ABSTRACT
Hiram Johnson became the governor of California in 1911 at a time when legislative expression in the state was influenced by the Republican president, William Howard Taft. The year 1910 in California saw the emergence of a political personality who was to have great influence on the future of the Japanese in California. This was Hiram W. Johnson, a native California attorney whose father, Grove Johnson, had been one of the advocates for Japanese exclusion during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hiram Johnson had some idea that the newly installed Wilson administration would ask him to put into abeyance any anti-Japanese legislation, as had the Taft administration. Although he attempted to dissuade Hiram Johnson from allowing the passage of the alien land bill, he made little effort to force the hand of the California legislature. The dominant rationale for an alien land law in California was that the Japanese were allegedly buying all the choice farm and orchard land.
