By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Pearl Harbour And Pan-Asianism

Having covered Hawaii before including the Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The dominant narrative holds that Japan’s surprise attack led inexorably to die outbreak of a truly global conflict. In this view, American opposition to involvement in the Pacific and Euro­pean wars melted away on December 7, 1941. As stridency anti-interventionist, Senator Arthur Vandenberg subsequently claimed in an oft-quoted remark: “That day ended isolationism for any realist.” It is assumed that the United States’ entry into the war against Ger­many was inevitable from the moment Japan struck Pearl Harbor. This perspective has been encouraged by no less a witness than Win­ston Churchill himself, who later spoke of having “slept the sleep of the saved and thankful” after hearing the news of Japan’s attack In his memoirs, he would declare that “now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and into the death. So we had won after all!” 

Yet at the time, Churchill did not regard America’s full-scale entry into the war against Germany as a foregone conclusion. Nor was he alone. Across the world, politicians and military leaders tried to fathom what had happened in Hawaii and where it might lead. It would take almost one hundred hours from Pearl Harbor for the situation to resolve itself, five agonizing days in which the fate of the world hung in the balance. In the end, it was Hitler who declared war on the United States on December 11, rather than the other way around. Among those who do remember this order of events, the declaration is considered an inexplicable strategic blunder by Hitler, sealing the fate of his regime. But in reality, Hitler’s declaration of war was a calculated gamble, driven by his geopolitical calculations, his assessment of the balance of workforce and materiel, and, above all, his obsession with the United States and its global influence.

The standard road to the Second World War and Manchurian crisis explains that Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 strained relations with the United States, a situation aggravated by the empire's invasion of China in 1937, and then brought to a breaking point in 1941 by Japan's advance into southern Indo­china. The Roosevelt administration froze Japan's assets and placed a total embargo on oil. Japan's leaders, unable to find common ground with the United States, launched a surprise attack oil Pearl Harbor. However Japanese expansion into southern Indochina and the subsequent oil ban provided the initial spark of the Pacific War. Why did the Unit­ed States resort to freezing assets and embargoing oil?

That the Manchurian crisis acted as a powerful ideological catalyst and coagulant in Japanese flunking can be deduced by comparing Kawakami's spirited piece above on Japan's mission with a commentary he wrote ten years prior, during the Washington Conference:

All the Powers have bound themselves by agreements or resolutions not to return to the old practice of spheres of influence or special interests [in Chi­na]. This change is no shadowy thing, as it is accurate. Twenty years ago, the Powers were talking only about China. Today they are talking about what they can give her. That indicates vast moral progress.

 

Thus, what was once the "vast moral progress" of liberal self-denial now required Japan's civilizing intervention.

Eventually, Pan-Asianist-inspired "special responsibilities" developed into the principal justification for Japanese expansionism in the decade fol­lowing the Manchurian crisis.

Within a few hours of the Pearl Harbor attack, a Zero pilot whose engine had been damaged by antiaircraft fire ditched his plane on Niihau, a sleepy island located 150 miles northwest of Honolulu and inhabited by 250 Hawaiians and part Hawaiians,  one issei, and a nisei couple with a two-year-old daughter. From 7 December until 13 December the pilot, helped by the nisei husband, imposed his will on the island,  whose inhabitants had no communications with the outside world except for a weekly boat from neighboring Kauai. After six days the pilot was killed by a Hawaiian.  His nisei ally committed suicide.

Using this incident as raw material, the budding writer Sohachi* Yamaoka* spun a remarkable tale that was published as a factual account in August 1944.  Refracted through the prism of Yamaoka's imagination, the pilot and Nisei's husband share a glorious death, having held off hordes of enemy attackers and having absorbed "thousands" of machine gun bullets. The reader is left with the arresting image of surviving Niihau doho* defiantly marching off to internment camps while the  sansei child "waits to grow up and carry on his [sic] father's loyalty."

If the momentary liberation of Niihau (the only Hawaiian island to experience a Japanese "occupation") had a basis in history, the "Bombing of Washington" (1944) by  Kiyoshi Omori* was pure wishful thinking seasoned with borrowings from prewar scenario literature. The plot has the Combined Fleet sailing across the Pacific,  rounding Cape Horn, approaching Chesapeake Bay undetected, and linking up with a German squadron. The climax comes when the Axis partners dive into the  Washington Monument.

In 1944 such fare may have distracted readers whose daily lives were full of reminders that death was just around the corner. But the idea of assaulting the American mainland was not merely a literary diversion, nor was it confined to writers during the twilight of Imperial Japan.

* After the war, Yamaoka won fame for his historical fiction, among them an eighteen-volume novel on the first Tokugawa shogun.

According to the distinguished military historian Ikuhiko Hata, late in 1944 a group of naval officers led by Lieutenant Commander Daiji Yamaoka seriously entertained the prospect of launching a suicide strike in California. Some three hundred chosen men of the "Yamaoka Parachute Brigade" were to be transported across the  Pacific on several mammoth submarines and landed in the vicinity of Santa Barbara. They were then to shoot their way into Los Angeles via Santa Monica, wreaking havoc with the Douglas and Lockheed aircraft factories and taking as many lives as possible before their own annihilation. Training for this operation began in  December 1944 but was halted in May 1945 with the selection of a new target, the Mariana Islands.

Except for units in scattered parts of the Pacific and Asia, and a few diehards at home, the Greater East Asia War came to an end on or shortly after 15 August  1945 when the emperor broadcast an appeal to "endure the unendurable" because the situation had developed "not necessarily to our advantage." Lingering dreams about Hawaii, such as there were, were soon dispelled by the harsh realities of defeat and occupation.

By the fall of 1945, those individuals who had written about or prepared plans for an invasion and occupation of Hawaii were either dead or adapting to new lives.  Military figures fared poorly. Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi had gone down with his flagship at Midway on 5 June 1942. Commander in chief of the Combined Fleet  Isoroku Yamamoto had been ambushed and killed in the skies over Bougainville on 18 April 1943. Admiral Matome Ugaki, the architect and champion of "Eastern  Operation," took off on a solo kamikaze mission from a base outside of Tokyo on the last day of the war and was never seen again. Surviving Combined Fleet and  Navy General Staff officers underwent extensive interrogations by the Americans. General Gen Sugiyama and his wife committed suicide shortly after the surrender ceremony on board the USS Missouri. General Shin'ichi Tanaka, the opponent turned enthusiast for a Hawaii invasion, spent the summer of 1945 in a hospital,  recovering from serious injuries sustained in a plane crash outside of Phnom Penh. For all surviving officers, postwar life brought many hardships, not the least of which was being tainted men, "militarists" responsible for leading Japan down the path of overseas aggression and national catastrophe.

On the other hand, civilians involved with Hawaiian affairs made dextrous adjustments to the postwar sociopolitical environment. Identified as an ultranationalist by Occupation authorities, Professor Saneshige Komaki was obliged to resign from Kyoto University in 1945. He found employment, however, in a commuter train company. During the early 1960s, he reentered academe, emerging as president of Shiga University in 1965. Komaki's student, Tsugio Murakami, spent most of the postwar years in academic life. As of 1979 neither Komaki nor Murakami had visited postwar Hawaii.

Hawaii issei and nisei who spent the war years in Japan met various fates, some of them painful. Fortune smiled, however, on George Kunitomo and Colbert  Kurokawa. Both found employment with SCAP, General Douglas MacArthur's Occupation administration. Kunitomo subsequently taught American literature at  Tokyo's Aoyama University. He returned to Hawaii for a brief visit in 1966, one year before his death. Kurokawa came back to Hawaii in 1951 and spent seven years in the islands working in the insurance field. Returning to Japan years to a variant of his prewar Marxism. When Hirano passed away at the age of eighty-two in 1980, an Asahi obituary wove a seamless fabric over the wartime interlude: As one of the editors of Lectures on the Development History of Japanese Capitalism published in 1932–1933, Hirano was a leading [Marxist] theorist in the Koza* [symposium]  school in a famous controversy with the Rono* [farmerlabor] school over the definition of Japanese capitalism. After World War II, he devoted himself to the peace movement and participated in many international meetings. He was internationally known for his activities in support of the Vietnamese people, in the movements for Japan-China friendship, and Asian African solidarity.

