Four—
The Japanese Conspiracy:
Honolulu: 1920

Fear of Japanization of Hawaii

On the eve of the strike Terasaki noted in his diary, "The English-language newspapers are playing up their view that the Japanese government is instigating the strike." Indeed on January 31 the Honolulu Advertiser carried an editorial asking, "What is Hawaii going to do about it? What is the Government of the U.S. going to do? Is Hawaii ruled from Tokio?" The next day, it ran a front-page political cartoon depicting a man dressed in yukata (cotton kimono) and geta (wooden clogs) hurling a brick labeled "strike" at a ducking plantation owner who lets the brick hit the head of Uncle Sam. The same day the Honolulu Star Bulletin splashed a large headline accusing "priests of Asiatic paganism, foreign language school teachers and Japanese editors" of seeking to control Japanese laborers so they could become the "masters of Hawaii's destiny." A few days later, in an article carrying the headline "Control of Sugar Industry at Stake," the Honolulu Advertiser warned of a "Japanese conspiracy" jeopardizing the future of the territory. All the local newspapers had begun to speak of a "Japanese conspiracy" and to accuse the Japanese government of working behind the scenes to incite the laborers to strike.

It was actually a specific event, the "red flag incident," instigated by the Japanese-language newspapers in Hawaii, that prompted the English papers to raise the Japanese conspiracy theory. For historians of modern Japanese history, the "Red Flag Incident" refers to the 1908 case in which Sakae Osugi^[*] , Toshihiko Sakai, Kanson Arahata, and several other

socialists received prison sentences for waving red flags to celebrate their comrades' release from prison. In the aftermath of this incident the Saionji cabinet was forced to resign; and the succeeding Katsura cabinet, dominated by conservative officials, adopted a policy of strengthening control over socialists and strictly regulating strikes. The incident is often considered a prologue to the High Treason Incident of 1910.

In Hawaii the red flag incident was sparked by an editorial in the Hawaii shinpo^[*] of January 21, just before the Federation of Japanese Labor issued its stop work order. The editorial read,

We feel keenly the need to hold demonstrations with flag processions. Striking laborers should parade through towns, each hoisting a red flag with the slogan "77 cents for a day's wage" or "77 cents for ten hours of hard labor." This is a demand for a wage increase to the merciless plantation owners; and it is an excellent method to gain understanding and sympathy from the general public and the gradually increasing numbers of tourists.

The day before the newspaper had already urged the workers to go on strike in support of the Filipinos who had begun their strike expecting the support of the Japanese.

History throughout the ages proves that the reason one tiny, small nation in the Far East has been able to overcome the tyranny of a mighty nation and achieve the greatness it has today is not its military force, much less its monetary power, but rather its spirit which combines a sense of justice with chivalrous virtue. You must accept with pride and honor the fact that you are people of such a country, the Land of the Rising Sun. Japan, where cherry blossoms bloom, is a country of spirit, a country where blossoms scatter quickly and bear fruit.

The American Legion, represented by its territorial executive committee, vigorously protested the Hawaii shinpo for encouraging "a red flag parade of Japanese strikers in American territory," and the English-language press criticized the Hawaii shinpo for being an organ of the Federation of Japanese Labor. The president and editor-in-chief of the paper, Takeshi Hattori, who had written the pieces, was summoned for questioning by the police.

Hattori, who had a good command of English, had once worked for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. In secret reports sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Consul General Rokuro^[*] Moroi, who had returned to Japan in 1919, Hattori is frequently identified as a "secret agent." It is not clear whether Hattori joined the HSPA as a secret agent of the Japanese consul general from the start, nor is it known whether he was fired from the HSPA or resigned. Whatever the case, he had ac-

quired enough capital to purchase the Hawaii shinpo^[*] immediately after he left the HSPA. If the HSPA suspected that Hattori's red flag incident involved the Consulate General of Japan, that would clearly add weight to the English press's charge that the Japanese government was inciting the strikers.

The Federation of Japanese Labor responded with a statement in the Japanese press: "We have no connections with the Japanese government, Japanese language newspapers, or any other newspapers and magazines." Acting Consul General Eiichi Furuya declared in a statement dated January 31 to both English-language newspapers, "I wish to state that the Japanese has under no circumstances any connection or relation with the Labor Union in this Territory."

As local representative of the Japanese government, the consulate had always been involved in troubles related to immigrants. Consular officials usually adopted a prudent peace-at-any-price principle that was not always to the advantage of the immigrants. When the consul general tried to dissuade the workers from striking at the time of the 1909 strike, they responded with fists raised in anger and shouts that he was parroting the planters. After that the HSPA had stopped conferring with the consul general when labor issues arose.

The English-language newspapers brushed aside the consul's statement as "weak denials" and continued to argue that the strike was a Japanese conspiracy. The Honolulu Advertiser condemned the pending strike by the Federation of Japanese Labor and its "cat's-paw," the Filipino Labor Union, as against American interests. On February 1, 1920, it forecast a "practically complete paralysis of the Hawaiian sugar industry at a moment when the nation is facing a serious sugar shortage and when the highest prices in history are being secured for the product and the laboring men are sharing the profits on a scale unheard of elsewhere." A few days later the newspaper announced, "Uncle Sam cannot afford to have Hawaii under the domination of an alien race."

As evidence for the claim that Japanese field laborers were receiving sufficient wages, the Honolulu Advertiser pointed out that at Aiea Plantation alone nearly $900,000 in money orders had been sent to Japan during the previous year. The paper suggested that this proved the Japanese were refusing to assimilate and that they maintained primary loyalty to Japan. The English-language press also pointed out that the federation dealt with potential defectors by warning them that betrayal of the union would bring disgrace on the whole Japanese people. According to article 3, clause 6, of the constitution of the Federation of Japa-

nese Labor, "Should a member be found guilty of the act of contravening the interest of this Federation. . . . he should be reported to several affiliated branche. . . . and to the mayor of the offending member's permanent domicile in Japan." This regulation was decided by a vote on January 25, a week before the strike began. Manjiro^[*] Yamakawa, the director of the Oahu federation (and the former Aiea Plantation federation chairman) was immediately expelled from the federation because he was suspected of leaking the deliberations of its meetings to the planters.

The Japanese newspapers regarded this disciplinary action against Yamakawa as an object lesson. The Hawaii hochi^[*] went so far as to expose his real name, stating that Yamakawa was an alias he was using in Hawaii. Measures adopted to maintain a rocklike organizational solidarity included not only expulsion, denial of membership, and repayment of debts but also "social discipline" and "notification in Japan." Not only would a turncoat and his family be ostracized from the Japanese community in Hawaii, his kinfolk in Japan would be stained by the dishonor of his betrayal too.

This method of ensuring unity, which stifled minority opinions and symbolized a culture of collectivism and shame, was very Japanese, but it appeared shockingly alien to the haole sugar plantation owners. The Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association charged that "reporting to the Japanese government of a member's dismissal" was a manifestation of fanatic nationalism.

Once the strike began, the English-language press hammered away at the theme that the strike was "un-American" and that it had been instigated by the leaders of the Japanese community. The Honolulu Advertiser declaimed on February 20, 1920, "Hawaii is an American territory. Hawaii's sugar industry is an American industry, owned and controlled by Americans. And this condition is not going to be changed to satisfy a few Oriental newspaper editors and foreign language school principals. The Americans of Hawaii can't be terrified by a threat."

The paper's February 3 editorial repeated this view:

The constitution of the United States guarantees the right of free speech and a free press. But free speech and a free press do not mean license to attack Americanism. Certainly it does not give to a foreign press the right to work for the overturning of American institutions, nor does it contemplate the use of any portion of the press to stir up industrial trouble with the purpose of subjecting our industries to the domination of an alien race. . . .

The Japanese press, the Japanese language schools and the Japanese priesthood have demonstrated that they are dangerous to American institutions and hostile to American principles. . . .

Let's fight this thing out to a finish. Let's have the issue decided once for all—the issue of whether Hawaii shall remain American or become Japanized. That is the real issue, the only issue that counts.

The Japanese conspiracy theory that claimed Japan aimed at upsetting the Hawaiian sugar industry and gaining control over it escalated day by day. A February 3 editorial in the Honolulu Star Bulletin , under the headline "Alien Agitation," went so far as to say that the situation was "as if the Mikado had the power to name our Governor and direct our political destiny." And on February 6, HSPA president John Water-house issued a short statement condemning the strike: "The action taken by the Japanese Federation of Labor is, as we see it, an anti-American movement designed to obtain control of the sugar business of the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association feels that it is absolutely necessary to oppose this movement to a finish no matter how long it takes, how much it may cost or how much inconvenience it may cause."

During the labor struggles on the mainland the usual rhetorical trump card played by management or the authorities was to fan public fears by labeling strike leaders as "Bolsheviks" or "IWW leaders." But the HSPA used a slogan familiar from the First World War: "Fight for democracy." They transformed the strike, an economic conflict between labor and capital, into an international conspiracy by defining the issues as "whether Hawaii was to be controlled by Asians or Anglo-Saxons" and "how American territory was to be protected from pagans." The tone of racial conflict was unmistakable.

The Japanese conspiracy theory advanced by the HSPA cannot be dismissed simply as propaganda warfare to crush the strike. Anti-Japanese sentiments were strong in the United States. After the Russo-Japanese War, for example, an English-language newspaper in Hawaii had run a political cartoon showing a vicious-faced "Japan" with its wide-open mouth about to swallow up the "Sandwich Islands" (Hawaii). Since Japan had taken colonial control over Korea and Taiwan, the question of "Japan's ambition" was of real concern to those living in Hawaii, the American territory closest to Japan.

Wartime tensions between Japan and the United States over Japan's Twenty-one Demands in China and later over the Siberian intervention intensified the anti-Japanese movement on the U.S. mainland. Newspapers in Japan occasionally ran headlines such as "Anti-Japanese Agitation by Americans."^[1] However, the anti-Japanese movements that concerned them in 1919 and 1920 did not refer to anti-Japanese move-

ments on the West Coast or to the great strike of the Japanese workers in Hawaii. Indeed, the strike in Hawaii was reported only twice in Japan, and then only in articles of a few lines.^[2] The "anti-Japanese policies" that the Japanese government was frantically dealing with were happening not in the United States but in Asia. In May 1919 Chinese students mounted demonstrations to protest the Japanese occupation of Shandong, and in Korea the March 1 "independence movement" triggered daily bloody incidents on the peninsula for several months. In the view of many Japanese, the British and Americans, especially the missionaries, were assisting these anti-Japanese movements. What is more, many American missionaries sent to Asia were affiliated with the same denominations that had sent missionaries to Hawaii. Hawaiian sugar plantation families often had brothers or sons who followed in the footsteps of their forefathers to become missionaries in Asia or sisters and daughters who married missionaries there. From these witnesses the planter elite in Hawaii heard bloodstained testimony about the meaning of Japanese domination in Asia.

But there was another reason the HSPA advanced the Japanese conspiracy theory. Of Hawaii's population 48 percent were ethnically Japanese, and more than half were nisei, American citizens who would have the right to vote some day. It was obvious from the birthrate statistics that political power in Hawaii would eventually shift to these dual citizens. But the parents of these "American citizens," the first generation, or issei, placed primary importance, and most of their enthusiasm, on educating their children as Japanese. Wouldn't an increase in the second-generation population lead to their control de facto over Hawaii's sugar industry; and wasn't this the ultimate aim of the "pagan priesthood"? In the eyes of the haole governing class, the Japanization of Hawaii had already begun.

Acting Governor Iaukea Makes a Declaration

Royal Mead, the HSPA assistant secretary, dealt directly with the Federation of Japanese Labor. But the federation side, which seems to have taken the title "secretary" to mean a clerical office worker, slighted Mead. In fact, his actual position was executive director in charge of the HSPA's finances and administration. The forty-four-year-old Mead was from San Francisco, a city where anti-Japanese feelings ran strong. After qualifying as a lawyer, he had gone to Hawaii, where he was later hired by the HSPA.

Mead had negotiated with the Japanese side during the 1909 strike. No doubt it was partly because of Mead's experience that the HSPA claimed that the new Oahu strike was not a spontaneous movement by the workers but an affair instigated by the Japanese-language newspapers. In fact, the first strike was led by Yasutaro^[*] Soga^[*] , president and editor-in-chief of the Nippu jiji (at that time named Yamato shinbun ) and Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, later president of the Hawaii hochi^[*] , among others.

In handling the 1920 strike Mead kept in close contact with Frank Thompson, the HSPA's lawyer. Terasaki noted in his diary that a Japanese clerk from Thompson's office often went to purchase several copies of the Hawaii hochi . The HSPA propaganda campaign against the strike began as a fight against the Japanese-language newspapers, using the two English newspapers as a foil. The Hawaii hochi countered this attack with headlines such as the following, which appeared on February 5: "Officers of the HSPA should calm down" and "Crazed commentary by the English-language newspapers." The battle between the Japanese and English newspapers ran on, leaving the federation sitting on the sidelines. As a result, a labor-management struggle that should have been no different from that on the U.S. mainland was transformed into a race issue and an anti-Japanese issue.

Worried that this situation might cast a long shadow on Hawaii's future, on February 3 Acting Governor Curtis Iaukea issued a statement denying the involvement of the Japanese government in the strike: "There is not a shred of evidence to connect the government of Japan with this industrial conflict." On February 19 he sent a document to the representatives of both houses of the territorial legislature, stating that he was "convinced that the racial issue [had] been deliberately emphasized to cloud the economic issue."

The territorial governor of Hawaii was appointed by the U.S. president, but it was the HSPA that recommended a suitable person to the White House. The governor was always someone who had associations with the HSPA. Governor McCarthy, who had departed for Washington on New Year's Eve, was no exception. But Acting Governor Iaukea, who took charge of the territory during the governor's absence, was different. Already seventy-five years old, he had worked for the royal household of King Kamehameha. He was managing trustee and treasurer until Queen Liliuokalani's death, and for a long time he was also responsible for foreign affairs. It was Iaukea who had gone to Japan to conduct the final negotiations for bringing Japanese contract immigrants to Hawaii in the 1880s.

The kamaaina oligarchy had granted certain privileges to the native Hawaiians after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Iaukea as well as other members of the Hawaiian royal family and Hawaiian chieftains were elected to the territorial legislature, where they had some political clout. At the time of the strike, of the legislature's fifteen senators and twenty-nine representatives, one-third were Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian. After serving as a legislator for many years, in 1916 Iaukea had been appointed secretary of territorial Hawaii.

Known popularly as "Colonel," the elderly Iaukea was a thin man, unusual for a Hawaiian, who displayed dignity and composure. He was also a troublesome opponent of the HSPA. Not only was he familiar with how Japanese immigrants originally came to Hawaii at the urging of the sugar planters, he also knew very well who had overthrown the independent Hawaiian kingdom. The day after issuing his statement that there was no evidence of a Japanese government conspiracy, Iaukea turned down a request by the plantation owners to call out the local American army garrison and the territorial forces to suppress the striking laborers. But the HSPA dismissed Iaukea as a mere figurehead who was filling in for the absent Governor McCarthy. The English-language newspapers disparaged his actions. On February 5 the Honolulu Advertiser criticized "the weak-kneed attitude of the territorial government" and went on to write, "It is extremely unfortunate that in this crisis there is not at the head of the territorial government a man with backbone and sound judgment able to understand that the plantation strike is not a conflict between capital and labor merely but a fight to decide whether Hawaii shall remain American or become a Japanese province."

One of the purposes of Governor McCarthy's long-pending trip to Washington was to petition Congress for Hawaii's statehood. When the news arrived in Hawaii that the statehood bill had no chance of passage, the English-language newspapers immediately blamed not only the Japanese strikers, whose agitation had made a bad impression on the mainland, but also the "weak-willed" Acting Governor Iaukea.

Having dealt with the kamaaina many years, Iaukea was not surprised at being disparaged, nor was he upset in the least by pressure from the HSPA. Despite their repeated requests, he continued to refuse to call out military troops. The accomplishment of Iaukea, who appealed to the racial harmony and aloha spirit of Hawaii and who tried to prevent violence and needless provocation, should not be underestimated. For the

Federation of Japanese Labor, his presence as acting governor during the initial days of the strike proved an unexpected advantage.

By contrast, the brashness of the Japanese-language newspapers, starting with their reporting of the red flag incident, worked against the strikers, and so did the penchant of the Japanese community to veer toward narrow-minded nationalism. The advisory committee, made up mostly of Japanese-language newspaper reporters, had already detached itself from the federation headquarters, but it continued to function as the Honolulu strike supporters' association. The association consisted of the leaders of Honolulu's Japanese community, and its influence was great. According to the FBI files, the organization "forced donations to the Federation from all Japanese in Hawaiian territory, from maids to gardeners."^[3]

Japanese religious leaders, both Buddhist and Shinto, quickly made public their support of the federation, but they irritated the HSPA by sending a "letter of caution" in the name of "charity and benevolence." When the strike supporters' association formed a group to collect donations for the striking workers, many religious leaders gave their names to the cause. Governor McCarthy later sent the authorities in Washington a list of contributions made at this time as evidence of the Japanese patriotism of Japanese residents in Hawaii.

While the cane field workers' strike was unfolding in Hawaii, on the mainland the usually conservative Railroad Brotherhoods were rumored to be planning a nationwide strike in support of a plan to nationalize the railroads as the Soviet Union had. Attorney General Palmer received coded secret telegrams from FBI branch offices around the country about this planned action. But the office of the U.S. Attorney in Hawaii reported, "It is not probable that there will be any difficulty with the few railroads in this district (Oahu Railway, Maui Railway, Hawaii Consolidated Railway)." The territorial attorney general, Harry Irwin, could be confident of this assertion. In mid-January the largely Caucasian railway workforce had received the wage increases they demanded in negotiations with management. It was the powerful sugar planters who operated the railways on the Hawaiian Islands, and the railroad operators were members of the HSPA. But although the HSPA approved wage increases for Caucasian workers, it refused to recognize the right of Japanese and Filipino sugarcane workers to bargain collectively regarding their demands.

