Five—
The Conspiracy Trial:
Honolulu: August 1921

By early 1921 the radical left on the American mainland was in retreat. The American Communist party, which had split in two soon after its formation, finally reunited in January 1921, with Sen Katayama elected to its central committee. By the end of the year Katayama had fled to the Soviet Union. A few months earlier Big Bill Haywood, the IWW leader, had defected there as well. Haywood was neither a communist nor a radical theorist, but he did not want to end his days in an American prison. Out on bail after the 1917 roundup of IWW leaders, he had been charged anew with attempting to overthrow the government and other crimes. The news that Haywood escaped abroad rather than fight to the end was an incalculable shock to his comrades in the labor movement. Not only was it the final blow to the IWW, it was a significant event in American labor history.

On May 31, just six weeks after the news of Haywood's defection, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti finally began in Massachusetts. An anarchist group supporting the two defendants hired Fred Moore, a lawyer known for his struggle for civil rights, to head the defense team. Moore, who had just won acquittal of IWW members charged with dynamiting the residence of a Standard Oil Company executive in Oklahoma, headed for Boston, where he shocked conservative easterners with his long hair and cowboy hat.

The Massachusetts state attorney's office was treating this case different from a simple murder and robbery. It was attempting to make it a showcase for the crackdown on anarchists, communists, and other radicals. State troopers surrounded the courthouse, and, in accordance with

Massachusetts law, the trial began with the two defendants in a cage in the courtroom. The two sides faced off in a fierce struggle. The prosecution called fifty-nine witnesses, and the defense called ninety-nine. Several prosecution witnesses gave questionable testimony that was determined in later years to be perjury. Vanzetti, who was said to have been the driver of the car used in the crime, did not know how to drive; and the validation of the pistol that was to have been the key piece of evidence was inconclusive. But the case went to the jury with these and other points left in doubt.

In heavily accented broken English the two defendants each made statements in their self-defense. But in the eyes of the establishment Protestant Anglo-Saxons, these two Italian immigrants represented an alien culture, whose members belonged to a different religion and who produced too many children despite their poverty. Moreover, the image of the Mafia, which had started to insinuate itself in the United States, trailed Italian immigrants. The judge's final instructions to the jury appealed to their patriotism. He told them to deliberate on this case as if they were soldiers who had gone across the ocean to France to fight and die in the First World War to defend democracy. As if responding in that spirit, on July 14 the jury found the two foreign anarchists guilty. Massachusetts law decreed death by electric chair for the crime of murder and robbery. Sacco cried from his witness cage, "Sono innocente."

Wallace Farrington, the new territorial governor, had just returned to Honolulu from Washington, D.C. The fifty-year-old Farrington was a native of Maine who had gone to Hawaii twenty-five years earlier as a newspaper reporter. He worked at first for the Honolulu Advertiser , then for the Honolulu Star Bulletin , where he eventually became editor-in-chief and publisher. He was to serve as governor for two terms (eight years), establishing the "Farrington era" in Hawaiian history. But on August 1, 1921, less than one month after his appointment, and a few weeks after the guilty verdict in the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, the front pages of the English and Japanese newspapers carried similar headlines that shook Hawaiian society to the core. One announced, "Dynamiting Case, Indictments for Criminal Conspiracy in the First Degree."

A year and two months after the dynamiting of Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki's house at Olaa Plantation, the grand jury sent the case to trial. Since the dynamiting had been treated as a local incident, with only a few lines of reporting when it occurred, this was the first time that most people in Hawaii had heard of it. The Honolulu Advertiser summarized the in-

dictment as follows: "On the night of June 3 a band of the 'assassination corps' forced an entrance into the house of a Japanese named Sakamaki, a plantation employee who had refused the join the strikers. While one member of the band stood guard with a drawn pistol, another deposited a quantity of dynamite under the house and then set off the fuse with a lighted cigaret, according to the evidence."^[1]

Indicted in the case were twenty-one former leaders of the Federation of Japanese Labor, including Noboru Tsutsumi. It was the first time that so many Japanese had been charged at one time with a crime. In the Honolulu Advertiser report that sensationalized the charges by stating that those connected with the federation had organized an "assassination corps" to carry out "a campaign of terrorism," there was a half-page photograph of the Sakamaki house after the blast, together with insets of ten of the indicted, including Tsutsumi. The Honolulu Star Bulletin reported, "The round up of the indicted Japanese forms a dramatic climax to the series of outrages, cane-burnings, assaults, dynamitings, and other forms of violence which characterized the strike last year."^[2] The Japanese-language newspapers also treated the defendants as guilty from the time of the indictment. The Hawaii hochi^[*] already concluded, "Due to an internal quarrel within the federation headquarter. . . . this shocking incident was divulged. . . . A crushing blow has been dealt, and the case will expand."^[3]

The Hawaii hochi reported that "the ringleaders," Miyazawa, Tsutsumi, Goto^[*] , Takizawa, Kawamata, and Hoshino, had been placed in custody at 8:00 P.M . on August 1 and that bail had been set at $1,500. According to the trial records, the bail was later increased to $3,000 per person. The association could not come up with the money immediately, so Tsutsumi, Hoshino, and Fujitani remained in jail until the morning of August 3.

The caption under Tsutsumi's photograph in the Honolulu Advertiser identified him as a person "known among the Japanese as a radical socialist and the author of a voluminous history of the plantation strike written in the Japanese language." After he resigned from the federation, Tsutsumi wanted to edit the strike records. But because others were ineffective in collecting funds to compensate the strikers on Oahu, he had been going around to the other islands to solicit contributions. Although he had resigned after the strike, he had continued to lead the organization behind the scenes.

The Hawaii Laborers' Association had created the post of secretary-general after its restructuring, and Jiro^[*] Hayakawa, forty-one, a news-

paper reporter, was chosen to fill it. Influenced as a youth by Toshihiko Sakai and Shusui^[*] Kotoku^[*] , he was interested in the labor movement, but he had been in Japan during the strike and had not been involved. Known as a serious writer in a Chinese classical style, he earned the sobriquet "the Soho^[*] Tokutomi of Hawaii," but he lacked Tsutsumi's charisma.

About a week after the indictment members of the haole elite were invited to a large party at the Moana Hotel, one of the top-ranked hotels in Honolulu. Hosen^[*] Isobe, dressed in priest's robes, greeted guests at the entrance to the banquet room. His long-cherished dream of building the Honolulu mission main hall had been achieved, and this banquet was to celebrate that occasion in the presence of the head priest of the Soto^[*] sect who had come from Japan. Shortly after the event, Isobe left Hawaii for Los Angeles to build the first Soto temple on the U.S. mainland.