The examples of Murobuse, Hirano, and others prompted Kazuo Yatsugi (wartime leader of the National Policy Research Society) to remark wryly that many  postwar intellectuals who clamor for ''progressive" and "antiwar" causes were among those in the vanguard of propagandists during the Greater East Asia War. To some extent, this can be explained by genuine idealism and a sincere belief in the war as a liberating mechanism. But, remembering the rhetoric of Komaki, Hirano,  Murobuse, Noyori, Mochizuke, Kunitomo, Kurokawa, and others, one is reminded of a remark by the late British essayist and World War I veteran Charles Edward  Montague: "War hath no fury like a noncombatant."

A significant number of Hawaii issei accepted postwar realities far less readily than did Japanese intellectuals. No quantitative data exist tabulating issei wartime views,  nor would polls have illuminated the complexity of this generation's innermost feelings. Hawaii issei were not antiAmerican and they did nothing overtly against the  United States, but to say that they wanted America to win the war would be a grievous misrepresentation. Issei were after all Japanese, not American, citizens.

Two postwar Japanese historians (Nobuhiro Adachi and Hidehiko Ushijima) who have written about the subject with insight and sensitivity both affirm that in their innermost hearts most issei remained loyal to Japan. According to Adachi, even among those who considered the Pearl Harbor attack a betrayal were many who believed in and hoped for an ultimate Japanese victory. "Great Japan" and the "invincible" Imperial Navy had come to have a special meaning for Issei. They catalyzed pride and sharpened a sense of self-identity in an alien land. They symbolized the motherland's concern for its overseas children. Indeed, some issei viewed the Pearl  Harbor operation as an Imperial Navy rescue mission for the benefit of Hawaii doho *. Radio reports of Japanese advances in the Pacific and

As American reports of Japanese setbacks, including Midway, multiplied during 1942 and 1943, several issei began to withdraw into a fantasy world. The defeat of the empire in battle was unthinkable. American news reports, therefore, must be false. Some true believers formed underground kachigumi (victory groups) which  combatted American "rumors" and strove to keep ethnic pride and confidence alive among Hawaii issei Japan's unconditional surrender came as a traumatic blow to Hawaii's issei. Confronted with the emperor's 15 August broadcast, issei women wept. The men heard  the news, eyes downcast, in stony silence. Amid the celebrations and victory parades, many issei stayed indoors, mortified by shame and grief. Some felt awkwardness in facing their children.

A sizeable proportion of the issei in Hawaii psychologically refused to accept the events of August 1945 as reality. Rumors gave their delusions sustenance. Japan, it was said, had won the war. The Americans were trying desperately to hide this fact. President Truman had sent General MacArthur to Japan to apologize to the emperor for the "indiscriminate" bombing of Hiroshima. In Hilo (on the island of Hawaii), it was whispered that the Combined Fleet lay at anchor off Pearl Harbor, waiting for the Americans to clear the entrance channel of mines.

to accept America's capitulation at a ceremony at Pearl Harbor.  Eager to catch a glimpse of the momentous event, he climbed Mt. Tantalus and found a ridge overlooking central Oahu. He scanned the sprawling naval base and espied what looked like a huge Rising Sun flag fluttering over Pearl City. Exhilarated, he rushed down the hill for a closer inspection and discovered that he had been looking at a Red Cross flag.

returnees met with more acclaim than that which was accorded * The emperor's younger brother.

Blind faith in their motherland's invincibility cost some issei a good part of their life savings. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs, seeing a handy profit to be made from self-delusion, went around to issei offering to sell yen for dollars. The prewar exchange rate had been approximately three yen to the dollar. The issei were given a chance to get four yen for a dollar. Believing the yen to be the currency of the victorious power, some issei fell for the deception and willingly gave up their dollars in exchange for  what turned out to be a pittance (from 1948 until 1971 one dollar bought 360 yen).

After Japan's surrender, the underground Hawaii  kachigumi surfaced as kattagumi (victory groups, with katta in the past tense, implying "we've won"). Among the  known island kattagumi were the Karihi hakkokai * (Kalihi* Eight Cornerst**Society), the Parama koseikai* (Palama* Rebirth Society), the Tobu* doshikai*  (Eastern Brotherhood Society), and the Hawaii hisshokai* (Hawaii Victory Society). The Hawaii Victory Society in 1948 claimed to have four thousand members  (out of a total issei community of about thirty-five thousand). A 1949 investigation revealed that the actual figure was closer to five hundred.

By 1949 most issei had accepted the fact of their ancestral land's defeat. Some began to have doubts on 27 October 1945 (celebrated as Navy Day in prewar Japan)  when it was said that the Imperial Navy would make a grand entrance into Pearl Harbor. Scores of issei flocked to Aiea Heights and waited—in vain. The emperor's radio broadcast on 1 January 1946, in which the now constitutional monarch disavowed his divinity, convinced most Hawaii issei that the war was over. Among those who retained their earlier convictions, doubts sprouted in 1948 when someone went around collecting money for the emperor's imminent visit to  Hawaii. For others, trips to Japan dispelled vestigial illusions.

A small core of Hawaii issei clung to their fantasies for years, much as did isolated Imperial Army soldiers hiding in remote corn news of the Philippines and in the hills of Guam.

* Kalihi and Palama are districts of Honolulu where many doho* residences were formerly concentrated.

** The first two ideographs of the slogan "Eight Corners of the World Under One Roof."

Only on 17 November 1977, thirty-two years, three months, and two days after the end of the Greater East Asia War did the Hawaii Victory Society formally disband. In an announcement published in the Hawaii hochi *, Victory Society secretary Seiichi Masuda related the course of events that led to Japan's Occupation. He discussed the postwar growth of the motherland and praised the nisei for their loyal and heroic service in the United States  Army. He concluded: "From now on, as a resident of a Hawaii that has passed into another world, I join my hands together and go to seek that paradisaical Hawaii."

If World War II offered some Hawaii  nisei opportunities to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States, it evoked in others an awareness of their roots. Although only a tiny percentage of Hawaii nisei experienced internment (about 480 out of 120,000), there were those for whom the war catalyzed a fateful decision. As one  Hawaiiborn youth wrote his draft board in September 1944: "This war has made me clearly realize that my love and attachment to Japan have been deeper and  stronger than I imagined." That young man spent a year in prison. Upon release, he renounced his American citizenship.

There are no statistics in the public domain telling how many Hawaii nisei gave up life in the United States and moved to Japan. It is certain, however, that those who took this step felt strongly enough to face formidable economic, linguistic, and cultural hurdles. For them, the "melting pot" and "Americanization" had become illusions  from States, it evoked in others an awareness of their roots. Although only a tiny percentage of Hawaii nisei experienced internment (about 480 out of 120,000), there were those for whom the war catalyzed a fateful decision. As one  Hawaiiborn youth wrote his draft board in September 1944: "This war has made me clearly realize that my love and attachment to Japan have been deeper and  stronger than I imagined." That young man spent a year in prison. Upon release, he renounced his American citizenship. 

Moreover, they acted from understandable if at times misguided motives: bitter memories of racial discrimination in Hawaii, opposition to what they perceived as the militarization of the Islands, and an idealistic belief in Japan's self-proclaimed mission to build an Asia for Asians, an Asia free of European and American intruders be they capitalists or communists.

Hawaii nisei who fought in Japan's armed forces, whose experiences have been portrayed apologetically or passed over in silence, need to be understood in the context of their times. Their sacrifices, unlike those Hawaii nisei who served in the United States Army, have not been recognized. Today, the memory of those who fell in battle is preserved neither at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo nor at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu's Punchbowl Crater. The survivors have not enjoyed the prestige and perquisites of veterans of the highly publicized nisei combat units in the American Army: the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Yet the hardships of nisei veterans of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy have been if anything more severe they have in many cases persisted long after the war, and they have for the most part been borne in silence.

Collaboration is a pejorative word. Often misused, it is inappropriate for those Japanese Americans whose circumstances and inclinations led them to serve Japan during World War II. On the other hand in Hawaii, potential collaboration was by no means confined to Japanese Americans. Any resident of the Islands in 1942,  regardless of ethnicity, probably speculated on what life would be like in the event of a successful Japanese invasion. Any rational mind considering that contingency would most likely conclude that a degree of collaboration would be hard to avoid. Unlike the Philippines, Hawaii was physically too small for anyone to avoid contact with occupation authorities. A guerrilla movement would have been virtually suicidal. There is little evidence that either the military or civilians were prepared to fight to the last man should Hawaii have been assaulted. On the contrary, many probably shared the views of a State Department special agent who in a report written several weeks before 7 December 1941 acknowledged: "If the Japanese fleet arrived, doubtless great numbers of them [Hawaii Japanese] would then forget their American loyalties and shout a 'Banzai' from the shore. Under those circumstances, if this reporter were there he is not sure that he might not do it also to save his own skin, if not  his face."

