d States did nothing to prevent the development of hostile US-Japanese relations. There were reasons for this. In the early 20th century California introduced race laws to prevent the settlement of Japanese immigrants and from 1906-8 the mass migration from Japan had been halted. American policy in the 1920s tended not merely to perpetuate Japanese-American hostility but to poison the relationship between Japan and Britain too. At Versailles, Wilson antagonized the Japanese by refusing to write a condemnation of racism(which had bearings on the situation in California) into the covenant of the League. Under President Hoover, the American government continued to play a world role, with the object of preserving peace. But its actions were usually counterproductive. Hoover refused to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which destroyed Japans American trade, 15 percent of its exports. That combined with the London treaty, which it signed reluctantly, completed Japans alienation from the West, and determined its rulers, or at any rate the military cliques which in effect ran Japanese army and naval policy, to go it on their own. There followed the 1931 Japanese occupation of Manchuria and, in 1933, Japans departure from the League of Nations. Hoover made no positive moves to oppose Japanese expansion. When Roosevelt took over, he made matters worse. Hoover had helped to plan a world economic conference, to be held in London June 1933. It might have persuaded the have not powers like Japan and Germany that there were alternatives to fighting for a living . But on July 3 Roosevelt -5-canceled it. Thereafter the United States did indeed move into isolation, though it was not the only great and civilized power to do so in the 1930s. Nor was its move out of want but necessity. Among the victors of World War One, fear of a second, which would invalidate all their sacrifices, was universal. In the United States, the Depression, coming aft...
