• It’s actually pretty plausible, the first wave of Japanese people to immigrate to California and Hawaii was in the 1860s. By the 1900 census there were nearly 25k Japanese people living on the West Coast.

      • @grue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And I guess since the Meiji Restoration was bad news for the samurai class, it makes sense that they would want to emigrate.

        (I looked it up because often it isn’t the upper classes that are motivated to leave a society, but in this case it checks out.)

    • Skua
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      41 year ago

      The first Japanese embassy to America even landed in San Francisco in 1860