These words were not written by a coward. Dying to the last man, woman, and child ( Hokusai as the Japanese called it in those desperate defenses of Saipan, Iwo  Jima, and Okinawa) was neither a 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Yet the hardships of nisei veterans of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy have been if anything more severe they have in many cases persisted long after the war, and they have for the most part been borne in silence.

Collaboration is a pejorative word. Often misused, it is inappropriate for those Japanese Americans whose circumstances and inclinations led them to serve Japan during World War II. On the other hand in Hawaii, potential collaboration was by no means confined to Japanese Americans. Any resident of the Islands in 1942,  regardless of ethnicity, probably speculated on what life would be like in the event of a successful Japanese invasion. Any rational mind considering that contingency would most likely conclude that a degree of collaboration would be hard to avoid. Unlike the Philippines, Hawaii was physically too small for anyone to avoid contact with occupation authorities. A guerrilla movement would have been virtually suicidal. There is little evidence that either the military or civilians were prepared to fight to the last man should Hawaii have been assaulted. On the contrary, many probably shared the views of a State Department special agent who in a report written several weeks before 7 December 1941 acknowledged: "If the Japanese fleet arrived, doubtless great numbers of them [Hawaii Japanese] would then forget their American loyalties and shout a 'Banzai' from the shore. Under those circumstances, if this reporter were there he is not sure that he might not do it also to save his own skin, if not  his face."

These words were not written by a coward. Dying to the last man, woman, and child (Hokusai as the Japanese called it in those desperate defenses of Saipan, Iwo  Jima, and Okinawa) was neither a

tenet of American military doctrine nor consonant with American historical experience, the Alamo notwithstanding. Moreover,  Hawaii in 1942 was still a territory, not a state. It is doubtful that an assault on what were then considered distant islands inhabited largely by Polynesians and Orientals would have precipitated the national upsurge of determination that would have occurred if, say, several Imperial Army divisions had landed at Long Beach or  Monterey.

Consequently, if the choice were to collaborate or face suicidal odds, there is little doubt that Hawaii's residents would have opted, in the British phrase, to "carry on" with as much dignity as possible. The scale and degree of collaboration would probably have depended upon many obvious and subtle factors, among them individual character, the content and style of occupation policies, the conduct of occupation authorities and garrison troops, and the local assessment of Japan's prospects for winning the war or at least for repelling an American counterattack.

creating an atmosphere in which it is possible to recognize wartime planning for Hawaii as an interesting and significant historical phenomenon worthy of serious scholarly attention.

 

Chapter I—  A MidPacific Frontier About 1,400 miles north of the equator and roughly midway between Asia and America stretches a long, slender archipelago called the Hawaiian Islands. Unlike the insular galaxies that spray the South Pacific, this archipelago stands alone, forming an oasis in a vast watery expanse.

On a map of the entire Pacific Basin, the Hawaiian Islands look like wayward specks, dwarfed by the oceanic and continental masses that surround them. Closer inspection shows these specks to be more numerous than they first appeared. Some even have a respectable size, by island standards. The Hawaiian archipelago extends for 1,523 miles along a northwest-southeast axis. It consists of 132 islands that have a total area of 6,425 square miles or slightly larger than Connecticut and  Rhode Island combined and a bit smaller than the Japanese island of Shikoku.

 

Ninety-nine percent of Hawaii's area is accounted for by eight islands that cluster in the southeastern quarter of the chain. In descending order of size, these are  Hawaii (the Big Island), Maui (the Valley Isle), Oahu (which is located in the city of Honolulu and the naval base at Pearl Harbor), Kauai (the Garden Isle), Molokai  (the Friendly Isle), Lanai, Niihau, and Kahoolawe. The remaining 1 percent of land consists of islets and atolls strung out over 1,200 miles of ocean from Nihoa in the central part of the arc to Kure in the extreme northwest. Hawaii, because of its location, is called "the crossroads of the Pacific." Indeed, the archipelago has a spatial relationship to continental masses around the Pacific  Basin much like that of a hub to the rim of a wheel. Eastwest and north-south trans-Pacific routes converge in Hawaii like spokes. From a Hawaii perspective, conventional geographic nomenclature has an anomalous ring. Asia's Far East is not very far and it lies to the west. The American Far West is also not far and it lies to the east. Moreover, relative distances look different from a Hawaii vantage point. Panama is about the same distance from Honolulu as the Philippines. Alaska is no  farther away than is Samoa, nor are the Pacific shores of Siberia more remote than the beaches of southern California.

There is one spatial relationship, however, of which even many Hawaii residents are unaware. The archipelago's western end is closer to Japan than the eastern end is to the American mainland.

Geography and history have brought various Pacific, Asian, and European peoples to Hawaii. The aboriginal Hawaiians were descended from maritime Polynesian migrants from Tahiti and the Marquesas who reached the arc more than a thousand years ago. When Captain James Cook "discovered" the Sandwich Islands (as he called them) in 1778, the Hawaiian population was estimated to be about 300,000. During the next two hundred years, pure Hawaiians declined in numbers largely as a result of diseases. Meanwhile, as a result of mixed marriages, the part Hawaiian population

grew until by 1980 it had reached 173,000 or about 19 percent of those who make the state of Hawaii their home. The bulk of today's Hawaii residents are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from the mainland United States,  Japan, the Philippines, Portugal and its territories, China, Korea, Samoa, and—most recently—Vietnam. Direct immigration from European countries other than  Portugal has been limited, although at various intervals in Hawaii's history there have been modest influxes from England and Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia, Spain,  and Russia.

From the 1890s until the 1960s, the Japanese constituted the largest single ethnic group in Hawaii. This plurality put the Hawaii Japanese community in a different environment than that of its scattered and less numerous counterparts on the American mainland. In Hawaii, as the late nisei journalist/historian Tamotsu Murayama observed, social and cultural traditions were more faithfully preserved through the years. It is probably also fair to say that before the Second World War Hawaii community ties with Japan were on the whole closer than were those of West Coast communities.

The first Japanese to reach Hawaii were probably fishermen, swept across the North Pacific by storms and currents. There are several well-documented cases of Japanese castaways reaching Hawaii in the first half of the nineteenth century, and one cannot rule out the possibility of earlier contacts. But like the Chinese, Portuguese, and Filipinos, most Japanese came to Hawaii as laborers to fill manpower demands on local sugar plantations.

Until the 1870s native Hawaiians worked the cane fields, but economic, cultural, and demographic considerations led plantation owners and their agents to supplement and eventually replace Hawaiians with imported labor. Chinese were brought to the Islands in 1852. By the 1860s, agents recognized Japan as a potential source of labor. In 1868, 148 Japanese were transported to Honolulu and assigned to plantations on Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and Lanai. This inaugural group had no immediate successors because disagreements over working conditions led the newly established imperial government* in Tokyo to prohibit further shipments.

The bulk of Japanese laborers reached Hawaii between 1885 and 1907. In 1885 the authorities in Tokyo permitted two boatloads to embark for Hawaii. In the  following year, Japan concluded a Convention with the Kingdom of Hawaii, according to which laborers were engaged under a three-year contract and brought in under official supervision. From 1886 until 1894 some thirty thousand Japanese came to Hawaii under the conventioncontract arrangement. The convention was terminated in 1894, after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (1893) and the creation of the Republic of Hawaii. Thereafter, private entrepreneurs imported  Japanese workers and supplied the manpower-hungry plantations, despite rising opposition to Japanese immigration from elements of the politically dominant, white, propertied class. This opposition temporarily abated after Hawaii's annexation by the United States in 1898, and the influx from Japan increased dramatically. There were 24,407 Japanese in Hawaii in 1896. By 1900 this figure had risen to 61,111, which was more than double that of any other ethnic group.

