Chapter Three: The Riot of 1907

In B.C. the people appear to have lost their heads.
– Governor-General Earl Grey

We are all of the opinion that this province must be a white man’s country …. We do not wish to look forward to a day when our descendants will be dominated by Japanese, or Chinese, or any color but their own …. We are an outpost of the Empire, and that outpost we have to hold against all comers.

1907 was a critical year in the history of Japanese immigration to Canada, for in that year more Japanese than ever before, or ever after, arrived in British Columbia. Anxieties over the immigrants, who were moving into a constantly restless, rapidly expanding area, had become endemic, but the portents of a brewing racial storm became an actuality in 1907 with the consolidation of anti-Japanese agitation among the industrial workers, whetted by newspaper stories and the province’s politicians who, in discovering the political potency of the anti-Japanese feeling, could exploit the situation for their own ends.

The agitation in 1907 proved sufficiently serious for Ottawa to arrange an agreement with Japan to restrict immigration, despite the terms of the Anglo-Japanese trade treaty which allowed free entry of the Japanese into Canada. The agreement was nothing as drastic as the evacuation orders of 1942 and scarcely satisfied those who wanted complete exclusion and who still felt that the wishes of the province were being sacrificed. It nonetheless reflected the power of the pressure tactics that one province could impose on the central government.

The question of exclusion became one subject upon which there was little difference of opinion, the one measure on which it was always possible to obtain concerted action. And by persistent effort, British Columbia was able to convert, in effect, the entire nation to a policy of racial prejudice. Instead of an enlightened policy of general and gradual acceptance, the province wanted to exclude and to reject; thus the historical pattern, even in this very early stage, was settled. Finally, the events significantly changed the nature of Japanese immigration and settlement. The large numbers of Japanese women who subsequently migrated to Canada were to consolidate the life of the Japanese in Canada, to transform the largely itinerant life of the immigrants into that of settlers with families and a deeply rooted interest in the country as a permanent abode.

The immigration problem quickly became one of the major issues in the provincial elections of February, 1907. The Conservatives, according to the Vancouver Province, had apparently uncovered a “Liberal plot” in which the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was to import 50,000 Japanese in the spring in order to build the western end of the line, for which arrangements were “virtually completed.” The newspaper headlined its front-page story in bold capitals, “50,000 Japanese For B.C.”, and commented: “Who knows but what is the intention of the railway company and its political followers to eventually enfranchise this Japanese horde. What a fine plan to run British Columbia could be carried out with 50 or 60,000 machine votes!”¹ It was further alleged that Laurier’s Liberals were keeping the ports of the province open to Japanese immigrants, and for that reason had disallowed the exclusion policy which McBride’s provincial government wanted to enforce.

William Bowser, running for a seat in Vancouver, was quoted as saying that he had received “authentic” information that the huge influx was imminent. And alluding to the policy of the Grand Trunk Pacific “to place no restrictions whatever” on the kind of labour it employed, every contractor being “at liberty to employ white or Oriental labour as he sees fit,”² Bowser charged that “blind to the interests of this province, the authorities at Ottawa had refused to put any clause in the contract with the railway company forbidding employment of Japanese.”³ Such scare tactics, even conjured up on blatantly extravagant figures and remorselessly evoking federal-provincial conflicts of interest, could not but feed upon the fears of the electorate. No doubt they helped to gather some useful votes for him and 25 other Conservatives who were swept into office.

There had indeed been a letter dated December 10, 1906, in which E.G. Russell, then agent of the Grand Trunk Pacific in the West, wrote to S. Goto, an official of the Canadian Nippon Supply Company of Vancouver, which had been formed a week earlier, to arrange contract labour:

Making reply to your verbal inquiry of recent date upon the subject of Japanese labour for general and railway work in Northern British Columbia, I would say that 5,000 men will undoubtedly be required should they apply in reasonable numbers.⁴

And Goto, during a trip to Japan, used Russell’s letter to convey the impression that he had a bona fide contract in order to gain an upper hand over rival labour suppliers. Still, this figure of 5,000 was considerably lower than the 50,000 hotly publicized by the newspapers and Bowser.

Mackenzie King, making his investigation as Royal Commissioner into Oriental immigration, felt that, because of the many circulated stories, the stand taken by the Grand Trunk Pacific over immigration from Japan “could not be too fully investigated.”⁵ After sifting the “evidence,” however, he concluded that the railway was in no way responsible for the Oriental immigration which had taken place. Nor was King able to secure evidence which indicated that Grand Trunk Pacific had entered into any binding agreement or contract for the supply of labour, despite efforts by the Canadian Nippon Supply Company. The shipment of “coolies” who were to land at Prince Rupert and for whom huge barracks were supposedly to be erected, amounted to only ten men. What, then, was the source of Bowser’s “authentic” information? King’s inquiry completely exonerated the Grand Trunk Pacific and demolished any stories that the Japanese were involved in the “plot.” But whether these rumours of 50,000 Japanese invading the province were true or untrue was irrelevant. The sensational manner in which such rumours were featured in the press and on the hustings, and represented as factual, served to keep the anti-Japanese issue vividly alive.

The “Yellow Peril,” according to the fevered imagination of the daily press, stood poised, ready to engulf into its maw, if it was not already devouring, the livelihood and security of the white population. If British Columbia did not endeavour to keep the Orientals out of the province, then “the whites … would die – be ousted absolutely out of existence.”

Why? because the Chinese, or the Japanese, through an evolutionary process which has been in progress for centuries is now, as we find him, a marvellous human machine, competent to perform the maximum of labour on the minimum of sustenance. He does not require to maintain a home as white men do; does not spend one 50th part of what the meanest white labourer considers absolutely necessary for clothing; lives in a hovel where a white man would sicken and die – and with it all performs … unskilled laborious tasks quite as efficiently as a white man, and, given the training, is equally proficient at duties requiring the exercise of some skill.⁶

This was the picture painted of the Oriental immigrants, seen through yellow-tinted glasses: robots, operating with cheap, machine-like efficiency, not only possessing those qualities which undermine the existing standards of white workers, but posing a threat to the future of the white race.

Usually the evolutionary theory of the survival of the fittest was used as an argument supporting and confirming a policy of colonial expansion and aggression at the expense of “inferior” peoples. It involved nothing more than the implementation of the theory of the replacement of an inferior by a superior human society. In international politics, racism excused aggression, for the aggressor no longer felt himself bound by a consideration for foreigners who belonged to “inferior” races and were classified as little more than beasts. Here, the Victoria Colonist editorial writer tacitly assumed that the white race could not win against the Orientals. He evoked the theory of survival as befitting the “inferior” race in his argument for Japanese exclusion, a race who were supposedly attempting, paradoxically, to colonize the province and its white inhabitants. The propagandists were simplifying and distorting Darwin’s biological thesis to conform with their particular interests, because they saw the Japanese becoming potent competitors in the labour market and needed some disguise for not only excluding them but denying them any share in the economic and political privileges they themselves enjoyed. The Darwinian ethos became useful as an ultimate sanction for racial antagonism.

