A Rising Tide Lifts All Battleships

Last Saturday, I promised to come back to the issue of Japan and the U.S. beefing up their navies in the wake of World War I. Great Britain was in on the arms race as well, and plenty of war-weary civilians were less than happy about it.

"They're Off" by David Low in London Star, by January, 1921 

Once you start binging on military hardware, it's awfully hard to stop. It's like an addiction, overwhelming rational thought. The three nations had been allies in the Great War, but were behaving as if each other were bitter enemies.

Detail from "Cartoons of the Day" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, ca. Dec. 17, 1920

John McCutcheon's fellow cartoonist at the Tribune, Carey Orr, would make the same point in his own cartoon a few weeks later but leave Great Britain out of it (see last Saturday's post). Although drawn later, I think Orr's cartoon did the better job of illustrating the futility of an arms race.

"Let's Take the Limit Off" by John Knott in Dallas News, Jan., 1921

John Knott attributes the three countries' build-up to Wilson's Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels. Republican-leaning cartoonists could easily characterize the American naval build-up as a folly of the outgoing Democratic administration, even if they had been among those decrying U.S. lack of "readiness" four years earlier.

"The Roots" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 27, 1921

(Or, in the case of Carey Orr, drawing this shortly after decrying the arms race.)

"Have a Heart Sam" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, Jan./Feb., 1921

This Canadian cartoonist seems to agree with Knott that the U.S. is to blame for the naval arms race. Canada (including Québec) being a part of the United Kingdom, perhaps Mr Racey was obliged to lay primary responsibility on the U.S. for the three-way naval buildup in deference to his overlords from across the Atlantic. I'm afraid I don't have an example of how cartoonists on Canada's Pacific coast viewed the Japanese aspect of this arms race.

"Der Letzte Krieg Ist Vorbei," unsigned, in Nebelspalter, Zurich, ca. Feb. 1921

So I'll settle for this Swiss cartoonist, who relegates Great Britain to the sidelines.

"Another Good Reason for Disarmament" by Wm. C. Morris for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, Jan. 1921

But naval supremacy in the Pacific was not the only issue driving a wedge between Japan and the U.S.

"Sitting Tight" by Harold J. Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Jan., 1921

California's Alien Land Law went into effect in December, 1920, expressly prohibiting Chinese and Japanese resident aliens from either purchasing or leasing agricultural property. Legal discrimination against East Asians was nothing new, nor exclusive to California:

 In Oregon's 1859 constitution, it stated that no "Chinaman" could own property in the state, and it protected specifically the rights of "white foreigners" the same property owning rights as enjoyed by native citizens. The territory of Washington passed legislation in 1886 in response to the spreading anti-Chinese unrest in the territory that prohibited aliens ineligible for citizenship from property rights. The Washington legislature added a statute to their constitution in 1889 written more broadly, declaring that one had to declare the intent to naturalize "in good faith" to be eligible for property ownership, which meant that the applicant had to be eligible for naturalization, and Asian immigrants were not eligible. When California re-wrote its constitution in 1879, it limited land ownership to aliens of the "white race or of African descent," the same language used to limit naturalization in 1870. The 1870 Naturalization Act had removed the "white" only restriction on citizenship that had been in force since 1790 and expanded naturalization rights to anyone of African descent. This meant that if an applicant was neither white, nor of African descent, they were not eligible for naturalization. The coded language targeting "aliens ineligible for citizenship" became a legal way that individual states could limit the rights of Asian immigrants without targeting a group racially in the language of the law. 

"How Can Japan Doubt Our Friendship" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, Jan. 20, 1921

California's 1920 Alien Land Law was designed to close loopholes in earlier anti-Japanese legislation, and would serve as a model for other western states. When Japan protested the discriminatory intent of the law as being a violation of existing treaties between Japan and the U.S., California members of the U.S. House of Representatives proposed replacing California's law with a federal statute prohibiting all resident aliens from acquiring agricultural land.

"Why Get So Excited About the Little Fellow" by Parmalee in Nashville Tennessean, Jan., 1921

Anti-Japanese legislation stretched eastward as far as Minnesota and Florida, but you really can't let any part of the U.S. off the hook discrimination-wise. The 1920's were a period of intense anti-immigrant fervor all across the country, a topic to which I'll turn soon. And, it being African-American History Month, let's not forget that lynching, housing discrimination, and other institutional racism knew no state boundaries, and 1921 would see the nation's most horrific ever paroxysm of White terrorism against an entire Black neighborhood.

But today's post is about U.S.-Japan relations, so let's return to the topic at hand.

"Look at the Size of It" by Haydon Jones in New York Evening Post, Feb., 1921

Yap is a small island group about 700 miles east of the Philippines. After the Spanish-American War, Spain had sold Yap to Germany; then, after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles awarded it as a mandate to Japan. In the waning days of the Wilson administration, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby protested to the League of Nations that the U.S. did not recognize Japanese sovereignty over the islands. As it happens, they happened to be a critical telegraph cable crossing linking the U.S., Australia, Pacific islands, and Far East Asia, back when telegrams were the primary vehicle for international communication.

"As Much Privacy as a Gold Fish" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. Jan. 8, 1921

While the U.S. did have certain rights as a World War I belligerent power, its outsider status at the League left it without much leverage in the Yap Scrap. Yap would remain part of the Empire of Japan until the end of World War II; it is now part of Micronesia. 

"Hello, Japan" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, Jan., 1921

Finally, there was the fatal shooting of U.S. naval officer Lt. Warren H. Langdon by a Japanese sentry  in Vladivostok, Russia on January 8, 1921. Returning to the U.S.S. Albany around 4:00 a.m., Lt. Langdon was confronted by a Japanese sentry and shot in the back when he attempted to continue on his way. As with Yap, the U.S. did not recognize Japanese jurisdiction in Russian territory, complaining that this was only the most serious example of Japanese harassment of Americans there. Anxious not to make relations between the two countries worse than they already were, Japan court-martialed the sentry, issued regretful apologies to the U.S. government, and promised reparations.