This project had origins in 1987 in communication between Yutaka Yoshioka, Chairman, Japan International Agricultural Council, and Kenneth Farrell, Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources, the University of California-Berkeley. Projects were proposed in "long-term food and consumption trends" and "a comparative analysis of farm structure in the United States and Japan" (letter from Farrell to Yoshioka, April 20, 1987). Proposals and counterproposals were sent back and forth but the project accelerated after Professor Wen Chern of The Ohio State University learned of the project from Professor Naraomi Imamura of the University of Tokyo on a visit to Tokyo in September 1989. Because of pressing administrative responsibilities precluding an active role in the project, Kenneth Farrell recommended to Professor Imamura that the project be carried out with Professor Chern and associates.

The Association for Asian American Studies has awarded Masakazu Iwata the 1993 National Book Award for Lifetime Scholarship for this book. Based upon numerous interviews on site as well as English and Japanese documents, the book is a narrative history of the Japanese migrants and, specifically, their experiences as immigrants to the continental United States in the late 19th and the 20th centuries. The focus is upon the Issei, the first generation Japanese in America, who upon arrival entered the fishing, timber, mining, and railroad industries in the American West but shortly left the ranks of labor to become independent farm operators, mainly in the various states west of the Missouri River. It broadly delineates the socio-economic milieu of the times and depicts the arduous, agonizing ascendancy of the Issei up the agricultural ladder in the various regions of settlement, while dealing with their successes and failures as well as general contributions made in their adopted land prior to 1941.