Continuing now with Back Door to War The Roosevelt Foreign Policy
1933-1941 by CHARLES CALLAN TANSILL....

... Continued Friction with Japan
Points towards Inevitable War
a. Congress Enacts an Exclusion
Law Which Angers Japan
As AMERICAN STATESMEN looked from the troubled scenes in China to the quiet landscapes in Japan, it was not with relief but with suspicion that they viewed the placid picture of Old Nippon. The orderly ways of empire grated upon the sensibilities of many Americans who preferred the uneasy atmosphere of democracy to the regulated rhythm of the Mikado's Government. Since 1913, Japan had been under almost constant attack by the Department of State. The Wilson Administration had led a sustained assault against Japan along several fronts, and the inauguration of a Republican Administration in 1921 had led to the calling of the Washington Conference for the express purpose of checking Japanese plans for expansion. The climate of opinion in the United States was definitely hostile to Japan, and it was inevitable that clouds of misunderstanding between the two countries should gather along the diplomatic horizon. The first threat of a storm came in connection with the immigration question.

After the close of the World War there was an increasing fear in the United States that the war-impoverished countries of Europe would send a huge wave of immigration to American shores. On May 19, 1921, in order to prevent such a contingency, Congress enacted a law that limited the number of aliens of any particular nationality that would be granted admission to the United States in any one year to 3 per cent of the "number of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in the United States" in the year 1910. Some months later a new act was framed which reduced the annual admission of any nationality to 2 per cent of the foreign-born population of that nationality resident in the United States in 1890.1 A high dyke had been erected against the expected wave of immigration.

It was soon apparent that this new legislation would not be used merely to supplement the gentlemen's agreement with Japan which since 1907 had controlled the immigration of laborers from that country. In 1921 a movement began in the Far West to exclude by legislation any further immigration of Japanese laborers. This could be accomplished by employing a phrase suggested in 1922 by the Supreme Court when it ruled that Japanese were ineligible for citizenship by naturalization. Federal legislation could be framed so that it would apply solely to Japanese immigrants.2
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