Japan then, stopped emigration fearing that Korean dissidents would be able to gather more easily overseas. The workers lived in group camps segregated by ethnicity; Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. They would rise at 4:30 a.m. for a quick breakfast, meet at 5:15 and march to the fields to begin work by 6:00. After a thirty-minute lunch break, they would work until four. They were paid 15 dollars a month, half the average daily wage for workers in America. Although wages were later raised to 18 dollars a month, the workers imagined that much greater opportunities awaited them on the U.S. mainland. Between 1905 and 1907, 1,003 plantation workers fled to California to work in the rice fields, and by 1916, 1,136 Koreans had moved to the mainland.
Since 90 percent of the Korean immigrants were males, gender imbalance became a serious issue. Lonely bachelors resorted to the “picture-bride” match-making system, so named because photos of eligible Korean ladies were circulated and matches arranged. The Korean brides-to-be would then set sail to America to meet their husbands. From 1910 to 1924, an estimated 600 to 1,000 picture brides arrived in Hawaii with Japanese passports. Despite some disappointment and personal horror stories, virtually all of the couples married and settled down. Gradually monthly incomes rose to 26 dollars, they saved every penny they could, and by 1922, dozens were running businesses of their own.