The Machinations of HSPA Lawyer Thompson

On the morning of February 8 Acting Governor Iaukea summoned Pablo Manlapit, the Filipino workers' leader, to the territorial government office to meet with officials, including Harry Irwin, the territorial attorney general, and Dr. Frederick Trotter, president of the territorial Board of Health. They urged Manlapit to call off the strike temporarily for public health reasons. The number of influenza patients was increasing daily at an alarming rate. In Honolulu many churches had canceled their services because of the epidemic. On the plantations, however, the separation of workers into camps on the basis of nationality kept them isolated from one another and slowed the spread of the disease. The Board of Health wanted to limit the movement of people as much as possible. It thought that the HSPA would soon issue orders to evict the Filipino strikers from the plantations and feared that a movement of evicted workers off the plantations would accelerate the epidemic. The Board of Public Health had pleaded with the HSPA to postpone eviction, but Secretary Mead refused. On the afternoon of February 8, the day the eviction order was served, Manlapit convened a special meeting of the Filipino delegates and immediately called off the strike. Only 257 Filipino laborers on Oahu followed Manlapit's order. The rest of them, thrown off the plantations, boarded trains for Honolulu to seek protection from the Federation of Japanese Labor.

News of struggles within the Filipino union had already reached the federation headquarters. Just two days before the strike was called off, Manlapit had expelled the leader of an opposition group, the newspaper publisher Juan Sarminento, on suspicion of spying for the HSPA. The Filipino union leaders, moreover, never made clear how they spent support monies given them by the Japanese federation; and, though the HSPA eviction order had been anticipated, they had made no concrete plans to deal with the situation. Antipathy toward the Filipinos was on the rise among the Japanese workers. Although the Filipinos had rushed ahead in calling for a strike, their resolve had collapsed in just twenty days.

On February 11 and 12 the Hawaii hochi^[*] published a series under the title "The Truth Behind the Back to Work Order" that was based on Manlapit's revelations to Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, the paper's editor. According to these articles, on the day before he was called in by Acting Governor Iaukea, Manlapit was invited to the residence of Frank Thompson, the HSPA lawyer. After offering Manlapit some whiskey,

Thompson asked, "What would you do if I put $25,000 on this table?" "If there were $50,000 I'd think it over," Manlapit answered, intending to draw Thompson out. But Thompson was more cunning than Manlapit. "Your words have been recorded by my secretary," he said.

When Manlapit looked into the next room, he saw a Caucasian woman taking shorthand. The trap set by Thompson, combined with the intrigues of Sarminento, who had gone over to the HSPA after expulsion from the Filipino union, left Manlapit with little choice but to order an end to the strike.

But that was not all. Two days after the strike ended, a Chinese messenger who said he was sent by Thompson told Manlapit, "There is a booking in your name on the Matsonia which departs tonight. Go to the mainland on this ship." He handed over an envelope containing $500. Manlapit sent his eldest daughter to return the envelope, but two hours later Thompson himself arrived with an English-language newspaper reporter. He said to Manlapit, "I hear that more than a few Filipinos are so enraged at your order calling off the strike that they are aiming to kill you. For your own safety, it's best if you leave Hawaii."

Thompson also claimed that the envelope had contained $5,000, not $500. Manlapit decided that the only way he could escape from this trap and make public his innocence was to confess everything to Makino.

The day after the Hawaii hochi^[*] ran its story, the Honolulu Star Bulletin printed Thompson's version of what had happened. According to Thompson, on January 26, the day before the Japanese went on strike, Manlapit called to request a meeting. Shortly after, Manlapit arrived with Esquerez, treasurer of the Filipino Labor Union.

"We don't have funds to continue the strike," Manlapit said. "The Japanese promised us $50,000 at the start and $100,000 later, but they haven't given us any money. If the HSPA can pay us $50,000, we can call off the strike as early as tomorrow." Thompson turned down the offer, saying he couldn't engage in that kind of deal. "Then I'll fight to the end whether I die or am put in prison," said Manlapit angrily. As Manlapit started to leave Thompson called out, "If you call off the strike, I'll personally cover your travel expenses."

About two weeks later, on February 10, according to Thompson, Manlapit arrived at Thompson's law office at 1:15 P.M. He said that his life was in danger and asked for $500 to go to the mainland. Thompson gave him the money, but Manlapit must have changed his mind, for that night he came at 8:00 P.M. to return the money. These being the facts, explained Thompson, charges of threats or bribes were way off the mark.

Putting the lie to Thompson's story, the Hawaii hochi^[*] ran an article revealing that it was not Manlapit who had reserved cabin 36 on the Matsonia bound for San Francisco. On February 14 Manlapit issued a new strike order to the Filipino workers. The Hawaii hochi promptly observed, "the measures to separate the Japanese and Filipinos have ended in failure."

Can the HSPA's efforts to disrupt the strike using cultural and racial differences be considered a failure?

On October 28, 1919, as Noboru Tsutsumi and other Japanese leaders were beginning to organize the Federation of Japanese Labor, William Sheldon, a haole lawyer deeply interested in labor issues, warned, "The Japanese are making a serious mistake, because if they want to make the movement a success they have got to eliminate the national line and cooperate with laborers of all nationalities."^[4]

Sam Nishimura, a nisei who was fifteen years old at the time of the strike, later recalled the viewpoints of both Japanese and Filipinos. "You know, whatever Japanese do, they're persistent. They're hard working guys. And the other guys, molowa (lazy). so they don't work, so naturally, Japanese would advance. Up and up. So, they didn't like the idea. But nothing they can do, because Japanese is such nationality that they're industrious, and they try to make a go no matter how hard a time they have, so they didn't like the idea, I think."^[5]

Many writers on Hawaiian history have concluded that the Oahu strike of 1920 was a revolutionary labor struggle that transcended the bounds of race. But this interpretation is simply wishful thinking based on a current perspective. In actuality, the gears of the Japanese and Filipino sides had not meshed from the start. In particular, Manlapit's decision to call off the strike deepened the Japanese laborers' contempt for the Filipinos and widened the rift between them. The Federation of Japanese Labor continued to provide the Filipinos with monetary assistance, but they no longer trusted or relied on them.

The Trumped up "Tsutsumi Statement"

What inspired the striking Japanese plantation workers in Hawaii was the labor movement back home. In 1920 demonstrations demanding universal manhood suffrage centering on labor organizations were held throughout Japan, and the military police had been called out to deal

with a major strike of thirteen thousand factory workers at the state-run Yahata Iron and Steel Works. On February 12 the front pages of the Japanese newspapers reported the arrest and detention of the leaders of the Yahata strike. That morning Noboru Tsutsumi was called to the Consulate General in Honolulu.

Late in the previous afternoon Tsutsumi had received a summons to appear with one other director. He had just returned from Kauai, where he had gone to rein in the Kauai Federation of Labor, which had declared their intention to strike. Kiyofumi Nakabayashi, the director from Kauai, accompanied Tsutsumi to the Honolulu consulate, which was located in an expensive residential neighborhood lined with prominent palm trees, about twenty minutes by car from the federation headquarters. The consulate still stands there today, but in 1920 it was a two-story wooden building with the gold imperial chrysanthemum crest glittering on the front.

Acting Consul General Eiichi Furuya and a secretary by the name of Kumazawa met the two men. The previous consul general, Rokuro^[*] Moroi, had been called back to Japan the previous August, but his successor, a former consul general in New York, Chonosuke^[*] Yada, was still at the Foreign Ministry in Japan, and for some reason his posting had been delayed. The forty-five-year-old Furuya was fifteen years older than Tsutsumi. After graduating from an English-language training school, he had worked for a time at the Customs Office in Yokohama. Although not a typical career diplomat, he had been posted to Seattle, Shanghai, and Liaoyang as vice consul and had arrived in Honolulu six months after Tsutsumi.

In his three-piece linen suit, the long-jawed Furuya gave the impression of being relaxed. His manner of speaking was courteous. Pulling the English-language newspapers on his desk toward him, he began to question Tsutsumi. The February 11, 1920, Honolulu Advertiser that he held in his hand carried a lengthy report on the "Tsutsumi statement." It alleged that Tsutsumi had made speeches on Kauai to the effect that the strike was instigated by the Japanese government and that "the strik. . . . is in line with Japanese policy wherever they colonize. It is of a part with the Japanization of Korea, Manchuria, Eastern Inner Mongolia, Shantung and Formosa." Since the statement implicated the Japanese government, the consulate could not ignore it.

The following report of the questioning is based on what Tsutsumi noted down immediately after he talked to Furuya. Neither the director,

Nakabayashi, nor the secretary, Kumazawa, who were in attendance, contested the contents when the summary was made public.

FURUYA: "Did you say anything about being connected to the Japanese government?"

TSUTSUMI: "I am such an advocate and promoter of the principle that workers should organize themselves that others criticize me vigorously for excluding third parties. I am confident that labor struggles can be won by the laborers. I am always eager to accept the support of those who understand and sympathize with our struggle, regardless of nationality. But there is no need to promote Japanism nor do I feel the need to call in the Imperial government. I am not a narrow Japanese imperialist, but a nationalist socialist [minzokuteki shakaishugisha ] in the broad sense.

"It would be a great mistake to shout about Japanese imperialism in Hawaii. But even though this is a free Hawaii under the American flag, only the workers are forced to put up with a half-baked Japanese-style paternalism. So I started this movement to demonstrate the American spirit and to build a Hawaii for Hawaii.

"Whoever dragged the Japanese government into this is like the bureaucratic politicians in Japan, who hide behind the mask of paternalism to protect feudalism. It must have been some famous political trickster, some obstinate and narrow-minded petty official. I feel no need to bring in the Imperial government to the strike. Therefore I have no reason to say such things in my speeches and have no recollection of doing so."

FURUYA: "What about the matter of taking over the power of the industry?"

TSUTSUMI: "If wages are increased from 77 cents to $1.25, will industrial power in Hawaii shift? The Federation headquarters has barely $3,000 in funds even if its pockets are turned inside out. If we could buy a $100 million sugar production company with this kind of money it would be cheap. This could only happen in an adventure novel or a fairy tale, and at this point we don't have the time to waste on such fantasies. But there are capitalists who are using this as an opportunity to buy up stock on Oahu. I am impressed by such clever entrepreneurs. It is unfortunate that there are no Japanese with such foresight."

FURUYA: "Because you say such things others charge you with attempting to take over the industry."

TSUTSUMI: "There's no need for me to talk about that on the plantations, but I have been thinking seriously about the issue. Basically, are foreigners forbidden to hold stock in Hawaiian sugar companies? The HSPA claims that this is a racial struggle, but isn't it racial when only the whites have the power over capital and don't let the other races even touch them with one finger?

"Ultimately labor struggles can't be resolved until workers hold some of the stock in their company, the capitalists involve themselves constantly in their businesses, and everyone connected to the company affirms that it is

his company. Isn't it the recent trend for companies to say that distributing stock is better than giving cash bonuses, and isn't this beginning to be implemented?

"They are saying that the Federation headquarters is seizing control of the power over the industry, but an industry is not maintained and developed by capital alone. Because labor power is also necessary, labor and capital are like the wheels on a cart or like the two wings of a bird. They are both indispensable elements to industry. Consequently, capitalists should recognize the status and rights of laborers within industry. We are by no means asking for the power to control, but we will not hesitate to assert our rights as workers. To avoid misunderstandings I won't go further into this type of discussion at the moment, but I don't think that the capitalists' monopoly over industry is an auspicious thing for the industry."

These comments reveal Noboru Tsutsumi's theories on the labor movement, and he spoke to the striking workers in nearly the same manner. That was why the English-language newspapers accused Tsutsumi of being not only a Japanese government spy but also an IWW radical.

FURUYA: "So what is your opinion about the IWW issue?"

TSUTSUMI: "A walkout is the workers' last resort to bring the capitalists to their senses, so it's natural that they shut down factory operations and stop sugarcane cultivation in a legal manner. Who would go on strike if things were to go on as before? The IWW attempts to take over the control of industry by whatever means possible. Our movement is to achieve harmony between labor and capital by going out on strike only after all peaceful measures have been exhausted. The sun will legally wither the cane and the mills will legally stop because the workers are not there. Everyone would start working happily as soon as wages are increased. It will be obvious whether or not we are the IWW if by chance wages are increased."

The Federation of Japanese Labor had consistently emphasized that the essence of their movement was the "great ideal" of conciliation between labor and capital. Tsutsumi expressed this ideal by referring to the Japanese character: "Historically and socially the Japanese have a conciliatory and peaceful disposition. Since the founding of the nation, Japanese have based their society on feelings of affinity for kinship and on the family system, and since they do not insist on individual rights and duties this has naturally become their inherent character."

As his final question, Acting Consul General Furuya asked, "What about the issue of an Imperial warship coming to pick up the strikers?" What the English-language newspapers had questioned most about the Tsutsumi statement was that he allegedly said if the situation became

dire, an Imperial warship would be sent in support of the workers. As it happened, the Japanese cruiser Yakumo was due to put in to port on March 8.

When the haole planters overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, the Japanese government had quickly dispatched the warship Naniwa , ostensibly to protect the lives and property of resident Japanese immigrants. But a Japanese murderer who had escaped from prison sought refuge on the Japanese vessel. Captain Heihachiro^[*] Togo^[*] refused to hand over the man to the Hawaiian side, arguing that the ship was Japanese territory. The incident nearly caused an international incident between Japan and the United States, and many immigrants were so moved that they named their sons Heihachiro. Although this incident had occurred twenty-some years earlier, talk of a Japanese warship raised an issue that Hawaii's governing class could not easily ignore.

To Furuya's question, Tsutsumi replied, "During a sit-down strike you do not let workers come and go. We could not tell the workers not to move from their camps even if evicted, and then in the next breath tell them we were coming to pick them up in cars. So I certainly have not even thought about an Imperial Navy warship. And I doubt that we could carry on a serious strike if we resorted to such infantile foolery. The suggestion is so divorced from common sense that I can't take it seriously."

Kumazawa, the consulate secretary, blurted out, "This really is ridiculous. What made the papers write such things? It's even more extreme than the anti-Japanese feelings in California. Ha, ha, ha."

It is doubtful that Acting Consul General Furuya joined in the laughter. In a report to Foreign Minister Kosai^[*] Uchida on March 1, Furuya observed that many strikers believed that a warship would certainly rescue them. "Regardless of whether Tsutsumi made such statements in his speeches," he wrote, "it is now necessary to sweep away the various rumors and misunderstandings." He urged issuing statements to the English- and Japanese-language newspapers clarifying that the visit of the cruiser Yakumo and the federation's strike were "entirely unrelated."

On February 13 the Japanese Consulate General issued an official notice denying any connection between the Japanese government and the wage increase movement and warning against such unfounded and inflammatory rumors. The visit of the Yakumo , the consulate explained, "had been planned as part of the itinerary set before its departure from Japan the previous November. Needless to say, there is no relation to

the sugar plantation laborers' wage increase movement, and thus care should be given that there is no such misunderstanding."

After leaving the consulate, Tsutsumi issued his own statement to the newspapers: "Comments that I have been sent by the Japanese government or about the Imperial warship are entirely false. Why would I behave in a way so lacking in common sense? I can only think that this is the work of the planters' dogs seeking to benefit from the situation."

The Japanese newspapers carried daily warnings that anyone who undermined the solidarity of the Japanese was "a planters' dog" and urged people to beware of such a person. The papers continued to publish the names of "dirty traitors." The permanent domicile, the date of birth, and the actions of recalcitrant workers were also published in their home-town papers in Japan. The English-language press termed such disciplinary action a display of "fanatic nationalism." And they accused Tsutsumi of being a Japanese government spy on the grounds that he had gotten this information from family registers in Japanese local government offices.

On February 12, the day Tsutsumi was called into the consulate, an "emergency notice" issued by the federation disciplined seven people at Waipahu Plantation, all skilled workers in the mill who earned high wages, by exposing their alleged collaboration with the plantation management. Manpachi Ogata, a boilerman and a Waipahu delegate to the Oahu federation, was one of them. The February 12 Hawaii hochi^[*] reported that Ogata's children, "feeling ashamed of their father's deed, cried aloud from morning on, and the betrayer's children refused to go to school." It is easy to imagine how bitter their parents must have felt. The HSPA not only gave money to the "planters' dogs," it cleverly exploited their hatred of the federation and used them to fabricate the so-called Tsutsumi statement.

The HSPA had made Noboru Tsutsumi, the de facto leader and a central figure of the federation, their main target. But when the HSPA claimed that their struggle against the strike was to protect "American democracy" from Japanese takeover, Tsutsumi made no concessions. He retorted that the strike was a struggle to bring American democracy to the Hawaiian cane fields. In Tsutsumi the HSPA faced a stout opponent the likes of which it had not encountered before.

The 1921 FBI report on the "strike leader T. Tsutsumi" observed, "He is a very fluent speaker, very radical in his views. The laborers at

present worship him like a god and believe whatever he tells them."^[6] Among those who heard Tsutsumi's speeches, impressions were mixed. Many agreed with the assessment of Tsuneichi Yamamoto, a former Hawaii hochi^[*] reporter, who recalled, "Above all he was eloquent. He had presence, had no fear, and confidently fought with anyone."^[7] Another former reporter thought that his appeal was intellectual: "Rather than being particularly eloquent, he had an exceptional intellect, and people couldn't help but heed his words."^[8] Some, however, had the impression that Tsutsumi was a sentimental idealist. Takeshi Haga recalled, "His manner of speaking was one of waving his hands and appealing to the audience's emotions. Gradually he would become excited and even shed tears."^[9]

Speeches printed in the Japanese-language newspapers suggest that Tsutsumi put things in a way that could be easily understood by the workers. But it is undeniable that he tended toward Japanese sentimentalism, and this may have given the HSPA the opportunity to fabricate the "Tsutsumi statement."

A 1921 FBI report indicated that Tsutsumi had made another inflammatory statement the year before: "Tsutsumi, in a speech, told the Japanese that if they did not win he would commit Hari Kari, that it would be an unpardonable sin if the Japanese did not win and that in that event he would suicide. He said that the Sumitomo Bank had agreed to advance $200,000 to the strikers in case of the emergency." This deepened the suspicion already created by Tsutsumi's alleged assurance that the Imperial Navy would rescue the strikers. Just as the HPSA had tried to sow dissension between the Japanese and Filipinos by entrapping Manlapit, it kept revealing alleged Tsutsumi statements in an attempt to establish the theory that the strike was a Japanese conspiracy.

