The Roosevelt-Kaneko talks began on March 26, 1904, when Ambassador Takahira brought Kaneko to the State Department to pay respects to Secretary Hay. Kaneko spoke so enthusiastically about America’s obvious tilt toward Japan that Hay later fretted in his diary, “I had to remind him that we were neutral.”14
Takahira and Kaneko then went to the White House. More than thirty visitors were waiting to see the president, but when Roosevelt saw Kaneko’s calling card, he bypassed the others to pump Kaneko’s hand. As Raymond Esthus writes in Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, Roosevelt “took the Baron into his confidence completely.”15 Roosevelt spoke in decidedly unneutral terms about Japan’s mission of civilization in Asia. Roosevelt asked Kaneko for reading material on Japan. The baron whipped out articles he had authored and recommended the book Bushido by Inazo Nitobe, which likened samurai values to Europe’s chivalric code. The founding fathers must have been elated when they read Ambassador Takahira’s summary of the first Roosevelt-Kaneko talk, in which Takahira reported that the president expressed confidence that Japan would win the war and establish herself as Asia’s great civilizing force.16
EMPEROR GOJONG—HIS COUNTRY now held hostage by the Japanese—met with Minister Allen and requested America’s protection. Allen cabled Washington about the meeting: “He falls back in his extremity upon his old friendship with America…. The Emperor confidently expects that America will do something for him at the close of this war, or when opportunity offers, to retain for him as much of his independence as is possible…. I am obliged to assure His Majesty that the condition of Korea is borne in mind by the United States Government, who will use their good offices when occasion occurs.”17 The American minister’s statement of obligation was false, as Gojong would soon learn.
Then most of Gojong’s palace was burned down, probably by the Japanese. The emperor retreated to a detached palace library, which was next to America’s legation building. Gojong requested political asylum from the United States. Allen told him that if the emperor scaled the legation walls, he would put him out.
Despite the setback, Gojong was not without hope. True, his neutral country had been occupied by a foreign power, but he had reason to believe that once the war ended, Japan would withdraw and Korean independence would resume. After all, he had signed that important treaty that promised Korea a square deal. But as Gojong scrambled, Roosevelt informed Secretary Taft, “I heartily agree with the Japanese terms of peace, insofar as they include Japan having the control of Korea.”18
THE BATTLE OF YALU River, ending on May 1, 1904, was the first major land clash of the Russo-Japanese War, with Japanese troops crossing the river and routing the Russians. With the victory, the Japanese army was now prepared to invade Manchuria from the north as well as from Port Arthur in the south. Far away in his palace, a White Christian czar imagined it impossible for “little Jap monkeys” to best his army, but in fact Japan now had the Russians in a headlock.
ON JUNE 6, 1904, Roosevelt again welcomed Baron Kaneko and Ambassador Takahira to the White House, this time for a private luncheon. Roosevelt knew he was speaking through these two interlocutors to the founding fathers in Tokyo, yet he kept these discussions secret, informing neither the State Department nor Congress.
Roosevelt’s guests immediately addressed the critical subject always at the forefront of the president’s thinking: race. They pointed out that it had been the thirteenth-century Mongolians who had terrorized Europe and that this Yellow Peril had also threatened Japan. The diplomats reiterated that Japan was different from the rest of Asia, with its own two-thousand-year civilization, and they “did not see why they should be classed as barbarians.”19
Roosevelt agreed and complimented the two by saying he thought the Japanese people were more racially similar to Americans than were the Russians. By way of analogy, the president explained that riffraff races such as the Turks and Russians—“European peoples who speak an Aryan tongue”—were not very civilized; instead they were “impossible members of our international society… [while] Japan would simply take her place from now on among the great civilized nations.”20
Then Roosevelt gave his little Jap guests a lesson in race history, saying that in the AD tenth century, his Teutonic ancestors had been considered the White Terror, “and that as we had outgrown the position of being a race threat, I thought that in a similar fashion such a civilization as [the Japanese] had developed entitled them to laugh at the accusation of being part of the Yellow Terror.”21 He informed Kaneko and Takahira that Japan should have “a paramount interest in what surrounds the Yellow Sea, just as the United States has a paramount interest in what surrounds the Caribbean.”22 Though Roosevelt had just made a momentous pronouncement, his Japanese guests missed its implications. Big Stick Teddy was suggesting that because the Japanese had assimilated Anglo-Saxon values and would support the Open Door policy, they should have a Monroe Doctrine–like protectorate on the Asian continent. Teddy did not make the analogy clear at this meeting—as he later would—and neither Takahira nor Kaneko referred to it in their cables back to Tokyo.
