JAPANESE IMMIGRATION. COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION, The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m. in room 1209, St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, Calif., Hon. Albert Johnson (chairman) presiding. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Phelan, we will open these hearings by.. asking for a statement from you. This trip to the Pacific coast is in response to requests which have extended over several years past. This summer we are able to be present for a few weeks, and we have with us a majority of the committee, and we would be glad to hear from you any preliminary statement you desire to present, and then later, when it comes to verifying certain facts and securing still further information, we may have to take more of your time. STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES D. PHELAN, A SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. Senator PHELAN. Mr. Chairman, I suppose you understand that this is a question that covers a wide field, and I am pleased to hear you say that you will give me an opportunity later if it is necessary to introduce some supporting statements by others more competent to testify in substantiation of what I have to say. A great deal of this matter here will be of no use to-day [indicating papers]. The CHAIRMAN. The committee has just received a half a dozen copies of a report entitled "California and the oriental," issued by the State board of control. That will be made a part of the record. (The report referred to (Exhibit A) appears at the conclusion of this day's proceedings.) Senator PHELAN. I have not yet received a copy, but I have read the governor's letter transmitting the report of the State board of control to the Secretary of State in Washington, and I consider it a very convincing document and carefully prepared, and doubtless in every respect true. Those who differ with the views of myself and the governor will doubtless in their testimony before you impugn some of the statements made. I would be very much interested to hear how they can disprove the facts which have been brought forth by this report. For a long time in California those who dissented, and I may say they are very few, called out for facts, and now the facts have been produced in an official document, which I say confirms everything that has been said growing out of observation and study. I myself, before I made any statements affecting this situation, verified them. I visited the immigration station at Angel Island to verify and have the truth and as near as possible vouched with my own eyes as to the picture brides, and I then sounded the alarm. It was at first denied; then it was confirmed. In the matter of the smuggling of Japanese over 3 the border, I visited Tia Juana, Mexicali, Calexico, and Andrade. There I had the testimony.of the immigration inspectors themselves, and yet that was disputed and is still being disputed. I heard that with the connivance of the Japanese consul in southern California Japanese were smuggled ashore from passenger ships en route to South America temporarily laying to in Los Angeles Harbor, where, under the regulations of the department, no one could visit the ships. The consul certified bona fides of certain "relatives and friends" who wished to see them on board, and they arranged, by providing them with money and charts, how to make serreptitious entry into California. That I had officially verified, yet it was stoutly denied. In the matter of the acquisition of large tracts of land in southern California, on the southern border, I made that discovery and gave it to the public. And by these means my only object here is to give you information in order to have a sound public sentiment behind this movement. It has been denied. It is true. When you are dealing with people who falsify, use subterfuges, evasions, prevarications, and untruths you have to be very careful. I notice there was announced in the papers that a certain Col. John P. Irish is going to testify before you. He is a well-known character in California, and, if I may say, during his entire residence in this State-I think he is an immigrant from some Middle Western State-he has always allied himself with what in a public sense is a wrong cause. In other words, he is a clever gentleman who lends his talents for the advocacy of the other people's cause, and I suppose he does not lose anything by it except in the way of public esteem. He has issued a circular here called "The anti-Japanese pogrom-Facts versus the falsehoods of Senator Phelan and others." The CHAIRMAN. What is a pogrom? Senator PHELAN. A pogrom, as I understand it, is the persecution and slaughter of the Jews in Russia, and I suppose it would apply to any race that is being persecuted and slaughtered. It is a very strong word. I am not aware that there are Japanese here being persecuted or slaughtered in California. In fact, I am not aware of a single outrage by which the people have manifested their feeling. The Japanese have the equal protection of the laws. The courts are open to them and there has been no allegation of that kind. If urging their exclusion from California is regarded as persecution, then the same would apply to the Chinese; it would apply to the reds and the anarchists and the unfit of all races and all classes. It is not persecution; it is preservation. That is the word which should dominate our councils, the selfpreservation of a people. And when we find this occupation by a foreign people, unassimilable with the white races, coming here to destroy, it is a mere assertion of the fundamental right of selfpreservation that fixes the policy, and in every instance the method by which we have attempted to rid ourselves of this evil, as we believe, has been legal. Your very presence here to-day would indicate that there is no such thing as a pogrom. You are here to investigate for the purpose of recommending legislation, and that is the only course the State of California has pursued, and that is the only course the Federal Government has pursued. I will take his pamphlet up seriatim. I just picked it up this morning. As these are the allegations made against the bare facts-denying their authenticity-I may simplify matters by mentioning them in order. This gentleman says: Senator Phelan began his pogrom by publishing that an American company had sold to Japanese 800,000 acres of land on the Mexican side of the Imperial Valley. The American company at once proved this to be a lie. It had not sold land anywhere to Japanese. Mr. Phelan then changed his statement and charged that the Mexican Government had sold 800,000 acres of land adjoining our boundary to Japanese, and that this was a violation of the Monroe doctrine. The Mexican Government immediately replied with proof that it had not sold land anywhere to Japanese, and as Senator Phelan had claimed that under the Monroe doctrine the United States can dictate to the States of Central and South America what private parties may own land in their jurisdiction, President Carranza very promptly and properly repudiated the Monroe doctrine. I was visiting southern California and there I learned that one of the large Japanese steamship companies- Mr. VAILE (interposing). This document can be made a part of the official record in connection with Senator Phelan's testimony? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. EXHIBIT B. THE ANTI-JAPANESE POGROM-FACTS VERSUS THE FALSEHOODS OF SENATOR PHELAN AND OTHERS. [By Col. John P. Irish.] Let it be repeated that the present anti-Japanese agitation, like the antiChinese movement of years ago, has the same psychology as the Russian antiJewish pogrom, which always starts with the lie that Jews have murdered Christian children to use their blood in the rites of the synagogue. The leader of the anti-Japanese pogrom is Senator Phelan. An election is approaching. He has made no record of any benefit to the State in the Senate, so he must divert attention from his uselessness as a Senator by attacking the Japanese and trying to stampede the State by lying about them. It is my purpose to take up his public statements and those of his helpers in this ignoble work and prove them false, not by my word but by official and other indisputable authority. Senator Phelan began his pogrom by publishing that an American company had sold to Japanese 800,000 acres of land on the Mexican side of the Imperial Valley. The American company at once proved this to be a lie. It had not sold land anywhere to Japanese. Mr. Phelan then changed his statement and charged that the Mexican Government had sold 800,000 acres of land adjoining our boundary to Japanese, and that this was a violation of the Monroe doctrine. The Mexican Government immediately replied with proof that it had not sold land anywhere to Japanese, and, as Senator Phelan had claimed that under the Monroe doctrine the United States can dictate to the States of Central and South America what private parties may own land in their jurisdiction, President Carranza very promptly and properly repudiated the Monroe doctrine. In November Mr. Phelan published in the Chico Enterprise that he had been approached by a Japanese, who presented a letter from our ambassador to Tokyo, and who proposed that we should surrender the whole Imperial Valley to the Japanese. But the Senator had furnished a clue to test the truth of the story by naming a letter from our ambassador, and soon changed the story; and in its new form it was published in the California Cultivator of January 31, 1920, as follows: "When I left Washington an American representing powerful Japanese organizations said to be backed by the Japanese Government proposed that Americans be ousted from the Imperial Valley and it be turned over to the Japanese." Notice that in this last version no names are mentioned and no clue given, not even finger marks. As no Japanese and no American can be thought of to be fool enough to go to Mr. Phelan with such an idiotic proposition, the statement has the face of a lie in both versions. In November he made a speech to the Chamber of Commerce of Oakland. After some vagrant vituperation of the Japanese, he ventured upon a specific statement to call attention to the "horrible condition of Merced County, overrun by Japanese, who own there 5,000 acres of the best farm land in the county." I immediately wrote to the recorder of Merced County to let me know the acreage owned by Japanese. In reply he sent me the 1919 report of the county assessor, just made to the State controller. The assessor says there are 185 Japanese in Merced County. They own 395 acres of farm land and 36 town lots. There are 27 Japanese children in the primary schools and 2 in the high school. The white neighbors of the Japanese all say they are good people to do business with, and unobjectionable. On the 18th of last December Mr. Phelan made an anti-Japanese speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, in which he said that Japanese births in California were three to one white birth. The official report of the State board of health, sent to me by Mr. Ross, registrar of vital statistics, shows for 1919: White births Japanese births___ 50.898 4,378 The records of the board of health show more white births in the single year 1919 than Japanese births in the full 10 years preceding. His speech on that occasion strung other lies on this birth rate lie, like beads on a string. In their statements made to the Committee on Immigration of the United States Senate, both Senator Phelan and Mr. McClatchy said that there were in California 20,000 picture brides and that "they usually each give birth to a child once a year." The official report of the California Board of Health for 1919 records 4,378 Japanese births in the State for that year. So that of the imaginary picture brides, 20,000 in number, reported by Phelan and McClatchy, more than 16,000 must have been asleep at the switch. After Gov. Stephens refused to call an extra session of the legislature to pass anti-Japanese laws, Phelan said in Washington that the governor had received a letter from the Japanese Association warmly thanking him for his refusal, and Phelan published the letter. I wrote the governor's office asking if he had received such a letter. The answer was: "Phelan's statement is an absolute lie." There are men in San Francisco who know the inside facts about this little comedy. When those facts are made public, as they undoubtedly will be, the Senator will have to face an embarrassing situation. In the meantime, it is sufficient to say that the governor never received the letter. Recently a questionable item in a naval appropriation bill was before the Senate. Mr. Phelan demanded its passage as necessary to the defense of this coast, for he said, "the largest Japanese warship lies in the harbor of Honolulu.” A few days later the Associated Press published from its agent in Honolulu that no Japanese warship was in Hawaiian waters, nor had been for a long time. Commenting on this, the New York Sun said maybe Senator Phelan does not know where Hawaii is. The Senator has uttered other defamatory statements, and every one is a lie. They are as thick in his record as cooties in a battle trench. I leave him now to attend to the cases of his companions in falsehood and exaggeration. I dislike to say that Mr. V. S. McClatchy, of the Sacramento Bee, intentionally lies, but his bitter prejudice and hatred had fed his credulity until he has become a “carrier" of falsehoods, as some people are “carriers" of typhoid, Mr. McClatchy has published that during the 12 months ending June 30, 1919, 9.678 Japanese were found to be illegally in this country and were arrested and deported. Now, the official report of the Commissioner of Immigration shows 9 Japanese deported for being illegally in the country in the year ending June 30, 1918. The commissioner's report for the next year, ending June 30, 1919, shows 117 contraband Japanese were apprehended and deported. So, for the full year covered by Mr. McClatchy's statement, the official report shows only 126 Japanese illegally in the country and deported. I wrote the Commissioner General of Immigration asking the foundation for Mr. McClatchy's statement, and that official seems to think that his official |