This tactic had an immediate effect. A month after Manlapit spoke to the Hawaii hochi about the "truth behind the back to work order," he reported to the Philippine Labor Bureau that "the attitude of the Federation of Japanese Labor" was the reason for his order to end the strike. "I found out," he wrote, "that, on the one hand, the Japanese are trying to strike a blow at the Hawaiian commercial circles, while on the other hand they are planning a general strike by all unions in an attempt to take over this Territory." Since the Philippines, like Hawaii, were an American territory, he said that he had put American interests ahead of everything else. "I opposed this shocking scheme of the Japanese who are attempting to occupy the Territory," he wrote. "I refused to become a tool used for Japan's interests." As a result, he felt no choice but to call

off the strike. The report was obtained in Manila by Saburo^[*] Kurusu, later the special envoy to U.S.-Japan negotiations immediately before the Pearl Harbor attack, who sent it to Foreign Minister Uchida.^[10]

In any case, whenever the HSPA or the English-language newspapers brought up the Japanese conspiracy, they invariably quoted Tsutsumi's alleged warship statement. With the passage of time the "Tsutsumi statement" came to be considered a historical fact—not only by the U.S. government but by the Japanese as well.

The Spanish Influenza Strikes

As he had done in the case of the Filipino workers, Acting Governor Iaukea asked the HSPA to postpone evicting striking Japanese workers from the plantations until the influenza epidemic was contained, and once again the planters refused. On February 18 the HSPA ordered that the striking workers be removed from plantation housing within forty-eight hours. At some plantations, such as Aiea, several dozen temporarily hired plantation police went from house to house throwing household goods on the street and nailing shut doors. The only workers permitted to stay at Ewa Plantation were two disabled men, who had lost limbs in accidents with cane knives and who were not participating in the strike. Even the sick, who had taken to bed heavily wrapped in clothes to ward off the chills of high fever, were mercilessly evicted. Children as well as adults, packing blankets, pots, pans, and basins on their backs, left their humble but comfortably familiar homes. The Japanese camps in all the plantations became ghost towns, where the voices of playing children and the cries of babies could no longer be heard.

"Striking Japanese were chased out of their houses," recalled Antone Camacho, a Portuguese luna at Kahuku Plantation who was twenty-six years old at the time. "Other people came to take chickens and other things which were left behind."^[11] Some have testified, however, that it was not the plantation companies but the local Federation of Japanese Labor that forced the evictions. According to Seiichi Miyasaki, a junior in high school at Waialua at the time, "My father was head carpenter, earning $2 a day, he did not want to strike because I was little, and he thought I'd be in a bad situation thereafter. . . . [M]ore or less he was forced to go on strike. My father did not want to strike, but I distinctly remember four men came with the truck to load our stuff in the car."^[12]

Though Hawaii is a land of eternal summer, February is the coolest month of the year, and on rainy evenings it can become quite chilly. The

total number of workers and their families evicted was 13,393 (some 4,000 children among them). Many were forced to sleep outdoors near the railroad stations for several weeks after their expulsion. At Waipahu and Waialua plantations most evicted families took shelter in local Japanese-language schools and temples. But the majority of those at Aiea and Kahuku plantations headed for Honolulu in small trucks and rail cars arranged by the federation. Immediately after the expulsion order, 7,000 went to Honolulu, and the number continued to increase. This forced the federation to expend a vast sum of money. For the month of February lodging costs for evicted workers rose to $18,000 and transportation costs to $6,000.

Evacuation to Honolulu was only possible with the total cooperation of the supporters' association, which the federation had tried to keep at a distance. Since space was running out at all available inns, rental houses, churches, temples, shrines, and Japanese-language schools, the federation had to ask members of the Japanese community to open their warehouses for people to sleep in. It was only because the highly respected leaders of the supporters' association went around Honolulu with federation secretary Ichiji Goto^[*] and others that the community agreed to help out.

At the newly rebuilt Honganji mission in Hawaii on Foat Street, supported by large donations from the worshipers, evacuees from Kahuku slept on bedding spread on the concrete floor of the great hall. Flush toilets had been installed a few months before, but children, familiar only with the more primitive nonflush public latrines on the plantation, kept throwing things into them even after being told not to do so many times. The plumbers' bills were sent to the federation.

Workers from Aiea Plantation were sheltered in a church on King Street. "We put wicker boxes and trunks in the wide hallway of the basement as partitions between families," recalled Violet Fujinaka. "Quite a few people were coughing and needed bed rest. I had come to Hawaii when I was one year old, and I was 22 years old at the time. I was working as a maid in a white military man's house, and I would go on my day off once a week to see my mother at that church."^[13]

The Filipinos suffered much more than the Japanese after being evicted from the plantations. The Izumo Taisha shrine was the only place that took them in, and it was clearly not large enough. Hiroshi Miyazawa, the overworked federation staff member in charge of the Filipinos, finally arranged to use an abandoned sake brewery storehouse. The Filipinos slept on beds made from soap boxes placed on a dirt floor reek-

ing of sour sake, and they had to dig holes in the dirt to use as latrines. Married and single workers were thrown in together, causing a great many problems.

The staff of the Honolulu Board of Health, on edge about the influenza epidemic, investigated conditions in each of the shelters. If they judged a place to be unclean, they ordered it to be closed immediately. For this reason, the presence of Filipinos in the sake storehouse was kept secret. Buying some time in this way, the federation started building shacks for the Filipinos on land it bought for $4,000.

The number of deaths attributed to the Spanish influenza in the United States from 1918 to 1921 was higher than all the American dead in World War I. In Japan there were some 130,000 deaths during the twelve months ending July 1920. The speedy imposition of a strict quarantine on ships arriving in Hawaiian ports kept down the number of flu patients, but even so the numbers were gradually rising. As Acting Governor Iaukea and the Board of Health had feared, with the migration of evicted workers from the plantations the numbers of patients rose dramatically.

The Honolulu Japanese Physicians' Association donated one thousand free consultation tickets to treat the evicted workers. The Japanese-language school, which became a temporary hospital for the striking workers, soon looked like a field hospital on a battlefront. Several young nisei women who worked as volunteer nurses at the public health section set up in the federation headquarters died from the disease. In February 1920 the causes of deaths recorded for Honolulu numbered 179 from influenza and 42 from pneumonia. But it is difficult to obtain an accurate count of Spanish influenza deaths. Doctors also listed acute pneumonia, respiratory infection, heart damage, and whooping cough on the death certificates.

Among the evicted Waialua Plantation worker families, forty-three people died just in the ten days after eviction. Many later recalled the epidemic in oral histories:

I remember lot of Japanese died on that strike. And I had lot of school friends, too. Like, Nakatsu, Kamiyama and all that. I don't know whether they had some place down Haleiwa there, some church or something tha. . . . the place was so crowded. . . . [T]hat was a pretty bad strike influenza came in.^[14]

No doctor, doctor cannot. Everyday, so many guys are dying, so, you know, what they had to do was get a plantation truck and just dump the body. Put 'em in the graveyard. That's all. They cannot make a decent funeral. I notice

a place where mother and a son died together. They had to bury 'em together. So that epidemic was terrific.^[15]

A person could get pains in the morning and be dead in the afternoon. My sister died too.^[16]

(I went to Jodo^[*] mission temple with my parents after eviction.) (There were) many people, I don't know how many, well, they all develop flu and original minister's wife passed away from the flu. Caught from the people. (Because of the strike), their sanitation was not as good as it should be then.^[17]

Etsuta Inoue, the federation director from Maui, was one of those who died in the epidemic. Inoue had been trained as a Zen Buddhist priest and had also worked as a newspaper reporter. He was known to be passionate about his job with the federation. When he delivered a speech, using the strength of his entire body and his face flushing with emotion, it was like a "burst of flame."^[18] He had returned from Maui on February 14 to make a report to the federation office, but for someone who was normally able to push himself hard, he seemed unusually lethargic. Another director, who had thought something might be wrong as he watched Inoue go off to the Kobayashi Inn, later found him shaking on his futon. He was immediately taken to the emergency hospital at the Japanese-language school.

The Japanese Hospital, originally called the Japanese Charity Hospital but renamed the Kuwakini Hospital during the Second World War, had been rebuilt two years before. It was a modern facility, but there were so many influenza patients that it was unable to handle them all. By the time Inoue was transferred to the Japanese Hospital from the dirt floor of the temporary ward two days later, he had contracted pneumonia and become delirious. A week later, half an hour after he was visited by the three federation secretaries, Tsutsumi, Miyazawa, and Goto^[*] , and six directors, the thirty-two-year-old Inoue died. His last feverish words were, "Have the Filipinos gone back to work? Let's get all the islands. Oh, is that so? It's all right . . ."^[19]

On Saturday, February 22, the day Inoue died, a grand Washington's Birthday parade was held in Honolulu. Marching schoolchildren were followed by members of the newly formed Hawaiian Post of the American Legion. A few days before, the local Legionnaires, following the policy of Americanism touted by the American Legion headquarters on the mainland, had issued a resolution stating that the Japanese-language schools and newspapers represented extreme anti-Americanism.

Determined to not let the death of Etsuta Inoue be futile, the federation turned his funeral at the Hawaii Honganji mission two days later into a major demonstration showing the renewed solidarity and determination of the striking workers. The funeral procession wound through the main streets of Honolulu, following Inoue's body from the Hosoi Funeral Home to the Honganji. First came a small marching band from the Waipahu Plantation youth group, quietly playing a song. Federation leaders walked on either side of the hearse, carrying a wreath of white and yellow flowers and a funerary banner of light yellow with the words "Mourning the spirit of Etsuta Inoue, director of the Federation" in black. The striking workers followed, grouped according to their plantations and walking in a silent, solemn procession. It was a clear day with blue skies. Along the funeral procession route, Japanese merchants pressed their palms together in prayer as they watched the coffin go by, and the large Hawaiian policeman who was directing traffic quietly gave a respectful salute.^[20]

The mayor of Honolulu, Joseph James Fern, age forty-eight, who was already a patient in Queens Hospital, died two weeks later. Fern was of mixed white and Hawaiian parentage with the Hawaiian name Keo Kimo Pana. He had started out as a horse wagon driver at Kohala Plantation on Hawaii. From the start he had been sympathetic to the plantation workers. Indeed, he had declared that the success of the sugar industry in Hawaii was "due to the efforts of the Japanese workers,"^[21] and like Curtis Iaukea, he had viewed the federation's actions with warmth. His lavish funeral was held in Hawaiian style, with colorful orchids.

The Palmer Mediation Proposal

Terasaki made no mention of Inoue's funeral. His diary for that day noted simply, "February 24 (Tuesday, fair): Nippu supports Palmer plan. Hochi^[*] declares that if it is conditional then it cannot support it." Apparently he was much concerned about a strike mediation plan proposed by the Reverend Albert W. Palmer two days before. Palmer, the pastor of the Central Union Church, the most historic church in Hawaii, was a native of Kansas. After graduating from the University of California, he spent many years as a minister on the West Coast. He had come to the Union Church three years before at the age of forty-four. He had a doctorate in religious studies, was teaching at the University of Hawaii, and wrote a weekly column on religion for the Honolulu Star Bulletin . He

had a warm personality, and despite having come to Hawaii relatively recently, he had gained the trust of the kamaaina. Perhaps because he was an outsider he was able to propose a bold mediation plan.

In testimony before Congress in 1921, Arthur F. Griffiths, the headmaster of Punahou School, an elite school for Caucasians in Hawaii, categorized the attitudes of the haoles of the time into three groups. The first group, the leaders of the sugar industry, were strongly anti-Japanese. "They regard [the Japanese] as a menace, they believe that the Japanese Government is seeking to control the local situation and that it will resort to any methods to accomplish its purpose." The second group, although "somewhat neutral," were "inclined to be opposed to the Oriental" and to "fear that [the] Japanese were getting out of hand." The third group, "the descendants of missionaries, Kamaainas , old timers, Christian workers and church members in general," advocated "broad friendly policies of Christianization and Americanization."^[22]

Reverend Palmer belonged to the third group. Concerned about the effect on Hawaiian society of the confrontation between the HSPA and the Japanese immigrant workers, he approached not only other Caucasian leaders such as Arthur L. Dean, president of the University of Hawaii, who were concerned about the strike but also Japanese community leaders in the strike supporters' association to work out a solution. In the Japanese community, the Reverend Takie Okumura, Dr. Iga Moori, and Masao Kawahara, president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, responded to his appeal. Moori, a Christian and a physician, had been official physician in the Hawaiian kingdom's immigration bureau, and Kawahara was the owner of a local major store and the president of the Pacific Bank.

After meeting with these men, Reverend Palmer proposed his mediation plan in his Sunday sermon. The Big Five sugar planter families were all members of his congregation. Palmer warned them that half the population of Hawaii was Japanese and that misunderstandings could ensue if racial issues and nationalist suspicions intruded into labor-management relations. Reverend Palmer also cautioned the federation leaders about the danger of overly stressing their Japanese-ness for the sake of encouraging solidarity. He pointed out that the rising sun crossed with the hammer and sickle that appeared on the federation's flag and stationery exacerbated the misunderstandings on the part of the Americans, and so did publishing the names of "traitors" in their hometown newspapers in Japan.

Reverend Palmer proposed the following compromise:

To the Japanese Labor Federation, [we recommend] that it recognize the unwisdom and peril of any such organization along national lines and that it therefore call off the present strike, abandon the field of plantation labor and thus leave that field clear for an organization of the employees within the sugar industry itself and so arrange as to be inter-racial in scope.

To the Planters' Association, we recommend that, as an expression of its progressive spirit and purpose to treat its employees in the most generous and enlightened fashion, it announce that it will arrange for an election by secret ballot on each plantation of an Employees' Committee to confer with the Plantation Manager in securing the utmost cooperation between the management and the men. Such election to be held within one month of the date the men return to work.

Within the Japanese community, major organizations such as the doctors' association, the bankers' association, and the chamber of commerce all announced their approval of Palmer's plan. Diplomatic documents indicate that Acting Consul General Furuya also saw his plan as a way to end the strike and sent a memo to that effect to Foreign Minister Uchida.^[23] The Terasaki diary notes that Soga^[*] 's Nippu jiji and Hatori's Hawaii shinpo^[*] both declared their overall support of the Palmer plan. But Makino's Hawaii hochi^[*] dissented; on February 26 the newspaper characterized the Palmer plan as "a great insult to the workers, [which] throws the strike as a whole body into the jaws of death," and as a "disgraceful peace negotiation." It directly opposed the plan on the grounds that "a spoken promise cannot be trusted" and vehemently attacked the Nippu jiji for supporting it.

Among the haoles many in the religious and education community declared their support. So did Acting Governor Iaukea, who announced on February 25 that the planters had been "putting pressure" on him to use military force against the strikers just as they had used Americans to threaten the Hawaiians at the time of the 1893 "revolution."^[24] "Under these circumstances," he said, "if the planters have evidence in their possession which proves the existence of Japanese conspiracy claims, if they have evidence other than agitated words, they should publish it."^[25] In response to public opinion, which sought a resolution to the strike as soon as possible as apprehension about the influenza epidemic spread, the two English-language newspapers also declared the Palmer plan worthy of consideration.

On the evening of February 24, on their return from Inoue's funeral, the federation leaders argued animatedly over the Palmer plan. Once

again a "Tsutsumi statement" became an issue. When the Palmer plan was announced, a Japanese reporter from the Honolulu Advertiser asked Tsutsumi his opinion. He responded, "It is excellent in terms of stressing harmony between labor and management, but realistically there are some problems. Most of all, I cannot accept the dissolution of the federation." The paper reported the story under the headline "Secretary Tsutsumi Is Firmly Against the Palmer Plan."

After a discussion at federation headquarters that lasted until dawn, Tsutsumi was called in the following morning by Acting Governor Iaukea, who asked him to explain the attitude of the federation. After meeting with Iaukea, Tsutsumi made the rounds of Japanese community leaders to explain his statement in the newspaper.

At 7:30 P.M . on February 27 the three federation secretaries, Tsutsumi, Miyazawa, and Goto^[*] , and the five directors visited Reverend Palmer at the Central Union Church. Dean, Moori, Kawahara, and others were there as well. This discussion, which lasted five hours, focused on the dissolution of the federation. Tsutsumi and the other federation officials stubbornly opposed dissolution of the organization. Palmer and the other mediators suggested a compromise: "As long as the association is not limited racially to Japanese, we will not be concerned about the existence of a labor organization."

After reconfirming this point, Tsutsumi and his colleagues issued a statement dated February 27: "The directors and secretaries of the Federation of Japanese Labor accept the general principle laid down in Mr. Palmer's plan and stand ready to take the steps to put it in operation just as soon as it shall appear that the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association has accepted the general principles of the said plan and also stand ready to put it in operation." In other words, the Federation of Japanese Labor, trusting in the goodwill of the mediators who were known as men of good sense in Hawaiian society, was prepared to compromise. Since their stated goal was conciliation between labor and capital and harmony for Hawaii, the federation put harmony first. It was also a thoroughly Japanese way of dealing with the situation: showing respect to the mediators before discussing concrete plans for resolving the strike.

But the HSPA flatly refused to engage in collective bargaining with the workers. It refused to "consider any plan or suggestion involving even tentative relations, direct or indirect, of the nature of compromising the present strike situation through or in conjunction with the so-

called Japanese Federation of Labor." It also rejected the humanitarian compromise that Reverend Palmer had proposed from the pulpit. And its attitude toward Tsutsumi remained unyielding. Calling Tsutsumi an agitator who was not a real worker, the HSPA insisted that cane field laborers were being intimidated and they would not permit that alien domination of the sugar industry.

The prospects for an early resolution of the strike evaporated.

The Planters' Association Strikes Back

In the midst of the uproar over the Palmer plan, the HSPA announced that the bonus rate for February would be 258.5 percent. This meant that the lowest-paid workers, who earned $20 a month, would receive a bonus of $38, or a total of $58. In actuality, the bonus was paid in two installments, so only half of the amount was to be paid in February, but the magic of this figure had a powerful effect on the workers.