 

The Tide Of Japanese Immigration To Hawaii Ebbed In 1908

* The Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown in 1868 by a group of warriors from southwestern Japan who established an Imperial government in Tokyo under the nominal leadership of the young Emperor Meiji.

when responding to anti-Japanese agitation in California, the United States and Japan concluded a Gentlemen's Agreement wherein Tokyo quietly undertook to restrict the trans-Pacific flow of laborers. Only relatives of immigrants and prospective wives (including the so-called picture brides) continued to come to Hawaii until the 1924 Exclusion Act virtually closed the door.

Japanese immigrants to Hawaii had much in common with each other. Geographically they came overwhelmingly from southwestern Japan—from Hiroshima and  Yamaguchi prefectures of Honshu * and from Fukuoka and Kumamoto prefectures of Kyushu*. Socially they were from those elements of the peasant class that were hardest hit by the economic dislocations that rocked rural Japan in the 1880s and 1890s: small farmers, tenant farmers, and agricultural laborers. Physically hardy, they were more willing than most of their compatriots to take risks, to venture into an alien and unknown environment to improve their economic situation and social status. They came to Hawaii intending to accumulate some capital and then to return home upon the expiration of their contracts.

Of the approximately 180,000 Japanese who reached Hawaii between 1885 and 1930, the majority returned to Japan. Some did so as soon as their contracts had expired. Others lingered on for various lengths of time ranging from a few months to four decades. Hundreds hurriedly sought repatriation in 1941 as war clouds gathered over the Pacific.

Those immigrants who did not return to Japan followed several courses. A few continued to work in the cane fields. Most removed themselves at the earliest opportunity from the drudgery of plantation life with its low pay, cramped bunkhouses, and narrow horizons. Japanese made up over 70 percent of sugar plantation labor in 1900 but less than 20 percent in 1932. Some found employment in the pineapple industry. Some became independent farmers and grew vegetables near one of the towns, harvested rice on Kauai, or raised coffee crops along the Big Island's Kona Coast. Others took to the sea as fishermen. A few entered domestic service in one of the more affluent white households or became gardeners. Many, moving to Honolulu or Hilo, opened stores with savings accumulated through hard work and frugal living. Finally, some moved on to the West Coast in search of better opportunities.

A Japanese community started to develop in Hawaii before the turn of the century. It took shape as the unmarried transient contract laborer gradually gave way to the married resident, who more often than not had moved off the plantation. In fostering the social, religious, and educational institutions that would sustain and enrich their lives in an alien land, the first generation of Hawaii Japanese turned to their homeland for models and guidance. Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines were built.  Japanese language schools were founded to impart the mother country's speech and moral values to the next, Hawaiiborn, generation. Japanese language newspapers appeared, informing the community of local, national, and international events. Eventually, a Japanese Chamber of Commerce, prefectural societies (which brought together those from the same prefecture back home), professional associations, and philanthropic organizations proliferated, strengthening the community's cohesiveness and sharpening its identity.

Several factors reinforced the issei's ties to Japan and simultaneously insulated the issei from Americanization. First, there was a language barrier, far more formidable than that encountered by most European immigrants. Second, Japanese men usually did not marry Chinese, Hawaiian, or Caucasian women. Instead, they brought brides from Japan. Third, the Japanese were excluded from the white community's social circles and corridors of power. Fourth, after Hawaii became an American territory in 1898, Japanese immigrants who were already in the Islands and who subsequently arrived were barred from acquiring United States citizenship. Finally,  strong feelings of patriotism and ethnic pride gave Issei an inner strength that reduced the lure of assimilation with white American culture.

Patriotism among Hawaii Japanese took sustenance from their homeland's brilliant achievements during the reign of Emperor Meiji (1868–1912). Divided, vulnerable,  and patronized by the West when the Tokugawa shogunate fell in 1868, Japan by 1912 had won international recognition as a world power. Within four decades  Japan had built a modern centralized state, equipped with a Prussian-inspired constitution, managed by a well-trained and highly motivated bureaucracy, and defended by a battle-tested army and navy. A national educational system was eliminating the last vestiges of illiteracy, instituting universal primary education, and administering an impressive array of middle schools, higher schools, vocational schools, and prestigious universities. The economy was advancing briskly if unevenly along the road to industrialization without inflation, serious unemployment, or heavy indebtedness to foreign creditors. An overseas empire had been won,  stretching from southern Sakhalin to Taiwan and including Korea and enclaves in Manchuria. In 1914 the Imperial Navy occupied Germany's Micronesian colonies  (the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands), bringing the frontiers of the Rising Sun to within twelve hundred miles of the Hawaiian Islands—less than half the distance between Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States.

Japan's successes excited both admiration and misgivings throughout the world. These reactions were pronounced in Hawaii because of the Islands' proximity to  Japan, their ethnic composition, and (until 1898) their uncertain political future. Japan's military exploits not only stirred the patriotism of Hawaii Japanese but also gave them a heightened sense of their status and prestige. Victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) promoted feelings of superiority over local  Chinese. The epochal triumph over Russia in 1904 and 1905, a triumph in which several Hawaii Japanese participated as volunteers in the Imperial Army and  Navy, was felt deeply in the Islands. Russia was perceived as a European country. Russia's defeat therefore constituted a victory of Asians over Caucasians. The implications of this victory were not lost upon Hawaii Japanese, who continued to live under the political domination of white Americans.

The motherland's achievements were brought to the attention of the community by more than local vernacular newspapers and language schools. In 1885, Tokyo opened a consulate in Honolulu and within a few years was appointing consular agents (unpaid volunteers) within the community. Regular visits of Japanese naval vessels began in 1876 and continued until the eve of the Second World War.

Naval visitations were often accompanied by festivities and warm hospitality, particularly so at times when members of the local community felt discriminated against by the Hawaiian authorities. When the monarchy was replaced by a republic in 1893, allowing the white propertied class to consolidate its power, Tokyo reacted by dispatching the warship Naniwa to demonstrate Japan's concern. Banzais greeted the ship in Honolulu. In 1897, the Naniwa made another appearance when the Hawaiian Republic levied a heavy tax on sake and turned back three boatloads of Japanese immigrants. This time it was met by a local ''Welcome the Naniwa Committee."

The captain of the  Naniwa on both occasions was Heihachiro * Togo*, who subsequently won fame by leading Japan's battle fleet to its greatest victory: the destruction of the Russian Baltic Squadron in the Tsushima Straits on 27 May 1905. Togo's popularity in Hawaii was said to have been so great that some local  Japanese families named their children "Togo" or "Naniwa." Whether this occurred cannot be established with certainty. But it is a fact that until just before  World War II a brand of sake brewed in Hilo on the Big Island bore the name Togo Masamune. A portrait of the admiral adorned the label.

Tokyo was by no means indifferent to its subjects in Hawaii. Concern derived largely from sensitivity to matters of international prestige. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the Meiji government strove, in general, to gain the respect of the major Western powers and in particular to convince these powers to revise the "unequal treaties"* which in effect denied Japan full membership in the community of what was then called "civilized" nations. Tokyo regarded its overseas compatriots (doho*) as representatives of the empire, and their status abroad reflected directly upon that of Japan. The government's prohibition of emigration to  Hawaii from 1869 to 1885 stemmed in part from anxiety that if Japanese laborers were treated like Chinese coolies, the analogy would place Japan in a lower international category of states.

By the 1890s, however, once a sizeable Japanese community had been established in Hawaii, Tokyo adopted the position that any unreasonable restriction of further immigration by Hawaiian authorities impinged upon Japan's national honor. It will be recalled that when the Hawaiian Republic denied three boatloads of immigrants permission to land in 1897, Tokyo dispatched the warship Naniwa to Honolulu to back up the foreign minister's protest. * Treaties concluded between the Tokugawa shogunate and major powers during the 1850s which granted extraterritorial privileges to foreigners in Japan and deprived Japan of the right to set its own tariffs on imported goods.

Did Japan hope that Hawaii might someday come under its wing? The evidence is complex and contradictory, for there was a discrepancy between expressed hopes and actual behavior.  The Meiji government behaved with scrupulous discretion toward Hawaii, even when tempting opportunities presented themselves. For example, in the wake of the  1871 Treaty of Commerce and Friendship between Japan and the Kingdom of Hawaii, certain Hawaiian entrepreneurs broached the idea of Japanese "men of means"  leasing Hawaiian land and building productive colonies with imported Japanese labor. Tokyo ignored these propositions. While on a visit to Japan in 1881, King  Kalakaua offered to renounce Hawaii's extraterritorial rights in Japan. The king also proposed the marriage of his niece to a Japanese prince to forge a bond between Japanese and Hawaiian royalty. Finally, Kalakaua urged Japan to organize and lead a federation of Asian nations of which Hawaii would become a member.

