Surprising figures revealed by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1920 served to relieve much of the anxiety experienced by too many members of the race-conscious Anglo-Saxon majority dwelling in California at that time:
“The report of the Census Bureau on the number of Japanese residents in the United States shows that the number has been much exaggerated by those panic-stricken persons who affect to dread the rise of a new Japan in America…the Japanese population of the three states on the Pacific coast increased more slowly from 1910 to 1920than it did in the previous decade. There are 70,196 Japanese in California, which has a total population of 3,426,861; in other words about one Californian in every fifty is a Japanese.”
The U.S. Census figures for 2011 indicated that the Asian-American population numbered over 17 million, with the lion’s share still residing in the West and the vast majority having arrived after 1965.
Click here to read about the 1921 [anti-]Alien Land Bill in California.