The English-language newspapers pointed out that the strikers had lost $36 by listening to the labor agitators, and the Federation of Japanese Labor was obliged to warn strikers repeatedly not to be tricked by the amount of the bonus. Japanese plantation workers outside Oahu were laboring in the cane fields to raise support funds for the strike, but with the bonus increase they could save more money too. The workers on Oahu, the only ones on strike, could not hide their frustration.

One reason the HSPA firmly opposed the Palmer plan was an extraordinary rise in the price of sugar. Generally the sugar market was quite stable, but every few decades it went through a major fluctuation. The sudden price rise in 1920 was one of these exceptional shifts in the market. The wartime sugar price control law had been repealed in the United States the previous year. There was no immediate effect on the market price, which remained at 5 to 7 cents per pound. But as if in concert with the rising labor unrest in Hawaii, the price began to rise at year's end, jumping to 12.29 cents by January 5, 1920. It appeared to dip in late February, but then in March it reached 13 cents. The HSPA quickly calculated the bonus rate and once more announced it with great fanfare.

It was not only the sugar price that worked to the advantage of the HSPA. Rainfall in Hawaii was considerably less than that in Cuba, its main competitor. Hawaiian sugar growers had to invest heavily in irrigation, and the labor required was considerably greater than in Cuba. About the time the strike started, rain began to fall quite heavily even

on Oahu, where rainfall was normally less than the other islands. The planters did not have to worry about irrigating the fields, and the sugarcane grew as expected. The striking workers felt that even the weather was in league against them.

The HSPA did not let this favorable opportunity pass. The planters began to recruit scabs who would work for $3 to $3.50 per day. Many were unemployed laborers. As one Waialua worker recalled, "Nobody tried to go out in the field to work, what I mean, to strike break, because it wasn't a safe thing to do. . . . [Strikebreakers] lot of them from Honolulu who did not have jobs [or] from other islands."^[26] The Hawaii hochi^[*] pointed out that many of scabs were Koreans and Chinese who harbored "national animosity" toward the Japanese. Since their homelands had experienced Japanese aggression, it was natural that they felt intense antipathy toward the Japanese. Indeed, many Chinese and Korean immigrants in Hawaii contributed funds to support independence or nationalist movements at home. And many of the Chinese scabs used their bonus money to take their families on long-postponed visits back to China.

Many Filipinos, who had ostensibly joined in the labor struggle with the Japanese, became scabs as well. In fact, HSPA president Waterhouse proposed a plan to import great numbers of Filipinos at the end of December 1919. By March they began arriving in Hawaii. In the HSPA's annual report after the conclusion of the strike, Waterhouse stated that during the strike 75 percent of the average monthly work had been accomplished.

Criticism of the Federation

We don't like to strike
     But it can't be helped
     Because our wages aren't increased
Will you raise them, until you raise them
     Unless you raise them, we'll have to
Strike, don don
77 cents is cheap
     But we can't eat on it
     So it can't be helped
We'll launch our strike
     Until our cries can be heard above
Don don
                             Strikers'  Don Don  Song

Until the greedy and cruel planters who are destroying Hawaii's industry
Wake up,
We'll go to the bitter end
Without quitting our united strike
Oya, Oya
                               Strikers'  Oya Oya  Song

As more and more scabs began working the fields, unrest spread among the Japanese laborers. The HSPA tactic of using monetary incentives to defeat the strikers had its effect, and a few Japanese became scabs as well. Late on March 1, for example, Noboru Tsutsumi rushed by car to Kahuku Plantation to deal with a laborer who had become an agent for the planters out of a grudge against the federation and was secretly stirring up a movement to return to work.

The number of federation rallies peaked in March: speeches at Waianae Plantation on March 1 and at Kahuku and Waipahu on March 2, the Pearl City striking workers meeting on March 3, and a lecture meeting sponsored by the supporters' association at Asahi Theater in Honolulu that night. All these rallies aimed at "planters' dogs," and often they were quite emotional. A newspaper reported that the audience at one rally was "an excited mob that heard speeches filled with tears, anger by the audience, crying by the orators—the entire house crazed." Unable to stay in the office and devote himself to reworking the federation's tactics, Tsutsumi raced from one plantation to another giving speeches nearly every day: March 4 at Waialua Plantation, March 7 at Ewa and Waipahu.

At the Oahu federation meeting on March 9, more than one thousand delegates from the federation branches at each of the plantations crowded into the garden of the Tokiwaen restaurant. The meeting moved indoors when it began to rain. Even with all the sliding doors open people spilled out into the hallway, so jammed they were unable to move. Yet no one left until the three rounds of "Banzai" signifying adjournment a little after midnight. Fifteen delegates from the various plantations rose to speak that night, wildly denouncing the "unforgivable traitors" who had gone back to work.

The number of Japanese laborers returning to work in early March was announced by the plantations as follows (figures in parentheses are those announced by the federation): Aiea Plantation, 8 workers (0); Waipahu Plantation, 25 workers (7); Ewa Plantation, 10 workers (0); Waialua

Plantation, 14 workers (9); Kahuku Plantation, 32 workers (21); Waimanalo Plantation, 0 workers (0).

To deal with the strikebreakers, the federation devised the tactic "silent send-off." The idea was to put pressure on the scabs by mobilizing more than one thousand strikers to silently send off the trains carrying scabs to the cane fields. But the strikers had to leave Honolulu on street-cars departing at 4:00 A.M . to carry out this tactic. Initially approximately three hundred strikers turned out, but they became discouraged when it began to rain, and by the third day less than thirty showed up. The "silent send-off" tactic was soon abandoned.

The most effective way of disciplining the turncoats was to announce their expulsion from the union in the newspapers. Individuals disciplined for "acting on their own in violation of the rules of the federation" appeared with their photographs in the newspapers practically every day.

The influenza epidemic grew more severe. From the beginning of March the number of new patients averaged 120 daily. Federation expenditures on funerals rose to $965 in March. The amounts for the other months were $278 in February, $534 in April, $134 in May, $124 in June, and $67 in July.

Among the passengers on the Siberia-maru , which departed for Yokohama on March 5, were some three hundred Japanese immigrants returning to Japan. Many feared that the strike would last a long time and gave up the struggle, but many feared the spreading influenza. However, only those immigrants who had some savings were able to return to Japan at this time.

On March 12 the cruiser Yakumo entered the port of Honolulu. Since the alleged Tsutsumi statement about the dispatch of the Yakumo to rescue the strikers had become such a problem, Acting Consul General Eiichi Furuya had repeatedly issued warnings: "Needless to say, no connection or contact is to be made with the plantation workers' wage increase movement, take care so as not to incur any misunderstandings."^[27] Japanese residents of Honolulu abstained from the usual welcoming reception. With special permission from the American military, the Yakumo put in to the naval port at Pearl Harbor. After replenishing water and other supplies, it quickly departed for Japan.

On March 15, the day the Yakumo left port, Terasaki noted in his diary, "(Monday, somewhat cloudy): The strike continues. Prospect seems unfavorable, but the workers believe the headquarters' statement that the outlook is favorable." In fact, by this time striking workers were

voicing distrust of the federation leadership. Using Japanese agents, the HSPA intrigued to sow discord between the strikers and the federation leaders by skillful scandal-mongering. Responding both to threats and to gestures of conciliation, the number of laborers returning to work, although few in number, continued to increase.

Fliers of a cartoon depicting six federation leaders chomping on cigars and leaning back in a large model convertible decked out with small federation flags were widely distributed. Its captions read: "We are the lords (daimyo) of Hawaii." "If there wasn't a strike, I wouldn't be riding in a car." "I'm living in luxury." "Ten dollars an hour" [meaning this man was receiving compensation]. "The cigars of the Federation officers cost 50 cents each." "It would be great if the strike is prolonged."

The number of automobiles in Hawaii was increasing rapidly, but ordinary workers rode only trains and buses. Even the lowest-level staff at federation headquarters, however, used automobiles so as to respond promptly to any situation. The HSPA cleverly played on this point to promote estrangement within the federation ranks.

The HSPA pointed out that it was not clear how contributions to the strike were being used. Contributions were collected periodically, and a list of contributors to the wage increase movement support fund was published in the Japanese-language newspapers along with the amounts given. Contributing to the fund was regarded as evidence of loyalty to the striking workers. Naturally contributors who had donated funds from their own meager household budgets were interested in how the money was used. Among the slander and misinformation spread by the HSPA, references to the strike support fund were especially effective.

It was true that some federation headquarters members behaved in questionable ways. At a time when the typical laborer could scarcely afford a 10-cent bowl of noodles at a cheap eatery, federation staff members held meetings at restaurants. Ryokin^[*] Toyohira, a reporter for the Nippu jiji , recalled, "I think Tsutsumi and the other leaders of the Federation were earnest, but it was a collection of many kinds of people and they had increased in number, so it can't be said for certain that there were no bad elements. The inn where the Federation leaders stayed included a restaurant where they held their meetings and consultations, so the Hawaii hochi^[*] and others jibed at the drinking and eating."^[28]

Tsuneichi Yamamoto, a reporter for the Hawaii Hochi^[*] at the time, remembered that one day he was called in by the newspaper's president, Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, and editor-in-chief, Haga. Yamamoto was an old friend of Tsutsumi's who had taught him how to write articles when he

had just started out at Hawaii mainichi . "Catch those guys in action when they are having a party at a restaurant with the money collected from workers," Makino told Yamamoto. And Haga added, "Yamamoto, I'll let you in on something. I hear they often use the detached room at Mochizuki. You should crawl under the room."

In Honolulu the Mochizuki Club was known as a first-class restaurant. It was located very close to the Japanese Hospital on Liliha Street on a quiet, cool hillside. There is a park there now, but the massive trees with jutting branches and the large pond in their shadow suggest the opulence of those days. In the middle of this pond, as if afloat, stood the detached room that Haga had mentioned. The directors of the federation held meetings there until late into the night. Since they were wearing cotton yukata kimonos, they may have appeared to be relaxing, and in Prohibition days, rumors were rife that they were breaking the law. Had they brought in illegal liquor to the meetings? Were they being serviced by geisha? Makino ordered Yamamoto to find out.

The detached room was connected to the main building by a long corridor with a railing. The small and nimble Yamamoto went along the corridor in the dark, holding onto the handrail, and somehow crept directly under it. Unaware that someone was hiding underneath them, the occupants spoke frankly. Yamamoto heard Tsutsumi's familiar voice. But no matter how long he crouched, he could not hear anything that might be improper. Neither did it sound like they were drinking sake. Mosquitoes were plentiful in Honolulu in those days. Out in the middle of the pond clutching the beam supporting the room, Yamamoto found himself being attacked. Unable to bear it any longer, he slapped at a mosquito. His other hand, which had gone numb, suddenly slipped, and he fell into the pond.

"What's that sound?!" a voice said. Yamamoto heard a shoji sliding open. If he were caught, he might face a beating. With only his head sticking out of the water, he waited silently. "It was probably a carp splashing," someone said. The shoji closed. His only suit soaked, Yamamoto returned to the office, but Makino was not angry, and the next morning he silently flung a newly bought suit at Yamamoto.

To respond to the suspicions about the support fund, the federation made its account balance public after the strike. For the month of March alone transportation expenses, including automobiles, amounted to $3,797. Other items such as special expenses and emergency expenses were unclear. The emergency expenses were $49,000, the highest expenditure for that month.

The strikers continued to show a brave face, attacking the plantation owners in song.

While espousing Americanization on paper,
They actually destroy Americanization
Those English newspapers that don't even know Americanism,
Let's defeat them
Oya , defeat them, defeat them
The planters rely on big money and power,
We 25,000 laborers fight
Our weapon for victory is to strike
Until the planters increase our wage
Oya , defeat them, defeat them
To the oppressor planters
We will show our working man's guts
On this occasion at this time
Until the planters take off their helmets in defeat
Oya, defeat them, defeat them
                 Strikers' Defeat Them Song ( Strike Yattsukero Bushi )

As the strike dragged on, the federation planned various events to boost worker morale. On March 21 a sumo wrestling match sponsored by the Honolulu sumo fans' association was held in the garden of the Tokiwaen restaurant, and some two thousand workers gathered to watch. The following evening a large crowd attended a joint meeting at the Asahi Theater sponsored by the federation headquarters. With Ichiji Goto^[*] as the master of ceremonies, representatives of the supporters' association, youth association, and newspapers gave speeches.

It was Torakichi Kimura, representing the supporters' association, who first brought up the Sakai $100-check incident in his speech. On the evening of March 5 a federation headquarters staff member went to Sumitomo Bank to deposit a $100 check contributed by the innkeepers' union along with other checks. Unable to reach the bank before closing time, he took the checks back to headquarters and handed them to the director in charge of finance, who put them into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and returned to Kyorakukan^[*] where he was staying. The following morning he realized that the $100 check had disappeared. Several days later it was revealed that the check had been handed over to HSPA secretary Mead. It was said that a man named Sakai had picked it up and delivered it to the HSPA. In no time Mead used this incident to show how slipshod the federation was in handling contributions. It was not clear who this Sakai was, but from Mead's description the rumor started that it might have been Miyazawa of the federation.

Hawaii hochi^[*] president Kinzaburo^[*] Makino stepped up on the stage after Kimura to belabor the federation leadership in his booming voice:

Federation headquarters should use its energies for propaganda, and listen to others. They should do something besides wearing leggings or feeding Filipinos. Not only did a $100 check get into the hands of the HSPA, it also appears that a man named Sakai reports the daily balance of accounts to them. There are other strange, peculiar, and inexcusable things going on. The fellows at headquarters have been sumo wrestling outside the ring, not inside it, so things remain unsettled. Then this becomes a problem for the Japanese-language schools and the Japanese-language newspapers. If this were simply a problem for 25,000 workers, we could leave it up to headquarters, but since it is a problem for our 110,000 comrades we cannot ignore it.^[29]

Makino had often referred to himself as the "sumo grand champion of oration" among the Hawaiian Japanese. In response to his merciless criticism, the audience applauded, and showed its approval by stamping on the floor in unison. Noboru Tsutsumi, who spoke after Makino, began his remarks in a softer tone than usual.

I greatly appreciate President Makino's admonition. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the Federation's stand. We have never ignored the opinions and guidance, whether verbal or written, from gentlemen in every quarter. Those who see our actions as arbitrary must, I think, be those who have not given us their suggestions.

Although he spoke politely, Tsutsumi was not about to yield anything to Makino.

It is because we wish to resolve the strike simply as a labor management issue that we emphasize solely the laborers so strongly. If the strike is treated as a problem of all 110,000 comrades, would it not by necessity become a Japan-United States problem and a race problem? We also often hear criticism about leaks of headquarters secrets. But it is a mystery to me what secrets are leaked and how these leaked secrets are spread to the world. A case like the $100 check incident simply means that at great pains someone took something from our office, then sent that one piece of paper to the HSPA as if he had obtained the head of a monster, and that secretary Mead put on a big act to upset our headquarters. If we fell for such a trick and engaged in mutual recriminations, Mead would be pleased, but we would appear ridiculous. At headquarters we are treating the case of the $100 check in a calm and collected manner so as not to create any opportunity for provocation. I am grateful that the issue has been raised this evening so that a headquarters member could state our position to our satisfaction.^[30]

The audience responded to Tsutsumi's rebuttal by applauding after each phrase and finally by waving their hands and hats, in a display of support stronger than that given Makino. Makino, however, used his news-

paper for a further reply. In the afternoon edition the next day the Hawaii hochi^[*] ran as its headline, "Don't Let Secretary Tsutsumi Speak, the Pitfalls of Slipping the Rails Are Extremely Great." Tsutsumi had stated in his speech that since final federation account books were not available, no one could know the exact balance, but the newspaper reported him as saying that "there are no exact account books." It claimed that this was "slipping the rails."

Kinzaburo^[*] Makino

Makino was so well known in Hawaii that it was said there was no one not acquainted with him. Tall and stocky, he attracted attention wherever he went. He sported a Panama hat, immaculate white suits, flashy bowties, and white shoes and always smoked a fat cigar. Unlike most Japanese, he drove to work each morning in a large Ford. With his thick neck, jutting jawline, and prominent fleshy nose, Makino looked more "foreign" than Japanese. Among Caucasians he was known as "Fred" Makino, but in the Japanese community he had a reputation as a rough-and-tumble character. In 1909 the Japanese consul general had described him as "of mixed blood, notorious for being irresponsible."^[31]

Makino, who was born in Yokohama, was indeed a mixed-blood (or hapa as the Hawaiians said). His father was Joseph Higginbottom, a British woolen merchant, and his mother was Kin Makino, a Japanese woman. He had two older brothers, an older sister, and a younger brother. When he was four years old his father died in Shanghai from typhoid fever, and he was reared by his mother. Although Yokohama was a city with many foreign inhabitants, it is not difficult to conjecture what his memories of childhood as a child of mixed parentage with no father must have been. He finished school through the upper primary level. Whenever he could he went to the judo studio, and he was known on the street as a youngster quick to get into a fight. As he grew up he became a regular in the Motomaki pleasure quarter, and he was known among the geisha in Honolulu as "Kin-san," unequaled in his talent for singing Japanese ballads and ditties.

Although his mother had remarried, Kinzaburo and his stepfather never got along. So when Kinzaburo was twenty-two years old his second older brother, Eijiro^[*] , who had taken over their father's business, arranged for him to go to Hawaii. When he arrived, his eldest brother, Jo^[*] , was already successful as a merchant at Naalehu Plantation on the Big Island. After keeping the books at his brother's store for three years,

Kinzaburo^[*] opened the Makino Drug Store in Honolulu. The following year he married Michie, the daughter of an early government contract immigrants. Michie's parents had strongly opposed this marriage because Kinzaburo was of mixed blood, and not a few among the Japanese community called him a hapa behind his back. Despite this, Kinzaburo seemed to feel at home in Hawaii with its ethnically and racially diverse population. Except to return for his mother's funeral, he never again set foot in Japan.