The Judge, the Jurors, the Prosecutor, and the Defense

The trial for conspiracy in the first degree began on Wednesday, February 1, 1922, in the First Circuit Court in Honolulu. The indictment read: "On 27th of May 1920, [the accused] did maliciously or fraudulently combine, or mutually undertake or consort together to commit a felony, to wit, to unlawfully use and cause to be exploded dynamite or other explosive chemicals of substance for the purpose of inflicting bodily injury upon one J. Sakamaki." Jury selection, which continued into the next day, took less than four hours. Challenges to rule out biases or prejudices of prospective jurors were raised once by the prosecution and nine times by the defense. All of the challenges were on racial grounds, to exclude people with names that were obviously Filipino, Portuguese, or Hawaiian. Indeed, the twelve jurors selected were all men with Anglo-Saxon names.

Judge James J. Banks, seated in the highest chair at the front of the room, instructed the jury not to read any newspaper accounts of the case and to consider only the testimony. To the press bench, he warned, "Newspapers kindly refrain from publishing anything. I don't want any expression of opinions from the newspapers about the case or any feature of the case." The judge also said that he would prohibit the attendance of anyone who published his opinions in editorials or articles during the course of the trial.

Banks, sixty-one years old, was a native of Alabama, a southern state with a history of discrimination against blacks, and had studied law at the University of Alabama. Four years had passed since he was appointed

to the federal bench by the president, but his heavy, nasal southern accent could still be difficult to understand by those not used to it.

After jury selection was completed, the chief prosecutor, William H. Heen, made a twenty-minute opening statement for the prosection. Heen was thirty-nine years old, young enough to be Judge Banks's son, yet he had already established a reputation in Hawaii's legal circles for his acumen. Although he had a haole name, he was dark-skinned, and his features were exotic, with a high forehead and piercing eyes that bulged slightly. His stiff dark hair was cut so short that it appeared to be standing on end. Heen's mother was from a distinguished Hawaiian family that had dominated Maui, and Heen was known as a man of wealth who owned prime property in Honolulu.

Heen returned to Hawaii after obtaining his law degree at the University of California. He was promoted two years later to deputy attorney general of the territory. In 1918 he was elected city and county attorney of Honolulu. At the Japan-U.S. friendship dinner sponsored by the strike supporters' association just before the strike began (January 23, 1920), Heen made a speech appealing for harmony. Yet four months later, when the Federation of Japanese Labor applied to participate in the Hawaii Mission Centennial Celebration, Heen expressed some of the strongest negative views among the committee members who opposed its participation. In addition to Heen, the prosecution side consisted of Harold E. Stafford and John W. Cathcart.

The defense team also consisted of three lawyers, all known in Hawaii's legal circles. The chief defense counsel, William B. Lymar, a forty-year-old native of Iowa, had graduated from Harvard Law School and come to Honolulu in 1909, the year of the first strike. After serving as assistant district attorney for the city and county, he set up his own law practice. The other defense counsels were Francis M. Brooks and Arthur M. Brown.

Of the twenty-one defendants charged in the indictment, fifteen appeared in court every day. Their names were called each morning at the start of each court session in this order:^[4] Goto^[*] , Miyazawa, Tsutsumi, Kawamata, Furusho^[*] , Hoshino, Takizawa, Baba, Tomota, Ishida, Koyama, Kondo^[*] , Sazo^[*] Sato^[*] , Fujitani, and Murakami. Each wore the only suit and necktie he owned. Although in Hawaii today casual aloha shirts are worn even in public offices, in those days, no matter how high the temperature, East Coast-style formality was still considered proper. From the first day of the trial oppressive clouds blanketed the sky above

Honolulu. At times the rainfall was so heavy that it was hard to hear the voices in the courtroom. The stone courthouse, with its narrow windows, was dark even when the weather was clear. The atmosphere was so solemn that the trial seemed to be taking place in a town somewhere in the eastern United States rather than in a tropical island called the "paradise of the Pacific."

Sakamaki Takes the Witness Stand

On Thursday, February 2, at 10:15 A.M ., the first witness for the prosecution took his seat on the witness stand. It was the victim of the dynamiting case in the indictment, Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki, then fifty-one years old. Sakamaki had stowed away on a ship bound for America when he was fifteen. On learning that his mother was ill, he hastened to return to Japan, but when he reached Hawaii he discovered that she had already died. Instead of continuing his journey home, he took a job as an interpreter at the newly established Olaa Sugar Company on Hawaii. In the Honolulu courtroom twenty-three years later, his voice must have rung with pride as he identified himself: "I am just now assistant postmaster, Olaa post office, and official interpreter and clerk for Olaa Sugar Co." Not only was Sakamaki the sole pipeline connecting the sugar company to the Japanese laborers, as assistant postmaster he also handled administrative matters regarding family registration delegated to him by the Japanese Consulate General.

Sakamaki was known as a difficult man who constantly boasted of his family's samurai background. Yasuki Aragaki, a current resident at Olaa Plantation, remembered Sakamaki clearly as the man to whom his father, a tenant farmer from Okinawa, was always beholden. Even around the plantation, Sakamaki wore a good-quality three-piece suit. His thick mustache, which flared out at the edges, seemed to overwhelm his small stature, and his manner was arrogant. He often treated his fellow Japanese who worked in the cane fields with a lack of generosity that bordered on the malicious. On the witness stand Sakamaki was dressed neatly in a navy blue pin-striped suit with a maroon bowtie. As he glared at prosecuting attorney Heen, hardly blinking, he answered the questions put to him about the night of the explosion.

In a concise manner Sakamaki testified that shortly after 11:00 P.M . on the night of June 3, 1920, he was awakened by a deafening blast.^[5] He ran to the plantation guard's house to inform him, but the guard had just

left, thinking that something had happened at the mill. Sakamaki then ran to the company office and telephoned the plantation manager to find out how to handle the incident.^[6]

Sakamaki finished his description of the night of the incident by stating that it was a "narrow escape" for his family. "We all think ourselves very fortunate," he said. Prosecutor Heen asked Sakamaki to give the names and ages of the six children whose lives had been spared, slowly and one at a time as if to impress them on the jury's memory.^[7]

Then prosecutor Heen asked Sakamaki, "What is your religion?" "Christian," he answered.

At Olaa Nine Mile, now called Keaau, there is a shopping center of about ten Japanese stores anchored by a supermarket. In one corner stands the Olaa Japanese Christian Church, commonly called the "Japanese Church." The church is a small wooden structure painted yellow, with three spires rising from its dark green roof, and its denomination is the same as the most historic church in Hawaii, Honolulu's Central Union Church. Sakamaki had asked the Olaa Sugar Company for funds to build it, and the company had agreed. On the night of the explosion Sakamaki had gone out to a church meeting after supper and returned late. As head deacon of the church from its inception—a church he could be said to have founded—Sakamaki was in full charge of its administration.

Many Japanese who went to America to study at the turn of the century turned to the church or to the YMCA for help, and many American families who accepted Japanese students as houseboys or "school boys" were introduced through their churches. Not surprisingly, many Japanese students became Christians during their stay in America. Sakamaki, however, had been baptized only after becoming the interpreter at the Olaa Sugar Company. Conversion to "the Jesus religion" was a ticket into haole society, and even Japanese were more readily accepted by the Caucasians if they were Christian. It was rare for Japanese to take such a step. Most remained Buddhist. But Sakamaki, "the old fox," put the "Japanese Church" first, and he often took the side of the sugar company against the Buddhist temples on the plantation.

