Chinese Rosie Riveter: chinese-american feminism during WW2

The Chinese Rosie Riveter:

Chinese American Women during World War II

History: Gender and Migration Seminar
Prof. Jose Moya, Columbia University, Fall 2007

I.               Introduction

World War II marked an improvement in the status of Chinese-American women in the United States. The population of women of Chinese origin in the United States dramatically increased due to favorable immigration legislation during the war. Between 1945 and 1950, 7449 Chinese women entered the United States and represented 80% of Chinese immigrants, and the ratio of Chinese men to women in the United States fell from 18.9 to 1 in 1900 to a more normal 1.7 to 1 in 1950.[1] Chinese women also played a stronger role in community associations and increased civic participation during and after the war. Their activism was rooted in a transnational concern for defending China against Japanese invasion. First, their fundraising efforts for the war allowed them to expand their public role. Second, their access to jobs in a wartime economy allowed them to extend their employment outside of Chinatown, and after the war, they managed to sustain their employment gains. Although the new pool of Chinese immigrants after World War II was composed of women of a different social demographic, often having been pushed to immigrate for political rather than economic factors, and being generally better educated than Chinese immigrants of the past, their career success in the United States and their ability to work and assimilate outside Chinatown were positively influenced by the efforts of Chinese-American women during World War II.

1. I.               Background on Gender in Chinese Immigration to the United States

Since the first significant wave of Chinese immigration to the United States in the 1840’s, Chinese immigration had always been gender-biased towards male sojourners whose intentions were to labor for a short period of time in order to send remittances to China. The primary reason for this self-selecting gender bias was the nature of the work available to Chinese immigrants during the early 1800’s, concentrated predominantly in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and mining during the Californian Gold Rush. These labor opportunities were physically demanding and extended only to male workers. Since most early Chinese migrants perceived their stay to be only temporary, they deemed it unnecessary to bring their wives over to the United States. Furthermore, migrant marriage in China was used as a way of assuring a man’s loyalty and intention to return after making his fortune, so migrants often left wives and children in China as a sort of social collateral on their remittance obligations; having a family in China forced male laborers to remain dedicated to their familial responsibilities and stay more firmly rooted to their homeland.[2]

While many historians cite cultural gender roles as the primary reason for why far fewer Chinese women than Chinese men immigrated to the United States, historian Xiajian Zhao argued that American immigration policies played a greater role in enforcing gender discrimination. It is certainly true that China’s patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal society limited women to the role of child-bearing and serving their parents-in-law, that it did not allow women the freedom to make independent migration decisions. However, according to Zhao “the establishment of the so-called bachelor society…was not a choice made by the Chinese; it was the result of discriminatory legislation against the Chinese in the United States.”[3]

The Page Law of 1875, which forbade entry of Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian contract prostitutes, laborers, and felons also made the entry of Chinese wives into the country very difficult. Women were charged extra fees for their applications to leave the country, and they had to undergo harrowing and humiliating examinations by American consuls. Upon the enforcement of the Page Act, the number of women admitted to the United States decreased by fifty eight percent, from 626 per year between 1869 and 1874 to 265 per year between 1875 and 1881. Furthermore, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forbade immigration of Chinese laborers, and prohibited the Chinese from gaining citizenship, along with its 1884 amendment that accorded “laborer” status to all wives of laborers regardless of whether or not they worked in China, restricted the immigration of Chinese women to merchants’ wives, also significantly reducing the number of female immigrants. [4] Anti-miscegenation laws in many states also made it illegal for Chinese men to marry women of other races.

Since Chinese migration was a network-driven process, with kin bringing over kin, and friends of the same village sponsoring each other as family, U.S. laws that restricted Chinese women’s ability to become a citizen strongly influenced the family economics of Chinese migration. These laws made it more pragmatic for men to sponsor other men as sons, even if they were not actually blood-related, rather than sponsor their own daughters, in order to maximize the number of possible entries.[5] The Married Women Law of 1855 allowed an alien woman to gain citizenship upon marriage to a male American citizen, but this law did not work the other way around; women’s citizenships were determined by their husbands, and if a female citizen married an alien, she would have to forfeit her own citizenship. This made it impossible for Chinese female migrants to employ the same process as Chinese men in bringing over spouses, and thus reduced their value in the family economics of migration. After women won their suffrage in the United States, the Cable Act of 1922 allowed certain non-Chinese women to determine their own citizenship, but this law prohibited the granting of citizenship to a woman who married a person “ineligible for citizenship.” This law, in effect, targeted the Chinese who were rendered ineligible for citizenship under the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882. These policies, which were repeatedly supported in federal and state courtrooms, made it impractical for male Chinese-American citizens to sponsor daughters for entry because their daughters could not in turn sponsor other Chinese men for citizenship and continue the network-driven immigration process.[6] For these pragmatic reasons, Chinese-American immigrants, such as Lew Chuck Suey in the early 1900s, when given one slot for a declared child, would rather sponsor another man’s son to enter the United States than his own daughter.[7]