The influx of Japanese immigrants was rarely looked at as representative of some possible present or future benefits in the destiny of the province: rather, the written and spoken language of anti-Japanese agitators was generally couched in imagery that would create foreboding and fear. The mysterious mass of Japanese, those insidious and menacing invaders from an unknown continent who scarcely possessed the attributes of a common humanity, was seen as ineluctably crushing the white man out of existence. The preparation in the progression to violence was then simple: a long period of categorical prejudgement in which the members of the victim group had long been typed and were not considered as individuals.⁷

Sharpened and distorted at each telling, rumour often provoked and sustained the fears of people who, in any case when deeply rooted prejudices were involved, would not have been convinced of the truth even if carefully established facts were theirs to read. The Nippon Supply Company’s Goto had obtained an agreement from the Canadian Pacific Railway to be its sole contractor for Japanese labour following a letter from F.F. Busteed, the general superintendant. Busteed had written: “With reference to the agreement which has been renewed between you and this Company, regarding the employment of Japanese, I would say that the number required per annum will be between 500 and 2,000.”⁸ Not much later, the Vancouver Province inflated this figure to the arrival of 12,000 Japanese “within the next six months … to replace the whites who were employed as ‘maintenance of way’ men.”⁹

Malignant theories and exaggerated rumours could only lead to mob passions, prejudices and fears which were so easy to evoke and so difficult to check. Indeed, anti-Oriental feeling was rife all along the Pacific coast – from British Columbia to California – and it was not long before Vancouver formed its own Asiatic Exclusion League after the pattern of those in Seattle, San Francisco and other cities across the border. At its organizational meeting on August 12, attended by the presidents of the provincial Liberal and Conservative associations, the members unanimously passed a resolution declaring that, unless checked, the “extremely aggressive” Japanese would ultimately control the province and an alien race would secure a foothold in Canada.

Of the three groups of immigrants from Asia – Japanese, Chinese and Hindus – the Japanese were considered the most “aggressive” and as therefore constituting a far greater threat than the other newcomers, who were sufficiently disliked but not as feared. Behind the fear of the Japanese immigrant rose the spectre of Japan, the new military power of the East, who had recently defeated Russia in the war of 1904-5, and whose shadow, it seemed, already was cast over not only the Pacific but the world. It was Kaiser Wilhelm, brooding over the rise of Japan, who had coined the succinct and striking phrase: Die gelbe Gefahr – the Yellow Peril – when in 1895 his imaginative mind inspired him to draw a cartoon of an ominous Oriental figure, riding a dragon, leaving smoking cities in ruins, ready to overwhelm Europe. His scheming mind later led him, in the thrashing of a brainstorm, to “uncover” a Japanese plot to seize the Panama Canal with a hidden army of 10,000 men who worked in the coffee plantations of Mexico and secretly drilled after sundown in military jackets and brass buttons, under the command of officers “disguised as simple laborers.”¹⁰ The Kaiser simply wanted somehow to foment a war between Japan and the United States in which England would have to support America, costing her her Japanese ally and breaking up the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. This wishful thinking and German inventiveness had no real consequences, but at least the Kaiser was successful in implanting the idea of the Yellow Peril, a phrase which became a catchword in speech and print for many years to come, especially in relation to the Japanese “problem” on the west coast.

During the summer months, the warnings of “invasion” were in full-throated cry, and conditions were ripe for an unimpeded progression towards violence. And when the steamer Kumeric, sailing from Hawaii, entered Burrard Inlet on July 24 and dropped anchor in Vancouver harbour with 1,189 Japanese on board, it was to provide consternation, confusion and not a little humour. The Kumeric formed only one of boat loads of Japanese who continued to arrive in Vancouver and Victoria. In the same month, the Admiral Jaurequiberry brought 241, but the Kumeric carried by far the largest number of Japanese immigrants in that or any other year, and obviously made the largest impact on the anxiety-ridden people of the Vancouver area. In contrast, eight vessels of the Australian lines, sailing from Honolulu, disembarked Japanese at Victoria in the first ten months of 1907, but they carried merely 278 Japanese, from the Mona’s 63 to the Tremont’s three. But all these hungry and bewildered immigrants had one thing in common: they were all from Hawaii; they were part of a massive exodus from those islands prompted by the efforts of the powerful Planters’ Association of Honolulu to lower the wages of some 60,000 Japanese. The association had had some influence in convincing the United States to pass a law in January forbidding the movement of Japanese into the United States from Hawaii – a law which forced many of them to look to Canada as an alternative. It was also alleged that the association had contributed money to the Asiatic Exclusion League in order to set up a situation which would discourage the Japanese from moving to the mainland. Yet 2,779 managed to move to Canada from Hawaii during the first ten months, not without loss to both the employers and the Japanese boarding-house keepers who were at odds in the infighting over Japanese labour in the islands.

The Japanese at this time provided well over half the labour on the sugar and rice plantations in Hawaii, and sought an increase in wages and improved working conditions. The planters refused to accede to their demands, and instead began to import Portuguese labour as a counter measure. The boarding-house keepers then attempted to intensify the dissatisfaction by advertising some glowing but not entirely accurate reports in the local Japanese newspaper of the conditions obtainable in British Columbia: high demand for labour, high wages and unlimited opportunities. The fact, however, that wages for common labourers in Hawaii were as low as $18 a month as compared to the $1.35 to $1.50 per day offered by the Canadian railways gave the best of the argument to those who were striving, in a curiously contrived way, to raise wages in Hawaii. The plan could only reach its potential if a sufficient number crossed to British Columbia and the employers might then become aware of the limited supply of Japanese labour and therefore meet the demands. The expedition of the Kumeric was therefore a speculative approach to the problem: the promoters wished to change the planters’ attitudes and were also thinking of the profits to be gained by supplying transportation to those wishing to go to Canada. The earlier voyage of the Admiral Jaurequiberry and the two later trips of the Indiana, which carried a total of 563 Japanese to Vancouver in August and September, were prompted by the same motives. Many of the passengers, disgruntled with the situation in Hawaii or their desire to move to the United States frustrated, were eager to sail to Vancouver without much persuasion.

When the boarding-house keepers learned that some 3,000 Portuguese were enroute from the Canary Islands to work on the plantations as part of the scheme to dampen demands for higher wages, they negotiated the chartering of the Admiral Jaurequiberry and the Kumeric. The Admiral Jaurequiberry left Honolulu without difficulty, but the incensed planters threatened legal action against the Kumeric’s captain, Andrew Baird, to prevent the ship from sailing. It was all a bluff because there was no law, Japanese, Hawaiian or Canadian, that prevented the Japanese from going to British Columbia.

Hawaii, unlike British Columbia, did not want the Japanese to leave. It wanted them to stay, so long as they would stay quietly, and take what wages were offered. The Japanese had been brought in to take the place of the once unmanageable, now malleable, Chinese. But the employers did not dare, unlike the agitators in British Columbia, to exploit race prejudice because Hawaii’s small ruling white class was outnumbered by non-whites. The reason for the absence of the usual violent racial strife in Hawaii lay largely in the heterogeneity of the population, a population so racially distributed that no politician, business man or newspaper publisher could really afford to affront any of the more important groups of his employees or customers.

The Kumeric’s captain, who had unloaded 1,400 Portuguese in Honolulu, admitted that the planters were “very mad … for we were taking from them as many laborers as we brought” but it was “business and not a matter of sentiment with us.” Baird also expressed some affection for his passengers: “I have never seen a merrier crowd nor a finer lot of immigrants.¹¹ And the ship’s surgeon, Dr. John Pugh, claimed: “If you had the pick you could not have chosen a finer lot. They are all scrupulously clean and some are well off. It is a libel to call such men coolies.”¹²

When the Kumeric landed, R.G. MacPherson, Liberal member for Vancouver, charged that some kind of chicanery was being enacted, and the press suspected connivance on the part of the Japanese government. And it all probably resulted in a large loss to the Japanese charterers in Honolulu. The charterers had learned from prior experience that each passenger had to possess $25 in order to comply with an Immigration Department regulation as interpreted by Dr. Munro, the Vancouver medical inspector and immigration agent. “No person,” according to the regulation, “shall be permitted to land who is a pauper or destitute or likely to become a public charge.”

