Peter T Young

Common Law

April 29, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Times

Ushi and Kame Teruya emigrated from Okinawa in the early-1900s and settled on the Big Island’s Hāmākua coast where they worked for the sugar plantation before becoming independent sugar growers. The couple had six children – four boys and two girls.

Three brothers, Albert, Herman and Wallace, dreamed of creating a successful business in the ‘land of opportunity’ which Hawai‘i was to thousands of immigrants and their offspring.

In 1929, Albert, seeing no opportunity to improve his bleak life on the plantation, was the first to leave to work in Honolulu. Wallace followed a year later, and the rest of the family moved to Honolulu in 1933.

They lived in the Kapiʻolani district, where the Holiday Mart store is now located. The area was swamp land where many people farmed.

They started out working in restaurants. The Great Depression was on, and one benefit of restaurant work was that it provided room and board plus wages. The brothers worked 14 hours a day, but the enthusiasm of youth fueled by a dream of something better kept them going.

In 1935, the three brothers pooled their savings and bought the lunch counter/soda fountain at a downtown drug store for $600 and named it the T&W Lunchroom.

Three years later, in partnership with their cousin, Kame Uehara, with whom Albert had first lived in Honolulu, they opened ‘Times Grill’ at 635 Kapiʻolani Boulevard, offering 24-hour service.

The name ‘Times’ expresses a progressive attitude: “Keeping up with the times.” In addition, Times was easily pronounced by non-English speaking immigrants and it fit easily on a small sign.

Herman’s interest was in grocery stores; while a student at McKinley High School, from which he graduated in 1938, he would rush home after school and gather up vegetables and eggs his parents had raised. Herman’s dream was to open his own store, and he wanted Albert and Wallace to be his partners.

Two years later, Pearl Harbor was attacked. Herman and Wallace volunteered to serve in the US Army. They served with the most decorated infantry regiment of World War II – the 442d Regimental Combat Team.

Sgt. Herman Teruya, while charging up an Italian hill occupied by crack German soldiers made the supreme sacrifice (he died 3-months before his 25th birthday.) After the war, Wallace returned to Honolulu to resume his activities that began before the war.

In 1947, recognizing restaurant business is long hours, even after-hours, with bars and drinking involved, and after considering opening a variety store, Albert and Wallace thought there was more opportunity in the grocery business. So they sold Times Grill to a former employer at the Kewalo Inn, who had just returned from a California internment camp.

Albert conceded that Herman’s dream of opening a market played a part in their decision to open a market instead of a variety store. They began methodically learning the grocery business.

They got involved in different aspects of the business, working for suppliers, working for another supermarket, learning all the aspects of the grocery business so when they opened their own business, they had a broad perspective of all the different departments.

Wallace worked in Amfac’s grocery warehouse and at Tom, Dick and Harry’s market on Kapahulu. Albert worked at Sears, where he learned how a big company operates and about customer service.

On April 29, 1949, with the help of friends and family who helped stock shelves, they opened the first Times Supermarket, the McCully store at 1772 South King Street. That first store was small by today’s standards, but it was modern, well-stocked and air-conditioned.

When the family went on vacations to the Mainland, part of the itinerary was always checking out supermarkets. They would stop at every market they saw and pulled into the parking lot and see if there were any new ideas they could use in Hawai‘i.

In 1956, they opened their second store, in Wai‘alae-Kahala, which they dedicated to Herman. They put up a plaque to show they appreciated the ideas and dreams he had shared with them: “Dedicated in Memory of Herman T Teruya, Sergeant, USA, 1919-1944.”

Times has grown to include 24-supermarket locations which includes 17-Times locations, 5-Big Save Markets, a small-format supermarket on the East Side of Oahu (Shima’s Supermarket,) a fine wine + specialty foods shop (Fujioka’s Wine Times) and 12-pharmacy locations.

