The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 23 (2012)

From “Vanishing Race” to Friendly Ally:
Japanese American Perceptions of Native
Hawaiians during the Interwar Years

Hiromi MONOBE*INTRODUCTION
This article explores how the perceptions of Native Hawaiians among
Japanese residents in Hawai‘i shifted in the context of race relations in
the islands during the interwar years of the late 1910s through the early
1940s.1 Guided by the theory of racial formation, the author pays particular attention to the interconnected nature of representation and social
structure whereby local white-Japanese relations exerted a constant inﬂuence, not only on the form and state of interactions between Japaneseand Native Hawaiians, but also on how the former viewed the latter.2
Existing scholarship on the pre-World War II history of Japanese in
Hawai‘i focuses primarily on their relationship to white elites (plantation owners), characterizing the former as “oppressors” and the latter as“the oppressed.” This article adds a third—and complicating—dimension to the typical binary view of race relations in the islands by examining how Japanese residents—both immigrants and their local-born Nisei
children—looked at and interacted with Native Hawaiians under whitehegemony.

*Associate Professor, Doshisha University

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During the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese Americans found their social,economic, and political status gradually rising, although they remained
less inﬂuential politically than Native Hawaiians, who held U.S. citizenship and had certain other privileges due to being indigenous to theislands.3 Having been brought to the islands as a labor force for sugar
plantations, ﬁrst-generation Japanese immigrants, known as Issei, occupied the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder in Hawai‘i. Their legal
status as “aliens ineligible for citizenship” rendered them, in the wordsof historian Yuji Ichioka, a “political pariah,” without voting rights. Thiswas despite their signiﬁcant economic ascent as a community leading up
to the 1920s and afterward.4 To ﬁght racial marginalization and discrimination, the ﬁrst two generations of Japanese in Hawai‘i, Issei and Nisei,
devised various strategies of racial self-representation, which also affected their attitudes and behavior toward Native Hawaiians. Initially,
many immigrant intellectuals were strongly inﬂuenced by the racial
ideology of imperial Japan, which borrowed the language of civilizationand progress to portray Japanese as racially equal to Euro-American
whites and placed peoples of non-Japanese nonwhite origin in a positionof inferiority. Native Hawaiians were viewed and thought about accordingly, for a negative perception and skewed representation both justiﬁed
and predicted the inevitable ascendancy of the Japanese in Hawai‘i overother minority races there.
This initial strategy of racial self-empowerment nonetheless underwent a notable transformation in the thinking of key community leaders,
who, in the context of their permanent settlement in Hawai‘i, reoriented
their perspective to the local reality under which they lived their everyday lives. Whereas their compatriots back home could rely on Japan’s
sovereign military might to dominate other groups, the conditions ofwhite hegemony in Hawai‘i made it difﬁcult for Issei and Nisei to imagine an easy overturning of the existing racial order solely on the basis of
their belief in their own innate racial superiority. Against this background, a number of Japanese Americans, especially of the second generation, began to forge a more amicable and sympathetic view of Native
Hawaiians as a people who shared a similar set of issues as themselves—
as racialized minorities under the dictate of white plantation owners andthe local Republican oligarchy. Working toward the goal of a moreracially equitable Hawai‘i, some Nisei leaders even developed a senseof interracial “partnership” with Native Hawaiians, similar to what post1980s scholars have termed a “local identity.”5

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Focusing on the historical evolution of the Japanese immigrant-Native
Hawaiian relationship under white rule provides a more nuanced andcomplete understanding of race relations in Hawai‘i. The theory of“racial triangulation” is especially useful for re-visioning the racial
entanglements of peoples in the islands. While Claire Jean Kim developed this theory to unveil the complex mechanism of racial formation(the formation of socially constructed racial identities) among Asians,
whites, and blacks, this present article proposes to treat JapaneseAmericans as “occupy[ing] a distinctive ‘third’ position” relative towhites and Native Hawaiians.6 From the 1990s onward, studies on Asian
immigrant settler colonialism draw on a similar kind of multiracial
formation in critically examining the power that Asian Americans—especially Japanese Americans—have exerted over Native Hawaiians incontemporary Hawai‘i.7 Yet, the way that triangular race relations
looked and unfolded in the islands prior to World War II has not been
fully investigated. Rather, it appears as if some scholars presume thatJapanese Americans have always held the upper hand over Native
Hawaiians, even during the prewar years.8 As a result, racial conﬂict andoppression are the predominant themes in studies of Asian settler colonialism. To help provide a more complete picture, this article examines
not only conﬂict but also collaboration between the two nonwhite groups
in the society of Hawai‘i. Decades before the dramatic ascendancy of the
Nisei, local Japanese and Hawaiians did struggle to rise above each underwhite hegemony. At times, however, individuals from the two groups
also developed close personal ties and cooperated politically as allies inan effort to improve their common status as racialized minorities in prewar Hawai‘i.
THE EMERGENCE OF MULTIFACETED RACE RELATIONS
AND WHITE HEGEMONY IN HAWAI‘I
Hawai‘i was originally a kingdom of indigenous people. After the1820 arrival of Christian missionaries from the East Coast of the continental United States, many whites settled in Hawai‘i and became involved in the sugar industry, beginning in the 1830s. To develop andexpand their sugar business, these whites needed land and labor. To
secure these, they persuaded leaders of the Hawaiian government toestablish a new land system and labor law. Previously, all land in theislands belonged to the king, and private ownership was not allowed. In

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1848 a drastic land reform, the Great Mahele, was carried out, whichallowed white foreigners as well as native commoners to gain title toland. While many natives did not understand the meaning of land ownership, white capitalists clearly did, and this paved the way for them toobtain vast tracts of land for sugar plantations. In 1850, the government
also enacted the Masters and Servants Act, which contained clauses governing the relationship between plantation owners and plantation laborers. The act allowed an employer to prosecute a worker if the worker
broke his side of the labor contract (for example by running away fromthe plantation), thus giving employers more control over their employees. In these ways, the enactment of the new land and labor laws contributed to solidifying the plantation system in Hawai‘i.9
Initially, Hawaiians were employed as sugar plantation laborers, butthey tended to quit when their contract ended and return to their traditional self-sufﬁcient lifestyle. Next, Chinese workers were brought overas laborers, but after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,
Chinese were prohibited from entering Hawai‘i. In 1885, Japanese immigrants began arriving in the islands under an agreement reached between
the Hawaiian and Japanese governments, and an inﬂux of Japanesecontinued until the early twentieth century. In 1893, the Reform Party,
composed mainly of white sugar businessmen, overthrew Hawai‘i’smonarchy and established a provisional government. In the following
year, the same group of whites established the Republic of Hawaii. The
Republic’s government sought to strengthen political and economic ties
with America , and in 1898 Hawai‘i was annexed by the United States,
becoming the Territory of Hawaii. Hawai‘i remained an American territory for more than half a century before ﬁnally joining the union as theﬁftieth state in 1959.10
One of the most conspicuous characteristics of Hawai‘i was the richvariety of its racial and ethnic mix. Immigrants came not just from China
and Japan but also, around the turn of the century, from Portugal, Norway,
Germany, and Puerto Rico. This contributed to diversifying the islands’
population. Among the immigrants, the most powerful were the descendents of Christian missionaries and other groups of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Although they intermarried with the Hawaiian royal family and werethus of mixed blood, these people constituted a “white elite segment”
that occupied the pinnacle of Hawai‘i’s social hierarchy. In the 1920s
and 1930s, Japanese were numerically dominant, constituting nearly 40
percept of the territorial population. In terms of the racial dynamics ofFROM “VANISHING RACE” TO FRIENDLY ALLY

