Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Curtis P ʻIaukea

No, not Curtis “Da Bull” ʻIaukea (professional wrestler in the 1960s-70s;) this story is about that guy’s great grandfather, Curtis Piʻehu ʻIaukea, born December 13, 1855, at Waimea, Hawaiʻi.  He is the son of JW and Lahapa (Nalanipo) ʻIaukea.  His father was district magistrate of Hāmākua for many years, and the family was well known on the Big Island.

ʻIaukea was reared in Honolulu under the direction of his uncle, Kaihupaʻa, an old-time retainer of the chiefs and a personal attendant to King Kamehameha III.

He was raised at the former Chief’s Children’s School (the school, started in 1840, had been given up in 1850 and used as the home for retainers of the royal family.)   As Kamehameha III’s retainer, Kaihupaʻa lived there and ʻIaukea was reared to also serve as retainer of royalty.

“The place was known as Halepoepoe, (meaning circular or round house) so-called because of the quadrangle or court forming the central portion of the building.”  (ʻIaukea)

“Of the more vivid and enduring of my boyhood impressions, I recall the days when, as a bare footed urchin of five and six, I used to romp around the Palace Grounds, dancing attendance on royalty in the role of page and valet to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Hawaiʻi – Ka Haku-o-Hawaiʻi (Prince Albert, son of Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma,) as he was more familiarly known amongst royalty and Hawaiians, then, well on in his fourth year and in the full enjoyment of health and happy childhood.” (ʻIaukea)

As a ward of the government, ʻIaukea was educated under Archdeacon Mason of the Anglican Church in Hawaii at ʻIolani College, then directed by the Church of England.

In 1872, upon the death of King Kamehameha V, who had sent Mr. ʻIaukea to Lāhainā to learn sugar operations, he went to Hilo to live with his sister. It was there that King Kalākaua, on royal tour of the islands, saw the young man and commanded him to resume his place at the royal palace.  In 1880 Mr. ʻIaukea was chief secretary of the department of foreign affairs.

“One of the most accomplished of the younger Hawaiians, Colonel Curtis Piʻehu ʻIaukea, was on his way around the world as a special envoy on what may be described as a good will mission, to keep alive or reawaken the pleasant feeling brought into being by King Kalākaua’s journey, and to perform certain special diplomatic errands; he was to go first to the United States and Europe, thence to Egypt, India, and, finally, Japan, where he was expected to arrive at the end of 1883 or the early part of 1884. One of his errands was to investigate in London and India the possibilities for Indian immigration.”  (Kuykendall)

Specific duties entrusted to ʻIaukea were: (1) to represent Hawaiʻi at the coronation of the czar of Russia; (2) to serve as Hawaiʻi’s commissioner to the Great International Fisheries Exhibition in London; (3) to negotiate regarding immigration to Hawaiʻi from British India, the Philippine Islands and Japan; (4) to attend to the exchange of decorations between the king of Hawaiʻi and the rulers of several other countries; (5) to deliver commissions to persons selected by him to serve as Hawaiian consuls in several designated areas.

His mission in Japan resulted in the admission of Japanese laborers to the sugar plantations of Hawaiʻi.  Although a formal treaty was not established, Japanese leadership stated they would not block immigration to Hawaiʻi.  (Japan was facing a major economic recession and discontent among farmers in Japan; Japanese leadership felt giving the workers the option of going to Hawaiʻi might relieve some of the domestic stress.)

ʻIaukea has a long list of service to the Monarchy and later the Republic of Hawaiʻi.  A few of his assignments included, Colonel on the King’s personal staff and Tax Collector, 1878; Collector General of Customs, 1884; King’s private secretary, 1886; Chamberlain and Crown Land Agent and Commissioner, 1886; in charge royal party to Queen Victoria’s jubilee, 1887; to London with Embassy from Republic of Hawaii to Diamond Jubilee Queen Victoria, 1897; accompanied President and Mrs. Dole to Washington, as secretary and attaché, 1898; elected County Sheriff, 1906; elected Territorial Senator, 1912; appointed Secretary, Territory of Hawaii, 1917; and acting Governor, 1919.

As chamberlain, he had the distinction of taking charge of the royal party attending the jubilee of Queen Victoria of England in 1887, the party included Queen Kapiʻolani, Princess Liliʻuokalani, Governor Dominis and others; en route, the party visited President and Mrs. Cleveland at the White House.

