It may be well here to state the actual nature of the issue in California. This can be done briefly in no better way than by quoting an editorial published not long since in the New York World, a newspaper remarkable for the intelligence with which it has generally treated the Japanese question.
The World's editorial was published apropos an address made by Mr. Roland S. Morris, who served under the Wilson Administration as ambassador to Tokyo, and whose admirable work in Tokyo might have borne good fruit but for our unfortunate habit of relieving ambassadors, however able, when the political party to which they belong goes out of power.
Said the World:
In his address at the University Club on the Japanese issue in California, Roland S. Morris, American Ambassador to Tokyo, refrained from discussing the merits of the case and merely defined the question in accordance with the facts. It is only in the light of the facts that a sound decision can be reached where argument and judgment run along the line of fixed prejudices.
As Mr. Morris explained, Japan does not question the right of the United States, subject to its treaty obligations, to legislate on the admission of foreigners. While under the treaty of 1911 Japanese were granted full rights of residence and admission, the Tokyo Government accepted the condition that it would continue limiting emigration from Japan to the United States in compliance with the "Gentleman's Agreement" of 1908. [4]
[ 4] The "limiting" here referred to includes the stoppage of labour emigration, not by us, but by the Japanese Government, which took this amiable and dignified means of avoiding a direct issue on the subject of racial equality.
The Japanese Government and people are not seeking the removal of restrictions on immigration. The Japanese are not eligible to American citizenship, but they have enjoyed in this country the same personal and property rights as other aliens. It is here that the friction has been created by the action of California.
In 1913 California deprived those aliens who were ineligible to citizenship of certain property rights. In 1920, in Mr. Morris's words, "this legislation was amplified by an initiative and referendum act." What he does not state is that this measure was intended to discriminate against the Japanese in buying and leasing land.
Hence the protests of the Government at Tokyo. The Japanese object to what they regard as the injustice of being set apart as a separate class, suffering political disabilities and deprived of rights other aliens enjoy.
Mr. Morris leaves the issue open when he says: "The Japanese protest presents to all our people this very definite question: In the larger view of our relations with the Orient, is it wise thus to classify aliens on the basis of their eligibility to citizenship?"
In pursuance of its local ends, California has adopted a provocative position and played into the hands of Japanese jingoes and militarists.
Lamentably, these simple facts have been cast adrift upon a stormy sea of Californian prejudice. That sea, I fear, so fills the eye of the Average American that oftentimes he fails entirely to descry the shipwrecked waifs of Truth out there upon their little raft. Were he to attempt to state his views upon the California question he would in all probability quote as the source of his information that favourite authority, "They say."
"They say Japanese immigrants are flooding into California and buying up the farming land; they say the Japanese have large families; they say they don't make desirable neighbours; they say that if things keep on this way they will ultimately control the state. Certainly we don't want any part of our country dominated by foreigners." The less familiar he is with certain Californian traits the more he is likely to conclude: "I guess it must be true or the Californians wouldn't be making such a row about it."
His tendency to reason thus may be enhanced by the recollection of a phrase he has heard: the "Yellow Peril"—one of the most poisonous phrases ever coined. He does not know that the term was Made in Germany for the very purpose of exciting international suspicion and ill-will. He may not be alive to our real Yellow Peril—that of the yellow press—but may, upon the contrary, actually acquire his views on international affairs from such inflammatory sheets as those published by William Randolph Hearst, himself a son of California and a leader in the anti-Japanese chorus.
My Average American knows little of Californian politics, and nothing of politics in Japan. He does not realize that Californian politicians are largely responsible for the stirring up of anti-Japanese sentiment, precisely as earlier politicians of the state were responsible for anti-Chinese sentiment, and that in both cases vote-getting was a chief motive. It is sometimes very convenient for a demagogue to have a voteless alien race at hand to bully.