711.945/1043: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Woods)
55. Supplementing the Department’s No. 54, April 15, 1 p.m., the following are excerpts from the Congressional Record46 indicating the viewpoint of several senators who participated in the debate on the question of retaining the Gentlemen’s Agreement.
“Mr. Lodge. I regret to say that the letter addressed to our State Department by the Ambassador from Japan seems to me a letter improper to be addressed by the representative of one great country to another friendly country. It contains, I regret much to say, a veiled threat. Now, Mr. President, the United States can not legislate by the exercise by any other country of veiled threats. Owing to this, what we are now doing assumes the character of an international precedent; and I think it should be understood, and understood by the whole world, that the United States alone is to say who shall come into the United States to form part of its citizenship. What our country determines as to its immigration is neither a just cause of offense nor a subject for war or threats of war. It is an undoubted sovereign right and nothing else.”
“Mr. Moses. May I inquire of the Senator why he repeatedly uses the words ‘veiled threat’? The Senator knows perfectly well that in the composition of diplomatic communications the two words ‘grave consequences’ are not veiled. They are well known in their implication.”
“Mr. Lodge. They are just as well known as the phrase ‘the United States could not regard with indifference’ the violation of the Monroe doctrine. Everybody knows what ‘can not regard with indifference’s means. Both phrases are the well-recognized language of diplomacy.
“The letter of the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. President, has created a situation which makes it impossible for me to support the pending amendment. When I was interrupted I was about to say that this amendment has now assumed the dignity of a precedent, and I never will consent to establish any precedent which will give any nation the right to think that they can stop by threats or by compliments the action of the United States when it determines who shall come within its gates and become part of its citizenship. That is a decision which belongs to the United States alone, and from that decision there can be no appeal.”
“Mr. Reed. I think I speak the feeling of the entire Committee on Immigration when I say that one of the principal points we had in mind was to do nothing offensive to the Japanese; that one of our purposes in putting this amendment in was to recognize the Gentlemen’s Agreement; and that we felt, further, that the restriction of Japanese immigration could best be accomplished by combining the Gentlemen’s Agreement with a very rigid quota law which would hold down the number of Japanese to the minimum, for at the same time we would thus get the cooperation of the Japanese Government in applying that quota law.
[Page 377]“It was our feeling that that would be more effective than such an exclusion section as has been offered by the Senator from California. It was a choice of methods. To our mind one was a friendly method and the other was at least open to the charge of being an unfriendly method involving some racial discrimination. It was with that thought that the committee offered the amendment.
“Now, however, Mr. President—and I am speaking only for myself in this—I think the situation has changed. I think it ceases to be a question whether this is a desirable method of restricting Japanese immigration. The letter of the Japanese Ambassador puts the unpleasant burden upon us of deciding whether we will permit our legislation to be controlled by apprehensions of ‘grave consequences’ with other nations if we do not follow a particular line of legislative conduct. I, for one, feel compelled, on account of that veiled threat, to vote in favor of the exclusion and against the committee amendment.
“I say that with deep regret, because I believe that this action, which is forced upon us, means the waste of much of the results of 20 years of excellent diplomacy. It means the waste of much of the good feeling that followed the ratification of the four-power treaty,47 and it means a loss of part of the good relations that followed the prompt and friendly action of America after the Japanese earthquake of last year. When I vote against the committee amendment I expect to do so with a sad heart.”
“Mr. Pepper. Mr. President, I wish to direct attention to one aspect of this matter which seems to me to have been insufficiently emphasized. As I understand the Gentlemen’s Agreement, it is an agreement between parties neither of whom make reference to force, to pressure, or to the gravity of the consequences which will ensue if the agreement is not made, or, if it is in existence, whether it should be abrogated.
“As long as the Gentlemen’s Agreement between Japan and the United States was left in the atmosphere in which it was generated, I was prepared to vote for its continuance. But the proposition which I wish to submit to the Senate is that the Gentlemen’s Agreement has been abrogated, and not by the United States. The instant the Japanese Ambassador makes a formal communication to this Government suggesting, through proper diplomatic channels, that unless certain legislative action is taken by us the gravest consequences are likely to ensue, at that moment the whole matter passes out of the sphere of a Gentlemen’s Agreement, and it becomes necessary for us to act, as it seems to me, in the colder and perhaps calmer atmosphere which characterizes mere legislative deliberations.”
“I am not insensible to what has been said by my colleague, the junior Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reed), about his apprehension of unhappiness, ill feeling, and dissatisfaction; and yet it sometimes happens that where one is compelled to recognize that such a relation as has existed can no longer exist, where one must take a clean-cut and definite position respecting the terms and consequences of which there can be no misunderstanding—it sometimes happens, I say, that the air is cleared, that the atmosphere ceases to be surcharged [Page 378] with doubt, with uncertainty, and suspicion, and that the way is open to a more permanent and more satisfactory international relationship even than that which has theretofore existed.
“Therefore I am one of those, Mr. President, who very earnestly hope that this action will not be misinterpreted by our Japanese friends as an evidence on our part of a lack of appreciation of them, of their many fine and noble qualities, and of the many admirable features of their civilization, and that they will not regard us as having forgotten the closeness of the tie which has bound us in the past, but rather that it will be recognized that, perhaps out of deference to their great and exceptional position in the family of nations, it has been necessary for us to pass beyond the realm of ‘Gentlemen’s Agreements’ and to mark legislatively the line which, after all, exists in fact, whether any act of the legislature recognizes it or not, between oriental civilization and that which we express.
“I am going to vote, therefore, Mr. President, otherwise than I had originally intended to vote; and I am going to do it not in heat, not in irritation, not as a protest against what has been written by the Japanese Ambassador, but rather because I recognize what he has written as of itself terminating the status that has heretofore existed.”
“Mr. Willis. Mr. President, I desire to say only a brief word upon the pending question. As a member of the Committee on Immigration, I agreed to the action which the Committee took, and of course expected to support the committee amendment which, in substance, recognizes the ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ with Japan. I was one of those who believed that if substantially, as I thought, the same result could be obtained under that agreement as could be had from stringent limitation upon Japanese immigration without disturbing the status quo, it would be better so to do. It was, therefore, the effort of the committee—an effort which met with my approval—so to shape the legislation as to let this situation alone.
“I accordingly expected, as I have said, to support the committee recommendation; but, Mr. President, I think a new situation has arisen, not because of any action of our Government, but, as the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pepper) has said, I must say without bitterness or ill feeling, it is a fact, that this situation that is new and quite unusual has been created by the letter that has come to the Senate from the Ambassador representing the great Empire of Japan.
“Therefore, Mr. President, because of this new situation that has been created, I do not see how there is anything left for the Senate to do other than to announce by its action in unmistakable terms that we regard the question of immigration as an American question; that we do not concede that any Nation anywhere upon the earth has the right to say to the United States what our policy in that behalf shall be. Therefore, calmly and deliberately and without any bitterness toward our Japanese friends or feeling against the Japanese Government, with which I trust the United States may always remain on the most friendly terms, I shall cast my vote against the pending amendment.”
- Of Apr. 14, 1924, p. 6305 passim.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 33.↩