General | Page 44 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

March 15, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pearl Lochs

The island of Oʻahu is divided into 6 moku (districts), consisting of: ‘Ewa, Kona, Koʻolauloa, Koʻolaupoko, Waialua and Waiʻanae. These moku were further divided into 86 ahupua‘a (land divisions within a moku.)

‘Ewa was divided into 12-ahupua‘a, consisting of (from east to west): Hālawa, ‘Aiea, Kalauao, Waimalu, Waiau, Waimano, Mānana, Waiʻawa, Waipi‘o, Waikele, Hōʻaeʻae and Honouliuli.

‘Ewa was at one time the political center for O‘ahu chiefs. This was probably due to its abundant resources that supported the households of the chiefs, particularly the many fishponds. (Cultural Surveys) ʻEwa was the second most productive taro cultivation area on Oʻahu (just behind Waikīkī.) (Laimana)

The salient feature of ‘Ewa, and perhaps its most notable point of difference, is its spacious coastal plain, surrounding the deep bays (“lochs”) of Pearl Harbor, which are actually the drowned seaward valleys of ‘Ewa’s main streams, Waikele and VVaipi’o.

The Hawaiian name for Pearl Harbor was Ke-awa-lau-o-Pu‘uloa, The-many (lau)-harbors (awa)-of-Pu‘uloa. Pu‘uloa was the rounded area projecting into the sea at the long narrow entrance of the harbor. Another and more poetic name was Awawa-lei, Garland (lei)-of-harbors.

The English name ‘Pearl’ was given to it because of the prevalence of pearl oysters (pipi) in the deep harbor waters. (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

In Hawaiian traditions, Pu‘uloa (Pearl Harbor) consists of three distinct awalau, or lochs, including Kaihuopala‘ai (West Loch), Wai‘awa (Middle Loch) and Komoawa (East Loch). (Nohopapa, KSBE) For some time, Pearl Harbor was also known as Pearl Lochs and Pearl River.

These bays offered the most favorable locality in all the Hawaiian Islands for the building of fishponds and fish traps into which deep-sea fish came on the inflow of tidal waters. (Handy, Handy & Pukui)

In Hawaiian traditions, Pu‘uloa (Pearl Harbor) consists of three distinct awalau, or lochs, including Kaihuopala‘ai (West Loch), Wai‘awa (Middle Loch) and Komoawa (East Loch). (Nohopapa, KSBE)

‘Loch’ is a Scottish and/or Irish term that refers to a lake or bay that is nearly landlocked. So, when and why did the term ‘loch’ come in as names these awalau?

Let’s look back …

Liholiho was the son of Kamehameha I. Upon his father’s death Liholiho became Kamehameha II. Liholiho’s reign was also noted for his efforts to ensure the lasting independence of the Hawaiian kingdom.

In 1823, Liholiho and his favorite wife, Kamāmalu, sailed to England to meet with King George IV, the first Ali‘i to travel to England. King George IV scheduled a meeting for June 21, but it had to be delayed; Liholiho and Kamāmalu became ill. The Hawaiian court had caught measles, to which they had no immunity.

It is believed they probably contracted the disease on their visit to the Royal Military Asylum (now the Duke of York’s Royal Military School).

Virtually the entire royal party developed measles within weeks of arrival, 7 to 10 days after visiting the Royal Military Asylum housing hundreds of soldiers’ children. On the 8th of July the Queen died, a few days later, King Liholiho died. His reign was approximately 5-years.

In 1824, Great Britain sent the bodies of Kamehameha II and his Queen back to Hawai‘i on the HMS Blonde, under the command of Lord Byron.

The British Government took advantage of this opportunity to acquire more detailed information concerning the islands; and to that end, included in the personnel of the ship a party of scientists.

Among these was a Lieut. Charles Malden, a surveyor, who during the stay of the ship, made a comprehensive and extensive survey of several harbors and roadsteads (offshore ship mooring areas).