Ten years later, ʻIaukea went to London with the embassy from the Republic of Hawaiʻi to the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and in 1898 he accompanied President and Mrs. Dole to Washington, DC, as secretary and military attaché.

Among the many orders and foreign distinctions that have been conferred upon him are the grand cross and cordon of St. Stanislaus, conferred by the emperor of Russia on the occasion of the coronation in 1883; officer of the French Legion of Honor, conferred by Pres. Grevy of the Republic of France; grand officer’s cross of the crown of Italy; rand cross and ribbon of the Order of Takovo; jubilee and diamond jubilee medals of Queen “Victoria; grand officer of the Order of Rising Sun of Japan; knight commander of the Swedish Order of St. Olaf, and all of the Hawaiian orders and decorations instituted by King Kalākaua during the monarchy.  (Derby)

His service in Hawaiʻi spanned through several monarchs and thereafter served in a number of republic and territorial positions.  Curtis P ʻIaukea died in 1940.

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Juzaburo Sakamaki

On May 3, 1899, Ben F Dillingham, Lorrin A Thurston, Alfred W Carter, Samuel M Damon and William H Shipman formed the Olaʻa Sugar Company and started what they believed would become Hawaii’s largest and most prosperous sugar plantation.

By that time (and in the years following,) numerous foreign immigrants came to the Islands to work on the sugar plantations, including Olaʻa.

There were three big waves of workforce immigration: Chinese 1852; Japanese 1885; and Filipinos 1905.  Several smaller, but substantial, migrations also occurred: Portuguese 1877; Norwegians 1880; Germans 1881; Puerto Ricans 1900; Koreans 1902 and Spanish 1907.

With the respective language barriers created by the influx of foreigners, plantations assigned interpreters to open lines of communication with the workers.

One of those at Olaʻa was Juzaburo Sakamaki.

In 1869, Sakamaki was the youngest child born in Hirosaki-Shi, Aomori-Ken, Japan to Hisao Sakamaki and Fumi Takasaki.  His father died when he was 4; to make ends meet, his mother had to run a private boardinghouse.

Inspired by a letter from a friend, at 15, without telling his mother, he stowed away on a ship bound for California to start a new life.  After arriving in the US, Sakamaki went East to Pennsylvania, where he spent nine years studying and working.

Receiving word that his mother was ill, he decided to return home. By the time he reached Hawaiʻi, he learned that she was already dead, so he canceled his plans to go on to Japan.

At about this time, Olaʻa Sugar Company was established, and he 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.

As assistant postmaster of the Olaʻa post office, Sakamaki was also involved in all the daily activities of the Japanese there.   As the agent of the Consulate General of Japan in Honolulu he was also in charge of administering the immigrants’ family register items.

In this capacity, he not only dealt with registrations of births, deaths, marriages, adoptions and other family matters, he handled remittances that workers sent home.

Growing immigrant population, including those from Japan, started to concern some, in the Islands, as well as on the continent.

In part, this was referred to as the “Japanese Problem” (their numbers were growing, racial conflicts were developing and the military feared Japanese expansion.)

Likewise, there was discontent among the sugar workers.  This came to a head in 1920.

Demanding increases in pay, in 1920, Japanese and Filipino 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 the neighbor islands for support.)

Though the strike was on Oʻahu, its impact was felt at Olaʻa.

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.

“It was about eleven o’clock pm that night of the third of June … I was awokened by sound and, of course, didn’t realize that it was an explosion; first thought it was water-tank fell or something; anyway, I was awokened by the sound, and my wife was in another room and she called me …”

“‘What was that sound? What was that noise?’ Then a little later my boy said he smelled powder; then I realized it was an explosion.”

The dynamite had been set under the floor between the parlor and the dining room on the mauka side; the side of the house had been blown off.

Sakamaki had sided with management during the labor disputes of 1920.  The Territory of Hawai’i 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.