Tokyo politely declined all three of Kalakaua's proposals. However welcoming Hawaii's renunciation of extraterritorial rights, Japanese statesmen prudently realized that accepting such a gesture might jeopardize Japan's chances for a comprehensive revision of the unequal treaties. Britain's consent would be crucial to achieve that objective. As to the marriage proposal and Asiatic federation, Tokyo regarded them as premature. For the time being, territorial expansion would take second place to treaty revision. Moreover, American interests in Hawaii were extensive, and Japan in the 1880s could not risk alienating the United States. In short, Meiji leaders were acutely aware of Japan's weaknesses and at the same time determined to gain acceptance by the great powers. Guided by these conditions and goals, Tokyo exercised caution and kept bolder impulses under tight control.

While the Meiji government was cautious in practice, certain individuals nurtured acquisitive aspirations concerning Hawaii. Occasionally these aspirations were openly expressed. During the 1890s, for example, several intellectuals, influenced by currently fashionable social Darwinism and impressed by the colonization of the Americas, Australia, and Siberia, wrote that Japan should also expand overseas through emigration. At this time, Hawaii was a household word, signifying the earliest destination for Meiji emigrants. Publicist Setsu Nagasawa in 1893 called the Islands a "springboard" for peaceful expansion.

More forthright in their formulations were activists such as Keishiro * Inoue who urged throughout the 1890s that Japan must rule Hawaii to protect itself in the Pacific. It was at this time that Hiroharu (Kanji) Kato*, later chief of Navy General Staff, felt deep regret that Japan did not use its naval power during the 1893  Hawaiian revolution to expel American influence from the islands and maintain the monarchy's "independence."

There is some evidence that government officials entertained the idea of gaining control over Hawaii. Foreign Secretary Taneomi Soejima is reported to have considered taking over the Islands during the 1870s. Emperor Meiji's answer to King Kalakaua's 1881 proposal for a Japanled Asiatic federation including Hawaii also contains some revealing hints. After politely declining the Hawaiian monarch's proposal, the emperor (in words probably drafted by Foreign Secretary Kaoru  Inoue in consultation with other leaders in the government) went on to say: "However, I ardently hope that such Union [of Asian nations and Hawaii] may be realized at some future day, and keeping it constantly in mind I never fail, wherever time allows me, to discuss the means of bringing about that result. . . .  it cannot only be the fortune of Japan and Hawaii but also of whole Asia." These innocuous words anticipate the rhetoric of the Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere sixty years later when publicists loudly called for Hawaii's "reunification" with Asia.

Whatever hopes Japan may have had about acquiring Hawaii through peaceful expansion were dashed in June 1897, when the United States and the Republic of  Hawaii concluded a treaty of annexation. As soon as the treaty became known in Japan there was an outcry in nationalist circles. The newspaper Kokumin declared that the entire nation disapproved of the treaty and demanded that the Imperial government issue a strong protest. Tokyo did submit an official protest on 19 June,  after President McKinley had submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification.

While informing Secretary of State John Sherman of his government's displeasure, Toru* Hoshi, Japan's minister in Washington, assured him that Japan "did not have and never did have" designs upon the integrity and sovereignty of Hawaii. Yet two days earlier, in a telegram to Foreign Minister Shigenobu Okuma*, Hoshi had urged  the following course of action: "I submit my plan, which I believe to be the only possible means of a frustrating scheme of Hawaiian annexation, that is, our occupation of that Island by dispatching, without any delay some powerful ships under the name of reprisal, taking advantage of  present relation between Japan and Hawaii."

Hoshi's advice was not taken by his superiors, but the matter did not end there. One Japanese diplomat, disgusted by his government's weak response to the American action, attempted suicide en route home from Honolulu on the Naniwa.

in the longer run, the obstruction of Japan's peaceful expansion into Hawaii through restrictions to immigration, together with the disappointment of vague but deep-rooted expectations for a closer relationship with the Islands, left a residue of frustration. Both the frustration and the expectations were resurrected forty-four years later when Hawaii suddenly emerged as a strategic target and visionary object in the Greater East Asia War.

One of the ironies of history is that yesterday's problem can become today's pride (and vice versa). In the 1890s, Hawaii was the scene of the first serious Japanese-American friction. In the 1980s, Hawaii is a symbol of Japanese-American cooperation. Japan's profile in Hawaii today is more visible than at any time before World  War II. Yet with few exceptions, the Japanese presence in the Islands is welcomed both locally and in Washington.

Hawaii has become a favorite meeting ground for American and Japanese officials. Heads of state have conferred there. Ministers and department chiefs regularly consult there. Prime Minister Zenko * Suzuki spoke about "Pacific solidarity" in 1982, having been introduced by State Governor George Ariyoshi, who delivered a  welcoming address in accented but appropriately composed Japanese. Units of Japan's armed forces regularly visit Hawaii. In 1980 and 1982, Japanese naval vessels participated in maneuvers with the Hawaii-based U.S. Seventh Fleet. It is not uncommon to see Japanese sailors sightseeing at Pearl Harbor's Arizona Memorial.  More recently, Japan's Ground SelfDefense Forces have held joint command post maneuvers with the United States Army at Schofield Barracks. In honor of the first such joint exercises on American soil, a reception was held at the Honolulu Japanese Chamber of Commerce on 23 June 1982 for some three hundred Japanese and  American army officers, with a welcoming speech by the state governor.

In the economic sphere, Japanese corporations have invested in Hawaiian businesses, real estate, and tourism. Any number of highrise hotels that cluster along Waikiki Beach are Japanese-owned. Some 690,400 Japanese tourists came to Hawaii in 1981, more than three times the number of immigrants from Japan between 1885 and 1941. Japanese restaurants, theaters, banks, and retail stores can be spotted throughout Honolulu. A Mitsukoshi Department Store opened in Waikiki in 1979, fulfilling a project that began in 1940 only to be interrupted by the war. To manage and help staff these enterprises, some thirteen thousand Japanese nationals have taken up residence in Hawaii.

Japanese culture, traditional and modern, pervades the islands. In addition to festivals, temples, shrines, theaters, and language schools, there are three Japanese language newspapers, two Japanese-language radio stations, and—until recently reduced to evening programs only—one full-time Japanese-language television channel. The University of Hawaii has more specialists in Japan than any other institution of higher education in the United States. The university trains one-quarter of those studying the Japanese language in this country. From Japan come well-known writers, artists, movie stars, pop singers, television personalities, and sumo * wrestlers, assured of appreciative local audiences. Emperor Hirohito received the most effusive welcome of his 1975 American trip when he paid a visit to  Honolulu.

To be sure, the Japanese presence in Hawaii has provoked some complaints. Several years ago some voices blamed big-spending yen investors for driving up real estate prices. Some criticism attended the purchase of a Honolulu golf course by Japanese interests after local users discovered that they had to pay steep membership fees. Eyebrows were raised when the local press revealed that Tokyo yakuza (gangsters) operated a Waikiki hotel whose services to specially introduced Japanese clients were said to extend into areas normally associated with certain massage parlors. However, these incidents have been infrequent and relatively minor. Despite grumblings and jokes from members of all ethnic groups about the Rising Sun completing peacefully what it started to do at Pearl Harbor, Japan's presence in Hawaii is on the whole accepted.

Hawaii's Japanese Americans in the 1980s, a vast majority of whom are descendants of immigrants who came to the islands from 1885 to 1924, have both fulfilled and belied predictions about them made fifty and sixty years earlier. Contrary to what observers of the 1920s were saying, the Japanese community in Hawaii has not soared to numerical dominance. It has grown from 160,000 in 1941 to 227,000 in 1980, but proportionately it has decreased from a peak of 43 percent of the total Island population in  1920 to only 23.5 percent in 1980. Current immigration from the American mainland and the Philippines will probably further reduce this proportion.