Due to discriminatory legislation, which compounded existing economic and cultural gender biases for immigration, the population of Chinese women in the United States in 1920 was only 1,724. The ratio of men to women in 1860 was more than eighteen to one. After World War II, the population of Chinese women had increased to 9,218 and the ratio of men to women in 1950 had dropped to a more normal 1.7 to 1.[8] Legislation passed during World War Two, namely the War Brides Act of 1945 and the Fiancees and Fiances of War Veterans Act of 1946, and to a lesser extent the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, significantly increased the population of Chinese women in the United States. The activism of Chinese women during the war changed their public roles while the war labor market allowed for women to work outside of Chinatown for the first time. Though the demographics of Chinese female immigrants after World War II differ in many ways from pre-war demographics, this essay argues that the public efforts of Chinese-American women during World War II play a significant role in setting the stage for a stronger female identity and public role for Chinese-Americans after the war.

1. III.           Chinese-American Women’s Community Activism During World War II

            Chinese-American women’s activism during World War II was characterized by the transnational motivations of immigrant identity. Since the fall of the Qing dynasty, when China became weakened and divided by foreign imperialism, and Japan rapidly modernized to develop a stronger military and economy, Chinese-Americans witnessed the preferential treatment of Japanese-Americans in immigration legislation over Chinese-Americans. Though the U.S. limited migration of laborers from both China and Japan, Chinese laborers were insolently prevented entry through the 1882 Exclusion Act whereas the Japanese garnered a more dignified Gentleman’s Agreement with the U.S., in which the Japanese government could exercise some autonomy in self-limiting the entry of laborers to the United States.[9] Chinese-Americans in the early 20^th Century strongly believed that if China were more powerful economically and militarily, then it would be better able to protect its overseas migrants and their descendants from acts of economic and racial discrimination, such as the San Francisco massacre of Chinese immigrants in 1871 and the institutionalized racism that surrounded it. Therefore, Chinese-Americans reasoned that the way towards a better life in the United States lied in improving the position of China in the world. In the words of historian Sucheng Chan, the Chinese in America “consciously placed their own futures within the folds of China, devoting tremendous energy to the revival of China and the protection of its dignity and sovereignty” because they “comprehended their experiences and negotiated their positions more often within a context of global geopolitics than in the context of American race relations. They believed that only a revitalized China could protect its emigrants.”[10]

The transnational paradigm for improving the standing of Chinese-Americans in the United States was also a key mechanisms for strengthening the roles of Chinese-American women in public and political life. Motivated by the desire to help China, particularly to aid the women and children who suffered from Japanese massacres in Nanking, Shanghai, and other parts of the country, Chinatown women formed many women’s war fund-raising organizations, such as the Chinese Women’s Associations in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland; the New Life Associations in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Boston; and the countless other female-led organizations that sprouted up in the months and years after September 18, 1931, when Japan first invaded Manchuria. [11] Organizations were divided along class lines, with the poorest class of Chinese immigrants contributing to the war effort through sewing projects for soldiers and the sales of patriotic scarves, lucky buttons, and handmade flowers and crafts; while more wealthy Chinese-American women organized drama benefits, raffles, parades, jewelry auctions, and fashion shows.[12] In San Francisco alone, there were seven women’s organizations, which would have been an unthinkable number before the Sino-Japanese War. These organizations strengthened Chinese women’s roles in several ways: first, they gave women an opportunity to practice civics and engage in community politics; second, their fund-raising success and subsequent acknowledgement and appreciation from China gave them credibility as a social group with the power to influence national and international affairs; and third, their engagement of European-Americans in their fund-raising efforts through popular parades and festival days such as the Rice Bowl showed a new face of Chinese women to the American public: as noble, hard-working, charitable, and sociable individuals.[13]

