Sugar | Page 2 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

March 31, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Suo Oshima

The Seto Inland Sea is dotted with about 700 islands of various sizes, and Suo Oshima (officially Yashirojima), located in the southeastern part of Yamaguchi Prefecture, is the third largest island. (Kawai, JANM)

Situated off the coast of western Honshu is Suo Oshima, often noted English as “Suooshima” or “Suo-Oshima,” this rural part of Japan is one of the countless landmasses that can be found out on the Seto Inland Sea. Officially part of Yamaguchi Prefecture. (Kimball)

Seto Inland Sea is the largest inland sea of Japan and is surrounded by Honshu. Shikoku, and Kyushu. Features of the Seto Inland Sea is fast tide due to a big difference of high and low tide There are high tides and two low tides twice a day.

Water level difference between high tide and low tide is called “tidal range” – here, it is 3-10-feet in the east and 10-13-feet in west. (International Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas (EMECS) Center)

Suo Oshima is home to a series of peaks that are collectively called the “Seto Inland Sea’s Alps”. Comprised of Mt. Monju, Mt. Kano, Mt. Genmeizan, and Mt. Dake, the heights of this mountain quadruplet are nearly 2,300-feet tall.

Back during the Edo Period (1603–1868), Suo Oshima was overpopulated. Due to the mountainous core of the goldfish-shaped island, residents had a hard time finding ample space to live. (Kimball)

“The population is now around 15,000, but at the beginning of the Meiji period there were about 70,000. At that time, politics was in chaos, and there were also natural disasters such as typhoons, so the islanders could not make a living.”

“At the same time, the island had a history of migrant workers, and it was common for people to go out on boats. At that time, the government talked about migrant workers (overseas emigration), and many people applied. For the islanders, it probably felt like going to a faraway place for a long period of time.” (Makoto Kimoto, JANM)

A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations in Hawai‘i became a challenge. The only answer was imported labor.

Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided 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.) The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi. Concerned that the Chinese were taking too strong a representation in the labor market, the government passed laws reducing Chinese immigration. Further government regulations, introduced 1886-1892, virtually ended Chinese contract labor immigration.

In 1868, an American businessman, Eugene M Van Reed, sent a group of approximately 150-Japanese 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)

However, for the next two decades the Meiji government prohibited the departure of “immigrants” due to the slave-like treatment that the first Japanese migrants received in Hawaiʻi and Guam. (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.

Kalākaua’s meeting with Emperor Meiji improved the relationship of the Hawaiian Kingdom with the Japanese government and an economic depression in Japan served as motivation for agricultural workers to move from their homeland. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

The first 943-government-sponsored, Kanyaku Imin, Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi arrived in Honolulu aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship Company City of Tokio on February 8, 1885. Subsequent government approval was given for a second set of 930-immigrants who arrived in Hawaii on June 17, 1885.

With the Japanese government satisfied with treatment of the immigrants, a formal immigration treaty was concluded between Hawaiʻi and Japan on January 28, 1886. The treaty stipulated that the Hawaiʻi government would be held responsible for employers’ treatment of Japanese immigrants.

Many Japanese people living on Suo Oshima opted to move. From 1885 to 1894, 3,913 people living on the island took advantage of the opportunity and moved to Hawai‘i (about 13.5% of the total of about 29,000 Japanese emigrants to Hawai‘i during that time). Thus, many of the Japanese now living in Hawaii originally have roots that harken back to Suo Oshima. (Kimball)

After Hawai‘i was annexed by the US, many people from Suo Oshima went to Hawaii, and many Suo Oshima people were active in Hawaiian society. After the war, many donations and goods were brought from Hawaii to Suo-Oshima. (Japan Hawaii Immigration Museum)

To commemorate the connection between Suo Oshima and Hawai‘i, the Japan Hawai‘i Immigrant Museum was opened February 8, 1999 after four years of collecting materials.

