WARS
1894-95, First Sino-Japanese War: China and Japan at war over Korea; China is defeated. 1904-05, Russo Japanese War: Japan decisively defeats Czarist Russian army and sinks their Baltic fleet. News reporters gather world wide, fascinated by the spectacle of massive military engagement between a major continental European power and an ascendant Asian small island nation.

The US, a rising global power with interests in the Pacific, inserts itself into the peace negotiations ending the Russo-Japanese War. President Theodore Roosevelt invites Japanese and Russian negotiators to the U.S. Naval station at Portsmouth, New Hampshire and brokers the Peace Treaty, for which Roosevelt wins the Nobel Prize, 1906.

When in 1905 the San Francisco School Board attempts to segregate Japanese school children in the same way already done with Chinese children, the Japanese American community and the Japanese government create a firestorm. President Theodore Roosevelt chastises the California State and city school authorities for not appreciating the dangers of "aggravating this belligerent nation" (Japan, whose Navy "could take the Philippines away from us").

Having quelled the "San Francisco school incident" Theodore Roosevelt persuades Japan to reach a U.S./JAPAN Gentlemen's Agreement in 1907, whereby Japan voluntarily stops issuing passports to laborers wishing to emigrate to the United States.