Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Jack Roosevelt Robinson

He was born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia, the fifth, and last child of Mallie and Jerry Robinson. Jackie was a four-sport athlete in high school and college; during a spectacular athletic career at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA,) he had starred in basketball, football, track, and baseball (and became the first student to earn varsity letters in four sports: football (1939 and 1940,) basketball (1940 and 1941,) track (1940) and baseball (1940.)

Jackie found a job in the winter of 1941 in Honolulu, where he played in the semipro Hawaii Senior Football League for the Honolulu Bears. He stayed at Palama Settlement, rather than with the team in Waikiki (the hotels barred him entry because of the color of his skin.) Jackie left Honolulu on December 5, 1941, just two days before the Japanese attacked. On April 15, 1947 Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers in their opening-day game against the Boston Braves. In so doing, he became the first African-American to play in the major leagues since an abortive attempt at integration in 1884.

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‘Unknown Negro Mess Man’

The Navy Board of Awards was established on February 12, 1942. A Navy spokesman recommended that the ‘unknown Negro mess man’ be considered for an award (the sole commendation to an African American.) The unknown Negro mess man was named to the 1941 Honor Roll of Race Relations – it was ‘Doris Miller.’ Doris Miller was born on October 12, 1919, the third of four sons to Connery and Henrietta Miller in Waco, Texas. He was named for the midwife present at his birth.

Doris enlisted in the US Navy and was assigned to the battleship West Virginia in 1940. The morning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “Dorie Miller went up and physically picked up the captain and brought him down to the first aid station. And then he went back and manned a .50-caliber machine gun.” On May 27, 1942 in a ceremony at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Chester W Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, personally recognized Miller aboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise.

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Salvaging Oklahoma

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was planned as the initial step of their Pacific campaign. At the time of the attack, the Oklahoma was outboard of the battleship Maryland, alongside Ford Island. She was struck on the port side by four to nine torpedoes, which caused the ship to capsize quickly and come to rest on the bottom. The righting and refloating of the capsized battleship Oklahoma was the largest of the Pearl Harbor salvage jobs, and the most difficult.

Refloating operations were commenced by installing four independent patches in breaches of the hull. To right her, the first pull began on March 8, 1943, the final pull was on May 20, 1943 – it took 74-days to turn the ship over. The Oklahoma was later sold to the Moore Drydock Co of Oakland, California, for scrapping. On May 17, 1947, while under tow, the Oklahoma sank 540-miles out of Pearl Harbor with no one on board.

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Yokohama Specie Bank

The government-supported Yokohama Specie Bank, founded in Japan in 1880, was international in origin. It developed an extensive network of branches. The bank was named after the ‘specie’ (Latin for “in kind,”) a silver coin (as distinguished from bullion or paper money) used as an international currency for settling payments among traders. Japanese banking came to Hawaiʻi on August 8, 1892, with the opening of the Honolulu branch of the Yokohama Shokin Giriko, the Yokohama Specie Bank, Ltd.

Although the Yokohama Specie Bank conducted a merchant bank business in Hawaiʻi, its principal function remained that of transacting foreign exchange business. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941,) the building was confiscated by the Alien Custodian Agency. During the war, the first floor was used for storing confiscated possessions, while the basement was converted into a 250-man drunk tank.

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Oklahoma

In 1911 Congress authorized the building of two battleships, the Nevada and the Oklahoma, to be a modern symbol of the power of the United States (These two battleships were to be the first to burn oil as fuel instead of coal.) Oklahoma (BB-37) was laid down October 26, 1912, christened in March 23, 1914 and commissioned on May 2, 1916.

The Oklahoma, a 27,500-ton battleship, needed 2,166 sailors and marines to function properly. She could travel 20,000 miles without refueling. She carried ten 14-inch guns. She was based at Pearl Harbor for patrols and exercises, and was moored in Battleship Row on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked. Oklahoma took 3 torpedo hits almost immediately and capsized. Righting and refloating her took 74-days. Too old and badly damaged to be worth returning to service, Oklahoma was formally decommissioned in September 1944.