Here is a link to the Museum website: https://suooshima-hawaii-imin.com/en

The building of the Japan Hawai‘i Immigrant Museum is a reproduction of the former Fukumoto residence built by the late Chouemon Fukumoto.

After returning to Suo Oshima in 1924, he built the Fukumoto residence, which is now the Japan Hawaii Immigrant Museum, in 1928. (Japan Hawaii Immigration Museum)

Many of the materials displayed in the Immigration Museum were donated by townspeople and their families who had returned from Hawaii. The museum also has historical materials, old documents, and a data search corner for information on the history of immigration to Hawaii. (Japan Hawaii Immigration Museum)

Kauai County and Suo Oshima established a sister city relationship which was signed in June 1963. “The relationship between Japan and Hawai‘i is an integral part of our state’s historic, cultural, and economic well-being – just look at our food, our customs, and our people,” said Mayor Kawakami.

“Through our 60 years of friendship, we have come to share a mutual understanding of each other’s government, economy, agriculture, tourism, and community. And as we celebrate together this milestone, we continue our promise to pass along our customs with the next generation, keeping both Japan and Hawai‘i culture and tradition alive.” (Kauai County)

January 4, 2025 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

‘Father of Japanese Immigration to Hawaiʻi’

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

Sugar cultivation/processing started as early as 1802 and it continued to grow that about a century after Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawaiʻi, it eventually dominated the landscape.

A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge. The only answer was imported labor.

The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.) The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi. Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawai’i increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom (almost 30% of them were living in Honolulu.) (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

Concerned that the Chinese had secured too strong a representation in the labor market, the government passed laws reducing Chinese immigration. Further government regulations introduced between 1886 to 1892 virtually ended Chinese contract labor immigration.

About this time (1866,) Robert Walker Irwin, at the age of 22, arrived in Japan to head the Yokohama office of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. In 1867 the company launched the first regular trans-Pacific steamship service fulfilling a contract with the US government to provide monthly mail service between San Francisco and Hong Kong via Yokohama.

Irwin (January 4, 1844 – January 5, 1925,) great-great grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to former Pennsylvania politician (Mayor of Pittsburgh and member of the US House of Representatives) and United States Chargé d’affaires to Denmark William W. Irwin and Sophia Arabella Bache Irwin.

He was later hired to work for the Mitsui business conglomerate and cultivated a number of business and government contacts in Japan becoming acquainted with Japanese Finance Minister Masuda Takashi in 1872.

He also became good friends with Japanese Count Kaoru Inouye, who had toured the United States with Irwin in 1876 and became a major force for modernization within Japan.

Later (1880,) the Hawaiian consul general to Japan, Harlan P Lillibridge, took a leave of absence and Irwin was appointed to replace him; the appointment soon became a permanent one.

In March 1881, King Kalākaua visited Japan during which he discussed with Emperor Meiji Hawaii’s desire to encourage Japanese nationals to settle in Hawaiʻi.

As noted in Nupepa-Hawaiʻi, 1881, “His Majesty the King of Hawaiʻi arrived here yesterday morning at 8 am in the Oceanic. As the steamer moved up to her anchorage, the men-of-war in harbour dressed ship and manned yards, the crews of the Russian and Japanese vessels also cheering heartily as the Oceanic passed them. … He subsequently embarked in the Emperor’s State barge.”

Kalākaua’s meeting with Emperor Meiji improved the relationship of the Hawaiian Kingdom with the Japanese government, and an economic depression in Japan served as an impetus for agricultural workers to leave their homeland. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

Irwin married Takechi Iki on March 15, 1882. This was the first legal marriage between an American and Japanese citizen and was arranged by Kaoru Inouye, then the Japanese Foreign Minister. (Irwin had six children. The eldest, Bella, founded the Irwin Gakuen School in Tokyo.)

Focused on Japanese immigration to support Hawaiʻi’s sugar labor needs, and not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the gennenmono episode, Irwin’s friendship and close relationship with Inouye smoothed negotiations; and in 1885 and the first legitimate Japanese immigration to Hawaiʻi occurred.

