Heading: (Japanese-American – San Francisco)
Author:
Title: Three imprints about the 1906 international crisis that followed the San Francisco order for segregation of Japanese school children
Place Published:
Publisher:
Date Published: 1907-1908
Description:

Includes;

• Johnson, Herbert B. Discrimination Against Japanese in California: A Review of the Real Situation (Berkeley, Calif: Courier Publishing Company, 1907) First Edition,  Original wrappers, tape spine. 133pp. With fold-out school map of San Francisco

• MIyakawa, Masuji. Life of Japan New York Baker and Taylor 1907 First Edition. Original cloth, with front cover color design. 301pp.+24 pp.appendix. Profusely illustrated with plates and text drawings. 

• Miyakawa. Powers of the American People / Congress, President and Courts… New York Baker & Taylor 1908 Second Edition. 431pp. Original decorative cloth. Small tear on Contents page, not affecting type, repaired with archival tape

In 1906, during the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and months after the earthquake, San Francisco city authorities declared that Japanese students must attend a racially-segregated “Oriental” public school. Amid international tension between the US and Japan, Roosevelt sent Secretary of Commerce and Labor Victor Metcalf to negotiate a compromise which rescinded the segregation order, while severely restricting future Japanese immigration to California.

Johnson, the sympathetic white clergyman and missionary, decried the atmosphere of racist discrimination that prompted both the crisis and its sequel.

Miyakawa was the first known Japanese-American lawyer in the United States, a leading civil rights advocate who filed suit against the School Board on behalf of the Japanese students.  While his two books are nominally a plaudit to his homeland and a learned study of the American legal and political system, both touch upon his personal role in alleviating the crisis. The first is a significant association copy, inscribed by the author to Metcalf the year after that California politician helped resolve the casus belli. Tipped in, probably by Metcalf, is a New York newspaper clipping headlined: “in forthcoming book, said to be inspired by Japanese Government, Possibilities of War between Two Nations Are Discussed – Author, however, argues for Peace and proposes ‘The United States of Japan and America.’

Fair to Very Good