The Imperial Cruise

by James Bradley

  America’s love affair with Baron Kaneko never faded, even after more than a year of his constant propagandizing. On July 23, citizens of Seattle applauded as the suave Harvard-tongued lawyer assured them, “Not only Japan and China, but the entire civilized world, will gain immeasurably by our conflict with Russia.”76 Recognizing the Aryan male’s chivalrous feelings for foreign females (a key motivation for the invasion of Cuba), Kaneko wrote an article entitled “Japanese New Women,” which the New York Times honored with six-column prominence. Kaneko played to America’s benevolent intentions when he wrote, “One of the results of the Russo-Japanese war will be that a new era will arise for the women of Japan.” Like a famous celebrity known to all Americans, the editors of the Times identified the author as simply “Baron Kaneko.”77

  On Wednesday, July 26, 1905, Roosevelt welcomed Ambassador Takahira to his seaside mansion to iron out some last-minute details for the deal. On that same day, Alice dined with Emperor Meiji in his moated palace in the center of Tokyo. To influence Teddy, Meiji showed Alice his private gardens, an honor never before accorded a White Christian.

  At a dinner the next night, Alice tapped the minister Griscom on the shoulder:

  Secretary William Howard Taft and Alice Roosevelt in Tokyo, July 1905. One Tokyo newspaper reporter observed, “This is truly the highpoint in the long history of Japanese-American relations.” (Collection of the New-York Historical Society)

  “Do you see that old, bald-headed man scratching his ear over there?”

  “Do you mean Nick Longworth?”

  “Yes. Can you imagine any young girl marrying a fellow like that?”

  “Why, Alice, you couldn’t find anybody nicer.”

  “I know, I know. But this is a question of marriage.”78

  The following evening, Prime Minister Katsura threw a gala banquet at the Imperial Hotel. In his speech, Katsura saluted Roosevelt as “a true exponent of the best principles of civilization.” Speaking next, Taft cited “the fifty-year-old friendship of America and Japan, a friendship which had never been dimmed by a cloud nor ever ceased to grow, which would be stronger and more durable than ever in the future.”79 Taft also said of Japan, “during the past 50 years she made an advance unparalleled in the history of nations, an advance which had placed her in the very foremost rank of the world’s leading Powers.”80

  Emperor Meiji. He oversaw Japan’s tilt toward the west and away from Asia. President Roosevelt sent him the skin of a Colorado bear. (Stringer/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  The banquet was a public expression of mutual goodwill; the secret deal between the nations would be done the next morning behind closed doors. For generations, British imperialists had sat in their private London clubs or the back rooms of Parliament charting new boundaries on maps, lines that cut through nations, tribes, and families. The United States had redrawn the map of the North American continent with unmarked graves as they spread westward. Now two new Pacific powers would play the civilizer’s board game.

  The Taft party observing a sumo match, July 1905. While the American public saw photos like this, Taft was secretly negotiating agreements with Japan not discovered until years later. (Collection of the New-York Historical Society)

  On Thursday, July 27, Roosevelt met publicly with Baron Kaneko, Minister Komura, and Ambassador Takahira aboard his presidential yacht, the Mayflower. In Tokyo, the morning after the Imperial Hotel banquet, Secretary Taft and Prime Minister Katsura met secretly in a simple, unadorned room in Shiba Palace. Besides Taft and Katsura, the only other person present was the interpreter, the foreign affairs vice minister, Shutemi Chinda. No transcript was made of the conversation and the palace has since burned down.

  Katsura knew that in speaking to Taft he was communicating with Roosevelt, and from Baron Kaneko’s many notes, the prime minister was well aware of how Roosevelt’s mind worked.* So race was the topic of conversation as Katsura assured Taft that “the insinuation of a ‘Yellow Peril’ was only a malicious and clumsy slander circulated to damage Japan.” Taft asked for a promise that Japan would keep its hands off the Philippines. Katsura responded that “Japan had no aggressive designs whatever on the Philippines.”

