I’ve read that the Japanese American farming community in California was considerably more effective than their American counterparts, with their land being much more valuable, and they had a rapidly increasing market share of a lot of produce and other foods. There does seem to be plenty of sources on this topic, but if anyone out there has some suggestions for deeper readings, or has interesting information on it that would be pretty cool.
Special Interests and the Internment of Japanese-Americans During World War II
It’s quite accurate. My social circles include some cross pollination between historians and farmers, and I’m fairly certain that this thread by Sarah Taber is the best collection of evidence to that that’s easily available (with cited sources, at least.) I’d seen this a while ago, but had to go digging to find it again. https://twitter.com/sarahtaber_bww/status/954774752970801152
The sources she cites: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/harvest.html
https://www.ocregister.com/2012/02/25/japanese-internment-and-victory-gardens/
An additional source, by a historian on their own family’s history of participating in both interning Japanese Americans and in benefiting directly from that internment. https://s-usih.org/2018/02/keeper-of-the-stories/
ETA: For more information on the extent of Japanese American farm production I recommend the article quoted below:
“Hegemony over Produce Farming Despite the alien land laws and the small proportion of California acreage farmed by the Japanese, they came to dominate a narrow, highly specialized band of agriculture: crops requiring intensive labor, specialized care, and capable of being grown in profitable quantities on relatively small plots of marginal lands. In the Sacramento area, for example, Japanese farmers grew 80 percent of the tomatoes supplied to canneries, 61 percent of the asparagus, and 78 percent of the spinach, but only 7 percent of peaches, pears, apricots, plums, and cherries (Board of Control 1922, p. 50). By the eve of World War II, Japanese farmers were producing over 90 percent of snap beans, strawberries, and celery, and approximately 50 percent of artichokes, cauliflower, cucumber, and tomatoes (Bloom and Riemer 1949, pp. 82-83).” (Jiobu, Robert M. Ethnic Hegemony and the Japanese of California.) http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.utdallas.edu/stable/pdf/2095644.pdf?refreqid=search%3A497de30d8409da95443c5eb367649e10