Irwin arranged for and accompanied the first 943-government-sponsored, Kanyaku Imin, Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi who arrived in Honolulu aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship Company City of Tokio on February 8, 1885. After returning to Japan, Irwin received government approval for a second set of 930 immigrants who arrived in Hawaiʻi on June 17, 1885.

The laborers were selected “from the farming class with particular attention given to physical condition, youth, and industrious habits.” They were predominantly unskilled male workers from Hiroshima and Yamaguchi, two neighboring prefectures in the Chugoku district of southwest Japan, and they were accustomed to rural village patterns of early marriage, high birth rates and large families. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

With the Japanese government satisfied with treatment of the immigrants, Irwin was able to conclude a formal immigration treaty between Hawaiʻi and Japan on January 28, 1886. The treaty stipulated that the Hawaiʻi government would be held responsible for employers’ treatment of Japanese immigrants.

Irwin was the single most important figure in starting the official labor migration from Japan to Hawaiʻi in 1885. The Kanyaku Imin immigration system that Irwin negotiated concluded in June 1894 with 29,339 Japanese nationals having immigrated to Hawaiʻi. This government-sponsored immigration was quickly replaced with private immigration.

He later became a Japanese citizen and received both the “Order of the Rising Sun” and the “Order of the Sacred Treasure.” In Japan, he is called the “Father of Japanese Immigration to Hawaiʻi.”

In 1891, Irwin purchased a summer home in Ikaho. The residence is a designated Historic Place and is open to the public as a small museum to the Irwin family and Japanese immigration to Hawaiʻi. Irwin died January 5, 1925 and is buried at Aoyama Cemetery, Tokyo.

December 4, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Tanomoshi

“The establishment of a cash economy and community of foreigners in Hawai‘i during the early years of the Pacific whaling industry also led to the development of commercial fisheries in the waters around the islands.” (Schug)

Then came sugar … A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge. The only answer was imported labor.

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.

With the Japanese government satisfied with treatment of the immigrants, a formal immigration treaty was concluded between Hawaiʻi and Japan on January 28, 1886.

“Japanese social conventions compelled established residents in Hawai’i to offer guidance and support to new arrivals, who could expect assistance especially from ken-jin, fellow immigrants from the same region of Japan.”

“The transition to American society was eased for Japanese immigrants by the establishment of tightly knit communities. … These cohesive communities were important sources of financial and social capital for budding entrepreneurs.” (Schug)

“Plantation workers had no credit and minimal income, so banks were quick to deny them loans.” (CUInsights)

“Families … banded together in times of hardship and celebration. Families not only shared their harvests, but also helped others out financially through a feudal Japanese system known as ‘tanomoshi.’ Families regularly invested to create a large sum of money to provide financial assistance.” (Nancy Iwasaki Saiki; Zentoku Foundation)

“In the Tanomoshi the Japanese have put a unique concept of co-operation into effect. Tanomoshiko as used in Western Japan comes from ‘tanomui’ which means “dependable.’”

“The procedure seems to have originated in pooling contributions to a given fund and drawing lots to see who might go on pilgrimages to the shrines and temples. During the early part of the Tokugawa Period [1603–1867],Tanomoshi took on a definite economic meaning.” (Bogardus)

“If a man needs money to pay debts, to build a house, or to bear the expenses of marrying off his daughter, he invites a group of friends, usually on payday, to drink tea.”

“There is no limit to the uses of the tanomoshi. One group of women held a five dollar one until they all had wrist watches. Among men a suit tanomoshi is favored.” (Bradford Smith)

Tanomoshi required mutual trust among its members because these loans did not have collateral. Families trusted one another that loans would be paid back and acted in the best interest of the community. (Kanase, Zentoku Foundation)

Tanomoshi is an informal collaborative funding pool that participants can draw on. Call it venture capital. The system is somewhat intricate and was used to fund hundreds of businesses and other ventures. (HPR)

“The tanomoshi-ko is normally promoted by a person who is in urgent need of money. Suppose, for instance, he needs $100 and decides to organize a tanomoshi.”

