Type: Exhibition section
Name: Pluralism and Postwar Life at Seabrook
Detail: The end of the war began a return to more tolerant attitudes about American cultural diversity and the United States’ status as a “nation of immigrants.” In line with liberal pluralistic thinking, which emphasized American culture as a “melting pot” of different traditions, Seabrook provided spaces for its diverse workforce to display and share their heterogeneous traditions. Images of Japanese American and Estonian workers reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and brandishing the flag were juxtaposed with photos capturing Japanese dance ceremonies, traditional flower-arrangement classes, and mochi making. Estonian choirs and folk dancers enlivened holiday ceremonies.
Pluralism was both a matter of public celebration and an unavoidable fact for the workforce. Despite the existence of job and housing segregation, in the cramped spaces of the company town workers invariably interacted on and off the job. While the company maintained strict work schedules, they were also allowed some free time for socialization. Workers integrated as members of Seabrook-sponsored sports teams that competed against teams in the area. There were dance parties and beauty contests held in the Seabrook Farms recreation center; places of worship included a church and a Buddhist temple where marriages and funerals were held; and, cafeterias, health centers, and administrative offices used by all.
This self-sustaining community that Seabrook built restricted and isolated laborers from American society beyond the company town’s confines. Lacking the capital to purchase their own farmland meant that many workers staked their families’ prospects on the ability of their children to gain an education, go to college, and enter professional life. Workers did show solidarity against Seabrook Farms. Paul Noguchi, for instance, recalled the camaraderie that existed among bean pickers working in the fields, and their shared sense of resentment at having to meet daily “mysterious” picking quotas that always seemed to shift. Workers typically picked crops for 15 hours a day and even longer during harvest season. In one instance, Noguchi remembered how Jamaican and Puerto Rican guestworkers brought in a seasonal labor in the postwar period, made a “good natured” offering of extra beans that allowed slower workers to meet their weight quota. Workers would teach each other the trick of soaking baskets in water to increase their weight. Resiliency and agency united all of Seabrook’s laborers.