Many in the Japanese immigrant community succumbed to the temptations of gambling, prostitutes, and above all alcohol. To improve public morals, Sakamaki had organized the Olaa Japanese Temperance Union in 1911 and served as its chairman. This was several years in advance of the U.S. Prohibition Act, and it was unheard of at other planta-

tions. Not surprisingly, the haole planters, descendants of missionaries, saw "Frank" Sakamaki as a man they could trust.

After confirming that Sakamaki was a Christian, prosecutor Heen concluded his questioning by asking, "During the strike and before your place was dynamited did you receive any threats of any kind?"

"No, sir," replied Sakamaki.

"Did not?"

"No, sir."

"Well, did you hear of any threats?"

Acting as though Sakamaki's reply was unexpected, Heen repeated his question, but defense attorney Lymar raised an objection and Judge Banks sustained it.

In the cross-examination Lymar focused solely Sakamaki's anti-strike activities. The prosecution was attempting to prove that the federation had attempted to get rid of Sakamaki by killing off the entire family with dynamite because he was an anti-strike leader. Lymar was trying to destroy the core of the facts of this indictment, and during direct questioning, Sakamaki had described his anti-strike activities:

SAKAMAKI: "Most of the time they come to where I am. I am dealing with laborers daily, say ten to hundred, pretty near. Everyday I meet laborers, contractor; I come in contact personally all the time, morning and night. I meet different people, so, everybody come around. I have impressed upon them that it is not proper to do anything to support this strike just now."

HEEN: "You at those times advised them against the strike?"

SAKAMAKI: "Oh, yes."

Under Heen's questioning Sakamaki also testified that he had distributed Kazan (Volcano), a small anti-strike newspaper with a readership limited to Hilo and its surroundings run as a one-man operation by its publisher and editor, Kohachi^[*] Yamamura. Yamamura, a native of Ehime who used the pen name Kainan, was known for his aggressiveness. When he was a road construction labor contractor in California, he lost a leg in a shootout with a Mexican contractor. In keeping with his violent character, he wrote pieces full of personal attacks. For some reason Yamamura, who also came from a samurai background, got along well with Sakamaki, and the two men were old friends, or furen.

Under cross-examination from defense attorney Lymar, Sakamaki testified that once or twice a week some 2,000 to 3,000 copies of Kazan were sent to his house. He placed piles of them where they would be

easily seen. Lymar asked, "Isn't it true that, although you dispatched these papers by these different people, sent them out, that it was common knowledge that they were left undistributed at different places, large bundles of them each week were left at different points, undistributed and unread?"

Sakamaki made no attempt to deny this. "Might be," he replied, "but so far as I know if, maybe one or two read it that's all, sufficient; I don't expect all been read it, but as far as this paper get in some place, that's all I care for."

Sakamaki, the victim, was on the witness stand less than an hour, and he testified in English without an interpreter. In those days, even nisei interpreters spoke in pidgin English, mixed with some Japanese and Hawaiian, but Sakamaki had learned his English on the mainland when he was young, and he was said to speak English like a haole.^[8] The trial transcript attests that he was fluent except for occasional misuse of the indefinite article or verb tense. Although his accent is not discernible from the transcript, his English was proficient enough for the plantation manager to listen to him without misunderstandings.

When questioned by Heen and Lymar, Sakamaki often replied "Yes, sir," or "No, sir." This was little different from the way southern blacks responded to their white employers. Despite his authority as the company's official interpreter and the fear with which he was regarded by Japanese laborers, Sakamaki's life of serving haole bosses left its mark.

Immediately after Sakamaki's cross-examination ended, one juror asked, "Please your honor, one question. One name I didn't get, the name of that man tha. . . . I want to see if it is the same as one of these names, the man that owned this newspaper." When Sakamaki, responded "Yamamura," another juror asked, "He is not one of the men named there?" The Caucasian jurors had trouble distinguishing the Japanese names, and this sort of question was repeated often throughout the trial. Some jurors never learned the names of the defendants, even though they were called out every morning when the defendants entered the courtroom.

"Co-conspirator" Matsumoto's Testimony

The second witness for the prosecution gave his name as Junji Matsumoto. He wore frameless round thick-lensed glasses, but his physique was solid, indicating long years of physical labor. He answered prosecutor Heen's questions with short replies of two or three words in a low

voice that was hard to hear. The thirty-three-year-old Matsumoto had lived in Hawaii for seventeen years. Starting as a cane field laborer at Ewa Plantation on Oahu, he worked at various plantations on several islands. When the strike began, he testified, he had been at Waialua Plantation on Oahu helping Honji Fujitani, who ran the Nippu jiji branch office on the plantation.

HEEN: "That is H. Fujitani, one of the defendants in this case?"

MATSUMOTO: "Yes." (Defendant Fujitani is asked to stand up.)

HEEN: "Is that the man H. Fujitani?"

MATSUMOTO: "That's the man."

HEEN: "Have the record show that the witness identified H. Fujitani."

Honji Fujitani had organized the Waialua union, the first to engage in a wage increase movement on Oahu. After he became involved in the Oahu Federation of Japanese Labor, he was so busy that he hired Matsumoto to collect the subscription fees for the Nippu jiji . As secretary of the Waialua union, Fujitani was its actual organizer, but Tokuji Baba, who held a high position in the plantation mill, served as its president. In response to Heen, Matsumoto confirmed that Baba was one of the men sitting in the defendants' seats.

According to Matsumoto, in March 1920 the federation began to recruit special security or guard troops called pickets. Matsumoto was one of the pickets at the Wahiawa Plantation union. Their main work was to block scabs and to keep watch on the laborers who had returned to work. The pickets at Wahiawa were divided into several groups, and Matsumoto headed one of them.

Almost casually, Heen turned to his main line of questioning. "Now, in May, sometime, of 1920 did you have occasion to go to Waialua to see H. Fujitani?" Matsumoto replied that he had, on the night of May 21. Fujitani had been in bed with a cold at the time but had gotten up to talk with him. "When I went there he told me that he had some work for me, that I had to go to Hawaii. I was told that message come from Baba that I have to go to the federation office and for me to go tomorrow." Fujitani did not explain why he wanted Matsumoto to go to Hawaii, nor did Matsumoto ask. Fujitani handed him $75 for initial expenses.

On the morning of the next day, Matsumoto arrived by train in Honolulu at about 9:00. The station was near Aala Park, and Matsumoto headed directly for the Sumitomo Bank building, a five-minute walk. The headquarters of the Federation of Japanese Labor^[9] was on the second

floor of the building, along with the Oahu union office. The two offices were separated by a sitting room with newspapers and magazines.