In 1909, six years after Makino opened his drugstore, the first Oahu strike took place. The main instigators were Yasutaro^[*] Soga^[*] of Yamato shinbun and Motoyuki Negoro, a recent graduate of a mainland law school. Upset by the conditions of the immigrant laborers, Soga used his newspaper to fan worker demands for a wage increase. At the recommendation of the Honolulu merchants, Makino was named the chairman of the High Wage Association. The consul general criticized him for "gathering people like a low-class charlatan healer and holding lecture meetings to court popularity, just to make personal attacks and heap abuse and slander on the HSPA."^[32] His charismatic presence at once turned him into a hero in the Japanese community. Arrested along with Soga and others, he was convicted of inciting the strike, but he had become such a popular figure that each day during his four months in prison his supporters delivered more food than he could eat. Seeing how influential newspapers could be, Makino founded the Hawaii hochi^[*] as a platform for his opinions. After the strike Makino and Soga became estranged as a result of their disagreement on many issues. It can be said that Makino started his own newspaper out of his antagonism toward the "snobbish" Soga.

Yasutaro Soga, a native of Tokyo four years Makino's senior, had graduated from the English Law School (the predecessor of Chuo^[*] University) before going to Hawaii. After doing clerical work at a Japanese store on a plantation, he joined the Yamato shinbun , the oldest Japanese newspaper in Honolulu, and eventually became editor-in-chief and president. After the 1909 strike, the newspaper changed its name to Nippu jiji . Until the 1930s, the Nippu jiji was the only Japanese-language paper under special agreement with the Associated Press. Soga, a soft-spoken intellectual, was known as a writer with sound judgment. Under the pen name Keiho^[*] , he wrote poems as well, and, a practicing Christian, he attended church on Sundays.

The personalities of Soga and Makino were quite different. Seiei Wa-

kikawa, a student at the University of Hawaii, went around to Japanese community leaders each month to seek contributions for the Japanese kindergarten. Soga^[*] always handed him $2, saying, "Thank you for your efforts." But Makino would jangle his keys and open his safe as if Wakikawa were a nuisance, then toss a $1 coin to him. Wakikawa went on to study at Tokyo University and eventually became editor-in-chief of Nippu jiji .

After the 1909 strike Soga deepened his association with the elite of Honolulu's Japanese community: the consuls general, the branch managers of Sumitomo Bank, and the branch managers of the Yokohama Specie Bank. He served as director on the boards of the Prince Fushimi Memorial Scholarship Association, the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, and the Rotary Club. The only Japanese whose names were listed in the English-language directory of prominent Hawaiians were Soga and the Reverend Takie Okumura.

In stark contrast to Soga, Makino did not frequent the consulate, and only once did he join a group greeting a Japanese warship when it put in to port. From its founding, the Hawaii hochi^[*] vowed that it "would not bow to any power or pressure," and it regarded the Nippu jiji as its only competition.

Although the Hawaii hochi and Nippu jiji were located just one block apart, Makino and Soga did not acknowledge each other when they passed on the street. There was intense rivalry between the reporters on the two newspapers, and they clashed on nearly every issue: if the Nippu jiji called something white, the Hawaii hochi would call it black. The catchphrase among the Hawaii hochi staff was, "Don't lose out to Nippu ." By opposing the Nippu in its editorial stance, the Hochi^[*] sought to cut into its rival's circulation.

Soga penned articles as editor-in-chief, but Makino did not write a single sentence. Reading through newspapers from Japan and the English-language newspapers, Makino spat out his opinions each morning to "Fighting Haga," the editor-in-chief, who wrote them up as articles or editorials. Haga's poison pen turned Makino's thunderous shouts of "Those idiots!" into copy and established the Hochi reputation as "Hawaii's ruffian."

Makino hired all types of people as reporters. Haga was said to have been an agent of the HSPA during the 1909 strike, but Makino turned this former enemy into his right-hand man. He also persuaded Teisuke Terasaki, a gentle teacher active in his church, to join the paper, and it

was Terasaki, not Haga, that he welcomed into his private residence. Makino later hired Communist party members who were under official surveillance. "It's good to have a cause no matter what it is," he said.

At the time of the 1920 strike the Hochi^[*] was serializing Chobei^[*] Banzuiin , a novel about a commoner ruffian who risked his life breaking into the mansions of the shogun's vassals. Makino, who called Chobei "my hero," admired his manliness and chivalry. In the Japanese community, where others concerned themselves with what people thought about them and went along with the mainstream, Makino intended to be "a nail that stuck out." Indifferent to whether he was accused of sentimental romantic "heroism" behind his back, he confronted everything head-on. Freed from the restraints of Japanese society, his innate independent spirit flourished in the Hawaiian milieu.

After spending the morning expounding his views to Haga, Makino made the rounds of the community in the afternoon. He diligently visited various government offices, the courthouse, city hall, and even the police department next door to the Hochi , and chatted casually with officials, lawyers, and policemen. Japanese immigrants usually addressed haoles as "Mr.," but Makino did not hesitate to call them by their first names. Using the English he had learned after arriving in Hawaii, Makino worked his way into haole society, and no other Japanese journalist was so quick to gather information. Wielding the Hochi as his weapon, Fred Makino was a disruptive presence, jabbing at the haole leaders, including the HSPA.

The first time Makino helped out his fellow Japanese was on the issue of picture brides. When they arrived in Honolulu, picture brides were forced to take part in a mass marriage ceremony as they were not allowed to leave the immigration office unless they had husbands. The Japanese immigrant community had long deplored this practice as inhumane. Makino mounted a movement to change the law so that ceremonies presided over by a Shinto priest or a Christian minister could be held after the women left the immigration office.

When six Japanese-language teachers had been refused entry by the Honolulu immigration office the year before Tsutsumi arrived, Makino had also brought suit under American law, winning a decision in their favor. He was also a central figure in efforts to obtain citizenship for Japanese who enlisted in the American military during World War I, and he was active in the Japanese-language school debate. His hiring of a haole lawyer, Joseph B. Lightfoot, was unprecedented in the Japanese community.

At some point Makino had hung out a shingle advertising the Makino Law Office. He counseled Japanese immigrants who had no idea where to seek advice in this unfamiliar foreign land on everything from putting up their wives and daughters as collateral for loans, leasing land, and illicit sake brewing to prostitution, divorce, and renunciation of adoption agreements. When people came to seek advice, Makino swiftly invited them into his office. To avoid embarrassing them, he did not allow anyone else in, even the staff of the Hochi^[*] . For legal problems, he referred them to his lawyer, Lightfoot, but took a fee for his intercession on their behalf. Since he had taken quickly to American-style give-and-take, he acquired a bad reputation as a petty shyster, some even calling him "Kinta the viper".

Makino's residence on the coast outside of Honolulu was an estate with a large Japanese-style garden, boasting a semicircular bridge and a rose garden, tended by his wife, Michie. Makino loved to fish. Whenever he was home he went on one of his fishing boats. The waters were shallow, and mahi mahi were plentiful. The Makinos had no children, but they were fond of their two German shepherds, Piko^[*] and Kuro. According to Yoshimi Mizuno, who worked as one of their live-in maids for many years, "Uncle" may have been known as an irascible old man at work, but he did not yell at his wife or his domestic help.

The Hochi finances were always tight, often making it uncertain when salaries could be paid. Many wondered how Makino was able to acquire his seaside mansion. A cloud of suspicion always followed him, but a clue to this mystery can be found in Foreign Ministry archival documents dealing with a lawsuit brought after the 1909 strike, when the HSPA used the local authorities to seize what were alleged to be secret union documents. The police had forced their way into Makino's drugstore without a search warrant, dynamited his safe, and carried off his account books and other items. When released from prison after serving his sentence for conviction on incitement charges, Makino sued the HSPA for unlawful seizure. Lightfoot was the only lawyer who was willing to take on this case against Hawaii's absolutely powerful HSPA. This was the beginning of the relationship between the two men.

Not wanting to stir up antagonism, the consul general pressed Makino not to aggravate the situation, but Makino refused to withdraw his charges. The HSPA, which complained that even the Japanese consul general could not control him, attacked him as a "Japanese anarchist" and called him "the worst element of Japanese."^[33] Makino had quickly contacted Kumano Yamaguchi, an Imperial Diet member, through his

eldest brother in Yokohama. During the contract labor days Yamaguchi had operated an immigration company and built up a political war chest with money wrung from the immigrants. When he heard about Makino's problem, Yamaguchi called for a formal official inquiry concerning the "illegal action inflicted upon a Japanese in Hawaii by the American authorities." He collected signatures from thirty-six Diet members, who protested the police seizure of Makino's records as an act of "brutality violating international goodwill" and contravening treaties between Japan and the United States.

The case became enough of an issue to require a secret report to Foreign Minister Jutaro^[*] Komura from Yasuya Uchida, the ambassador in Washington. Documents expressing concern about the case were also sent several times from the U.S. secretary of state to the governor of the territory of Hawaii. In 1915, six years after the so-called case of illegal search, a delegation of senators and representatives from Washington, D.C., was slated to make an observation trip to Hawaii. Makino seized the opportunity to distribute a document describing the details of the case to each of its members. When the HSPA learned of this, it moved to settle out of court, and the case rapidly headed for settlement. Makino had sought $50,000 as compensation. In an obituary written at the time of Makino's death, his half-brother, Seiichi Tsuchiya, wrote, "He received some compensation money, but the amount is unknown." A report from Consul General Hachiro^[*] Arita to Foreign Minister Takaaki Kato^[*] at the time of the settlement noted that Makino had received about $10,000.^[34]

It can be surmised that Makino, who had decided early on that Hawaii would be his permanent place of residence, invested the money in real estate. By the time he died Makino left pieces of land in various parts of Oahu besides his estate overlooking the ocean. It is unclear how much income Makino "the shyster" had accumulated, but according to Kumaiichi Kumazaki, the Hochi^[*] accountant for forty-six years, no matter how financially straitened the newspaper was, no funds from the Makino Law Office were routed to it.

The 1920 strike took place eight years after the founding of the Hawaii hochi^[*] . Along with the Nippu jiji it had become one of the two major Japanese-language newspapers in Honolulu. Compared to the Nippu jiji , however, its typeface was old-fashioned, and its readership smaller. On the plantations, however, the Hawaii hochi was much more popular than in Honolulu proper. Among the striking workers its influ-

ence probably was no less than that of the Nippu jiji . It was easier for the plantation workers to comprehend articles appealing to their emotions than those based on reason.

The Hochi^[*] had often criticized the federation for engaging in a "policy of secrecy." Its leadership shut out the Japanese-language newspaper that could most easily reach the workers, and they made no effort to consult its editor. Makino, who thought he had played a pivotal role in the 1909 strike, regarded himself as a Japanese community opinion leader, and from the start he intended to take a leadership position in the federation. When the federation was organized, the supporters' association had recommended him as a candidate for secretary general. But if a man with a past like Makino's were in a top post in the federation, it was obvious what the response of the HSPA would be. Tsutsumi and others quickly supported Seishi Masuda, who was popular with everyone.

Even so, Makino persisted in offering the benefit of his wisdom to the federation. When Governor McCarthy left for Washington to appeal to the federal government, Makino proposed that attorney Lightfoot be sent there as a federation director to state its case at the same time. He even suggested accompanying them himself, but the trip would require $5,000 in expenses. From the start the federation leadership did not know how to deal with Makino. The Oahu union was wary of Haga's attendance at federation meetings, for behind him loomed Makino.

In early March, when the federation was starting to worry about how to deal with scab workers, members of the U.S.-Japan relations committee arrived in Honolulu. This group, consisting of the president of the National Bank in New York, the president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and other business leaders, was stopping over in Honolulu on a goodwill mission to Tokyo with the goal of smoothing over tensions between the United States and Japan. Makino proposed showing these American business leaders the conditions in the Hawaiian sugar industry. The federation assented, but because the group was in port for such a short time, the opportunity was lost.

Makino was impatient with the federation. "They have solidarity and legality on their side, but they can't succeed in the strike with just those," he wrote in the March 5 issue of the Hochi . "The HSPA is just waiting for us to give up and split apart as the strike drags on. As time goes on, we will lose to those with money. There is no chance of winning unless

we resolve things quickly." He went on to say that he hoped "that putting someone in the Federation leadership merely because he knows English or has just graduated from school doesn't lead to defeat."

On March 10 Terasaki noted in his diary, "Somewhat chilly as the weather has not cleared up. Mr. Makino suggests attempting to mediate the strike." The next day he wrote, "Mr. Makino told Mr. Haga to suggest mediation by the acting governor." But Acting Governor Iaukea showed no interest because Governor McCarthy was to return on March 30. On March 18 he wrote, "Supporters' association holds its [regular] meeting, half of the members attend. [Illegible] discussed and decided on. Mr. Haga strikes Mr. Negoro."

The 77-cent Flag Parade

By late March federation tactics were lagging behind the HSPA's. An exception was the success of the 77-cent flag parade. The centennial anniversary of the arrival in Hawaii of the missionaries, the forefathers of the kamaaina planters, fell in April 1920. The Mission Centennial Celebration was to be in grand style, with leaders of the American religious community, academicians, politicians, and military men from the mainland invited as guests. The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne) participated in this event, putting in to port on the cruiser Renown . Makino, who urged taking advantage of an opportunity when Hawaii would be the focus of the world's attention, suggested a demonstration. The federation asked the Hawaii Mission Board for permission to participate in the centennial celebration with a "period costume parade" showing the history of Japanese immigration to Hawaii. The centennial organizing committee, however, immediately rejected this application, concerned that their event might be used by an anti-American group.

The Federation of Japanese Labor decided to hold what it called a "77-cent flag parade" on April 3, the eve of the centennial ceremonies. The Honolulu Advertiser , anticipating that the union intended to upset the celebration, called for a roundup of the federation leaders, citing the same reasons as those for getting rid of the IWW and the Bolsheviks.^[35] But the federation conducted its parade in a thoroughly American manner. At 1:00 P.M . Noboru Tsutsumi addressed more than three thousand workers who had gathered at Aala Park: "Ladies and gentlemen, it has been two months since the beginning of the strike. The obstinate HSPA had rejected our legitimate demands as workers and has attempted to

mislead the public with false propaganda. Ladies and gentlemen, today's parade is to expose the obstinacy of the HSPA and to inform the general public about our plea for justice. I hope you will parade in an orderly and valiant manner."^[36]

Divided into fourteen sections, one from each plantation, the demonstrators started to march, headed by a group of workers from Ewa Plantation carrying a large American flag. A group of Filipinos, too few to make up a separate group, marched with the Waipahu Plantation group. One section of demonstrators carried a hand-drawn likeness of Lincoln inscribed with the words "Hawaii's sugar plantation workers are still suffering under slave-like treatment. Free these slaves." The male demonstrators all held small white triangular flags with the words "77 cents a day," while the women waved small flags with the words "58 cents a day." Of the laborers on Oahu, 14 percent were women. The women workers marched in the clothes they normally wore to ward off dust when they raked leaves: skirtlike aprons worn around ikat (kasuri ) work pants, hand coverings and leggings, wide-brimmed straw hats, and white scarves covering their cheeks. The children walking behind their parents waved small flags that said, "My Papa 77 cents a day" and "My Mama 58 cents a day."

Leaflets handed out to spectators expressed the workers' grievances: "77 cents a day, that's what we are paid for 10 hours of hard labor"; "We are not Reds, God forbid, but brown workers who produce white sugar"; "We simply requested $1.25 for a day—reasonable, don't you think? We are requesting living wages"; "There is a bonus, you will say, but it is a conditional bonus"; "If we fail to work over 20 days, we don't get any bonus"; "Can you support your family on 77 cents a day?" "We are sincerely wishing for the prosperity of Hawaii"; and "God created people to be equal." Any mention of being Japanese was avoided, nor was a red flag to be seen.

Acting Consul General Furuya quickly sent a report to Foreign Minister Uchida: "The participants in the parade observed the instructions of the Federation headquarters and behaved in an orderly manner from start to finish, with no threatening actions. They seem to have impressed some of the Americans."^[37]

Many police officers had been dispatched in Honolulu, creating an imposing security force, but the parade leaders checked any break in the ranks. The demonstrators marched under a scorching noonday sun that radiated heat off the pavement, and most children walked barefoot just as they did on the plantations. The Hochi^[*] noted, "Their pitiful figures

made even the most cold-hearted people feel a sadness. Many Americans and Japanese watching from the barricades set up along the streets were seen with handkerchiefs pressing their faces at the sight of the marchers."^[38] And the Hawaii shinpo^[*] reported, "American women, expressing their dislike of the planters' cold-heartedness, muttered, 'My what has happened to the planters.'"^[39]

The Japanese along the parade route cheered encouragement to the demonstrators, often shouting "Banzai." According to the Nippu jiji , as the parade passed by the Honolulu fish market, a tearful middle-aged Japanese man called out, "Your demands are just. You're sure to win. Fight to the end." He was so overcome with feeling that he could not finish. When the demonstrators returned to Aala Park, the parade turned into a rally supporting the striking workers. They tried to use the raised bandstand in the park, but the police refused permission, so several men propped up a ladder and the speakers clambered up to give their speeches.

A voice was heard from the rear of the crowd: "Let me say something." It came from a tall Caucasian man in a sailor's uniform. Five destroyers from the U.S. Pacific fleet were in port in Honolulu for the centennial celebration, and many sailors were out on the town. Pushing through the suspicious crowd, the sailor made his way forward. Climbing onto the ladder, he took off his sailor's hat and gave his name as Smith. An innocent-faced youth, he showed no nervousness as he spoke to the workers from a land he had never seen: "I am a seaman and I earn $3 a day. Why is it that working under this scorching sun in Hawaii earns only 77 cents a day? It is a major embarrassment that there are such low wage earning workers in a leading civilized country like America. I think you should demand $5 a day, or even $10 a day."

Despite the warnings from FBI Director Hoover, on the mainland wildcat strikes by railway workers were spreading, stopping train service in many places. Although he may have looked like a carefree youth, the sailor probably had a background that made him sensitive to the rights of the Japanese immigrant workers. The demonstrators were deeply moved by this unanticipated encouragement from the sailor and responded with resounding applause.

The day after the demonstration there was a small furor over the portrait of Lincoln. The likeness had been drawn by workers staying at the Soto^[*] sect mission who had carried it to Aala Park. But someone at the residence of the Castle family, located near the mission, thought it had been brought from the Japanese Consulate General. William R. Castle,

the head of the family, was not only president of Castle and Cook, one of the Big Five sugar planters, but also the chairman of the centennial celebration committee. The two English-language newspapers accepted this false report as fact. In its front page story, the Star Bulletin asked, "Will the Japanese Consul throw a little light on the subject? We rise to ask."^[40] The paper accused the Japanese consulate of backing the demonstration from behind the scenes.

