Examples (Details)
Sword Family Papers
Journal of Mary Parry Sword
[Page 20] The streets are narrow, crooked, rough and hot, and filled with Chinese, some of whom are well dressed and respectable looking, but the greater proportion of those we see in the shops and in the streets, are literally half naked, and disgusting to look at.
[Page 27] As we were going to church yesterday we met a Chinese funeral; I never saw such a scene in my life. Ther was quite a long procession. First came a number of boys dressed in white carrying banners and streamers of coloured ribbons, next they carried gilt temples, filled with all kinds of sweetmeats and eatable. In one was a large pig roasted whole…Finally comes the coffin, surrounded by mourners…A great many mourners were hired for the occasion.
Drinker Family Papers
Box 3:
Henry Sturgis Drinker: scrapbook of articles from Brown and White written by HSD while on trips to Near East, Far East…
Box 5:
Henry Sandwith Drinker…anonymous diary from China
[Page 1] So I am really off! Really bound for the East, for China, land of pigtails and tea! I can scarcely believe it.
[Page 8] One thing that struck me [?] was the [great number] of servants in all the houses. Most people have at least twenty or 30 and hardly any have less than 12 but it seems the reason is that none of them will do the others work. For instance I once heard a lady tell her maid who chanced to be in the room to have the window shut, she told one of the head servants and he called a coolly who finally shut the window!
Shigezo and Sonoko Iwata Papers
Box 1: Biographic Materials; Correspondence of Shigezo and Sonoko Iwata
Box 2: Diary, other paperwork, newspaper clippings
April 21, 1942 letter from Mrs. Iwata to her husband
I was asked how I write [to you] so often, every day, when nothing ever happens. I didn’t tell him what I write about – maybe he would think it was silly, but I didn’t tell him that I never run out of things to say.
Edward F O’Day Papers
Letter to Mr. O’Day, Oct. 31, 1919
…In the meantime the Japanese in a panic are securing thousands upon thousands of acres of California land, fearing that eventually we will succeed in putting a stop to that practice, and that they must make hay while the sun shines. The State Legislature under its constitution and under any treaties prevailing could put a stop to the “picture bride” evil, insofar as California is concerned, by enacting a law that parties to a marriage must be present at the ceremony; the Legislature could prevent the leasing of lands by whites to Japanese; it also could prevent the holding of stock in land companies by Japanese and could put a stop likewise to white people acting as dummies for Japanese purchasers of land. The result of Stephens’ failure to cooperate will mean that several hundred thousand acres will pass into alien ownership before the 1921 session of the Legislature.
Letter to “Eddie”. September 13, 1921
[Enclosed copy of a letter written to Elmore Leffingwell. The author notes in a pre-script: “I don’t care to be quoted, however, for I may sometime want to go to Japan”.]
To the people of the East, South, North, and Middle West the Japanese problem is regarded merely as a manifestation of petulance, peevishness and prejudice in California over an influx of cheap and efficient foreign labor that should be welcomed. To the people of the Pacific Coast it involves peaceful conquest by an inferior race, which, on account of ethnological and social repugnance, is non-assimilable. To the informed it means the imminence of a whild-wide revolution, industrial, commercially, and politically, and the ultimate dominance of the world by Asiatic races, consolidated, controlled and exploited by Japan…
This is now the situation: Japan dominates Eastern Siberia, Manchuria, Korea, and the northern half of China; England’s sphere of influence extends from Shantung to Macao, controlled by Portuguese, while France controls Tonquin and is competing with England for the control of the rich province of Yun-nan in southwestern China. And the United States, amy, perhaps, be permitted a cable-landing on the Island of Yap! While the interested powers get the trade we get the news—censored!
All of this means nothing to the uninformed masses in this country. The average American is about as much concerned with the political and economic problems of the Orient as with the battle for supremacy in the monkey cage at the Bronx Zoo. The people fo this country that do no know that China alone contains almost one-quarter of the earth’s population and inexhaustible resources almost untouched…
Who is to direct, control, and reap the profit of the tremendous development impending? Not China. That is absolutely certain. There is not the remotest possibility that the Chinese people will be able to organize and maintain a stable government—or any government at all…
It is inevitable that China, hopelessly bankrupt and politically chaotic, must go into the hands of her creditors, and Japan is determined that she shall be the receiver to give preference to the claims of England and France…
We constantly hear the reiterated excuse of paid apologists for Japan that China would be much better off under Japanese control? That is true. She would be better off under the domination of Liberia than she would if left to her own resources…The interests of the interests and safety of the Caucasian races demand that the affairs of bankrupt and disorganized China be not exploited by any one power, but be taken over by concerted action and administered for the best interests of the whole world…
Japan is aiding history to repeat itself. Remember that five million nomadic Tartars found China disorganized and held 400,000,000 people in subjugation for three centuries. If an alien and barbaric race can accomplish that, what may we expect from a first-class power, advantageously situated? Bear in mind, too, that there are no ethnological antagonism between the Japanese and Chinese; that their written language is almost identical and that there is no more difference between their spoken language than between the eight distinct languages and innumerable dialects of China…
There is no question that Japan is now looking ahead to world-wide dominance in the distant future, through the amalgamation of the Mongolian races under her direction and leadership, first industrially and commercially, and then through force of arms; and opposing her is nothing but the mouthings of our politicians and the oratory of a few Chinese students of foreign education, who have a thin veneer of patriotism over a heredity of graft and corruption.