One of these surveys was a fairly complete charting of the whole of Pearl Harbor, with soundings taken throughout the entrance channel and the three main lochs. The chart resulting from this survey was printed in 1841 by the British Hydrographic Office. (Navy)

Today, that map is also identified as Registered Map #437, Honolulu Harbor, South Coast of O‘ahu. (A copy of it is included in the album associated with this post.) It seems others replicated the names of the lochs of that 1825 map in what we now refer to as Pearl Harbor.

The answer to the previous question of when and why the awalau were called ‘lochs’ comes from the Diary of James Macrae, who was aboard the Blonde and sailed with Malden. Macrae wrote,

“Pearl River is about seven miles west of Hanarura, and is improperly called a river, being rather inlets from the sea, branching off in different directions. There are three chief branches, named by the surveyors, the East, Middle and West Lochs.” (Macrae)

While we are familiar with the East, Middle and West Lochs, there were other areas within Pearl Harbor that were also referred to as lochs: Southeast Loch, West Loch Branch and, later, Magazine Loch, Quarry Loch and Merry Loch.

March 14, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Founders

Founding Fathers. Founders. Fathers. Signers. Framers. Patriots. The list of terms to describe the individuals who ‘founded’ the United States of America can go on and on. (Harvard)

Warren G. Harding popularized ‘Founding Father’ a little over a century ago, in his keynote address at the 1916 Republican National Convention. Harding was a senator from Ohio at the time, and chairman of the convention, which nominated Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes (who ultimately lost to Woodrow Wilson).

As reported by the Richmond Virginian on June 8, 1916, Harding said,

“No political party ever has builded or even can build permanently except in conscientious devotion to abiding principles. Time never alters a fundamental truth.”

“Conditions do change, popular interest is self-assertive, and ‘paramounting’ has its perils, as the Democratic party will bear witness, but the essentials of constructive government and attending progress are abiding and unchanging.”

“For example, we ought to be as genuinely American today as when the founding fathers flung their immortal defiance in the face of old-world oppressions and dedicated a new republic to liberty and justice.”

“We ought to be as prepared for defense as Washington urged amid the anxieties of our national beginning, and Grant confirmed amid the calm reflections of union restored.” This wasn’t the only time Harding used the term.

In 1859, George William Curtis, a popular lecturer and writer of his day, referred to the men who created the Declaration of Independence as ‘fathers,’ when he said,

“Our fathers did not say it, because they did not mean it. They were men who meant what they said, and who said what they meant, and meaning all men, they said all men. They were patriots asserting a principle and ready to die for it, not politicians pettifogging for the presidency”

A few years later (on November 19, 1863) on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania came perhaps the most famous use of the term ‘fathers,’

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

(“Four score and seven” equals eighty-seven, so President Abraham Lincoln (speaking in 1863, at the time of the American Civil War) was referring to 1776. Likewise, his reference to “all men are created equal” takes us to the Declaration of Independence that states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”)

Dictionaries don’t necessarily help in narrowing a list on who a Founding Father is:

Merriam-Webster

founding father (n): 1. an originator of an institution or movement; 2. often capitalized both Fs: a leading figure in the founding of the United States; specifically a member of the American Constitutional Convention of 1787

Oxford English Dictionary

founding (adj): Associated with or marking the establishment of (something specified); that originated or created. Spec. founding father (freq. with capital initials), an American statesman of the Revolutionary period, esp. a member of the American Constitutional Convention of 1787

Safire’s Political Dictionary (1968, 2008)

Founding Fathers: A group of revolutionaries who took their changes on treason to pursue the course of independency, who are today viewed reverently as sage signers of the documents of U.S. freedom.

Some say the term has been applied to the first English settlers in North America, to participants in the Continental Congresses and Constitutional Convention or the “founding generation” that led the United States from the Declaration of Independence onward.

To some, a Founding Father is, more specifically, a signer of the Declaration of Independence (there were 56 signers – who “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”)

In addition, some suggest the framers and/or signers of the US Constitution are the Founding Fathers.

