A rising tide of anti-immigrant and anti-radical politics
swept the United States following World War I, and Seattle
area politicians played an important role. It’s
well-documented that defeat of the Seattle General Strike of
1919 helped pave the way for anti-labor campaigns across the
country. But less well known is the fact that national
anti-immigrant politics, particularly anti-Japanese politics
of the post-World War I era, had important roots in the
Pacific Northwest.
This
paper looks at 1920 committee hearings convened by
Congressman Albert Johnson on the question of whether to bar
Japanese immigration and citizenship claims. Johnson was
the co-author of sweeping 1924 legislation that effectively
closed America’s borders to non-white immigrants for the
next forty years. And his use of hearings in his home
district to promote a national version of white supremacy
reveals much about the racial politics of post-WWI Seattle
and about Seattle’s role in national debates over who could
and could not be considered “American.”
Members of
the United States Congress arrived in Elliot Bay aboard a
steamship on the afternoon of Sunday, July 25, 1920.[1]
This delegation was part of the House Committee on
Immigration and Naturalization, which was in the midst of an
investigation on issues surrounding Japanese peoples on the
west coast. Their local investigation commenced in the
Seattle courtroom of Judge E.E. Cushman. They broke for
lunch at the Rainier Club, took an impromptu tour of Pike
Place Market, and retired to Paradise Lodge in the Mount
Rainier National Park during recess.[2]
The committee would stay in the area for over a week,
hearing hours of testimony related to the local situation
surrounding the Japanese.
A Change
in Asian Immigration
Increased industrialization and infrastructure around the
turn of the century created a great demand for cheap labor
in the United States. Initially Chinese immigrants provided
low cost labor. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act stopped
the flow of immigrants, and thus the major source of labor
on the west coast. Japanese were the primary immigrant
group to fill the demand for labor left behind by the
Chinese. Initially employed by railroad companies and
factories, Japanese immigrants quickly started their own
businesses and communities.
The
Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 established Japan as a
geopolitical rival in Pacific. The increased awareness of
Japanese power by the United States helped both to aid and
inhibit the anti-Japanese agitation that was developing on
the west coast.[3]
Local organizations mobilized to create anti-Japanese
propaganda while President Theodore Roosevelt urged caution
to prevent insulting the Japanese government. The following
years brought the first federal legislation dealing
specifically with Japan as well as the controversial
“Gentleman’s Agreement”. During World War I immigration
restriction was focused primarily on Germans, Bolsheviks,
Communists, and anarchists. The post-war rise of American
nationalism increased support for a broader and increasingly
racist immigration policy. As part of this movement, the
House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization began to
investigate issues surrounding Japanese immigrants in the
United States. After conducting preliminary hearings in
Washington D.C. during the summer of 1919, the Committee
scheduled a more comprehensive investigation for California
(the state with the largest Japanese population) the
following year. The main topics of thee hearings were: was
the “Gentleman’s Agreement” being adhered to by Japan?;
Could Japanese immigrants be assimilated into American
society?; and should Japanese immigrants be eligible for
naturalization?
Japanese
Hearings Come to Washington
In response to lobbyists and Washington Governor
Louis Hart, the House Committee on Immigration and
Naturalization extended the scheduled 1920 hearings on the
Pacific Coast Japanese question to the State of Washington.
Local Japanese politics were not foreign to the
Congressional committee or federal level politicians. They
had received previous statements from prominent Seattleites
such as businessman and publisher Miller Freeman,
Presbyterian pastor Mark A Matthews, and local Japanese
missionary U.G. Murphy. The chairman of the committee was
also Washington State Congressman Albert Johnson, a
long-time crusader for more restrictive immigration
legislation. Johnson had a history of racial agitation in
Washington State. As editor, he had long used his Grays Harbor newspaper to attack Asian immigrants and he pointedly supported a 1907 riot that forced hundreds of South
Asians in Bellingham, Washington to flee the United States
for Canada.[4]
Johnson also encouraged local anti-Japanese agitation at a
Tacoma American Legion meeting less than one month before
the 1920 hearings.[5]
Including Johnson, the committee contained fifteen members.
