JAPANESE EXCLUSION: A Study of the Policy and the Law

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1925. This report, submitted to the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, provides a comprehensive history of diplomacy leading up to the adoption of the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely limited Japanese immigration, following protests by the Japanese government.

In this introduction, Trevor writes that the Act was not adopted in criticism of others, "but solely for the purpose of protecting ourselves. We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America can be kept American."

U.S. Representative Albert Johnson and Senator David Reed were the two main architects of the Act, which prevented immigration from Asia, set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere, and provided funding and an enforcement mechanism to carry out the longstanding ban on other immigrants. They sought to establish a distinct American identity by preserving its ethnic homogeneity. Reed told the Senate that earlier legislation "disregards entirely those of us who are interested in keeping American stock up to the highest standard - that is, the people who were born here."

Historian and author David C. Atkinson later wrote that the Japanese government perceived the Act as an indignity, and he views this "as a turning point in the growing estrangement of the U.S. and Japan, which culminated in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor." In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act allowed for people of Asian descent to immigrate and become citizens of the United States.

The 6"x 9" pamphlet is printed in black ink on off-white paper (84 p.) and has been bound in a Gaylord photomount pamphlet binder. The title of the pamphlet is handwritten in white ink on the stiff gray paper cover. There are ink stains to pages 2 and 3, along with light pencil markings throughout.