The trial for conspiracy in the first degree began on Wednesday, February 1, 1922, in the First Circuit Court in Honolulu.  Of the twenty-one defendants charged in the indictment, fifteen appeared in court every day. Their names were called each morning at the start of each court session in this order: Goto, Miyazawa, Tsutsumi, Kawamata, Furusho, Hoshino, Takizawa, Baba, Tomota, Ishida, Koyama, Kondo, Sazo, Sato Fujitani and Murakami.  (UC Press)

The indictment read: “On 27th of May 1920, (the accused) did maliciously or fraudulently combine, or mutually undertake or consort together to commit a felony, to wit, to unlawfully use and cause to be exploded dynamite or other explosive chemicals of substance for the purpose of inflicting bodily injury upon one J. Sakamaki.”

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)

By the early 1920s many Americans had begun to look at Japan and the Japanese with deep suspicion. Some suggest it was the catalyst for legislation restricting immigration into the US.

The subsequent Johnson Reed Immigration Quota Act ((Immigration Act of 1924) limiting 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)) passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities: in the House 308 to 58 and in the Senate 69 to 9.

(As an aside, Sakamaki Hall at the University of Hawaiʻi – Mānoa is named for Juzaburo’s son, Shunzo Sakamaki, a prominent administrator and Asian history professor at the University of Hawaii, from 1936 until his retirement in 1970.)

(A controversial aspect of Shunzo Sakamaki’s career concerns his work with the FBI beginning in 1940 aimed at identifying Japanese Americans in Hawaiʻi who should be considered dangerous in the event of war with Japan. While he believed that the vast majority of Japanese Americans in Hawaiʻi were loyal to the United States, he was on record as believing that Shinto priests in Hawaii should be interned.)  (UH-Mānoa)  (Lots of information here from a book by Masayo Umezawa Duus.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hale o Nalii

On July 7, 1937, Japan invaded China to initiate the war in the Pacific; while the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 unleashed the European war.

As to Hawaiʻi, War Department message of November 27, 1941 read as follows: “Negotiations have come to a standstill at this time. No diplomatic breaking of relations and we will let them make the first overt act. You will take such precautions as you deem necessary to carry out the Rainbow plan [a war plan]. Do not excite the civilian population.”  (Proceedings of Army Pearl Harbor Board)

Oʻahu held a position of the first importance in the military structure of the US before and during WWII. During the prewar years, Oʻahu and the Panama Canal Zone were the two great outposts of continental defense.  (army-mil)

A key goal in the Pacific was to hold Oʻahu as a main outlying naval base and to protect shipping in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands.

In the year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, American strategists developed a strategy that focused on “Germany first.” In the end, that was what occurred with the American war effort.  Then, Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the US entered the war.

But for much of 1942 and well into 1943, the US deployed substantially greater forces to the Pacific than to Europe. This was in response both to political pressure from the American people and the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Pacific over the first six months of the war.

On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000-Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France.

General Dwight D Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000-ships and 13,000-aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe.

The final battles of the European Theater of WWII, as well as the German surrender to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, took place in late-April and early-May 1945.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.  On September 2, 1945, the Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

During World War II, Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the rare five-star rank of General of the Army. Eisenhower oversaw the invasions of North Africa and Sicily before supervising the invasions of France and Germany.

Following the war, Eisenhower served as Army Chief of Staff; in the spring of 1946 he toured military facilities in the Pacific and elsewhere, including Hawai‘i.

The Commander at Kilauea Military Camp (KMC), who at the time was working on post-war closing up and returning schools, warehouses, land, and even the Saddle Road which had been built by the military to the community (as well as providing military help in cleaning up following the April 1946 tsunami), got word that Eisenhower was coming for a five-day visit, for rest, after a tour of the Pacific nations.

Eisenhower was looking for “quiet time, no protocol, no attention.”

At the time, KMC “was ceasing to be only for war-weary soldiers for rest, relaxation and recreation. The camp still had a contingent of 10 officers and 148 enlisted men; three Red Cross hostesses, a Librarian and a good jazz band.”

“There were 12 good riding horses, 4 pack mules for trips to the summit of Mauna Loa, a number of bicycles, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a fine library, and a first-class bakery in a building by itself. Never-the-less KMC personnel got to work sprucing up the place, the General was coming.”

Eisenhower stayed in Cabin 44; it was called Hale-o-Nalii (house of the chief – it served as quarters for general’s at KMC).  It was later renamed Eisenhower House, due to the fact that ~that~ general slept there.

On one night, Eisenhower “was feeling very rested and would enjoy some entertainment and asked for suggestions.”  He was offered, “‘How about a party with cocktails, dinner and a Hawaiian troop of dancers and musicians?’”