The Honolulu charterers had arranged to distribute $25 to each of the passengers before they presented themselves to Dr. Munro. The charterers’ agents then presented a letter which stated that they had collected $25 from each passenger for fear “they might gamble it away, and on arrival … would not have the requisite amount of money.”¹³ When Kirochiro Maruyama, an interpreter from Honolulu, was asked about this procedure, he denied it, saying that the money belonged to the passengers and was merely in safekeeping. Then as expenses had to be borne for transporting the immigrants to their quarters, K. Morikawa, Consul for Japan in Vancouver, collected the money from each passenger as he came off the boat. He explained that he was holding the money in trust until all the immigrants were properly housed and employed.

Added to the sight, then, of over a thousand Japanese stepping off the Kumeric was their dropping $25 apiece into a gunny sack held by an officer of the Japanese Consulate. It immediately caused a sensation and into the scene leaped MacPherson as a self-styled protector of “Canadian justice.” “Here is an immigration ship,” he said, “the passengers of which are being mulceted $25 each, and so far as we know they may be under the impression that the money is being taken from them by the Dominion Government.”¹⁴ He had the money-taking stopped and ordered that the money be returned. Each immigrant therefore landed with $25, a small but useful windfall on his first day on Canadian soil.

Some 800 of the Kumeric passengers were taken to the Granville Street depot and loaded on cars for transportation to Steveston, later to spend the night huddled under old canvas in a cannery warehouse. The rest were lodged in boarding-houses in Vancouver. All of them had almost starved enroute to Vancouver when the crossing took several days longer than expected and provisions had petered out. Upon reaching port, they had been so anxious to get off the ship that they gathered on the dockside of the ship, causing it to tilt dangerously. When entreaties by the dock officials proved useless, they were dispersed by water from fire hoses. When they ran to the other side, the ship leaned with them. And when the pattern was repeated, the scene developed into broad farce.

The Japanese government had no jurisdiction over these immigrants once they passed beyond Hawaii’s territorial limits. Indeed, representatives of both the Japanese and Canadian governments shrugged off direct responsibility, as they were powerless to stop the flow, though the consul in Vancouver had attempted to halt the influx:

When intimation was first received that there was to be an exodus of Japanese from Hawaii to British Columbia, strong representation was made to the Japanese imperial government …. The home authorities agreed with me that the movement was unwise, and instructed me to cooperate with the Japanese Consul-General in Honolulu in adopting every measure possible to prevent any of the Japanese laborers from removing to British Columbia.¹⁵

He sent a cable to Honolulu just before the Kumeric sailed, suggesting that it was unlikely that the newcomers would find work; but, as Morikawa lamented, his advice “seems to have been completely disregarded.” And after the ship reached Vancouver, Morikawa again cabled to the consul in Honolulu, warning of the lack of housing and of the agitation among white labour. The Hawaii Shimpo printed the message under the heading, “Pitiable Condition of the Emigrants on Kumeric.” In his investigation, Mackenzie King concluded that “it seems reasonable to assume the immigrants went beyond the wishes of the authorities by whose permission they had been allowed to emigrate at all.”¹⁶

King’s conclusions were made, of course, long after wild rumour had done its damage, long after claims were made that Japan was behind the “invasion” and was sending hand-picked men to take possession of the country. And Ottawa’s disclaimer that “it is powerless to act in the matter …. So long as they are healthy and of good character, there is no machinery under the law by which their entrance would be barred”¹⁷ only infuriated such men as MacPherson who fired off a direct protest to the Dominion government.

It must have seemed, indeed, that an actual “invasion” was taking place as boat after boat laden with Orientals arrived in Vancouver and Victoria. With the 8,125 Japanese who entered the province during the first ten months of 1907 were over 2,000 Sikhs from India and nearly 1,300 Chinese who were willing to pay the head tax of $500. But 45% of the Japanese who arrived during that time held passports for the United States and were subsequently admitted into that country. Of the remainder, many were contract labourers for companies such as the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Wellington Collieries. Hence, if Japanese were “invading” the country, it was not without a hard-pressed Canadian citizen or corporation first placing upon it the seal of his or its approval.

The Chinese had been effectively blocked from entering Canada when a series of head taxes were levied. In 1885 the Dominion government levied upon every Chinese immigrant a head tax of $50, of which British Columbia was to receive one-quarter. The number of immigrants, moreover, was limited to one for every 50 tons of the ship, and a bill of health was a prerequisite to entry. Further agitation by British Columbian members of Parliament resulted in the head tax being raised to $100 in 1900 and to the practically prohibitive figure of $500 in 1903, with one-half going to the province. In effect, this was a virtual exclusion policy, one which was highly successful as only 121 paid the tax and entered Canada in the next three years. But the number suddenly swooped to 1,266 in the first ten months of 1907, coinciding with the surge in Japanese immigration. Apparently the exclusion policy had produced the curious effect of making the resident Chinese a favoured labour group, giving them a monopoly in certain types of work for which wages rose. With this increase in prosperity, the Chinese were able to visit their homeland and to lend money to prospective immigrants to help pay the head tax.

In contrast to this stringent means of reducing the Chinese influx, the Canadian government was forced to weigh Japan’s position in the international world and her relationship with the British Empire. Therefore careful diplomacy, attenuated to the exigencies of imperial policy, had to be employed on the subject of the Japanese. Laurier refused to impose a tax of any kind on Japanese immigrants and ventured the hope that British Columbia would be willing to make a sacrifice “for the sake of the mother country and for the sake of a united empire.”¹⁸ The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, which had further strengthened the bonds between Japan and Britain, was extended in 1905 to an agreement to come to each other’s assistance and conduct war in common if either country had to defend its territorial rights or special interests in the Orient.

The anti-Japanese elements in British Columbia saw that the treaties deprived Canada of the right to control entry of aliens into her own territory, giving Japan a more favoured position than any other nation. Since British Columbians were generally antipathetic to compulsions of high imperial policy, the pattern for the essential conflict was therefore set down early. It lay between British Columbia and the federal government, between the province and Japan, and ultimately, between the province and its Japanese residents. The conflict never lay between Canada and Japan, for the Dominion government usually sought, during any difficulties, to secure justice for the aggrieved foreign power and at the same time endeavoured to convince the province of its obligation, not only to the rest of Canada but also to the interests of the British Empire. Thus the many anti-Japanese measures against immigration which had been passed by the provincial legislature between 1897 and 1906 were denied by assent being reserved by the Lieutenant-Governor and denied by the Governor-General or negated through the courts.