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Hawai‘i, however, they were positioned as a minority. Native Hawaiians,
the original residents of the islands, constituted 14 percent, including
part-Hawaiians. While Native Hawaiians’ proportion of the population
continuously declined after the arrival of Westerners, they retained solid
political power in the territory because they had the largest number ofregistered voters among all ethnic groups in the islands, as well as inﬂuential statesmen representing their collective interests.11
JAPANESE INTELLECTUALS’ PERCEPTIONS OF NATIVE HAWAIIANS
Before examining Issei views, it is useful to discuss how intellectuals
in Japan viewed Native Hawaiians, as Issei were subject to the inﬂuenceof contemporary Japanese ideology. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868,
which embraced the motto “leaving Asia and entering the West” (datsua nyuo), the Japanese government eagerly introduced Western systems
and ideas as a foundation upon which to build a modern Japan. Theirgoal was to gain international recognition for Japan as a developed country and to elevate their nation, through modernization, to a level equivalent to that of the Western superpowers. This eventually led Japan totread a path of imperialism and colonialism, following in the footstepsof the superpowers.12 It was as part of this process that Japanese intellectuals absorbed the idea of social Darwinism, a crucial component oflate-nineteenth-century Western thought and values. This caused themto look down on the indigenous people of the Paciﬁc, particularly thosein Micronesia, where Japan had started to reach its imperial hand. Referring to indigenous people in the tropical islands as dojin (literally“land people”), a derogatory Japanese term for “aboriginal,” intellectuals claimed that the “dark-skinned” natives were physically, mentally,
and culturally inferior to Japanese and that they should therefore be“taught and guided” by “more advanced” Japan. This viewpoint also
shaped Japanese perceptions of Native Hawaiians, on whom they projected negative images such as “primitive,” “uncivilized,” “irrational,”and “lazy.”13 Such Japanese-versioned Orientalism was captured in“Current Circumstances in Hawaii and Japanese Suffrage” (Hawai no
Gensei, Nihonjin no Sanseiken), one of the essays found in Selected
Essays on Yankees (Yanki Sho), written by philosopher and journalist
Betten Nagasawa (1868–99) in 1894. In 1893, the same year that whites
overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, Nagasawa stopped in Hawai‘i on his
way to the continental United States. Immediately after arriving in

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Honolulu, he went to see Iolani Palace, the former residence of the royalfamily, and then Washington Place, the private home in which Queen
Liliuokalani was conﬁned. While appreciating the beauty of the European-style palace and showing respect and sympathy for the tragic fateof the noble queen, Nagasawa also made the following comments on the
Hawaiian masses:“Kanaka” (or dojin) are ignorant, idiotic people who understand neither thehonor of the nation nor the signiﬁcance of autonomy. . . . Shaking their buttocks, they gather together in front of the statue of King Kamehameha to sip
blood and enjoy a feast. Among them, there are very few who warn against
white predominance and foreign threats to national dignity and who are willing to devote themselves to protecting the state. Instead, most only dance theso-called “hula hula” and entertain themselves. It is no wonder that the Reform Party, proposing the establishment of a provisional government, gained
authority.14

Native Hawaiians illustrated here—sipping blood and dancing a wicked,
promiscuous dance—ﬁt the image in Western imagination of stereotypical barbarians still in the stage of precivilization.15 Infused with Westernthought and spurred by Japanese ethnocentricism, Nagasawa developed
this particular view of Hawaiians because they were neither white, therace that served as a role model for modern Japan, nor of the Yamato(Japanese) race, who were nonwhite but supposedly gifted with physical and intellectual excellence. Dismissing the fact that many Native
Hawaiians had been strenuously ﬁghting against white elites to preserve
the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom, Nagasawa assumed that alarge majority of Hawaiians lacked the intellectual and moral capacity
to understand the importance of pledging loyalty to and protecting theautonomy of their mother country. Nagasawa was a populist who believed that the masses, not just a handful of nobility, should constitutethe backbone of the nation. Although feeling somewhat sorry for theusurped queen, he despised the majority of Hawaiians as “backward”
dojin and considered it inevitable that their country should be taken overby the “more advanced” whites. In addition, like many other Japanese
intellectuals in this period, Nagasawa was an expansionist and lamented
that Japan had “lost” Hawai‘i to the white Americans who had overthrown the monarchy. Japan, he argued, which was on a par with whitenations, should have stepped forward to annex Hawai‘i because of its

