Alien Land Law

How Alien Land Laws Impacted

Japanese Immigrant Families

Nancy Shiozawa

In March 1790, the newly-formed U.S. Congress passed a law establishing rules for becoming an American citizen. Under the new Rule of Naturalization, only “free white persons” were eligible. People of African descent, indentured servants, and Native Americans were denied citizenship. In 1873 the law was amended to deny citizenship to Chinese and Japanese immigrants, as well.[1]

Some of the first immigrant laborers to arrive were the Chinese. They helped build the country’s railroads and also worked in fisheries and mines. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, ending Chinese immigration for the next 60 years.[2]

With the Chinese excluded, other laborers were needed. In the late 1800s, Japanese immigrants began to arrive. They worked at building railroads, in mines and fisheries, and as agricultural laborers.

Japanese immigrant farmers were innovative and hard-working. In California, as they succeeded and their farms expanded, the resentment of the white farmers grew. They appealed to their lawmakers to stop the Japanese. The result was the 1913 California Alien Land Law. The law prohibited Japanese immigrants from buying agricultural land or leasing it longer than three years. The justification for the law was that Japanese were ineligible for citizenship because they were not “free white persons.” As non-citizens they were not eligible to buy farmland. In the next decade, 15 states adopted restrictive laws similar to California’s.[3]

Idaho adopted an Alien Land Law in 1923. Here are some examples of how early Southeast Idaho Japanese farmers were impacted by this law:

Heijiro Shiozawa arrived in San Francisco in 1905 and for several years he worked on the railroad and on farms in Utah and Idaho. In 1911 he married Kane Fukura, a picture bride, and they settled on the Matthais farm in Rigby, Idaho, where they worked and raised their family.[4] Heijiro leased the Matthais farm for 28 years. In 1940 Mrs. Matthais died and the farm lease was terminated. Because Idaho’s law prohibited immigrant Japanese from buying farmland, Heijiro was not able to buy the land he had farmed for so many years.[5]

Yohei Tanabe was born in 1881 in Shizuoka, Japan. He emigrated in 1907, worked his way to Idaho on a railroad gang, and once here he decided to try farming. He, too, married a picture bride, Tomiko Fujiwara, and together they settled north of Pocatello. Yohei leased a large farm north of Pocatello for many years. It was a prosperous farm and good land, but the law kept him from buying it in his own name.[6] Bannock County records show that in the 1930s the Tanabe family purchased 80 acres of farm land north of Pocatello in the names of two young adults: Sanaye Tanabe (Yohei’s oldest daughter) and George Shiozawa (Heijiro’s son and future husband of Yohei’s second daughter, May).[7] These two young American-born citizens of Japanese ancestry bought the land, something Yohei could never have done at the time.

A similar situation impacted the Toji Fujimoto family of Rexburg. For nearly 35 years the Fujimotos farmed rented land in the Rexburg area. In 1937, Masayoshi Fujimoto, Toji’s American-born son, purchased 120 acres of farmland for the family, land that Toji could not buy because of the law.

This type of transaction was repeated many times and on many farms during those years. It was through land purchases made by Nisei children that Japanese Americans could finally own the land they farmed.[8]

In 1952 Congress adopted the McCarran-Walter Act, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, making it illegal to deny citizenship -- and the privileges of citizenship such as land ownership -- based on race.[9]