The ‘Founders’ is Not a Gender-based Group

An obvious omission in finding the ‘Founding Fathers’ is that it suggests only men helped found this country. That, of course, is simply not true.

We are reminded of Abigail Adams, wife of the 2nd President of the US, John Adams, and mother of the 6th President of the US, John Quincy Adams. She reminds us of the saying, “Behind every great man is a great woman.”

As she says, “Remember the Ladies.” Abigail Adams signs her letter, “I am your ever faithfull friend”.

In addition, if one were to suggest Paul Revere is a ‘Founding Father’ because of his midnight ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, with the news that British soldiers stationed in Boston were about to march into the countryside northwest of the town, then we would also need to include Sybil Ludington as a ‘Founder;’ she, too, rode a midnight ride to warn Patriots of the coming of the British.

The Founders Were Not Perfect (Neither Are We)

None of the ‘Founders’ were perfect; and, neither are any of us.

For some of the Founders, their deeds were not consistent with their words. For example, many of the Founders were slave owners. While this is abhorrent, the Founders established a system of government that, after much struggle and the violence of the Civil War and the civil rights movement, did lead to legal freedom for all Americans and movement toward equality. (Smithsonian)

Nowadays it seems it is easy and often that others will blame everyone else for everything. And, one fault of character becomes the focus of the judgment of the whole person.

If we continue to judge people of the past by their respective actions or inactions based on the norms of our society today versus theirs, I am confident future generations will look upon all of us and laugh and wonder, ‘What were they thinking?’

Wouldn’t it be nice if, “I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along?” (Rodney King, May 1, 1992)

Broad Expression of the Founders

A challenge of making a list is that lists invariably leave someone out.

And, who makes the list of Founders depends on who you talk to, or what criteria you suggest you use in making your own list. And, unfortunately, views tend to change, as political or social views/issues of the present interfere with the context and commitment of nearly 250-years ago.

More broadly, it may be appropriate to suggest a Founder is anyone who helped bring on the American Revolution, win the war that secured independence, and helped establish the American Republic.

Click the following link to a general summary about the Founders:

Click to access Founders.pdf

March 10, 2024 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Spring Forward

Shortly after contact, there wasn’t always agreement about what time or date it actually was … time-keeping practices varied in the 18th century, depending on circumstances.

In the 1880s, changes were being made in timekeeping practices. Several large nations still recognized prime meridians other than the one through Greenwich, and some continued to differ on the definition of a “day.”

In 1883, the US railroad industry divided the continental US into five (later four) time zones, establishing official time zones with a set standard time within each zone. (National Geographic)

The civil population nevertheless adopted ‘Railroad Time’ almost spontaneously; 85% of US towns of over ten-thousand inhabitants had done so by October 1884.

Hawaiʻi did not adopt standard time until 1896, with various notices published in the papers: “Hawaiian standard time will be ten and one-half hours slow of Greenwich.”

“The half hour is chosen for the reason that the Hawaiian group, while limited in area, is almost centrally on the line between the ten-hour and eleven-hour belt, and the inconvenience of a wide difference between standard and local time is thus avoided.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 9, 1896)

“The meridian adopted, 157 deg 30 min, is not far from central to the group. The Kauai people will be expected to set their local time ahead 8-minutes and Niihau 10-minutes; the Maui people will set back local time on an average four minutes.”

“The Hilo people, if they fall into line, will set back ten minutes, and Kona from 7 to 8 minutes.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 9, 1896)

It was not until 1918 that an Act of Congress set standard time all over the US, as well as daylight savings time. (Howse)

The 1918 act of Congress, ‘To save daylight and to provide standard time, for the United States’ provided for nationwide daylight saving time from March through October.