The spring session of the provincial legislature had seen the passing of yet another Natal Act, based on language tests designed to exclude Japanese from Canada, similar to those previously disallowed. The Act was passed in defiance of the federal government’s veto, causing embarrassment to the Governor-General and others who favoured trade with Japan. “Confound those British Columbians!” declared former Governor-General Lord Lansdowne, “they used to play tricks of that kind even in my time, and we disallowed a number of their bills. Amongst them I remember one which in the guise of a sanitary regulation, forbade the exportation of bones and other animal remains, the real object being to prevent the poor China-men from regaining his own country and thence going where good Chinamen go after their death.”¹⁹

Tension accelerated swiftly into a political storm in which the motives of Lieutenant-Governor James Dunsmuir were deemed to be highly suspect and bitterly impugned. Dunsmuir had reserved the Natal Act framed by Attorney-General Bowser, refusing to sign it even though it had been passed by the legislature. Dunsmuir, as President and chief stockholder of the Wellington Colliery Company which operated coal mines at Wellington, Comox and Alexandria, was himself an employer of Oriental labour. A wealthy industrial magnate, his empire also included iron works, several railway companies and a fleet of steamers. At his palatial Hatley Castle, the largest private residence of its time on the Pacific coast, he employed a gardener named Noda who created and took care of the Japanese-styled landscaping around the 650-acre estate. He also used a regular staff of 100 Chinese to make part of the estate a self-sustaining farm. Moreover, negotiations had been completed between Dunsmuir and the Canadian Nippon Supply Company – the same group which had been accused by Bowser of having been organized to import 50,000 Japanese to work on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway – to furnish 500 miners. As part of the contract, the Supply Company was enjoined to “use its best endeavours” to prevent the miners from joining any strike. If any of the miners were to strike, the Collieries had the right “to cease from further employing any such strikers.”

Preparations for a huge anti-Oriental demonstration in Vancouver had been in progress since mid-August. Adding to the alarm over the migration from the Orient and Hawaii was the news that 700 Sikhs, who had been expelled from Seattle and other American communities, had entered British Columbia, as well as the rumour that another shipload was en route to Vancouver. The Asiatic Exclusion League called a series of meetings to organize what promised to be the largest anti-Asiatic demonstration in the history of the coast.

September 7 began with a mass parade from Cambie Street grounds to City Hall. Early in the morning, some 2,000 men, under the command of Major E. Browne, waved banners which carried such slogans as: “Stand for a White Canada!” “Steamer Woolwich is Enroute with 500 Japs!” and “If Canada were Attacked, Who Would Defend Her: the Whites or the Orientals?” By the time the procession reached Hastings Street, its ranks had increased to 5,000 and was reported to number 8,000 by the time the crowd milled around City Hall. After “Rule Britannia” was played, a straw and rag effigy of Dunsmuir was burned, the crowd “shouting itself hoarse with delight.”²⁰ Then followed emotional speeches and resolutions attacking Dunsmuir and calling for the resignation of Premier McBride, who was accused of having betrayed the province because he did not immediately resign following Dunsmuir’s refusal to sign the Natal Act.

The Reverend H.W. Fraser, one of two clergymen whose “earnestness and enthusiasm” were duly noted, stated that “if something is not done to stop the influx, it will go so far as to see the pulpit in the hands of the Japanese …. It was pure Anglo-Saxon blood that made the Empire and it would never be made with a mixture of the Asiatic blood …. Let us have a White Canada.”²¹ A.E. Fowler, secretary of Seattle’s version of the Asiatic Exclusion League, demanded that exclusion be “absolute and perpetual.” Warming up to his task, he referred to an event in late August when 500 men wielding clubs had expelled a small group of East Indians from Bellingham, Washington: “The result of the Hindoo trouble in Bellingham today is that there are no Hindoos in Bellingham.”²² Outside City Hall, impromptu orators climbed telephone poles to harangue the crowd, denouncing the Orientals who were turning the province into a “Mongolian province.” But Fowler’s speech was an incitement to violence, for it obviously suggested that what Bellingham had done, Vancouver could do.

Suddenly part of the crowd turned into an uncontrollable mob, the brakes removed between mere verbal hostility and overt violence. “Law and order [was] lost in the vortex of mob rule which swirled and eddied through the Oriental section.”²³ The “spark in the powder of pent-up hatred” came when a brick was thrown through the window of a Chinese store on Carrall Street. And down through Pender Street swept the mob, leaving behind them scores of broken plate windows and ransacked stores. The Chinese barricaded their doors and offered no resistance.

The mob, estimated at about a thousand strong, swept on to “Little Tokyo,” and when the plate glass of a large store was shattered on the corner of Powell and Westminster a wild series of scenes was set off in the best tradition of frontier lawlessness. Frank Uyehara, one of the first children born of immigrant parents, described part of the opening scene as he saw, or rather, heard it:

When word came that the crowd was nearing, those along Powell Street got their first taste of a blackout; lights were turned off. All was dark and still. A deadly hush reigned. It was broken by a distant murmur which quickly filled the night air. Soon the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet and the sound of many voices became audible. Mothers clutched their children closer in the darkened backrooms of their homes. Not a word was spoken. At last, a mass of marching men swung around Main heading up Powell picking up crushed rocks from the semi-paved street and hurling them at the windows …. A child’s shrill cry split the dark silence of one of the houses. It was followed by another, and another. A bedlam of wailing broke loose.²⁴

The police, drawing their clubs, were unable to cope with the mob or were unwilling to do so.

The Japanese met the mob at first with defensive tactics, pelting rocks down from rooftops. But then they sallied forth with sticks, clubs, iron bars, knives and bottles. Crying “Banzai” they tore into the mob. Some of the Japanese went to ground as stones thumped against heads, but the mob soon wavered, broke, retreated – some men gashed and bleeding, their lust for conflict quickly dissipated by the unexpected and fiery resistance. “The riot was real war,” commented the wry Kosaburo Ichino. “When I ran up a stepladder, a fellow quickly climbed up after me. I wounded him, but he turned out to be a fellow Japanese. But I was like a soldier that night.”²⁵ And as Laurier reported to Governor-General Grey: “The Japs showed fight, a cause for rejoicing and for anxiety; rejoicing because the rowdies got a well deserved licking; anxiety because this may make the Japs very saucy and render an adjustment of the trouble more difficult.”²⁶ In the midst of this hand-to-hand skirmishing, another group of immigrant Japanese came down the gangplank of the steamer Charmer, the rumour circulated around the city that a dozen of them had been thrown into Burrard Inlet in a skirmish on the Canadian Pacific Railway wharf.

By nightfall, when police reinforcements finally arrived, the Japanese had already organized their own patrols to protect their district through the long night. A police cordon which encircled Powell Street probably saved the mob, not the Japanese, from further damage. The rioters, licking their wounds, were contemplating a second strike at Chinatown, the scene of their early success, but Chief of Police Chamberlain had barricaded the streets and firemen had readied their hoses to turn them on the mob. Finally, the speakers from City Hall, who had unleashed the passions of the mob, arrived to try and disperse the mob. Fowler, who had given the most inflammatory of the speeches, climbed onto the guy wire of a telephone pole and advised the crowd to scatter. And although prowling bands sniffed the streets until daylight, by the early hours of the morning an uneasy peace prevailed.

Sunday in Vancouver, after the most riotous evening in its history, proved to be relatively calm, though “alarming” reports and “wild rumours” were plentiful. Twilight brought huge crowds, their curiosity whetted, to the perimeter of the beleaguered areas, anticipating trouble. Rumour had it that “the Japs are out, five thousand strong, armed, and ready for fight, and ready to begin it, too.”²⁷ Two men who had inadvertently walked towards Powell Street were surrounded and threatened by the Japanese patrols, but no violence ensued. The atmosphere was raw and ugly; the Japanese were indignant and in no mood to be submissive. As one of them said, “Our fellows are ready to fight tonight many times their number. I do not blame them because of the violence done them last night. My countrymen are easily stirred, quickly resent insult. There will be grave trouble.”²⁸

So grave, indeed, was the situation that Consul Morikawa and Mayor Bethune held a conference at the office of the chief of police. Later, Morikawa went to Powell Street and assured the Japanese that they could retire safely for the night. Most of them did disperse, but their sentries stood under the glare of arc lights until dawn, relieved at intervals with almost military precision. Lights blazed in the windows of all stores and houses, indicating that the Japanese were watchful and ready for emergency.

