Chapter 11
INCOGNITO IN JAPAN
“I was told to say I was English if anyone asked my nationality…. I have never seen such a more complete change…. Americans were about as unpopular as they had been popular before. [There was] not a banzai to be heard.”1
—ALICE ROOSEVELT ON HER RETURN TO JAPAN, SEPTEMBER 1905
Theodore Roosevelt was a master with the carefully staged photograph. He launched his Ranchman and Rough Rider personas from New York photo studios. Roosevelt always gave serious thought to how the visual record would reinforce his manly image. As Roosevelt wrote, “You never saw a photograph of me playing tennis. I’m careful about that. Photographs on horseback, yes. Tennis, no.”2
As a result, the world didn’t realize that as president, Roosevelt stocked his closets with costumes. One of his most cherished was his Rough Rider uniform, kept in fine trim by his personal Brooks Brothers tailor. One hot summer day, Roosevelt put it on for a meeting with two visitors, but forbade photographs.3 He didn’t want to be embarrassed if the public found out that the president still played soldier. Also, Roosevelt wanted what transpired that day to remain invisible to history.
On August 4, 1905, two emissaries of Gojong, the emperor of Younger Brother Korea, arrived at Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill retreat to beg Elder Brother to exercise his “good offices” to save Korea.4 It was before them that Roosevelt dramatically appeared, dressed in full Rough Rider regalia, looking tough pacing back and forth across his new trophy room in front of the trembling Koreans. But in his response to their impassioned plea, Roosevelt struck a curiously powerless note. He explained that his hands were tied and that he could not consider Gojong’s request until it was processed through official channels. Roosevelt and the Koreans knew Japan controlled Korea’s “official channels.”
The next day—August 5—Roosevelt wore a different costume for a meeting he dearly wanted captured on film. Roosevelt chose the grandest of settings, the 273-foot ship Mayflower. Built privately as a luxury yacht in 1896, the U.S. Navy had purchased the Mayflower in 1898 for the invasion of Cuba. In 1903, Roosevelt had deployed it to wrest Panama away from Venezuela. In 1904, Taft had traveled around the Caribbean on the Mayflower to survey the Caribbean nations newly under Roosevelt Corollary scrutiny. Now Roosevelt had commandeered the Big Stick ship as his enormous personal yacht.
The occasion was the commencement of the negotiations to resolve the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt posed the photo below the Mayflower’s deck, just outside the ship’s seagoing banquet hall. He stood between the men, two Russians on his right and two Japanese on his left. Privately Roosevelt loathed the two Russians, Sergei Witte and Roman Rosen, and considered his Harvard buddy Jutaro Komura and Baron Kaneko’s sidekick, Kogoro Takahira, civilized fellows. Posing as a worldly diplomat wrestling with war and peace—dressed in a brilliant white silk vest, white tie, black tails, black silk top hat, white cotton gloves, and monocle—Roosevelt placed himself dead center in the photo. But, like his tennis costumes, there was much left out of the frame.
After the photograph, Roosevelt led his guests to a smorgasbord lunch laid out on a round table with no chairs, so no one could choose sides. No negotiations took place then; the Russians and Japanese would negotiate between themselves. Indeed, after lunch the Russians and Japanese steamed north to Portsmouth. Roosevelt, meanwhile, played sailor, enjoying himself by descending below Long Island Sound in a U.S. Navy diving bell. By then Roosevelt had the photograph that would misrepresent the champion of war as a peacemaker.
A week earlier, Roosevelt had huddled on the Mayflower with Baron Kaneko, the foreign minister Komura, and Ambassador Takahira, while Secretary Taft had met with Prime Minister Katsura in Tokyo. These simultaneous meetings had affirmed the triple alliance.5 A more accurate photo on August 5 would have been of Roosevelt, Emperor Meiji, and King Edward VII holding hands in a triple alliance circle, with the Russians looking on from afar.