Heen asked who the Oahu union officers were. Matsumoto responded, "E. Yokoo." Heen then asked, "Where is he now, do you think?" "In Japan," was the response.

Eijuro^[*] Yokoo had been president of the Ewa union. When HSPA president Waterhouse refused to negotiate with Tsutsumi and the other federation leaders, Yokoo had been pressed into representing the laborers. During the turmoil after the strike, his fellow laborers turned against him, and the Ewa sugar company fired him as a dangerous person. According to his wife, Toyo, Yokoo then worked as a clerk in the Japanese Hospital in Honolulu. She came down with influenza and never fully recovered, so they returned to Yokoo's hometown, Chikushi-harada, Fukuoka prefecture, two months before the indictment.

In response to Heen, Matsumoto confirmed that of the defendants named in the indictment, Yokichi^[*] Sato^[*] (Kahuku union) and Kaichi Miyamura (Hawaii Island union), had also returned to Japan and were not present in court. Heen then asked the Oahu union leaders—Waialua delegate Tokuji Baba, Waipahu delegates Shoshichiro^[*] Furusho^[*] , Fumio Kawamata, and Kan'ichi Takizawa, and Waimanalo delegate Shunji Tomota—to stand so that Matsumoto could affirm their identities. Although it was clear that Matsumoto knew nothing about those connected with the Federation of Japanese Labor, Heen had him confirm the identity of the three secretaries (Noboru Tsutsumi, Ichiji Goto^[*] , and Hiroshi Miyazawa) as well as Chuhei^[*] Hoshino, who had come to federation headquarters from Hawaii, and Tsurunosuke Koyama and Chikao Ishida, who had come from the Hawaii Island union. As for Seigo Kondo^[*] and Tsunehiko Murakami, Matsumoto testified that he knew them well because they had also been pickets. Confirmation that the persons sitting in the defendants' seats were the same persons as those charged in the indictment was essential in establishing the indictment.

Heen asked Matsumoto to recall what happened on the morning of Saturday, May 22. When he went to see Tokuji Baba in the second floor office in the Sumitomo Bank building, Matsumoto said, "I was told [by Baba] that I had to go to Hawaii, that further details would be given to me by the directors of the Hawaii union when I got there." Six other defendants (Tsutsumi, Goto, Miyazawa, Hoshino, Takizawa, and Kawamata) were also present, he said, and they told him the same thing. "First order was given to me by Baba, and while I was in that room every person that I met told me that 'you have to go to Hawaii, and when you go

to Hawaii, the particulars and further orders will be given to you by the directors of the Hawaii union, and you must obey that orders.'"

Q: "Did you inquire of these men as to what you were to do over there?"

A: "I did."

Q: "What did they say?"

A: "I was told that further orders would be given me in Hawaii by the directors of the Hawaii union."

Q: "What else did these men who you have mentioned say to you outside of getting further details or particulars from the officers of the Hawaii union, do you recall?"

A: "Nothing else except those."

Q: "Well, do you recall whether or not they wished you good luck or something to that effect?"

A: "Takizawa, Kawamata, Tsutsumi, Miyazawa, Goto^[*] , Hoshino, those people told me that 'you are going to Hawaii. On your work at Hawaii would be the success of this strike and I want you to do the best you can in Hawaii.'"

That afternoon Matsumoto returned to the federation office. Fujitani, who had arrived from Waialua, handed him a ticket for the evening steamship to Hilo. Defense attorney Lymar objected that the interpreter was not accurate: "The witness stated that at the time when these tickets were transferred there was one given to the witness and Fujitani held the other one, telling him, the witness, that he, Fujitani, was going to Hilo by the same boat for the purposes of making a speech."

The court interpreter, forty-five-year-old Kin'ichiro^[*] Maruyama, had come to Hawaii at the age of eight with his parents, who were part of the second group of government contract immigrants, and had graduated from a public high school in Honolulu. He had once caused an international incident by hiring a British ship to ferry twelve hundred Japanese workers to Vancouver, Canada, during the period when migration to the mainland was prohibited. Several years later he had been hired as a court interpreter, and by the time of the trial he had also opened up a law office. Maruyama had no legal credentials. His law office, like Makino's, probably handled procedures for immigrants who did not know English.

After high school Maruyama had returned to Niigata prefecture briefly for a conscription physical examination, but because he left his homeland at such a young age, Japan must have seemed like a foreign country to him. Maruyama had no problems speaking English, but his Japanese was a bit awkward. Compounding the problem, Japanese wit-

nesses at the trial spoke in the dialects of the regions in which they were born. Reading the trial transcript, one cannot help feeling that he handled Japanese like a foreigner. In any case, only the Japanese defendants and several Japanese-language newspaper reporters listened to the testimony in Japanese. What Judge Banks, the prosecution, the defense attorneys, and the twelve jurors heard was Maruyama's interpretation, and the trial record itself was a transcript of Maruyama's English.

When Matsumoto boarded the Maunakea , a steamship that departed from Honolulu for Hilo at 3:00 P.M . on May 22, the passengers included Fujitani and a man named Taniguchi from the Aiea union who was also going to give speeches on the Big Island. When the ship docked at Hilo shortly after 7:00 A.M . the following morning (May 23), Matsumoto said that he went to stay at the Okino Hotel, a first-class Japanese establishment in the middle of Hilo, a short distance by foot from the Hawaii Island union office. Matsumoto went there at once to speak to Tsurunosuke Koyama, Chikao Ishida, and Kaichi Miyamura, all of whom he was meeting for the first time.

After introducing himself and saying that he had come "by the orders of the federation of labor from Honolulu," they told him that because he was tired from the boat trip he should rest while waiting for their orders. Invited along by Fujitani, who was staying in the same hotel, Matsumoto spent a few days sightseeing at the erupting Kilauea volcano and other places with Taniguchi, I. Saito^[*] , and Tsunehiko Murakami, another one of the defendants in the case.

On the evening of Thursday, May 27, his fifth night in Hilo, Matsumoto was chatting with Murakami and Saito in his room at the Okino Hotel when a car from the Hawaii Island union came by to pick them up. By the time the three of them left the hotel, he said, it was dark outside.

At this point in his testimony, Judge Banks adjourned the trial until the following morning. Throughout the trial Banks became impatient if the day's proceedings went one minute past noon, and he ended them even in the midst of important testimony. It might have been that he was simply a cranky old man (he was over sixty at the time), or he may have resented lunchtime being shortened.

As the Honolulu Advertiser pointed out, Matsumoto was the prosecution's "star witness." Indeed, he was the witness who could substantiate the charges in the indictment. Matsumoto had been indicted by the grand jury, but just before beginning interrogation of the prosecution witnesses, Heen had removed his name, along with that of I. Saito,

from the twenty-one defendants in the indictment. The prosecution had turned defendant Matsumoto into a state's witness.

