Picture Bride Stories

By Barbara Kawakami. During the 1885 to 1924 immigration period of sugar plantation laborers from Japan to Hawaii, more than 200,000 Japanese, mostly single men, made the long journey by ship to Hawaii. As it became apparent that they would never return to Japan, many of the men sent for brides to join them in their adopted home. More than 20,000 of these "picture brides" immigrated from Japan and Okinawa to Hawaii to marry husbands whom they knew only through photographs exchanged between them or their families. Based on Barbara Kawakami's first-hand interviews with sixteen of these women, Picture Bride Stories is a poignant collection that recounts the diverse circumstances that led them to marry strangers, their voyages to Hawaii, the surprises and trials that they encountered upon arriving, and the lives they led upon settling in a strange new land. Many found hardship, yet persevered and endured the difficult working and living conditions of the sugarcane plantations for the sake