All but six remained in California to conduct further
investigation during the Washington State proceedings.[6]
The hearings commenced at 9:30 AM on July 26, 1920 in the
federal courthouse in Seattle. The testimony continued in
Seattle until July 29, at which point they were moved to
Tacoma for a single day on August 2, returning to Seattle
for the final day on August 3. The primary voices included
were that of the Seattle Ministerial Union, American Legion
and Veterans Welfare Commission, local immigration
officials, farmers, and local Japanese. The hearings also
included scattered testimony from organized labor and female
citizens concerned about Japanese morality. Also in the
transcript of the hearings is a vast quantity of statistics
on the local Japanese community. Included are immigration
data, birth rates, and complete listings of all Japanese
businesses in and around Seattle. After the testimony, the
record concludes with a summary of the Japanese situations
in both Oregon and California.
Anti-Japanese League
Why did
the hearings come to Seattle? Some speculated that Governor
Hart’s term was nearly up, and the Republican-led committee
timed the hearings to garner support for his November
re-election bid.[7]
It was Seattle’s Anti-Japanese League, however, waged the
campaign to extend the congressional hearings to
Washington.
The
League was primarily comprised of members of the American
Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Washington State’s
Veteran’s Welfare Commission (VFW). The Anti-Japanese
League was founded in1916 by former Washington State
legislator and director of the local United States Naval
training facility, Miller Freeman. Freeman was the League’s
president at the time of the congressional hearings. He had
also been appointed to the head of the Washington State VFW
by Governor Hart.[8]
Freeman had testified before the committee in Washington
D.C. in 1919 and was asked by Chairman Johnson to solicit
additional anti-Japanese witnesses. In the 1919 testimony,
Freeman framed his animosity toward Japanese immigrants in
the context of competition for control over the Pacific Rim:
“To-day, in my opinion, the Japanese of our country look
upon the Pacific coast really as nothing more than a colony
of Japan, and the whites as a subject race.”[9]
Adding
to this sense of conflict was the strong military presence
at the Seattle and Tacoma hearings, which worried the
Seattle Union Record, the city’s labor newspaper.
Another
feature of the inquiry is the presence of a military group
in the background that keeps in constant touch with Mr.
Johnson or Mr. Raker of the committee. This group composed
of men like Miller Freeman, Colonel Inglis, Philip Tindall,
does not make a pleasant decoration for an inquiry on
Oriental affairs-an inquiry that should be kept as far from
military influence as it is possible to keep it.[10]
This
statement made by Seattle Union Record Editor
Harry Ault was powerful enough to command the notice of the
congressional committee. Congressman Raker went so far as
to confront Ault about his editorial statement, and to deny
that there had been any closed-door meetings with military
representatives.[11]
Yet
despite the military context, Freeman’s testimony in support
of restricting Japanese immigration was based almost
entirely upon economic rationalizations. After introductory
testimony by Governor Hart, Freeman was the first to give
testimony to the congressional committee. First, he
claimed, Japanese were taking jobs away from World War I
veterans returning from Europe. This argument would be
elaborated upon when Director of the Veteran’s Welfare
Commission Colonel W.M. Inglis testified that Japanese at
the Stetson-Post Mill Co. received twenty jobs that
supposedly should have gone to veterans in the spring of
1919. When asked by Chairman Johnson what had happened when
Japanese laborers were in competition with a group of
veterans for twenty mill jobs Colonel Inglis responded: “The
result was the Japanese were employed and the ex-service men
were not.”[12]
The
other chief concern voiced explicitly by Freeman and others
was that Japanese immigrants were taking over certain
business sectors from their Caucasian competitors. Freeman
stated: “My investigation of the situation existing in the
city of Seattle convinced me that the increasing accretions
of the Japanese were depriving the young white men of the
opportunities that they are legitimately entitled to in this
State.”[13]
Shut out of local unions, Japanese had been forced into
business, finding considerable successes primarily in
agriculture and residential hotel ownership. These
successes were the main source of agitation for the
Anti-Japanese League, whose prominent members could no
longer control the local Japanese population.