Acting Consul General Furuya's reported to Foreign Minister Uchida: "I immediately telephoned the same [Castle] and informed him of the misunderstanding, upon which he apologized deeply for his rashness."^[41] Castle offered an apology in both English-language newspapers: "My information was mistaken. . . . This of course was a great surprise as well as a great relief." But the small story was buried in an inconspicuous part of the newspapers. It would not be surprising if guests invited from the mainland returned home thinking the Japanese government was behind the striking laborers.

The centennial celebration, which began on April 4, the day after the demonstration, continued for two weeks. The Hawaiian Annual for 1921 reported, "The commemorative season opened with religious services in all the federated churches, appropriate to the occasion, followed by conferences on the past, present and future on religious and educational lines." Each day there were different events: an industrial parade, a Hawaiian parade, a Hawaiian feast, and a recreation day with outrigger and regatta contests. Smiling hula dancers swayed to the strains of Hawaiian ukulele music. Hawaii seemed to have forgotten the labor-management confrontation that now rested like a sailing ship stranded in a dead calm. Hawaii was starting to attract attention as a tourist destination, and the centennial celebration was a major turning point in that direction. Large resort hotels and golf courses were planned, and within five years the number of mainland tourists had increased threefold.

In 1920 Japan still had troops in Siberia. Since America, Britain, and France had proclaimed a policy of nonintervention in the Soviet Union and withdrawn their forces from Siberia, world criticism focused anew on Japan. While the aloha spirit was flourishing in Hawaii during its centennial, disquieting anti-Japanese comments were being voiced in Washington. The secretary of the navy warned that since Japan was making preparations for war, viewing America as a threat, it was essential that the United States carry out new plans for military preparations, including the building of warships. In his April 12 statement to newspaper

reporters the secretary made comparisons to the naval expansion programs in Britain, France, Japan, and Germany, but because it came on the heels of the Pan-American Association chairman's alarmist observation that Japan was America's strongest competitor in commerce and industry, it garnered attention.

In California the anti-Japanese movement had gathered momentum since the beginning of the year. Although Japanese ownership of land had been prohibited in California since 1913, Japanese immigrants had increased their agricultural holdings by buying land in the name of their American-born children. With the new census showing a considerable increase in nisei born to picture brides, there were calls to amend the 1913 Alien Land Law. The amendment proposed was harsh: those who did not have the right to citizenship were not allowed to manage their children's assets, nor would their leases be recognized.

To place the amendment on the November ballot, a petition had to be signed by one-tenth of the total number of voters in the previous gubernatorial election. It was difficult to collect the fifty thousand signatures needed. On March 10 Sen. James Phelan of California, a central figure in the anti-Japanese movement, made an ominous prediction of war between the United States and Japan. He said that unless a way for peaceful compromise was sought and reached, it would be difficult to avoid war since Japan had developed rapidly in the previous sixty years and now had the same technology to build warships as the Americans did.

The Eve of the Stop Strike Order

After Palmer's raids in January 1920 strikes on the mainland were often crushed by violent counterattacks by police or thugs hired by the companies. The railway strike that the authorities had most feared was about to be broken, and the IWW and the Communist party were about to be outlawed.

Sen Katayama's name had been on the Palmer Raid list, but because he was not at home he avoided arrest and went into hiding in Atlantic City. Returning to New York when the situation calmed down, he distributed leaflets criticizing the "barbaric conduct" of Japanese troops in Siberia. Anti-Japanese agitation by the "Japanese radical faction" was more vexing to the Japanese government than to the American authorities. According to a leading daily in Japan, "[The radicals] attack Japan's imperialism and they predict that if the Russian Red Army is defeated,

Japan will become radicalized."^[42] This article appeared on a Sunday, when the first Japanese May Day rally was held in Tokyo's Ueno Park. With the slump in stock prices in March, a postwar financial panic had spread, leading to unemployment, wage decreases, and factory closures. More than ten thousand members of fifteen labor unions gathered at Ueno to pass resolutions calling not only for improved labor conditions such as the eight-hour workday but also for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Siberia.

On April 29, 1920, Attorney General Palmer predicted, as he had the year before, that an assassination plot against federal and state officials and other prominent national figures with the aim of overthrowing the government might occur on May Day, and he threatened severe punishment for the perpetrators. However, nothing happened in any American city. The fact that "it passed without major disturbances"^[43] made news in Japan.

On April 28 a report entitled "Facts about the Strike in Hawaii" was circulated to Home Minister Takejiro^[*] Tokonami, Foreign Minister Yasuya Uchida, and Education Minister Tokugoro^[*] Nakahashi: "There seems to be no hope for an easy solution; knowledge among Japanese laborers seems to be increasing considerably. The authorities, groundlessly concerned that in the future [the Japanese immigrants] will hold the governing power over all the islands, are using oppressive means in their plans to destroy the Federation of Japanese Labor from its foundations. This may result in efforts at exclusionary treatment toward the general Japanese populace."

The author of the report, Jutaro^[*] Mabuchi, governor of Kyoto prefecture, based his comments on what Sakae Morita, leader of a tour group of Hawaiian immigrants visiting their homeland, told the Kyoto prefectural police department. Morita, a native of Ehime prefecture, operated a photography studio at Waipahu Plantation and was connected with the local federation early on. The Japanese authorities were interested in him as someone familiar with its activities.

As the report noted, in late April the Federation of Japanese Labor had changed its name to the Hawaii Laborers' Association. This was an attempt to counter the racial strategy of the HSPA, which touted the Japanese conspiracy theory. But in actuality, although the word "Japanese" was removed from the name of the organization, the federation headquarters personnel remained the same. There was no thought of including the Filipino Labor Union president, Manlapit, as an official.

Three days after the "77-cent flag parade," the U.S. attorney for the district of Hawaii, S. C. Huber, reported to Attorney General Palmer in Washington: "The Honolulu stock market during the past few days has shown considerable strength. This has been due to the favorable reports coming from the plantations in regard to production and also to mainland advices related to higher sugar price." The sugar price, which had been at 13 cents in March, continued to rise in April, reaching an unprecedented level of more than 20 cents in May. After the peak of 23.5 cents on May 19, it continued to stay above 20 cents.

On the mainland the national consumers' union had protested this extraordinary jump in price to Congress. As the sugar price rose, so did the price of all foods and canned goods using sugar. A national meeting of one hundred twenty agricultural associations pressed the federal government to investigate subterfuges by the major companies that monopolized the sugar industry. Even in Hawaii, a producer of sugar, the general populace could no longer afford the price of white sugar reimported from the mainland.

In mid-February 1920 the Justice Department had made a sweeping arrest of 875 food merchants for profiteering on the shortage of sugar. Of these, 28 were found guilty, 11 of them sugar dealers. The pursuit of improper profiteering was conducted in earnest after these arrests. Particular attention was paid to the actions of the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C&H Sugar). Despite the fact that cane production was the major industry in Hawaii, there was only one small sugar refinery on the islands, on Oahu. Most raw sugar from Hawaii was sent by ship to the C&H Sugar refinery outside San Francisco, where it was refined and then sent to markets on the mainland. The directors of the company included the Big Five Hawaiian plantation owners.

Hawaiian sugar had gained a much larger share of the American domestic market. Cuban sugar was being shipped to Europe, where postwar sugar production had dropped, and beet production on the U.S. mainland had been hit by successive poor harvests. In Washington there were suspicions that the HSPA had artificially engineered the unprecedented rise in sugar price under these circumstances.

When a representative of the Railroad Brotherhood asked the Washington HSPA representative about the rise in the sugar price, he replied that it was due to "the increase in the labor cost of producing suga. . . . in addition to [the higher labor costs for irrigation]. [F]or the past three months or more there has been a strike of the laborer. . . . , [and] as a result strike breakers have been employed at a very heavy expense and

only a portion of the crop is being harvested, and it is possible that they will not only have a loss of a considerable portion of this year's crop but an additional loss due to the failure to have planted and cared for the next crop."^[44] While recognizing the slump in production, the Justice Department's suspicions deepened that the Hawaiian sugar companies were using it as an excuse to drive up the price of sugar.

Huber concluded his report to Attorney General Palmer by stating, "It is becoming increasingly evident that the strike is broken and it is just a question of time before the Japanese capitulate." The rapid price increase certainly favored the growers' position, but other circumstances were beginning to work against them in May. Pineapple production had already been targeted as the industry that would someday succeed the sugar industry. During the slack season, some pineapple field workers had been sent by the growers to work as scabs in the cane fields, but because harvest time was approaching, these workers were returning to the pineapple fields. The rainy season, which had brought unusually high rainfall to Oahu, was finally coming to a close too. The days turned into scorchers, and slowly the cane began to wither. It was obvious to anyone seeing the cane fields turning yellow that the strikers had their only chance to force a settlement in their favor.

The pent-up frustrations of the strikers were beginning to focus on the federation. Although released from the drudgery of hard labor, the workers were disappointed that their situation had dragged on for so long. Ennui caused fissures in their solidarity. With daily life uncertain, the problem of their children's education became increasingly worrisome as the days passed.

Among the Japanese community leaders, concern about the possible aftereffects on the Japanese community was growing stronger. Members of the strike supporters' association such as Masao Kawahara, president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, Dr. Iga Moori, and Reverend Takie Okumura, pastor of Makiki Church, who had been involved in Reverend Palmer's mediation plan, felt they could no longer leave things to the federation headquarters. In May they began to hold daily meetings to devise a proposal that would resolve the strike as soon as possible. By this time the federation leadership was willing to take a more conciliatory attitude toward the supporters' association. This was because of rising criticism among the striking workers that the federation, by insisting on a movement of true laborers, was neither heeding the warnings nor listening to the advice of local leaders.

Kawahara and his colleagues came up with a plan to have the haole president of the Oahu Railway and Land Company act as mediator. He was also president of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce and was supposed to be a third party with no connections to the HSPA. Although he expressed interest, he was unavoidably called to the mainland for business and said he would consider the request again on his return. The Hawaii hochi^[*] cautioned Kawahara's group against placing their hopes on the return of a Caucasian businessman or even asking a third party to find a solution to the strike. On May 8 the newspaper wrote, "Even though we believe in his [Kawahara's] sincerity, if this method of mediation should fail, his involvement would end up as a loss of face for the striking workers. . . . We must keep in mind that the strikers are tired, but the planters are also weakened substantially." The Hochi^[*] warned the strikers to be "absolutely against a one-sided mediator."

The Nippu jiji supported the mediation plan of Kawahara's group, but on May 19 the Hochi lampooned its position with a "Dokomademo bushi," or "Through thick and thin song":

Flattering the planters saying you want order through thick and thin
To your readers you show your dislike, that you don't care,
Proudly supporting the Palmer Plan through thick and thin
It's actually an empty sham, you show your dislike, that you don't care,
If you're going to mediate fairly through thick and thin,
It can't be settled unless conditions are attached, you show your dislike,
    that you don't care.

On May 21 Terasaki's diary noted, "Mr. Makino leaked word that he would be willing to mediate." Although Acting Governor Iaukea had refused to mediate a month earlier, Makino was now willing to do so, provided that he was requested to. This meant that either the federation or the supporters' association had to seek his help. By this time the group headed by Kawahara and other supporters' association leaders had disbanded, apparently stung by the May 22 Hochi criticism that they had "no qualifications to resolve the strike which has become a major issue for all Japanese." The newspaper had labeled them "impure elements" for leaning toward workers' acceptance of the unconditional return to work demanded by the HSPA.

Makino went to work with Haga on a mediation plan. Even if Makino were to be the real mediator, they thought that the idea would be better accepted if it appeared that Governor McCarthy was involved. Since Lightfoot, the attorney for Makino's law office, was acting territorial chief prosecutor, they decided to have him approach the gover-

nor. But first it was necessary to get the private consent of the federation headquarters. Makino decided to have Tokuzo^[*] Shibayama approach Noboru Tsutsumi, likely to be the most difficult person to persuade. Shibayama, a coffee dealer with no previous direct or indirect connections to the federation, was from Gifu prefecture, next to Shiga prefecture, and had known Tsutsumi's father. Makino hoped the more senior Shibayama would bring Tsutsumi into his plan.

Shortly after 7:00 P.M . on May 23 Shibayama telephoned Tsutsumi as he was eating a delivered box supper with the other federation directors. After returning from his speaking tour on Maui, Tsutsumi had not been feeling well because of a cold. He told Shibayama that he wanted to go to bed early, but Shibayama insisted the matter could not wait until morning. Tsutsumi had no choice but to go to Shibayama's house in the Kalihi district at some distance by car from downtown Honolulu.

According to Tsutsumi's recollection, after showing him to an easy chair on his veranda, Shibayama began their conversation. "Tsutsumi, having the strike drag on must be a problem. How about trying to resolve the strike issue at a suitable time?" Then he continued, "As a method of mediation, Makino has said he would stake his life on having the governor mediate. For this mediation, we can have the governor take the surface role for appearances, while Makino, Haga, and you work behind the scene, and I'll act as your go-between. As you know, Haga is a wily tactician, Makino is trusted by Japanese and Americans, and you can take charge of the workers."^[45]

When Tsutsumi expressed doubt that Governor McCarthy would agree, Shibayama answered, "Makino says he'll make sure by asking Lightfoot, so as his friend I want to bolster Makino's efforts." With words laced with emotion, Shibayama kept at Tsutsumi late into the night.

SHIBAYAMA: "It is your opinion that counts at Federation headquarters. If you think that mediation excluding the federation headquarters is disgraceful, then for the sake of the workers' welfare you should be prepared to give up and commit hara kiri. Now is the time when you must give me your head. I'm not telling you to die, but are you prepared to die?"

TSUTSUMI: "I have vowed to give my life to the workers, so if it will truly benefit the workers, I'm willing to give you my head or my life, but I don't want to die in vain."

SHIBAYAMA: "That's it. I knew your father, so when it comes time for you to commit hara kiri, I will commit hara kiri too. I promise I won't let you be killed alone. Please make up your mind."

Tsutsumi still would not agree to the plan, so Shibayama pressed him harder. "Won't you act like Kaishu Katsu did at the peaceful surrender of Edo Castle?" Tsutsumi avoided an answer. When he asked about the conditions for returning to work, Shibayama said he was not familiar with them, so he asked Tsutsumi to return the next evening to meet with Makino and Haga. As Tsutsumi departed, Shibayama reminded him that their discussion should be kept absolutely secret until the governor took action. But the meeting with Makino and Haga never took place. Shibayama told Tsutsumi that the meeting was postponed, and Tsutsumi did not hear from him after that.

On June 1 Terasaki noted in his diary, "Today at Mr. Makino's residence there was talk of [illegible: consultation?] about the strike problem, but hearing that Mott Smith intended to mediate, this was canceled." Like Iaukea, John Mott Smith was a Hawaiian with long service as a public official who had been acting governor as well. Mott Smith, in fact, was not active in mediation, but giving the rumor as his reason, Makino withdrew from involvement in mediating the strike.

Three days later, on June 4, Terasaki's diary noted, "Dole [company president] of Hawaiian Pineapple came [to Hochi^[*] ] and in a roundabout way sought help in recruiting laborers." The previous night a dynamite blast had exploded at the house of Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki at Olaa Plantation on Hawaii, but Terasaki made no mention of the incident in his diary. Indeed, the Terasaki diary made no reference to the strike or to Makino's interest in mediation for the rest of the month. But on July 1 one sentence suddenly appeared: "Federation headquarters issues stop strike order, several hundred return to plantations."

"We Order Return to Work Today"

In a report sent to Foreign Minister Uchida the day after the order to end the strike, Furuya described the process of reaching "pau," or a conclusion, in greatest detail. It is clear from this report that Furuya, in whom neither labor nor management placed much faith, played a role behind the scenes in pulling the Japanese side together during the strike's final stages. According to Furuya, Hosen^[*] Isobe, priest of the Soto^[*] sect Buddhist temple, told him that since Kawahara's group had disbanded, he had been negotiating secretly with the HSPA's chairman, Waterhouse, with "some possibility of achieving a solution." Furuya immediately called Tsutsumi, rumored to be the "most uncompromising" of the federation directors, to the consulate. "Continuing the strike any further,"

he told Tsutsumi, "is not only a disadvantage to the workers but also makes any resolution more difficult, so we should rapidly take measures to resolve the strike."

In his talk with Tsutsumi, Furuya had the strong impression that the federation preferred mediation by the president of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, as proposed by the strike supporters' association, to mediation through Isobe. Furuya urged Kawahara and Dr. Moori to move forward with their mediation plan, but the chamber of commerce president had changed his mind and refused to be involved in negotiations. "We have missed the opportunity and now it would be difficult to convince the planters," he said. Meanwhile, Isobe, accompanied by a pineapple dealer named Wakabayashi, had begun negotiations with Waterhouse.

The planters were under outside pressure to end the strike. The mainland was astir over the coming presidential election. It appeared that Attorney General Palmer, who had become a presidential candidate, wanted an issue to appeal to the delegates at the Democratic party convention on June 10. When Palmer received a report from Huber, the U.S. attorney, that sugar production would drop because of the strike in Hawaii (June 7), he fired off a telegram to Hawaii saying that any further decrease in sugar production would pose a grave problem to the entire country and urged the immediate resolution of the dispute.

While the HSPA was being pressed by the federal government to resolve the strike, Isobe, calling himself a "labor envoy," had approached Waterhouse, who took over from secretary Mead, the point man for negotiations until this time. The forty-seven-year-old Waterhouse was a member of the Baldwin clan, one of the Big Five families. Born in Hawaii as a Kamaaina, after graduating from Princeton he joined the family business and held several positions as president or executive in the family-run companies. Tall and portly, he exuded a calm intelligence.

