Chapter 2: Japanese Settlement in Australia

According to Sissons, apart from these theatrical performers, the only Japanese who arrived in Australia before 1883 seem to have been seamen who were employed on foreign ships in Japan and paid off in Australian ports.⁶ Some of these seamen eventually engaged themselves in the pearling industry, which brought many Japanese immigrants to Australia after 1883. These early settlers were the vanguard of later Japanese settlements which developed around the pearling industry.

In 1876 a private proposal to bring out Japanese as free settlers to the Northern Territory received tentative approval from the South Australian cabinet. The scheme failed owing to conservative opposition in Japan. A similar proposal was made in 1898, but this scheme was also rejected by the Japanese, possibly due to dissatisfaction with the restrictions that were to be put on Japanese settlement. Japanese rejection coincided with increasing pressure in Australia for a White Australia.⁷

In 1901, when the Immigration Restriction Act (the White Australia Policy) was introduced, there were about 3,500 Japanese in Australia.⁸ The majority were contract labourers either in the pearling or sugar industries. Most came from farming and fishing backgrounds in heavily populated areas – for example, Wakayama, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi and Kumamoto prefectures. They left Japan for economic reasons. In Australia they saw prospects for wealth far greater than they possessed at home. Usually they intended to work temporarily in Australia, to remit their surplus income to their families and to return home with their accumulated savings.⁹ Many were in their prime age of working life.¹⁰

Thursday Island, Darwin and Broome were the three major towns where Japanese worked in the pearling industry. The first Japanese to work in the pearling industry in Australia was, according to Sissons, Nonami Kojiro of Shimane, a seaman who signed off at Sydney. He joined a pearling lugger as a pumper and arrived on Thursday Island in about 1878.¹¹ This was only a year after the first European officials had been sent there. Pearl shell gatherers had already been attracted to the island, and employed South Sea Islanders, mainly women, to dive and gather the shell for them. In the early 1870s, boats equipped with helmet apparatus appeared.¹² By 1880 more than 100 boats were working.¹³ Nonami became a successful diver within a few years of his arrival. His success attracted more Japanese to the island, and by 1883 about 15 were working on the luggers. Most were ex-seamen recruited by Burns Philp and Company in Hong Kong.¹⁴ The success of these men prompted Captain J.A. Miller, manager of the Australasian Pearl Company, to go to Japan in 1883 to recruit Japanese labourers.¹⁵ The performance of these Japanese men was such that Australian pearlers continued to seek labour in Japan.¹⁶

The first known Japanese to arrive in Darwin were also pearlers. In 1884 the North Australian Pearlshell Company, inspired by Thursday Island, brought 15 Japanese divers to Darwin. All or some of these may have been among the 37 Japanese Miller had brought to Thursday Island, as some of Miller’s boats also worked out of Darwin.¹⁷ The first Japanese diver in Darwin was a former seaman called “Charley Japan” from Nagasaki. He originally found employment in the pearling industry in Cossack, Western Australia in 1883,¹⁸ and then moved to Darwin where he was employed as a diver by an Australian pearler. Before the end of 1892 he was able to equip his own boat and bring some of his countrymen from Western Australia to serve as his crew. Other Japanese heard about his success and came to Darwin, bringing the Japanese population there up to about 30 in 1892.¹⁹

Broome was settled in the early 1880s and at that time men from the United Kingdom dominated pearling there. By the mid to late 1880s, Japanese were working in pearling areas along the Western Australian coast from Roebuck Bay to Exmouth Gulf. Pearling fleets operated from coastal towns, including Broome, Cossack, Port Hedland and Onslow.²⁰ It is not certain when the first Japanese came to Broome, but in 1891 there were 322 Japanese recorded as living in Western Australia, mostly in Broome.²¹

In 1884 the Japanese government approved contracts similar to Miller’s and allowed Fearon, Low and Company, a British firm working from Broome, to employ 69 men. In the following year it also allowed Streeter and Company, the largest of the Western Australian pearling companies, to employ six men.²² After this, the number of contracts approved was limited. Immigration did not take place on any significant scale²³ until 1892 when the Nihon Yoshisa Emigration Company, the first officially approved company, began sending contract labourers. This company and a branch it established later, the Toyo Emigration Company, sent most of the indentured labourers to Australia.²⁴ The majority of the Japanese in the pearling industry came from Wakayama Prefecture. Some came to free their families from debt and were “very keen to make money”.²⁵ According to Ganter, “Wages that were meagre by Australian standards were considered attractive in the Japanese context. Eighteen-year-olds could earn the equivalent wage of a Japanese high school principal …”²⁶ A former diver interviewed by Ganter said:

I went to Australia to make money. If I worked as a cook for two years (on a lugger) I could build a big house … In Japan it would take you fifty years to earn that sort of money. I endured for ten years, yes endured.²⁷

Japanese divers were highly efficient and much sought after. In 1898, a report prepared by the Queensland government commented on the Japanese:

They are the Scotchmen of the East and are industrious, frugal, clean, tractable and law abiding … Their frugality impels them to forward their savings to Japan instead of squandering them.²⁸

In Broome they were described as “the most industrious, thrifty and well conducted element”²⁹, while at Darwin they were described as “a fine, sturdy lot of men”.³⁰ By 1894 the Japanese were the largest national group working in the pearling industry in the Torres Strait.³¹ By the mid-1890s the Japanese were threatening the monopoly of white ownership. By 1898 the Japanese population on Thursday Island exceeded that of the Europeans – 619 Japanese and 608 Europeans.³² The Japanese had gained complete control of some aspects of the pearling industry, such as ship-building and repairing, and were strongly represented among lugger owners and divers, and in the business and professional sectors of Thursday Island.³³ In Broome the Japanese remained a minority, although they had a virtual monopoly of diving and associated tending.³⁴ The number of Japanese in Darwin was small in comparison with that of Thursday Island and Broome, as the total catch of shell at Darwin was the smallest of the three.³⁵ In 1893 there were 21 Japanese men in Darwin, all but one engaged in pearling.³⁶