“The idea was accepted, but that meant we had only one day to prepare for everything.”  (Pauline Wollaston, the KMC Commander’s wife, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Dec 14, 1986)

“All went well. The general ordered several highballs, the dinner was superb, and he loved the entertainment. While this was going on I happened to glance at one of his aides – a gray-haired, battle-worn general. Tears were streaming down his face.”

“I asked him what was the matter, could I do something for him.  He answered, ‘Oh, you all already have! When I see this great man enjoying himself, I can’t control my emotions.’”

“Gen. Eisenhower left the next morning; and all along the roadway, from KMC to the airport, there were children and adults waving and cheering.” (Pauline Wollaston, Hawaii Tribune Herald, Dec 14, 1986)

Eisenhower also served as president of Columbia University (1948–1953) and as the first Supreme Commander of NATO (1951–1952).  He was elected the 34th President of the United States (January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961).   (Lots of information here from KMC, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, army-mil and GlobalSecurity.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Communists in the Union in the Islands in the 1930s and 40s

In 1951 in Washington, DC, Jack Kawano (former President of  ILWU) gave a US House Congressional Committee On Un-American Activities details on the Communist Party activities in Hawai’i. Kawano stated, in part:

I am not a Communist. However, I was a member of the Communist Party. I joined the Communist Party because some individual  Communists were willing to assist me inorganizing the Waterfront Union.

I decided to quit the Communist Party because I found that the primary existence of the Communist Party was not for the best interests of the workingman but to dupe the members of the union, to control the union, and to use the union for purposes other than strictly trade-union matters.

The Communists play rings around the rank and file members of the union and their union’s constitutions, by meeting separately and secretly among themselves and making prior decisions on all important union policy matters, such as the question of strikes, election of officers, ratification of union agreements, the question of American foreign policy, and all other important matters of the Union.

Primarily all of these decisions are made on the basis of what is good for the Communist Party and not what is good for the membership of the union.

In 1934, on the water front, when I was first employed there, there was no union; and in order for one to get a job and be able to hold on to it, it was almost an impossibility unless he  brought gifts and bribes to his foreman.

Discrimination, favoritism,  no job security, low wages, speed-ups, dangerous working conditions  were all part of a daily routine. The workers’ need for a union was so great that it was not funny.

In October 1935, when the West Coast Firemen’s Union opened a hiring hall in Honolulu, and later when the same hiring hall was shared by the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, the officers of both the Firemen’s Union and the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific paid for and reserved a small space in the same hiring hall for an organizing committee.

This organizing committee was headed by Maxie Weisbarth, who was then agent for the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, and Harry Kealoha, a member of the Marine Fireman, Oilers, and Water Tenders Union at that time.

The first organizing drive among longshoremen was launched by Weisbarth and Kealoha, aided by others like Charlie Post, and so forth. However, I did not join the union at that time because they did not permit workers of oriental descent to become members of that organization.

I joined the Longshoremen’s Association of Honolulu in November 1935, when the organizers changed their policy and made it possible for workers of oriental extraction to become members of the union.

Several organizational meetings were called, and they were fairly well attended. However, then efforts in organizing was defeated when the water-front employers offered Thanksgiving turkey to the workers on Christmas, and the workers were told that the turkey was a present to them from the company, and if they did not listen to the radical agitators from Sailors’ Hall they would be getting better things from the company in the future.

I was one of the few who ignored the company’s advice, and continued my membership in the union until I got fired in 1936. I was not fired long before I talked my way back on the job.

When I was reemployed, I got fired again because the company found that I did not quit the union. This time I was fired until the end of the 1936-37 Pacific coast maritime strike, which ended in February 1937.

At the end of that strike, with the aid of some members of the sailors’ union and the firemen’s union, I managed to get my job on the water front back again.

So I went back to work on the water front in early February 1937.  However, because I could not get transferred to my former sugar gang, I left the water-front job in July 1937 to work full time as a water-front organizer for the union without pay.

Organizing in those days was very difficult. I used to talk to workers on then way to and from work; visited them at their homes and talked to them; signed up and collected dues from some of them; but because we were not able to show any encouraging results, these people gradually dropped out of the union.

