California Joint Immigration Committee

The California department of this military veterans organization was concerned by potential Japanese aggression and had maintained an anti-Japanese position since its founding. Legion Adjutant James K. Fisk was Chairman of the CJIC.

NSGW was a brotherhood founded in 1876 whose membership was limited to those born in California. The organization was chiefly concerned with issues of nativism rather than the economic effects of Japanese immigration. John T. Regan of the NSGW was a Principal Member of the CJIC.

The unskilled members of this 9,000-strong labor union were particularly opposed to Japanese immigrants, whom they believed undercut wages. Paul Scharrenberg, secretary of the union from 1910 to 1936, was a Principal Member of the CJIC.

Representing farmers who ran small-scale operations, this organization opposed Japanese immigration due to the competition that Japanese farmers introduced to the state.[7]

Led by former U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham, NCAJR was founded in 1921 by Sidney L. Gulick, an educator who spent twenty-five years as a missionary in Japan before returning to the United States. Once the Immigration Act of 1924 had been passed, NCAJR distributed pamphlets written by Gulick and fellow missionary William Axling. Gulick argued that excluding Japanese immigrants was damaging relations with Japan and that the only way to address the problem was to institute a quota. One line of attack used by the CJIC against NCAJR was that advocates for modification of the law were beholden to Japan on account of their past work and were therefore concerned more for the well-being of Japan rather than the United States.[8]

This ecumenical association of Protestant denominations publicly opposed the exclusion of Japanese immigrants and called for the immigration law to be changed so as to provide Japan with a quota. It was primarily concerned with the effect Japanese exclusion had on international relations.[9] According to McClatchy, Gulick “converted” the leaders of the FCCCA to his point of view and, as leader of the organization's Oriental Department, pushed anti-exclusion as an established church policy.[10]

From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, businessmen on the West Coast who traded with Japan sought to modify the exclusion clause so as to permit Japan an immigration quota. Their efforts were coordinated by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which was mainly led by Wallace M. Alexander. Alexander was a businessman and trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[11]

Support for Japanese exclusion was generally divided on the West Coast around the time when the CJIC was founded. A 1924 study conducted by the Japanese Foreign Office found that of nineteen California newspapers, ten were anti-Japanese and five were pro-Japanese, with the rest holding a neutral stance.[13]

Throughout the second half of the 1920s, the CJIC and the most prominent members of the anti-exclusion movement fought over the righteousness of their causes. In a special issue of the English-language newspaper The Japan Times and Mail published five months after the passage of the immigration act, prominent Japanese citizens expressed their dissatisfaction with the exclusion clause. In response, the CJIC issued a pamphlet in which McClatchy argued that the Gentleman's Agreement had been “inefficient” and that the exclusion clause of the 1924 act was not due to racial prejudice.[14]

In December 1925, the executive committee of the FCCCA promulgated its new position on Japanese exclusion. Rather than continue to pursue a political solution, the FCCCA would work to educate the public and gain influential supporters throughout the country.[15] The CJIC did not regard this as a retreat and so maintained its attacks against the FCCCA throughout 1926.

In early 1927, the scope of the CJIC's activities expanded to include opposition to immigration from Mexico and The Philippines. This was accompanied by a relative reduction in interest in Japanese exclusion.[16] Within one year, the CJIC was primarily targeting Mexicans and Filipinos.[17] McClatchy still maintained an interest in Japanese exclusion, as when he spoke out against an immigration quota for Japan while testifying to the House Immigration Committee in June of that year.

In September 1928, the California State Grange withdrew from the CJIC. Late that year, the pro-quota movements were gaining momentum, with McClatchy admitting that his opponents were “steadily gaining a psychological advantage.”[18] In February of the following year, the CJIC resumed its attacks on pro-quota movements, beginning with a letter-writing campaign to California legislators.[19]

With the onset of the Great Depression, business interests on the West Coast created their own pro-quota movement in hopes of stimulating more trade with Japan. Throughout 1930 and 1931, pro-quota movements continued to gain momentum, with several cities passing pro-quota resolutions. In July 1931, the Immigration Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce passed its own pro-quota resolution. McClatchy protested by publishing another anti-quota pamphlet composed as an open letter to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce leader Wallace M. Alexander.[20]

After Japan invaded Manchuria in late 1931, McClatchy used the incident to argue that similar underhandedness would be employed by Japan against the United States in order to modify the immigration law.[21]

In mid-1933, pro-quota strength increased with the new support of Roy Howard of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. McClatchy responded by seeking the support of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. The result was a conflict between the pro-quota Scripps-Howard newspapers and the anti-quota Hearst papers.[22]

In March 1934, a CJIC release raised the threat of “a flood of immigrants from all the colored races of Asia.”[23]

In February 1935, McClatchy published CJIC releases that claimed the Japanese government was distributing pro-Japanese textbooks in American public schools, particularly in Hawaii. No evidence was found to support this claim.[24]

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 and ensuing breakout of full-scale war between Japan and China, American public opinion of Japan dropped sharply.

On May 15, 1938, McClatchy died of a heart attack at the age of eighty.[25] He was succeeded as Executive Secretary of the CJIC by his son Harold Jedd. The CJIC continued to publicize the danger posed by Japan to Hawaii, issuing a release in October 1938 that warned of the “Japanese Threat to Dominate Hawaii.”[26]

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, ended any hope for establishing an immigration quota for Japan. The CJIC subsequently supported the mass removal of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast.[27]

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made U.S. citizenship available to Mexicans residing in the lands won by the U.S. in the Mexican-American War. The treaty did not comment on the racial status of Mexicans. The right of Mexicans to obtain citizenship was confirmed in 1897 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled on the case In re Rodriguez. The Immigration Act of 1924 closed off immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere, but did not contain restrictive quotas for nations in the Western Hemisphere.

Starting in the late 1920s, the CJIC advocated the exclusion of Mexican immigrants on the basis that they were not white or black and therefore could not become citizens under the Naturalization Act of 1790, revised in 1870. McClatchy and California Attorney General Ulysses S. Webb testified before Congress in 1929. According to McClatchy, Mexican Indians were “of the Mongolian or Mongoloid race” and were therefore ineligible for American citizenship.[28] The CJIC followed the message up in October of that year with a press release bearing the headline “Mexican Indians Not Eligible for American Citizenship.”[29]

The CJIC's strategy to achieve Mexican exclusion was to find a suitable test case for a federal court, a favorable ruling from which would overturn the precedents that had theretofore permitted Mexicans to immigrate to the U.S. and naturalize. McClatchy searched the nation for a suitable naturalization judge to whom the opportunity could be presented. In doing so, McClatchy colluded with John Murff, a naturalization examiner, and John Knight of the U.S. District Court in Buffalo.[30] The case in question was In Re Andrade (1936). The petitioner Timoteo Andrade was a citizen of Mexico who had been residing in the U.S. for twenty years when he filed his naturalization petition.[31] The case was ultimately decided in Andrade's favor, marking a significant setback to Mexican exclusion.