Immigrant Laborer Contract

I discovered a terrific document hanging in the hallway of Queen’s Hospital’s Cardiac Care Unit.

It’s a labor contract for a Japanese immigrant who came to Hawaii in 1900 to work in the sugar cane fields.

If you click on the picture above, a larger and more easily read version will appear, so you can check out the details of the agreement between the worker and the Japanese Immigration Bureau.

It’s fascinating if you’re into this sort of stuff, and the part that really interested me is that the man – Karumon Miyashita – contracted to be paid $15 a month. If his wife Soye worked, she would be paid $10 a month.

Each month, the bureau deducted $2.50 from his pay and put it in a trust fund to be used to secure return passage for Mr. Miyashita and his wife to Japan.

See? It pays to wander the halls of a hospital while waiting for a patient’s room to be cleaned.