BARON KANEKO REPEATEDLY WARNED Roosevelt that the Japanese public yearned for a cash payment from Russia. The Japanese army and navy had bested the Russians in every battle, and an indemnity would signal that Japan was the recognized victor. Concessions of territory would not be enough, because the Japanese army had already secured the lands through the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of its soldiers. The millions upon millions of friendly banzais that had been given to Alice were in expectation that her father would secure a square deal for Japan. Roosevelt never understood that by so publicly aligning himself with Japan against Russia, he was encouraging the assumption across Japan that he was the man who would help expunge the “Shame of Liaodong.”
Czar Nicholas II had no plans to cooperate with the Japanese with regard to any financial compensation, vowing “not a ruble” for the “little Jap monkeys,” and thundered from St. Petersburg: “The Japanese desperately need money, and we will not give it to them.”6
Roosevelt stepped into the middle of the dispute and sent two unsolicited and strongly worded letters of advice to the founding fathers. Lecturing Japan’s wise men, the Rough Rider wrote that in the “interest of civilization and humanity,” Tokyo should forgo an indemnity:
Ethically, it seems to me that Japan owes a duty to the world at this crisis. The civilized world looks to her to make peace; the nations believe in her; let her show her leadership in matters ethical no less than in matters military. The appeal is made to her in the name of all that is lofty and noble; and to this appeal I hope she will not be deaf.7
Ethically? Lofty? Noble? Baron Kaneko had already informed an adoring Carnegie Hall audience that Japan had abandoned the “Right Is Right” ethics of the East and embraced the “Might Is Right” ethics of the West. The founding fathers saw nothing lofty or noble about the U.S. Army’s mowing down civilians in the Philippines or the British navy’s shelling Chinese cities. This was about war. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese sons had perished to expunge the “Shame of Liaodong.” With these letters, once again a White Christian power was asking the non-White Japanese to forfeit their hard-won spoils of war.
On the same day Roosevelt dispatched his lecture to the founding fathers in Tokyo, he upbraided the Foreign Office in London: “Every true friend of Japan should tell it as I have already told it, that the opinion of the civilized world will not support it in continuing the war merely for the purpose of extorting money from Russia.”8 This was the third time Roosevelt had asked the big boys to play with him. In the margin of Roosevelt’s plea, the foreign minister, Lord Henry Lansdowne, wrote: “This is a suggestion that we should press the Japanese to make further concessions. Were we to do so, our advice would not be taken and would be resented.”9 What was so clear to the experienced diplomats in London never occurred to the Rough Rider, lost in his dress-up fantasies that summer by the sea.
AFTER THE FINAL SESSION of the Portsmouth peace talks, the chief Russian negotiator rushed out and told the press: “The Japanese yielded on everything. We pay not a Kopek of indemnity…. It was a complete victory for us.”10
For the second war in a row, Japan had won all the battles but afterward was shamed by White Christians.
An Osaka newspaper drew a picture of a weeping skeleton of a Japanese soldier holding the treaty. Underneath were the words “We are ashamed to report this.”11 The Mainichi Shimbun wrote: “The fruits of our arms have been lost by weak diplomacy. Japan victorious in the field has been defeated in the conference chamber.”12 In London, King Edward VII, the prime minister, Arthur Balfour, and Lord Lansdowne were surprised by the Japanese concession. The foreign affairs editor of the Times in London wrote to the British ambassador in Russia about Roosevelt: “I should like to know what kind of pressure he finally applied to Tokyo. I am told it amounted almost to a threat of the financial boycotting of Japan.”13
Riots broke out in the cities that had so recently cheered Roosevelt’s daughter. In Tokyo, furious mobs burned thirteen Christian churches, threw stones at passing Americans,14 and destroye
d thirty tramcars, and U.S. Marines bivouacked on the grounds of the U.S. legation to protect it from the howling mob.15 Though he had not sat at the Portsmouth negotiating table, Roosevelt had made himself Japan’s guy, and the betrayed Japanese now booed the president they had so recently applauded. In his memoir, Minister Lloyd Griscom wrote, “President Roosevelt’s picture, which adorned many Japanese houses, was turned to the wall. I had quite a number of anonymous letters saying the mob would shortly again visit the Legation to express appreciation for the part we had played in depriving Japan of the fruits of victory.”16 Minister Griscom wrote to Roosevelt in an understatement, “Your popularity has suffered a distinct check.”17 Roosevelt blamed Tokyo, as he wrote to his ambassador to Russia: “Why in the world the Japanese statesmen, usually so astute, permitted their people to think they had to get a large indemnity, I cannot understand.”18
Secretary Taft laid over in Yokohama on his way home from China. The rioting had died out, but not the anti-Roosevelt feelings. Taft cabled the U.S. minister, Rockhill, in Beijing: “Conditions in Japan… will make it unwise for Miss Roosevelt to spend any considerable time in Japan.”19
After the riots, Baron Kaneko suggested that Roosevelt repair the damage by keeping his promise to publicly endorse a Japanese Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt blanched and postponed, pledging that he would do so once he departed the presidency.20 Kaneko left the president with only one of Teddy’s earlier promises fulfilled: Roosevelt gave Kaneko the Colorado bearskin for Emperor Meiji.