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geopolitical importance in the Paciﬁc, just as Russia had gained control
over Sakhalin. Nagasawa believed that Hawai‘i could serve as the ﬁrst
landing place and a valuable stopover to start their new lives abroad forJapanese emigrants headed for further destinations such as Mexico,South America, and Australia. Viewing Japanese and whites as equal interms of inherent ability, he also contended that Hawai‘i was an arena inwhich the “Japanese race” and the “white race” would compete with eachother to demonstrate their strength.16 In the eyes of Japanese expansionists like Nagasawa, Hawai‘i was nothing more than a target for Japan’scolonial ambitions, and the Hawaiian people were merely objects of conquest and control.17
ISSEI PERCEPTIONS OF NATIVE HAWAIIANS
If Japanese intellectuals saw Hawaiians as inferior to Japanese, how
did ﬁrst-generation Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i view Native
Hawaiians during the interwar years? Many Issei intellectuals, before
leaving Japan, had become familiar with Progressivism and social
Darwinism, which placed whites at the top of the racial hierarchy andWestern culture at the pinnacle of the world social order. When they emigrated to Hawai‘i and began living in a society dominated by elite whites,
however, they were forced to deal with racial hierarchy, not merely as
an abstract idea but as the reality of their daily life. While in Japan they
could dream of being equal to whites, but in Hawai‘i most Japanese immigrants found themselves in the lower strata of society, struggling tosurvive, in a position of inferiority vis-à-vis the existing hegemony. To
redeem their ethnic pride and mobilize their community, they often employed Native Hawaiians as a negative exemplum in discussions of theirown future in the islands. They called indigenous Hawaiians “dojin” andreferred to them as a “vanishing race” (horobiyuku minzoku), doomed todisappear in the natural course of history.
Shinsai Sagawa, a Protestant minister at the Hilo Japanese Church on
the island of Hawai‘i, was one such Issei. Calling Native Hawaiians a“vanishing race,” he proclaimed them to be the polar opposite of theJapanese. In the essay titled “Discussing Our Compatriots in Hawaii”(1939), Sagawa elaborated on “Japanese racial expansion” and the mission of Nisei in Hawai‘i, painting a striking contrast between the ﬂourishing, vigorous young Nisei and the diminishing, frail Native Hawaiians.
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saw a parallel between Native Hawaiians and Native Americans, andcontended that Hawai‘i-born Nisei would prosper in the islands becauseof their racial superiority, while Hawaiians, physically and mentallyinferior to the Japanese, would eventually die out. In the essay, Sagawa
stated:Some people are pessimistic about the future of the Nisei in Hawaii. What
will happen to them if their population continues to increase? . . . Yet, powerlies in numbers. . . . The more they increase, the more strength they will
gain. . . . Like American Indians, Native Hawaiians were given various kindsof protection by the government, and they have fallen into the same fate as
the Indians. If they cannot survive competition, perhaps it is inevitable forthem to disappear. . . . God gives the right to survive to those who are usefuland beneﬁcial to society. The Yamato race is exuberant and expansible . . .
the Nisei will overcome all difﬁculties and contribute to making Hawaii intoa paradise in the coming Paciﬁc Age.18

Japanese racial expansion, as presented here by Sagawa, was a widely
advocated concept among Japanese American intellectuals in Hawai‘iand the continental United States during the interwar years. It was a
Japanese American version of the pioneer thesis, comparing Japaneseimmigrants moving eastward across the Paciﬁc to European pioneers
moving westward in the process of American colonial expansion. As
Japanese progressed eastward, ﬁrst Hawai‘i and then the West Coast
would turn into lands of fertility and prosperity. By juxtaposing themselves with white settlers, Issei intellectuals attempted to make Japaneseimmigrants a part of mainstream American history in order to gain recognition for their contribution to American society and, ultimately, toempower their ethnic community. Underlying this concept was the argument that Japanese have an “expansive character” inherited from theirancestors; it thus followed naturally that Japanese should emigrate to
Mexico, South America, the North Paciﬁc, and the rest of Asia, building new communities abroad rather than conﬁning themselves to the narrowness of their home islands. Overseas they would successfully settle
down in these unknown lands and eventually become an integral part of
the host societies, demonstrating their racial superiority through such
virtues as diligence, perseverance, self-sacriﬁce, tranquility, and loyalty,
which they believed to be rooted in their Yamato blood. Since all peopleof Japanese descent were seen as doho, or compatriots (literally “com-FROM “VANISHING RACE” TO FRIENDLY ALLY81

ing from the same womb”), regardless of their place of birth or residence,
they could be widely scattered overseas to construct sturdy social, political, and economic foundations for their race.19 As Hawai‘i was the ﬁrst
designated destination for Japanese immigration in the modern period,
Issei in Hawai‘i found this concept of the Japanese pioneer to be particularly pertinent to their situation, and they exhorted the Nisei, theHawai‘i-born generation, to embrace the same mission as a vanguard ofJapanese racial expansion.20 In the process of the racial expansion in
Hawai‘i, Issei also claimed that Nisei should avoid intermarriage andﬁnd their spouses within the Japanese race to maintain the “purity of theirblood,” which the parents’ generation regarded as the foundation ofJapanese excellence.21
In this context, it was perhaps not surprising that Issei intellectuals
superimposed the image of Native Americans on that of Native
Hawaiians, perceiving both groups to be destined to succumb to the pioneers and to the more advanced civilizations the newcomers brought withthem.22 Like Francis Parkman Jr., the author of The Oregon Trail (1849),
who wrote that American Indians “received their ﬁnal doom,” Japaneseimmigrants like Sagawa believed that progress ruled history and that
Native Hawaiians could not avoid their fate.23 They believed that theNative Hawaiians’ displacement by Nisei conﬁrmed the principle of survival of the ﬁttest; no matter how protected they were, they were too
weak in terms of body and mind to survive “natural selection.”
In contrast to white settlers’ perceptions of Native Americans in the
mid-nineteenth century, however, Issei intellectuals never perceived
Native Hawaiians as a dangerous or troublesome threat who should be
repressed or tamed. Partly because local Japanese and Hawaiians neveractually fought each other with guns and bows, as whites and Native
Americans did, many Issei projected an amicable, peaceful image on
Hawaiians, and felt pity and sympathy for this indigenous people who
had been marginalized and whose population was dwindling sharply,
even though they were the islands’ original residents.24 Certain Issei
publically expressed sorrow for the tragic fate of Native Hawaiians, andeven indignation toward the white colonizers, who had more fatally affected the lives of Hawaiians than Japanese settlers ever could. Yasutaro
Soga (1873–1957), publisher of the Nippu Jiji, the Japanese-language
newspaper that boasted the largest circulation in the Territory of Hawaii,
held such a view toward Native Hawaiians. Soga was one of the mostinﬂuential leaders in the local Japanese community, as his newspaper

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enabled him to help shape public opinion among the Japanese American
community in Hawai‘i. In June 1934 he wrote an editorial titled “At theKamehameha Festival—the Rise of Ethnic Consciousness among Natives” in which he offered his observations on an annual Hawaiian festival and his thoughts concerning the tragic history of Native Hawaiians.25
The Kamehameha Festival was started in order to commemorate King
Kamehameha, the person who ﬁrst uniﬁed the Hawaiian Islands into akingdom.26 At the festival, the Hawaiian Royal Band played music,
choirs sang songs, dance troupes performed chants and hula, and a grandprocession with ﬂoats paraded the streets of Honolulu, drawing thousands of spectators. Impressed by the dazzling extravaganza, Soga expressed sincere respect for Hawaiian culture and revealed how he felt
about the circumstances that Hawaiians had been stranded in since thedemise of the monarchy:
In any society, the conquering of one civilization by a more advanced civilization is always accompanied by historical tragedy. If you look at the transformation of Hawai‘i’s society over the past century from the perspective ofnatives, you cannot say that it has contributed greatly to enhancing their happiness. Seeing their daily life, I cannot help sensing a tragic shadow on themas an ethnic group. . . . Transplanting capitalism to Hawai‘i was part of aprocess of great advancement, not only in our economic activities but also in
our material culture at large. For the natives, however, it also led to ethnic
demise, economic and political enslavement, and collective tragedy.27