The usefulness of the pickets was demonstrated when they discovered an attempted arson two days later, at the Japanese School on Alexander Street. The blaze was easily stifled before the firemen arrived; it was found that a large pile of rags, soaked with coal oil, had been stuffed inside the weatherboarding of the building. Morikawa asked Mayor Bethune to call out the militia following the arson attempt, but Bethune refused, stating that the city police were capable of handling the situation. He sent a telegram, however, to Colonel Holmes, the district army commander, asking him to be prepared to send troops.

A wrestling-jujitsu contest advertised for that week, between Leopold McLaghlen and “Professor” T.H. Kanada, was called off by the city council with this tersely worded statement: “It was very unwise that such a contest in which a white man met a Japanese should be run off in the city in the present excited condition of the community.”²⁹

Only small alarums and muffled movements punctuated the Sunday evening and night. A drunk attempted to pass through police lines near Woods Hotel, declaring himself a “Britisher” and insisting on his inviolate right to go where he pleased. When he was arrested and bundled off to the police station, a crowd followed the prisoner, raising their voices to an angry pitch which echoed along Powell Street and prompted the Japanese pickets to give warning shouts to prepare for battle. Police seized a box containing 24 rifles and four boxes of 5,000 rounds of ammunition found aboard the baggage compartment on the British Columbia Electric Railway from New Westminster. They were addressed to Sam Kee, a prominent member of the Chinese community. A fire alarm rung from Hastings Sawmill caused further excitement in the Japanese district. The false alarm, one of several, was thought to be part of a scheme to start small fires in various sections of the city in order to lure away the fire brigades and police from the Oriental quarters.

On the Monday following the rioting, as soon as the stores opened their doors, the Chinese were reported to be buying revolvers and rounds of ammunition. Such a large number, in fact, thronged the doors at McLennan, McFeely and Company that the sidewalks were blocked. One salesman claimed that he had sold 15 guns at $20 each to one Chinese. “Orientals Buy Arms” stated the Vancouver World in five-column black type on its front page. City solicitor George Cowan started on a round of the hardware stores, advising that they must cease selling firearms. But one store, Wood, Vallance and Leggatt, had already sold 40 guns, and others had sold out their stock at inflated prices.

Not many Japanese were reported to be buying guns, for it was claimed that the “wily Japanese” had already stocked themselves in preparation for the riot.³⁰ No shots, however, were officially reported to have been fired by anyone, though one Japanese witness claimed during the subsequent Royal Commission investigation that he had been shot at by one of the rioters. According to his testimony, his adversary “pointed a revolver straight at me and asked me if I wanted to fight …. As he went away he fired the bullet, coming within few feet of me and entering a wall.”³¹ Guns or no guns, the Japanese were ready for another attack. On the rooftops of stores and houses hundreds of bottles, stones and bricks were piled. One man even had boxes of dynamite stacked on his veranda.

All Chinese went on an unofficial strike, causing great distress in homes, hotels and restaurants. The Japanese worked a half-day and planned an open-air meeting at the Powell Street baseball grounds, later changed to an indoor gathering at the Japanese School. Some were anxious to show their strength by parading through the city, and even wanted to form a “coalition” with the Chinese. But cooler heads prevailed, and the police had instructions to peremptorily stop any kind of parade.

The troubles generally petered out within a few days, but the memory of the riot continued to rankle. On New Year’s Day, for example, three off-duty firemen were indulging in “harmless fun” when one of them fell through the window of a boarding-house. Apparently the Japanese owner and his tenants thought that the September riot had been resumed and immediately set upon the three intruders, subjecting them to “a most brutal” treatment, in which the face of Richard Frost was “terribly carved and scored” and permanently disfigured. After three of the Japanese were arrested on a charge of attempted murder, President Von Rhein of the Asiatic Exclusion League requested a wholesale search of Japanese houses for arms. The Trades and Labour Council claimed that the Japanese possessed “miniature arsenals” in their homes. “We are harbouring in this city the nucleus of a dangerous element that augurs ill to the white citizens …. The homes of many are arsenals filled with all kinds of instruments of warfare and they are only awaiting the slightest provocation, half an excuse to use them.”³²

But swift action on the part of the higher government officials tended to erase the immediate anxieties in the city. The news of the riot had been received with shocked disbelief in Ottawa. Governor-General Grey told Lord Elgin: “In B.C. the people appear to have lost their heads.”³³ Grey wired Mayor Bethune to demand that law and order be preserved and that the lives and property of the Japanese be accorded full protection as guaranteed under the clauses of the treaty between Canada and Japan. W.D. Scott, Superintendent of Immigration, was sent to Vancouver to report on the situation; on October 2, the orders which had been issued by Vancouver immigration officials prohibiting the landing of Japanese from Hawaii were rescinded as a violation of treaty rights. Laurier announced on October 12 that he had decided to send his Minister of Labour Rodolphe Lemieux as Canadian Commissioner to Japan to obtain an agreement concerning the restriction of immigration. He was also to send the Deputy Minister of Labour, Mackenzie King, to British Columbia to investigate the claims of Japanese losses and the reasons for increased Japanese immigration.

Twenty-four persons had been arrested and called to trial as an aftermath of the riot. One was a Japanese who was fined $10 and costs for carrying a concealed weapon. Although he pleaded self-defence, the court stated that he had no right to carry a weapon and, in a burst of jurisprudent understatement, that he had set a “poor example” to his fellow citizens. The others were charged either with “rioting” or “disorderly behaviour.” J.A. Pollock, a clerk, had his bail fixed at $2,000 and was charged with “having been riotously and tumultuously assembled to the disturbance of the public peace, and with more than three other persons unlawfully and with force damaged a building.”³⁴ Pollock claimed in his defence that “a small boy” had placed a stone in his hand as he stood watching, but that the police had caught him before he could throw it. William Reed was jailed for six months and nine men were fined sums ranging from $50 to $105.

The rioting did nothing to dampen the ardour of the Asiatic Exclusion League, which busily held a series of meetings to demand a complete cessation to immigration, even if it meant the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. With remarkable sangfroid, the League stated, “We feel very sorry that the mob broke loose … but the authorities will now … be forced to recognize that B.C. people will not permit this country to be made the dumping ground of yellow cheap labour.”³⁵

MacPherson, the Vancouver MP, left for Ottawa to lay, as he put it, “the whole facts of the Asiatic situation” before Laurier:

B.C. is to be a white man’s country. The majority of the residents are utterly opposed to the present flinging wide the gates to Asiatics. If the Government does not step in and put a stop to the already humiliating condition of affairs there will be another little episode like the one which occurred in Boston harbor when the tea was thrown overboard.³⁶

MacPherson explained the gravity of his statement about the “Boston Tea Party” by saying that unless the province got redress for her present grievances, she would cut loose from the bonds of Confederation.

The focus of the grievance held by local and provincial leaders was that the Laurier government had ignored their interests. The Province warned that British Columbia is “a competent part of the Dominion with votes that we will unfailingly use when the elections come around.”³⁷ The threat was not made idly, for Laurier lost four seats in the province in the federal election of 1908. No political figure could hope at this time for support in British Columbia unless he stood for exclusion of Asiatic immigrants, as Earl Grey told Laurier. Premier McBride had already made the Japanese problem as much of a political issue as he could. He repudiated Dunsmuir’s reservation of the Natal Act, and again permitted Attorney-General Bowser to introduce a new act, again disallowed by Ottawa.