In 2002, Times was sold to California-based PAQ Inc, which owns and operates a chain of supermarkets in Central California and Hawai‘i. (Lots of information here is from Times, Chapman, Congressional Record and 100th Battalion.)

Times-first store-King & McCully-1949-(times)

Times Grill Ad-Honolulu Record-August 3, 1950

Wallace Teruya and Albert Teruya in aTimes Super Market-(times)

Wallace Teruya, left, and Albert Teruya broke ground for one of their Times Super Markets-(times)

April 28, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Pan-Pacific Union

The first gathering from different Pacific countries met in Hawai‘i on August 2-20, 1920 in the First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference. Later, the First Pan-Pacific Educational Conference was held in Honolulu, August 11-24, 1921. About this time the Bureau of American Republics was being organized into the Pan-American Union at Washington, DC.

“The Pan-Pacific Union, representing the lands about the greatest of oceans, is supported by appropriations from Pacific governments. It works chiefly through the calling of conferences, for the greater advancement of, and cooperation among, all the races and peoples of the Pacific.” (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, December 1924)

“In the beginning, the union may with justice be acclaimed the handiwork of one man, Alexander Hume Ford. He it was who in 1908 translated an idealistic dream of a brotherhood of Pacific races into an equally idealistic but more substantial organization dedicated to the furtherance of interracial good will and amity.”

“He it was who, after a long battle to gain the support of an at first skeptical Hawaii to the new Pan-Pacific Union visited the capitals of the oriental countries, the Australasian states, Canada and the United States, gaining pledges of support for the new movement from statesmen wherever he went.”

“And again it has been Ford who has fought for legislative appropriations to carry on the work, Ford who has personally fostered and built up a strong spirit of mutual respect and friendship among the diversified nationalities of Hawai‘i”. (Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, July 1922)

‘Pan-Pacific Union’ was the local expression of the larger ‘Hands-around-the-Pacific’ movement, which embraced all countries in and about the vast western ocean – the future theatre of the world’s greatest activities. (The Friend, May 1, 1918)

Ford’s “‘The Mid-Pacific Magazine,’ published at the Cross-Roads of the Pacific, (served as a) Pan-Pacific publication, presenting monthly interesting facts, fictions, poetry and general articles concerning the lands in and bordering on the great ocean.”

The projected calling of a Pan-Pacific conference to meet in Hawaiʻi, the establishment of a Pan-Pacific commercial college in Honolulu and the project of a Pan-Pacific peace exposition here after the war was launched by a number of influential business men. (Mid-Pacific Magazine, 1918)

A Pan-Pacific commercial college was considered one of the best means to bring Hawaiʻi into closer communion with the countries of the Far East while the exposition and general conference would create a sentiment in the countries of the Pacific to make the Pacific independent in its resources and make Hawaiʻi a real cross-road of the Pacific. (Oregon News, June 26, 1918)

In 1924, the Mary Castle Estate allowed the Pan-Pacific Research Institute to use her former home, Puʻuhonua, in Mānoa for University of Hawai‘i student and other use to “tackle the scientific problems of the Pacific peoples, especially those of food production, protection and conservation.”

“The assistant students will, it is expected, attend the University of Hawai‘i, where they will take their degrees. Two such students from the mainland now with scientific party here, are expected to be the first of such entries in the University of Hawaii with others to follow from lands across the Pacific.”

“The gift will be used as the nucleus of the Pan-Pacific University, for which charter was granted some years ago. This will be graduate university chiefly for research work.”

“The chief work of the Pan-Pacific Research Institute will be along lines of research study of food resources of Pacific lands and of the ocean itself. It will be entirely Pan-Pacific Institute connected with no other body but cooperating with kindred bodies in all Pacific lands. It will be neither American, Hawaiian nor Japanese, but governed by scientists from all Pacific regions.”