On Friday, February 3, Matsumoto continued his testimony. The car sent from the Hawaii Island union, he said, drove along Hilo bay. On the coast about four miles from downtown Hilo was the annex of the Matano Hotel, called the Seaside Club. It once had been a club operated by Caucasians, and was used for receptions when the Imperial Navy training ships or the consul general visited from Honolulu and for local prefectural association gatherings. Nearby were several fresh seafood restaurants. One was a small teahouse diagonally across the street from the Seaside Club. (At the trial the name of this establishment was never raised. No one now remembers its name.) The car stopped here.

Matsumoto arrived at this teahouse between 8:00 and 9:00 P.M . on May 27. Four men were waiting for Matsumoto, Saito^[*] , and Murakami in a private room. In addition to Miyamura, Koyama, and Ishida of the Hawaii Island union, there was a man named Yoshimura, who had come from Kahuku Plantation on Oahu. Under cross-examination, Matsumoto added that they had waited to hold their meeting until Yoshimura arrived in Hilo that day. (With so many Japanese names mentioned, the jurors became confused, and asked questions about who was in the car and whom they met.) After introducing themselves, the men sat around a table covered with a white cloth. After food was served and some general conversation, Kaichi Miyamura addressed the group, saying "that an order came from federation office as to what we were going to do, that 'you all here must keep this secret; that you must not tell this to anybody else. In case you do so, tell this thing to any outsider and to bring any damage to the cause of this strike, that the federation publicly suppression of my name and also the name of all the relatives.'" Then Miyamura asked, "Would you solemnly swear that you close the matter that will be discussed here?" After Matsumoto and the others swore to do so, Miyamura went to the heart of the matter.

"Then he told us that there is a man named Sakamaki who lives at Eight Miles, who is an interpreter who is obstructing the cause," Matsumoto testified. "He told us to kill this man with powder." After Matsumoto and the three others thought it over, Matsumoto testified, "I consented, all three consented." Miyamura rose from his seat and called each of the four men outside the room separately. To Matsumoto, Miyamura gave a $100 bill for expenses and told him to do his best. "I told him 'all right. I will consented,'" said Matsumoto. Leaving the others at

the teahouse, Matsumoto, Murakami, and Saito^[*] left for the Okino Hotel in the car that had picked them up. From conversation in the car, Matsumoto learned that Saito and Murakami had also received $100 each from Miyamura. Back at the hotel, they retired to their rooms and went to sleep.

The Honolulu Advertiser reported Matsumoto's testimony under the headline "Dinner Party at the Tea House, Conspiracy Discussed." But Kaichi Miyamura, the defendant who had allegedly ordered the killing of Sakamaki, had returned to Japan, and he was in no position to refute Matsumoto's testimony. A contractor with several hundred workers under him at Wainaku Plantation near Hilo, Miyamura had also operated a large store at the plantation. The Hawaii jinbutsu hyoron^[*] described him as "a rustic man" but "quite well educated. . . . He is affable in the way he smiles as he deals with others. . . . He has an inborn dignity and is kind and courteous to his subordinates and is astute."^[10] Of those active in the 1920 strike, some, like Tsutsumi, joined the movement of their own volition. But others, like Miyamura, were pressed into organizing locally and found themselves involved before they knew it.

At the time of the indictment the prosecution announced that it would request the Japanese government to extradite not only Kaichi Miyamura but also Eijuro^[*] Yokoo and Yokichi^[*] Sato^[*] , but it never made any formal request to do so. According to Yokoo's wife, Toyo, Yokoo was never investigated by the Japanese authorities.

Matsumoto testified that early the next morning (May 28), Miyamura arrived alone at the Okino Hotel, where he met with Matsumoto, Saito, and Murakami in a large room on the second floor. He told them that he could not find Yoshimura, who had paid his bill at his hotel and left. (This Yoshimura was thought to have returned to Japan after the strike ended, and is referred to in the trial records with no first initial.) "[Miyamura] told us that he doesn't think that Yoshimura would disclose the conversation to any outsider but in case you fellows should run away, that [he] would notify the home government and publicly suppress your father's name and also your family that is living in Japan." Miyamura also reminded them of the need for secrecy. For the first time he mentioned compensation for killing Sakamaki. If they succeeded, each would be paid $5,000. "You came here for the cause of the twenty-five thousand laborers," Miyamura told the three men. "If you are going to help them I want you to succeed in this thing." Matsumoto testified that he and the other two vowed, "If the killing of Sakamaki with powder would

help the cause of the twenty-five thousand laborers we would do so, and we consented to do so."

As soon as the conversation ended, Matsumoto went alone to Olaa Plantation, where he had lived for four years. He was familiar with the lay of the land, but he wanted to take a look at the Sakamaki house, the target of the attack, and he also intended to see what kind of anti-strike activities Sakamaki was engaged in. But Matsumoto was recovering from an operation for appendicitis and felt sick, he said, so as soon as he reached Olaa, he found lodging and took to bed. He spent several days there, only going out to a nearby eatery, Ikedaya, when he was hungry. It was there that he met Saito^[*] , who arrived a few days later to make contact with him. Saito informed him that Murakami had left for Oahu to see his wife and children and that he should do nothing until Murakami returned from Honolulu.

After Murakami came back to Hilo on the morning of June 3, said Matsumoto, Saito at once contacted him with a message from Murakami to go to Hilo right away. Matsumoto, who was not feeling well, was still in bed, but he arose about noon and hired a car to take him to Hilo, where Murakami had taken a room at the Matano Hotel. It was already past 1:30 P.M . when Matsumoto arrived. "Murakami," he said, "told us that 'Everything is ready, that we will do the work tonight, that I am going to leave for Honolulu tomorrow.'" Still feeling unwell, Matsumoto asked a Dr. Takeda for an injection and went to rest until night-fall at his cousin's place on Waiakea Plantation, near Hilo.

As directed by Murakami, Matsumoto went to the Matano Hotel at 8:00 P.M . Murakami left the hotel soon thereafter to hire a car to drive to Olaa Plantation. Matsumoto waited at the corner, dressed in a suit and necktie and wearing a hunting cap, and Saito waited at a different corner. Arriving in a large model Hudson (large enough to seat seven people) with a driver hailing from Okinawa, Murakami picked up the two men to drive to Olaa. Matsumoto recalled that Sakamaki often went to evening meetings at the Japanese Church, so he had the car stop there first. Peering through a window, Matsumoto did indeed see Sakamaki, who later came out and got in his car to go home. The Hudson carrying Matsumoto and the others followed him to railroad tracks near the Sakamaki house. Murakami had the car stop just before the tracks. He got out with Saito, who was also riding in the backseat, and the two spoke in hushed tones in the dark for about thirty minutes, according to Matsumoto's testimony. Meanwhile Matsumoto sat waiting in the front passenger seat. When the two men returned to the car, Matsumoto said,

"Saito^[*] told me that Murakami told him that he brought some powder from Honolulu; that he is going to set the powder tonight." This, Matsumoto said, was when he first found out that dynamite would be used to kill Sakamaki.

