Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945

356 Pages·1991·13.11 MB·English

by  Gary Okihiro

Cane Fires
The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945
In the series
Asian American History and Culture
edited by Sucheng Chan
Cane Fires
The Anti-Japanese
Movement in Hawaii,
1865-1945
Gary Y. Okihiro
Temple University Press
Philadelphia
The epigraph to Chapter 9 is from a poem by Muin Otokichi Ozaki,
and the epigraph to Chapter 11 from a poem by Sojin Takei. Both
are included in a collection of tanka poems edited by Jiro Nakano
and Kay Nakano, Poets Behind Barbed Wire (Honolulu: Bamboo
Ridge Press, 1983), and are used here with permission.
Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122
Copyright © 1991 by Temple University. All rights reserved
Published 1991
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information
Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984 <§l
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Okihiro, Gary Y., 1945-
Cane fires: the anti-Japanese movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945 /
Gary Y. Okihiro.
p. cm. - (Asian American history and culture series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87722-799-3 (alk. paper)
1. Japanese Americans-Hawaii-Social conditions.
2. Japanese Americans-Hawaii-Economic conditions.
3. Hawaii-Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series.
Du624·7·J3038 1991
996·9'004956-dc20 90-41610
CIP
To
my mother and father,
Alice Shizue Kakazu Okihiro
and
Tetsuo Okihiro

Contents
Illustrations following page 160
Preface ix
Part I. Years of Migrant Labor, 1865-1909
1. So Much Charity, So Little Democracy 3
2. Hole Hole Bushi 19
3. With the Force of Wildfire 41
Part II. Years of Dependency, 1910-1940
4· Cane Fires 65
5· In the National Defense 82
6. Race War 102
7· Extinguishing the Dawn 129
8. Dark Designs 163
Part III. World War II, 1941-1945
9. Into the Cold Night Rain 195
10. Bivouac Song 225
11. In Morning Sunlight 253
Notes 277
Index 323

Preface
The idea for this book originated in the summer of 1984;
as I reread J. Garner Anthony's Hawaii under Army Rule,
what immediately struck me was that Hawaii's Japanese
and the West Coast Japanese were subjected to much the
same treatment at the hands of the u.s. military during
World War II. That recognition startled me because I had
believed, along with others who had studied the subject,
that the wartime experience of Hawaii's Japanese differed
markedly from that of the West Coast Japanese, whom the
army summarily evicted from their homes and confined in
concentration camps for the war's duration following Presi
dent Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order
9066 on February 19, 1942.
In fact, Hawaii, the melting pot of the Pacific, had been
held up as an example of racial harmony even during a time
of intense national emergency. In the days following Pearl
Harbor, acts of violence against Hawaii's Japanese were ex
ceedingly rare; just over 1.400, or less than 1 percent, of
the territory's Japanese were interned; and martial law ap
plied to all, demonstrating, in effect, equal treatment for
all of Hawaii's residents. The 1982 Report of the Congres
sional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment
of Civilians explained: "Hawaii was more ethnically mixed
and racially tolerant than the West Coast. Race relations
in Hawaii before the war were not infected with the viru
lent antagonisms of 75 years of anti-Asian agitation .... In
Hawaii, the spirit of aloha prevailed, and white supremacy
never gained legal recognition." 1 Accordingly, most schol
ars believed that Hawaii's wartime experience had little or
no bearing on the West Coast situation.
The predominant view of Hawaii's "unorthodox race doc-
ix