“He asks nine friends to subscribe $10 a month each to his tanomoshi. They meet and each deposits the $10, making the total of $100.”

“The first month’s receipts always go to the promoter, who gets the entire amount, interest free.”

“Because the promoter is not required to pay interest to the other members, who must thereafter pay interest besides their $10 when they want to use the capital, the tanomoshi is often described as ‘aid for a friend in need,’ insofar as the promoter is concerned.”

“Each month thereafter for nine months, all the members contribute their regular $10 shares and, depending upon their immediate needs, bid for the use of the capital.”

“At all subsequent meetings, the members who wish to draw the principal submit bids of the interest they are willing to pay for the use of the money.”

“At times there is considerable competition for the use of the capital. The member making the highest bid gets the principal for the month, but he must also pay each shareholder the amount of interest he bids.”

“If the highest bid in the second month is $2, the bidder has to pay this amount to each member what has not received his share. Thus, he would have to pay out a total of $16 to the eight members whose shares have not been drawn, leaving him with $84.”

“After a person draws his share, he does not benefit thereafter from interest payments, although he continues to make his monthly payments until the tanomoshi has run its course.” [“When everyone has had the pot, the ko ends.” (Bradford Smith)]

“Each member before receiving his share must have two persons stand witnesses for him. These witnesses must be members of the ko.”

“If a borrower can not finish his payments after drawing his share, the witnesses are obliged to meet his payments thereafter. If tanomoshi they cannot pay, their share is withheld from them.” (SB Nov 4, 1939)

“Private money clubs or mutual financial aid and saving associations are commonly identified as one of the contributing factors to high small business ownership rates among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants in the United States.” (Yoon)

“While the first tanomoshi groups were bound by a shared ethnicity or culture, they soon evolved into circles of individuals that had common jobs or interests. From those groups, credit unions were born.” (CUInsights)

September 29, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Pioneer Mill

The early Polynesians brought sugarcane with them to the Islands. Kō (sugarcane) was planted as a subsistence crop – with domestic, medicinal and spiritual uses.

In 1802, processed sugar was first made in the islands on the island of Lānaʻi by a native of China, who came here in one of the vessels trading for sandalwood and brought a stone mill and boilers. After grinding off a small crop and making it into sugar, he went back to China the next year.

It was not until ca. 1823 that several members of the Lāhainā Mission Station began to process sugar from native sugarcanes, for their tables. By the 1840s, efforts were underway in Lāhainā to develop a means for making sugar as a commodity. (Maly)

Sugar was being processed in small quantities in Lāhainā throughout the 1840s and 1850s; in 1849, it was reported that the finest sugar in the islands could be found in Lāhainā. (Maly)

James Campbell, who arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1850 – having served as a carpenter on a whaling ship and then operated a carpentry business in Lāhainā, started a sugar plantation there in 1860. The small mill, together with cane from Campbell’s fields, manufactured sugar on shares for small cane growers in the vicinity.

Soon after the establishment of the new plantation, Henry Turton and James Dunbar joined Campbell. Under the name of Campbell & Turton, the company grew cane and manufactured sugar.

The small sugar mill consisted of three wooden rollers set upright, with mules providing the power to turn the heavy rollers. The cane juice ran into a series of boiling kettles that originally had been used on whaling ships.

When the nearby Lāhainā Sugar Company, a small company founded by H Dickenson in 1861, went bankrupt in 1863, its assets were acquired by Campbell and his partners.

In 1865, the plantation became known as Pioneer Mill Company (that year Dunbar left the company.) By 1874, Campbell and Turton added the West Maui Sugar Company, a venture of Kamehameha V, to the holdings of Pioneer Mill Company.

The Pioneer Mill Company was extremely profitable, enabling Campbell to build a large home in Lāhainā and to acquire parcels of land on Maui and Oʻahu.