Seattle
Star
Promotes Anti-Japanese Agitation
Both in California and Washington, newspapers
and newspaper men were prominent in creating anti-Japanese
sentiment. The publisher of The Sacramento Bee, V.S.
McClatchy, was perhaps the most outspoken anti-Japanese
agitator in California.[14]
House Committee Chairman Albert Johnson had been in the
newspaper business for two decades prior to the Washington
State hearings, having published The Seattle Times,
The Tacoma News, and The Grays Harbor Daily.[15]
The
Seattle Star
was the primary anti-Japanese voice in the Puget Sound
area. In the weeks preceding the congressional hearings,
The Seattle Star ran a series of articles that portrayed
local Japanese in a negative light. One three-part series
written by George N. Mills and beginning on May 19, 1920 was
titled “The Japanese Invasion AND ‘Shinto, the Way of the
Gods.’”[16]
From the beginning of the article, Mills expresses his
desire to “…impress more emphatically on the mind of the
American reader the certain disastrous consequences of
future Oriental immigration, and why our present policies as
regards certain Asiatics should be forever abandoned.”[17]
Mills describes the Shinto religion as the basis for life in
Japanese culture and government, going so far as to say
that, “religion and government in Japan have been one and
the same in the past as well as the present.”[18]
Mills uses this premise to argue that any person of Japanese
heritage who practices the Shinto religion will be
ultimately devoted to the government of Japan. This idea
was certainly on the minds of the congressional committee
when they questioned Japanese witnesses about their loyally
to Japan and willingness to perform military service for
Japan or the United States.[19]
Mills continued the anti-Japanese agitation in his third
installment when he stated that “If our present policies
with Japan continue indefinitely, it will only be a matter
of time when at best we will be no better than a subject
race.”[20]
Beyond the Mills piece, The Seattle
Star ran smaller anti-Japanese pieces on nearly a daily
basis leading up to the hearings. ““Spy” Film is Killed by
Japs”[21],
“Say Jap Choked White Woman”[22],
Charge Jap Stole White Wife’s Love”[23],
and “One-Third of Our Hotels Jap Owned”[24]
read some of the headlines between May and July of 1920.
The Seattle Star was also quick to cover the
protests by anti-Japanese organizations and their efforts to
focus federal attention on the local Japanese question.
This included appeals to labor groups to support
anti-Japanese legislation, coverage of petitions by veterans
groups to Governor Hart, and attacks on local ministers for
their continued support of the Japanese.
Although
coverage from other local publications (The Seattle
Times, The Seattle Union Record, and The Town Crier)
was not pro-Japanese, the coverage provided was more
balanced and less inflammatory. While The Seattle Star
signaled its position with an inflammatory front page
headline after the first day of the congressional testimony:
“EXCLUSION! The Solution That Means Peace,”[25]
the traditionally radical Seattle Union Record
ambiguously reported: “We withhold judgment concerning the
testimony before the congressional committee of inquiry of
Oriental affairs, until it is finished in Seattle.”[26]
Anti-Japanese
Politics in City Hall
In the
summer of 1920, the Seattle Star and the
Anti-Japanese League’s exclusionary politics fused in a
campaign against Japanese hog farmers. The campaign was one
of the most overt attempts at limiting the livelihoods of
Seattle’s Japanese during the time of the hearings. The
Seattle Star reported that Japanese farmers were
paying too high a price for restaurant swill (the primary
source of sustenance for local hogs). The fear was that
Japanese would price white farmers out of the swill market,
and thereby drive white hog farmers out of business.
Supposedly, once a monopoly had been established, the
Japanese would escalate the price of pork products to
recover the capital invested in the high-priced swill.[27]
Seattle
City Councilman and Anti-Japanese League member Phillip
Tindall was at the center of the campaign against Japanese
hog farmers. Tindall proposed a bill that would change the
way in which restaurant swill was collected. The Tindall
bill called for a city-wide restaurant garbage collection
contract. As a direct strike at the Japanese hog farmers,
the Tindall bill specified that the garbage collection
contract could only be entered by a citizen of the United
States (a privilege not granted to Japanese immigrant
farmers).[28]
If ratified, the Tindall bill would have virtually
eliminated Japanese farmers from the hog business.
