Gentlemen’s Agreement

Gentlemen’s Agreement, (1907), U.S.-Japanese understanding in which Japan agreed not to issue passports to emigrants to the United States, except to certain categories of business and professional men. In return, U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt agreed to urge the city of San Francisco to rescind an order by which children of Japanese parents were segregated from white students in the schools.

Japanese immigration to the U.S. Pacific Coast had increased dramatically during the first years of the 20th century, and the issues addressed in the Gentlemen’s Agreement reflected the prejudices of Californians who feared that Japanese immigrants would depress wages and gain control of most of the good farmland. The Japanese government faithfully carried out its part of the agreement and the San Francisco school board repealed the segregation order, but the bias and discrimination against Japanese in California continued. The Japanese population in the United States continued to increase, as a result of a proviso that wives be permitted to immigrate, and the agreement was later superseded by the much more stringent Immigration Act of 1924.