American Japanese Relations in California [typescript]

New York, 1917. Sidney Gulick, a Congregational minister, spent twenty-five years in Japan working for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. When he returned to the US, in 1913, he advocated for better US-Japanese relations and the end of discrimination against Japanese immigrants in America. He published several books and pamphlets on these subjects in the 1910s and 1920s.

This two-page mimeographed typescript describes the favorable responses of American labor union officials (who strongly supported anti-Asian legislation) to US tours by Japanese government and parliamentary officials between 1914 and 1917. The typescript refers to a dinner hosted by George Shima, "popularly known as the Japanese 'Potato King'" (and the richest Japanese American immigrant) "which several representatives of organized labor... attended." The typescript also describes meetings between Japanese officials and Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor.

Gulick, ever the optimist that the US and Japan could improve relations, offers as support of his views that one white San Francisco labor leader told one of his Japanese counterparts, "The more I see of you the less you look like a Jap."

The typescript is accompanied by a two-page typed letter, signed, from Gulick to the Japanese banker Shidachi Tetsujiro, and a printed "Declaration" by the American Branch of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through Churches which states, in part, that "American Christians... should strive to secure Federal legislation providing for the adequate protection of aliens [and] the early removal of all causes of irritation, and a fundamental solution to the whole Asiatic problem." All items folded for mailing. The typescript and letters are very good or better. The Declaration is foxed.