Campbell became known by the Hawaiians as “Kimo Ona-Milliona” (James the Millionaire). Despite his success in sugar, his interests turned to other matters, primarily ranching and real estate.

Over the years, Campbell acquired property in Kahuku, Honouliuli, Kahaualea and elsewhere, amassing the holdings that eventually became ‘The Estate of James Campbell.’

In 1877, James Campbell sold his half interest to partner Henry Turton for $500,000 with agents Hackfeld & Company holding a second mortgage of $250,000. The company’s charter was dated in 1882, but by 1885, Mr. Turton declared bankruptcy and sold the property back to James Campbell and to Paul Isenberg, who was associated with Hackfeld & Co. Mr. CF Horner was selected to manage the plantation.

With later acquisitions of additional West Maui lands, Pioneer Mill was incorporated on June 29, 1895. Horner sold his interest to American Factors, formerly Hackfeld & Co., and in 1960, Pioneer Mill Company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Amfac.

Irrigation of Pioneer Mill Company’s fields, an area that eventually extended 14-miles long and 1 1/2-miles wide with altitudes between 10 and 700 feet, was accomplished with water drawn from artesian wells and water transported from the West Maui Mountains. The McCandless brothers drilled the first well on Maui for Pioneer Mill Company in 1883.

Pioneer Mill Company was one of the earliest plantations to use a steam tramway for transporting harvested cane from the fields to the mill. Cane from about 1000-acres was flumed directly to the mill cane carrier with the rest coming to the mill by rail. (The Sugar Cane Train is a remnant of that system.)

In 1937, mechanically harvested cane was bringing so much mud to the factory that Pioneer Mill Company began the development of a cane cleaner.

Between 1948 and 1951, a rock removal program rehabilitated 3,153 acres of Pioneer land to permit mechanical planting, cultivating, and harvesting. In 1952, the railroad was eliminated and a year later new feeder tables were conveying cane directly from cane trucks into the factory.

Lāhainā Light and Power Company, Lāhainā Ice Company, the Lāhainā and Puʻukoliʻi Stores, and the Pioneer Mill Hospital were associated with the plantation, providing services to employees as well to Lahaina residents.

Faced with international competition, Hawaiʻi’s sugar industry, including Pioneer Mill Company, found it increasingly difficult to economically survive.

At the industry’s peak in the 1930s, Hawaiʻi’s sugar plantations employed more than 50,000-workers and produced more than 1-million tons of sugar a year; over 254,500-acres were planted in sugar. That plummeted to 492,000-tons in 1995. A majority of the plantations closed in the 1990s.

Seeing hard times ahead, Pioneer Mill Company took 2,000-acres out of cane during the 1960s to develop Kāʻanapali as a visitor resort destination.

By 1986, the plantation had reduced its acreage down to 4,000-acre (which at its height had 14,000-acres planted in cane.) After years of losing money, in 1999, Pioneer Mill closed its operations.

The Lāhainā Restoration Foundation and others worked to preserve the Pioneer Mill Smokestack. It remains tall above the Lāhainā Community as a reminder of the legacy of sugar in the West Maui community. (Lots of information here from the UH-Manoa, HSPA Plantation Archives.)

(One of our few locations that survived the Lahaina fire relatively unscathed is the Pioneer Mill Smokestack and Locomotives. (Lahaina Restoration Foundation))

September 28, 2024 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

William G Irwin

William G Irwin was born in England in 1843; he was the son of James and Mary Irwin. His father, a paymaster in the ordnance department of the British army, sailed with his family for California with a cargo of merchandise immediately after the discovery of gold in 1849. The family then came to Hawaiʻi.

Irwin attended Punahou School and as a young man was employed at different times by Aldrich, Walker & Co.; Lewers & Dickson; and Walker, Allen & Co.

In 1880, he and Claus Spreckels formed the firm WG Irwin & Co; for many years it was the leading sugar agency in the kingdom and the one originally used by the West Maui Sugar Association.