“Conferences are being held with the heads of several delegations already here from Pacific lands, and cable invitations have been sent to others to hurry on and take part in the deliberations as to the work the institute shall undertake for the peoples of the Pacific area.” (Bulletin of the Pan Pacific Union, September 1924)

In the following 16-years the Pan-Pacific Union became a sort of early “think tank” capable of providing “perfect quiet for study, remote from disturbances, with ample room for visiting scientists to live and work.”

Many other institutions were happy to cooperate. The Bishop Museum lodged research fellows there, often for a year at a time. There was one charge for the lodgers: a visitor was expected to give at least one of the weekly public lectures.

A Junior Science Council was added. In 1933 Ford wrote that “twenty students of all races and from many localities, members of the Pan-Pacific Student’s Club who are attending the University of Hawai‘i, are occupying the barn and carriage house in a cooperative housekeeping arrangement and working out in their own way ideas which may promote happier international relations.” (Robb & Vicars)

The big house was finally torn down in 1941. The other associated structures lay empty, and gradually they disintegrated. Termites had long been a problem.

A combination of lack of attention to administrative detail, inadequate long-term funding arrangements, declining governmental support (compounded by the global economic depression,) and, perhaps above all, a shift in support on the part of Hawai‘i’s socio-economic leaders from the Pan-Pacific Union to the new Institute of Pacific Relations, resulted in the group’s slow decline.

By the advent of WW II, Pan-Pacific Union had withered into insignificance and, with Ford himself in rapidly declining health, it simply disappeared.

This does not mean the Pan-Pacific Union and Ford were at last irrelevant. (UH) As a local newspaper editorialized at the time of Ford’s death in 1946, he “did more than any other man to acquaint the whole wide world with the importance of Hawai‘i in the Pacific theater.” (Honolulu Advertiser, October 18, 1946; UH)

Pan-Pacific Union-1921

April 27, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Jones Act

It’s called the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. The Act was introduced by Senator Wesley Jones from Washington, and thus carried his name.

The Jones Act is part of the post-World War I years, when the vulnerability of US shipping to German U-boats was still fresh in the public’s mind, to maintain a “dependable” merchant fleet for the next “national emergency” – as well as promote US shipping interests. (WSJ)

Part of the act deals with ‘coastwise (or domestic) trade’ – essentially the term applies to a voyage that beginning at any point within the US and delivering a type of commercial cargo to any other point within the US. (Maritime Law Center)

Another related term is ‘cabotage’ – this initially referred to shipping along coastal routes, port to port; now it is defined as the “transportation of passengers and goods within the same country” and “law or policy protecting transporters of passengers and goods within a country from competition from foreign carriers.” (American Heritage Dictionary)

The threshold question here is whether the carriage involves a move of an item of “merchandise” from one coastwise point to another when any part of the journey by sea or by land and sea occurs by vessel. If so, the movement is coastwise trade.

Merchandise is essentially any object, whether valuable or not, whether privately owned or owned by the US Government or by a state government or subdivision thereof, other than the carrying vessel’s own equipment and consumable supplies. (King)

The Jones Act was designed to protect the domestic shipping industry. It states that only ships made in the US and flying the country’s flags can deliver goods between US ports.

That means that a cargo ship filled with goods from China can only make one stop in the US at a time. It can’t stop in Hawaii to exchange goods before heading to Los Angeles. (Bussewitz)

This limitation is not new. After passage of the Constitution in 1789, the First Congress promptly exercised the sovereign powers of the US to protect the US merchant marine fleet from foreign flag competition in its domestic maritime trades.

The new Congress imposed a tax on foreign vessels operating in the domestic trades at a rate that, as a practical matter, precluded them from competing with the domestic merchant marine in those trades. Then, in 1817, Congress expressly prohibited foreign vessels from operating in the coastwise trades.