In the north, according to Bach, Europeans were “faced with the problem of how, on the one hand, to retain access to such labour in defiance of a national anti-Asian feeling while, on the other, to make certain that the imported labour remained subordinated”.³⁷ As early as 1889, white shellers in Queensland were complaining about Chinese and Japanese boats and urging the government to refuse all ship licences to alien applicants. “The large shelling companies which had originally encouraged the introduction of such aliens as cheap labour were now seeking legislative protection against the consequences of their own cupidity.”³⁸ By 1892 Asians were excluded from owning boats.³⁹

From 1901 the Immigration Restriction Act meant that Japanese could “not be admitted as settlers, irrespective of their relationship to domiciled persons or of their economic status”, while the Australian government retained “a final control over the movements of Japanese who arrived on conditions of temporary entry”.⁴⁰ This had the effect of freezing the number of Japanese at 1901 levels.⁴¹ The Japanese government found this offensive and strongly objected through the British government. The Australian government attempted to placate Japanese sensitivities without retreating from its firm position on non-white immigration.⁴²

The Australian pearl shell companies were in a difficult position. Despite anti-Japanese feelings in the trade, they had come to depend to a large degree on Japanese expertise and abilities. According to Bach, they “reacted vigorously, stating repeatedly that if the provisions of the new Act were applied to them they would be forced either to abandon the enterprise or to move to the adjacent Dutch islands, beyond Australian control. The threat persuaded the federal authorities to make exemptions for them.”⁴³ But in 1912 the Pearlshelling Act, which contained a specific prohibition against alien licences, was introduced to further restrict the Japanese. Between 1892 and 1912, the Japanese were effectively deprived of any direct legal participation in ownership within the industry, but the dependence of the industry upon their labour was in no way diminished.⁴⁴

Japanese dominance of diving and tending lasted until World War II, with the exception of a short period during World War I when pearling was suspended around Thursday Island and reduced at Broome, and many were repatriated to Japan. Normal activity did not recommence until 1919.⁴⁵ In Broome, in 1925, only 720 of the Western Australian pearling labour force of 1,746 were Japanese, but Japanese accounted for 193 out of 210 divers.⁴⁶ By 1928, ninety-nine per cent of all divers’ licences in Torres Strait belonged to Japanese.⁴⁷ In 1941 approximately 500 Japanese were working in the Australian pearling industry.⁴⁸ They formed very closely-knit communities in the Japanese quarters of their towns – “Chinatown” in Broome and Darwin, and “Yokohama” on Thursday Island. Men from the same town in Japan tended to live in the same boarding house, which would be named after the town, such as Kushimoto House and Ooshima House. Most could not speak English.⁴⁹ According to Ogawa, Broome and Darwin had men from more varied places of origin than Thursday Island, where almost all were from Wakayama.⁵⁰ Social activities reflected Japanese customs. The entertainment available during off seasons was limited, although there were Japanese brothels. Gambling and drinking were popular pastimes. According to Sissons, gambling was a “great problem”, and many lost a lot of money.⁵¹ They tried to reproduce the Japanese diet as closely as possible, and on Thursday Island a soy sauce factory in “Yokohama” was run by Haruyoshi Yamashita, president of the Nihonjin-kai on the island before the war. Almost all the Japanese in the pearling towns belonged to a local Nihonjin-kai, which was not only the centre of social life, but also served as an information centre for the local Japanese community. Members tried to re-create many of the cultural traditions of Japan. The Nihonjin-kai played a bridging role between the community and the home country. According to Ogawa, the Nihonjin-kai on Thursday Island was very well organised and “made various contributions to the Japanese residents”. Thanks to the initiative of the Nihonjin-kai, the Japanese communities at Thursday Island and Broome were allowed to have a Japanese doctor.⁵²

Diving was dangerous and had a very high death rate of about 10 per cent per annum.⁵³ According to Ogawa, 561 Japanese divers on Thursday Island and 977 in Broome died up to 1941.⁵⁴ Many other divers suffered paralysis because of the “bends”. According to Sissons, despite the risks “many Japanese found that employment by Australian pearlers suited their needs better than life in Japan”. Most went back to Japan when their contracts expired but signed up again later.⁵⁵

Until 1901 the largest number of Japanese emigrants worked as indentured labourers in the cane fields, or as tradesmen in the sugar mills. In 1888 the Mourilyan Sugar Company proposed a contract for the employment of 100 Japanese on the cane fields, but this scheme fell through when the Japanese government requested conditions beyond the company’s resources.⁵⁶ In 1892 Burns Philp employed the first 50 contract labourers on the cane fields on a 3-year contract arranged through the Yoshisa Emigration Company. All were from Hiroshima Prefecture.⁵⁷ While men from Wakayama went to the pearling industry, Hiroshima was a major source of labourers for the sugar industry. By 1898 some 2,300 Japanese worked in the Queensland sugar fields.⁵⁸

The Yoshisa Emigration Company was, according to Kodama, a well-behaved broker, handling emigrants to Australia conscientiously.⁵⁹ The employment conditions for Japanese in the sugar industry were very clearly detailed. Armstrong writes that “their working and living conditions were better than those of the white labourers and certainly they were superior in all respects to those of the Kanakas”.⁶⁰ According to their contracts, they were to work 10 hours a day, were paid 30 shillings a month, and were to be provided with hot baths, two suits of clothing a year and Japanese-style meals.⁶¹ The Japanese were known to go on strike if these conditions were not met.⁶²