Now the eyes of the world were directed on Vancouver. The Times of London ridiculed the idea that a few thousand Japanese were likely to turn British Columbia into a Mongolian province, and the Daily Telegraph execrated “the sheer savagery” of the “shameful and unprovoked attacks.” But the London Pall Mall Gazette warned that the situation would not permit of “indefinite procrastination …. Failing exclusion, the situation demands an alternative policy.” The danger of an “unrestricted flood” was that it would produce “an Oriental predominance” and “perhaps deflect the whole course of the civilization and destiny” of the province. On the whole, opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of exclusion but at odds with the “impolitic and disgraceful” methods of attaining it.³⁸

Elsewhere, thousands of words were poured out, ventilating all the racial stereotypes and suggesting that an overt attempt on the part of Japan to colonize the province was in process. Unrestricted immigration meant the planting of

a vast alien colony, exclusive, inscrutable, unassimilative, bound together in a secret offensive and defensive organization, with fewer wants and a lower standard of living than their neighbours, maintaining intact their peculiar customs and characteristics, morals, and ideals of home and family life, with neither the wish nor the capacity to amalgamate with or even conform to the civilization upon which they have intruded, and gradually, by the mere pressure of numbers, undermining the very foundations of the white man’s well-being.³⁹

The triple-pronged charges against the Japanese – peaceful penetration, low standard of living and inassimilability – were herein neatly contained. These were to be reiterated, with remarkably little variation, at least until mid-century.

The press in Japan was moderate in its pronouncements, satisfied with the prompt action of the Canadian government. The Tokyo Nichi Nichi felt that treaty rights and obligations were of crucial importance and that “everything is clear and distinct” in the matter of Canada’s responsibility. The Yomiuri Shimbun was probably the only newspaper to give advice to the immigrants themselves and, in a little homiletic aside, told the Japanese in Vancouver to “respect themselves and thus earn the respect of the people among whom they lived.”⁴⁰

The opinions expressed in these newspaper articles and political speeches were not, of course, evidence of Canadian or British Columbian opinion in toto. British Columbia was not necessarily at one as regards the Japanese, nor was opinion absolutely uniform in all details. But there were few, if any, dissenting or even ameliorating opinions on the Japanese “problem.” If federal Conservative leader Robert Borden could state, a few weeks after the riot, that British Columbia must remain “a British and Canadian province, inhabited and dominated by men in whose veins runs the blood of those great pioneering races which built up and developed not only Western but Eastern Canada,”⁴¹ he was enunciating an idea that conformed closely to the overwhelming majority opinion.

Sweetness and light, however, prevailed over the proceedings of Mackenzie King’s Royal Commission investigation into property losses. Both sides – Canadian and Japanese – tried to outdo the other in uttering high-flown abstractions and expressions of “reciprocal goodwill,” behind which obviously lay the guiding voice of imperial policy. The Chinese affair lacked, in contrast, the international complications and had occasioned no such commotion as had been raised with the Japanese. In the context of the local situation, of the inflamed feelings of both Japanese and white residents in Vancouver, the officialese of the statements was a clutter of meaningless phrases.

Howard Duncan, counsel for the Japanese government, in his presentation of his clients’ claims said that the Japanese residents

have no feeling of enmity, no feeling but kindness and regard for the people of Vancouver. They look upon this unhappy incident, not as the outcome of racial feeling by the white population of this district against them; they look upon it rather as the result of agitation by people who have not that regard for the maintenance of good feeling in this country, but who for the purpose of creating a condition, have, inadvisedly, they believe, attempted to create a feeling of antagonism to them …. Nor can the local Japanese lay any blame upon the city council or upon the citizens of Vancouver, because they feel that neither the government of this city nor the people of this city are imbued with any feeling of hatred against them.⁴²

Duncan’s remarks stretched the idea of Oriental forbearance to exaggerated limits. It was their “national pride” and the “passion of loyalty” for Japan that had been injured, Duncan stated, “the love of country [which] is one of the strongest and noblest passions that can move a mortal.”⁴³ In his reply, King said that “the attacks were not directed against the Japanese because they were Japanese” and that they should feel that “there has not been on the part even of those who took a hand in this deplorable riot, any desire to injure or offend their pride as a people in any way whatever.”⁴⁴

These good-mannered remarks were curiously isolated from the realities of the situation. Yet there was no doubting the skill, unvarying patience and urbanity of King whose career was spiralling upwards in those early years of political apprenticeship. King’s diplomatic handling of the inquiry did a great deal to pacify the Japanese so that “all was settled peacefully [and] everyone spoke well of the young commissioner who acted fairly and courteously.”⁴⁵ Thirty-six years later, few Japanese would share that opinion of King, grown old as Prime Minister.

The damages themselves proved to be relatively meagre. The sum of $1,600 offered to the Japanese Consulate in Vancouver as reimbursement for legal expenses, was even larger than the amount awarded for “actual” damage to property. The Chinese claims totalled $25,990, nearly three times as much as the sum awarded by King to the Japanese, prompting a commentator to say, “ironically enough, our friends the Chinese fared far worse than our enemies the Japs.”⁴⁶

The claims were presented on October 7 to the Dominion government on behalf of Japan through T. Nosse, Consul-General of Japan at Ottawa. Losses were estimated at $13,519.45, of which $2,405.70 was claimed for “actual” damages to property and $11,113.75 as “resultant or consequential” damages – that is, losses owing to loss of trade, profit and wages. The Commission sat at Pender Hall for ten days during which 80 witnesses were examined, including police and other officials as well as an architect who had prepared an estimate of damages. Each claim was accompanied by a statutory declaration setting forth particulars and photographs showing damages done to premises. By November 8, King had prepared his judgement of 60 awards: a total of $9,036.00, of which $1,553.58 was awarded for “actual” damages. The individual amounts ranged from $2,480.10 to Utakichi Kawasaki to $2.70 to Mrs. Shimomura; in between, the awards – as were the actual claims – were modest: for example, $199.50 to the Asahi Rice Mills, $50 to the Japanese Boarding House Union, $7 to the Japanese School. The City of Vancouver took no part in the inquiry after it learned that King’s purpose was to assess damages and not to determine the question of liability of payment. The city had divorced itself of financial responsibility, instructing George Cowan, solicitor for Vancouver, not to attend after the opening day of the inquiry. Clearly, to Vancouver, it was the federal government’s fault in allowing the Japanese to come in the first place, and it was therefore a matter between Japan and Canada, not the city’s concern.

Most of the claims, in King’s language, were “fair and reasonable” and reflected a spirit of moderation. The difference of some $4,500 between the total amount claimed and the amount awarded was accounted for by “somewhat exorbitant” claims made by several merchants for loss in business and “more or less excessive” claims made by some of the boarding-house operators who claimed indemnity for a longer time than appeared reasonable, or who failed to exercise “reasonable judgement” in spending money for hiring guards. One witness presented a claim for “treating,” at a sum of $2.00 per day, each of seven men to guard his boarding-house. To the question, “Do you think the Government should pay for drinks?”, the witness replied that “treating” included not only drinks but food, lodging and “general hospitality” for his guards.⁴⁷ The Commissioner’s principle in assessing claims was to consider only those losses which were “capable of definite and certain ascertainment” so that “treating” could not be included within this somewhat ascetic standard.