As part
of the general anti-Japanese agitation, the sanitation and
general operation of Japanese owned hog farms was also
called into question. A letter to the editor of the
Seattle Star penned by King County Health Officer H.T.
Sparling complained that “The condition of some of these
(Japanese owned) ranches is indescribable.” Nevertheless,
Sparling went on to describe rat infested conditions and
filthy meat being taken to the market for human
consumption. In closing, Sparling stated, “I am strongly in
favor of the ordinance introduced by Councilman Tindall and
recommended by Dr. Bead, as it tends to centralize the
industry and will make supervision easy.”[29]
The
Tindall bill was passed by the Seattle City Council on June
21, 1920 by a vote of five to two. The bill was said to
break up the Japanese “garbage collection monopoly” as well
as add $50,000 to the city’s budget once a new collection
contract was reached with a non-Japanese bidder.[30]
The garbage collection bill was seen as a potential trend
setter for new bills that could further limit Japanese
advances in other business realms. The Seattle Star
editorialized, “We must stop the Japs at every opportunity
we get. The Tindall bill is one of those opportunities.”[31]
Not all
Seattleites agreed that the Tindall bill would be an
effective or moral means of controlling Japanese commerce.
The Town Crier gave the “…inside dope on the
Tindall garbage bill, a measure that was camouflaged as one
of sanitation but later came out into the open as intended
primarily to put Japanese hog ranchers out of business.”[32]
This same piece from The Town Crier implicates
local hog rancher I.W. Ringer (supposedly the only rancher
with the capacity to bid on the garbage collection contract)
as another driving force behind the Tindall bill. Less than
a week after its initial passage, the Tindall garbage bill
was vetoed by Seattle Mayor Hugh Caldwell. After supporters
failed to bring the matter back to the City Council for a
potential override, the Tindall bill died on August 1, 1920
(the thirty day deadline after the Caldwell veto).[33]
Japanese
Americans Testify
A small
yet interesting portion of the hearings took place on the
second day of testimony when several Japanese immigrants and
second generation Japanese Americans appeared before the
committee. The most prominent member of the Seattle
Japanese community to testify was Mr. D. Matsumi. Matsumi
was the general manager of M. Suruya Company (dealing with
the import and export of general goods), as well as the
president of the United North American Japanese
Associations. This organization branched to Montana and
Alaska, independent from its counterparts in Oregon and
California.[35]
Matsui
was able to offer a very detailed census of the local
Japanese population based on data his Japanese association
had collected over the previous four years. The private
census included complete data on Japanese children in the
local school system, Japanese churches, hotels, and farms.
The most complete data in the census record pertains to the
birth and death rates of Japanese (and Chinese) in
Washington State. Beyond the state records, there is also
similar data collected from every major county in the state
between 1910 and 1917, comparing the Japanese birth rate to
that of whites in the same areas. At the end of this
section of the census is a month by month record of birth
and death rates from 1915 through early 1920. This section
gives the best regional perspective as it includes,
Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.[36]
Mr. Matsui used this information to refute a frequent racist
charge made against the Japanese: that they were reproducing
at an alarming rate. The figures provided by the census
proved this charge to be blatantly false. The committee was
primarily concerned with how the census data was collected,
but paid some attention to the condition of the educational
system in regards to Japanese children.
Mr.
Matsui chose not to directly refute charges brought against
the local Japanese community by anti-Japanese witnesses.
Instead, he portrayed Japanese immigrants as industrious
Americans. In a written statement, he tried to give a
historical perspective of Japanese in the region.
Responding to accusations of unfair farming practices he
reported, “According to these facts it seems to me that the
Japanese farmer is more intensive in dairy farming than the
other people engaged in the same business. The amount of
milk produced per acre and the number of cows per acre on
the farms operated by the Japanese is larger than that
produced by others. In other words, there is less waste and
the farming itself is conducted on a more intensive basis.”[37]
The five
remaining Japanese to testify were not first generation, or
Issei, immigrants. They were second generation, many of
them American citizens, or Nissei. Reflecting the recent
nature of Japanese immigration to the Northwest, they were
all quite young, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty
three. Chairman Johnson had described this portion of the
hearings as an opportunity “to hear the leading Japanese
representatives.”[38]
It is significant to note, then, that the Japanese
community, rather than showcasing its own internal
leadership, instead encouraged its youth to advocate for
tolerance, understanding, and equal opportunity for all
immigrants and their descendents. They offered themselves
as living proof that, contrary to anti-Japanese arguments,
Japanese immigrants and their children could assimilate.