Because the Japanese were the most expensive non-European labour, their employment was restricted to the large plantation owners and the larger mills. The owners of small plantations opposed the use of Japanese in any capacity and this attitude was supported by the labour movement and large sectors of the Queensland community.⁶³ However, the Queensland government regarded Japanese as an excellent form of indentured labour to supplement the diminishing numbers of kanakas, as many Japanese left the country when their 3- to 4-year contracts expired.⁶⁴ Reasonably large groups of Japanese continued to arrive until 1900, when Queensland concluded an agreement with Japan establishing a quota system. In 1900, 632 Japanese were working in North Queensland cane fields and about 250 around Mackay.⁶⁵

The Japanese never dominated the sugar industry as they did the pearling industry. After the introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act, the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) continued to employ Japanese, but the number declined steadily between the two world wars.⁶⁶ In October 1940, 178 Japanese were recorded as residents on the Queensland mainland, excluding the Brisbane metropolitan area, and were living in major sugar farming areas including Cairns, Innisfail, Mourilyan, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton and Maryborough.⁶⁷ Most were probably engaged in sugar farming, but some worked in hotels and ran laundries.⁶⁸ Probably because the Japanese in these locations tended to be spread out, it is claimed that only Cairns and Mackay had Nihonjin-kai, and these organisations were not as active as those in the pearling communities.

In 1896 a Japanese consulate (1896–1908) was established in Townsville to protect the interests of Japanese workers at sea and on land.⁶⁹ By then some who had been working in the pearling and sugar industries had left and established their own businesses, such as laundries or general stores. Some found their way south to cities such as Brisbane and Sydney and established themselves in small businesses, mainly laundries.⁷⁰ In 1895 the government resident on Thursday Island remarked that the Japanese had begun to “evince a greater appetite for independent enterprise than any other of the Asiatic races”.⁷¹ Before 1941 many Japanese laundry owners in Sydney had been pearling divers on Thursday Island.⁷²

Most women who came to Australia arrived either as wives or prostitutes. Prostitution was probably the third most common occupation, after pearling and sugar, which brought Japanese to Australia before 1901. In areas where Japanese labourers were settled, prostitutes often followed and by 1888 Japanese brothel keepers had established themselves in Australia.⁷³ In 1897 the Commissioner of Police for Queensland reported that there were 116 Japanese women in the colony and that all but one, the consul’s wife, were engaged in prostitution from Cooktown to Childers. The largest group of reported prostitutes was 34 on Thursday Island.⁷⁴ In 1894 Hattori published more detailed information about the Japanese women on Thursday Island. According to his study, there were 32 women, 21 prostitutes and 11 “respectable” women in 1893.⁷⁵ The Japanese prostitutes there were widely criticised by church leaders and citizens. Japanese residents themselves claimed that they were embarrassed and disgusted by the activities of their countrywomen. In 1893 John Douglas, the Government Resident, inspected the brothels and reported to the Queensland Colonial Secretary:

The profits are very considerable. I have not been able to ascertain exactly how these profits are divided. Several Japanese women are known to have made a good deal of money, and much of this has been invested in shares of shelling boats.⁷⁶

Both the Queensland and Japanese governments agreed that the emigration of all women from Japan to Queensland should stop. However, the trade continued to grow throughout the decade, with 219 Japanese women engaged in prostitution in 1898.⁷⁷

In 1897 only the government of Western Australia had statutory powers to prevent the landing of prostitutes.⁷⁸ The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 specifically prohibited the entry of “any prostitute or person living on the prostitution of others”.⁷⁹ Japanese brothels in Australia declined steadily after 1902 but did not disappear altogether. As late as 1928 “the Queensland Branch of the National Council for Women forwarded to the Customs authorities allegations that Japanese women were being landed at Townsville at regular intervals”.⁸⁰ H. MacDonnell, who came to Cairns in 1897, talked of early Cairns in the 1900s:

It (Chinatown) was a very colourful place. People of every coloured race in the world congregated there, including a great many Japanese prostitutes who in the late afternoon and evening would promenade in groups of two or three, all dressed in most gorgeous kimonos.⁸¹

In 1916, twelve Japanese prostitutes were reported in Perth and Fremantle, and 20 in Broome. The brothels in Western Australia were usually thinly disguised as legitimate businesses, and prostitutes operating alone or in small groups often described themselves as “dressmakers” or similar. Most of the men living off the earnings of prostitutes also operated legitimate businesses, such as laundries, or worked as cooks or waiters.⁸² According to Kyuuhara, when the prostitutes became aged, around 60 years old, they retired and went back to Japan. Some remained as they had married. Kyuuhara’s examination indicates that 58 married couples were legitimately registered from 1885 to 1938 on Thursday Island. Of those, 24 wives were from Nagasaki, the area where a large majority of the prostitutes came from.⁸³ Just before the outbreak of the Pacific War there were four to six prostitutes in Yokohama on Thursday Island.⁸⁴ Six single women were included among the Japanese interned on the island at the outbreak of the war.⁸⁵ It is most likely that they were prostitutes.