  Katsura told Taft that “the only means for accomplishing” peace in North Asia “was the drafting of an understanding among Japan, the United States and Great Britain which would uphold the Open Door principle.” The prime minister understood that “a formal alliance was out of the question”—meaning that Tokyo knew that the U.S. Senate would not approve what Roosevelt was now granting Japan—but because “such an understanding would benefit all the powers… could not an understanding or alliance—in practice if not in name—be arrived at?”

  At this point, former judge Taft had to know that he was in hot constitutional water, and he replied legalistically that of course it was “impossible for the President of the United States to enter even an informal understanding without the consent of the Senate.” But then Taft quickly added, “Without any agreement at all… just as confidently as if a treaty had been signed… appropriate action by the United States could be counted upon” to support Japan’s sphere of influence in Asia because “the people of the United States were so fully in accord with the policy of Japan and Great Britain.”

  This remarkable American commitment to Japan’s expansion “as if a treaty had been signed” would remain secret for almost two decades and has been obscured by time. Here was the triple alliance for which Japan had struggled since the Shame of Liaodong. And now that the prime minister had promised to support the Anglo-Saxon Open Door, Katsura submitted the bill.

  Katsura told Taft that “Korea was the direct cause of the war with Russia,” an outrageous overstatement that Taft judged “wholly reasonable.” Katsura said that to prevent further “international complications… Japan felt compelled to take some definite steps to end the possibility of Korea lapsing into her former condition.”81

  It wasn’t until nineteen years later—after Roosevelt’s death—that a researcher came across Taft’s top secret summary to Roosevelt of his meeting with Katsura. For protection, Taft had composed his memo with no direct quotes. Upon reading the summary, Teddy quickly cabled Taft, “Your conversation with Count Katsura absolutely correct in every respect. Wish you would state to Katsura that I confirm every word you have said.”82 The Japanese Foreign Ministry rendered the Taft-Katsura agreement into diplomatic code and sent it through a deep Pacific cable to the foreign minister, Komura, now in America.

  The Taft-Katsura secret treaty sentenced Koreans to Japanese subjugation for forty-five tortuous years. Teddy would later dissemble regarding his role, and his many apologists have downplayed its significance; one historian advanced the curious argument that the agreement wasn’t important because Roosevelt didn’t mention it in his autobiography. But Teddy consistently whitewashed unpleasantries from his past, even the existence of his first wife. The president of the United States had skirted the Constitution and negotiated a side deal with the Japanese at the same time he was posing as an honest broker between Japan and Russia at the Portsmouth peace talks. And he would lacquer his accomplishment with multiple coats of obscurity.

  Proof that Taft was aware that he had pulled a fast one can be found in the words the secretary used in his departure speech at Tokyo’s Shimbashi station. (Alice remembered, “I have never seen a denser and more enthusiastic crowd than that which packed the open spaces around the station.”83) Bidding goodbye to his Tokyo hosts, Taft curiously devoted his speech to the Japanese “ability to keep a secret.” He said, “For example, Lady Oyama here [wife of a heroic general] speaks very good English and from our conversation I realize she knows of many things from her husband. However she will never talk about a military secret. If this was an American lady she would speak everything she knows and everything that she think she knows. Secrets have to be kept strictly especially in military matters.”84

  Prime Minister Katsura now announced the new triple all
iance via an interview with the New York Times, in which he said:

  Our Far Eastern policy [will be] the introduction of all the blessings of modern civilization into the East Asiatic countries. [Japan’s] policy in the Far East will be in exact accord with that of England and the United States. [Japan would soon force] upon Korea and China the same benefits of modern development that have been in the past forced upon us…. We intend to begin a campaign of education in [Korea and China] such as we ourselves have experienced [and to develop] Asiatic commercial interests that will benefit us all. China and Korea are both atrociously mis-governed…. These conditions we will endeavor to correct at the earliest possible date—by persuasion and education, if possible; by force, if necessary. And in this, as in all things, we expect to act in exact concurrence with the ideas and desires of England and the United States.85

  Simple as that and conveniently translated into English by the New York Times: at the behest of London and Washington, the Japanese military would expand into Korea and China to civilize Asia. Later generations would call it World War II.