From 1817 to 1866, the US maritime cabotage laws prohibited the transportation of merchandise “from one port of the United States to another port of the United States in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power.” (McGeorge)

The Jones Act revamped the US shipping laws governing cabotage, ship mortgages, seamen’s personal injury claims and more in the immediate aftermath of World War I. (King)

However, the bulk of the discussion on the Act deals with coastwise trade and cabotage and the fact that the law requires that all goods traded between US ports be transported by US-owned, US-built, US-flagged and at least 75 percent US-crewed ships. (Wilson)

The US is not alone in establishing and enforcing cabotage laws. Most trading nations of the world, according to Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD,) have or have had cabotage laws of some kind. (GAO)

But folks now-a-days, especially in the Islands, are suggesting the Act is inhibiting free trade – which results in higher prices for shipping (adding to the cost of almost everything we buy in the Islands.)

According to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service, the cost of a US-manufactured ship is about four times that of foreign competition, and crew costs for “Jones Act–eligible” vessels are several times higher than foreign counterparts. These higher operating costs make shipping between US ports as much as three times the rate of shipping to a foreign port. (Wilson)

The “significant measurable US import restraint on services is in the transportation sector. Complete liberalization of oceanborne domestic water transport (i.e. repeal of the Jones Act) results in a $656 million net welfare gain ….”

“More conservative estimates of foreign-cost advantages under free-trade conditions change the model results, showing significantly less import penetration in the US market and smaller welfare gains. Relaxing the domestic construction requirement alone is estimated to generate $261 million in net welfare gains …” (US International Trade Commission, 2002)

Another way to say the above is that “repealing the Jones Act would lower shipping costs by about 22 percent.” (Congressional Record)

By shutting out foreign competition, the law limits shipping capacity and inflates US freight rates. Like most forms of protectionism, it benefits a few (primarily labor unions and US shipbuilders) to the detriment of many.

US islands, such as Hawaiʻi (along with the state of Alaska,) feel the effects of the Jones Act more than most localities. (Bloomberg)

Jones Act waivers were granted during Hurricane Katrina due to the significant disruption in the production and transportation of petroleum and/or refined petroleum products in the region during that emergency and the impact this had on national defense. (USCG)

Some suggest waivers are evidence of the negative impacts of the law, but also say ending the Jones Act shouldn’t be a unilateral move. Dozens of other nations have similar protectionist laws, and the US should only allow competition from ships that are registered to nations that agree to reciprocal rollbacks. (Bloomberg)

Jones Act-Bloomberg

April 26, 2016 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

‘Righteous and Honorable Diplomat’

“Europe, 1940-41, was a place and time of too few heroes. The world had begun a journey down an unalterable path to horror. …”

“But, in the face of those horrors, there were many who were courageous, who acted selflessly, who saved lives — not for any honor or reward, but simply because they could not act any other way. One man who possessed that courage was Hiram Bingham IV.” (Denise Merrill, Conn Sec of State)

Hiram Bingham IV (known as ‘Harry’) was part of an ‘underground railroad,’ engaged in smuggling people out of Europe. People who belonged to this conspiracy were filing in and out of his house as though they were on conveyor belts. Harry Bingham was participating in discussions of all sorts of illegal activities. (Robert Kim Bingham)

“I do want you to know that Hiram Bingham had me (when I was a 15-year old boy in Marseille working for the Quakers) into his office and told me how he would issue my family a visa to the US after we had obtained the release of my father from the Gurs Concentration Camp.”

“I could write a treatise about what Consul Hiram Bingham did to save refugees during his posting as US consul at the American Consulate in Marseille, France in the 1940-1941 period. He definitely helped to save my life and that of my parents and sister.” (Survivor Ralph Hockley)

“I owe my life, literally, to Hiram Bingham IV, who issued US immigration visas to my grandmother, Anna Ginsburg, grandfather, Marcel Ginsburg and to Helene Sylvia Ginsburg, who would become my mother later in her life. She was 18 at the time.”

