Yellow Men and White

...Though naval competition has been eliminated as a point of friction, exclusion remains as a sore point and a potential trouble maker in the future...

...If Congress finds a way to right the injustice of that law, and to give to Japan the same privilege of sending immigrants here under the quota that other countries enjoy, it will have acted to remove what has been the biggest point of potential friction between the two countries...

...The important question is whether Japan as a nation is or is not entitled to the proper respect and consideration of other nations...

...Accordingly, the Japanese government consider it their duty to maintain and to place on record their solemn protest against the discriminatory clause in Section 13 (c) of the Immigration Act of 1924, and to request the American government to take all possible and suitable measures for the removal of such discrimination...

...Two extracts from his memoranda may be cited as illustrating the attitude of the government and the people whom Hanihara represents...

...To Japan the question is not one of expediency, but of principle...

...In other words, the Japanese government ask of the United States government simply that proper consideration ordinarily given by one nation to the selfrespect of another, which after all forms the basis of amicable international intercourse throughout the civilized world...

...While both the Executive and Congress have considered Japanese exclusion a closed issue, the people of Japan still feel that a stigma of inferiority has been placed upon them, and public officials have made it plain that they were only waiting a favorable opportunity to reopen the matter through negotiations...

...However it can only do so if sentiment on the Pacific coast has radically changed in the past six years...

...When first the fertile lands of the Pacific coast states beckoned to the hardy and industrious peasant of Japan, thousands crossed the Pacific to win a comfortable living as truck farmers and orange growers, or as artizans and laborers...

...If any congressional spokesman proposes to take the lead in Congress, he must have the support not only of the bulk of his colleagues from the Pacific coast states, but also of the labor unions and other organizations once opposed so strenuously to including Japan under the quota system...

...In the following paper Mr...

...The Japanese government, on the other hand, stoutly maintained that its measures were securing the promised result, citing in proof of its claim figures of the United States Commissioner General of Immigration showing that the excess of admissions over departures of Japanese from our shores, including all classes, from 1908 to 1923, averaged only 578 annually...

...Spokesmen for the Japanese people have made it plain that they intended to reopen negotiations whenever the opportunity offered itself...

...By the immigration act of 1924, Congress excluded Japan from the quotas that were henceforth to govern immigration from European countries to the United States...

...Labor on the Pacific coast raised its voice in protest to Washington...

...It would remove from the people of Japan the feeling that we excluded them from the quota in order to emphasize their inferiority...

...Labor had a legitimate grievance, for the American workman was at a disadvantage when competing with his Japanese rival, brought up on a much inferior standard of living...

...Furthermore, the issuance of passports was given over to a group of special officials at the Foreign Office, who made a thorough investigation of each application for a passport by students or merchants, in order to find out whether the applicant was really a laborer masking as a member of another class...

...Whether or not Congress intended to brand the Japanese as an inferior people, and to put them on a plane below the Italians, Greeks, Irish, Poles and other nationalities to whom definite quotas were assigned, is aside from the question...

...It is in the states beyond the Rockies that Japanese immigration is an economic and social problem of the first order...

...If Congress were to debate the question of letting Japanese in under the quota, and then vote the proposal down, new fuel would be added to the fires that have been smoldering ever since Ambassador Hanihara made his strong, if unsuccessful, protest to former Secretary Hughes...

...It refused, for one thing, to issue passports to laborers, skilled or unskilled, except those previously domiciled in the United States, or their parents, wives or children under twenty years of age...

...Here more than anywhere else there seemed to be discernible a threat of war...

...The value of such legislation would be moral, not material...

...The London naval treaty has put an end to suspicions on both sides of the Pacific, for during the life of the treaty each country knows exactly what ships the other can build...

...Over the effectiveness of the agreement there has been a sharp difference of opinion...

...Meanwhile, a shift seems to be taking place in the views of congressional leaders...

...Whatever the views of the administration—and it may be taken for granted that it knows how Japan feels—it must of course wait for Congress to act...

...Japanese exclusion has provided a second menace to peaceful relations between the two countries...

...It was in no wise intended as a restriction on the sovereign rights of the United States to regulate its own immigration...

...The Japanese government voluntarily undertook to adopt and enforce certain administrative measures designed to check the emigration of Japanese laborers to the United States...

...The duty of the Executive is to enforce the laws enacted by Congress, and the 1924 act is still in force...

...McKee analyzes the contemporary attitude of many statesmen toward the problem...

...To raise the issue again without the full backing of the Pacific coast might indeed have consequences little short of disastrous...