I used to borrow Willie Crozier’s p. a. system (public-address system) to organize mass meetings along the water front in the mornings.

I used to make leaflets and distribute them among workers on the water front in the mornings and afternoons.

But because the employers had organized a company union, sports clubs, and so forth, to divert the attention of the workers elsewhere, and because they used the leaders of this company union to discriminate and threaten organizers and members of the union …

… and because through their company union they raised the wages from 40 to 50 cents during the 1936-37 strike, we were never able to get the majority of the employees into the union at any one time during those days.

This situation continued from 1935 on until we finally got organized and won our first agreement on the water front in the spring of 1941.

There were many enthusiastic organizers in the beginning, but as time went on, and no organizational results showed, these organizers and union leaders gradually dropped out of existence. Some of these organizers and leaders were: Maxie Weisbarth, Harry Kealoha, Edward Berman, Levi Kealoha, Jack Hall, to mention a few.

However, Frederick Kamahoahoa and I kept plugging until we finally organized the water front with the aid of some of the more active union men on the water front.

Some of the more active union men who played an important part in assisting us organize the water front were Takeshi Yamanchi, Chujiro Hokama, Kana Shimiabakuro, Naoji Yokoyama, Kiheji Nishi, Daniel Machado, Jr, Francis Perkins, Ben Kahaawinui, Lefty Chang, William Halm, William Piilani, John Akin, Solomon Niheu, and a few others.

While we were organizing, there was a strike of sugar workers on the Puunene plantation in 1937. The strike lasted for 2 to 3 months. When the strike began, Maxie Weisbarth sent a man by the name of Ben Shear from Honolulu to assist the sugar workers in their strike and to help them along. The idea was to try to get them to join the HLA, Honolulu Longshoremen’s Association.

These plantation strikers and their leaders seemed to be very interested, but because we were not able to give them any substantial financial assistance the strikers decided to stay independent from HLA and did not affiliate themselves with HLA, Honolulu Longshoremen’s Association.

Just about the same time the longshoremen in Port Allen, Kauai, went on strike. They demanded recognition of their union, adjustment of grievances, and better wages.

Ben Shear, who was at that time in Maui, was pulled out from Maui, and he, together with George Goto, was assigned to go to Kauai and assist the strikers in Kauai. Ben Shear and George Goto did a great deal in building up the strength of the longshore union in Port Allen und in Akukini.

Meanwhile, Bill Bailey, a Communist, was sent from Honolulu to Maui, to assist the strikers there. He stayed with the strikers until the strike, was finally settled without any written agreement, and as a result of that the Plantation Union was broken after the end of the strike.

Now comes my first Communist meeting. The first Communist meeting that I attended was held. I believe, in the room on Emma Street near Beretania Street occupied by William Bailey.

I was escorted to this meeting by Edward Berman, who was at that time a nominal organizational head of the union in Honolulu. At this meeting, Bailey gave a lecture that lasted anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour.

He issued us membership cards in the Travelers’ Club, otherwise known as a Communist card. He told us that as long as we carried that card we would be respected by all good union men from the mainland, and we could count on Harry Bridges to help us. He also asked us to volunteer in the Spanish Loyalist Army, but no one volunteered.

From what I understand, [the Travelers Club] was a membership book signifying that you are a member of the Communist Party. I understood there is a slight difference between those people who carry Communist Party book offshore and inshore.

In this case it was an offshore group, and it was impossible for them to belong to one unit, because seamen travel all over the country, so to make them eligible to attend meetings wherever they go, in every port, they have one unified card system, and I think that was supposed to be this Travelers’ card system.

A man carrying a Travelers’ card from New York would be eligible to attend a meeting in Honolulu, and vice versa.

[At the meeting,] the general trend of thought was like this – that the bosses are no good; that workers can live without the bosses, and we should try to get rid of the bosses by forming an organization and fighting the bosses, first through the union and later through the revolution, or something like that.

I think everybody signed up in the Communist Party through the Travelers’ Club who attended that meeting ….

[Kawano noted, as a union organizer, he attended a Communist Party school stating,] Around the latter part of the summer of 1938, Jack Kimoto [an Japanese language interpreter and the one who set up the Communist Party in the Islands] urged me to consider going to San Francisco to study labor economics at one of the special schools conducted by the Communist  Party of the USA in California.