The measures that Chinatown women took to help in the war effort were often gendered, feminine measures. Historian Judy Yung wrote that fund-raising was regarded as a woman’s occupation because men often felt that soliciting for money was shameful, and believed that it would be harder for people to refuse a woman than a man.[14] The women’s organizations organized parades and parties, including the famous Rice Bowls that thundered through the streets of San Francisco, and drew enormous crowds of people from outside Chinatown into the parade. Female organizers in the Rice Bowl sold “Humanity buttons” alongside the Chinese performers, and collected substantial donations. The first Rice Bowl, which took place on June 17, 1938 raised $55,000; the second was extended to three days from February 9-11, 1940, and raised $87,000; the third, from May 2-5, 1941, raised $93,000.[15] In addition, the Chinatown Women’s Association raised $30,000 in 1938 by organizing a week-long charity bazaar, a nine-day fundraising campaign, a parade, and a street festival.[16] They also helped to orchestrate the first Chinese American beauty pageant took place in Chinatown, under the leadership of the CCBA and the Chinese Hospital Association. According to historian Peter Kwok, “sixty Chinese American women took part in the contest, and the fund-raising was a great success. The crowning of the beauty queen [was] chosen not for her physical or intellectual attributes, but based on her ability to sell fund-raising tickets.”[17] The annual Miss Chinatown beauty pageant continues to exist to this day, and perhaps ironically, there continue to be many women involved in the leadership of this fundraising effort.

The second generation of Chinese-American women eagerly organized alongside their mothers. Alice Fong Yu, an American-born Chinese woman, started the Square and Circle Club, one of the first Chinatown youth clubs in the United States, and gathered a group of young Chinese-American women to help in the war effort. Judy Yung wrote that the Square and Circle Club “became particularly well-known for two female-gendered activities: fashion show benefits and the boycott against silk stockings.”[18] Since Japan produced 90 percent of the world’s silk stockings, the Square and Circle Club sought to hurt the Japanese war effort by hurting its economy. The Non-Silk movement, which was endorsed by movie stars such as Loretta Young, Sylvia Sidney, and Frances Farmer, gained a lot of momentum inside and outside Chinatown, and was extremely effective. In 1938, Japan’s export of silk was reduced by three fifths of the quantity exported only two years before.[19] Alice Fong Yu wrote very poignantly to her fellow Chinese-American women in the Chinese Digest in November 1938: “Silk is the lifeline which connects Japan with credit and resources abroad, and Chinese women in America can exert considerable strength toward severing this strong and important link.”[20] Yu recognized that Chinese-American women can be a powerful social and political group, one that can effectively use its resources to help China fight Japan. Her ability to organize not only Chinese women but also work along with European American women demonstrates the new influence that second generation Chinese American women’s organizations were exercising during the war.

The war effort united Chinese women of different generations. According the March 1938 Chinese Digest:

Practically every sizeable Chinese organization in America is now going out individually or has teamed up with other organizations to raise war refugee relief funds in their own communities and elsewhere. For the first time the second generation has suddenly realized how much their motherland means to them now that it is in danger of being conquered and the young men and women have gone in to raise relief money side by side with the older generation.[21]

Fund-raising and sewing were ways for women to aid the masculine war effort with “feminine” skills. However, women also participated directly in political action. The Chinese Women’s Organization wrote to various American newspaper editors that were advocating for the U.S. to take a “hands-off” policy with regard to China. They demanded that the U.S. uphold the Nine-Power Treaty and the Kellog-Briand Pact, and help settle international disputes peaceably, by applying pressure to stop Japanese massacres in China. Dr. Margaret Chung, who spearheaded relief work within the American Red Cross and led Chinese-American women in December 1937 in sewing ten thousand inner garments for wounded soldiers in Shanghai, also used her social connections to push successfully for the WAVES bill in 1942 that allowed women into the navy. Chinese-American women also were the majority in the protest and strike of the longshoremen at the S.S. Spyros, owned by Japan’s Mitsui Company, which shipped American arms to Japan. The protest, on December 16, 1938, with the support of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) resulted in continued activism in which women played a major role in lobbying Congress for the eventual prohibited sales of arms to Japan.[22]

