military officers, or government officials who had collaborated with the United States. During the subsequent chaos of the North Vietnamese takeover of South Vietnam — and the war in Cambodia that followed — many of these individuals were able to escape through the payment of bribes (Do, 1999).

Vietnamese families have a strong family-support ethic, even in comparison to other Southeast Asian cultures. In many cases, families in Vietnam were able to send their most capable or English-speaking relatives to the United States to work at entry-level jobs and save enough money to ransom additional family members. While commonly referred to as the "boat people," many Vietnamese actually exited their country through unofficial or semi-official payments to government officials. The amounts paid could reach several thousand dollars per person, placing an enormous burden on the earliest Vietnamese immigrants to accumulate savings as quickly as possible and remit them home.

The first Vietnamese immigrants of the 1970s were those brought over with U.S. government assistance — generally senior military officials who would have faced imprisonment or death if left behind. The United States facilitated the emigration of interim Vietnamese President Ky, former head of the Air Force, along with his staff and a number of additional military officers and government officials. Though Ky's role in the United States is disputed, he and the earliest immigrants used their wealth and connections to help bring subsequent waves of middle-class government and military personnel through indirect means.

The composition of Vietnamese immigration began to shift in the late 1970s and early 1980s — the era of the "boat people." Desperate to leave with their entire families, Vietnamese refugees would pay fishermen, pirates, and captains of small freighters to ferry them clandestinely away from the Vietnamese coast. Hong Kong, nearly 1,000 miles away, was a preferred destination because its government generally attempted to transfer Vietnamese refugees onward to a receptive United States as quickly as possible. Reception in Malaysia, Thailand, and other neighboring countries was considerably less welcoming.

Once these families arrived on California shores, their circumstances varied considerably. Although the first wave of privileged Vietnamese received government and private assistance, subsequent arrivals were largely left to fend for themselves. Doctors, lawyers, and former business owners took menial jobs to support their families. In California, Vietnamese immigrants settled in clusters where they could speak their own language — most notably in Whittier and southern Los Angeles and Long Beach, where "Little Vietnam" exists to this day.

The children of Vietnamese immigrants, for the most part, excelled in American schools (Zhou, 1998). Numerous accounts describe children who arrived in California speaking no English and graduated near the top of their class within a few years (Kao, 1995). Their academic performance was so consistently strong that it attracted extensive scholarly attention. The primary explanations appear to be: (1) a deep respect for the sacrifices their parents and relatives made, which instilled a strong sense of obligation, and (2) parents' intense commitment to ensuring their children advanced as far as possible educationally and professionally.

Two notable exceptions to this pattern exist: Vietnamese gangs and the Hmong. Not all Vietnamese children adapted successfully to American life. A violent gang culture centered in Little Vietnam became a serious law enforcement challenge in the 1980s and beyond. The Hmong, a highland people from Vietnam, assimilated poorly by comparison. Unlike their lowland compatriots, the Hmong had relatively little exposure to modern urban culture. They continue to experience disproportionately high rates of poverty and dependence on public assistance, despite significant U.S. government support — a legacy of their recruitment to fight against the Viet Cong.

Japanese Americans in California

Japanese Americans have achieved success in ways similar to Vietnamese Americans, but at a different historical moment and for different reasons. The opening of Japan by Commodore Perry in 1854 brought profound changes to Japanese culture and governance. A population explosion in the late 1800s and early 1900s, combined with strong demand for labor on the U.S. West Coast, drove a significant wave of Japanese emigration to California during that period. These immigrants took on menial work in agriculture, on railroads, and at the docks. Unlike the Vietnamese, many Japanese immigrants were peasants rather than middle-class professionals — yet they brought with them their culture's strong work ethic and deep family values.

The Immigration Act of 1924 imposed severe restrictions on Asian immigration during the era of the "Yellow Scare," effectively halting Japanese immigration. Although some Issei (first-generation) and Nisei (second-generation) Japanese Americans arrived after that point, the majority of Japanese-American families trace their U.S. roots to before that date. They faced considerable discrimination alongside other Asian communities (Daniels, 1977). Despite this, Japanese Americans were able to integrate into broader American society while preserving their language and values. Many settled in California's Central Valley, where they cultivated high-intensity, high-value truck farm crops for the growing urban markets of California.

The attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 triggered a "Jap scare" that led to the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in camps throughout the Western United States. Despite the profound injustice of this episode, Japanese Americans demonstrated remarkable resilience (Kitano, 1969). Their community's focus on family values and educational achievement ultimately produced academic and professional excellence across California and the rest of the country. Unlike some later immigrant groups, Japanese Americans chose to immerse themselves as fully as possible in mainstream American culture after World War II. As a result, Japantowns — once common and sizable before the war — never regained their earlier prominence, as most Japanese Americans chose to live in the general population in cities and suburbs, or to return to farming in one of the world's most productive agricultural regions.