Focusing on Los Angeles farmland during the years between the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Japanese Internment in 1942, Transborder Los Angeles weaves together the narratives of Mexican and Japanese immigrants into a single transpacific history. In this book, Yu Tokunaga moves from international relations between Japan, Mexico, and the US to the Southern California farmland, where ethnic Japanese and Mexicans played a significant role in developing local agriculture, one of the major industries of LA County before World War II. Japanese, Mexicans, and white Americans developed a unique triracial hierarchy in farmland that generated both conflict and interethnic accommodation by bringing together local issues and international concerns beyond the Pacific Ocean and the US-Mexico border. Viewing these experiences in a single narrative form, Tokunaga breaks new ground, demonstrating the close relationships between the ban on Japanese immigration, Mexican farmworkers' strikes, wartime Japanese removal, and the Bracero Program.

About the Author

Yu Tokunaga is Associate Professor of History at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies with a joint appointment at the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan.

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Understanding the History of Japanese-Mexican Relations and Nurturing Empathy Toward Others

By Yu Tokunaga, author of Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations“Lo voy a comprar 👏 Felicidades!!!” I recently received this comment from my Costa Rican friend after posting on Facebook about my new book, Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown Transpa

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Exploring Japanese-Mexican Relations in Los Angeles and the US-Mexico
Borderlands

1. The 1924 Immigration Act and Its Unintended Consequence in the US-Mexico Borderlands
2. The Deepening of Japanese-Mexican Relations in Triracial Los Angeles
3. Transpacific Borderlands: Japanese Farmers and Mexican Workers in the 1933
El Monte Berry Strike
4. Ethnic Solidarity or Interethnic Accommodation: The 1936 Venice Celery Strike
5. Japanese Internment as an Agricultural Labor Crisis: Wartime Debates over
Food Security versus Military Necessity
6. Enduring Interethnic Trust in Rancho San Pedro
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Learn More

Interview with Yu Tokunaga on newbnooksnetwork.com

Reviews

"Tokunaga’s book, by drawing on multiple languages and emphasizing the fluidity and dynamism in the construction of race, ethnicity, and national boundaries between Japan, Mexico, and the United States, offers more than enough to think about in terms of transnational histories of Japanese America."
— California History

"Transborder Los Angeles is a novel and fascinating study of Southern California agriculture during the interwar period."
— Pacific Historical Review

"One of the many strengths of this work is Tokunaga’s skilled use of English-language, Spanish-language, and Japanese-language sources. This allows Tokunaga to intertwine the varied and diverse perspectives of Japanese immigrants in Mexico and the United States, Mexican immigrants in the United States, and the governments of all three nations into one complex and compelling narrative."
— Journal of American History

"The book is accessible to the reader and highlights the delicate relationship between transborder communities, Japanese immigrant farmers, Mexican laborers, and how they competed for power."

— Agricultural History

"Utilizing the concept of Los Angeles farmland as a transpacific workplace, Yu Tokunaga provides a stunning analysis of the triracial hierarchy of Southern California agriculture. The changing relationships between Japanese tenant farmers, white landowners, and Mexican workers through adaptation to new immigration laws, labor strikes, and Japanese internment display surprising fluidity and mutual dependency in this transborder region."—George J. Sanchez, author of Boyle Heights: How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of American Democracy

"This work masterfully brings the transnational histories of ethnic Japanese and Mexican communities in Southern California into dialogue. Tokunaga innovates in demonstrating how Los Angeles agriculture operated through a unique triracial hierarchy in which Japanese farmers leased land from white landowners and then hired Mexican laborers to help work the land. As a result, in the case of labor strike by Mexican workers, Japanese immigrant farmers were caught in the middle."—Greg Robinson, author of After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics

"This fascinating book illuminates Los Angeles's development as a transpacific and transborder area through the lens of relations between Mexican workers, Japanese growers, and Mexican and Japanese states. Using Japanese sources as well as others, the author explores these changing relations through the social earthquake of large agricultural strikes near Los Angeles in the 1930s, adding depth and richness to accounts of strikes in El Monte and Venice and successfully placing these events within broader transnational paradigms."—Devra Anne Weber, Professor Emerita of History, University of California, Riverside

Awards

Shimizu Hiroshi Award 2023 2023, Japanese Association for American Studies

About the Book