Book Notes

(from the California HISTORIAN)

Japanese Pride, American Prejudice: Modifying the Exclusion Clause of the 1924 Immigration Act
By Izumi Hirobe
(Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA,
2001, hardcover, 327 pages, $49.50)

Reviewed by Wayne Maeda
Ethnic Studies Department
California State University, Sacramento

Hirobe undertakes painstaking and laborious work to investigate the role of how non-governmental groups attempted to shape America’s foreign relations during the decades following the passage of the Immigration Act in 1924 which excluded the Japanese from entering the United States. The author states:

Recent scholarship has emphasized that not only governments but also civic groups such as business associations and private foundations play a critical role in shaping of America’s foreign relations.... Since the main players in the battle over the Japanese exclusion clause came from the private sector, a study of their activities will shed new light on how non-governmental groups can influence American foreign relations.

The author focuses primarily on a small group of east coast clergy led by Sidney Lewis Gulick, a Congregational missionary, antiwar activist and former missionary to Japan. Having spent some of his educational life in California, he was well aware of the rising anti-Japanese sentiments there. He became one of the leading voices in opposition to the anti-Japanese movement in America. Hirobe argues that they were motivated by the ideals of maintaining international peace and Christian justice.

The other group that the author investigates is the business interests, with San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and Pacific Northwest forming the core of this group. These business groups on the west coast developed an increasing interest in reforming United States exclusion policy toward Japan as the Depression grew worse. They hoped to develop trade linkages by supporting a token immigration quota for Japan. The author examines the Japanese side of the issue as well and how anti-Japanese legislation, particularly exclusion without being assigned a quota, contributed to increase anti-American hostilities in Japan.

Hirobe further demonstrates that even as private non-governmental groups lobbied for reform of the Immigration Act of 1924, this stimulated and prolonged the life of other non-governmental anti-Japanese organizations in California. Especially virulent were the attacks by the California Joint Immigration Committee (CJIC), Native Sons of the Golden West, California State Grange, California Department of the American Legion and organized labor. These groups followed the leadership provided by V.S. McClatchy who inherited half ownership of the Sacramento Bee and established the Fresno Bee with his brother C.K. McClatchy.

Ultimately these non-governmental groups, interested in altering the Immigration Act of 1924, were not only ineffectual in altering public policies but also prolonged the life of the anti-Japanese groups and kept the pot of anti-Japanese sentiments stirred, to the detriment of Japanese American communities on the West Coast. Much of the shortcomings in this study could have easily been resolved in the editing process, which has detracted from Hirobe’s meticulous research for this scholarly work.