Gentlemen's Agreement
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- This article is about the international agreement between America and Japan. For other uses see Gentlemen's agreement
The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 was an informal agreement between the United States and Japan. Japan agreed not to issue passports for Japanese citizens wishing to work in the United States, thus eliminating immigration. In exchange, schools in San Francisco, California agreed not to discriminate against students of Japanese descent. The school district had tried to segregate all Asian students to separate schools in October 1906. A treaty in 1894 had assured free immigration but it was informally nullified when the Gentlemen's Agreement went into effect. The agreement had stemmed from increasing racial tensions between the Japanese workers and white American labor, and a desire by the Japanese government to prevent a possible segregation that would affect the Japanese community in San Fransisco. There was also a strong desire, on the part of the Japanese government, to preserve the image of the Japanese race in the eyes of the world: Japan did not want America to pass a Japanese Exclusion Act. President Theodore Roosevelt decided, based on his positive opinion of the Japanese nation (which had just come away from a victory in the Russo-Japanese War), to accept the agreement as proposed by Japan as an alternative to more formal, restrictive immigration legislation.
See also: Chinese Exclusion Act.