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and U.S. officially joined in World War II, hundreds of Chinese-American women volunteered to participate directly in the war effort, mainly as nurses and translators, but also as members of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and the navy Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services (WAVES).[23] In 1943, WAC recruited 50 Chinese-American women to serve in the Army Air Force, and the height and weight standard was lowered for these women in what was called the Madame Chiang Kai Shek Air WAC unit. Of these pilots, Maggie Gee and Ah Ying Lee became the best known female heroes of the Chinese-American community. Women pilots in China’s Air Force were also seen as heroes. One reporter for the Chinese Students and Youth Publication wrote of Chinese aviator Lee Ya Ching, “She not only brings glory to China’s Air Force but she does likewise for all Chinese women.”[24]

Hundreds of more women supported the war by working in the defense industry, building ships and war materials, as well as performing administrative jobs, and their work helped to build a sense of gender equality in the Chinese community. In the words of Madame Chiang Kai-shek: “We women are citizens, just as much as are our men…our line of usefulness may be different but each must do what best can be done to contribute our share to rescue our nation from defeat and slavery.”[25] The transnational concern for China during the war also brought about unity within the contentious Chinatown communities, and in this unusual climate of unity, women were able to garner a voice for the first time in organizational decision-making.

Since the 1840’s, Chinatowns across the United States were divided into highly contentious associations of kinsmen and merchant tongs. But during the war, Chinese Digest wrote of a newfound sense of solidarity in Chinatown, “For the first time in the community’s history, every group, faction, clique, society, association, and lodge joined hands and fraternized with each other.”[26] These organizations, which had historically been heavily patriarchic without any visible female leadership, now for the first time welcomed representatives from women’s organizations, who were allowed to participate as equals in the deliberations of the Chinese Six Companies, otherwise known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the most powerful organization in Chinatowns across the United States. The voice that Chinese-American women garnered at this time within the ranks of leadership in the ethnic enclave would remain after the war. Chinese-American women developed and exercised powerful social and political organizing skills, and they would retain these skills during times of peace.

The willingness of Chinatown organizations at this time to accept women into the ranks of leadership owed in part to the willingness of political parties in China to acknowledge the importance of women in war efforts. Xiang Dingrong, a Nationalist party representative, reportedly said at an anti-Japanese rally in Hangzhou that “every woman has a responsibility for the rise and fall of a nation.”[27] His outright support for women’s activism inspired Chinese women in the mainland and overseas, and his words became a rallying cry for the war effort. [28] In fact, Chinese army leaders called out to overseas Chinese women for help. A Chinese Times editorial by Man Yun urged:

We must understand that the Chinese Women’s Movement and the liberation of the Chinese people are inseparable. Chinese women make up half of the country’s population. United they represent a great force. Women who love their country and who don’t want to sell out should organize and mobilize this force, answer to the call of our leaders, and use whatever knowledge and abilities they have for the war effort. By contributing to country and humanity, women can thus prove they are as valuable as men. When women have fulfilled their responsibilities to national salvation, society will naturally give wide support to the women’s movement.[29]

Historian Yung stated that many Chinese American women believed Man Yun’s message: that only by liberating China could women liberate themselves and that the women’s movement should be directed to mobilizing for the war effort. Thus many participated with the hopes that their active contributions would “prove they are valuable” and worthy of gender equality.

The capital that Chinese Americans sent to China during the war was very important to the war effort, and Chinese Americans were courted by Chinese political parties. They were recognized as an important constituency, and they participated actively in China’s political discourse even though they were overseas. Chinese American political donations to revolutionary parties were especially notable, particularly the vast amounts purportedly donated to Sun Yat Sen, who relied on his personal connections in China and the United States for much of his initial financing.[30] Economic historian Yong Chen wrote that Chinese-American remittances during the war totaled more than four times the size of Chinese international trade deficit.[31] This amount was more than four times the remittances sent between 1914 and 1930, so the extra money that Chinese-Americans sent to their families at home “injected much needed foreign currency into the Chinese economy,” and it “empowered Chinese Americans and significantly improved their status in China as they found important allies in their struggles against racism in the United States.”[32]

Chinese-American women, who played a major role in fund-raising for China’s war effort, benefited from the recognition they received for their activism, and were rewarded with greater public roles in Chinatowns across the United States. The transnational nature of their ascent in power in the community is worth noting as an interesting continuation of the migrant experience. Even second-generation women leaders such as Maggie Gee, Jade Snow Wong, Eva Lowe, all wrote about the importance of their childhood visits to China in contributing to their motivations for political activism during the war.[33] Furthermore, Chinese nationalist leaders such as Sun Yat-Sen, Liang Qichao, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who graduated from Wellesley College, also wrote about the importance of their experiences as Chinese American scholars in shaping their world view. Activism for better treatment of the Chinese was transnational. Just as the Chinese in America protested and boycotted the Japanese during the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese in Beijing had also protested and boycotted American goods in 1905 in protest of America’s discriminatory laws. The transnational effects of Chinese-American political action are worth studying as another part of migration studies: the continued migration of power structures and political activism.

Ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown serve as a portal between two nations and its residents are double ambassadors to the Chinese and American peoples. One of the most important results of Chinese American women’s activism during the Sino-Japanese War and World War II was the impact it made on the perception of European Americans towards Chinese Americans. According to historians Peter Kwok and Dusanka Miscevic, the American Left came to the aid of Chinese-Americans because they were “particularly troubled by Japan’s pretext of preventing the spread of communism to justify its attacks on China and its hostility toward the Soviet Union. Consequently, many people in the United States recognized the need to support China in order to check the expansion of Japan and, by extension, to combat the worldwide menace of fascism.”[34]  Thus, as representatives of China, Chinese-Americans benefited from America’s position in the international war, and began to be portrayed more positively in the media. Chinese American women were particularly well-portrayed for their hard work in the shipyards and these representations helped to open up occupation opportunities for them outside of Chinatown in a variety of blue collar and white collar positions.[35] One important, non-monetary value of the Rice Bowl parties in Chinatown was that it showed a more sympathetic face of Chinese-Americans to European-Americans, and vice versa. According to an article in the Chinese Digest:

Chinatownians had always known the sympathy generosity of the American people toward the people of China. But whereas before they had only read or been told of it, on the night of June 17 they saw it – saw it in the faces of 200,000 Americans as they milled into Chinatown, as they vied on purchasing “Humanity” badges, and as they literally poured money into rice bowls placed everywhere for that purpose. The cause of this active sympathy was pithily expressed in four Chinese characters written on a strip of rice paper pasted in front of a store which read: “America Believes in Righteousness .“[36]
On February 18, 1943, when Madame Chiang Kai-shek gave her resounding address to Congress urging the United States to join China against Japan, the American media responded to her well-spoken humanitarian plea. According to an article in Time magazine, “one grizzled Congressman [said] ‘I never saw anything like it. Madame Chiang had me on the verge of bursting into tears.”….Madame Chiang and China know the meaning of endurance. Through this woman, a few Americans saw and understood China.”[37] Life magazine devoted a full-page photo to Madame Chiang and praised “her appearance, her understanding of American democratic principles, and her general impact on those present.”[38]According to the Life article: “If the Generalissimo could take the Japs as Madame took Congress, the war in the Pacific would be over in the bat of an eyelash.”[39] Madame Chiang’s continued tour of the United States made a huge impact on Americans and Chinese Americans alike. In the words of a second generation Chinese American woman Helen Pon Onyett, whose family lived in Connecticut:

Really at that time, even being second generation, it was a little difficult being in the minority. You weren’t really a part of things. Then when World War II happened, everyone couldn’t do enough for China. And Madame Chiang Kai-Shek came and provoked a lot of sympathy and everyone started feeling, we are Americans and we should support China. And I could feel the reaction toward me. We were the only Chinese family in town, and their reaction toward us was really a turnabout.[40]

With the turn in Congressional and public sympathy, it became an embarrassment for the Untied States to carry on the Exclusion Acts against the Chinese. World War II, which hurt the standing of Japanese Americans who were unjustly placed in internment camps, was beneficial to Chinese Americans in that it facilitated the necessitated of the Chinese Exclusion Acts in 1943, and improved the lives of immigrants already in the U.S. by allowing them to attain citizenship and bring over many more wives and children. In the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, as he announced the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Acts in 1943:

I regard this legislation as important in the cause of winning the war and of establishing a secure peace. China is our ally. For many long years she stood alone in the fight against aggression. Today we fight at her side…By the repeal of the Chinese exclusion laws, we can correct a historic mistake and silence the distorted Japanese propaganda.[41]
Historian Yong Chen described the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Acts as a “victory won via the transnational practices of Chinese Americans.”[42] Their support of China during the war in turn empowered them as a Chinese political constituency. Chinese leaders in turn pressured American government to open up discriminatory immigration policy. As representatives of an American ally in a transnational war, Chinese Americans, particularly women, improved their public image in the minds of the American people and in their own communities. This improvement of representation was important in opening up labor opportunities to Chinese American women during and after World War II.