Seventeen year old James Sakamoto, who would later become a
community leader as editor of the city’s first English
language paper for Japanese Americans, The
Japanese-American Courier, was the last to testify. His
older sister (who at the time was not even a resident of
Washington State) also testified. All five statements from
the young Japanese were brief, with questions directed at
their education status, ability with the Japanese language,
and whether the witnesses had any desire to return to
Japan. The only diversion from the standard line of
questioning took place during the testimony of James
Sakamoto, at the time a seventeen year old student at
Seattle’s Franklin High School. Sakamoto (who was born in
Japan) was asked about his obligation to military service
for Japan. He indicated that he would find a way to skirt
this responsibility. Colorado Congressman William Vaile
asked him, “…suppose you were required to render military
service to the United States, what will be your position?”
To which Sakamoto responded, “I will go in.”[39]
Sakamoto would remain true to this sentiment more than
twenty years later when defending Japanese-Americans in the
wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. He stated that Japanese
“will remain unswervingly loyal to the United States” and
also the “first to uncover any saboteurs.”[40
Seattle Ministerial Union
One
group intent on combating the anti-Japanese agitation was
the Seattle Ministerial Union. According to the testimony
of Seattle minister W.R. Sawhill, pastor of First United
Presbyterian Church, “…there are about 250 protestant
ministers in the city. They are all, in a way, members of
the organization, but I suppose about 100 are paying and
voting members.”[41]
Sawhill, along with Dr. Mark A. Matthews and missionary U.G.
Murphy, were important voices before and during the
congressional hearings. Both Matthews and Murphy had
appeared before the Congressional Committee on Immigration
and Naturalization previously in Washington D.C. and were
familiar to lawmakers. According to Chairman Albert
Johnson, Murphy was singled out as an exemplary voice, and
asked to provide additional non-Japanese witnesses to vouch
for the character of the local Japanese population.[42]
In June of 1919, U.G. Murphy had spoken on behalf of the
Ministerial Union as part of a series of congressional
hearings in Washington D.C. Murphy was clear that the
Ministerial Union was against racially based immigration
policies: “…it is the discrimination along race lines that
causes the tension. Our naturalization law is based on the
color scheme, the race line, and that is the offensive
point.”[43]
Prior to
the Seattle and Tacoma hearings, the Ministerial Union
penned a letter to the committee requesting an investigation
into the activities of the Anti-Japanese League and stating
their positions on the Japanese question. In its letter
dated July 24, 1920 (included in the testimony of W.R.
Sawhill), the Seattle Ministerial Union was clearly opposed
to any constitutional amendment limiting rights of Japanese
Americans or immigrants. They also spoke in favor of
unlimited admission of Japanese students as well as equal
treatment for immigrants from all countries.[44]
Because
of their history of steering large congregations on
political questions and local elections, the Seattle
Ministerial Union came under attack from anti-Japanese
witnesses as well as The Seattle Star. Dr. Mark A
Matthews was a favorite target of the Star, which
pointed to his relationship with President Woodrow Wilson as
reason to fear his influence on the local and national
levels.[45]
Despite its origins on the West Coast as a Democratic Party
movement, immigration restriction was politically a
Republican crusade. Wilson, a Democrat, had twice vetoed
the immigration legislation that was eventually passed in
1917.[46]
Dr. Mark
A Matthews
Dr. Mark A Matthews was one of the most
outspoken opponents of anti-Japanese agitation before and
during the Congressional hearings. He was the minister of
Seattle’s First Presbyterian Church which at the time
boasted nearly a 10, 000 member congregation, making it the
largest Presbyterian congregation in the United States (more
than double the size of the second largest church). Because
of the prominence of First Presbyterian, Dr. Matthews was
elected as moderator of the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church, the national governing body of the
Presbyterian denominations. This national position led to
an association with United States President Woodrow Wilson.