By contrast, the forty-three-year-old Isobe was short of stature, with a build as taut as a military man's. His long face was punctuated by narrow, defiant eyes and a bushy mustache. Isobe wore closed-collar jackets rather than priestly robes, so his military mien was even more pronounced. But a statement issued by the strike supporters' association indicated how little Japanese community leaders thought of Isobe's leap into the fray:

We have great misgivings about Hosen^[*] Isobe's involvement in mediation. Isobe has never attended any public undertakings in the Japanese community. Other than being a braggart, he is not especially a man of learning, nor does

he have any resources. Moreover, members of the strike supporters' association know well that he lacks good faith, causing us to feel misgivings about his efforts. If Isobe has a fragment of good faith, he should discuss with the Japanese in Honolulu how he expects to end the strike.

Hosen^[*] Isobe was born into a large samurai family in Tokuyama, Yamaguchi prefecture, and was apprenticed to a temple at age seven. At seventeen he became priest of a series of dilapidated temples deep in the mountains. He would singlehandedly repair a temple and move on to another, becoming a well-known priest in the Soto^[*] sect. Sent to Korea to engage in mission work, he soon collected contributions from the Japanese community in Inchon to build a worship hall. It was rumored that while in Korea, Isobe had connections to the Japanese involved in the assassination of Queen Min (1895). In 1914, with his reputation as a man of action well established, Isobe was sent to Honolulu as the ninth pastor of the Soto sect mission. Since the Honganji sect had already put down deep roots in the Hawaiian Islands, the latecomer Soto sect found it difficult to expand its congregation. Even in Honolulu it had only a temporary mission. As he had in Inchon, Isobe made the rounds soliciting funds for a Soto sect branch temple in Honolulu, but with so few followers he found it impossible to make much headway.

By the time he volunteered to mediate in the strike, Isobe was finally ready to start construction on the main hall of the Honolulu Soto sect temporary branch temple. According to the sect's account, the mission was heavily in debt at the time:

As the due date for repayment of a $5,000 loan from Honolulu Bank for the land in Palama for the temporary branch temple approached, the bank unfortunately closed. In addition, there were outstanding debts for land purchase and construction costs in the amounts of $4,000 to Hawaii Bank, and $1,000 to Mr. Kobayashi, and to three other public companies. We were forced to sell the land for the branch temple for $15,000 in order to repay these debts. As we had the fortune to have a surplus of $10,000 we were able to include this amount in the construction budget.^[46]

It was at this juncture, according to the mission history, that Isobe decided to involve himself in efforts to resolve the strike. The money gained from selling the land for the temporary branch temple provided only a portion of the construction costs for the main hall. Substantial additional funds were needed. Thus at a time when he was desperately collecting funds for the temple, Isobe became interested in mediating the strike.

According to Furuya's report, Isobe told him on June 29: "Obtaining a tacit agreement from President Waterhouse that an increase in wages of at least $2.50 (with the bonus rate reduced by a certain amount) would be agreed upon at this year end's annual meeting, it was settled that outwardly there would be an unconditional exchange of handshakes between the strikers' representative and the HSPA chairman allowing the strikers to return to work."^[47] On the same day Furuya received a cable directing him to "immediately make efforts to end the Japanese labor strike." Furuya had immediately contacted Isobe and called in Tsutsumi.

Aware that criticism of the federation had sharpened among the Japanese community and among the strikers, the federation leadership was willing to listen to Furuya's recommendations. On June 30, at the Suigoro^[*] restaurant in Waiau, representatives of laborers from all the islands held an all-day meeting about ending the strike. That evening there was a heavy downpour, and the following day was unusually cloudy for the season. At 10:00 A.M . representatives of labor met with management at the Young Hotel. The labor representatives were impressed that Waterhouse himself had taken part in the negotiations. Counting on Waterhouse's integrity, they were willing to agree, at least on the surface, to the planters' insistence that no concessions would be made or terms considered while the laborers were still out on strike and that a return to work was the first condition for ending the dispute.

In the photograph commemorating the meeting, only HSPA president Waterhouse appeared from the management side. Indeed, he had been the only one from the HSPA to attend. Seated on either side of him were "labor envoy" Isobe in his closed-collar jacket, his assistant Wakabayashi, and the Japanese interpreter. Standing behind them were fifteen worker delegates, including two Filipinos, all darkly tanned. It was clear at first glance that they were pure laborers. Thus the commemorative photograph included no one from the federation headquarters, the central force behind the strike. Accepting HSPA insistence that it would "not recognize the federation as [its] negotiating partner, [but] talk only with those selected from the strikers,"^[48] Tsutsumi and the other strike leaders agreed to show no outward involvement in the negotiations to end the strike.

The decision to end the strike was issued not under the name of Tsutsumi and the other federation headquarters secretaries but under that of Tsurunosuke Koyama, a delegate from Hawaii. At the strikers' rally held

in Aala Park on June 31 just after the labor-management meeting, it was the Oahu federation chairman, Eijuro^[*] Yokoo, who read the declaration to end the strike.

The Hawaii Laborers' Association has the honor to announce this 1st day of July of the year 1920, to our twenty-five thousand members and the two hundred thousand residents of Hawaii that the great controversy between capital and labor on the sugar plantations of Hawaii, which has lasted for the past six months, has been completely settled by the mutual and confidential understanding between the magnanimous capitalists and the sincere laborers, and that it will henceforth endeavor to materialize the true spirit of capital-labor cooperation and bring about industrial advancement and prosperity of Hawaii.

Not one word explained the actual process by which the strike was concluded. It took less than an hour to read the declaration and an accompanying resolution:

We therefore deem it proper and just to terminate the present strike, beginning July 1st, 1920 and to gently take steps along the line of capital-labor cooperation.^[49]

Three choruses of "Banzai" were raised, and the rally came to an end.

The workers headed impatiently for the Honolulu railroad station. Workers from Kahuku and Ewa boarded a special train at 11:00 A.M., immediately after the rally ended, and the train to Aiea departed at 11:10 A.M . After five months the workers returned to their plantations.

Criticism of Federation Headquarters

Nine days later, on July 9, the new Japanese consul general, Chonosuke^[*] Yada, finally set foot on Hawaiian soil, arriving on the Tenyo-maru^[*] . Yada had returned to the ministry in Tokyo in late 1919 after leaving a previous post in New York. Despite a public announcement in late January that he was to be posted to Honolulu, as he watched the progress of the strike, he repeatedly postponed his departure and in the end arrived some seven months later. It was highly unusual for the consul general post to be vacant for so long. When Furuya received instructions from Foreign Minister Uchida to make efforts to end the strike, Yada was already on board the ship that brought him to Hawaii. As acting consul general, Furuya's actions were extremely risky. His role in ending the strike by consolidating the Japanese side under orders from Tokyo

could have fueled the Japanese conspiracy theory of the HSPA. By delaying the arrival of the new consul general, the Japanese government could avoid becoming caught up in the strike and thus deflect the conspiracy theory.

Chonosuke^[*] Yada, then forty-nine years old, was from Shimane prefecture. After graduating from Tokyo Higher Commercial School he worked for a company, then taught at the Kagoshima Commercial School, before passing the diplomatic examination. Yada was not on the same elite track as Imperial university graduates were, but unlike Furuya, he was a career diplomat. After postings to consulates in Vancouver and Ottawa, he spent three years as consul general in New York before going to Honolulu. As soon as he took up his new post, Yada publicly condemned the strike. At a welcome party arranged by the leaders of the Japanese community on July 18 at the Mochizuki Club, he told his audience,

The fate of Japan will be determined by the friendship which she maintains with the United States. . . . The American-Japanese friendship is vital to the well-being of Japan and the people. . . . The Japanese nationals in Hawaii must remember that they are residing in an American territory and as residents of Hawaii they must trust and cooperate with the American people in all understanding. It would do well for Japanese to abandon old customs and conventional ideas, and keep in step with the world.

At a dinner party sponsored by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, Yada noted, "Speaking frankly, there is plenty of room for the Chamber to grow." He urged the organization to target the buying power of all two hundred fifty thousand residents of Hawaii, not just the Japanese community.^[50] His words clearly reflected a sensitivity to the islands' white elite. An avid golfer, Yada quickly made acquaintances not only within the Japanese community but among haole social circles as well.

The new consul general's comments were consistent with the new interest that the Japanese government was showing in Japanese immigrants in Hawaii. They were also a response to the increasingly vehement anti-Japanese movement on the West Coast.

A few days after Yada's arrival, a delegation of the Congressional Committee on Immigration, numbering nearly a hundred, arrived in Honolulu. One of the reasons that HSPA president Waterhouse participated in the resolution of the strike, it seems, was the group's imminent arrival. The delegation had first gone to California, where it appeared likely that the amendment to the Alien Land Law would be approved in

the upcoming election. Since the Japanese government called it an "anti-Japanese land law," and had repeatedly objected to the American government, the law had become an issue in U.S.-Japan relations.

California's Governor Stephens urged the congressional committee to visit Hawaii after finishing its investigation of the Japanese immigration situation in California, so that they could see with their own eyes the developments California had to guard against. As the Honolulu Star Bulletin noted, "The Hawaiian islands, an American territory, are being conquered by the Japanese without opposition, and it is California's plea to the nation that this state shall not be conquered as Hawaii is being conquered by a foreign race."^[51]

By the time the delegation arrived in Hawaii, the strike had just ended, but everywhere its members looked, they saw Japanese faces. They returned to the mainland shocked at what the San Francisco Chronicle called the "result of Japanese colonization." But among them were also those like Senator Lowell of California who, on his return home, insisted that California should look at Hawaii as a model, not as a warning. "Hawaii treats Japanese like southern states treat negroes," he said.^[52]

On July 9, the day before the congressional delegation arrived in Honolulu, John Waterhouse was enjoying a round of golf at his country club. It had been some time since he had been able to relax on the well-maintained velvet-smooth greens of the club, whose membership was limited to the planter elite. His day on the links was suddenly interrupted by Hosen^[*] Isobe, who pushed his way into the club accompanied by some of his parishioners. On several plantations posters had been put up detailing the discussion between Waterhouse and Isobe as they negotiated the strike settlement, and Isobe had come to persuade Waterhouse to take them down. Waterhouse refused. The Japanese labor leaders and Japanese newspapers, he said, had misinformed the strikers about what was said at their meeting, and he had decided to provide them a correct report, taken by a stenographer at the time, of every word uttered at the meeting. Isobe replied that revealing the details of the meeting to the laborers might result in a new strike. "Then let the new strike come," answered Waterhouse.^[53]

At the daylong meeting of the labor delegates at the Suigoro^[*] restaurant on June 30, Ichiji Goto^[*] , secretary of the federation headquarters reported the three "conditions" agreed on for the "unconditional return to work": first, the $2.50 minimum day wage increase would be presented as a voluntary action of the HSPA and announced at the HSPA

annual meeting in a few months; second, the striking workers would be allowed to return to their previous jobs; and third, the specifics of the agreement would be worked out between management and the laborers. Isobe, as mediator, had reported to Furuya that he had extracted these conditions from Waterhouse, and Furuya had so informed the federation leadership. Waterhouse, however, stuck to his principle of refusing to recognize the collective bargaining rights of the federation. At the HSPA annual meeting in November, he insisted that "no concessions whatsoever, either direct or implied, were made and the men who returned to work were on the same basis which existed when the strike was called."^[54]

Although Isobe had specifically told Furuya that he had exacted a "silent agreement" from Waterhouse on the $2.50 wage increase, the stenographic record of the meeting indicated that Waterhouse had said only that once the laborers returned to work "unconditionally," they could hold discussions with managers at each plantation's company to determine the details of what would happen. It was Isobe who had brought up the $2.50 wage increase. Waterhouse did not reject this, but he did not say "I'll make it a promise" or "I'll guarantee it." Indeed, he scrupulously avoided making specific promises.

Nevertheless, when Waterhouse's proposal for an unconditional return to work was conveyed to the federation, it was with the conditions stipulated by Goto^[*] at the Suigoro^[*] . The federation leaders had interpreted it merely as the HSPA's outward policy of insisting on an unconditional return to work, and, because it had been communicated to them by Acting Consul General Furuya, they decided to return to work, "believing in the good will of the HSPA." The Japanese-language newspapers referred to it as a "gentlemen's agreement."

If there was one point on which labor and management agreed at the end of the strike, it was to refrain from talk about victory or defeat. Both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star Bulletin respected this and merely reported that the strike had come to an end. Even the Hawaii hochi^[*] , usually quick to find fault, announced an "agreement reached between labor and management" without reflecting on which side had won. The Nippu jiji , however, in its extra about the "amicable resolution of the strike," happened to refer to the "victory" for the Japanese laborers. According to the Hochi^[*] , "although it is unknown whether this was on purpose or an oversight," the Nippu extra, which disregarded the understanding among the press, led the striking workers to conclude that they had "won after all." This was clear when the workers began

to negotiate with plantation managers after returning to their plantations. Convinced that the workers' sense of victory would make a settlement difficult, Waterhouse had posters distributed proclaiming the "truth about the negotiations to end the strike."

The laborers returned to their plantations full of bold energy but found management attitudes stiffer than they expected. It was not unusual for a skilled mill worker who had been earning $2 before the strike to be shifted to cane field work at 77 cents on his return. Non-Japanese workers who had moved into the strikers' quarters were in no hurry to move out. Strikers who returned to their plantations as soon as the strike ended immediately went to work to qualify for their bonuses, which required twenty days of work per month. In June the sugar price had fallen, but it was still holding at 18 cents, and the June bonus rate was 511 percent. But many plantation companies refused bonuses to workers who had participated in the strike even if they had worked the requisite number of days.

As the federation delegate from Aiea Plantation later reported, "Upon the strikers' return, the managers, lunas, and guards were all kind at first, but as the days passed their attitude changed, and when the Federation officers went to the plantations they were treated with contempt, and nearly fifty members were unable to return to the plantation." The strike leaders were blacklisted at the plantations, and one after another they were fired. Eijuro^[*] Yokoo, the Ewa Plantation federation leader who had read the declaration ending the strike at the rally at Aala Park, was fired a month after he returned to work. "You said you would commit hara kiri if you allowed the strike to end in defeat," the workers chided him, "so now that we have lost the strike, you should commit hara kiri."^[55]

The Hawaii hochi^[*] began running a daily series of "Investigative Reports" that fanned the workers' discontent.

[August 12]: Circumstances leading to the resolution of the Labor Association strike: The facts should be probed by true laborers other than Federation headquarters officers, local branch organization officers, sycophantic newspapers, and the mediator Mr. Isobe; these laborers should also investigate the disgraceful behavior of the secretary and four or five other officers.

[August 13]: The malfeasance of bad elements in the Federation headquarters is considerable. They wasted $600,000 in expenditures and lost several million dollars in income to conduct a six-month-long strike, which could have been resolved to the benefit of the workers, but ended with no written contract, and put returning workers back in the same wretched conditions.

[August 17]: Did HSPA President Waterhouse deceive Isobe, did Isobe deceive the Federation headquarters secretary, or were the Federation headquarters secretary and Isobe in cahoots to deceive the workers? The truth of who duped whom will eventually be known, but there is no question that the workers were duped.

Consul General Yada reported to Tokyo that Isobe had started negotiations to resolve the strike on the spur of the moment because he feared the obstructive actions by ambitious men like Hawaii hochi^[*] president Makino. The series in the Hawaii hochi was Makino's retaliation against negotiations that had excluded him.

Rumors spread that another strike was in the offing. When Isobe, who continued to frequent the consulate secretly after Yada arrived, brought in such reports, Yada bypassed the federation headquarters. Instead, he immediately summoned laborer representatives from each of the Oahu plantations that had been on strike and instructed them to return to work quickly even if they had to put up with some worker discontent. It is not difficult to imagine their response. The plantations had returned to calm, but all the discontent and anger of the returned workers were now directed, not at the plantation owners, but at the federation headquarters. As if to pour fat on the fire, the Hochi^[*] called for reform of the federation: "To establish an effective labor union, a restructuring of the federation headquarters is essential. We urge that an emergency meeting of delegates be held to allow the workers and the general public to be satisfied."^[56]

In response to the Hochi 's complaint, a special delegates meeting was held at the Suigoro^[*] restaurant at Waiau on August 19. The delegates assembled were the same ones who had gathered to discuss resolving the strike six weeks before. Once again federation headquarters secretary Noboru Tsutsumi was central to the discussions.

The first topic considered was the report of the Finance Committee, which had become the biggest issue after the end of the strike. Federation strike funds had amounted to a sum far beyond the imagination of ordinary workers, and the Hochi had raised questions about federation accounts. The federation announced that its total revenue through July 31, 1920, had been $681,448.83. More than $670,000 came from membership fees and strike support funds paid by workers on all the islands. Donations from Japanese merchants and others amounted to only $6,000. It is not easy to calculate the current equivalent of $680,000. It might be more accurate to infer its value by comparing it to the capital of major Caucasian banks, which ranged from $500,000 to $1,000,000,

or to the $25,000 capitalization of the Pacific Savings Support Corporation organized by Japanese immigrants in Hilo.

Chuhei^[*] Hoshino, the Finance Committee representative who gave the report, stated that only $30,000 remained. During its eight months of activities, the federation had spent a total of $650,344.82, half of which had gone to feed the workers evicted from the plantations. The next largest amount, $134,000, covered the Oahu federation's activities, and $60,000 was spent for lodging the evicted workers. According to the Finance Committee report, household goods purchased for the evicted workers were "mostly sold, at least the useful items," and so was the headquarters' truck and Ford automobile. Two hospitals for plantation workers in Kalihi had been purchased for $6,550, but after the strike one was appraised at $2,000 and the other at $2,400, so the federation directed the bank to take charge of their disposition. The relocation center that the federation had to buy for the Filipinos had cost $3,000, but the Oahu federation had offered to purchase it for $2,000. All other real estate, which had been appraised with the help of the strike supporters' association and carpenters, had been disposed of in the month since the end of the strike.

Although the Finance Committee report went into great detail even about the disposition of pots and pans from the nine centers for evicted workers, the evening edition of the Hochi^[*] strongly urged a "clarification of the suspicions" about the use of federation funds. The next day, Tsutsumi, as federation representative, announced, "We wish to have an investigation and understanding of the facts of the matter." An audit committee, made up of members chosen from each island, focused on the federation headquarters' expenditures on negotiations, travel, and special expenses, all of which the Hochi labeled "amusement expenses." The investigation, which took five days, resulted in a report approved at the August 25 delegates meeting. The report concluded, "We undertook this investigation of the accounts of the headquarters because of suspicions that there may have been questionable behavior on the part of headquarters staff or use of headquarters funds for personal entertainment at restaurants. We have come to the conclusion that there were no irregularities and no points of discrepancy between what was announced by headquarters as its final balance and what is contained in the ledgers of the headquarters." In short, the audit committee found that there were "no grounds for suspicion" in the federation's management of its accounts.