In 1884, the firm took over as agent for Olowalu Company. William G. Irwin and Claus Spreckels constituted the partnership in the firm, which maintained offices in Honolulu. The role of the agent had greatly expanded by this time.

William G Irwin and Company acted as a sales agent for Olowalu’s sugar crop as previous agents had done. It also was purchasing agent for plantation equipment and supplies and represented Olowalu with the Hawaiian Board of Immigration to bring in immigrant laborers.

In addition, Irwin and Company acted as an agent for the Spreckels-controlled Oceanic Steamship Company and required, for a time, that Olowalu’s sugar be shipped to the Spreckels-controlled Western Sugar Refinery in San Francisco by the Oceanic Line.

In 1885, Irwin and Spreckels opened the bank of Claus Spreckels & Co., later incorporated under the name of Bank of Honolulu, Ltd., that later merged with the Bank of Bishop & Co.

In 1886, Mr. Irwin married Mrs. Fannie Holladay. Their only child, Hélène Irwin, was married to industrialist Paul Fagan of San Francisco.

A close friend of King Kalākaua, Irwin was decorated by the King and was a member of the Privy Council of Hawaiʻi in 1887.

In 1896, the Legislature of the Republic of Hawaiʻi put Kapiʻolani Park and its management under the Honolulu Park Commission; William G Irwin was the first chair of the commission.

In 1901 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government in recognition of his services as Hawaiʻi’s representative to the Paris Exposition.

By 1909, William G Irwin and Company’s fortunes had declined and, reaching retirement age, Irwin reluctantly decided to close the business. In January 1910, the firm of William G. Irwin and Company merged with its former rival C. Brewer and Company.

Irwin moved to San Francisco in 1909 and served as president and chairman of the board of the Mercantile Trust Company, which eventually merged with Wells Fargo Bank.

In 1913, Mr. Irwin incorporated his estate in San Francisco under the name of the William G. Irwin Estate Co., which maintained large holdings in Hawaiian plantations. He had extensive business interests in California, as well as in Hawaiʻi, and was actively associated with the Mercantile National Bank of San Francisco in later years.

William G Irwin died in San Francisco, January 28, 1914.

Irwin had a CW Dickey-designed home makai of Kapiʻolani Park. In 1921, the Territorial Legislature authorized the issuance of bonds for the construction, on the former Irwin property, of a memorial dedicated to the men and women of Hawaiʻi who served in World War I. It’s where the Waikīkī Natatorium War Memorial now sits.

The Honolulu Waterfront Development Project, introduced by Governor Lucius E Pinkham and the Board of Harbor Commissioners in 1916, was declared to be the “most important project ever handled in Honolulu Harbor.”

The project began in 1916 with the construction of new docks; it continued in 1924 with the construction of Aloha Tower as a gateway landmark heralding ship arrivals.

On September 3, 1930, the Territory of Hawaiʻi entered into an agreement with Hélène Irwin Fagan and Honolulu Construction and Draying, Ltd. (HC&D), whereby HC&D sold some property to Fagan, who then donated it to the Territory with the stipulation that the property honor her father and that it be maintained as a “public park to beautify the entrance to Honolulu Harbor.”

The Honolulu Waterfront Development Project was completed in 1934 with the creation of a 2-acre oasis shaded by the canopies of monkeypod trees (shading a parking lot;) Irwin Memorial Park is located mauka of the Aloha Tower Marketplace bounded by North Nimitz Highway, Fort Street, Bishop Street and Aloha Tower Drive.

The William G Irwin Charity Foundation was founded in 1919 by the will of his wife to support “charitable uses, including medical research and other scientific uses, designed to promote or improve the physical condition of mankind in the Hawaiian Islands or the State of California.” The 2010 Foundation report for the Foundation indicated its value at over $100-million.

Among other activities, it funds the William G Irwin Professorship in Cardiovascular Medicine, which was created with gifts from the William G Irwin Charity Foundation of San Francisco, and, with a transfer of funds in 2003, the Hélène Irwin Fagan Chair in Cardiology at the Stanford School of Medicine.