“The three fled Antwerp, their home, on May 10, 1940, the day Germany invaded and occupied Belgium. They traveled, by car, to Paris where they hoped to spend the war. It was not to be. As the Germans neared Paris, my relatives escaped west, to Bordeaux.”

“According to the stamps in my mother’s Belgian passport from that period, the three received Immigration Visas from US vice consul Hiram Bingham in Marseille on September 12.”

“After that, they received French exit visas in Perpignan on September 14. Then back in Marseille, they received Portuguese and Spanish transit visas. They crossed from Cerbère into Spain, reaching Barcelona on September 20 and Lisbon the next day. … The two married in 1942. I was born three years later in Manhattan.” (Jane Friedman)

“Of the three of my family he saved in 1941 in Marseilles I am the last one alive and I write this with trembling fingers and many a tear. May his name be honored for ever. (He) saved my Mother, my sister and I.”

“Without him we would not have been able to avoid the concentration camp to which we were assigned two days later. He provided us with a ‘Nansen Passport’ because we no longer held citizenship in any country, and therefore had no papers.”

“He risked a great deal to do this. I still have the document. We cannot honor him enough, and not that many whom he saved are still around to pay him tribute. I am grateful every day. … Thank you.” (Survivor Elly Sherman)

“As vice consul, Hiram Bingham was in charge of issuing visas – visas that could quite literally mean the difference between life and death. Bingham began issuing visas in June of 1940 to Jews and political refugees alike, on occasion even sheltering them in his home.”

“He did so because he simply believed in his heart that it was the right thing to do and the only thing his conscience would allow. However, his actions were not in accord with the official policies of the United States. Germany, at that time, was not our enemy.”

“Also, to assist in the smuggling of refugees was a violation of his orders and the laws governing France. When those who were desperate to escape were refused by American consulates in other French cities, they began, in increasing numbers to turn to Bingham in Marseilles.”

“It is impossible to determine the exact number, but during his relatively brief service in Marseilles, Hiram Bingham was directly or indirectly responsible for saving the lives of perhaps 2000 or more people.”

“Some were or would become famous – Leon Feuchtwanger, Franz Werfel, Alma Mahler Werfel, Heinrich and Golo Mann, son and brother of Thomas Mann, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, Andre Masson, Nobel Laureate Otto Meyerhof, Konrad Heiden, Hannah Arendt, and others.” (Denise Merrill, Conn Sec of State)

“Harry Bingham did more than issue visas. He was actively involved in rescue operations – spiriting threatened persons out of the hands of the Vichy police.”

“In one well known incident he helped Lion Feuchtwanger escape from an internment camp and hid him together with Heinrich Mann and Golo Mann – Thomas Mann’s brother and son – in his apartment. He helped Varian Fry through numerous scrapes with the Vichy police by using his consular post to imply US interest and concern.”

Survivor Author Thomas Mann: “I want particularly to be able to thank you personally for your sympathetic help to the many men and women, including members of my own family, who have turned to you for assistance…Yours Very Sincerely, Thomas Mann.”

“Many more were ordinary human beings fleeing tyranny. Harry’s saving work would end in the summer of 1941, when he was relieved of his post and transferred first to Lisbon and later to Argentina. His career in the diplomatic service ended in 1945.”

“He has been honored by many groups and organizations including the United Nations, the State of Israel, and by a traveling exhibit entitled ‘Visas for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats.’” (Denise Merrill, Conn Sec of State)

Simon Wiesenthal Center video Tribute to Hiram (Harry) Bingham IV:

Hiram Bingham IV was the son of Hiram Bingham III (who rediscovered the ‘Lost City’ of Machu Picchu (he has been noted as a source of inspiration for the ‘Indiana Jones’ character;)) grandson of Hiram Bingham II (born in Hawaiʻi and was a missionary in the Gilbert Islands;) and great grandson of Hiram Bingham I (leader of the Pioneer Company of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Hawaiʻi.) (Hiram Bingham I is my great-great-great grandfather.)