 

1. II.             Chinese-American Women’s Access to Jobs During World War II

The change in Chinese Americans gendered labor relations during World War II stemmed from a background of employment changes the Great Depression. The U.S. economy was hit hard during the 1930’s and many Chinese American men lost their jobs. However, according to historian Yung, most Chinese women continued to find employment because their jobs were located in gendered occupations such as domestic service and sewing that were less severely impacted than the jobs of Chinese men in restaurants, seasonal laboring, and small businesses such as laundry. “Less affected by unemployment than their men and encouraged by the political conditions of the depression era,” Yung wrote, “Chinese American women were able to improve their circumstances as well as to assume a larger share of responsibility for their families and community….This situation made some immigrant wives the breadwinners.”[43] This initial change in employment opportunities between Chinese American men and women may have contributed to a change in power relations within families in favor of women. Between 1930 and 1940, the number of married and employed Chinese women increased by nearly 50 percent while the number of married and employed Chinese men dramatically decreased.[44] In the words of a 1935 survey by the Center for Socio-Economic Research and Analysis:

The Chinese women of today are much more fortunate and certainly more independent than they were ten or twenty years ago. They are now permitted by their husbands to work outside their homes and the fear of mockery by their neighbors has ceased since it has become the vogue to work, whether to help out the family finances or to have a little pin money. Generally speaking, to help the family finances, since most of them are hard pressed.[45]
According to Yung, a change in family labor relations brought about by the Great Depression, Chinese American gender relations began to improve, and newspapers began to encourage Chinese women “to be aware of her rights, become physically fit…and serve the community.”[46]

This set the stage for a greater improvement of Chinese American gender labor relations during World War II as Chinese American women began to work outside of Chinatown in greater numbers at better-paying defense industry jobs. In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, about 500 to 600 Chinese American women, mainly young second generation women, began working in the ship yards in World War II.[47] According to historian Xiaojian Zhao, “Chinese American women were a familiar sight at most defense plants in the Bay Area….It was the economic opportunity and patriotism that led Chinese women to work in defense jobs.”[48] Zhao’s testimonies by various Chinese American women showed that these wartime jobs paid more, were more emotionally rewarding, and oftentimes were found to be easier than the jobs that the women held before the war. Furthermore, Zhao wrote that “Chinese women were more readily accepted in defense companies than their men….Male Chinese were often resented by white workers because of their apparent ability to compete.”[49] Since women were considered temporary laborers who would quickly be displaced after the war, many European American employers found them to be less threatening. Shipyard owners such as Henry J. Kaiser and the Moore Dry Dock Company encouraged Chinese Americans, particularly women, to work for them in support of the war.

The media presented a positive image of Chinese American women at the time, as astoundingly competent and hard-working people: “’Shanghai Lil’ is the name they know her by, over at Assembly 11 on graveyard shift,” wrote a reporter for the Fore ‘n Aft, on April 7, 1944, “Her name is Leong Bo San….She is five feet, one inch tall, and she weighs 102 pounds….Tiny and delicate as she looks, she works with an energy that amazes people twice her size. Says her boss James G. Zack: ‘I wish I had a whole crew of people like her.”[50] These positive portrayals helped to keep employment opportunities outside of Chinatown open for Chinese American women after World War II. According to historian Xiaojian Zhao, “although the majority of white middle-class American women returned to domesticity [after the war], most Chinese American women continued to work, but they no longer relied on employment within their own communities.”[51]

In addition to long strides taken in jobs outside of Chinatown, Chinese American women also

exerted more power in their garment factory jobs within Chinatown. The first strike by Chinese American women against the National Dollar Stores happened in 1938, as European American unions began to work for the first time with Chinese American garment workers. Though the strike won limited concessions, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union helped displaced Chinese American workers find better-paying jobs outside of Chinatown, and although these European American factories were at first very reluctant to take on Chinese American workers, the union leaders who helped to orchestrate the National Dollar Stores strike convinced several factories to accept workers, and when these results proved to be positive, continued employment followed, opening up outside garment factories for the first time to Chinatown women.[52]

