Reestablishment of Right Relations Between American and Japan
From the book Japanese Exclusion. The article sited is probably from 1924.
The original article is by Gulick, who wrote numerous materials about the Japanese. He was in favor of their immigration and had some interesting approaches as to how to make it more workable.
He quotes the American ambassador to Japan's views on the Exclusion Act.
(1)Other things the anti-Japanese groups have done.
Why Japan feels hurt and humiliated. (Gulick was the type of writer who liked to use numbered lists in his writings - a lot.)
A continuation of his list.
His list carried on to a third page.
He writes that the main goal should be that the East and the West learn to get along with each other. A pretty reasonable goal.
He's saying that all the anti-Japanese prejudice can lead to disaster, but he didn't anticipate war between the two countries. As it was, the anti-Japanese views helped somewhat to contribute to the eventual war, but the war itself was started by the Japanese militarists who had their own goals in mind.
(2) Gulick says that people throughout the U.S. had somewhat similar fears of the Japanese and their labor as did those on the West Coast. In this, he was somewhat off. (3) He anticipated fairly serious violence between Japanese and white laborers. There was, indeed, some violence, but the main reaction to the Japanese laborers on the part of the white farmers and businessmen was to work to get them kicked out of the West Coast, and to make sure that no more entered the country.
(4) He thinks we need to be “homogeneous” in our thinking, and says that the immigrations from other countries have basically hurt us.
(1) He believes that the Japanese can be assimilated if their numbers remain small enough.
He says that Japanese population has grown on the West Coast despite the Gentleman's Agreement.
He then approaches things from the viewpoint that some Japanese are already here. This will lead to his position that they should be treated decently. (Just don't let a bunch more of them come over.)
He tends to praise Japanese immigrants as being above most of the other immigrant groups in various categories.
(1) Basically, he's saying we should practice what we preach. He also points out that discriminatory race legislation is wrong, and the Japanese were upset that they were specifically pointed out as the objects of discrimination. (One interesting thing here; Gulick notes that “discriminatory race legislation is wrong,” but he doesn't really deal with all the race legislation that was against blacks at the time.)
He tries to pinpoint what people mean when they say this is a “white man's land.”
He notes that the national policy was one of equality for blacks, but that local laws customs of states in the South serve to nullify that national policy.
He notes this isn't really a “white man's land” since we have a significant number of blacks, Native Americans, and other groups.
Whether people follow the principles of the country doesn't depend on their race or color, but upon their education.
He beings to present his own solution to the problem of Japanese immigration.
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He advocates a fixed quota system for immigration of Japanese and all other nationalities, thus making sure that everyone will be treated equally.
I've read a lot of Gulick's materials. He seemed to be trying to find a constructive way to get the nations to get along, but it's also obvious that he had his own prejudices.
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