Congress also determined “That, for the purpose of establishing the standard time of the United States, the territory of continental United States shall be divided into five zones in the manner hereinafter provided. …”

“That the standard time of the first zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Eastern Time; that of the second zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Central Time …”

“…that of the third zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Mountain Time; that of the fourth zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Pacific Time; and that of the fifth zone shall be known and designated as United States Standard Alaska Time.” (Public No 106, approved by Congress March 19, 1918)

“Daylight saving plan was again agitated for these islands the early part of this year, and, in April, on official orders from Washington, the navy department here set their clocks forward an hour, but it did not last long. Cutting a foot off the end of Pat’s blanket to add to its head was found to give no greater length or warmth.” (Thrum)

The daylight saving provision was repealed in 1919, leaving intact the standard time system. (Schmitt & Cox)

Notwithstanding this official acceptance of standard time, many plantations persisted in the use of local time, or their own variations on it. The individual plantations had elected to adopt time systems that varied somewhat from the local times pertinent to the meridians at their centers.

The primary determinant of the difference between one of these plantation times and the pertinent local time was the local time of sunrise. Hence the plantation time systems were essentially daylight saving time systems.

There was no requirement that the difference between a plantation time and either the normal local time of the plantation headquarters or standard time, when that was adopted, be an even half-hour or hour, or that there be but one advance and one retardation of time in a year.

The time on a plantation was, indeed, more likely to be something like 11 minutes ahead or 14 minutes behind standard time, and changes of a few minutes might be made at intervals of only a few weeks.

Standard time was kept in Honolulu, in non-plantation towns, and at ports serving more than one plantation; and social events involving people from more than one plantation were scheduled by what was known as “Honolulu time,” “Hilo time,” etc. (Schmitt & Cox)

In 1933, the Hawaiʻi Legislature decreed daylight saving for the period between the last Sunday of each April and last Sunday of each September, but less than a month later repealed the act.

WWII brought daylight saving back to the Islands.

“(T)he standard time of each zone established pursuant to the Act entitled ‘An Act to save daylight and to provide standard time for the United States’, approved March 19, 1918, as amended, shall be advanced one hour.” (Public Law 403, approved January 20, 1942)

Year-round daylight saving time, one hour ahead of Hawaiian Standard Time, was established in the Territory during World War II by General Order No. 66 of the military governor, taking effect on February 9, 1942. The new time quickly became known as “Hawaiian War Time.” (Schmitt & Cox)

“Daylight saving has given us another hour before the nightly blackout, which begins at 7:30 pm and lasts until 7:00 am. The curfew for pedestrians has been changed from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, but cars are still not allowed on the streets after 7:30 pm. This means no late afternoon or evening meetings of any kind.” (Journal of Nursing, 1942)

With the end of the war and the expiration of War Time on September 30, 1945, Hawai’i reverted (notwithstanding a good deal of debate) to the pre-war standard time; and it was not until 1947 that the change was made to the present system of standard time.

In 1947, the Territorial Legislature permanently returned to the pre-war standard time – however, they also advanced Hawaiian Standard Time by 30 minutes, making it 10 (instead of 10-1/2) hours slower than Greenwich Mean Time, and thus two hours (not 2½) behind Pacific Standard Time. This change became effective the second Sunday of June, 1947. (Schmitt & Cox)

The issue resurfaced in 1966, when the Uniform Time Act of that year mandated daylight saving time during the spring and summer months nationwide unless State legislative bodies specifically exempted their jurisdictions.

Reasoning that Hawai‘i already had year-round partial DST – since 1947, Hawaiian Standard Time had been 31 minutes ahead of sun time in Honolulu – the 1967 Legislature voted to exempt the Islands. (Schmitt & Cox)

In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, effective starting in 2007, that declared daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March (‘spring forward’) and ends on the first Sunday in November (‘fall back’,) with the time changes taking place at 2 am local time.

Today, most on the continent advance their clocks and watches an hour forward, as daylight savings time kicks in.

Dali-The Persistence of Memory-1931

March 8, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Twain and Maui

Mark Twain wrote books about some of his travels (that included a visit to Hawai‘i) … one such, Roughing It. Here are some of his comments about Maui.

