Tamping Song - Haruka Fujii

While doing research for our project American Railroad, I was surprised to discover that after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese immigrants became one of the dominant workforces; by 1906, over 13,000 Japanese immigrants were working for the railroads. Later, under pressure, Japan would stop labor immigration to the United States via the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1908. During this research I also discovered a recording of the “Tamping Song” — a railroad worker’s song released on Columbia Records Japan in 1963. Using an inspirational melody from this song, my work weaves the ambition, dreams, and hopes of the immigrant workers on the front lines of the railroad construction in the US with the sentiment for their homeland.