Japanese prostitutes were not the only group smuggled into Australia, as it was also common for Japanese men to arrive as stowaways. According to Ogawa, the reasons were the high fees charged by Japanese emigration companies for arranging employment, the long waiting period, to evade conscription, or because they could not enter legally.⁸⁶ According to Ogawa, at the time of the Russo–Japanese War (1904–1905) most men working on Thursday Island received call-up notices, but ignored them even though they knew they could be charged with a criminal offence in Japan.⁸⁷

Unlike the north, in the south the Japanese were more scattered and their entry into Australia more haphazard. In 1901 there were 26 males and 4 females in Victoria, and 66 males and 6 females in New South Wales.⁸⁸ Despite the fact that South Australia was first interested in Japanese settlers, only a small number of Japanese went there. According to the South Australian census of 1901, eighteen Japanese were employed in the mining industry.⁸⁹ In the southern part of Western Australia, there were 207 males and 59 females. One study indicates that most of these men were engaged in three occupations − laundrymen, cooks and brothel keepers. All the females were prostitutes.⁹⁰ According to Sissons, some Japanese migrants would have been household servants.⁹¹ It was quite common for the Japanese government to issue passports in Japan for nationals to take up service as domestics overseas. Sissons continues, “Some young men began as houseboys until they had acquired sufficient command of the language. A table published by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1882 showing the destinations and the purposes for which passports had been issued during the years 1868–1881 indicates that out of a total of 24 passports issued for travel to Australia, 10 were for servants, nine government officials, four commerce, one study.”⁹²

Japanese also came to Australia to establish trade links between the two countries. Australia began exports to Japan as early as 1865, the year Japan opened its doors to the west. The first recorded commodity was coal.⁹³ In 1879 Japan set up a consulate in Melbourne and appointed Alexander Marks, an Australian merchant who had previously lived in Yokohama, as the first honorary consul in Australia.⁹⁴ He tried to develop Japanese–Australian trade. According to Tsunoyama, “the reason why Japan set up a consulate in Australia so early is not clear, but it is certain that Australia was an important export market for Japan in the 1880s”.⁹⁵ Japan appointed honorary consuls in other parts of Australia including Hobart in 1885,⁹⁶ Adelaide in 1896,⁹⁷ Broome and Brisbane. The Japanese consulate in Townsville was transferred to Sydney in 1897⁹⁸ and in 1901 it became the consulate-general.⁹⁹

The first Japanese business representative to establish a successful two-way enterprise was Kanematsu Fusajiroo of Kobe, who first came to Australia in 1887. The firm initially imported traditional Japanese manufactures, such as silk, to Australia.¹⁰⁰ Kanematsu established offices in Sydney and Melbourne, and his was the first firm to ship regular consignments of Australian wool to Japan, starting in 1890.¹⁰¹ In 1896 Nippon Yusen Kaisha commenced regular shipping services to Australia.¹⁰² The service was encouraged not only by the growth in trade between the two countries but also by the growing number of immigrant labourers for the Queensland sugar industry.¹⁰³ From this period until the 1930s, wool and wheat were Australia’s main exports to Japan, while silk piece goods and other textiles were the main imports.¹⁰⁴ The expanding trade led other big trading companies to establish branches in Sydney and Melbourne. Takashima-Iida did so in 1905, followed by Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Nihon Menka and Iwai Shoten. In 1916 the Yokohama Specie Bank established a branch in Sydney.¹⁰⁵ By 1935, “the largest ten Japanese companies operating in Australia controlled 95 per cent of Australia’s export trade with Japan and 89 per cent of the import trade”.¹⁰⁶ By the 1930s, five Japanese shipping lines provided direct services.¹⁰⁷

By the mid-1930s Japan was second only to Britain as a customer and fourth as a source of imports into Australia.¹⁰⁸ Some minor commodities were almost wholly taken by the Japanese – for example, 90 per cent of the mother-of-pearl and 70 per cent of the iron ore.¹⁰⁹ Despite some temporary fluctuations due to Japanese resentment about protectionism, the Japanese expressed strong interest in building further ties to secure long-term commodity supplies.¹¹⁰

Like Japanese pearling communities, Japanese residents in Sydney and Melbourne formed closely-knit communities. The Sydney community established a Nihonjin-kai in 1909 with 23 members, comprising 2 consular officials, 19 businessmen and 2 students. The honorary president was the consul-general of Japan. By 1940 membership had increased to 92, comprising people from the consulate, 1 bank, 3 steamship companies and 18 trading companies.¹¹¹ The membership did not include Japanese who had been settled in Australia for a long time and who had largely taken up an Australian lifestyle or who had married locally. However, the Nihonjin-kai held events such as film nights and talks which were open to local settlers. Harry Suzuki, who owned a laundry business in Sydney, recalled in 1987: “We didn’t mix with company people very much. Sometimes I went to the Undookai [sports meeting] and that’s about it.”¹¹² In 1927 the Japanese consul-general proposed a “Dooshi-kai” [Kindred Spirits Club] of Japanese laundry proprietors in Sydney to promote amity and cooperation among the long-time residents. The association was formed for trade purposes and to prevent unfair business competition among them.¹¹³ In 1940 the Dooshi-kai had 29 members, most of whom were laundrymen.¹¹⁴ According to Suzuki, most of the laundrymen in Sydney did join the Dooshi-kai, but he felt that it was almost compulsory because the consul-general had established it.¹¹⁵

The establishment of a Nihonjin-kai in Melbourne was delayed as the business community there was much smaller. In 1927 it was formed with a membership of 14, all employees of five trading companies. The membership had risen to 40 by 1940. As with the Sydney Nihonjin-kai, local long-term residents were not included. Chambers of Commerce were established in Sydney and Melbourne in 1931 and 1933 respectively.¹¹⁶