Teddy’s pose as a diplomat in a white vest caught on with the Anglo-Saxons. The Times of London reported: “Admiration for the President’s splendid success is the first sentiment of Americans; the next is admiration for the magnificent generosity of the Japanese.” American newspapers gushed: “Theodore Roosevelt stands unchallenged as the world’s first citizen. He has sheathed the swords of a million men.”21 Roosevelt—a professional author—quickly forwarded to friends dramatic anecdotes portraying himself in the middle of the action. On September 2, he wrote to Alice that if he hadn’t gotten Japan and Russia together, “they would not have made peace.22
IN SEOUL, EMPEROR GOJONG awaited Princess Alice. The year before, the frightened emperor had fled his burning palace as the Japanese had taken over, and now he resided in the much humbler royal library. Each day Japanese “advisers” brought Gojong papers to sign, and Japanese guards tucked him in at night. But Gojong considered himself a skilled survivor, fifty-seven years old in 1905 and allied with the United States since Chester Arthur had been president. He had hope.
And despite it all, Gojong perceived Roosevelt as a glowing moral force. Indeed, Elder Brother’s summons had brought Russia and Japan together and ended history’s largest war. Over the decades, Gojong had believed that America would come through, though he had worried when the American legation had suggested that the United States couldn’t help in the wake of the Japanese takeover. Still, Gojong’s heart beat expectantly; Elder Brother Roosevelt’s daughter was on her way. Perhaps Alice’s father would now come to the rescue.
Alice traveled from the east coast of China to the west coast of Korea through the Yellow Sea on a commercial passenger ship, passing the fortress of Port Arthur at the tip of the contested Liaodong Peninsula. They arrived at the Korean port of Incheon on September 19 and were met by the U.S. minister, Edwin Morgan (who had replaced Horace Allen), and his personal secretary, Willard Straight. The emperor’s personal train took them to downtown Seoul, where the Korean Royal Band welcomed Alice with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Emperor Gojong pulled out all the stops to welcome Alice—complete with a sedan-chair trip down newly cleaned streets. She later remembered that she was unimpressed: “Somehow it was all slightly sad and pathetic…. The country was beginning to slip into Japanese hands and I must say that the Japanese army officers I saw looked exceptionally smart and competent.”23
Alice stayed in the American legation building with Morgan, whom her father had sent to Seoul to pave the way for the Japanese takeover. Recalled Alice, “The legation was just next door to the Imperial Palace and one could see the little Emperor peeking through the curtains to see what was happening on our side of the fence.”24
Gojong had never dined publicly with a foreigner but broke precedent with a grand luncheon to honor Roosevelt’s daughter. Alice later remembered Gojong’s desperation: “We went to lunch with him. It was all a little pathetic. He was a sad-looking man, wearing lots of lovely, fluttery little garments. Not grand at all. When we went in to lunch, he positively hung onto my arm. I didn’t have his. He had mine.”25 Willard Straight wrote a friend, “These people are looking for straws and the Roosevelt trip [looks] like a life preserver to their jaundiced imaginations.”26
The next day Gojong tried again to impress Roosevelt by allowing women from the royal family to dine with Alice, also a first. Willard Straight observed that Alice’s party was “treated with more consideration than has ever been shown visiting royalty.”27
The emperor controlled the luncheons but the Japanese controlled the emperor. Desperate, Gojong took Senator Francis Newlands of Nevada aside and begged him to ask Teddy to exercise his good offices and save Korea from Japan’s tightening grip. Newlands sniffed that Gojong should submit a proper legal request through official channels, which Newlands knew Gojong could not do because of his Japanese minders.28 Alice later recalled, “At a farewell audience, the Emperor and Crown Prince each gave me his photograph. They were two rather pathetic, stolid figures with very little imperial existence ahead of them.”29
Emperor Gojong of Korea. He told the U.S. State Department, “We feel that America is to us as an Elder Brother.”
