First generation Japanese immigrant (Nisei) Shoji Nagumo organizes Japanese gardeners to challenge discriminatory practices.  Regional gardening associations become the League of Southern California Japanese Gardeners.

Many first-generation Japanese immigrants to the United States (Nisei) worked in jobs relating to agriculture and gardening due to racially exclusionary laws and their limited knowledge of English. In 1934, one third of Los Angeles’ Japanese-American labor force were gardeners. “Before [WWII], the Japanese dominated the garden business on the West Coast… Their skill and industriousness was recognized by all, and there was even some prestige associated in employing a Japanese gardener.”

Like the rest of the Japanese population in the West during World War II, Nagumo and his family were incarcerated in Japanese internment camps.

Helphand. Kenneth. Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime. (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2006), p 157-9.