Here Soga appears to be caught between reason and emotion. While trying to rationalize the displacement of Native Hawaiians as an inevitablepart of the natural course of progress, he also repeatedly uses the word“tragedy,” showing empathy toward Hawaiians’ hardship, distress, andlaments. Toward the end of the editorial he becomes even more compassionate, stating:This year’s festival was held on an unprecedentedly grand scale, but weshould not view it merely as merrymaking. The rise of Native Hawaiian ethnic awareness is not just something in people’s imaginations; it is emerging
as a real and substantial source of power in our society. We must recognize
it as an ongoing social phenomenon in Hawai‘i.28

Soga gave his blessing to the ethnic nationalism taking shape among
Hawaiians and concluded his piece in a highly optimistic tone, as though

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predicting that Hawaiians and their culture would revive in the future.
He emotionally supported the indigenous movement for multiple reasons: he was Japanese, he was a permanent alien ineligible for U.S. citizenship, and he was indignant about the dominance of elite whites over
the rest of Hawai‘i’s populations. He had a strong sense of social justice,so much so that he endorsed a plantation strike and was even imprisoned
as a labor ringleader in his younger days.29 Living in the same island
community with other minorities, he was able to relate to the plight of
Hawaiians and develop transracial ties with them.
In addition to the vanishing race image, another notable image of
Native Hawaiians held by Issei during this period was that of the noble
savage. The noble savage is an idealized concept of uncivilized humanity, usually personiﬁed as a rugged man of nature, bravery, freedom, andinnocence. The noble savage is heroic and respectable, his fate dramaticand tragic. He often represents nostalgia for a past when humans werestill pure and simple, before they were exposed to civilization. In the continental United States, liberal whites often projected such a romantic
image on Native Americans.30
Interestingly, the noble savage image of Hawaiians appears in Japanese
language school textbooks edited by local Issei teachers in the prewar
period. In the early 1930s, there existed more than 170 Japanese language schools in the Territory of Hawaii, and nearly 90 percent of
Hawai‘i-born Nisei receiving compulsory public education also studied
at Japanese language schools in the afternoon and on weekends.31
Japanese language schools in Hawai‘i originally used textbooks published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, with the intention of
educating children to be assets of Imperial Japan. From 1929 onward,
however, the Hawaii Japanese Education Society (Hawai Kyoiku-kai),
formed by Japanese language schoolteachers, compiled textbooks speciﬁcally designed for local Nisei students.32 In compiling these textbooks, the society adopted the following policy: “Japanese language
school textbooks are intended to enable our youth to grow into wellrounded persons and American citizens, embracing American ideals aswell as acquiring middle-level Japanese language proﬁciency.”33 For
textbooks on moral education, the society decided to “include a numberof lessons based on materials with local [Hawaiian] elements” and to“adopt fairy tales, legends, fables, and proverbs where suitable.”34 As
this editorial policy pursued the twin goals of Americanization and localization, Native Hawaiian characters came to appear in Japanese language

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school textbooks as a symbol of local culture, along with BenjaminFranklin and Abraham Lincoln, representative ﬁgures of mainstream
American history.35 Yet, while mainstream representatives were actual
persons, the Hawaiians in these textbooks were uniformly mythical andsupernatural ﬁgures. For instance, one textbook story recounts a famous
Hawaiian legend about the boy who invented sails. To look for his father
on another island, this young boy attempts to cross the ocean, and to do
so devises a boat with a canvas sail. In the end he ﬁnds his father, andhe and his parents live happily ever after. This story not only teaches
readers about courage, ﬁlial piety, family ties, a creative mind, and an
adventurous spirit; it also inspires respect toward traditional Hawaiian
culture as represented by advanced navigation and seamanship.36 Another example of a Hawaiian character in a textbook is a young boy
named Moemoe. In the Hawaiian language, “moe” means “sleeping,”
and a demigod named Moemoe appears in a number of Hawaiian legends. This tall tale begins as follows: “Moemoe was a very lazy boy who
was always sleeping. When his mother worked in the taro ﬁeld, he did
not help her. When his father went out ﬁshing, he did not go along.”
Moemoe continues to sleep even as a stream rises up and covers his face.
He ﬁnally wakes up when a kukui tree starts growing in his nostril andtickles him. The story ends with Moemoe’s deep regret for taking an
extended nap; he makes up his mind to help his parents and work hard.
Though the character of Moemoe reﬂects a stereotypical image of a“lazy” Hawaiian, he is also portrayed as honest, innocent, good-natured,
and wise enough to learn from his failure.37 As these examples show,
Issei textbook editors held favorable, romantic views of Hawaiians as
noble savages, and they passed these on to the Nisei generation throughJapanese language school education.
NISEI PERCEPTIONS OF NATIVE HAWAIIANS
If the foregoing represents Issei views of Native Hawaiians, then whatkind of perceptions did Nisei hold of Hawaiians during the interwar
years? While some Nisei adopted the social Darwinist notions of theirparents, many developed their own views of Hawaiians, based on theirpersonal experiences. Unlike their parents’ generation, whose lives were
mostly conﬁned to local Japanese communities where they did not speak
English or associate with non-Japanese on a daily basis, Nisei had close

