Teddy Roosevelt

I recommend to the Congress that an act be past specifically providing for the naturalization of Japanese who come here intending to become American citizens.

I ask it as due to ourselves because we must act uprightly toward all men.

I ask fair treatment for the Japanese as I would ask fair treatment for Germans or Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, or Italians.

Good manners should be an international no less than an individual attribute.

Where the several States have power I earnestly ask that they also deal wisely and promptly with such conduct, or else this small body of wrongdoers may bring shame upon the great mass of their innocent and right-thinking fellows--that is…

We wish, as we ought to wish, for a great commercial development in our dealings with Asia; and it is out of the question that we should permanently have such development unless we freely and gladly extend to other nations the same measure…

Throughout Japan Americans are well treated, and any failure on the part of Americans at home to treat the Japanese with a like courtesy and consideration is by just so much a confession of inferiority in our civilization.

We have as much to learn from Japan as Japan has to learn from us; and no nation is fit to teach unless it is also willing to learn.

To shut them out from the public schools is a wicked absurdity, when there are no first-class colleges in the land, including the universities and colleges of California, which do not gladly welcome Japanese students and on which Japanese…

But here and there a most unworthy feeling has manifested itself toward the Japanese--the feeling that has been shown in shutting them out from the common schools in San Francisco, and in mutterings against them in one or two other places…

The overwhelming mass of our people cherish a lively regard and respect for the people of Japan, and in almost every quarter of the Union the stranger from Japan is treated as he deserves; that is, he is treated as the stranger from any…

The Japanese have won in a single generation the right to stand abreast of the foremost and most enlightened peoples of Europe and America; they have won on their own merits and by their own exertions the right to treatment on a basis of…

They are welcome, socially and intellectually, in all our colleges and institutions of higher learning, in all our professional and social bodies.

The courtesy of the Japanese, nationally and individually, has become proverbial.

At the same time the advance in science and philosophy is no less marked.

The industrial and commercial development of Japan has been phenomenal; greater than that of any other country during the same period.

Japanese artists of every kind see their products eagerly sought for in all lands.

She has produced great generals and mighty admirals; her fighting men, afloat and ashore, show all the heroic courage, the unquestioning, unfaltering loyalty, the splendid indifference to hardship and death, which marked the Loyal Ronins…

Japanese soldiers and sailors have shown themselves equal in combat to any of whom history makes note.

Nevertheless, it is most discreditable to us as a people, and it may be fraught with the gravest consequences to the nation.

I am prompted to say this by the attitude of hostility here and there assumed toward the Japanese in this country.

It is the sure mark of a low civilization, a low morality, to abuse or discriminate against or in any way humiliate such stranger who has come here lawfully and who is conducting himself properly.

Especially do we need to remember our duty to the stranger within our gates.

If he is honest and upright in his dealings with his neighbor and with the State, then he is entitled to respect and good treatment.

Whether they are Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether they come from England or Germany, Russia, Japan, or Italy, matters nothing.