The Japan–Australia Society was formed in Sydney in 1928, and later a branch was set up in Melbourne, to promote “mutual understanding between the Japanese and Australian people”.¹¹⁷ Membership revolved around trading interests from both sides and included prominent members of Australian society, notably academics. The first president of the Sydney Society was Sir John Beverley Peden, KC, dean of the Faculty of Law at Sydney University.¹¹⁸ Members included Sir Mark Sheldon, former Australian representative at the League of Nations and former president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, Sir Mungo MacCallum, vice-chancellor of Sydney University and Major W.J.R. Scott,¹¹⁹ prominent rightist, conservative militarist and businessman.¹²⁰ The Melbourne president was Sir James Barrett, chancellor of Melbourne University,¹²¹ where Japanese was taught from 1922.¹²² According to Lockwood, “the movement for cooperation with Japan was not nearly as strong in Victoria as in New South Wales, Australia’s main base for the wool and metals industries, or as in Queensland, where primary industry was still dominant”.¹²³

While the restrictions on Japanese immigration to Australia existed, male Japanese working in Australia were not able to bring their families with them. Consular staff were automatically exempted and the presence of some other wives and children in Australia indicates that other exceptions were made. Japanese who married locally were able to establish a family life in Australia. Some Japanese men visited Japan to marry women of Japanese descent who had been born in Australia. The wives, and the children if any, of these marriages were able to enter Australia. For example, Jirokichi Nakata from Thursday Island, who first came to work in the pearling industry in Darwin in 1898, went to Japan in 1925 to marry an Australian-born woman who had been sent to Japan for education.¹²⁴ In 1927 his wife and 11-month old son joined him in Gordonvale near Cairns where he was leasing a sugar-cane farm.¹²⁵ The wife of Haruyoshi Yamashita, the soy sauce factory owner on Thursday Island, was also an Australian-born Japanese who was taken to Japan at the age of 2 and returned to Australia when she was 20.¹²⁶ According to Harumi, one of her daughters, she could not speak English well even after she spent the rest of her life in Australia.¹²⁷

Unlike the United States, Canada and NEI, the Japanese population was small and widely distributed, so Japanese schools, Japanese language newspapers and other formal trappings of community life did not exist in Australia. Most children of Japanese immigrant families in Australia went to local schools. It was not uncommon for second-generation Japanese born in Australia to spend some time in Japan (hereafter referred to as “Kigoo Nisei/Sansei” [returning second/third generation to Australia]). Some children of the Murakami family had this experience. The mother, Shigeno, was already a Nisei born to Japanese parents in Cossack, Western Australia, in 1897. Shigeno married an Issei [first generation], Yasukichi Murakami of Wakayama who came to Cossack in 1897 when he was 17. They met in Broome where he owned a photography business. In 1935 the Murakami family moved to Darwin.¹²⁸ The three daughters were sent to Japan to acquire a Japanese education. The youngest went there at the age of 14, just before the war, and remained there during the war. The other two returned to Australia before the war and were therefore looked upon as Kigoo Nisei. According to Joe, the third son of the family, “Darwin was no place for growing girls”.¹²⁹ Some families also sent their sons to Japan to be educated. Two of the eldest Murakami sons went to Japan as small children and spent most of their school years there. The eldest remained there until he was 21.¹³⁰ Joe said: “I was eagerly looking forward to my turn (to go to Japan) when the war broke out.” According to him, Darwin was “a very cosmopolitan town” in the years just before the war. Joe wrote in 1988:

I never experienced any feelings of being racially different in those days … My best friends were a couple of Greek brothers. There were also some Chinese boys, but we were never very close. In hindsight, their parents were probably indignant about the Japanese invasion of their homeland.¹³¹

According to Bain, most parents of children born in Broome desired to give them a complete “national education”. A steady movement of Japanese families to Japan began from about 1923, increasing in the years 1935–38. When the war broke out there were few young children of Japanese parentage left in Broome.¹³² Miki Tsutsumi, manager of Toonan Shookai in Broome and secretary of the Nihonjin-kai there, sent his older children to Japan. Kaname Tsutsumi, one of the children, was in the care of relatives in Japan during the war. He said: “I hated school. Children called me a spy because I was born in Australia. I had a hard time.”¹³³

Some Japanese men married either white or black Australians. The children of these marriages were mostly educated in Australia and most spoke only English. One of the few exceptions was Claude Tanaka, a Kigoo Nisei born in Brisbane to a Japanese father and an Australian mother of European origin. Claude spent 18 years in Japan and speaks both Japanese and English. He said: “Mum left us when I was still a baby. Dad decided to send me to his brother’s place in Japan as he thought it would provide a better environment for me to grow up in.”¹³⁴ All the children of the Shiosaki family in Broome, half-Japanese and half-Aboriginal, went to St. Mary’s convent school in Broome. The eldest daughter, Peggie, said:

There weren’t many pure Japanese kids in the town. They were all sent to Japan. But a few went to the state school with white kids. Half-Japanese kids, like us, went to St. Mary’s with Aboriginal kids.¹³⁵

Children on Thursday Island also went to local schools. Ted Loban, a local resident of Islander origin on the island, said:

There were two schools on TI. One for the white children and the other for coloured. Children from the Yamashita and Nakata families went to the white school. The Shibasaki kids came to my school.¹³⁶

There were six Shibasaki children. The father, Kyuukichi Shibasaki, first came to Australia in 1918 as a pearl diver. He married a woman of Malay and Islander origin when he resumed his work on Thursday Island in 1929.¹³⁷