The Hudson moved on slowly. Murakami and Saito jumped out just before Sakamaki's house and disappeared into the darkness. The car, carrying Matsumoto and the driver, drove on to Shipman Road to wait for the two men as arranged. After twenty or thirty minutes, Murakami and Saito came running breathlessly. Jumping into the backseat, they told the driver "to start the machine and go fast." The driver pushed the accelerator to the floor and sped off toward Hilo. Matsumoto did not recall hearing the noise of dynamite exploding. He was dropped off near his cousin's house in Waiakea where he had spent the day.

The following morning, June 4, Matsumoto went to the office of the Hawaii Island union to pick up Murakami's travel expenses so that Murakami could return to Honolulu that afternoon. Miyamura welcomed Matsumoto in good spirits, telling him, "You did good. You done your work good." He gave Matsumoto $50.

When Matsumoto handed the money to Murakami, who was waiting at the Matano Hotel, Murakami told him that apart from his hotel expenses, he had used about $50 for hiring the car and other expenses. He showed Matsumoto a memo with his account. As there was little time before the ship's departure, Matsumoto advanced him $50 from his own pocket, and Murakami left on the Maunakea for Honolulu.

In those days the Maunakea was the only Inter Island Steamship Company ship sailing between Honolulu and Hilo. It departed Honolulu in the evening and arrived in Hilo the following morning, then returned to Honolulu the following afternoon. The next ship after Murakami's was not until Monday, June 7, at 3:00 P.M . Lying in bed all day, Matsumoto waited at the Matano Hotel. On the morning of June 7 he went to the Hawaii Island union office to pick up travel expenses for himself and Saito. He spoke not only to Miyamura but also to Koyama and Ishida. "I said that Saito suggested going back to Honolulu today and I think that's a good plan, Saito told me that it's dangerous to stay here." Matsumoto continued his testimony: "He (Ishida) says, 'The officials are investigating very rigidly and it is not good for you fellows to stay here. You go back to the Matano Hotel and wait for me, I will bring the money.'"

Matsumoto was still feeling very tired, and as he waited in the hotel, he fell asleep. He could not recall how much time had passed, but when

he woke up Ishida had not yet arrived. Impatient, Matsumoto looked out the hotel window and caught a glimpse of a police car. Saito^[*] had already left the Matano Hotel that morning, so Matsumoto decided that it would be dangerous to wait any longer. Avoiding the front entrance, he left by the emergency stairs. As he cut through Mooheau Park on his way to the Hawaii Island union office, Matsumoto noticed Ishida sitting on a park bench. Ishida rushed up to him, saying that he heard that Matsumoto and Saito had been arrested. Ishida went to get some money at the office and returned to give Matsumoto $100, half of which Matsumoto gave to Saito, whom he met later. To be on the safe side, Matsumoto and Saito boarded the ship separately, each buying his own ticket after boarding.

After arriving in Honolulu the following morning, Matsumoto went directly to the Federation of Japanese Labor headquarters. Although the dynamite exploded, Matsumoto and the others had failed to kill Sakamaki as ordered by the federation. But according to Matsumoto, Tsutsumi or Hoshino told him, "You made a success of your work in Hilo. We get the report from Hilo that all the spies up there are now afraid and this was a great success." The other defendants—Miyazawa, Goto^[*] , Baba, Y. Sato^[*] , S. Sato, Yokoo, Kawamata, Takizawa, Tomota, Furusho^[*] , Kondo^[*] , and Fujitani—who were also at the office, thanked him for having "done well."

The Honolulu Advertiser described Matsumoto's testimony as substantiating the prosecution's charges. Matsumoto, an accomplice who knew the lay of the land so well that he had to participate in the alleged crime even though he was so ill that he should have been in bed, recalled the events of two years before as if they occurred the previous day. When Heen's questioning touched on details, Matsumoto replied while looking at notes in his hand. Defense attorney Lymar objected, but even after warnings from Judge Banks, he persisted in using notes to confirm his memory. The Honolulu Advertiser surmised, "It seems apparent that the defense will rely largely upon the impeachment of the witness for the testimony." But in fact, Lymar had raised objections on grounds of irrelevancy, leading the witness, no prima facie, and hearsay. Judge Banks summarily overruled 99 percent of his objections.

Before Matsumoto took the witness stand on Monday, February 6, the fifth day of the trial, Lymar objected that the conversation between Matsumoto and Saito described in Matsumoto's testimony was not directly

related to the crime of conspiracy. Sustaining this objection, Judge Banks told the jury not to consider that evidence at all, or any evidence of conversations between Matsumoto and Saito^[*] after the alleged explosion about impending danger.

Resuming his direct examination, prosecutor Heen had Matsumoto repeat the names of each defendant who had congratulated him on dynamiting Sakamaki's house. Then he began questioning Matsumoto about his second trip to Hilo.

About five or six months after the night of the crime, Matsumoto said that he and Saito boarded the ship for Hilo. Miyamura had told them that if all went well they would receive $5,000 from the Federation of Japanese Labor headquarters in Honolulu, but despite their repeated attempts the two men received nothing. Deciding they had no choice but to negotiate directly with Miyamura, Matsumoto and Saito had once again headed for Hilo. At the Hawaii Island union office they met with Ishida and S. Sato^[*] and also appealed to Chuhei^[*] Hoshino, who had returned to Hilo from federation headquarters. Ishida and the others kept responding, "At that time, Miyamura and Koyama wasn't there. They will give me an answer later on." Two or three days later Matsumoto and Saito talked in their room on the fourth floor of the Matano Hotel with the Hawaii Island union members Ishida, Hoshino, Sato, and Tomota (the latter was a leader in the Waimanalo Plantation union on Oahu, an obvious mistake on the part of Matsumoto).

"They told us," said Matsumoto, "that Miyamura [who had actually promised the $5,000] and Koyama [who was president of the Hawaii Island union] wasn't able to come." Instead Hoshino told them, "There's going to be a meeting of the representatives in Honolulu, that either I or Ishida would be one of those meeting and that they would put the thing at the meeting, and asked me to wait until that time." Hoshino also promised "that if the Oahu union refuses to pay this money, the Hawaii union would pay you." According to Matsumoto, he asked Fujitani, director of the Oahu union, to accompany him on this second trip to Hilo so as not to be manipulated.

The representatives' meeting that Hoshino said would settle the $5,000 issue was held November 23, 1920, to discuss measures to counter the wage increase announced by the HSPA. Hoshino, who came to Honolulu as a delegate from the Hawaii Island union, stayed at the Saikaiya Hotel, where Matsumoto and Saito visited him and asked him to bring up the $5,000 issue at the meeting. Matsumoto also went to the

Kyorakukan^[*] , where the meeting was being held, with a request to speak to the federation officers. He said this was because he was unable to comprehend the federation financial report in the Hawaii hochi^[*] that detailed $6,300 in expenditures for newspaper printing and $500 for flyer advertisements.^[11]

At Kyorakukan he asked to talk with Tsutsumi, who was staying with Miyazawa and Goto^[*] to attend the meeting as "advisers."

