The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-05-27
HAWAII THE KEY
important Field for Mission and Educationa
Work Among the Asiatic Races Rep
resented Here as Laborers.

j takes" If Americanism is to succeed
here it will be through the instrument
atty of these American born men from
Asia. They will develop our leaders,
for they have the capacity. the indus
try, the persistency and the citizenship.
Will they have the American spirit :?
They will if the churches of America
will help us to train them.
Outside of Honolulu the japanese and
Chinese are found upon the plantations
in small camps. Plantations often
cover many thousand acres, and as a
rule reach in a long line parallel to the
sea coast. They are as isolated as a
Western farm and each is sufficient
unto itself. The manager and very
few of his staff are Americans or North
Europeans. The one thousand or more
laborers comprise japanese. Chinese,
Portuguese, Koreans, Porto Ricans and
a few others.
RACES LIVE IN NATIVE CONDI-'
TONS.
AT convenient points in the planta-
tons the camps are located containing
sometimes only men of a single nation
atty. Where two or more races are
are. as a rule, housed in separate quar-
tiers, the japanese by themselves, etc.
Considering the climate and the condi-
tons viii n the laborers were accus-
toned to in their homelands the hous-
ing is good. The camps are sanitary,
the men healthy. we'll paid. and gener-
ally contented. But the japanese camp
is Japan, the Chinese are in China, the
Portuguese live in the Azores. Nothing
purely American is anywhere to be
seen. These foreigners bring their
strange habits of life, their conceptions
OF personal modesty, or immodesty.
their differing moral standards and
their vices. Hawaii lives in continual
danger of becoming the one American
territory where the social evil is not
only condoned but licensed. But for
the Edmunds law the world might even
be treated to the spectacle of these
islands adopting a system of 1egalized
vice which the moral sense of Japan is |
being educated to discard. A menac- |
ing reflection sounds in the air, rs
to become the saloon keepers
Paradise?" Pay day comes around on
the plantations and a crew of Oriental
gamblers swoop down upon the -Asiatic
camps and reap harvest. Tragedies
and comedies peculiar to Hiroshima
and Canton make life alternately grave
and gay. The children grow up in
nondescript atmosphere unlike any
thing the world can show elsewhere. |
For the restraints of life, the traditions
that make up the richness of existence
in the homeland. are wholly wanting ,
here. Religion is almost entirely alb !
sent. A tiny Buddhist temple or Shin /
to shrine may Turk somewhere about /
one of the several camps of the planta-
ton, but it is an exotic. The saddest /
spots on earth for children are these /
lonely mid-Pacif1c Asian camps.
WORK AMONG THE SCHOOLS.
Yet these children have the brains I
leadership. Put now an earnest, de-
voted Christian japanese evangelist in /
such a camp. Instantly a new force is
evident. He is an embodiment of all
that is best in his national life, his
people gather about him. They seek
him in sorrow. they flock to him in
heir difficulties with the foreign man
ager; he writes birth certificates for
heir children and engineers their mar
'iages. and all the time tells them the
story Of the Cross. which his life en-
forces. When in addition to all his
)ther services he opens a tiny school
)ut of public school hours and teaches
he little folk how to read the dear old
'urlicues that form the handwriting OF
Dai Nippon, he seals his hold upon