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interactions with Hawaiians in the classroom and on the playground.
During the 1920s and the 1930s, the racial/ethnic student body mix in
Hawai‘i’s public schools was diverse: Japanese made up nearly 50
percent, Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians 15 percent, Chinese 9 percent,Portuguese 7 percent, Filipinos 6 percent, whites (most of Anglo-Saxon
lineage) 5 percent, Koreans 3 percent, and others 4 percent.38 In higher
education, however, the percentages accounted for by Chinese, Japanese,
whites, and Hawaiians increased, so that these four groups constituted
an even greater part of the student body. Black and Gold, the Honolulu
McKinley High School yearbook, and Ka Palapala, the University of
Hawai‘i yearbook, show that all the athletic clubs and most student organizations of this period were interracial, while some associations wererace-based. On the University of Hawai‘i campus, for example, the agriculture club, commerce club, home economics club, and religious groups
were interracial. On the other hand, fraternities and sororities were racebased; for example, Phi Delta Sigma was for white men, Hakuba-kai wasfor Japanese men, Yang Chung Hui was for Chinese women, and Ke
Anuenue was for Hawaiian women.39
While more open to interracial relations than their parents’ generation,
Nisei generally did not develop friendships with whites (other than Portuguese and Spanish) as much as they did with Hawaiians. Why was this?
As various evidence shows, some Nisei felt envy and admiration—and
therefore distance—toward whites because of whites’ more privilegedsocial and economic position. A female student at the Territorial Normal
and Training School (teachers’ college), growing up on a plantation on
the island of Kaua‘i, wrote in an essay of what she thought about whites
as a child: “I used to dream and wish sometimes, I were a haole [whitein the Hawaiian language] because I thought only white children wore
shoes, hats, owned dolls, and lived in better houses than we did.”40 In
another essay, a Territorial Normal School student from the rural area of
the island of Hawai‘i complained about favoritism given to white students by white teachers: “Did I ever wish I were a haole? Yes, I have. I
know how impossible it is for me to have such a wish but I did. Aren’t
the haoles given better marks than we who work just as hard for thework? We ‘sweat’ over the work; the haoles glance over the work; resultsin the teacher’s record are startling—A for the haole, D or C for us.
Doesn’t this make someone wish he were a white?”41 These essays were
written as responses in an extensive research study on local race relations

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conducted by Chicago-school sociologists at the University of Hawai‘ifrom 1924 to 1927. They succinctly capture Hawai‘i-born Nisei perceptions of whites in that period.42
Interestingly, Nisei who grew up on sugar plantations often tended tolook at whites more negatively than did Nisei from Honolulu and otherurban districts on O‘ahu. A plantation was a racially stratiﬁed community headed by elite whites, and it seems clear that growing up withinsuch a hierarchical system led Nisei to feel greater distance from whites,
and to even possess hard feelings toward them. A male student at the
Territorial Normal School from the island of Hawai‘i stated: “People living in the country districts usually do not have a kindly feeling toward
the haoles—represented in those districts by the plantation ofﬁcials,
lunas [overseers] and ofﬁce-workers. They do not mix with the otherpeoples.”43 While giving a wide berth to whites, however, this student
also mentioned that he would choose a person from the Chinese or
Hawaiian group if he were to associate with someone other than aJapanese. In terms of social and economic status, most Chinese andHawaiians were in a position similar to that of Japanese, though it wastrue that some, especially Hawaiians, were struggling ﬁnancially. Judging from the fact that this student’s favorable view of these two ethnic
groups appears to have developed after he came to Honolulu to attend
the normal school, the “Chinese and Hawaiians” he discussed here werelikely people from social, economic, and educational backgrounds similar to his own.
Like this student, Nisei youth were often quite willing to associatewith Hawaiians and become friends with them, despite the general tendency to socialize with members of one’s own ethnic group. A male Nisei
student at the normal school stated in his essay for the above-mentioned
research project: “Do I favor any group more than any other? Chineseand Hawaiians, aside from my own group, seem to meet with my favor.
Of course there are many faults in all of these groups, and there are many
good points, too. However, there are certain groups that I am inclined
toward more favorably.”44 In another essay, a female Nisei student at thenormal school wrote that she had made a small number of very closefriends at school, and that most of them were Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian.
She also mentioned that she herself was often mistaken for a person of
Hawaiian blood. Amused by others’ puzzlement, she wrote: “Many girls
at the Normal asked me if I was part-Hawaiian and when I replied in thenegative they all stood back astonished to hear my answer.”45 For this

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87

girl, being mistaken for a Hawaiian was something that made her feel
special and proud.
The following remarks by Issei educator Takayuki Asano, the principal of a prestigious Japanese language school in Honolulu run by a Buddhist mission, similarly reveal that some Nisei youth regarded Hawaiians
favorably and became good friends with them, sometimes even copying
their appearance. In 1925 Asano indignantly stated:
There are quite a few local Japanese children who decolorize their hair withvinegar to turn it a reddish brown color because, they say, they want to look
not like whites but like Natives. . . . It is lamentable that they hope not to be
Americans in a true sense, but to be Hawaiians.46

While this educator, the head of a conservative school, referred to the
Nisei tendency to copy Hawaiians’ appearance as “despicable degeneration,” many Nisei themselves appear to have found brownish wavy hairfashionable and attractive.
Further, some Nisei even regarded Hawaiians as potential love interests and possible future spouses. When asked about their marriage prospects in the research project, almost all young Nisei answered that theywould marry other Hawai‘i-born Japanese. Yet, in response to the question of whom they might marry other than persons of Japanese ancestry,nearly all of them chose Hawaiians or part-Hawaiians, along with Chinese.
One Nisei female student at the normal school answered: “I would nevercare to marry anybody outside my nationality [race] but if I had to makea choice, I would say that I prefer the Hawaiians.”47 Similarly, a male
Nisei student from McKinley High School remarked: “I would prefer tomarry a Hawaiian-born member of my race since we were brought up
under like conditions and would live with more understanding and harmony which would bring happy home life. If I should marry someone
else outside of my own race in Hawaii I prefer to go to the Chinese or
Hawaiian-Chinese group. I have no special reason to give except thatthey are generally closely related with my race and of the mildest andquiet sort of people.”48 In his book titled Interracial Marriage in Hawaii(1937), Romanzo Adams, a sociology professor at the University of
Hawai‘i, contended that while interracial marriage was not a common
practice among local Japanese, the Hawai‘i-born generation was more
open-minded toward interracial marriage than the immigrant generation.
Adams also indicated that among the spouses of local Japanese men who