He told me that it was only a 5-week course, and that I could learn a lot, and I would be able to do a more effective job of organizing after I returned from school. …

The following year, 1939, Ichiro Izuka and Jack Hall also attended a Communist Party school in California. They went from Honolulu. Robert McElrath also attended the school, from California, but by using Hawaii’s credit.

Oh, it wasn’t only Kawano who told of the Communism-Union link …

Dan Inouye noted in his 1967 biography, “No one with any sense of political reality denied that there were probably some Communists in the ILWU. … There were those who felt that the Democrats’ Party, by logical extension, was also controlled by Communists.” (Dan Inouye (former US Senator); reported by Borreca, Star Bulletin)

“Later, in 1975, Governor John Burns, who in the 1950s was a Democratic Party organizer and delegate to Congress, would reflect that perhaps there were Communists within the union …”

“‘Every guy in the ILWU was at one time or another a member of the Communist Party of America. This is where they got their organizational information and how to organize, and how to bring groups together and how to create cells and how to make movements that are undetected by the bosses and everything else. … I know what they were about. I said this is the only way they are going to organize.’” (John Burns (former Hawaii Governor); reported by Borreca, Star Bulletin)

To be clear, neither Kawano nor anyone else said all union leaders and members were communists.

But, as Kawano stated, “In view of the world situation, where our country is at war with communist forces in Korea, I cannot see myself assisting Communists or community in any way, particularly when you consider them to be enemies of  our country.  Therefore, I feel I owe it to my country to bring to light all I know about Communist activities in Hawaii.”

Read Kawano’s full testimony here (all here, except the Borreca quotes, are quoted from his testimony):

Click to access hearingsregardinhaw1951unit.pdf

After Kawano’s testimony, seven Hawai‘i residents – Jack Hall, John Reinecke, Dwight James Freeman, Charles Fujimoto, Eileen Fujimoto, Jack Kimoto and Koji Ariyoshi were arrested under the Smith Act in August 1951.

They were charged with conspiracy for their communist way of “thinking.” They were called the ‘Hawaii Seven’ and they were convicted and sentenced to prison.  They appealed.

The Ninth  Circuit  Court  in  San  Francisco overturned the convictions on  January  20, 1958 on the basis of a previous Supreme Court decision that the abstract teaching of communism did not constitute conspiracy to overthrow the government by force as defined by the Smith Act. (Tagaki-Kitamura)

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The Call of the Sea

“It began in the swimming pool at Glen Ellen. Between swims it was our wont to come out and lie in the sand and let our skins breathe the warm air and soak in the sunshine. Roscoe was a yachtsman. I had followed the sea a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about boats.”  (London)

In 1906, Jack London announced he was planning a trip on a boat – the Snark – he was to build and do blue-water sailing on a round-the-world cruise.  (The Snark was named after one of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poems.)

“‘Honolulu first,’ said London yesterday. ‘After that we are not very definite. Everybody’s in good health, the bourgeoise tradesmen have finally freed us, the boat is staunch, the weather fine. What more a man wants I don’t know.’”

“‘Meet me in Paris,’ called Mrs. Jack London back through the megaphone as the boat disappeared. ‘Isn’t it glorious? Good-by, everybody!” [April 23, 1907]

“The remaining members of the crew of the Snark are: Captain Rosco Eames, under whose personal direction the Snark was built; Herbert Stoitz of Stanford University; Martin Johnson, cook, and Hideshisa Hochigi. Cabin boy.”

“Flying from her mainmast the red flag of Socialism, Jack London’s Snark, towed by a gasoline launch, passed through the Oakland estuary shortly after noon yesterday.”

“She had been freed from Federal surveillance and scores of the author’s friends thronged her deck as she lay at Franklin-street wharf to bid godspeed to him and his wife on their long cruise.”

“Cheer after cheer rent the air as the Snark moved down the channel and passed out into the bay, on her way to Bonita Cove, near Sausalito, where she will await the ebb tide this morning before sailing through the Golden Gate.”

“In the farewell levee on the deck leaders in Socialism hobnobbed with literary workers and a staid burgher friend or two mingled in the gathering with men of the professions. But for the most part the throng that gathered was made up of workingmen as negligee in attire as the author himself.”