Expediency was also the guiding rule of conduct during the five-week Lemieux mission to Japan and consequent negotiation of what became labelled as the “gentlemen’s agreement” of 1908. The purpose of the mission was clearly to have Japan voluntarily restrict immigration, and Lemieux presented figures to show that the number of Japanese entering Canada had risen from 354 in the fiscal year of 1904-5 to over 8,000 in the first ten months of 1907. The existing trade treaty guaranteed the Japanese full liberty to enter, travel or reside in any part of the Dominion as well as protection for their persons and property. But the Japanese government, through Foreign Minister Tadasu Hayashi, stated that it was not its intention “to insist upon the complete enjoyment of those rights when that would involve disregard of special conditions which may prevail in Canada from time to time.”⁴⁸ Both Japan and Canada recognized the necessity for some solution to the problem, and such was the spirit of compromise which informed the proceedings that the name of the ensuing agreement was very appropriate. A provisional agreement made in December was confirmed by an exchange of notes between Hayashi and Lemieux in which Japan agreed “to take efficient means” to restrict emigration, “having particular regard to circumstances of recent occurrence in British Columbia.”⁴⁹

Thus the September riot resulted in the first concrete restriction of Japanese immigration in which Japan voluntarily agreed to restrict the number of passports issued to male labourers and domestic servants to an annual maximum of 400. Four classes of people were to be permitted to enter Canada: first, returning residents and their wives, children and parents; secondly, emigrants specially engaged by Japanese residents in Canada for personal and domestic service; thirdly, labourers under specifically-worded contracts (giving terms of contract, type of work, names and standing of employers) approved by the Canadian government; and lastly, agricultural labourers contracted by Japanese resident agricultural holders in Canada, limited to ten for each one hundred acres of land owned.

The annual quota applied only to domestic and agricultural workers and exempted returning residents and their close relatives while controlling the entry of contract labourers. The contracts of the latter not only had to be accompanied by certificates from the Japanese consul of the district where they were to be employed but also had to be approved by the Canadian government. The agreement did not therefore set a blanket quota of 400 on all immigrants, but only applied to two special classes. No formal regulations were set up to enforce this quota, the assurance having been made verbally or through correspondence. In fact, the figure of 400 was only embodied in a letter addressed by Hayashi to Sir Claude McDonald, the British ambassador in Tokyo.⁵⁰

Misunderstanding of these details led British Columbians to accuse Japan of bad faith, as more than 400 Japanese entered Canada yearly except in one of the following ten years. No documents, except for the diplomatic correspondence, were ever published because there were none; and, as the Conservatives’ George Foster complained in the Commons, treaties were preferable to voluntary agreements or promises which were “not things that are sacred or permanent but merely transitory.”⁵¹ Yet for all the complaints, the agreement worked well. Contract labourers were never brought to Canada under the agreement, and immigration dropped from 7,601 in the fiscal year ending March, 1908, to 495 the following year.

At this time, the United States was watching the developments in British Columbia with great interest. President Theodore Roosevelt was having his own problems with the question of Japanese immigration, and the Vancouver riot provided him with a reason for approaching Britain on this question. He had long considered that the Pacific coast of the United States and Canada shared identical interests in the problem, and he suggested that it was possible that the whole area west of the Rockies might decide to unite and form “a new Pacific republic” to safeguard its interest. And others were saying that unless immigration were checked, the Japanese “would be in a great majority in B.C. in less than a decade …. In the long run there would be a racial war, and either B.C. would become part of the United States, or the Japanese would maintain their footing upon the Pacific slope under their own flag.”⁵²

Roosevelt’s opinion that the Japanese should be excluded from the United States was further developed into the larger doctrine which stated that the entire English-speaking world should form a common front. Having heard of Mackenzie King’s work in Canada on the Japanese question, Roosevelt told King that he had decided to send the American fleet into the Pacific so that “it may help them to understand that we want a definite arrangement”⁵³ over immigration. He wanted King to present the views of the United States to the British government, for at this time war between Japan and the United States was thought of, in some quarters, as being “inevitable.” Even Governor-General Grey, pondering on the situation, had become convinced of an “inevitable tussle” between the white and yellow races. Japanese newspapers had seized upon anti-Japanese riots in California as a pretext to promote an anti-American campaign; and the jingo press in the United States, in its turn, was carrying on its headlong anti-Japanese attack, printing articles which described immigrants in California as soldiers organized into companies, regiments, and brigades.

What Roosevelt wanted, as he told King, was a convention of English-speaking peoples who would bar Asians from settling in English-speaking countries and whites from living in Asia. If a war could be imagined in which the Japanese were to land on the Pacific coast, he was sure that British Columbia would assist the United States. And although he felt that war was not likely, he maintained that it was not impossible and could easily be provoked by another riot on the coast.

Roosevelt had asked King whether he would like the fleet to visit Vancouver and Victoria, a suggestion which he was in no position to accept. But Alfred Deakin, the Australian Prime Minister, had already asked the American fleet to pay a visit to Australia in order to demonstrate the solidarity of the two countries on the question of the Yellow Peril. The British government later told King that it had not approved of Deakin’s invitation to the American fleet and that it had asked Canada not to follow the Australian example.

The British Foreign Office was greatly suspicious of Roosevelt’s overtures and gave him no encouragement. But he continued to spread his doctrine of Anglo-American solidarity against Japan. Early in 1908, he told three members of the Canadian Parliament that the American fleet had been sent to the Pacific in the interests of British Columbia and Australia as well as California and he said that they had thanked him for doing so. Meanwhile, agitation had increased in British Columbia for the fleet to visit its ports. Representatives of Vancouver and other nearby municipalities passed a resolution calling for the American fleet to visit Vancouver “in order that Asia may see that there is united feeling between Anglo-Saxon races of this continent.”⁵⁴ The visit would be “most timely,” they felt, and they requested the Dominion government to send an invitation to the Admiral of the fleet, “Fighting Bob” Evans.

Wishing to avoid any move which Japan might construe as inimical, the British Foreign Office tried to dissuade Laurier from giving way to the agitation from British Columbia. Laurier was told that the presence of the American fleet in Vancouver would inevitably cause another anti-Japanese outburst and result in more embarrassment and inconvenience. But with the announcement on March 19 that the American fleet had accepted an invitation to visit Japan, the Foreign Office changed its mind, for now the navy could hardly allow itself to be part of an anti-Japanese demonstration elsewhere. Laurier agreed to the visit but managed to delay the official invitation until it was too late for the fleet to put Vancouver on its itinerary.

Following these events, there was a gradual relaxation of the tension in British Columbia, though no solution to the Japanese “problem” was in sight. Two weeks after the riot Borden had declared that British Columbia “must remain a white man’s country,”⁵⁵ providing the leitmotif that was to run through the Tories’ sustained attack on the ruling Liberals, who were cursed with having to uphold an exceedingly unpopular policy. And in February, 1908, within a few days of Ottawa’s acceptance of the “gentlemen’s agreement,” British Columbia again passed an immigration law requiring a language test for Asiatics. And again it was frustrated when provincial Supreme Court Justice Hunter ruled that the Natal Act was contrary to the terms of Canada’s treaty with Japan and released two Japanese who had been detained under a warrant presented under the provisions of the act. And in dismissing Attorney-General Bowser’s appeal on February 25, Justice J. Clement expressed his irritation at the province’s effrontery:

To my mind, the case for the appellant Attorney-General is hopeless; so hopeless that I feel constrained to express my regret that it should even have been thought proper to attempt to enforce the ‘B.C. Immigration Act, 1908’, as versus these respondents. This matter of Japanese immigration has been dealt with properly, that is to say constitutionally, by the Parliament of Canada; and I must say that, to my mind, it smacks strongly of disloyalty to our settled form of Government when the authorities of one Province undertake to override and render abortive the will of the people of Canada; and when they even make bold to forbid the honorable observance of our solemn engagements with a foreign power.⁵⁶

Meanwhile, Borden, who had been thoroughly briefed on the situation in British Columbia, was taking up the cause in the House of Commons. In a speech on January 28, 1908, he complained that the control of immigration had been taken out of Canada’s hands. What would happen, he wondered, if a new government came into power in Japan and repealed every law in its statute books? “We might in three or four months be back in exactly the same position as before.”⁵⁷ Borden was decidedly unenthusiastic about the outcome of the Lemieux mission. And King, who had wanted to represent Canada on that mission, also had a poor opinion of the agreement, chiefly on the grounds that it offered no certainty that Japan would observe its terms.