Roosevelt now brought up the possibility that Japan might covet the Philippines, stating bluntly that if Japan attacked America’s Pacific colony, “we would be quite competent to defend ourselves.”23 The two guests earnestly assured Roosevelt that “tall talk of Japan’s even thinking of the Philippines was nonsense.”24 Roosevelt later recalled that he was confident that the Japanese would not expand beyond what he had bequeathed, because when he mentioned to Takahira and Kaneko the challenge of civilizing China, “they grinned and said that they were quite aware of the difficulty they were going to have even in Korea and were satisfied with that job.”25
Over the next year and a half, Roosevelt would repeat his Japanese Monroe Doctrine concept with the intent that Takahira and Kaneko would communicate his desire to the founding fathers and Emperor Meiji. Because Teddy relayed these ideas only orally, with no U.S. officials overhearing the exchanges that were said to Asian people who spoke and wrote a difficult language that few in the West could decipher, the president had excellent plausible deniability.
After their lunch in the White House, Ambassador Takahira quickly telegraphed Roosevelt’s views to Tokyo, where they were warmly received. Roosevelt had committed nothing in writing, so he had placed the interpretation of the conversation completely in the hands of an employee of the Japanese government, who portrayed the president as a Japan cheerleader, telling Tokyo that Roosevelt would shape American public opinion and take the diplomatic actions necessary to suit the desires of the Japanese government.26
Perhaps a junior-level State Department diplomat or a young staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would have known better, but Rough Rider Teddy had no fear. The Japs, he was certain, would be Honorary Aryans, content with the territory Roosevelt granted them, committed to the Open Door. Teddy never imagined that Russian power would soon collapse in revolution and that the powerful Japs and weakened Slavs would become friends after this war and unite—against American interests in North Asia.
Japan’s foreign minister, Jutaro Komura, was so grateful for the American tilt toward Japan that he suggested that Emperor Meiji formally thank Roosevelt. However, Ambassador Takahira intervened to keep Teddy’s commitment secret,27 cautioning Tokyo to put nothing in writing. Takahira did orally pass on Tokyo’s appreciation to Secretary Hay and asked Hay to convey this sentiment to Roosevelt “if [Hay] found it proper.”28 Two weeks later, a confident Roosevelt wrote Hay, “The Japs have played our game because they have played the game of civilized mankind…. We may be of genuine service… in preventing interference to rob her of the fruits of her victory.”29
AMERICANS COULD JUDGE THE high level of Japanese civilization for themselves at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. While the United States displayed its Indian reservation and Philippines reservation, Britain brought African “Kaffirs” to do maintenance work and to live in an open village where they
could be gawked at. In emulation of its Anglo-American allies, Japan brought along its colonized Others: eight good specimens of Ainu people, the aborigines the Japanese had long ago chased into the northern wastes of Hokkaido island. As an official World’s Fair publication stated: “Japanese civilization presents a striking contrast to the Ainu who are simple barbarians. Their stupidity… has never been… explained and they are ethnically listed with the races who are incapable of civilization and education.”30
Nearby was the Japanese merchant marine exhibit. Millions of American visitors saw its immense topographical map of North Asia, featuring Korea and Manchuria. The name of the map was “The Japanese Empire.”31
