1903 – 1906

On July 7th, 1898, the Hawaiian islands were officially annexed by the United States. Plantation owners needed cheap labor, which led them to recruit the first influx of immigrant labor from China. However, when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned the immigration of Chinese laborers, the U.S. diplomat and Presbyterian missionary Horace Allen began to recruit Korean laborers as an alternative. Desperate to escape the famishes and the turbulent climate of Korea, the first wave of Korean immigrants arrived in Hawaii on January 13th, 1903 by ship, with plans to work on sugar and pineapple plantations. By 1905, more than 7,226 Koreans—627 of whom were women, 465 being children—had come to Hawaii.