HEEN: "Did you have a talk with Tsutsumi at that time?"

MATSUMOTO: "I asked him, 'There is a big association in United States, headed by Mr. Gompers, and their expenses in newspapers and magazine is about $300 a month. This is a new organization and I can't see how you could spend over two thousand dollars a month, and I came to ask you how you spent that money.'"

Q: "All right. What else?"

A: "He told me that 'you are only a farmer, you better not say anything and go back and keep quiet.'"

A: "Then what happened?"

A: "I told him 'I don't know how educated you are, and even if you hold the head secretaryship of the association.' I said, 'I am doing what you are doing for these laborers, and what I am doing for the laborer doesn't make any difference,' and I told him 'and don't be so saucy.'"

Q: "Well, what happened then?"

A: "We had an altercation there; the doors came to be locked, when about twenty of them that were there came forward."

Q: "Well, who were these others?"

A: "Well, I had an altercation at this time and I could not remember all of them but I could remember four or five."

Q: "Well, who were these four or five, do you remember?"

A: "Tsutsumi, Miyazawa, Sato^[*] , Furusho."

Q: "Well, what sort of altercation did you have there?"

A: "While we were having this talk about 'you are fresh, go back and keep quiet,' etc., somebody says 'kill him.' Well, I got mad myself when I heard that. There were lots of people in back of me, in rear of me, and I struck Tsutsumi."

Whether or not Matsumoto used the Japanese words Koroshite shimae ! (meaning "Kill him!") is a critical point in his testimony. When interpreting Matsumoto's testimony about Miyamura's order to kill Sakamaki, the court interpreter used the phrase "Kill him." But in the case of the Kyorakukan altercation it would have been more natural for some-

one to use the expression Yatte shimae (Get him!) or Noshite shimae (Let him have it!). If Matsumoto did in fact testify that someone had said "Yatte shimae" or something similar, any murderous intent would have been ambiguous. The phrase could simply have meant "Beat him up!" rather than "Kill him!" However, when the court interpreter used the words "kill him" in English, that clearly showed intent to kill. The interpreter's use of "kill" in both cases raises lingering questions.

HEEN: "Who struck Tsutsumi?"

MATSUMOTO: "I struck Tsutsumi. Then everybody jumped me, and I and Tsutsumi grappled. While I was grappling with Tsutsumi, somebody from my left struck me in the head with a bottle. . . . I saw Sato^[*] with a broken bottle in his hand."

Matsumoto then heard something breaking. Furusho^[*] held a broken pitcher in his hands, about to attack Matsumoto. Matsumoto continued his testimony: "I know that I was going to be killed there so I was going to do my best; I struck the man who was in the rear of me with my elbow. I think I have knocked down two or three and did all I can at that place."

Matsumoto, who had injured his head, was so angered by this altercation that he finally went to the police to make a complaint of assault at the end of November 1920. Immediately afterward, Seigo Kondo^[*] visited him at the Tohoku^[*] Hotel where he was staying. Matsumoto reported, "He told me that 'you already made complaint about this assault,' and he asked me if I am going to disclose the dynamiting matter. . . . I told him I am going to confess. I told him that 'some of the officials of the association is not right and I am going to fight them.' . . . He told me to wait. 'I am going to have talk with Baba and we will satisfy you,' and asked me to wait." After placating Matsumoto, Kondo left.

Among the defendants, the forty-three-year-old Seigo Kondo was particularly striking. With his intimidating thick neck and broad shoulders, he appeared larger than he in fact was. At the time of the grand jury indictment, the Honolulu Star Bulletin described him as "reputed to be the 'man Friday' of the real leaders of the federation."^[12] Kondo's name was not once mentioned in documents related to the federation. He had no direct connection with the Federation of Japanese Labor, nor did he frequent its headquarters.

Kondo^[*] was the eldest son of a well-to-do family in Sanjo^[*] city, Niigata prefecture. When he was ten years old, his father, who had served on the town assembly for many years, drove out Kondo's mother and married a younger woman. Rebelling aginst his father, Kondo stopped going to school, and eventually he sailed to Hawaii as a coal stoker aboard a steamship. He worked at various jobs, starting with cane field labor, but by the time of the strike he was running a successful fishery in Pearl Harbor. He also owned a pool hall and other establishments in Pearl City. Some said he was a gambler, but it seems certain that he was a local boss. When striking workers evicted from plantations arrived in Pearl City, his chivalrous spirit prompted him to help them out, and eventually he and his followers joined in the strikers' patrols. According to Matsumoto, Kondo was a troubleshooter who stood between the strikers and the scabs.

With Baba in tow, Kondo visited Matsumoto once again at the Tohoku^[*] Hotel. According to Matsumoto, Baba told him, "Even if the federation had ordered you to do this, you have gone and done this and you will go to jail for it." Matsumoto replied, "I don't care what will happen. Some of these officials are not good; bad officials, and they are causing all this trouble to the laborers, and I am going to put them away." Baba tried to placate him. "I am going to have a talk with headquarters," he said, "and we will satisfy you." Kondo gave Matsumoto $300 for lodging and for medicine for his head injury.

When Matsumoto again pressed Kondo about the $5,000 some time later, Kondo told him, "I did my best but I couldn't get the money for you." Accompanied by Saito^[*] , Matsumoto then went to Ewa Plantation to see Murakami. In front of the Ewa Plantation company store, he told Murakami that since the promised money had not been paid he and Saito were going to give themselves up. "As to yourself," he added, "why don't you come up like a man and give yourself up?" Murakami, who was in the middle of work, answered that he would meet with them that night.

That night when Murakami went to see Matsumoto in his new lodgings at the Kobayashi Hotel, Matsumoto was out, so Murakami was able to speak only to Saito. The following night, when Murakami arrived at the hotel with Kondo, he saw Matsumoto lying on his bed. "You're a hell of a fellow," he said, complaining that he had come all the way from Ewa to see Matsumoto only to find that he was not in. "You are a friend

of Saito^[*] and you are open with Saito," Matsumoto replied, "but you don't speak open with me and for that reason I left Saito here and went to the movie picture show."

Suddenly Detective McDuffie from the Honolulu police poked his head in from the next room. "You have given this information—in connection with the putting powder on Sakamaki's house—to McDuffie to send us to jail," shouted Murakami. "Do you think that I could move McDuffie?" replied Matsumoto. "He came [so we could] give ourselves up."

In sum, Matsumoto's testimony suggested that he went to the authorities to get even with the federation leaders. After the dynamiting of the Sakamaki house, not only was Matsumoto unable to collect the $5,000 promised him by Miyamura, but the federation leaders derided him as a "farmer" and gave him such a beating that he barely escaped with his life. After Matsumoto filed assault charges against the federation headquarters leaders, Kondo^[*] and Baba tried to persuade him to with-draw them and to accept hush money for the Sakamaki incident. But the promised $5,000 never turned up, so Matsumoto made up his mind to turn himself in, accepting imprisonment for himself and taking along with him, and purging the movement of, the self-serving federation leaders who had squandered strike funds contributed by the hard-pressed laborers.