AMERICAN MEDIA COVERAGE OF the Russo-Japanese War was heavily pro-Japanese. The American infatuation with Japan increased as Jap soldiers gave chase to the Slavs. Popular magazine articles with titles such as “How Russia Brought On the War” and “Why We Favour Japan in the Present War” informed readers that the war was “a general revolt of all the civilized peoples of the earth against the perfidy and insincerity of Russia” and that “Russia stands for reaction and Japan for progress.”32 A British politician visiting Washington told Baron Kaneko, “Since coming to America I have traveled to every part of the country and met with people of every walk of life, and have been astonished by the great sympathy felt for your country. They support your country with an enthusiasm that one does not easily see even in my country, England, which is an ally of yours, and the antipathy they have for Russia was truly quite unexpected.”33 From the U.S. legation in Seoul, Minister Allen watched as Japanese troops took over Korea. He cabled Washington: “Japan is the rightful and natural overlord.”34
In the White House, Roosevelt lectured his cabinet on jujitsu holds and quoted the book Bushido. He wrote Secretary Hay, “What nonsense it is to speak of the Chinese and Japanese as of the same race!”35 Still, he had occasional doubts; after all, no matter their mimickry, these Honorary Aryans were not White. In December of 1904, Roosevelt called Takahira into the White House and warned him that despite its victories Japan should not get a big head regarding the White race. Privately the president occasionally worried whether Japan viewed Americans “simply as white devils inferior to themselves”36 and about “Japanese hostility to the white race in general and especially to Americans.”37 As he watched the Japanese army lay siege to Russian fortifications at Port Arthur, Roosevelt fretted that he wanted Japan to succeed, “but not too overwhelmingly.”38
JAPAN HAD HOPED TO capture Port Arthur quickly, but its troops encountered well-prepared Russian defenses and the bloody siege stretched on for months. In a preview of World War I, hundreds and thousands of young men perished in trenches as shrapnel rained down on them or died charging uselessly into the bullets of machine guns.
But the Japanese kept coming and the Russians eventually surrendered Port Arthur on New Year’s Day, 1905.
By that January, it appeared to Roosevelt that his predictions were coming true. Russia’s surrender of its seemingly impregnable Port Arthur fortress to the Japanese demonstrated that Slav civilization was sinking while Japan’s was rising. Then “Bloody Sunday” exploded in St. Petersburg as two hundred thousand protestors assailed the Winter Palace demanding victory over Japan or an end to the war. This was one of the first in a string of events later called the Russian Revolution, and Roosevelt saw it as further proof that the Slav was a declining race. With Roosevelt’s knowledge and approval, Japan began negotiating an updated treaty with England, in which seven months later England would trade India for Korea.
The arrangement was yet another round of imperial board gaming. Great Britain had supported Japan’s modernization efforts, and both were concerned with Russian expansion in Asia—British leaders worried that the Russians might move deeply into China. In 1902, Japan and Great Britain proclaimed an official Anglo-Japanese Alliance. This agreement might have been signed earlier if not for disagreements between the two parties regarding each other’s imperial ambitions. The alliance was built around two concepts: a declaration of neutrality if either signatory went to war; and a promise of support if either signatory went to war with more than one power. But the Japanese had no interest in supporting British claims to India, and Great Britain had no desire to be brought into defending Japanese interests in Korea. So a trade was arranged: both would stay out of each other’s way. Neither signatory would be obligated to come to the other’s defense in those seized territories.
The British saw the agreement as a velvety warning to Russia—no, the alliance did not mandate joining in the Russo-Japanese War, but the existing thicket of agreements between the powers meant that France could not easily come to Russia’s aid without resulting in a war with Great Britain. And it was no small thing to come up against the most powerful empire in the world, even if only in a court of diplomatic opinion. Yet if the British understood the alliance as more flute than drum, the Japanese saw things very differently. The greatest of the White Christian powers had just agreed that they would not do anything about a Japanese occupation of Korea.
