Shall Japanese-Americans in Idaho be Treated with Fairness and Justice or Not?

The subtitle: “Addresses and Proceedings at Mass Meeting Citizens of Idaho, Auditorium First Congregational Church, Boise, Idaho, Evening of January Twenty-Third, 1921.”

“RESOLVED:THAT IN MASS MEETING ASSEMBLED THIS AUDIENCE EXPRESS ITS CONVICTIONS THAT IN ALL MATTERS OF. LEGISLATION CONCERNING THE DISCUSSED QUESTION OF JAPANESE PEOPLE IN AMERICA THAT WE ADVISE THE RESTRICTION OF FURTHER IMMIGRATION FOR THE PRESENT AT LEAST, BUT THAT THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN HERE FOR YEARS AND ARE AMERICANS IN SPIRIT BE GIVEN CITIZENSHIP IF THEY MEET THE HIGH NEEDED CONDITIONS OF THE SAME AND THAT THEY BE TREATED WITH THE SAME CONSIDERATION AS WE TREAT ALL PEOPLES UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES.”

The topic was thus presented like a debate resolution.

The paper then goes on to tell about who is running the meeting, and why:

“ORIGIN OF THE MEETING.: The meeting was called by Frederick Vining Fisher, the Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Boise, entirely on his own initiative, without asking the support of the Church, the Pilgrim Brotherhood or the United Americans of which he is a State Director, solely in the interest of truth and justice. Attacks on the Japanese in the Forum of the Chamber of Commerce and the introduction of a bill in the State Legislature to petition Congress not to allow citizenship for American resident Japanese in any new treaty to be made caused Mr. Fisher to ask the citizens to come together and consider the real facts in the case.”

In other words, Idaho was joining states that were asking for a ban on allowing Japanese to become citizens.

“Let me state the case: There is a strong agitation at this time against the Jews and the Japanese, one in the east, the other here in the west. We of the west feel keenly that the agitation against the Jews is unjust and un-American, but we do not realize that the agitation against the Americans of Japanese descent may also be equally unjust. Idaho, like other western states, will soon be asked to take sides on this grave issue. We must put aside race prejudice and settle the question on pure merit and justice. We must know the facts. Idaho cannot retain her self-respect if unwilling to look the issue square in the face.”

This is a little puzzling for me. Apparently, there was anti-Jewish feelings in the Eastern part of the U.S. at the time.

One of the speakers was a Quaker, named Colonel John P. Irish.

“I have read the anti-Japanese legislation proposed by the legislature of Idaho, exhibited to me by a committee of your representatives. I observed that that legislation is not based nor demanded because of any condition existing in Idaho. It especially recites that it is demanded because of conditions existing in California. That's a remarkable thing. You have Japanese in Idaho. It appears they have given no cause of complaint. There is no indictment of them, their behavior, their industry, their habits, in the preamble of that legislation, but it is based upon conditions in California. Why, if your legislature were to propose to pass a law vitally affecting the agriculture and horticulture of Idaho and compelling those who practiced the art of horticulture or agriculture to practice it according to the physical conditions of California and not the physical conditions of Idaho, why, you would laugh at them; but here you are asked to pass legislation that involves the peace of nations and the peace of the world, to pass that not because of economic, financial, industrial or social conditions existing in Idaho, but because of conditions in California.”

He points out that the real problem area is California, not Idaho. California is basically shipping out it's anti-Japanese hate to other states. As far as their behavior in Idaho goes, he points out that there are no complaints against Japanese in Idaho.

“Now I don't blame your legislators. I don't blame anyone outside of California who has absorbed ideas on this question from the literature furnished by the venal press and the statements made by the venal mouths of the anti-Japanese agitators in my state, I don't blame you for it, and I am here to enable you to see both sides, to tell you the truth, to the end that you may deliver yourself from any chains and gyves of false conviction that you have entered into because of your misinformation.”

This relates to how people learn things. People learn from other people, from their schools, from radio, and from books, newspapers and other printed media. (Again, there was no television at the time.) The speaker is noting the effect of the press on influencing people's opinions.

Think about this for a minute. If you were living in Idaho, say, and you had never met a Japanese-American and did not know anyone who did, then how would you form your opinions about them? Probably by what others aid, and by what you read in the papers. If some of the papers are virulently anti-Japanese, and others weren't, then you would be in a quandary over which to believe. You might end up believing the stuff that is really composed of lies and rumors.

The speaker then goes into some of the facts, pointing out that the population of California is only about 2% Japanese.

He also points out how some of the anti-Japanese people have claimed the Japanese would out-populate the whites and take over the entire state.

