Gentlemen's Agreement (1907–1908)

A Series of Notes

On February 24, 1907, the first agreement ended in a Japanese note agreeing to deny passports to laborers planning on entering the United States. Japan also acknowledged the right of the United States to exclude Japanese immigrants holding passports issued for other countries; this would effectively prevent the re-migration to the United States of Japanese [Page 534]laborers from Mexico, Canada, or Hawai'i. Executive Order 589 was signed by Roosevelt on March 14, 1907, excluding from the mainland United States “Japanese or Korean laborers, skilled or unskilled, who had received passports to go to Mexico, Canada, or Hawai'i, and come therefrom.”

By February 18, 1908, a final Japanese note was signed, making the Gentlemen's Agreement fully effective. Although this marked the end of new Japanese male labor immigration, the Gentlemen's Agreement launched a new era for Japanese American family formation and unleashed variant forms of anti-Japanese prejudice.

U.S. Background

Understanding the rationale for the Gentlemen's Agreement requires a review of U.S. domestic conditions and of U.S.-Japan relations during the turn of the 20th century. In 1890, there were 2,039 Japanese in the continental United States (0.003% of the population), in contrast to 107,488 Chinese (0.2%). Following the annexation of Hawai'i, according to the 1900 U.S. Census, Japanese Americans represented 0.1% (85,716) of the U.S. population and Chinese Americans represented 0.2%. Moreover, there were thousands of Japanese sojourners who returned to Japan, resulting in low levels of population growth. As one small group struggling like many other immigrants in the U.S. West—Swedes, Italians, Armenians, Punjabis—why were Japanese targeted so intensively, particularly by Whites?

Decades of anti-Chinese fervor had culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which similarly suspended labor immigration for 10 years; it was renewed and restricted labor entry until after World War II. The labor-organized movement to renew anti-Chinese legislation served to racialize the immigration issue as an “Asiatic” problem. Protests called for the expulsion of all Asians. With the declining Chinese population, the yellow peril—depicted in Hearst publications as hordes of locusts descending on the shores of the Pacific—focused on the Japanese.

The Asiatic Exclusion League, started in San Francisco in 1905 by European immigrant labor leaders, focused on the exclusion of Japanese and Koreans. Its formation marks the start of the anti-Japanese movement. Pressured by the league, the San Francisco School Board decided to segregate Japanese school children in the Oriental School where Chinese children were already confined. Using the San Francisco earthquake's destruction of numerous school buildings as an excuse to reassign the ninety-three Japanese children—25% of them being native born—the board rescinded the segregation order after Roosevelt invited the board to the White House in February 1907 and promised to ask Japan for “voluntary” restriction of new labor immigration. This would be part of the informal negotiations underlying the Gentlemen's Agreement.

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