SH Archive 1907: Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition

[igneous]

Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: igneous
Date: 2020-07-04 23:19:41
Reaction Score: 1

Here's the answer, who knew?

President Theodore Roosevelt worked to improve diplomatic relations between the United States and the Empire of Japan. Two important steps in this direction were made by his helping to end the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and his arranging to have the Great White Fleet visit Tokyo (October 1908). The Root-Takahira Agreement (November 1908) was a third.

1907 was the year of the "Gentleman's Agreement" between America and Japan. Signed in February; Japan was an honored guest at the Jamestown Expo less than two months later.

" The Gentlemen's Agreement was a series of informal and nonbinding arrangements between Japan and the United States in 1907–8, in which the Japanese government agreed to voluntarily restrict issuing passports good for the continental United States to laborers while the US government promised to protect the rights of Japanese immigrants and their children already living in the United States. The goal of this agreement was to calm down immigration disputes and war scares that had escalated in these countries. The agreement was made without formal ratification, and its contents were not revealed to the public until it was harshly criticized in the early 1920s. It was eventually nullified by the enactment of the US Immigration Act of 1924. While the Gentlemen's Agreement between Japan and the United States has been relatively well known, the Japanese government simultaneously entered into a similar but less known agreement with the Canadian government. "