Some of those who worked at sugar-cane farming married local women and established families. Kiichi Kawano, who first came to work on railway construction in North Queensland in the late 1890s, married a woman of Aboriginal Chinese origin in Innisfail. George, their only son, went to a local primary school. In 1992 he said: “I only spoke English. Dad never tried to make me speak Japanese.”¹³⁸ The children of the Takagaki family in Mackay grew up speaking only English and went to a local school. Jack Takagaki, who came to Mackay as a sugar-cane labourer on a contract in 1902, stayed on and married a local woman of European origin.¹³⁹

Some families lived in isolation from the Japanese community. Arthur Yamaguchi was born to a Japanese father and an Aboriginal Chinese mother at a cattle station near Burketown in the Gulf of Carpentaria, 500 kilometres north-east of Mount Isa, in 1921. The family moved to Burketown in 1930 and later opened the town’s only bakery. Arthur went to a local school, but his schooling was mainly by distance education. He grew up speaking only English.¹⁴⁰

The Takasuka family settled in Victoria. Jo Takasuka, a graduate of an American university and a member of the Japanese Parliament after his return from the United States, came to Australia in 1905.¹⁴¹ Accompanied by his wife Ichiko and two infant children, a son and a daughter, he was admitted to Australia on an annually renewable Certificate of Exemption for the purpose of exporting and importing.¹⁴² The family settled at Nyah near Swan Hill where their third child, Mario, was born. They tried to introduce wet-field rice farming to Australia on a 200-acre selection on the Murray. Although unsuccessful, Jo’s efforts were recognised. In 1924 the government, while reserving its right to reverse the decision at any time, granted him “de facto permanent status”.¹⁴³ In 1934 he moved to Huntly, near Bendigo, where he started to grow tomatoes. Eventually the conduct of the business passed to his sons, Sho and Mario. He died in 1940 during his first visit back to Japan in 35 years.¹⁴⁴ Having grown up where there were no other Japanese, the three children, Sho, Aiko and Mario, mixed with white Australian children. English was the only language they knew. Sho left school when he was 13 and worked on a farm. He was always active in sports and community activities. Aiko became dux of Swan Hill Higher Elementary School and taught full time in schools in the Swan Hill district until 1933, when she married a local Cornish migrant.¹⁴⁵

According to a Japanese government source, 3,072 Japanese were living in the Oceania region in 1935.¹⁴⁶ In July 1941, 1,175 people over 16 years of age were registered as Japanese aliens in Australia. In addition there were 21 Japanese entitled to diplomatic and consular privileges, including 3 wives.¹⁴⁷ These were not required to register as aliens. The largest group of Japanese in Australia were indentured labourers engaged in the pearling industry, but many worked offshore and were not registered. On 16 August 1940 it was estimated that there were approximately 700 Japanese on pearling fleets in North Australian waters near Darwin and Broome, and of those 217 were registered at Darwin.¹⁴⁸

In the months before the Pacific War, families in Japan wrote to their sons, fathers and husbands telling them to return to Japan. In December 1939, a son in Japan wrote to his father on Thursday Island:

Prices have gone up from 150 to 200% … You may have plenty of money, but you can only buy a fixed amount of goods. You would have to spend half a day walking in the streets even for doing a little shopping. We must put up with such inconveniences for the sake of contributing to a New Japan. We are worrying about you, Dad, who is in Australia, fearing that something might happen to you. Please come home as early as possible.¹⁴⁹

On 15 August 1941 the Kashima Maru repatriated most of the business representative working for Japanese firms, mainly from Sydney and Melbourne, leaving only minimum staff in the offices. Mr Hamaure, an employee of Mitsui in Sydney, was repatriated. He wrote from the Kashima Maru to the Australian staff in the Sydney office:

When the Kashima Maru was going to leave the wharf in Sydney under the dull light and the guard of the officers, I found that there was hot stuff in my eyes. I had not expected such a departure when I first arrived in Australia more than six years ago and I sincerely hope the normal peaceful time will come shortly and all the nations of the world will enjoy their own life …¹⁵⁰

Those left in Australia were contract labourers and permanent settlers and their descendants. Approximately 50 per cent of those Japanese who stayed in Australia were engaged in the pearling industry, and approximately half of the remainder were single men who were either in the sugar-cane industry or small businesses. The rest were family groups. Some of the families were well established and some had already produced Sansei [third generation] Japanese who were only part-Japanese. Some Nisei sons had enlisted when the war in Europe began in 1939. The Nisei and Sansei descendants of Sakuragawa Rikinosuke, the Japanese acrobat who settled in Queensland in the 1880s, enlisted.¹⁵¹ Some of the long-term residents had experienced war in Australia before the Pacific War. Now they were to experience a war where they were to be interned as enemy aliens.

