<P> In 1912, the people of Japan sent 3,020 cherry trees to the United States as a gift of friendship . First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Helen Herron Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassador, planted the first two cherry trees on the northern bank of the Tidal Basin . These two original trees are still standing today at the south end of 17th Street . Workmen planted the remainder of the trees around the Tidal Basin and East Potomac Park . </P> <P> American Protestant missionaries were very active in Japan, even though they made relatively few converts . However they did set up organizations such as universities and civic groups . Historian John Davidann argues that the evangelical American YMCA missionaries linked Protestantism with nationalism, even suggesting that Americans were God's chosen people . They wanted converts to choose "Jesus over Japan". The Christians in Japan, although small minority, held a strong connection to the ancient "bushido" tradition of warrior ethics that undergirded Japanese nationalism . </P> <P> Both the U.S. and Japan fought on the Allied side . Japan's military took control of German bases in China and the Pacific, and in 1919 with U.S. approval was given a League of Nations mandate over the German islands north of the equator, with Australia getting the rest . The U.S. did not want any mandates . </P> <P> However, there was a sharp conflict between Japan on the one hand and China, Britain and the U.S. over Japan's Twenty - One Demands made on China in 1915 . These demands forced China to acknowledge Japanese possession of the former German holdings and its economic dominance of Manchuria, and had the potential of turning China into a puppet state . Washington expressed strongly negative reactions to Japan's rejection of the Open Door Policy . In the Bryan Note issued by Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan on March 13, 1915, the U.S., while affirming Japan's "special interests" in Manchuria, Mongolia and Shandong, expressed concern over further encroachments to Chinese sovereignty . </P>

A rivalry developed between japan and the united states over cuba