this ain't livin'

Japanese immigrants to the United States started entering California in larger numbers in the late 1860s, later than their Chinese counterparts, and they tended to come in families, rather than as single men seeking to make money in the goldfields. Once they arrived, many assimilated into white culture, living in mixed neighbourhoods, sending their children to white schools, and attending Christian churches. This didn’t sit well with many residents of California, who spoke out vigorously against the rise of Japanese immigration into the United States and opposed the growth of the Japanese community in the state.

The San Francisco Chronicle regularly littered its front page with racist rhetoric about ‘the yellow menace,’ and racist organisations were formed to lobby against the inclusion of the Japanese community. They argued for segregation of the Japanese population, denial of property rights, and other measures to make it clear that Japanese residents were not wanted. Japanese businesspeople and families attempted to hold their ground against the tide of racism, but it was difficult.

Especially in San Francisco after 1906, when the earthquake provided just the opportunity city leaders needed to attack the Japanese population. As the Chinese community battled for its right to retain the ground Chinatown was built on, Japanese children were ordered to attend ‘The Oriental School,’ designated for use by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children. The white community considered this act of segregation an accomplishment, because it had failed in an attempt to push Japanese children out of white schools before.

The Japanese community, on the other hand, was angry. Families objected to having their children forced into a school that didn’t offer education on par with that provided to white children. Many also pointed out that it was difficult if not impossible for their children to even reach the school. Thus, the school board was effectively denying their children of any kind of education at all. They went head to head with the school board, creating what rapidly looked like it could turn into a foreign policy nightmare in San Francisco, because the Japanese government was not pleased with the situation, and made its anger abundantly clear.

President Roosevelt was caught between conflicting interests. He wanted to retain good foreign relations with Japan, while also satisfying racist elements in the United States, and mollifying the Japanese-American community. Japan, as a rising power, was particularly concerned with its international image and made it clear that acts restricting immigration would not be well-received. So Roosevelt brokered an informal agreement; a ‘Gentleman’s Agreement,’ in the interest of satisfying all parties.

He promised the San Francisco School Board that immigration into San Francisco would be restricted, if the city would agree to lift the segregation. The United States agreed not to impose formal limits on Japanese immigration, creating what on the surface looked like free and open borders. Meanwhile, Japan agreed not to issue travel documents for citizens intending to travel to the United States.

Some exceptions were made to the agreement. For Japanese citizens who wanted to join family members in the United States, immigration was permitted, in the interest of keeping families together and limiting public outcry. Meanwhile, educated Japanese citizens were also allowed to enter the United States, though labourers continued to be excluded, a bow to the fact that a large component of the anti-Japanese sentiment in California revolved around labourers, who were perceived as threats to ‘American’ jobs. Japan saved face with this agreement, allowing it to retain a more powerful position on the international stage than China, which had been brought low with the Chinese Exclusion Act.

This resolved the situation, at least on the surface, although Congress never actually ratified the treaty with Japan, later striking it down in 1924. And it certainly wasn’t the end of anti-Japanese or anti-Asian racism in general in California; in fact, the state had much, much more to come.

Meanwhile, Japanese citizens continued to travel to Hawaii, then a territory, also under the terms of the agreement. From Hawaii, it was easier to enter the United States, allowing a slow trickle of immigrants to continue entering California, where many settled to establish farms and other businesses. Though not allowed to own land, they invested considerable time and energy in their home and business affairs, some of which passed through the generations, only to be taken away in the 1940s with the mass roundup and internment of Japanese-American people.

Discussions about anti-Japanese racism in the United States, when they occur at all, tend to focus on the camps, a critical part of US history. But the camps were not the beginning of the racist actions taken against Japanese residents of the nation, and California in particular was a steaming fermentation vat of both institutional and social racism. While the state is considered richly racially diverse today and many people remark on the large representation of people of Japanese descent, that representation came at a very high cost, and the state still experiences underlying racial tensions, though many have been subverted into new forms.

100 years ago, people complained that Japanese labourers were taking our jobs. Now, they complain that Japanese students are depriving white students of opportunities, that Japanese tech workers are overrepresented. And they’ve turned their disdain for Asian labourers to immigrants from Southeast Asia, those who cook, clean, and perform other menial tasks in search of better opportunities all while being subjected to an endless tide of racist commentary about how they’re depriving ‘Americans’ of job opportunities.