• Previous
• Home
• Next

Notes

1. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 12.↩
2. Ibid.↩
3. Ibid., p. 13.↩
4. Jeff Taylor, great grandson of Rikinosuke Sakuragawa, Brisbane, 4 June 1992.↩
5. Sissons, A-J Relations, pp. 13–14.↩
6. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 14.↩
7. Sissons, D., “Japanese in the Northern Territory: 1884–1902” (hereafter referred to as “Japanese in N.T.”), Mimeograph, ANU, 1974, pp. 25–43. The abortive plan in 1876 was put forward by a South Australian, Wilton Hack, who had spent some time in Japan as a missionary and an English teacher. The 1898 plan was proposed by J.L. Parsons, an Adelaide merchant, who first went to Japan to promote a market for South Australian products in 1895 and who, in 1896, was appointed honorary consul at Adelaide by the Japanese Government. A descendant held the position of honorary consul in Adelaide until 1990. ↩
8. Wilson, S., “Japanese in Western Australia”, p. 325, in Anne Atkinson, Asian Immigration to Western Australia 1829–1901, The Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australia, Vol. 5, University of Western Australia, 1988.↩
9. Sissons, D., “The Japanese in the Australian Pearling Industry” (hereafter referred to as “Pearling”), Queensland Heritage, Vol. 3, No. 10, 1974, pp. 10–18. ↩
10. Sissons, “Pearling”, p. 18 and Kodama, M., “Shoki Imin Gaisha no Iminboshu to sono Jittai” [The Early Years of Recruitment of Emigrants by Emigration Companies], Hiroshima Shi Kenkyu [Local History of Hiroshima], No. 3, Mar. 1978, p. 26.↩
11. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 15.↩
12. Foley, J. C., Timeless Isle: An Illustrated History of Thursday Island, The Torres Straits Historical Society, Thursday Island, 1986, p. 47.↩
13. Ibid., p. 48.↩
14. Bain, M.A., Full Fathom Five, Artlook Books, Perth, 1982, p. 84↩
15. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 15.↩
16. Sissons, “Pearling”, p. 10.↩
17. Sissons, “Japanese in N.T.”, p. 5.↩
18. Ibid., p. 12.↩
19. Ibid.↩
20. Bain, p. 231.↩
21. Wilson, p. 325.↩
22. Sissons, “Pearling”, p. 10.↩
23. Ibid., p. 13; Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, p. 55. In 1891 the Japanese Department of Emigration was established and the government took a more positive approach to emigration.↩
24. Kodama, p. 21.↩
25. Sissons, “Pearling”, p. 18.↩
26. Ganter, R., “Images of Japanese Pearl-Shellers in Queensland”, Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal, Vol. XIV, No. 7, May 1991, p. 269.↩
27. Ibid., p. 270.↩
28. Bain, p. 83.↩
29. Wilson, p. 325.↩
30. Sissons, “Japanese in N.T.”, p. 13.↩
31. Ibid.↩
32. Armstrong, J., “Aspects of Japanese Immigration to Queensland before 1900”, Queensland Heritage, Vol. 2, No. 9, 1973, p. 3.↩
33. Ibid.↩
34. Bain, p. 125.↩
35. Sissons, “Japanese in N.T.”, p. 24.↩
36. Ibid., p. 13.↩
37. Bach, p. 205.↩
38. Ibid., p. 209.↩
39. Ibid., p. 207.↩
40. Yarwood, Asian Migration in Australia, p. 84.↩
41. Ibid.↩
42. Patience, A., “Towards an integrated Western Pacific: A comment on developments in Japan–Australia relations”, in Oosutoraria Kenkyu Kiyo, Oitemon Gakuin University, Kyoto, Vol. 9, 1984, p. 34.↩
43. Bach, p. 205.↩
44. Ibid., p. 207.↩
45. Narita, K., ed., Nichigo Tsusho Gaikoshi, Shinhyoron, Tokyo, 1971, p. 49.↩
46. Wilson, p. 325.↩
47. Thursday Island High School, Pearling in the Torres Strait, Thursday Island, 1986, p. 15.↩
48. MP 742/1, 255/2/283, 21 Apr. and 7 July 1943. ↩
49. Ogawa, T., Arafurakai no Shinju [The Pearl of the Arafura Sea], Tokyo, Ayumi Shuppan, 1976, p. 170.↩
50. Ibid., p. 101.↩
51. Sissons, “Pearling”, p. 21.↩
52. Ogawa, p. 177. Ogawa does not explain how and when this arrangement came about. His statement is based on his interviews with the former Nihonjin-kai members on the island.↩
53. Ganter, R., “Death of pearl-shell industry comes under scrutiny”, Griffith Gazette, Vol. 7, No. 5, June 3, 1992, p. 3.↩
54. In Oshima, G., “Japanese pearl-seekers in Australian waters”, Japanese Studies Association Biennial Conference, Sydney, 1989, Appendix.↩
55. Sissons, “Pearling”, p. 22.↩
56. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 25.↩
57. Kodama, p. 27.↩
58. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 49.↩
59. Ibid., p. 43.↩
60. Armstrong, p. 4.↩
61. Kodama, pp. 23–24.↩
62. Armstrong, p. 4.↩
63. Armstrong, p. 5.↩
64. Ibid.↩
65. Kikkawa, Jiro, “Japanese in Queensland”, Multicultural Queensland, ed., M.B. Brandle and S. Karas, The People & Communities of Queensland: A Bicentennial Publication, 1988, p. 138.↩
66. Ibid., p. 139.↩
67. MP 729/6, 65/401/135, 18 Nov. 1940. ↩
68. Jack Takagaki, Jnr., son of Jack Takagaki who was a former sugar cane farmer in Mackay, Mackay, 6 July 1992.↩
69. Kikkawa, p. 138.↩