Nor has the prediction that the Japanese would not assimilate come true. The past fifty years have witnessed a steady erosion of insularity by intermarriage, education,  travel, and generational changes. Today the issei have dwindled to a small minority within a shrinking minority. Most surviving Issei are elderly women who came to  Hawaii as brides more than a half-century ago. Meanwhile, the Nisei generation has passed into middle age and beyond. While many of its members are still in the prime of their careers, the generation as a whole is older than the Issei generation on the eve of the Second World War. It is the sansei and yonsei (third and fourth generations) who predominate numerically. Their ties to Japan are comparatively diffuse, although many of these young Japanese Americans have a serious and thoughtful intellectual and emotional interest in their ancestral land. This attraction derives in part from a search for "roots" and in part from a reaction against the  Americanization embraced by their parents.

One prediction that has come true after a fashion is that the Nisei have transformed Hawaii's political landscape. The old business and financial elites who enjoyed political dominance from the 1890s until a few years after World War II have been succeeded by a more complex power structure in which organized labor plays a  notable role. The once-reigning Republican Party has lost its preeminence. The Republicans have been a minority in the state legislature since 1954 and for several years have had no candidate elected to the United States House or Senate. The political fortunes of Hawaii's Japanese Americans have been closely bound with the rise of the Democratic Party since the Second World War. That Japanese Americans occupy the governor's office, both United States Senate seats, several key legislative positions, and a strong position in the state civil service has been more a product of Democratic Party politics than of ethnic solidarity.

Amid these trends, memories of World War II have grown both indistinct and selective. Physical vestiges of the war can be found if they are looked for. In Pearl Harbor, the submerged rusting skeleton of the battleship  Arizona has been made a memorial to the 1,177 officers and men who perished when the ship was wracked by explosions on 7 December 1941. The National Memorial  Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu's Punchbowl Crater commemorates those who served in and who gave their lives in World War II and other wars. A solitary  Japanese tank, almost toylike in comparison with contemporary behemoths, rests incongruously in a recreation area at Fort DeRussy on Waikiki Beach. On the northern slope of Punchbowl Crater, with its embrasures facing Pearl Harbor, stands an abandoned concrete pillbox. It was built shortly after 7 December 1941 in anticipation of a Japanese invasion. Dozens of tour buses pass it daily. Recently, someone covered its grey-pockmarked exterior with a coat of bright yellow paint,  brushed on representations of flowers in green, and inscribed in bold pink letters the Hawaiian word for (among other things) welcome Aloha.

 

Chapter II—  The Prewar Japanese Community Wartime Japanese writers asserted that Hawaii doho * was waiting for the Imperial Army to liberate them from American rule. It is tempting to dismiss such views as propaganda. But to do so would be to commit an oversimplification fraught with misleading overtones. Japanese perceptions of the doho community in Hawaii were largely derived from, and shaped by, members of that community. Therefore, it is important to know something about certain aspects of the prewar community that made it not entirely illogical or insincere for observers in Japan to write about Hawaii the way they did.

In 1932, a book appeared in Tokyo describing life in the Hawaiian Islands. The author began by calling Hawaii "a second Japan." Properly understood in the context of the times, the phrase was neither farfetched nor presumptuous. Hawaii, with about 160,000 Japanese in 1941, contained the third greatest concentration of overseas doho in the world. China and Brazil had more, but in these countries, the Japanese were tiny minorities engulfed by masses of other inhabitants. In Hawaii, they were the largest ethnic group, comprising about 40 percent of the Territory's population. Roughly three-quarters or 120,000 of Hawaii doho were nisei born in the  Islands. The remaining 40,000 were issei who were denied United States citizenship whether or not they wanted it and were subjects of the Empire of Japan. The citizenship status of Hawaii Nisei was complicated. All were American citizens, under the principle of jus solis, by having been born on American territory. But in 1940 a  majority of Hawaii nisei (73,281 out of 119,361) also carried Japanese citizenship. The circumstances behind this anomalous situation require an explanation.

Until 1924 Tokyo regarded all children born of Japanese fathers in any part of the world as Japanese citizens according to the principle of jus sanguinis.  Consequently, nisei born in Hawaii during most of or before 1924 were Japanese subjects in the eyes of the Imperial government. True they could seek expatriation,  that is renounce Japanese citizenship, but only before the age of seventeen. After the age of seventeen, nisei were denied the right of expatriation until they reached their thirty-seventh birthday. Between seventeen and thirty-seven, they were liable to serve a term in military uniform, either in the Imperial Army or the Imperial Navy.

On 1 December 1924, the Imperial Diet (Japan's parliament) passed a law that loosened the bond between the mother country and overseas doho *. According to this law, nisei born before 1 December 1924 could nullify their Japanese citizenship by submitting formal notification accompanied by appropriate documentation to the  Home Minister. Those born after that date would lose their Japanese citizenship within two weeks of birth unless their parents registered them at a Japanese consulate.  In other words, any Hawaii nisei born after 1924 would have only American citizenship unless his or her parents promptly took steps with local Japanese diplomatic representatives to give the infant Japanese citizenship as well.

After 1924 it was considerably easier to sever the legal link binding Nisei to Japan. Older Nisei could renounce their Japanese citizenship. The parents of those born after 1924 needed only to do nothing and their children would have no legal ties with Japan.

These ties, however, were not significantly loosened in Hawaii until the eve of the Second World War. Only 8 percent (5,500 out of 66,000) of Nisei born before  1924 had renounced their Japanese citizenship by 1933. In the same period, about 40 percent (17,800 out of 39,900) of those nisei born after 1924 were registered by their parents at the Japanese consulate so that they could acquire Japanese citizenship. In 1938 it was announced that children of dual citizens (sansei, or third-generation Japanese Americans) were eligible for registration as Japanese subjects.

While dual citizenship conferred some advantages, it also had drawbacks. All Japanese male citizens were liable for military service. After the Imperial Army moved into Manchuria in 1931, draft levels increased to supply manpower for escalating hostilities with China. Hawaii nisei males with dual citizenship were advised to apply for draft deferment every year at the Japanese consulate. Should they neglect to do so and then go to  Japan, they were required to take a physical exam and face possible induction into the Imperial Army. Hawaii nisei were indeed drafted, but the exact number is not known.

The ambiguities of dual citizenship were only one of several circumstances complicating the lives of Hawaii nisei during the 1930s. The nisei were a generation suspended between Japan and the United States in a decade of increasing tension. The generation gap between their parents, who clung to traditional Japanese values and spoke little English, was considerable in terms of years (issei had married late), education, and social behavior. Many nisei bridled at the discipline and obligations imposed by the Japanese family system. Nor was there unanimous enthusiasm among the 85 percent (in 1934) of Nisei students who attended Japanese language school after their regular school hours. At the same time, nisei were not generally accepted into Hawaii's white (haole) community. They were not readily admitted to private schools that educated the local haole elite. Nisei with excellent academic and employment records was passed over when the Big Five corporations recruited management personnel. While old-time haole residents (kamaaina) tended to treat the nisei paternalistically, recent arrivals from the mainland—including army and navy personnel —often regarded them with distrust. Consequently, nisei with technical qualifications were as a practice not hired for well-paid defense jobs.

Between these complex sets of pressures,  nisei followed various paths in life and work. Some made up their minds to win the respect and acceptance of the whole community through hard work and rigorous Americanization. Others, under parental guidance or on their initiative, sought to improve their local status by acquiring an education in Japan, becoming in the process kibei.* But most niseis took an intermediate course, blending their * Literal "return to America". Kibei, a term coined within the Japanese American community, refers to Nisei who returned to the United States after receiving most of their education in Japan.

ancestral heritage with the peculiarities of the Hawaiian social environment. If asked, as many were, if they were ''loyal" to the United States or to Japan, few would have been comfortable contemplating a choice that would be mutually exclusive. As one nisei testified to a congressional committee in 1937: " . . . as long as you treat  American citizens of Japanese ancestry as Japanese, they are going to be Japanese."

These sentiments were echoed by a University of Hawaii freshman shortly thereafter: "If we Japanese in Hawaii are treated like 'Japs', perhaps in time we shall come to  feel like 'Japs'; but if our friends continue to treat us like Americans, we will feel and act like Americans."

