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

54 • BLACK SHIPS
BLACK SHIPS (IN JAPANESE, KUROFUNE). A widely used
Japanese term describing the four ships commanded by U.S. Navy
Commodore Matthew Perry when he first arrived in Japan in July
1853. Two of the four ships, the Mississippi and the Susquehanna,
were steam frigates and produced black smoke, while all four ships
had darkened hulls. As these ships were much larger and potentially
more dangerous than any previous vessels in Japanese waters, “black
ships” was both a literal reference to color and a symbolic reference
to death. See also TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE.
BONIN ISLANDS. See OGASAWARA ISLANDS.
BORAH, WILLIAM (1865–1940). Senator William E. Borah of Idaho
was elected to the Senate in 1907, where he served until his death in
February 1940. A powerful orator, he first took interest in foreign affairs
in the aftermath of World War I, emerging as a die-hard isolationist
who bitterly opposed American entry into the League of Nations.
The “Idaho lion,” as he was known, firmly believed that the
United States must avoid foreign entanglements. He was also convinced
that the United States ought to set a moral example to the
world.
Borah was an unpredictable character. For instance, in 1921, he introduced
to Congress a resolution urging disarmament upon his own
country and the other powers (most notably Britain and Japan). Having
set the stage for the Washington Conference of 1921–1922, he
subsequently denounced that conference for having gone beyond the
issue of naval arms limitation, to include Far Eastern political issues.
Appointed chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in 1924, Borah championed the cause of isolationism. In
1927, he nonetheless came out in support of the Kellogg–Briand
Pact, which attempted to outlaw war. Borah once remarked that it
was “the only kind of a treaty the United States could sign” with the
rest of the world.
Borah did not, however, abandon his isolationist instincts. In 1934,
he insisted that America would not be isolated economically, “but in
all matters political, in all commitments of any nature or kind . . . we
have been free, we have been independent, we have been isolationist.”
Along with Senator Key Pittman in 1935, Borah authored a bill re-