We “thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent several weeks there very pleasantly.”

“I still remember, with a sense of indolent luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the Iao Valley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream in the bottom of the gorge–a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdant domes of forest trees.”

“Through openings in the foliage we glimpsed picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with every step of our progress.”

“Perpendicular walls from one to three thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed with varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns.”

“Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining fronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid the turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of gleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling mists, like islands drifting in a fog …”

“… sometimes the cloudy curtain descended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually away till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it—then swept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again.”

“Now and then, as our position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again and hid themselves once more in the foliage.”

“Presently a verdure-clad needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner, and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley.”

“It seemed to me that if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made – therefore, why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump?”

“But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala – which means, translated, ‘the house of the sun.’”

“We climbed a thousand feet up the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and next day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit, where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night.”

“With the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent wonders.”

“The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley below appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished to mossy tufts.”

“Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these things – not down.”

“We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away into the sky above us!”

“It was curious; and not only curious, but aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery.”

“However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, all we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds.”

“Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy.”

“I have spoken of the outside view–but we had an inside one, too. That was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks, half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump …”

“…kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view as they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and only betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to a halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feet down from where they started!”

“It was magnificent sport. We wore ourselves out at it.”

“The crater of Vesuvius, … is a modest pit about a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference.”

“But what are either of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala?”

“I will not offer any figures of my own, but give official ones–those of Commander Wilkes, U.S.N., who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles in circumference!”

“If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for a city like London.”

“It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating in the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger.”

“Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly together, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean …”

“…-not a vestige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy fog).”

“Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor stretched without a break–not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow creases between …”

“… and with here and there stately piles of vapory architecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain–some near at hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote solitudes.”

“There was little conversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech.”

“I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.”

“While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection appeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste …”

“… flinging bars of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring.”

“It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory of it will remain with me always.”

March 5, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

The “Japanese Problem”

Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, Culture, Heritage, Identity … some have suggested that about 100-years ago, folks used “racial” referring more specifically to nationality rather than ethnicity. In other words, the concern then was that a foreign nation was gradually supplanting parts of another.

Never-the-less, at the time, folks were concerned with the growing numbers of foreign nationals, especially Japanese; racial conflicts were developing and the military feared Japanese expansion. Growing immigrant population, including those from Japan started to concern some in the Islands, as well as on the continent.

In response, the Commission of Relations with Japan, appointed by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America retained Professor HA Millis of the University of Kansas who authored the “Japanese Problem in the United States” (1915.)

He “believe(d) in restriction in numbers and in keeping the laborers from immigrating to this country. But once here, the Japanese should not be discriminated against.” (Millis; New York Times)

However, a later incident in Hawaiʻi (1920) is viewed as a catalyst to actions that resulted in The Japanese Exclusion Act to address what were real, as well as imagined conceptions, misconceptions and opinions.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves; let’s look back.

The early Polynesian settlers to Hawaiʻi brought sugar cane with them and demonstrated that it could be grown successfully.

Since it was a crop that produced a choice food product that could be shipped to distant markets, its culture on a field and commercial scale was started as early as 1800 and it continued to grow.

The first commercially-viable sugar plantation, Ladd and Company, was started at Kōloa on Kaua‘i. On July 29, 1835, Ladd obtained a 50-year lease on nearly 1,000-acres of land and established a plantation and mill site in Kōloa.

It was to change the face of Hawai‘i forever, launching an entire economy, lifestyle and practice of monocropping that lasted for over a century. Sugar gradually replaced sandalwood and whaling in the mid-19th century and became the principal industry in the Islands.

Sugar was the dominant economic force in Hawaiʻi for over a century, other plantations soon followed Kōloa. A century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, sugar plantations started to dominate the landscape.

Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system. By 1883, more than 50-plantations were producing sugar on five islands.