Unfortunately, officials in Washington all too often did not treat nisei as ordinary Americans. On 14 October 1940 Congress passed the Nationality Act (Public Law  853) in which Section 402 of Chapter IV stipulated that as of 13 January 1941 American citizens of foreign parents could lose their United States citizenship should they remain in their parents' homeland for more than six months. This legislation was aimed at, among others, nisei pursuing studies, working, and visiting relatives in  Japan. The effect of the law was to demonstrate that American-born men and women of Japanese ancestry were not equal to the vast majority of their fellow citizens.  One Hawaii nisei who was in Japan at this time was so offended by such statutory discrimination that he decided, notwithstanding the gathering clouds of war, not to return to the United States.

The issei, too, had ties to both Japan and the United States. Feelings of Japanese patriotism ran deep, and not surprisingly so, for this generation was born in Japan,  spoke Japanese as its mother tongue, and were not dual citizens like most of their children but outright subjects of Japan. Moreover, many issei attributed what they regarded as their superior status vis à vis Chinese, Filipino, and other nonhaole minorities in Hawaii to the Japanese Empire's power and to Tokyo's solicitude for its overseas doho *.

Issei's opinions were both shaped by and reflected in the local Japanese language press. There were over a dozen vernacular serial publications during the 1930s, but probably none were more influential among issei readers than the Honolulu newspapers Nippu jiji and Hawaii hochi*. Each paper had a circulation of about fifteen thousand. Only slightly less weight was carried by Jitsugyo* no Hawaii, published by Tetsuo Toyam

The tone of all three papers concerning international affairs shared certain characteristics. They were strongly anticommunist and expressed hostility to the Soviet  Union. Britain and France were treated coolly, and at times with outright suspicion. Among the European countries, perhaps Germany and Italy received the most complimentary coverage. Jitsugyo * no Hawaii, for example, portrayed Adolf Hitler in openly flattering colors. After the Anschluss of the Reich and Austria in March  1938, Führer's "snapping the chains of bondage" between the two German-speaking nations was equated with Takamori Saigo*'s exploits in the Meiji  Restoration.* Six months later during the Sudetenland crisis, Jitsugyo no Hawaii assessed the Munich agreements that dismembered Czechoslovakia in the following words: "Adolf Hitler has stark courage, power, and vision. . . . It required supreme courage on the part of Hitler to defy the threat of 25,000,000 armed men. But he  had what it takes—and won!"

Japan occupied a special place in the columns of Hawaii's vernacular press. According to Tadao Tamaru, a former reporter for Nippu Jiji, "all" editorials were favorable to Japan. Any criticism of the Imperial Army was "unthinkable."  Tamaru did not mention one remarkable editorial policy: that news in the Englishlanguage sections and Japanese language sections of the same paper was reported differently. The Nippu Jiji and Hawaii Kochi* were mainly vernacular newspapers, but each carried a few pages of news written in English. Each issue had two front pages, each with its own masthead, headlines, lead stories, and photographs—one in Japanese and one in English. Treatment of Japan in the English sections was comparatively detached. However, the sections written in Japanese reverberated with patriotic rhetoric. Whereas the English pages referred to "Japanese Army" and  "Japanese planes," the vernacular section spoke of ''our army" (waga gun) and "our angry eagles" (waga arawashi), the latter a poetic term for Japanese military  aviators during the 1930s and World War II. The extent to which English and Japanese versions of the same events diverged in the same paper can be gauged by comparing

*  Takamori Saigo* commanded the forces of the allied southwestern han (fiefs) which routed supporters of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, paving the way for the establishment of an Imperial government under the young Emperor Meiji. The political and social events that witnessed the partial demise of feudalism and the birth of an Imperial state have been called the Meiji Restoration. the headlines of  Hawaii Kochi *'s 24 September 1937 issue. During this period, the Imperial Japanese Army was fighting Chinese Nationalist forces around Shanghai and was beginning to push inland along the Yangtze River toward Hank'ou. Englishlanguage reports on these events were confined to two articles headlined  respectively "Chinese Hold Lotien Lines Against Foes" and "Raiders Bomb Hankow." In the Japanese section, there were eight stories about these and other developments not reported in the English language section. Sample headlines were: "Our Units Advance Everywhere''; "Enemy Defences Blown Up [at Lotien]";  "Army Ministry Announcement of War Situation"; "Mongol Units Cooperate with Imperial Army and Annihilate Enemy"; "Our Senda and Itakura Units Complete  Occupation of P'ing Ch'ih Ch'uan"; "Imperial Army Welcomed, Rising Sun Flags Flutter from Every Door!" (the exclamation mark was in the original headline). A wave of patriotism swept across Hawaii's Japanese community at the outbreak of hostilities between Japan and China on 7 July 1937.  Nisei as well as issei were caught up in an emotional fervor that reinforced ethnic consciousness and in some families narrowed the generation gap. To a certain extent, this emotion was rooted in anxiety that Japan's defeat by China would undermine the local status of Hawaii doho*. As Jitsugyo* no Hawaii editorialized: "Fellow compatriots, let us with our hearts pray for our ancestral land in her trials. Should the war, in the end, be lost, the Japanese in Hawaii, insulted and ridiculed by Kanakas [Hawaiians and part  Hawaiians] and Pake [Chinese], would in the long run be unable to work."

As the war escalated during 1938 into a Japanese crusade to "reform" China and to build a "New Order in East Asia," idealistic impulses in the Hawaii Japanese community came to the fore. Japan was perceived by many as devoting lives and resources to saving China from its decadence, to constructing a new Asia in which all Asians would ultimately benefit. In the eyes of this doho, Japan's challenge to the colonial powers and to Soviet communism was a historical turning point of fundamental importance. The demands of this "holy war" (seen) upon the ancestral land were so great that all doho were thought to bear a responsibility to contribute what they could for victory.

The vernacular press played the leading role in keeping issei informed about the war. Without regular Hawaii doho * correspondents in China, the local press relied heavily upon Domei*, a Japanese news agency that closely reflected official views.

Domei reports had greater credibility for many issei than those emanating from American news agencies. According to University of Hawaii anthropologist John  Embree, who was studying the Japanese community in Kona on the island of Hawaii during the late 1930s: "The first generation regards the Japanese war news in the  Japanese section as infallibly accurate; all other news of the war, such as appears in American papers, is 'Chinese propaganda'."

Professor Embree's remark was substantiated by Shiro* Sogabe, a missionary in Hilo, who in 1938 advised readers of  Jitsugyo* no Hawaii: "Japanese press reports are the most reliable in the world. Do not be misled by the English language press. It is all right to read the English language press, but you must first read the Japanese  press and make a calm judgment."

Hawaii's Japanese language newspapers on occasion openly criticized the Honolulu  Advertiser and StarBulletin for printing negative allegations about Japan's prosecution of the war in China. For example, when the Imperial Army fought its way into Nanking in December 1937, the local vernacular press openly hailed the fall of China's capital as an epochal triumph. But as stories of atrocities by Japanese soldiers started to surface in the local English language press, the vernacular papers responded sharply.

Feelings ran particularly high over the so-called slapping incident. During the occupation of Nanking, a young American diplomat named John Allison* was slapped by a Japanese soldier for intervening in what appears to have been the imminent abuse of a Chinese woman. The incident stirred up considerable publicity in the United  States, not to mention in the Territory of Hawaii. Jitsugyo no Hawaii took Allison to task for "slandering" the Imperial Army.

The China war made its presence felt in Hawaii's Japanese community in many ways. One was through rallies and meetings to support the war effort, such as those held by the Nihon bunka shikakai* (Society for the Promotion of Japanese Culture). Local theaters such as the Honolulu showed Japanese war movies and * John Allison subsequently served as ambassador to Japan (1953–1957). After retirement, he lived in Honolulu until he died in 1978.

Domei * newsreels, inviting viewers with posters hailing the "heroism of the Imperial Army" and promising "excitement inspiring100 million  doho*." Japanese radio  broadcasts were readily accessible, and starting in May 1940 the Tokyo station JZK began evening news programs broadcast especially for Hawaii audiences. An  advertisement in a Honolulu store selling Philco radios urged shoppers to ''Hear Japan, 100 Battles, 100 Victories." Another way in which Japanese views of the China war were disseminated in Hawaii was through prominent visitors. A number of the wellknown Japanese  politicians, journalists, and academics who came to or passed through Hawaii in the 1930s gave interviews for the vernacular press or delivered lectures to local  audiences for the purpose, as Baron Kishichiro* Okura put it, of imparting "a correct understanding of Japan's goals." These visitors included a postwar prime minister  (Hitoshi Ashida), the director of Domei (Masanori Ito*), the editorinchief of the Mainichi newspaper (Shingoro* Takaishi), and a retired rear admiral and Diet  member from Okinawa (Kenwa Kanna).

