Details
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, President. Two typed letters signed as President, to Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California at Berkeley, Washington, D.C., 20 December 1906 and 10 February 1909. Together 2¼ pages, 4to, White House stationery, the first with TR's scrawled "Private" at top left.
POLICY TOWARDS JAPAN AND THE JAPANESE-AMERICANS
20 December 1906: "...I am most anxious to bring about a peaceful understanding with Japan by which each country shall bar out the laborers of the other... in a way which will leave Japan a friend instead of an enemy eager and perhaps able to do us frightful damage whenever the opportunity arises. The conduct of the San Franciscans in barring the Japanese children from the schools has a permanent consequence...by inciting great resentment in Japan and making it far more difficult for me to secure an agreement for keeping out Japanese laborers..." 10 February 1909: "I laughed heartily over the Japanese letter. It seems too good not to be published. I am having a good deal of worry over California's totally unexpected outburst over the Japanese. I am doing my best to prevent serious damage..."
Roosevelt had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War and had received the thanks of the Emporer, but relations with Japan deteriorated when a wave of anti-Japanese hysteria swept California; on 30 October 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education ordered all Japanese children to be moved to a segregated school, claiming that the 91 Japanese students were crowding the white students out of classrooms. Roosevelt branded this "a wicked absurdity," called for the naturalization of Japanese already in America, and personally convinced the School Board to rescind the order. (cf. Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life, New York: Quill, William Morrow, 1992, pp. 478-481).
(2)
POLICY TOWARDS JAPAN AND THE JAPANESE-AMERICANS
20 December 1906: "...I am most anxious to bring about a peaceful understanding with Japan by which each country shall bar out the laborers of the other... in a way which will leave Japan a friend instead of an enemy eager and perhaps able to do us frightful damage whenever the opportunity arises. The conduct of the San Franciscans in barring the Japanese children from the schools has a permanent consequence...by inciting great resentment in Japan and making it far more difficult for me to secure an agreement for keeping out Japanese laborers..." 10 February 1909: "I laughed heartily over the Japanese letter. It seems too good not to be published. I am having a good deal of worry over California's totally unexpected outburst over the Japanese. I am doing my best to prevent serious damage..."
Roosevelt had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War and had received the thanks of the Emporer, but relations with Japan deteriorated when a wave of anti-Japanese hysteria swept California; on 30 October 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education ordered all Japanese children to be moved to a segregated school, claiming that the 91 Japanese students were crowding the white students out of classrooms. Roosevelt branded this "a wicked absurdity," called for the naturalization of Japanese already in America, and personally convinced the School Board to rescind the order. (cf. Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life, New York: Quill, William Morrow, 1992, pp. 478-481).
(2)