Wayne Patterson Quotations

Since emigration to Mexico was illegal and carried out without government permission, the immigrants initially had no passports. A competent foreign office, moreover, would never have allowed its people to go to a place like the Yucatan where labor conditions were terrible.

From all of our records and correspondence with EPD, they have done that.

Korean immigration to Mexico in the spring of 1905 led directly to the Japanese takeover of Korea six months later.

As the numbers of Japanese in California increased, there were increasing calls for Japanese to be excluded, as the Chinese had been excluded in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act.

This anticipated package of spending should go a long way to saving lives and helping make the back-bone of our economy still more efficient.

Foolishly, the Korean government had failed to post diplomats in Mexico and Hawaii to protect its immigrants.

The lack of emigration rules and regulations allowed Japan to argue for a temporary halt to emigration to Hawaii in its quest to prevent passage of a Japanese exclusion act.

All this had been accomplished without giving the appearance of bullying Korea that could raise questions in the United States about Japan's true intentions. In short, Japan could plausibly cite humanitarian concern for the welfare of overseas Koreans that would on the surface appear to be legitimate.