A Potpourri of Phrases
Directions: Example: Analysis:
Photo: F. Davey, Hawaii State Archives In the late 1920s, plantation managers living on the Islands wanted the second-generation of young Asian immigrants enrolled in public schools where they would receive vocational training to prepare them to work for the sugar mills.
A Potpourri of Phrases
| 1. The division of labor, marked by a division of race, had white managers and foremen representing 25 percent of the work force whereas approximately 75 percent of the laborers were Asians. | |
| 2. Sons and daughters of first-generation immigrants had the promise of a better life because going to school meant learning about equality. | |
| 3. The planters had a vested interest in limiting the kinds of courses made available to immigrant children who were discouraged from going past the eighth grade. | |
| 4. In 1928, plantation managers wanted Asian American students to take vocational training instead of literature courses so that they would become cane carriers who would continue to work in the fields. | |
| 5. However, the kind of education the young Asian Americans were getting went against the kind of thinking that was embraced by plantation owners. | |
| 6. In the white haole world, equality was not an issue because the managers were used to being on top of the socioeconomic ladder whereas field workers were on the bottom. | |
| 7. Nevertheless, teachers from the Mainland were determined to teach the children to think about equality and to recite parts of the Declaration of Independence. | |
| 8. In school, the children were called by their names and not by identification numbers stamped on a metal bango disk. | |
| 9. Their parents furthered their desire to have the world of education open doors for them that they could only dream about. | |
| 10. A Japanese laborer's daughter worked alongside of her father at an early age and was asked at the end of a full day's work, "Are you tired, (and if so), would you want to work in the fields when you are old enough to leave school?" | |
| 11. The words of their elders did not fall on deaf ears. | |
| 12. Some of the grandchildren of first-generation immigrants were given an opportunity to obtain a college education on the Mainland. | |
| 13. Unlike her parents, who had to fulfill a contractual obligation to work on a plantation for at least three years after arriving on the Islands, a second-generation Japanese American mother and her husband owned and operated a small Mom and Pop grocery shop. | |
| 14. Working 12 hours a day seven days a week for six years without a vacation, they earned enough money to send their son to a Mainland university in Ohio. | |
| 15. Writing to her son at eight o'clock in the evening, she says, "We are still down at the store since Dad has to catch up on the soaking of the teriyaki steak." | |
| 16. She tells him that the schooling she received was on a very limited scale in comparison to what he will learn. | |
| 17. For like many others, she was forced to leave school after completing the eighth grade to help her parents earn a living. | |
| 18. All that she learned from that time on was the result of her interest in reading books. | |
| 19. "In my small way," she continues, "I am trying and doing my best (by working) so that you being an exception can and must be above our intellectual level." | |
| 20. Like others of her generation, this mother had worked as a laborer together with her parents to make Hawaii's sugar industry "King." | |