The investigators, who checked each restaurant mentioned in the ac-

counts, determined that $800 was spent at Tsuboya and $400 at Sansuiro^[*] , but these could not be termed strictly "amusement expenses." "We heard that at Kikuzuki a headquarters staff had engaged in personal entertainment," the report said, "but this was not substantiated by information obtained from a geisha." The federation headquarters turned out to be innocent in this case too.

The Hochi^[*] , which had insisted that it was sufficient to focus the investigation "on the content of the gentlemen's agreement and whether there was any entertainment involving geisha during the strike," found itself in a corner when the investigation results were announced. It swiftly turned its attack toward Hosen^[*] Isobe, who had used restaurants ostensibly for the purpose of mediation negotiations. "A religious leader who engages in geisha entertainment," the paper fulminated, "isn't worth three cents." Isobe insisted that although he had never called a geisha, a fellow diner had. But Makino, who frequented the same restaurant, ascertained that Isobe had asked a geisha, as soon as she arrived, to play the shamisen accompaniment so that he could recite joruri^[*] ballad dramas. The Hochi even revealed the names of geisha Isobe specifically asked for.^[57]

Since Prohibition was in force, perhaps out of consideration for the restaurant owners, liquor was not mentioned in these articles, but according to the current Soto^[*] sect mission priest, Gyokuei Matsuura, Isobe used to brag that "the only day that I didn't drink since coming to Hawaii was the night after I was in a car accident."^[58]

The Hochi also reported that Isobe had received $2,370 as a strike mediation fee from the HSPA which was paid in two installments: first $1,500 and the remaining amount a few days later. It was well known that Isobe had secured a piece of prime property near the Consulate General as a site to build the Soto Honolulu mission but had had trouble raising money for its construction. Shortly after the settlement of the strike, however, work began on the main hall of the mission.

After settling the issue of the federation's accounts, the delegates meeting finally moved on to the main topic, restructuring the federation headquarters. In anticipation of the debate Tsutsumi expressed his own view of the issue:

Hawaiian society is too unenlightened to permit our headquarters to advance toward fulfilling the principles for which it has struggled. Even if we reshuffle, reorganize or change personnel, if we also refuse to abandon labor unionism, we will be oppressed by the capitalists and condemned by some elements in

the Japanese community. Are we to become a headquarters in name only because of this oppression and condemnation? Instead of turning into a den of power seekers, we ought to disband while we are still pure.

With no less vigor than it had criticized Isobe, the Hawaii hochi^[*] had focused its attack on Tsutsumi, and his proposal to disband rather than restructure could be considered his response to the newspaper.

The Hochi^[*] also brought up Makino's attempt at mediation in late May: "Since it may sound as if we are promoting ourselves, we had thought not to print this in the newspaper, but we have decided to announce the strike mediation plan we at the Hochi proposed for the workers to use as reference." In his effort to bring in Governor McCarthy as strike mediator, Makino had asked Tokuzo^[*] Shibayama to persuade Tsutsumi to give the federation's informal consent before having Lightfoot, the acting territorial chief prosecutor, approach the governor. It is clear from the Terasaki diary that Makino cut short his efforts when he heard that Mott Smith might become mediator. The article in the Hochi , however, made no mention of this and placed all the blame for the failure of the plan on Tsutsumi.

According to the Hochi , Tsutsumi had promised Shibayama not to speak of the mediation matter until it was fully arranged. Despite this, Tsutsumi had brought it up at federation headquarters, allowing Isobe to hear of it, and as a result Isobe and Waterhouse worked out an unsatisfactory mediation. If Tsutsumi had kept his promise, and if Makino had been able to bring in the governor of Hawaii as mediator, the laborers would not have been made fools after returning to the plantations. In its effort to subvert Tsutsumi's standing as the central figure in the delegates meeting, the Hochi ran articles calling him a liar who had betrayed his promise. To counter this charge, Tsutsumi responded with his own explanation:

I am a secretary of the Federation headquarters, and our members have vowed on our lives to remain unified to the end. Even Mr. Shibayama has stated that he is prepared die [literally, slit his stomach] for the laborers. What is more, it is perfectly natural that privately I would inform the officers of the headquarters and the Oahu Union leaders, who are my comrades in this struggle, about this matter. If I had made an arbitrary decision without informing them, then I, Tsutsumi, would be an autocrat. There can be no room for secrecy or authoritarianism in a popular movement that is forthright and fair.

On August 26 the Hochi responded to Tsutsumi's explanation with an article carrying the headline "False Points in Secretary Tsutsumi's Ex-

planation; He Has Created His Own Provisions Here and There, Twisting the Facts and Daring to Engage in the Folly of Duping the Public." The next day an editorial ridiculed Tsutsumi's statement that he had risked his life in the struggle: "It is only a great genius who can thoroughly deride the public. He should realize that the schemes of ordinary mortals damage themselves as well as society." As the delegates discussed restructuring of the federation, they listened with one ear to the Hochi^[*] 's clamor on the Tsutsumi issue.

In the following days the delegates held heated discussions on whether to restructure or disband. Although a decision to disband the federation headquarters was narrowly avoided, it was decided to get rid of Tsutsumi and the other federation officers who led the strike. As Consul General Yada reported to the Foreign Ministry,

On the surface, the delegates meeting accepted the actions of the Federation headquarters and its staff and expressed its gratitude for the efforts and service of its members. In actuality, all the officers were retired [sic], and a so-called restructuring was accomplished, as the Hawaii hochi^[*] faction insisted. At the same time, there are plans to soothe the hard feelings that arose from the federation's previous actions in dealing with the HSPA. From now on, at least until the annual HSPA meeting in November, it is thought that there will be no provocations such as [illegible].^[59]

Unprecedented Profits for the Planters

On November 29 John Waterhouse opened the fortieth annual meeting of the HSPA with the comment, "The unprecedented and abnormal condition of the sugar market and the serious labor difficulties on the plantations mark the past year as the most stirring and eventful year in the history of the sugar industry. . . . 'Spectacular' and 'ruinous' seem to be the only words to use in describing the market conditions of 1920. One does not have to be much of a prophet to assert that there will be no repetition of the 1920 prices."^[60]

At an extraordinary general meeting in October the HSPA had already decided to raise minimum wages for cane field laborers who worked at least twenty-six days per month to $30 for men and $22 for women. Four months after the strike ended the workers finally had obtained a daily wage increase from 77 cents to $1.15. Not only was this far less than the $2.50 that Isobe claimed was the silent gentlemen's agreement with HSPA president Waterhouse, it also fell below the $1.25 demanded during the strike. The bonus was set at a uniform rate of

10 percent, but workers still had to work at least twenty days per month to qualify for the bonus.

In fact, the planters had voted secretly during the extraordinary general meeting to gradually increase wages later on. Since the planters still publicly refused to recognize collective bargaining, wage increases were to be carried out cautiously so as not to give the laborers the impression that they had won the strike. The plantation workers had no way of knowing about this.

The Nippu jiji termed the $1.15 increase an improvement, and the Hawaii shinpo^[*] said that it should be taken under consideration. Only the Hawaii hochi^[*] criticized it: "The planters did not increase the actual income of the laborers, and yet they apparently increased their own income to recover damages from the strike." The paper made an issue of the new method for calculating the bonus. "Although the daily wage has increased," it pointed out, "if the sugar price rises over 8 cents the laborers' income would be lower than the present amount."^[61] If the monthly wage was more than $75, for example, there would be no bonus; thus the change amounted to an average decrease in the bonus rate of 0.5 percent.

In September, nine months after the start of the strike, consumer prices had increased further. Since the stock market slump in March, every time a ship from Japan arrived the prices of the rice, soy sauce, and miso imported for the Japanese laborers went higher and higher. Consumer goods from the mainland were also rising in price, and the fare for steamships between the islands rose in August, and the passage between Yokohama and Hawaii increased 20 percent in September.

Four months after his arrival, Consul General Yada expressed his opinion of the wage increase granted by the HPSA. "This revision does not significantly change the actual income of the workers compared to their current wage," he reported to Japan. "Their standard of living has not improved at all. . . . It could be considered a disciplinary revision against the strikers. Needless to say, it is a result of the planters' profit-first mentality."

Pablo Manlapit, chairman of the Filipino Federation of Labor, saw the HSPA announcement of a wage increase as a childish trick. Manlapit had strongly criticized the resolution of the strike. He said that it was difficult to believe that the Japanese leaders would end the strike merely by relying on the integrity of the planters' word without obtaining a firm wage increase. Changing the organization's name to Hawaii Labor-

ers' Association to show that it transcended nationality had also been an empty sham. The reality was that the Japanese pushed the Filipinos to accept settlement after the strikers had returned to work. As a result, the Filipinos continued to harbor distrust toward the Japanese.

On September 10 the Hawaii Laborers' Association officers who had led the strike resigned en masse. The newly elected directors lacked the leadership of Tsutsumi and his colleagues. The association headquarters made no public comment or response when the HSPA announced the wage increase to $1.15. But once again the Hochi^[*] took up the workers' cause: "This is not an improvement but a detriment; it is not a beneficial revision but a distortion."^[62] As the days went by the Hochi again made an issue of the "gentlemen's agreement." "The new bonus system clearly decreases income. Whose crime is this?" it asked. "Who declared the wage amount of $2.50?"^[63]

Only a month later, on November 21, did the association react to the HSPA wage increase announcement. Complaining that the new scale still did not provide living wages, the association reiterated its "desire" for minimum wages of $40 for men and $30 for women. This was no more than the $1.50 per day demanded in the strike. The association also accepted the HSPA's bonus plan, and although the HPSA ignored demands for an eight-hour workday, the association said nothing about this.

The Filipinos were no longer acting with the Japanese, but under Manlapit's name, they voiced a demand for a $2.50 wage increase in exchange for ending the bonus system tied to the price of sugar and for establishing an eight-hour workday with half days on Saturday. The HSPA immediately rejected the renewed wage increase demands from both the Japanese and the Filipinos.

At the 1920 HSPA annual meeting, Waterhouse criticized the strikers' tactics:

The cohesion and unity of action manifested by the Japanese was really wonderful when considered from a superficial viewpoint. An inside knowledge of the situation revealed a system of terrorism and intimidation most effectively adapted to the temperament of these people. An unswerving loyalty to their home country, to their hometowns and their home people is characteristic of the Japanese and influences their thoughts and actions. Relying on their loyalty, the labor leaders inserted in the articles of the Association of the Japanese Federation of Labor the following clause: "Should a member be found guilty of the act of contravening the interests of this Federatio. . . . he should be reported to several affiliated branche. . . . and to the mayor of the offending member's permanent domicile in Japan."

Waterhouse concluded his remarks on the "eventful year" by invoking the Japanese conspiracy theory: "The Japanese newspapers were strong in their denials that the strike was anything but economic, but at times were incautious enough to state that it was racial and nationalistic, and in some instances the real feeling of the leaders along these lines were manifested." The 1920 Hawaiian Annual described the strike as "a movement for higher plantation wage demand [that] was launched by certain Japanese papers and Japanese language school principals." Although the workers were "already better paid than elsewhere," a "so-called laborers' committee" twice made arrogant demands.

According to the HSPA, losses from the 1920 strike in all the plantations on Oahu amounted to $10 million. At the annual meeting the HSPA decided that these losses would be underwritten by dividing them up among the plantations on the other islands. For example, the Olaa plantation, where the Sakamaki house dynamiting incident occurred, was apportioned liability for $470,000.

On January 21, 1921, a Honolulu Advertiser editorial crowed, "With the end of 1920 the most prosperous year in Hawaii's history comes to a close. . . . Virtually every business showed great growth during the twelve months. Probably the leading business barometer, as reflecting the material well-being of the Islands, is the story told by the bank deposits, commercial and savings."^[64] HSPA president Waterhouse, however, had termed 1920 an unusually volatile year of "unbelievable price rises" and "ruinous price drops." In June, when an investigative committee directly under Attorney General Palmer began to investigate the abnormal surge in the sugar price, it began to fall, and by the HSPA annual meeting in November, it had dropped to 5.76 cents. Even so, the bank deposits in Hawaii reached the highest amount in a decade, 1.5 times that of the previous year.^[65] Waterhouse's expression "ruinous" must be considered an exaggeration.

To take Olaa Plantation as an example, not only did the sugar price soar, but contrary to the pessimistic forecast at the start of the year, the cane fields yielded a good harvest in 1920. The plantation manager's annual report for 1920 stated, "Our crops are looking remarkably well, and with increased tariff protection and a reduction in Excess Profits Tax, we should make a very satisfactory showing for the year." The report concluded with an unusually bright outlook. Improvements to the mill and the warehouse had been completed, and expansion of the plantation railroad was progressing. The plantation was also improving the

workers' welfare by building some thirty new housing units and by planning modernization improvements for the plantation hospital.

The "unprecedented profits" of 1920 not only enriched the plantation companies, they went into the pockets of ordinary laborers. The bonus rate had been 87 percent in 1919, but it averaged 279 percent in 1920. Wages paid to workers were also 3.2 times the amount paid the year before.

The labor contractors also enjoyed greater profits. The widow of Jirokichi Iwasaki, who had succeeded her husband's as the top contractor at Olaa Plantation, noted in her diary, "I was to receive $80,000. . . . This was the largest amount of money I made at one time in my life."^[66] After paying back an advance from the company, the wages owed to the workers, and the huge debt her husband had left, she still kept $18,000 in profits.

Although the strike fund collected from the workers on islands other than Oahu reached the huge sum of $680,000, savings deposits by Japanese increased $200,000 over the previous year. To put it another way, what supported the strike for nearly half a year was the unprecedented rise in the price of sugar. The economy was enjoying such a boom that the English-language newspapers coined the term "bonus millionaire workers." Consul General Yada reported to his government that "these are the best conditions since Japanese have come to Hawaii." Ordinary people were indulging in "a spirit of luxury," and mutual loan associations had become popular. Not only were more and more immigrants taking trips back to their homeland, a growing number of plantation workers left the plantations to open businesses in towns with money they had earned.^[67]

It was only on islands other than Oahu that "millionaire workers" emerged. On Oahu, where the strike took place, workers missed out on the chance to make the most profit in their lives. Although the association decided to compensate the Oahu workers for damages they suffered, the figure amounted to only $100 per striking laborer. This was one reason why support for the association cooled rapidly among the workers on Oahu. As one nisei said, "Laborer's money was small, after the strike the union was nothing, no more support."^[68]

William Rego, a Portuguese who had been a luna for many years at Waialua Plantation, remembered how the attitude of the Japanese laborers changed after their return to the plantation. The experience of the long strike gave them a chance to think seriously about their future in Hawaii. The phrase that Tsutsumi repeated so often in his speeches—

"We are demanding a wage increase because we are determined to live here permanently"—lived on after the strike. "I saw a lot of difference in the camps," recalled Rego. "They [the Japanese] never planted any fruit trees, but when they came back, they planted avocados, mangos, oranges, tangerines, lemons, limes. They planted all kinds of fruit trees when they came back and they made the camps look nice, you know, with all those fruit trees growing in the yards."^[69]

President Harding's Patriotism

In late 1920, as the Japanese workers and all the residents of Hawaii were trying to get back to normal after their strike, America was reaching a major turning point. The administration of Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who burned with the ideals of "the new freedom," had stumbled on its idealism and was coming to an end. The November election resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Republican candidate, Warren G. Harding. The American populace, tired of lofty idealism, had chosen the conservative policies of the Republican party.

Harding, a senator from Ohio, emerged as a compromise candidate when the votes at the Republican National Convention split among several leading candidates. At the Democratic convention Attorney General Palmer had made a strong showing in his effort to succeed Wilson, but ultimately he lost his bid for nomination. The Socialist leader, Eugene Debs, who ran for president from prison where he was serving a sentence for agitating, drew attention by garnering some one million votes. This was also the first election after American women won the right to vote. And in California the Alien Land Law, on the same ballot, was passed by a four to one margin.

The planters in Hawaii supported the Republican party, and their confidence at the HSPA annual meeting reflected the outcome of the presidential elections. Grand celebrations were held in Hawaii to welcome the new Republican president, and a phonograph of Harding's first election speech stirred patriotic feelings at victory parties. He had run his presidential campaign using the following patriotic slogans.

To safeguard America first.
To stabilize America first.
To prosper America first.
To think of America first.
To exalt America first.
To live for and revere America first.

The new president's slogans must have been reassuring to the planter elite, cloaking their fight to protect their rights from "the Japanese conspiracy" with the sanctity of Americanism.

In Hawaii anti-Japanese feelings were on the rise in the wake of the strike. A movement backing passage of the foreign language school control bill, which had narrowly been defeated the previous year, gained momentum. On November 25, a few days before the HSPA annual meeting, a special session of the territorial legislature passed the bill and set its enforcement to begin on July 1, 1921. Under its provisions, foreign-language schools were not to hold sessions before or during public school hours, and no pupil was to attend more than one hour a day, six hours a week, thirty-eight weeks a year. The Department of Public Instruction was authorized to prescribe the courses of study and the textbooks, and no one was allowed to conduct or teach in a foreign-language school without a permit from the department. Teachers moreover were required to demonstrate knowledge about democracy, American history and institutions, and the English language.

Four months later a foreign language press control bill was enacted. Its target was Japanese-language newspapers. As Consul General Yada observed, the Hochi^[*] 's attack on the HSPA prevented "the reaching of a settlement between labor and capital and led to the antagonism of the general American public centered on the planters." Another factor behind the passage of the bill was the purchase of the Hawaii shinpo^[*] by the Hawaii Laborers' Association. The new law required the Japanese-language newspapers to submit in advance an English translation of any articles on law, politics, and social problems. "The burden of the difficulty and expense of English translation will lead to suppression of the freedom of speech," Yada predicted for the future.^[70]