Dr. Matthews visited the White House on numerous occasions,
and welcomed President Wilson as a guest for one of his
sermons during a visit to Seattle.
Matthews
had roots in the southern United States and was a proponent
of the fundamentalist movement within the Presbyterian
Church.[47]
He was very active progressive reformer in the local
community, crusading against all of the “evils” of the
city. In previous years, he had petitioned President Wilson
regarding post-World War I treaties with Germany, labor
issues and political appointments of his associates.
Matthews had a history of swaying his massive congregation
on political issues and was credited with helping oust
former Seattle Mayor Hiram Gill in 1911.[48]
Matthews
was staunchly opposed to radical labor groups such as the
I.W.W., anarchists, and communists. Many of his letters
contained anti-Semitic sentiments, accusing Jews of
supporting radical left-wing causes. In one of his more
colorful statements, Matthews advocated the deportation of
thousands of Russian immigrants along with other communists
and anarchists. “why,” he asked, “should we allow the gauze
dress of American civilization to be destroyed by the torch
of anarchy in the hands of these infernal enemy aliens?”[49]
As an opponent of organized labor, Matthews’s support of the
Seattle Japanese community may have been an effort to weaken
local unions. The Japanese had maintained solidarity with
organized labor during the 1919 Seattle general strike, but
almost all local unions excluded Japanese from their
membership, and then fiercely competed with non-union
Japanese businesses.
During
his testimony in front of the congressional committee, Dr.
Matthews’s objections to discrimination against Japanese
immigrants were based mostly on issues of federal
jurisdiction. He felt that any issue dealing with
immigration was a treaty issue and that national legislation
would only lead to further diplomatic problems.[50]
Perhaps as part of his anti-labor politics, Dr. Matthews
expressed respect for the work ethic and business savvy he
identified with Japanese immigrants. He suggested that
their entrepreneurial activities made them model Americans.
In response to California Congressman John E Raker’s
question about Japanese taking over certain industries, Dr.
Matthews responded, “Now, no Jap has ever taken over
anything in Seattle, or will ever take over anything
anywhere else in this country… They bought it, and if you
object to a Japanese citizen or immigrant buying a fruit
stand, an American sold it to him. Now if it is not right
for the Jap to own it, why did the infernal, yellow-backed
American sell it to him?”[51]
The
Quiet Voice of Organized Labor
In
comparison with the outspoken testimony of ministers,
legionnaires, farmers, and immigration officials, organized
labor was relatively quiet during the congressional
hearings. Two union officials from Tacoma gave brief
testimony. One was Thomas A Bishoff, secretary of the
Tacoma Cooks’ and Waiters’ Union, and the other H.C.
Pickering, secretary of the Tacoma Barbers’ Union. Both
were relative outsiders to the general feeling of local
organized labor and admitted most of their testimony was
personal feeling or hearsay.
Both
Bishoff and Pickering were questioned about Japanese
participation in their respective industries in the city of
Tacoma. When asked to speculate about what might happen if
Japanese barbers were to attempt to open shops in the Tacoma
harbor area (where there were only white barbers), Pickering
responded: “Now down on the harbor, down where there are no
Japanese barbers, there is a prejudice down there.”[52]
He indicated that there would likely be considerable strife
if Japanese barbers attempted to locate themselves in the
harbor area of Tacoma.
According to Chairman Johnson, requests for labor
representatives from the Seattle area went unanswered for
unspecified reasons.[53]
A key feature of the testimony from the labor
representatives was a sentiment that Japanese were only a
limited threat to the laboring class. Chairman Johnson
expressed this point of view explicitly: “Now, we have been
confronted with statements in this record to the effect that
labor in Seattle had ceased to object to the admission of
the Japanese on the ground that he had ceased to become a
competitor of labor itself and was a competitor of the small
business man.”[54]
Japanese
immigrants originally came to the Pacific Northwest in the
late nineteenth century under the recruitment of the Great
Northern Railway Company. Early immigrants chiefly worked
as laborers for the railroad or lumber companies.[55]
By the time of the Seattle and Tacoma immigration hearings,
the climate of the Japanese workforce had changed
drastically. In 1920, a large percentage of the Japanese in
the Seattle area were engaged in farming or businesses such
as restaurants, hotels, groceries, laundries, and barber
shops. The labor movement that had been such a pivotal
factor in the nineteenth century Chinese exclusion was
dealing with a much different situation in the Japanese.
