In the previous post we explored the Taft-Katsura Agreement between Japan and the United States. The purpose was to use that as an example of two nations seeking a means to “keep a lid” on a pot that seems to be forever threatening to boil over. Immigration of Japanese to U.S. territories and the mainland was a flame that seemed to keep the pot at or near boiling.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

The first significant wave of 19th-century Chinese immigration to America began with the California gold rush of 1848–1855 and continued with subsequent large labor projects, such as the building of the first transcontinental railroad. Over time animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners increased for reasons of economic competition and simple racism. Attitudes, violence and state laws led the immigrant Chinese to settle in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and took up low-wage labor, such as restaurant and laundry work. California became the hotbed of anti-Chinese fear, segregation and exclusion laws, many of which were struck down by the Supreme Court. But the sentiment was building.

In 1892 the U.S. signed into law, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The Act also denied Chinese residents already in the US the ability to become citizens and Chinese people traveling in or out of the country were required to carry a certificate identifying their status or risk deportation. It was the first major US law implemented to prevent all members of a specific national group from immigrating to the United States, and therefore significantly shaped twentieth-century immigration policy. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 shaped everything that followed. The law alarmed Japan, which regarded China’s treatment as a sign of racial contempt. While Japan was not yet a great power in 1882. By 1905, it was and it expected to be treated differently.

Japanese Immigration

At the same time as the Law was being passed, there was rapid population growth after the Meiji Restoration especially in rural areas and among the urban poor. The government encouraged overseas labor migration as a means to relieve overcrowding. Meanwhile in the U.S. there was a demand for inexpensive labor in Hawaiian sugar plantations, West Coast agriculture, railroads, fisheries, and urban service work. Once the Chinese were excluded Japanese workers were more actively recruited. A U.S.-Japanese treaty signed in 1894 had guaranteed the Japanese the right to immigrate to the United States, and to enjoy the same rights in the country as U.S. citizens. 

By 1900 the Japanese immigrant population in California was small but was being noticed. As seems to be the case with immigrants in America, they work hard and become another “American success story” that, unfortunately, breeds jealousy. Labor unions had gained size and power and they became one of the voices that began to call for control, segregation or exclusion. The instances are many but the act that caused the pot to boil over was the 1906 San Francisco Board of Education enactment of a measure to send Japanese and Chinese children to segregated schools. The Government of Japan was outraged by this policy, claiming that it violated the 1894 treaty. In a series of notes exchanged between late 1907 and early 1908, known collectively as the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the U.S. agreed to pressure the San Francisco authorities to withdraw the measure, and Japan promised to restrict the immigration of laborers to the United States. By this time expansion into Manchuria called for settlers and laborers and as a result immigrants were directed there.

This series of agreements still did not resolve all of the outstanding issues. U.S. treatment of Japanese residents continued to cause tension between the two nations. The Alien Land Act of 1913, for example, barred Japanese from owning or leasing land for longer than three years and adversely affected U.S.-Japanese relations in the years leading up to World War I. As before, these actions were driven by local politics, not federal diplomacy but they had international consequences.

Nativism, Immigration and U.S. Politics

During the First World War Japan was a U.S. ally and for the moment immigration tensions were muted but remained unresolved. After the war there was a national movement towards isolationism and not wanting to be involved in foreign affairs. This was accompanied by a minor, but vocal, sentiment of nativism which led to a general hardening of racial theories and stereotypes. As a result, immigration restriction became a political “hot potato” and then a national priority.  The Japanese view of all this was that the U.S. was willing to accept Japan as a partner when it suited their needs and interests, but never as an equal civilization.

There was a sense on the American side that Japan was a partner that one had to keep an eye upon. The U.S. had long worked on getting all nations to agree to its Open Door Policy for China. With the outbreak of world war, Japan seemed to take advantage of the world’s attention elsewhere and in 1915 issued its “Twenty-One Demands” of China. The demands asked that China recognize Japan’s territorial claims in Manchuria, Liaodong and other areas; prevent other nations from obtaining new concessions along its coast; and take a series of actions designed to benefit the Japanese economically. The U.S. and other nations effectively pressured Japan to drop any demand that changed the Open Door policy, but the other demands were left to China which had to acquiesce. 

The boiling point soon arrived. In 1917, worried about national security, the U.S. passed immigration laws which instituted literacy tests, an arrival tax, and excluded anyone from an “Asiatic Barred Zone” except for Japanese and Filipinos.

The Immigration Act of 1924 

This federal law limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. The Act also included a provision excluding from entry any alien who by virtue of race or nationality was ineligible for citizenship. Existing nationality laws dating from 1790 and 1870 excluded people of Asian lineage from naturalizing. As a result, the 1924 Act meant that even Asians not previously prevented from immigrating, the Japanese in particular, would no longer be admitted to the United States. Many in Japan were very offended by the new law, which was a violation of the Gentlemen’s Agreement. The Japanese government protested, but the law remained, resulting in an increase in existing tensions between the two nations. 

Within Japan, the act created iIntense public outrage. Newspapers framed it as a national humiliation arguing that the West will never treat Japan as an equal. Within the Japanese government, the moderates lost ground to the nationalists and militarists. This law did more damage to U.S.–Japanese relations than almost any single diplomatic act before the 1930s.

From Japan’s viewpoint, this law struck at the very heart of their view of themselves and their place in the world order. Japan demanded recognition as a “civilized” nation and yet this exclusion implied inferiority and contradicted Japan’s self-image as a great power. It was a blow to their sovereignty and dignity. Further it clarified for them that the U.S., which had just embedded a racial hierarchy into federal law, would never see them as more than a partner of convenience, and would always seek to block Japan’s efforts in Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific. From this point on these would always be a strategic mistrust of U.S. intentions.

Even more, these immigration disputes fed the nationalist narratives within Japan, strengthened arguments for self-sufficiency, and increased the military’s skepticism toward diplomacy. What made immigration explosive was not demographics, but symbolism: it convinced many Japanese that even military victory, modernization, and alliance could not overcome racial barriers in the American-led international order.

All of this was well known within the debate leading to the enactment of the law. The law was opposed by a host of interest groups and diplomats: Secretary of State Hughes, career diplomats and embassy officials in Japan, Asia specialists, academics and foreign policy intellectuals, business and commercial interests,  and Christian missionaries – even President Coolidge was reluctant to sign it. The voices all argued that the law would: humiliate Japan, damage diplomacy, strengthen hardliners within the Japanese government, undermine long-term Pacific stability, and strengthen Japanese arguments for strategic autarky* and empire. All of which came true. 

*economic self-sufficiency (I had to look that word up!

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Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. | The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act), Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department