Chinese American women were empowered by the strike. Historian Judy Yung wrote that the National Dollar Store strike “moved women well beyond the domestic sphere into the political area…raised their political consciousness and organizing skills, allowed them to become part of the labor movement and find jobs outside Chinatown, and most important, marked their first stand against labor exploitation in the garment industry.”[53] The strike gave Chinese American organizers such as Sue Ko Lee the skills and experience to become a labor leader in her community, and more importantly to connect the labor cause of the Chinese Americans with that of European Americans and construct a framework of support across racial lines. In the words of the Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association, in a notice to employees on September 21, 1938, one of the objectives and effects of the strike was “to strengthen the bond between Chinese and American workers….We Chinese should not cross the picket line and enter any of the stores to shop so as not to give American workers a bad impression of us.”[54] The fact that Chinese labor unions were conscious of the image they were presenting to European Americans showed that the labor strikes a continuation of the migration and assimilation struggle, and just as Chinese American women garnered a greater public role in their communities through fund-raising efforts during World War II, so too did they garner a more positive perception of themselves in the American media through their labor efforts inside and outside of Chinatown.

 

1. III.           Conclusion

 

Immigration legislation passed during World War Two, such as the War Brides Act and the Chinese Alien Wives of American Citizens Act would greatly change the composition and gender balance of Chinese America. Under the War Brides Act, 114,691 female spouses of war veterans would be admitted to the United States.[55] Under the Chinese Alien Wives of American Citizens Act, 2,317 Chinese American women would be admitted between July 1947 and June 1950.[56] Although some historians argue that these new women immigrants belonged to a different class of Chinese American women who were better educated and were motivated by political rather than economic push factors, historian Xiaojian Zhao wrote that only 10 percent of the women who arrived under these legislations had been married for a year or less and would fit into the category of soldiers’ war-time new brides. “The vast majority of these so-called war brides were not new brides but longtime wives of Chinese Americans in transnational families….Their association with the United States had begun long before the war, and their marriages had little to do with the war.”[57] However, legislation that was intended for American G.I.’s who had met European wives during the war had unintended consequences for the Chinese in America and 7559 Chinese women immigrated to the United States between 1945 and 1950, representing 80% of total Chinese immigration.[58] This permanently changed the social structure of Chinese America as Chinatowns changed from bachelor societies to family-oriented societies, and more and more Chinese Americans were able to find employment and homes outside of Chinatown.

For the new immigrant women who entered the United States after World War II, the greater employment opportunities they would find were due to the efforts of women before them. The transnationally-motivated activism of Chinese American women in helping out in the war effort and taking up jobs in the home front were significant in improving their public role and gender status. Although demographic change in Chinese America itself accounts for part of the reason for the improvement of women’s role, the active labors of Chinese American women was a significant component to this change.

Works Cited

Adams, Bert N. and Jan Trost. Handbook of World Families. New York: Sage Publications, 2004.

Chen, Yong. “Understanding Chinese American Transnationalism During the Early Twentieth Century: An

Economic Perspective.” Chan, Sucheng ed. Chinese American Transnationalism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006.

Glickman, Lawrence B. “’Make Lisle the Style,’: the Politics of Fashion in the Japanese Silk

Boycott, 1937-1940.” Journal of Social History 28, 2005.

Peter Kwok and Dusanka Miscevic. Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New

Community. New York: The New Press, 2005.

Wong, K. Scott. Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 2005.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1995.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley,

University of California Press, 1999.

Zhao, Xiaojian. Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family, and Community, 1940-1965. New

Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

Appendix:

Graphs from Zhao’s Remaking Chinese America indicate that the overwhelming majority of women who entered under the War Brides Act had been married for years before the legislation, and were not young fiancés married during the war.

Figure 1.          War Bride Age groups – given that 16-20[59] was the average age range for female marriage during the 1940’s, the ages of the women under the War Brides Act reveal that most women had been married to their Chinese American husbands for many years before the war.

Figure 2.  According to this study, only 13% of Chinese American women who immigrated under the War Brides Act had been married for 4 years or less; only 23% had been married for 9 years or less. The majority of Chinese immigrant women (55%) had been married for 10-19 years.

Figure 3.          The median and average age of War Brides was about 33 years old. The youngest war bride was 16 and the oldest was 66.

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