  The Japanese public knew nothing of Roosevelt’s giveaway of Korea to Japan. They were focused only upon the indemnity they expected Roosevelt to wring from the Russians. On July 31, Kaneko warned Roosevelt in a letter, “My own opinion is that the payment of the actual cost of the war by Russia is absolutely necessary… because the public sentiment in Japan is strongly demanding a far larger amount of indemnity.”86

  Roosevelt gave little thought to the Japanese public’s strong yearning for the dignity a White Christian cash indemnity would bring Japan. But as Alice wended her way south from Tokyo to Nagasaki, millions of Japanese banzaied her, delirious with the expectation that her father would help Japan finally secure a square deal.

  THE TAFT PARTY SLIPPED into Nagasaki harbor on Monday, July 31. On Tuesday morning, August 1, crowds gawked at Alice purchasing some cigars, a business-card case, and a tortoiseshell-handled knife. Lunch was at the American consulate, and afterward the city of Nagasaki threw a huge send-off party in Suwa Park for the honored guests, who would next depart for the Philippines.

  The mayor of Nagasaki addressed the happy crowd and toasted the Americans with champagne, thought to be much more Western and civilized than traditional Japanese sake. Then Taft, a mountain of a man, the Lord of the Philippines and the American God of War, rose to speak. Taft concluded his speech with a happy war chant in Japanese and English that brought the cheering crowd to their feet:

  Japanese emperor… banzai!

  Japanese navy… banzai!

  Japanese army… banzai!

  Japanese emperor… banzai!

  Japanese navy… banzai!

  Japanese army… banzai!87

  Chapter 9

  THE IMPERIAL CRUISE

  “I did not come to give you your independence…. You will have your independence when you are ready for it, which will not be in this generation—no, nor in the next, nor perhaps for a hundred years or more.”1

  —THE SECRETARY OF WAR, WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, ILOILO, PHILIPPINES, AUGUST 1905

  As the Manchuria steamed from Nagasaki to Manila in August of 1905, dawn’s first rays revealed the rotund figure of the secretary of war, William Howard Taft, on his daily four-mile walk around the big ship’s circumference. Early-bird strollers received the trademark Taft treatment: the famous smile, the twinkling eyes, and the hearty guffaw. But beneath the friendly facade, Big Bill had a lot to worry about.

  Wife Nellie nagged from afar. She could have been by his side, supporting her prominent husband. But instead of the tropics and boring chitchat, Nellie had chosen the cool weather and royal conversationalists in Windsor, England. From her vacation perch, Nellie complained that if Bill hadn’t been away at the time of John Hay’s death, Roosevelt would have named him secretary of state.

  Then there was Alice. She was just twenty-one years old and, in Taft’s opinion, sometimes too naughty. He wrote Nellie, “She and Nick indulge in conversations on subjects that are ordinarily tabooed between men and women much older than they are and indeed are usually confined to husband and wife.”2 Once he’d seen Alice reach for her gold vanity case and assumed she was searching for a hairpin. Instead, the Princess picked up a strategically placed cigarette and put it between her teeth. Taft told Alice he’d give up drinking if she’d give up smoking. He never had to keep his side of the bargain.

  Taft knew Nick Longworth well and didn’t like what he knew. The Tafts and the Longworths were both leading families of Cincinnati, and Nick was Taft’s congressional representative. Before the trip, Big Bill had warned Nick’s mother that if her son went with Alice, they would surely return an engaged couple. Mrs. Longworth had dismissed the notion, saying that Nick was a confirmed old bachelor, not realizing the Princess was attracted to such men. As Alice later wrote, “I really didn’t have many friends of my own age when I was young. The ones of my own age… were frightfully nice and proper and respectable but they were not terribly interesting. I always liked older men. A father complex coming out, presumably.”3

