In 1865 a Scottish sugar planter in Hawaii wrote to an American businessman in Yokohama: ¡°Could any good agricultural laborers be obtained from Japan ... to serve like the Chinese under a contract for six or eight years?¡± The American said he¡¯d see.
The ragtag band he assembled ¡ª ¡°mere laborers,¡± he said, ¡°picked out of the streets of Yokohama, sick, exhausted and filthy¡± ¡ª became modern Japan¡¯s first emigrants. They arrived in Honolulu on June 19, 1868. They were known as gannenmono ¡ª ¡°first-year people.¡± It was year one of the watershed Meiji Era (1868-1912); year one of modern Japan; 15 years after the famous ¡°opening¡± of Japan by an American squadron of menacing steam-powered Black Ships.
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