A figure who aroused strong local reactions, both positive and negative, in the community was the ultranationalist Seigo* Nakano. Nakano made a stopover at  Honolulu in February 1938 en route home from a trip to the Third Reich. In an interview with Nippu jiji he stressed the rising power of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Six months later, in an article written specially for Jitsugyo* no Hawaii, Nakano criticized Tokyo's apology to the United States for the Panay Incident* and applauded a  statement by a hawkish Japanese admiral** that the white man must be driven out of Asia.

Among the most powerful stimuli to patriotism among issei were visits by ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Such visits occurred forty-one times between 1876 and  1939. From Tokyo's perspective, these calls in the Islands served several purposes. At an official level, they constituted a courteous gesture toward the United  States, providing occasions in which American and Japanese naval officers could establish professional contacts. At a second level, they offered opportunities to observe America's mid * Japanese planes strafing and sinking the American gunboat Panay on the Yangtze River near Nanking on December 12 1937.

** Nobumasa Suetsugu (1880–1944), commander in chief of the Combined Fleet (1933–1934), Home Minister (1937–1939).

    Pacific base. Finally, by showing the flag, they conveyed a message to Hawaiian (and after 1898 to American) authorities that Japan was a Pacific naval power that took more than a casual interest in its Hawaii doho *.

For their part, many doho welcomed naval visitations. The vernacular press gave them prominent coverage. Officers and men were accorded warm hospitality in the businesses, civic and religious organizations, and homes of doho on Oahu, Maui, and the island of Hawaii. Many issei saw the Rising Sun flag on an Imperial naval vessel as gratifying reassurance that the mother country still cared about its overseas subjects. Nor were the nisei unaffected. One of them recalled: "A naval ship,  being an extension of the suzerainty of the homeland, is a tonic of the first magnitude . . . and the reception is therefore both elaborate and sincere. We were brought up  in such an atmosphere, and so the sailors and officers of the training ships were welcomed with both affection and respect."

Editorial policies in the vernacular press fostered the idea that Japanese naval officers who had visited Hawaii subsequently retained a special connection with the islands. Promotions and combat exploits of these individuals were periodically published, sometimes in the form of their letters to a Hawaii vernacular newspaper editor. Rear Admiral Denshichi Okochi*, who called at Honolulu in 1934, subsequently commanded a flotilla in Shanghai and wrote to Nippu jiji editor Yasutaro*  Soga* how pleased he was that Hawaii doho correctly understood and supported Japan's war efforts. Another visitor to Hawaii, Lieutenant Commander Matsuhei  Kawasaki, wrote Tetsuo Toyama that Jitsugyo* no Hawaii editorials enjoyed a good reputation within the Navy Ministry. Toyama also befriended Lieutenant  Commander Takaji Terasaki who came to Hawaii in 1922 as a cadet and returned for a second visit in 1936. Promoted to captain in 1937, Terasaki commanded a  Yangtze River gunboat during the Nanking campaign and wrote an account of the city's capture which Toyama published. The article was accompanied by a  photograph of Admiral Okochi and Captain Terasaki on the deck of a warship under the caption "Shining War Deeds of Naval Stars with Hawaii Connections."

Personal ties between Japanese naval officers and the Japanese community were strengthened by geographical and family bonds. John Embree noted that in Kona local hosts looked for Japanese sailors with the same prefectural origins and tried to get the men to stay in their homes. It was not unusual for some of the officers and men among the visiting ships to have relatives in Hawaii. For example, when the training ships Ondo and Erimo called at Hilo in June 1937 they received a particularly warm reception. The commander of the Erimo had not only friends but also relatives on the Big Island. At about the same time the warship Sunosaki dropped anchor at Honolulu. Its commanding officer had an emotional reunion with his older brother, who had emigrated to Hawaii from Kagoshima thirty years earlier.

Nor were young women unaffected by the proximity of Imperial Navy cadets. In 1931 a Hawaii nisei girl fell in love with a cadet visiting American waters on a training vessel. For the next ten years, both waged a quiet struggle with Washington and Tokyo bureaucracies for the right to marry. Meanwhile, the cadet matured into a naval fighter pilot with the rank of captain. At last, in the spring of 1941, the couple was united. Nippu jiji celebrated the event by noting the "happy end" to a saga where  "pure love" between a Hawaii nisei maiden and an "angry eagle'' had overcome barriers separating the two nations. The Imperial Navy, however, gave its permission for the marriage only after the Hawaii girl had come to Japan and renounced her American citizenship.

Although Imperial Navy officers visiting Hawaii were expected to refrain from political activities, the goodwill and receptivity of issei led some to assume the role of educators. The public lectures on Japan's aims in China delivered by naval officers in Hawaii enjoyed considerable success. For example, on 8 December 1938,  Captain Isamu Takeda, commander of the naval tanker Shiriya, gave a lecture on the China war to an appreciative audience of 160 at the Konpira Shrine in Honolulu.  Sponsored by the local Nippon rengo * kyokai* [United Japanese Society], the lecture dealt with more than China. Captain Takeda was quoted approvingly in the  Jitsugyo* no Hawaii as asserting that future generations of doho* may be American in form but they would not lose their Japanese spirit. The captain's presentation was so well received that he was persuaded to postpone the Shiriya's departure to make similar appearances in Oahu's rural districts. Such was the local enthusiasm generated by naval visits that Admiral Suguru Suzuki, when interviewed in 1979, recalled how in 1937 and 1938 as a lieutenant commander attached to the Third Department (Intelligence) of the Navy General Staff he had been regularly detailed to pick up sackfuls of mail from Hawaii doho * at a Tokyo post office. The bulk of this mail contained expressions of goodwill and occasional monetary contributions. It is possible, albeit unprovable, that a few letters came from self-appointed guardians of doho patriotism. John Embree noted the existence of such types in the Japanese  community at Kona: "Anyone who acts in a way 'disloyal' to Japan is likely to have some neighbor write to Tokyo about him and then, if and when he returns to Japan  for a visit, he runs into trouble." The Imperial Navy was not the only beneficiary of Hawaii doho patriotism during the 1930s. From 1937 until 1939, encouraged by the Japanese Consulate and the  Japanese Chamber of Commerce, Hawaii doho purchased three million yen worth of Imperial war bonds and contributed 1.2 million yen to the National Defense and  Soldier's Relief Fund.* These transactions were handled largely by Honolulu branches of the Yokohama Specie Bank and the Sumitomo Bank, or through consular agents active on each island. During this interim, Hawaii doho reportedly donated more per capita to the National Defense Fund than did the inhabitants of Japan proper.

Monetary contributions made up only part of total donations. Through the good offices of  Nippu Jiji and other vernacular newspapers, ties, blankets, lead plates from auto batteries, tinsel foil from cigarette packages, and Kodak film wrappers were sent to Japan to help the war effort. Local kumi (groups) of housewives took up collections for and prepared imonbukuro (comfort bags) for troops fighting in China. Imperial Army infantrymen who were accustomed to foraging for food in  Chinese villages prized this imonbukuro, which typically contained an assortment of Camel and Lucky Strike cigarettes, Dole canned pineapple, Sunkist oranges,  SunMaid raisins, and chocolate kisses. A few Hawaii women sewed onethousandstitch belts to be worn as protective talismans by Imperial soldiers in combat.

* At that time the exchange rate was 3.4 yen to one U.S. dollar. grated. This complicated task was tackled by local prefectural societies, the vernacular papers, the Japanese Consulate, Japanese firms with branches in Hawaii, and the Army Ministry. Whether the articles were always delivered to the intended units in the field cannot be said with certainty, but the cooperation of so many groups was impressive.

Efforts were made in Hawaii and Japan to direct these remittances to those military units from the same Japanese prefectures and even from the same villages from which donors had emi At that time the exchange rate was 3.4 yen to one U.S. dollar. This complicated task was tackled by local prefectural societies, the vernacular papers, the Japanese Consulate, Japanese firms with branches in Hawaii, and the Army Ministry. Whether the articles were always delivered to the intended units in the field cannot be said with certainty, but the cooperation of so many groups was impressive.

 

 

For updates click hompage here