Though excluded by organized labor, the Japanese had formed
their own unions, often times abiding by many of the same
regulations as their mainstream counterparts.[56]
This voluntary conformity may have been another potential
factor in the lack of organized labor opposition. The
Japanese had demonstrated their willingness to be loyal
union members. Abiding by the same pay scales and shop
standards as white unions meant that Japanese labor would
not under-sell white labor. Although only officially
recognized in the machinists and timber workers unions,
members of Japanese unions had also shown their solidarity
by refusing to be scab workers during the 1916
longshoremen’s strike and the 1919 general strike.[57]
Harry
Ault
testifies
“Who is
this E.B. Ault that submitted his liberal, temperate and
considered views on the Japanese question this week before
the immigration committee? Can it be possible that he is
the editor of that exponent of wild-eyed radicalism, The
Union Record?”[58]
–The
Town Crier, August 7, 1920.
Some of the most interesting testimony took
place on the final day of the congressional hearings in
Seattle. Erwin B. (Harry) Ault was the final witness to
testify. In one of the longer statements throughout the
proceedings, Ault cautiously spoke for the Central Labor
Council of Seattle. Ault took a purely economic stance on
the question of Japanese immigration and naturalization.
Although he opposed future “Asiatic” immigration, he lobbied
for equal rights and pay for all Japanese workers already in
the United States. He expressed that any limitation on the
earning power of Japanese laborers would only be detrimental
to the general living standards of the American worker.[59]
He presented the marginalization of Japanese labor as a tool
used by business owners to lower the wage scale for workers
of all races. Ault was insistent on distancing himself and
organized labor from any racial element in the Japanese
question: “I say any prejudice, simply because a man’s skin
is dark or fair-I don’t think that is a fair estimate of a
man’s ability or capacity or usefulness to society or his
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”[60]
Ault was
the only pro-Japanese witnesses to not condemn intermarriage
between whites and Asian peoples. After some pointed
questioning by a seemingly shocked Congressmen John Raker
who asked Ault, “You would leave the young people of the
United States at liberty, without any law, to choose their
mates, to intermarry as they see fit?” Ault responded,
“Absolutely.”[61]
The Town Crier, which associated union advocacy with
simple-minded bigotry, commented on Ault’s testimony:
“Perforce, he wonders why Mr. Ault cannot apply some of the
same common sense, clear thinking and tolerance to the
consideration of other matters that occupy the attention of
The Union Record.”[62]
Afterward
Congressman Johnson went on to co-author the
1924 law that drastically curtailed most immigration to the
United States considered non-white, including Japanese.
Seattle’s anti-Japanese forces— particularly Miller
Freeman,the Anti-Japanese League, The Seattle Star,
and, increasingly, Teamsters union—continued their agitation
for another generation helping to set the stage for the
persecution and internment of Washington’s Japanese American
population during World War II.
But
Washington’s hearings on Japanese immigration did not just
signal a rising tide of anti-immigrant racism. They also
helped inspire a young James Sakamoto to promote Japanese
American citizenship claims. The year after the hearings,
Sakamoto co-founded the Seattle Progressive
Citizens League in 1921, a predecessor and model for the
Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). His leadership
and the efforts of other Nissei activists were part of a
broader movement against anti-Japanese and anti-Asian racism
that would run counter to American exclusionary politics for
the rest of the century.
Copyright (c) Doug Blair 2006
HSTAA 499 Summer and Spring 2005
[1]
The Seattle Times. July 26, 1920.
Pg 5.
[3]
Higham, John. Send These to Me: Immigrants in
Urban America. The Johns Hopkins University
Press. Baltimore and London. 1984: Pg 50.
[4]
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