70. According to former internees who were residents of Sydney and Brisbane, many Japanese laundry owners in those cities originally worked in the pearling industry. Douglas Umino, the son of the president of the Association of Japanese Laundry Proprietors in Sydney before the war, Sydney, 3 Jan. 1993, and Claude Tanaka, who worked in a Japanese laundry owned by Tonda in Brisbane before the war, Sydney, 7 May 1992.↩
71. Armstrong, p. 3.↩
72. Hanna Matuschik née Suzuki, Adelaide, 31 Oct. 1990. Hanna is the step-daughter of the late Sakuhei Suzuki, a former internee and diver who owned a laundry business in Sydney.↩
73. Sissons, D., “Karayuki-san: Japanese Prostitutes in Australia, 1887–1916”, Part I, (hereafter referred to as “Prostitutes I”), Historical Studies, Vol. 17, No. 68, Apr. 1977, p. 25.↩
74. Sissons, “Prostitutes I”, p. 324.↩
75. Ibid.↩
76. Ibid., p. 331.↩
77. Armstrong, p. 5.↩
78. Sissons, “Karayuki-san: Japanese Prostitutes in Australia, 1887–1916”, Part II (hereafter referred to as “Prostitutes II”), Historical Studies, Vol. 17, No. 69, Oct. 1977, p. 474.↩
79. Immigration Restriction Act, No. 17 of 1901, Section 3 (f), in Yarwood, A.I., Asian Migration to Australia, Appendix 1, p. 157.↩
80. Sissons, “Prostitutes II”, p. 475.↩
81. MacDonnell, H., “Early Reminiscences of Cairns”, Apr. 1959, in History of Cairns: Reminiscences, Part III, The Historical Society of Cairns.↩
82. Wilson, p. 326.↩
83. Kyuhara, S., Remains of Japanese Settlers on the Torres Strait Islands, Wakayama, 1977, p. 16.↩
84. Ted Loban, Thursday Island, 31 Aug. 1987.↩
85. BP 242, 1942–1954, Q 39362. ↩
86. Ogawa, p. 39.↩
87. Ibid., pp. 39–40.↩
88. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 27.↩
89. Sissons, “Japanese in N.T.”, p. 21.↩
90. Sissons, “Prostitutes I”, p. 326.↩
91. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 27.↩
92. Ibid.↩
93. Rix, A., Coming to Terms, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1986, p. 22.↩
94. Tsunoyama, S., “The Early History of Japanese–Australian Trade: An Addendum to Japanese Consular Reports”, Business History, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., London, Vol. 23, Nov. 1981, p. 288. By 1879 Japan had 23 consulates worldwide, of which 9 were administered by non-Japanese honorary consuls.↩
95. Ibid.↩
96. Tsunoyama, p. 287.↩
97. Sissons, “Japanese in N.T.”, p. 37.↩
98. Consulate-general of Japan in Brisbane, The Japan-Queensland Relationship, no date, p. 2.↩
99. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hachijuunendai no Nichigoo Kankei, Tokyo, 1980, p. 225.↩
100. Sissons, A-J Relations, p. 29.↩
101. Ibid., p. 30.↩
102. Johnson, M.R., “The Japanese State and Australia-Japan Economic Relations 1854–1936” in Oosutoraria Kenkyu Kiyo, Oitemon Gakuin University, Kyoto, Vol. 9, 1984, p. 71.↩
103. Ibid.↩
104. Rix, p. 21.↩
105. Johnson, p. 71.↩
106. Ibid., p. 67.↩
107. Ibid., p. 71.↩
108. Rix, p. 21.↩
109. Ibid., p. 22.↩
110. Ibid., pp. 21–22.↩
111. Narita, pp. 51–54.↩
112. Harry Suzuki, Sydney, 22 Aug. 1987.↩
113. C 123, Criminal Investigation Files, 1 July 1942.↩
114. Narita, pp. 55–56.↩
115. Harry Suzuki.↩
116. Narita, pp. 54–55.↩
117. Lockwood, R., War on the Waterfront, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1987, p. 78.↩
118. Ibid., p. 78. In 1917 Sydney University introduced the first Japanese language course at an Australian university. See Brewster, J., “You can’t have a failure rate of 75%: Idealism and realism in the teaching of Japanese in Australia, 1917–1950”, Conference of Japanese Studies Association of Australia, Sydney, 6–9 July 1989, p. 1. ↩
119. Lockwood, p. 79.↩
120. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 12, Melbourne University Press, 1988, pp. 550–552.↩
121. Lockwood, p. 83.↩
122. Brewster, p. 4.↩
123. Lockwood, p. 83. ↩
124. A 373, 1/505/48, Case No.32.↩
125. Tamiya Nakata, Thursday Island, 12 July 1992.↩
126. Harumi Ahloy, Thursday Island, 1 Sept. 1987.↩
127. Harumi Ahloy, Thursday Island, 12 July 1992.↩
128. Bain, pp. 301-318.↩
129. Ibid. ↩
130. A 373, 1/505/48, Case No. 26.↩
131. Joe Murakami, letter, Yokohama, 16 July 1988.↩
132. Bain, pp. 321-322.↩
133. Kaname Tsutsumi, Kawasaki, 10 Jan. 1987.↩
134. Claude Tanaka, Sydney, 3 Jan. 1993.↩
135. Peggie Carlie née Shiosaki, 26 Sept. 1990.↩
136. Ted Loban, Thursday Island, 31 Aug. 1987. ↩
137. A 373, 1/505/48.↩
138. George Kawano, Innisfail, 10 July 1992.↩
139. Jack Takagaki, Mackay, 6 July 1992.↩
140. Arthur Yamaguchi, letter, Mount Isa, 16 July 1992.↩
141. Sissons, “An Immigrant Family”, mimeograph, ANU, 1975, p. 2.↩
142. Ibid.↩
143. Ibid., p. 15.↩
144. Ibid., pp. 17–20.↩
145. Ibid., pp. 20–25.↩
146. Konno & Fujisaki, pp. 236–237.↩
147. Ibid., 26 May 1941.↩
148. Ibid. ↩
149. T.I. Material, Box A, List 1, p. 2.↩
150. E. Hamaure, an employee of Mitsubishi in Sydney, letter written on the Kashima Maru, 20 Aug. 1941, held by Mrs. Boylson, Sydney. ↩
151. Jeff Dicinoski, Brisbane, 4 June 1992.↩

• Previous
• Home
• Next