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married outside their race, there were more people of Hawaiian ancestry than of any other group.49 For example, between 1930 and 1934, 83
out of 3,358 local Japanese men married Hawaiians or part-Hawaiians,
compared with 29 who married Chinese, 17 who married Portuguese andSpanish, and 10 who married Caucasians (mostly of Anglo-Saxon ancestry). More local Japanese women in this period (29) married whites than
did Japanese men, but still a relatively large number chose Hawaiians
and part-Hawaiians as their spouses (43).50 In contrast to intellectuals inJapan and some Issei, who contended that maintaining the “purity ofblood” of the Japanese race was essential to successful “racial expansionof the Yamato race,” Nisei tended to regard Hawaiians as their equals,
as long as they were from a similar social background, and they did notconsider intermarriage with Hawaiians to mean degradation or deviationfrom local Japanese “norms,” as some Issei did.51 In this way, by choosing Hawaiians as friends and spouses, many Nisei in the interwar years
perceived Hawaiians neither as a “vanishing race” nor as “noble savage,” but rather as real ﬂesh-and-bone human beings with soul and spirit.
NISEI POLITICAL COOPERATION WITH NATIVE HAWAIIANS
During the 1930s, such amicable Nisei perceptions of Native Hawaiians
also developed into a cooperative relationship between local Japaneseand Hawaiians in the political arena. In 1930, Andy Masayoshi Yamashiro(1896–1960) was elected to the Territorial House of Representatives,
becoming one of the ﬁrst three Americans of Japanese ancestry to win
public ofﬁce as a legislator in the land of the United States. Before running for ofﬁce, Yamashiro had no formal political experience, although
he was well known as a baseball player, not just in the local Japanesecommunity but in the broader society of Hawai‘i as well.52 He starred
for an amateur team in Honolulu in his student years, and later playedfor professional baseball teams in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Unlike
other Nisei candidates, Yamashiro ran on the Democratic Party ticket
and was not associated with the sugar interests, who formed the base of
the Republican Party in the islands. Yamashiro carried out his politicalwork according to his personal vision of interracial amicability.
In the early days of Yamashiro’s political career as a young Democrat,
he was helped signiﬁcantly by two Hawaiian men. One was David K.
Trask, a famous Hawaiian statesman and representative ﬁgure of theterritory’s Democrats.53 After beginning his working life as a stevedore,

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Trask trained himself to be an attorney and later served as a sheriff in
Honolulu and as a territorial senator. He became acquainted withYamashiro through a mutual friend. Trask saw political potential in
Yamashiro, who was already widely known as a celebrated local athlete,and persuaded him to run for legislative ofﬁce as a Democrat candidatefrom the Fifth District of O‘ahu.54 Another Hawaiian who helped
Yamashiro was John Hoomano, a part-Chinese storeroom clerk at the
Honolulu Iron Works. Hoomano had long known Yamashiro from theirdays as teammates on a local baseball team and devotedly served as his
campaign manager.55
In the Territorial House of Representatives, Yamashiro at times allied
himself with Native Hawaiian statesmen, even working for the advancement of Hawaiians’ welfare. For example, he cooperated with Manase
K. Makekau, a representative elected from the island of Maui, in an effort
to support and promote the rights of the Hawaiian minority as indigenous inhabitants of the islands. On March 17, 1931, with the aim of helping preserve traditional Hawaiian culture, Makekau introduced a bill toestablish a committee that would conduct research on and preserve various Hawaiian historical and literary materials, including myths and legends. Under Makekau’s bill, however, the committee would receive nosalaries or remuneration, other than being paid for research expenses.56
On the next day, to assist Makekau, Yamashiro introduced a follow-up
bill asking the territorial government to allocate an explicit amount ofmoney to Makekau’s project: $1,500 to support the activities of theresearch committee and the Hawaiian historical archives.57 In this way,
Yamashiro backed up Makekau’s efforts to promote Native Hawaiian
heritage and pride, even though he was of Japanese, not Hawaiian, ancestry. As a local Nisei, born and raised in Hawai‘i, Yamashiro was familiar with Hawaiian culture and viewed it with respect. At the same time,
as a minority American, he was sympathetic with Makekau’s efforts
because he understood that the enhancement of ethnic awareness was
essential for mobilizing and empowering any ethnic community. As he
had close Hawaiian acquaintances who had helped his career both publicly and privately, it was not surprising that he lent a hand to Makekau
to help promote Native Hawaiian interests.
Yamashiro’s sense of belonging to Hawai‘i as a minority American
was manifested even more clearly in his public defense of Hawai‘i from“outsiders” in the island community. In 1932, in the aftermath of theinfamous Massie Affair—an alleged assault by locals on a U.S. Navy

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ofﬁcer’s wife—Rear Admiral Yates Stirling, commander of Pearl Harborand the highest-ranking naval ofﬁcer in the islands, announced thatmultiracial Hawai‘i, especially in view of its large Japanese population,
should be deprived of autonomy and be controlled instead by a commission of government ofﬁcials sent from the continental United States.58
Admiral Stirling stated: “Present government control should be by men
primarily of the Caucasian race; by men who are not too deeply imbued
with the peculiar atmosphere of the Islands. . . . Actual control of thelaws, their inception, promulgation and enforcement should be by the
National Government.”59 In response, Yamashiro eloquently defended
Hawai‘i and its residents, stating: “The most astounding thing to me isthat the admiral, who has been stationed at the naval base probably lessthan two years, thinks he knows it all. . . . He is without a background to
be any authority on conditions among the citizens of oriental ancestry.”
According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, dated April 1932, Yamashiro
asserted that “he considered himself just as good a citizen as the admiral and possibly a member of the community more concerned with its
welfare because of his birth here.” The Nisei statesman continued: “BothRepublicans and Democrats here have been advocating home rule andwe know that we can govern ourselves.”60 The racial group that Stirling
most explicitly attacked was the local Japanese. But, by repeatedly using
the word “we,” Yamashiro strove to mobilize and unify the entire island
population, regardless of race, ethnicity, social class, or political ideology, in an attempt to organize a ﬁght against a mutual “enemy”: a grave
threat to Hawai‘i’s self-governance from the continental United States.
It was his vision of racial cooperation in the islands that enabled him todevise such a strategy, which drew on and raised people’s pride as local
residents and attracted many sympathizers from various segments of thesociety of Hawai‘i.61
CONCLUSION
This article has examined how Japanese American perceptions of
Native Hawaiians shifted in the context of local race relations during theinterwar years in Hawai‘i. The divergent views of Native Hawaiians heldby the people of Imperial Japan and by Japanese American residents of
Hawai‘i illustrate how differing material conditions and political status
can override a common racial ideology to produce differing forms of