“When has it occurred in the history of the world that 2 per cent of a population could outdo 98 per cent of it in biological production?”

He also goes into an example of an outright lie relating to Japanese buying up land:

“Now there was one of the basic lies. Another one was published by a mannamed Van Bernard, who is a member of the California legislature, who wanted to arouse people on the question of land leasing. He published that Japanese had leased in the upper end of the Sutter Basin 10,000,000 acres of land. Well, now, when you remember that there are only 27,931,444 acres of farm land in California, if the Japanese have leased 10,000,000 of that why we are gone sure. (Laughter.) People at a distance who read that, and it immediately went into the whole press of California, into the mouths of agitators people at a distance who read that, who didn't know where the Sutter Basin is, said "10,000,000 acres, to arms," and they rushed right up to join an anti-Japanese club. Now I am one of the trustees of the flood control work on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers carried on by the state and federal government. I know every inch of the shores of those rivers. The Sutter Basin runs from the mouth of Butte slough to the confluence of the Sacramento and Feather rivers and the Sutter Basin has in it just 60,000 acres, 60,000 acres. And yet this man published, and it is current in California, today, that in that tract of land that has in it only 60,000 acres that Japanese in the upper end of it had leased 10,000,000 acres. (Laughter.)”

He goes on to try and show how the Japanese emigrant would see things:

“Instead of nagging and abusing them we should take this virile nation, with its beautiful history, we should take those people by the hand and lead them on, because they love the United States, they are heart-stricken at their treatment in California. You talk with intelligent, educated Japanese, as I do nearly every day, who come here from Japan, they are appalled, they can't understand it, they don't know why it is done. I was talking with a newspaper man the other day who landed here from Japan, a very good English scholar; he says, "I can't understand it; I am going to talk with the Governor." He went up and talked with our Governor and came back. I said, "You understand it now?" He says, "No, I understand it less than I did before; I don't see why it is." And it is hard for an intelligent, thoughtful, mercifully minded American to understand why it is.”

He then examines the rumors that the Japanese have been buying up all the good land in California, and notes that much of the land they have gotten is land that the whites wanted nothing to do with.

“Now what about the land they own? You read every anti-Japanese attack and they say, "They have usurped the richest land in California." They do own some good land, but a great part of the acreage owned by Japanese in California is land that no white man would touch.”

Someone in the audience asked him what the motive was behind the anti-Japanese movement.

“COLONEL IRISH: It is a very mysterious thing. The agitation was begun by the Scripps and Hearst papers during the war. When our State Department captured what is known as the Zimmermann letter and accompanying documents it was at once disclosed that this anti-Japanese agitation was German propaganda and the Scripps and Hearst papers stopped, until the close of the war, then took it up again. It is no less German propaganda now than it was then. If any of you can get a little book by Captain Olinger, a captain in our regular army, written just after the close of the war, under the caption, "The Technique of German Propaganda," and read that, you will find it very enlightening. He said, "If any of you think Germany has abandoned her purpose you err. Her propaganda now will be to separate the allies who in union have overcome her in an action at arms. In one country Germany will be playing upon race prejudices; in another upon religious prejudices as today amongst the Mohammedans; in another country commercial envy and jealousy; all the time bent on the one purpose, to divide the allies who in union have whipped her." Now that's what's going on. Why, there was in California working on a Hearst paper before we went into war a German subject named Brandeis. He was blatantly pro-German, and after we entered the war he was still more vicious. Our secret service arrested him, turned him over to the army, and he was held prisoner in Fort Douglas in Utah as an enemy alien till the close of the war, and when the war was over he came down to San Francisco, and he has been writing and publishing as a serial in that anti-Japanese organ, "The San Francisco Bulletin," with his signature, one of the most infamous anti-Japanese stories, defamatory, false, in every statement published and circulated by that German subject, a former officer in the German army. Now when it was published that Lenine and Trotsky had granted that 400 square miles concession in eastern Siberia to an American, Lenine said they had granted that concession to an American because he believed it would be one means of bringing on war between Japan and the United States, which was his purpose. There is that element of propaganda. Then there are other sinister influences always behind the urgency for a war. Do you suppose that the sow forgets the cornfield in which she once fills her belly? Don't you suppose she will go and hunt the same old hole under the rail fence and get in again? Do you suppose that the people who enriched themselves unduly by the spoils of war forget the corn patch and the hole under the fence? No. They don't forget it. They know where to go when they want another fill. There is that continual urgency all the time. These two species of propaganda and the other, all the time; and it points to one focus: every man that's engaged in it must be a conscious agent in a movement to cause war; he must be conscious of it.”

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