The Gentlemen's Agreement

In the United States we offer citizenship for all those who wish to join our nation. Although it is not easy, before WW2 and Japanese wishing to obtain citizenship had to jump through many hoops. The first law that came into effect was “The Gentlemen’s Agreement”. The gentlemen’s agreement was an unofficial treaty that protected both the United States and Japan. Japan had just defeated China in 1895, then defeating Russia in 1905. Japan demonstrated that they were not to be messed with and established themselves as a world power. During this time that Japan was establishing dominance of the Asia. The United States had just passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which caused labor shortages in the Unites States, primarily in the west coast.
As many Japanese saw this as an opportunity to make money, many left Japan

This act limited the amount of immigrants that were allowed to enter the United States based off their country of origin. For this act a quota was created for each race. This quote only supplied 2% of all of peoples that wished to immigrate to the United States, but completely excluded all Asian immigrants. The uncertainty of a national security threat caused by World War one, made congress open to this act and eventually was a great driving force for it. Following the footsteps of the 1907 immigration act that required a literacy test for all those over the age of 16, it also included the “Asiatic barred zone”. There was no need to bar the Japanese from entering the United States due to the gentlemen’s agreement, but the United States eventually did formally exclude the Japanese with the 1924 immigration act. With protest from Japan regarding the violation of the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the United States focused on regulating immigration rather than protecting bonds between the US and