Discrimination Against Japanese in California: A Review of the Real Situation

Berkeley: Press of the Courier Publishing Company, 1907. First Edition. 133pp; folding map of San Francisco tipped in at rear prepared by the Japanese Association of America, showing the location of the segregated Oriental School, the integrated public schools used by Japanese students and the area of the city in which most resided. Small tar to the top of the rear joint, light wear to the extremities, else very good in publisher's gray wraps. Johnson, a conscientious white clergyman with a deep sense of justice, held the post of Superintendent of the Japanese Mission on the Pacific Coast and participated actively in the National Immigration Congress. His slender booklet provides a critical lens on the infamous controversy that erupted when, following the devastation of the San Francisco earthquake, the city’s School Board mandated that Japanese children attend a segregated Oriental Public School. With diplomatic tensions flaring between the United States and Japan, President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched his Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Victor Metcalf (see also the 1908 Miyakawa entry below), to seek an accord. Through Metcalf’s intervention, the School Board agreed to withdraw its segregationist policy, though the concession came hand-in-hand with harsh new limits on Japanese immigration and unofficial segregation was still widely practiced. This came to be known as the US-Japan "Gentleman's Agreement".

Ref: Robert E. Cownan. Bibliography of the Chinese Question page 38. (Inventory #: 64487)