Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT • 89
GHQ/SCAP continued until the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into
force on 28 April 1952. See also PACIFIC WAR; WORLD WAR II.
GENEVA NAVAL CONFERENCE (1927). Held from 28 June to 4
August 1927, the Geneva Naval Conference was a failed attempt on
the part of the United States, Great Britain, and Japan to extend the
naval limitations agreements originally reached at the Washington
Conference of 1921–1922. In the years after the Washington Conference
of 1921–1922, Japan and Great Britain had concentrated their efforts
on building those vessels that remained outside the system of
naval limitation, namely cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. U.S.
President Calvin Coolidge—who was no less fiscally minded than
was Congress—had refrained from building these vessels, and by
1927, was alarmed at the prospect of losing parity with Britain and superiority
over Japan. Not wishing to be drawn into an arms race, President
Herbert Hoover sought instead to fix limits for auxiliary craft,
and he invited Britain, Japan, France, and Italy to meet in Geneva in
the summer of 1927. The Geneva Naval Conference was a conspicuous
failure. France and Italy refused to attend. The American and
British delegates wrangled over large versus small cruisers, and the
conference broke down because of their inability to compromise.
Convinced of the need to avoid a ruinous naval arms race with the
United States and Great Britain, Plenipotentiary Admiral Makoto
Saitō made every effort to make the conference a success, mediating
between his British and American counterparts. He had entered the
conference informed by the objective of avoiding any increase in the
actual existing strength of each power, and aimed at a 70-percent ration
in surface vessels vis-à-vis the United States and Great Britain.
The American–British split threatened these objectives. This was amply
evidenced by an immense naval authorization bill that the United
States Navy General Board submitted to the House of Representatives
in 1929. Although the bill was ultimately withdrawn, it called for the
construction (over a nine-year period) of 25 heavy cruisers, nine destroyer
flotilla leaders, 32 submarines, and five aircraft carriers.
GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT (1908). In February 1908, President
Theodore Roosevelt and Japanese ambassador Viscount Aoki Keikichi
concluded the so-called gentlemen’s agreement. A cooperative