The immigration problem between Japan and the United States was even more serious than that of the open door and the integrity of China. The teeming population of Japan was swarming beyond her island empire, and Korea and Manchuria did not seem to offer sufficient opportunity. The number of Japanese immigrants to this country, which before the Spanish War had never reached 2000 in any one year, now rose rapidly until in 1907 it reached 30,226. American sentiment, which had been favorable to Japan during her war with Russia, began to change. The public and particularly the laboring classes in the West, where most of the Japanese remained, objected to this increasing immigration, while a number of leaders of American opinion devoted themselves to converting the public to a belief that the military ambitions of Japan included the Philippines and possibly Hawaii, where the Japanese were a formidable element in the population. As a consequence there arose a strong demand that the principles of the Chinese Exclusion Act be applied to the Japanese. The situation was made more definite by the fact that the board of education in San Francisco ruled in 1906 that orientals should receive instruction in special schools. The Japanese promptly protested, and their demand for their rights under the treaty of 1894 was supported by the Tokio Government. The international consequences of thus discriminating against the natives of so rising and self-confident a country as Japan, and one conscious of its military strength, were bound to be very different from the difficulties encountered in the case of China. The United States confronted a serious situation, but fortunately did not confront it alone. Australia and British Columbia, similarly threatened by Japanese immigration, were equally opposed to it.