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91

racial representation. Of course, not all ﬁrst- and second-generation
Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i conformed to the patterns and examples
described here; there were a minority of Issei, and even some Nisei, who
maintained racist viewpoints similar to those of Japanese imperialists ofthe time. For the majority of Japanese immigrants and Nisei U.S. citizens in prewar Hawai‘i, however, a strategy of racial cooperation madebetter sense in their quest for social advancement than one of racial conﬂict.
It is important to look at historical context when evaluating the meaning of Japanese Americans’ racial representations in prewar Hawai‘iwhere local Japanese were numerically dominant but still socially
underprivileged. At ﬁrst glance, the idea of racial cooperation between
Japanese and Hawaiians, the two minority races in prewar Hawai‘i,
resembles what some scholars and political commentators have celebrated as the “aloha spirit” of the islands. Proponents of this concept
depict Hawai‘i as a racial paradise, where different cultures and races
have formed a real melting pot—a model for a diverse America. Dennis
Ogawa and Glen Grant, for example, contend that Hawai‘i is a postracial society in which individual merit outweighs and effaces racial differences.62 On the other hand, scholars of settler colonialism criticize
such a concept, arguing that it veils the reality of Hawai‘i, where social,political, and economic discrepancies exist between different racial andethnic groups.63 Indeed, in postwar Hawai‘i, as critics of the “aloha
spirit” argue, Japanese Americans have actually dominated the political
economy and often take advantage of the less-privileged positions of
Native Hawaiians and Filipinos.64 Those in the dominant group regard
racial harmony and cooperation as a means to enhance their power andcontrol over the rest of the society, while those members of minority
groups utilize it to challenge a hegemonic structure that places them ina subordinate position below a white ruling class. The examples in thisarticle of positive, or at least benign, Japanese views of Native Hawaiians,
and their occasional pursuit of interracial collaboration, are inseparablefrom the essential context of racial subordination under white elites inprewar Hawai‘i. Despite superﬁcial similarities between the interracial
harmony of the postwar years and Japanese-Hawaiian cooperation during the interwar period, the political meanings of these phenomena arealmost completely opposed if one takes into account the disparate formsof race relations that prevailed in the respective historical periods.

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NOTES
1Some of the materials used in this article were previously published in Hiromi
Monobe, “Senkanki no Hawai ni okeru Taminzoku-sei to Nikkei-jin no Ichi: Senjyu
Hawai-jin tono Jinshu-kankei ni okeru Ichikosatsu,” [In the relation with Native
Hawaiians: A study on the Japanese American position in the racial hierarchy in interwar Hawai‘i] Gengo Bunka Kenkyu [Ritsumeikan University Kiyo] 21, no. 4 (March
2010): 163–73. In the current article, however, I have introduced a new framework ofanalysis, incorporated additional data, and presented more elaborate argument and interpretations.
2
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the
1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994), 55–61.
3
Later, Filipino laborers were transplanted to Hawai‘i and placed at the lowest strataof the society, even below Japanese.
4
Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants,
1885–1924 (New York: Free Press, 1988), 2.
5“Local identity” means a cultural identity that collectively categorizes local-born/
local-raised people of Hawai‘i. While uniting people with different backgrounds, thisconcept obscures social, political, and economic inequalities between the dominantgroup and minority groups. For further details of “local identity” in Hawai‘i, see
Jonathan Y. Okamura, “Why There Are No Asian Americans in Hawai‘i: The Continuing Signiﬁcance of Local Identity,” Social Process in Hawai‘i 35 (1994): 161–78.
6
Claire Jean Kim and Taeku Lee, “Interracial Politics: Asian Americans and Other
Communities of Color,” Political Science and Politics 34, no. 3 (September 2001): 633.
As an example of the triangular relations, see Claire Jean Kim, Bitter Fruit: The Politics
of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000);
Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the
Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008);
Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in JapaneseAmerica (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 187–207.
7
In the concept of Asian settler colonialism, Asian immigrants and their descendents
in Hawai‘i are regarded as “settlers” who have beneﬁted from the dispossession and displacement of Native Hawaiians. See Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura, eds.,
Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in
Hawai‘i (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008); also see the special issue of the
Amerasia Journal, edited by Fujikane and Okamura, “Whose Vision?: Asian Settler
Colonialism in Hawai‘i,” Amerasia Journal 26, no. 2 (2000).
8
For example, see the section “Nisei Gains, Native Hawaiian Losses” in Taro Iwata’s
Race and Citizenship as American Geopolitics: Japanese and Native Hawaiians in
Hawai‘i, 1900–1941 (PhD diss., University of Oregon, 2003), 226–32.
9Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1968); Lawrence H. Fuchs, Hawaii Pono: An Ethnic and Political
History (Honolulu: Bess Press, 1997); Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawai‘i: The
Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
10Tom Coffman, Nation Within: The Story of America’s Annexation of the Nation of
Hawai‘i (Kaneohe, HI: EpiCenter, 1998).
11
Daws, Shoal of Time; Fuchs, Hawaii Pono; Merry, Colonizing Hawai‘i.
12Kazutomi Sakai, Kindai Nihon Gaiko to Ajia Taiheiyo Chitsujo (Kyoto: Showa-do,2009), 31–34.
13
Ibid., 80–84.

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14
Betten Nagasawa, “Yanki-Sho,” in Meiji Shisoka Shu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1968),
291. This is an anthology of the works by Meiji intellectuals.
15
Sakai, Kindai Nihon Gaiko to Ajia Taiheiyo Chitsujo, 80–84.
16Eiichiro Azuma, Interstitial Lives: Race, Community, and History among Japanese
Immigrants Caught between Japan and the United States, 1885–1941 (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2000), 34–36.
17
Yujin Yaguchi discusses Japanese tourists’ views of Hawaiians during the 1920s
and 1930s. See Yujin Yaguchi, Akogare no Hawai: Nihonjin no Hawai-kan (Tokyo:
Chuokoron-sha, 2011), 47–51.
18
Shinsai Sagawa, “Hawai no Doho wo kataru” [Discussing our compatriots in Hawaii],in Rakuen Sosho, ed. Takie Okumura (Kyoto: Naigai Shuppan, 1939), 23–24.
19
Azuma, Between Two Empires, 91–98, 100, 105–22, 213–15.
20
During the interwar years, some Hawai‘i-born Nisei enthusiastically embraced thisconcept of Japanese racial expansion. For further details, see the section on Masao
Sakamoto in Hiromi Monobe’s “The Intersection of ‘Americanization’ and ‘Racial Expansion’: Nisei Identity Politics in Prewar Hawai‘i,” in The Transnational Politics ofAsian Americans, ed. Christian Collet and Pei-Te Lien(Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2009), 159–63.
21
Azuma, Between Two Empires, 190–92.
22
Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian
from Columbus to the Present (New York: Vintage, 1978), 49–61.
23
Known for living with the Sioux and possessing more tolerant views of Native
Americans than his contemporaries, Parkman stated, “For the most part, a civilized white
man can discover very few points of sympathy between his own nature and that of an
Indian. . . . He must be conscious that an impassable gulf lies between him and his redbrethren . . . if expedient, he could shoot them with . . . little compunction.” Francis
Parkman, Jr., The Oregon Trail (New York: Putnam, 1849; Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1969), 292–93.
24
Regarding Western binary perceptions of Native Hawaiians (savage/benevolent) inthe early period, see Rona Tamiko Halualani, In the Name of Hawaiians: Native Identities and Cultural Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 1–37.
25“Kamehameha-Sai ni saishite: Taito suru Dojin no Minzoku-ishiki” [At the Kamehameha
Festival: The rise of ethnic consciousness among natives], Nippu Jiji, June 11, 1934. An
English translation of a Soga editorial almost always appeared in the Nippu Jiji on the
day following its appearance in Japanese. However, no English version of this particular editorial was ever published in the newspaper.
26“Thousands See Colorful Parade,” Nippu Jiji, June 11, 1934.
27“Kamehameha-Sai ni saishite,” Nippu Jiji, June 11, 1934.
28
Ibid.
29
Keiho Soga, Gojyu-nen no Hawai Kaiko (Honolulu: Gojyu-nen no Hawai Kaiko
Kanko-Kai, 1953), 189–245.
30
Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian, 28, 73–80, 118.
31
Hawai Nenkan 1932–1933 (Honolulu: Nippu Jiji, 1932), 177–78; Eileen H. Tamura,
Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 146.
32
Gijyo Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakko Kyoiku-shi (Honolulu: Hawai Kyoiku-kai,1972), 147–235.
33
Ibid., 149.
34
In one of the stories in a textbook, local Japanese children make jack-o’-lanterns on
Halloween, carving papayas in place of pumpkins. This is an example of localized