...For six years the 1924 act has controlled the flow of immigration to American shores...

...It was the Pacific coast that brought about the "Gentleman's Agreement," and it was the Pacific coast that lent the main impetus to the drive that debarred the people of Japan from the benefits of the 1924 immigration quotas...

...In another memorandum he says: It is not denied that, fundamentally speaking, it lies within the inherent sovereign power of each state to limit and control immigration to its own domains, but when, in the exercise of such right, an evident injustice is done to a foreign nation in disregard of its proper self-respect, of international understandings or of ordinary rules of comity, the question necessarily assumes an aspect which justifies diplomatic discussion and adjustment...

...If we had enacted at that time discriminatory legislation, the national susceptibilities of the Japanese people would have been grievously injured thereby, and the "Gentleman's Agreement" opened a way by which we might prevent the influx of Japanese laborers, thus providing ample protection for the workers of the Pacific coast, without taking extreme measures which would have offended the natural pride of a friendly nation...

...By these and other administrative measures, the Tokio officials undertook to keep Japanese laborers out of the United States...

...To illustrate how strongly they feel on the matter, many wealthy Japanese give the United States a wide berth when they travel abroad...

...Though the practice was not prohibited specifically under the "Gentlemen's Agreement," the Japanese government in March, 1920, put an end to the issuance of passports to so-called "picture brides...

...He spoke of the "grave consequences" which might ensue from the enactment of the legislation pending in Congress...

...great issue that has ever threatened to becloud the friendly relations between Japan and the United States...

...The Pacific coast had made a vigorous protest against giving Japan the benefits of the quota, and not many members in either house stood out against it...

...If any move is to be made in the matter, the initiative must properly come from the Pacific coast...

...On the contrary the Japanese government showed from the very beginning of this problem their perfect willingness to cooperate with the United States government to effectively prevent by all honorable means the entrance into the United States of such Japanese nationals as are not desired by the United States, and have given ample evidences thereof, the facts of which are well known to your government...

...Until they have evidence, therefore, that the Pacific coast really wants to correct what many now feel was an unnecessary slap in the face to Japan, any action by congressional leaders would be both premature and dangerous...

...If Americans feel that way about us," they say, "why should we go to America...

...Many people on the Pacific coast insisted that it did not succeed in stopping the flow of Japanese laborers, and that every year the Japanese colony established there was being augmented by new arrivals from the home country...

...Some endeavor to correct the existing situation should undoubtedly be attempted and a satisfactory adjustment made.—The Editors...

...To her the mere fact that a few hundreds or thousands of her nationals will or will not be admitted into the domains of other countries is immaterial, so long as no question of national susceptibilities is involved...

...For close to a generation, immigration has been the Troubles and storm clouds in plenty have hovered over the foreign policy of the United States, but none have possessed the dimensions of that discrimination against the Japanese which was expressed first in the "Gentlemen's Agreement" and second in the Immigration Act of 1924...

...So the American government started negotiations with Tokio, and the famous "Gentleman's Agreement" was the result of these negotiations...

...Every time the United States laid down the keel of a new warship, the jingo press in Tokio and Osaka conjured up to their readers the vision of an imperialistic Uncle Sam, bent upon ruling the waters of the far East with his dreadnoughts and submarines ; and we in turn saw in every building program approved by the imperial Diet further evidence that Japan was aiming to make herself mistress of the Pacific...

...The gist of the agreement was this...

...Racial conflicts soon ensued, as they invariably do when men of different race and color, and different standards of living, work side by side in competition with each other...

...In 1924 Congress definitely excluded Japanese from the quota law placed on the statute books that year, a law which committed the United States to a new immigration policy...

...At best, Japan could not hope to send to this country more than 200 of her citizens a year, a number so small that it could hardly offer any threat to the racial integrity of the American people...

...Under the agreement, the Tokio government itself undertook to keep Japanese laborers from the United States...

...Ambassador Hanihara explained in detail the point of view of his government, in a memorandum submitted to the State Department...

...Congressman Albert Johnson of Washington, a case in point, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration, who hails from a part of the country where anti-Japanese agitation has been the strongest, has indicated that he may favor placing Japanese immigration under a special quota...

...The Japanese have considered the legislation as discriminatory, and have felt that a blow has been dealt to their national pride...

...He says: It is needless to add that it is not the intention of the Japanese government to question the sovereign right of any country to regulate immigration to its own territories, nor is it their desire to send their nationals to the countries where they are not wanted...