“They all called him ‘Jack,’ and he seemed to know them all. They cheered when the two banners of red, the one bearing the initial S. for Snark and Socialism: the other, a black and white star, the London emblem,” were hauled by Captain Eames to the masthead.”

“There they will fly until the cruise is done, carrying the message of Socialism to the people of the seven seas.”  (PCA, April 30, 1907)

“The arrival of Mr. Jack London in the Snark is looked forward to with pleasant anticipation by certain society folk who will doubtless wine and dine him most hospitably.”

“After many rumored departures, he is said to have really sailed from San Francisco and may be expected here shortly, wind, weather and his navigating officer permitting.” (PCA, April 28, 1907)

“Folks flocked down to the waterfront to get a glimpse of the little craft which was designed to circumnavigate the globe.”

“A glimpse was all they got, for the Snark gave a line to Young Brothers’ tug Waterwitch and was towed to Pearl Harbor, where she dropped anchor off the Hobron place, and will probably remain there for the best part of the next two months.”

“Mr and Mrs London made up their respective and collective minds to spend at least two months in the waters of Pearl Lochs and to take their residence ashore in the TW Hobron cottage.  They yearn for the shore awhile and want to be quite.”

“‘We are here for work,’ said Mrs London when the Londons were visited by a representative of the Star shortly after their arrival here at 11:20 o’clock this morning [May 20, 1907]. Continuing Mrs. London stated that her husband intended to put in a lot of time writing and that they could not Image a quieter place than Pearl Lochs.”

“They will not go to Honolulu today. They do not want the distractions of the city, preferring, for the present at least, the peacefulness of the Hobron cottage, whither the typewriter has already been transferred from the cabin of the Snark and where

its click will be heard until late in July.”

London noted, “‘Pearl Harbor is a dream. The coming through the breakers into the placid water of the lagoon is a sight I shall never forget.  We shall remain here and work as quietly as may be.  I’m sick of the hotels and steamships.’”

“There are years of adventure and romance before the people of the Snark and the beginning has been auspicious. The Snark has proved herself to be everything that London claimed she would be.”

“‘We’ve come 2600 miles In twenty-seven days,’ said the captain, ‘and while not tired of the trip must say that land looks mighty good to me.  We went south in order to fall in with the dolphins and flying fish and latterly bore southwest for the wind as far as the nineteenth longitudinal.’”

“‘We loafed along the whole way, with more wind the first four days out than we had all the rest of the trip. The voyage was singularly devoid of Incident.  Three days out a ship was sighted, after which nothing was seen till Sunday, when we saw a steamer hull down.’

“The Snark is thirty tons gross and ten tons net; fifty-one feet in length, fifteen and five-tenths beam and seven and fieve-tenths in depth of hold.  Her foremast is much taller than the main and she carries a big bowsprit.  Her deck is flush and living apartments occupy the whole vessel from stem to stern.”

“The Snark, according to present plans, will leave here in about twenty days for Hilo. From Hilo the South Seas, Australasia and the Orient, and the rest of the world, will be checked off the Snark’s chart.” (Hawaiian Gazette, May 21, 1907)

Charmian London (Mrs Jack London) made a couple of books about the two years’ with her husband in the forty-five-foot ketch Snark into the South Seas, by way of the Hawaiian Islands.

The seafaring portion of her notes was published in 1915 as “The Log of the Snark.” The record of five months spent in the Paradise of the Pacific, Hawaii, she made into another book, “Our Hawaii,” issued in 1917. Jack London had previously passed through Honolulu in 1893.

The South Sea trip was meant to be just the beginning of the cruise. London dreamt of threading the Arabian Sea and traversing the Mediterranean and the Atlantic but ultimately it was the savage climate of the south Pacific that did for him.

After about 2-years of sailing, at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands London became afflicted by a skin disease which meant his hands swelled up and chunks of skin fell off. Without his hands he could not write and earn the money to fund the voyage and, after seeking medical advice, he was urged to abandon the trip.

It was a devastating decision for London, and he and Charmian were distraught, as Jack recalled: “In hospital when I broke the news to Charmian that I must go back to California the tears welled into her eyes.”

“For two days she was wrecked and broken by the knowledge that the happy, happy voyage was abandoned.”  Thus one of the most offbeat and pioneering cruises ended rather abruptly.  Once the voyage was called off, Snark was sailed to Sydney and sold there.  (Jefferson) 

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