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American culture that Nisei children could easily relate to. See Hawai Kyoiku-kai,
Nihongo Tokuhon 3 (Honolulu: Hawai Kyoiku-kai, 1930), 21–34.
35
Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakko Kyoiku-shi, 191.
36
Hawai Kyoiku-kai, Nihongo Tokuhon 4 (Honolulu: Hawai Kyoiku-kai, 1930),
23–31.
37
Hawai Kyoiku-kai, Nihongo Tokuhon 3, 70–75.
38
Hawai Nenkan 1928 (Honolulu: Nippu Jiji, 1928), 175; Hawai Nenkan 1937–1938(Honolulu: Nippu Jiji, 1937), 185–86.
39
Ka Palapala for 1932 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1932).
40
Student Essays, box 3, folder 2, N-33, William Carlson Smith Papers, University ofOregon (hereafter cited as WCS). These essays are all written in English.
41
WCS, box 3, folder 3, N-70.
42
In the 1920s, a group of sociologists associated with the University of Chicago
viewed Hawai‘i as a “racial frontier” where various racial groups coexisted, interacted,
and intermarried before being fully assimilated. Based on this assumption, Chicago sociologists, such as William Carlson Smith, Romanzo Adams, and Andrew Lind, conducted
research on race relations in Hawai‘i to prove their theory of assimilation. For further
information on their research, see Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact,
and Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 80–84.
43
WCS, box 3, folder 4, N-79.
44
WCS, box 3, folder 3, N-65.
45
WCS, box 3, folder 3, N-61.
46
Takayuki Asano, Ohai no Kage (Honolulu: Jitsugyo-no Hawaii, 1925; Tokyo:
Busei-shoin, 2007), 246.
47
WCS, box 3, folder 3, N-70.
48
WCS, box 4, folder 14, MK-27.
49
Romanzo Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii: A Study of the Mutually Conditioned Processes of Acculturation and Amalgamation (New York: Macmillan Company,
1937; Glen Ridge, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1969), 168–69.
50
Adams, Interracial Marriage in Hawaii, 340.
51
Hawai Nihonjin Nenkan 18 (Honolulu: Hawai Shimposha, 1922), 60–63; Azuma,
187–192.
52
Joel S. Franks, Asian Pacific Americans and Baseball: A History (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2008), 134–37.
53“Yamashiro Masayoshi-shi Shukugakai Gaho” [A report on Mr. Masayoshi Yamashiro’s
celebration party], Nippu Jiji, November 7, 1938.
54“Strong Minority in Government Is Advocated by Andy Yamashiro,” Honolulu
Advertiser, October 2, 1930.
55“Yamashiro and Hold Honored: Party Is Given at Teahouse for Victors in Election,”
Honolulu Star Bulletin, November 17, 1930.
56“Hawai Shiryo Shushu-an” [A proposal for the project of compiling Hawaiian materials], Nippu Jiji, March 17, 1931.
57“Ippan Yosan chu ni Sengohyaku-doru Tsuika” [$1,500 added to the general budget for the next ﬁscal year], Nippu Jiji, March 18, 1931.
58
The Massie case of 1931–32 was an alleged rape case that aroused vehement controversy not only in Hawai‘i but also in the continental United States. In September 1931,
Thalia Massie, wife of a Navy lieutenant, accused ﬁve local youths—two Hawaiians,
two Japanese, and one Hawaiian-Chinese—of raping her. Because of insufﬁcient andcontradictory evidence, the jury, comprised of multiethnic local residents, brought in a
verdict of not guilty, and the ﬁve defendants were released on bail. One of the Nisei

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defendants, Horace Ida, was later lynched by a group of unknown Navy vigilantes.
Thalia’s mother, husband, and several white sailors then kidnapped and killed Joseph
Kahahawai, one of the Hawaiian defendants. His murderers were arrested and sentenced,
but following severe criticism from whites both in Hawai‘i and in the continental UnitedStates, Territorial Governor Lawrence Judd commuted their sentences from ten years inprison to one hour in his ofﬁce. Daws, Shaol of Time, 319–27.
59
Ernest K. Wakukawa, A History of the Japanese People in Hawaii: The Pioneer
Historiography of the Japanese in Hawaii, Written in the English (Honolulu: Toyo
Shoin, 1938), 362–64.
60“Stirling Ideas Unfair, Belief of Yamashiro/Pearl Harbor Chief Lacks Backgroundfor Views, Legislator Asserts,” Honolulu Star Bulletin, April 9, 1932.
61
John Rosa argues that the Massie Case contributed to the formation of “local identity” in Hawai‘i during the 1930s. John P. Rosa, “Local Story: The Massie Case Narrative
and the Cultural Production of Local Identity in Hawaii,” Amerasia Journal 26 (2000):
93–115.
62
Dennis Ogawa and Glen Grant, “Living Proof: Is Hawaii the Answer?” Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (November 1993): 137–54.
63
Jonathan Y. Okamura, “The Illusion of Paradise: Privileging Multiculturalism in
Hawai‘i,” in Making Majorities: Constituting Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia,
Fiji, Turkey, and the United States, ed. Dru G. Gladney, (Palo Alto: Stanford University
Press, 1998), 264–84.
64
For further details of Japanese political dominance in postwar Hawai‘i, see Tom
Coffman, The Island Edge of America: A Political History of Hawai‘i (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, 2003).