The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907-08 was an informal agreement between the United States and Japan to ease growing tensions between the two countries, particularly over immigration. He called on US President Theodore Roosevelt to force San Francisco to repeal its Japanese-American school segregation ordinance in exchange for Japan agreeing to deny emigration passports to Japanese workers, while allowing wives, children and parents of current immigrants to enter the United States.
Japanese tensions rise
Following the Japanese government’s relaxation of isolationist emigration policies in 1868, Japanese people began to immigrate to the American Pacific coast, landing primarily in California, peaking in the early 20th century as a result of an 1894 treaty granting immigration rights to Japanese people. Finding migrant labor jobs and often working on farms, railroads and mines for low wages, the Japanese soon found themselves the target of discriminatory campaigns, an echo of those carried out after the boom in Chinese immigration of the 1852 gold rush.
Among other tactics, this included exclusion from membership in the American Federation of Labor, the nation’s largest union, and the initiation in 1905 of the Asiatic Exclusion League, founded with the aim of ending the Japanese and Korean immigration. Moreover, in 1905, the San Francisco Chronicle launched an 18-month anti-Japanese press campaign that warned of an invasion by “little brown men” and headlines like “The Japanese Invasion, the Issue of the Hour.”
“The Chinese and the Japanese…are not the stuff of which you can make American citizens,” said San Francisco Mayor James D. Phelan, a future US senator.
On October 11, 1906, the regulation passed by the San Francisco Board of Education calling for the sending of all Japanese and Korean students, as well as Chinese students, to a separate “Oriental school” caused particular indignation on the part of of the Japanese government, despite the fact that only 93 Japanese students, 25 of whom were born in America, lived in the neighborhood.
“Excluding (Japanese students) from public schools is cruel nonsense,” Roosevelt told Congress in December 1906.
Members of a congressional committee examine the passports of Japanese ‘brides’ at the Angel Island immigration station, circa 1920.
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To circumvent the agreement, many Japanese male immigrants entered into arranged marriages with so-called “image wives”. If a man married a woman who was in Japan, he could bring his new wife into the country legally. Although becoming a photo bride (supposedly because husbands selected them by their photos) offered some women the opportunity to start a new life in America, it could also come with risks since women did not know their husbands. or the condition of their future. houses.
Over 10,000 Japanese women entered the United States through 1924, and over 15,000 immigrated to Hawaii. At the time, Japanese immigrants made up about 1% of California’s population.
Teddy Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy Program
A positive relationship with Japan was key to Roosevelt’s foreign policy program. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his role in ending the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) with the Treaty of Portsmouth, Roosevelt also organized the Great White Fleet Tour, which sent 16 fleets of battleships on a 14-month world goodwill tour. which included a stop in Japan.
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On the heels of the Gentlemen’s Agreement, on November 3, 1908, the Root-Takihira Agreement was reached between the United States and Japan, ending a potential war. Negotiated by Secretary of State Elihu Root and Japanese Ambassador Takihira Kogoro, it was a commitment to maintain “the existing status quo” in the Pacific, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Center, as well as the policy of the open door and independence from China. Critics, however, accused Roosevelt of “sacrificing Chinese interests in Manchuria and Korea in the name of improving relations with Japan,” according to the center, but the deal was seen as a success that led to avoid a war.
Discrimination continues
Although Japan and the San Francisco Board of Education signed on to the Gentlemen’s Agreement, which was never ratified by Congress, it did not end discrimination against Japanese immigrants. Attacks and protests against Japanese immigrants and businesses were frequent.
California’s Webb-Haney Act of 1913, also known as the Alien Lands Act, barred “all aliens ineligible for citizenship” from lawn ownership rights. About 10 years later, the Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, was signed into law by Calvin Coolidge, rendering the Gentlemen’s Agreement obsolete.
“Of all the races ineligible for citizenship under our law, the Japanese are the least assimilable and the most dangerous to our country,” said VS McClatchey, a California newspaper publisher, while pushing for the law, which established a national-origin quota system and a ban on Japanese immigrants until the law was repealed in 1952.
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“A History of Japanese Americans in California: Discriminatory Practices,” National Park Service.
“American-Japanese Relations at the Turn of the Century, 1900–1922”, Historian’s Office.
“Root-Takahira Accord”, Theodore Roosevelt Center.
“Immigration and Relocation in United States History”, Library of Congress.
“Japanese Americans and the United States Constitution”, Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
“Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Congress”, United States House of Representatives.