Roosevelt—through private intermediaries that included his wife—signaled London and Tokyo that he supported the swap and wished he could trade the Philippines for Korea and make it a triple alliance. But Roosevelt had to ask his allies to spare him the exposure of “open evident agreement.” This, too, would be secret. Writing King Edward VII of England, Teddy said, “I absolutely agree with you as to the importance… to all the free peoples of the civilized world, of a constantly growing friendship and understanding between the English-speaking peoples…. All I can do to foster it will be done…. With affairs in the orient… our interests are identical with yours.”39
Still hopeful, Emperor Gojong dispatched twenty-nine-year-old Syngman Rhee to Washington to urge America to honor its treaty obligations. In February 1905, Rhee met with Secretary of State Hay. Later Rhee remembered that Hay had blandly assured him that the United States would fulfill the “good offices” provision of the U.S.-Korea Treaty.40
BY NOW, THE FOUNDING fathers in Tokyo knew Roosevelt’s thinking like the back of their aged hands. The foreign minister, Jutaro Komura—a fellow Harvard grad—sent Roosevelt a copy of Japan’s plan for a postwar world that just happened to mesh with Teddy’s thinking: after beating the Slavs, Japan would retain Port Arthur and Korea while supporting the Open Door. As Raymond Esthus concludes in Theodore Roosevelt and Japan: “Thus by February, 1905, Roosevelt and Japan were in complete agreement on peace terms.”41
As Japanese soldiers marched north from Port Arthur to attack the Manchurian city of Mukden (today’s Shenyang), Roosevelt fretted. He certainly leaned strongly toward the Japanese, but his ultimate priorities were the United States and his dream of Anglo-Saxon expansion. Making certain of some sort of balance of power in North Asia seemed wise. Observing the Japanese advance, he advised Czar Nicholas to make peace. Teddy wanted his line of friction to be south of Mukden, and he feared a Russian loss would unmoderate the plan. The czar ignored the meddlesome young president and the “little Jap monkeys.”
ONE FEBRUARY DAY, ROOSEVELT staged a match between his American wrestling instructor and his Japanese jujitsu teacher. The assembled generals, summoned to the White House for the occasion, observed the “yellow man” triumph. Back in Asia, the Japanese were putting the moves on the Russians. Their diplomatic offensive was no less robust. That same month, Baron Kaneko handed Roosevelt a written statement he had solicited from several Yale professors while visiting New Haven, which informed the president, “Japan has fairly earned the right to paramount influence in Korea, by reason of her sacrifices, to prevent the Russianization of Korea.”42 This opinion was echoed by Roosevelt’s most trusted adviser on North Asia, William Rockhill, the U.S. minister to China. Rockhill had proclaimed, “The annexation of Korea to Japan seems to be absolutely indicated as the one great and final step westward of the extension of the Japanese empire…. I cannot see any possibility of this government usi
ng its influence to bolster up the empire of Korea in its independence. I fancy that the Japanese will settle this question when the present war is finished.”43
Roosevelt didn’t wait until the war was finished. The same month, Teddy secretly told the founding fathers that he approved of Japan having a Monroe Doctrine–like protectorate in Asia. To further the triple alliance on the Atlantic side, Roosevelt used his wife, Edith, and the Brit who had been best man at their London wedding, Cecil Spring-Rice: from Teddy’s mouth to Edith’s ear, then into a folksy coded letter to “Springy,” who finally delivered the message to Whitehall. Sealing deals with London and Tokyo, Roosevelt felt himself at the center of international affairs, navigating the ship of civilization into twentieth-century Asia. And it was all so deliciously secret.
If Congress had been aware of the president’s alliances, perhaps a senator would have challenged Roosevelt to think through the consequences of the United States’ carving out a chunk of Asia for Japan to nibble on. Perhaps a congressman might have inspired Roosevelt to imagine a Japan that later would chafe at Teddy’s leash.
ROOSEVELT TOOK HIS SECOND oath of office from the chief justice, Melville Fuller, in a March 1905 ceremony before thousands in front of the East Portico, the grand balustrade entrance to the Capitol building. With his hand on the Bible, Roosevelt swore to uphold American values. A statue to Roosevelt’s immediate left represented some unwritten American values. Seventy-one years earlier, Congress had commissioned sculptor Horatio Greenough to create a statue that would “represent the conflict between the Anglo-Saxon and Indian races.” 44 Greenough testified before Congress that the statue recalled “the peril of the American wilderness, the ferocity of our Indians, the superiority of the white man, and why and how civilization crowded the Indian from his soil.”?45 Greenough called his monumental work The Rescue.
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