A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge; the answer was imported labor. Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants” (providing the legal basis for contract-labor system,) labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America.

The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.) Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawaiʻi increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom. The US Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882 (effective in Hawaiʻi in 1902) closed further immigration of persons of Chinese ancestry to Hawai’i, except for the few individuals who could qualify for an exempt status.

In 1868, approximately 150-Japanese came to Hawaiʻi to work on sugar plantations and another 40 to Guam. This unauthorized recruitment and shipment of laborers, known as the gannenmono (“first year men”,) marked the beginning of Japanese labor migration overseas. (JANM)

In March 1881, King Kalākaua visited Japan during which he discussed with Emperor Meiji Hawaiʻi’s desire to encourage Japanese nationals to settle in Hawaiʻi; this improved the relationship of the Hawaiian Kingdom with the Japanese government. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

The first 943-government-sponsored, Kanyaku Imin, Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi arrived in Honolulu on February 8, 1885. Subsequent government approval was given for a second set of 930-immigrants who arrived in Hawaii on June 17, 1885. More followed.

In 1919, in commemoration of the coronation of Emperor Yoshihito (and a sign of good Japanese-Hawaiian relations,) Japanese in Hawaiʻi offered to construct a modified duplicate of the fountain in Hibiya Park Tokyo in Kapiʻolani Park.

The official presentation of the “Phoenix Fountain” was conducted by Consul General Moroi who announced the fountain was a “testimonial of friendship and equality of the Japanese residing in the Hawaiian Islands.”

One Japanese speaker noted, “We are assembled here to mark a spot of everlasting importance in the annals of the history of the Japanese people of Hawaiʻi.” (It was later replaced and is now known as the Louise Dillingham Memorial Fountain.

But discord was imminent.

Growing immigrant population, including those from Japan, started to concern some, in the Islands, as well as on the continent. Many Americans had begun to look at Japan and the Japanese with deep suspicion.

In 1920, demanding increases in pay, Japanese sugar workers on Oʻahu struck the plantations – approximately 6,000 workers, over three quarters of the labor force, walked off the job (only Oʻahu workers walked off, they relied on neighbor island for support.)

Though the strike was on Oʻahu, its impact was felt across the Islands.

At about this time, Olaʻa Sugar Company was established in Puna on the Island of Hawaiʻi; Juzaburo Sakamaki was hired as the company’s only regular interpreter.

As interpreter, Sakamaki was the only pipeline between the company and the Japanese immigrants who made up the majority of the labor force at Olaʻa Plantation. Sakamaki had sided with management during the labor dispute.

Then, a small item in the June 4, 1920 Honolulu Star Bulletin noted, “The home of a Japanese eight miles from Olaa was blown up with giant powder last night.” The newspaper did not give the name of the victim, but it reported that the man was in a back bedroom at the time and was not killed, even though the front of the house was destroyed. (UC Press)

It turns out the attack was on Sakamaki’s home.

The Territory of Hawaiʻi charged leaders of the Federation of Japanese Labor with conspiracy to assassinate Sakamaki in order to intimidate opponents of the strike and alleged, further, that the strike was part of a concerted effort to take over the Islands by Japan.

It took the jury less than five hours to reach a verdict on the fifteen defendants. Judge Banks then sentenced all the defendants to “be imprisoned in Oʻahu prison at hard labor for the term of not less than four years nor more than ten years.” (UC Press)

Some suggest it was the catalyst for legislation restricting immigration into the US.

On December 5, 1923, Rep. Albert Johnson, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, had submitted to the House a new immigration quota bill. Having heard about the “Japanese conspiracy” over and over from Hawaiian representatives, Johnson finally decided to propose a new law prohibiting the immigration of all Asians.

The subsequent Johnson Reed Immigration Quota Act ((Immigration Act of 1924) limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890 (down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921.)) It passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities: in the House 308 to 58 and in the Senate 69 to 9.

I am reminded of the simple question, “Can we, can we all get along … can we, can we get along?” (Rodney King)