In the autumn of 1908 in British Columbia, one of the chief issues of the federal general election was the question of Japanese immigration. Conservative party candidates made capital of the unrest in the province with a “White Canada” slogan to make a special bid for anti-Oriental votes. Although the Liberals were returned to national office in October by 133 seats to 88, they suffered a reverse in British Columbia where the party lost four out of the seven seats which it held.

British Columbia’s Premier McBride stumped the hustings in 1908, sympathizing with those who feared the competition of the Japanese. He had decided to utilize the topic of Japanese immigration as a vote-catching issue and constantly insisted that exclusion was the only solution. Insisting that provincial wishes were being sacrificed for the sake of Empire and national policies, McBride said that Britain did not understand the particular situation: “Living as we do here among thousands of these yellow men and knowing them so well as we have come to know them makes me feel that if some of our friends in the Old Land might have enjoyed the same experience things would have been different.”⁵⁸ He professed to hold the interests of the province above all else, declining a movement to draft him as new leader of the national Conservative Party and later refusing a Cabinet post. McBride, often called “Mr. British Columbia,” was to sweep to almost an absolute electoral victory in March, 1912, totally wiping out Liberal opposition in the province and winning all seats except for two gained by the Socialists. He knew the sentiments of the province, and like the astute politician he was, he had gauged its emotional currents.

Finally, the events of 1907-8 were to result in a significant change in the structure of the Japanese communities. Prior to 1907, Japanese immigration consisted mainly of adult males, but now the “gentlemen’s agreement” effectively limited their entry. But since it placed no limit on the number of wives entering Canada, large groups of women began to migrate under the “picture bride” system, changing the nature of the life of the Japanese. And with the natural consequence of the high birth rate, packed within a short period, another argument for exclusion or expulsion was ready for exploitation. If the agitation had begun on the premise that the Japanese were “invading” the province as part of a plan to engulf the whites, now their natural fecundity was to be cast in the lurid light of a sinister bent on the part of the “scheming” Orientals to flood the Pacific coast with babies. Because they were orderly, thrifty and energetic, because they married, set up homes and raised children, the Japanese became more dangerous, more of a menace, more of a threat to white supremacy. This was the supreme paradox.

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Notes

1. Vancouver Province, February 1, 1907.↩
2. King, W.L.M., Report of the Royal Commission into the Methods by which Oriental Labourers Have Been Induced to Come to Canada (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1908), p. 39.↩
3. Victoria Colonist, February 2, 1907.↩
4. King, op. cit., p. 18.↩
5. King, op. cit., p. 36.↩
6. Victoria Colonist, June 18, 1905.↩
7. Allport, G.W., The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Doubleday, 1958), pp. 47-65.↩
8. King, op. cit., p. 13.↩
9. Vancouver Province, July 25, 1907. See also Dillon, E.J., “Japanese Immigration into B.C.”, Contemporary Review, 92 (September, 1907), pp. 422-3, for the claim that 5,000 Japanese were on their way to British Columbia to work in remote areas for the Canadian Pacific.↩
10. Tuchman, B.W., The Zimmerman Telegram (London: Constable, 1959), p. 30; McWilliams, C., Prejudice, Japanese Americans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944), pp. 40-1.↩
11. Vancouver Province, July 26, 1907.↩
12. Ibid.↩
13. King, op. cit., p. 45.↩
14. Vancouver Province, July 22, 1907. See also Victoria Colonist, July 27, 1907, and Vancouver Province, July 27, 1907, for the sensational way in which newspapers reported the incident.↩
15. King, op. cit., p. 50.↩
16. King, op. cit., p. 50.↩
17. Vancouver Province, July 25, 1907.↩
18. Woodsworth, C.J., Canada and the Orient (Toronto: Macmillan, 1941), p. 59.↩
19. Grey of Howick Papers, Public Archives of Canada.↩
20. Vancouver Province, September 9, 1907.↩
21. Vancouver World, September 9, 1907.↩
22. Ibid.↩
23. Vancouver Province, September 9, 1907.↩
24. The New Canadian, August 1, 1959.↩
25. Interview, October 23, 1959.↩
26. Grey of Howick Papers, Public Archives of Canada.↩
27. Vancouver Province, September 9, 1907.↩
28. Ibid.↩
29. Vancouver Province, September 11, 1907.↩
30. Vancouver World, September 9, 1907.↩
31. Vancouver Province, October 24, 1907.↩
32. Vancouver Province, January 7, 1908.↩
33. Grey of Howick Papers, Public Archives of Canada.↩
34. Vancouver ·, September 9, 1907. See also Canadian Annual Review (1908), p. 542.↩
35. Vancouver Province, September 9, 1907.↩
36. Vancouver Province, September 19, 1907.↩
37. Vancouver Province, September 9, 1907.↩
38. “Canada and Japan”, The Living Age (October 5, 1907), pp. 56-9. See also “British Press on the Riot”, Vancouver World, September 9, 1907; Stead, A., “Racial Prejudice Against Japan”, Fortnightly Review, 82 (October, 1907), pp. 637-51.↩
39. “Canada and Japan”, op. cit., p. 56.↩
40. Canadian Annual Review (1907), p. 398. See also “Foreign Affairs: a Chronique”, Fortnightly Review, 82 (October, 1907), pp. 688-92.↩
41. Borden, R.L., The Question of Oriental Immigration: Speeches (in part) Delivered in 1907 and 1908 (n.p., n.pub., n.d.), p. 9.↩
42. King, W.L.M., Report on the Losses Sustained by the Japanese Population of Vancouver, B.C., on the Occasion of the Riots in that City in September, 1907 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1908), pp. 15-17.↩
43. Ibid., p. 18.↩
44. Ibid., p. 20.↩
45. “In Days of Yore”, The New Canadian, August 1, 1939.↩
46. Victoria Times, May 2, 1942.↩
47. Vancouver Province, October 24, 1907.↩
48. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1912-13, p. 6971.↩
49. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1907-8, pp. 2040-1.↩
50. Canada, House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1913, p. 3.↩
51. Woodsworth, op. cit., p. 89.↩
52. “Foreign Affairs: a Chronique”, op. cit., pp. 689-70.↩
53. Dawson, R.M., William Lyon Mackenzie King (University of Toronto Press, 1958), p. 132.↩
54. London Times, March 13, 1908.↩
55. Canadian Annual Review (1907), p. 392.↩
56. British Columbia Legislative Assembly, Sessional Papers, 1909, pp. G59-63. See also Canadian Annual Review (1908), p. 541; In Re Nakano and Okazake, Supreme Court of British Columbia, 1908 [13 B.C.R. 370], in Mackenzie, N., and L.H. Laing, eds., Canada and the Law of Nations (Toronto: Ryerson, 1938), pp. 371-3.↩
57. Borden, op. cit., pp. 28-9.↩
58. McBride Papers, Provincial Archives of British Columbia.↩

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