Before he departed Yokohama for San Francisco, Taft revised his earlier opinion and cabled Rockhill that Alice could go to Japan under one condition: “Further investigation satisfies me that Miss Roosevelt’s contemplated trip with her party incognito to Japan can be quite safely made.”30
Incognito. Before Teddy’s summer of secret diplomacy, the Roosevelt name had been cheered across Japan. Now Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter had to hide her face. Alice later admitted, “I was told to say I was English if asked my nationality.”31
Alice slipped furtively into the Japanese port of Shimonoseki on a passenger ship from Korea guarded by Japanese plainclothes police. There were no photographs or press coverage, and she was allowed out only when heavily guarded. “I have never seen such a more complete change,” Alice recalled. “Americans were about as unpopular as they had been popular before. [There was] not a banzai to be heard.”32
Nevertheless, Alice continued to generate convenient headlines for American consumption. According to newspaper editors, Alice’s steamer, the Siberia, had made record time out of Yokohama. A world speed record was in the making.
Chapter 12
SELLOUT IN SEOUL
“We feel that America is to us as an Elder Brother.”1
—EMPEROR GOJONG OF KOREA, 1897
“I should like to see Japan have Korea.”2
—THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 1900
America’s princess had set a new Yokohama-to-San Francisco record of thirteen days. Then breathless coverage of her cross-country train trip entertained readers. Engineers slept in relays as they full-throttled their engines. Brass bands greeted Alice, and children waving American flags bid her farewell. Alice set a new transcontinental speed record.
When Alice returned to the White House, Edith was shocked by her appearance. The twenty-one-year-old girl had lost twenty pounds. Edith confided to Kermit, “Alice is looking very careworn and troubled about something. She will not say what is wrong.”3 Alice brooded alone about her marital future.
Back in Tokyo, the foreign minister, Komura, was being severely criticized for not having wrested an indemnity from Russia. By contrast, Komura regarded the Taft-Katsura agreement—made while he’d been in the United States—as a good bargain. In one quick meeting, Japan had received concrete U.S. support for the tri
ple alliance “as if a treaty had been signed.” Why not publicize this bargain to offset the indemnity criticism? In fact, historians suspect that the Foreign Ministry leaked the following sensational description of the secret Taft-Katsura agreement to the government-friendly newspaper, Kokumin, on November 4, 1905:
The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is in fact a Japanese-Anglo-American alliance. We may be sure that when once England became our ally, America also became party to the agreement. Owing to peculiar national conditions America cannot make any open alliance, but we should bear in mind that America is our ally though bound by no formal treaty…. The majority of America, under the leadership of the world statesman President Roosevelt, will deal with her Oriental problems in cooperation with Japan and Great Britain.4
Roosevelt must have felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is in fact a Japanese-Anglo-American alliance! But luckily for Roosevelt, who could have been impeached for making a secret diplomatic partnership, Americans couldn’t make sense of the Kokumin article, as only Roosevelt and Taft were aware how true that line was. (Roosevelt had kept even Minister Griscom in the dark.)
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