assage of the Texas land law in 1921 may have had no effect on Japanese already in the state, but it did discourage other Japanese from immigrating to Texas. The true death knell for Japanese immigration, however, came in 1924 when the U.S. Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act. For Texas the result of this law—informally known as the Japanese Exclusion Act—was a general stabilization in the state's Japanese population, a stability that continued until the beginning of World War II.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy on December 7, 1941, brought the United States quickly into the Second World War. The surprise attack also set off a wave of fear and hysteria across the country. Suddenly all Japanese Americans, no matter how loyal they were to the U.S., were suspect in the eyes of the rest of the country. Discrimination against those of Japanese ancestry became commonplace, and, in Texas as well as across the nation, prejudice all too often became confused with patriotism.

At the forefront of this anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States was the federal government. In addition to forbidding public assemblies of more than a few Japanese at one time, the government strictly controlled the travel of Japanese Americans outside a several-mile radius of their homes. It also froze their bank accounts, prohibiting withdrawal of money.

But perhaps the greatest intrusion into the lives of the Japanese, at least those in Texas, were the unannounced searches of their homes and the seizure of their property by FBI and local authorities. During these raids family members were subject to verbal interrogation, and almost anything written in Japanese was considered suspicious. Also suspect were cameras, which were immediately confiscated along with any binoculars, firearms, or short-wave radios the family might own. The ultimate fear of Japanese Texans, however, was that instead of only taking away their possessions, the federal agents might take members of the family as well.