  One day Big Bill cornered her: “Alice, I think I ought to know if you are engaged to Nick.” She responded, “More or less, Mr. Secretary. More or less.”4

  There was more on his mind than Alice’s shadow engagement. Taft was returning to a troubled Philippines. Back in 1898, the promise had been bright: Americans had benevolent intentions, and the Filipinos were to behave like Pacific Negroes by submitting to the White Christian’s globe-girdling destiny. In 1898, President McKinley had assumed that civilizing the Philippines would be accomplished quickly with few troops. By 1905, however, Taft and Roosevelt both realized that the Philippines was a black hole for the U.S. taxpayer and would never generate a significant strategic or financial advantage. This was a puzzle, since it seemed obvious that the higher races would eventually triumph—so went the Aryan myth, and so went Taft. Walking in circles around the Manchuria, wondering what to do next, Big Bill could not imagine that Asians would ever stem the westering tide.

  Alice Roosevelt and Secretary Taft aboard the Manchuria, summer of 1905. (Collection of the New-York Historical Society)

  As early as 1905, William Howard Taft had the inside track on the 1908 Republican presidential nomination, based mostly upon his reputation as a nation builder. But the only thing he had built in the Philippines was a pile of ruined dreams.

  For six years Filipino patriots picked off U.S. soldiers in the countryside as the American colonial government in Manila issued rosy reports. In 1900: “A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States.” In 1901: “The collapse of the insurrection came in May.” In 1902: “The insurrection as an organized attempt to subvert the authority of the United States in these islands is entirely at an end.” In 1904: “The great mass of the people, however, were domestic and peaceable.”5

  When Big Bill left the Philippines in 1903, Roosevelt appointed Luke Wright to be his successor as governor. Wright was a crusty fifty-nine-year-old former Confederate soldier, who overtly favored a military solution rather than a civil one for Pacific Negroes. He did not jolly the Filipinos as did Taft. Furthermore, he enraged Taft’s collaborator buddies when he cut off U.S. funds for the Federal Party and raised taxes to pay for the top-heavy, expensive American colonial bureaucracy. The house of cards that Taft had left behind slipped toward collapse.

  Just a few months before Taft returned on this 1905 trip, an Englishwoman named Mrs. Campbell Dauncey, who lived in Iloilo in the Philippines, wrote to her family in England:

  The Americans give out and write in their papers that the Philippine Islands are completely pacified, and that the Filipinos love Americans and their rule. This, doubtless with good motives, is complete and utter humbug, for the country is honeycombed with insurrection and plots; the fighting has never ceased; and the natives loathe the Americans and their theories, saying so openl
y in their native press, and showing their dislike in every possible fashion. Their one idea is to be rid of the U.S.A. to have their government in their own hands.6

  The Manchuria dropped anchor in Manila Bay at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, August 4.

  A reporter for the Manila Times noted, “It was the same William H. Taft who left here about two years ago that stood on the upper deck of the Manchuria…. Perhaps a trifle heavier than when he left here, there is no less warmth in his handshake. ‘I am certainly pleased to be back in Manila again,’ said the secretary, as his eyes swept over the low outline of the city as seen from the bay. ‘It seems like coming home again.’ ”7

  The visiting Americans would spend twenty-seven days in the Philippines—the first nine in Manila, thirteen sailing around the islands, five days back in Manila, and then on to Hong Kong. On Saturday, August 5, Secretary Taft kicked off the visit in classic colonial style: he took everyone to the racetrack. Wrote the Manila Times:

  * * *

  MISS ROOSEVELT AT THE RACES

  All eyes seemed to hunt out the one figure, to forget the political and economic significance of the visitors to these island possessions, and to realize only that before them, there in the grandstand, chatting animatedly with old and new friends, totally unconscious of the fact that she was the center of interest, stood the daughter of the president of the United States. Jaunty, yet possessing a queenly grace which showed in every gesture, vivaciousness itself, she was the life of the party, as she’d been at prior stops, a brilliant distraction.8