As Europe was rushing headlong into war, the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco sought to embrace peace from the Pacific coast of an isolationist America. Despite the sinking of the passenger liner, the Lusitania, by German U-Boats with the loss of 128 American lives just a few months after the fair's opening, the American public and its political leaders were in no mood for war. The San Francisco exposition, which ran from 20 February to 4 December 1915, celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal, seen as the key to future economic prosperity through enhanced sea connections between the US and Asia as well as America's two coasts, with San Francisco, the financial centre and largest city on the American Pacific coast, taking a leading role. For San Franciscans, the fair was an opportunity to show off their glittering city, one that had been brought to its knees by the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires that destroyed vast swathes of the ‘City by the Bay.’

The Japanese, like their American friends, viewed peace in the Pacific as a necessary counterbalance to the war enveloping Europe. At a diplomatic function in San Francisco immediately prior to the exposition opening, Admiral Baron Shigetō Dewa, one of Japan's most senior military commanders, enthusiastically proclaimed the PPIE a ‘Congress of International Peace,’ articulating the widely-held view that the canal would bring ‘increasing communication and intercourse among the peoples of the world,’ and provide ‘a real contribution to the cause of peace’ (San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Feb. 1915, p. 9).