Heen ended his questioning of Matsumoto by asking about his relationship to Sakamaki.

HEEN: "Did you have some misunderstanding with Sakamaki when you were working on Olaa?"

MATSUMOTO: "I had some trouble with an old man that was there and this old man went and complained to Sakamaki and Sakamaki went and told the camp police about the trouble between myself and the old man. Then the plantation police came to my place and told me that I am not needed there, for me to get out. Without asking me anything and without investigation. I was told to get out. So I thought Sakamaki had something to do with it. There was a man by the name of Miyake was working in the (plantation) store. [He] and another old man came to me and said, 'it is not Sakamaki who had said anything bad about you and got you out.'"

The misunderstanding was resolved, and on the urging of Miyake and the others, Matsumoto and Sakamaki shook hands. All this had taken place some six or seven years before, Matsumoto said, and he did not want to harass Sakamaki because of a personal grudge against him. His

only motive for involvement in the dynamiting incident, he answered Heen, was solely for the twenty-five thousand striking workers.

In later testimony Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki confirmed what Matsumoto said. The misunderstanding between the two men had been resolved, and they had shaken hands. In cross-examination by Lymar, Sakamaki characterized Matsumoto as "a man of high temper" who "was constantly getting into fights and brawls." But according to Sakamaki, he had not seen Matsumoto since they had shaken hands, until he unexpectedly bumped into him on the morning of his testimony. "He waited for me on the stairs of the county building," said Sakamaki, "as I come down he bowed to me and smiled and says, 'Well, very sorry to give you this trouble,' and shake hands with me."

"Mr. Sakamaki," asked Lymar, "after this explosion, did you make the statement that Matsumoto was a man who had had a grudge against you and that he might well be capable of having done that?" "No, sir," Sakamaki replied simply.

Defense Attorney Lymar's Cross-examination

The central figure on the defense team, William Lymar, was much taller than prosecutor Heen, and his features were sharper too. He had a full head of wavy, blond hair and deep-set, nearly transparent blue eyes. In his unaccented, midwestern monotone Lymar began his cross-examination by tenaciously extracting from the taciturn Matsumoto details of his life in Hawaii.

Matsumoto's father had immigrated to Hawaii when Matsumoto was a young child. When Matsumoto turned sixteen, his father, whom he had not seen for many years, brought him over to Hawaii. Shortly after his arrival, the father died suddenly, and Matsumoto had to go to work, moving from one sugar plantation to another. At Olaa, where he stayed several years, Matsumoto may have intended to marry and settle down, but his trouble there got him fired, and once again he shifted from one plantation to another every five or six months. In his cross-examination Lymar tried to establish Matsumoto's character as volatile, impatient, and short-tempered. The profile that emerged during the cross-examination was of the unhappy life of an immigrant forced to find his way in a foreign country at an early age.

After Matsumoto admitted that he had been involved in assaults at various plantations, Lymar asked, "You have allowed this ungovernable

temper of yours to reach such a pitch that you have taken ant poison in chagrin. Haven't you?" Matsumoto admitted that he consumed pesticide in a suicide attempt and was taken to the Ewa hospital in November 1919. He had just turned thirty. Only a few weeks after his discharge Fujitani had hired him to collect subscription fees for Nippu jiji at Waialua.

According to the Honolulu Advertiser , on February 7, as Lymar was turning to questions about the charges of indictment, Matsumoto, who had been on the witness stand for three days, appeared nervous and complained throughout the morning of feeling ill. Lymar's cross-examination sought to undermine the indictment by demonstrating that Matsumoto was not acquainted with the majority of the defendants, the federation officers who, he claimed, had issued orders for the conspiracy. He questioned Matsumoto about when and where he had met each defendant and what conversations they had.

To be consistent with his answers to Heen on direct questioning, Matsumoto desperately repeated the same testimony. There were pauses as his answers to Lymar's forceful interrogation were translated, and he was able to gain time as prosecution lawyers came to his rescue by raising objections. On top of this, Matsumoto's repeated claims of feeling ill brought him frequent recesses.

Lymar spent an especially long time on his testimony about defendant Baba. Lymar asked, "What kind of tone did Baba use in speaking to you, was it a low whisper?" Matsumoto initially replied it was an "ordinary tone of voice." But when Lymar pointed out that Baba had contracted influenza at the start of the strike and had not come into the office even in late May, Matsumoto added, "He looked sick." Matsumoto, however, never repudiated his testimony that Baba had given the order to go to Hilo.

When asked what he talked about with the other defendants when he received his order from Baba, Matsumoto was evasive: "I couldn't remember exactly." "Some were going in and out of the place and some were attending to their business." "Some I talked with them standing up as they coming out of the place or coming into the office." "There's a long table in the center there with the pile of newspapers. We had conversation at that table." Yet he gave the name of each defendant, saying, "I remember distinctly the person—" as if reviewing to show his testimony was consistent. Lymar's cross-examination was persistent and detailed. Yet he kept asking about the same matters and was unable to get

to the heart of the important points. He also had a habit of withdrawing his questions and rephrasing them. As these overlapped, the meaning of the questions became confusing even to others.

On February 9 Lymar began his cross-examination about the assault at the Kyorakukan^[*] Hotel. He asked Matsumoto whether he had not asked Tsutsumi or any of those present "for money from the benefit fund of the labor union" before the altercation began. Matsumoto replied, "I couldn't say I needed any money at that time." When he discharged from the Ewa hospital after his suicide attempt, he said, he had "hundred to hundred & fifty dollars." But according to Matsumoto, he received no wages as a member of the picket troop but simply was reimbursed for expenses incurred. He was told that eventually they would be given reward money, but none was forthcoming after the strike ended. That was why he was so angry, he said, when he heard that large sums of money had been used by federation headquarters. The only sum he had tried to get from the federation was the $5,000 he had been promised for the Sakamaki incident, he insisted.

LYMAR: "About a week before this assault of Tsutsumi at the Kyorakukan Hotel, you didn't meet Takizawa, one of these defendants, tell him that you were broke, and ask for the money?"

MATSUMOTO: "No, I had not."

LYMAR: "You didn't say to Takizawa on that occasion, 'I am broke, I hardly know how to get anything to eat. I have done much for the association and it ought to help me now,' you didn't say that?

MATSUMOTO: "It can't be, because I was working at that time for Soma^[*] (Inn at Wahiawa) and I was not so hard up as that and I haven't made any demand of money upon Takizawa."

LYMAR: "And did you then not say to Takizawa, 'if the association does not help me, I will do them all kinds of harm'?"

MATSUMOTO: "No, I have not."

LYMAR: "And at the time of that assault, is it not true that you owed money, outstanding bills for auto hire at that time?"

MATSUMOTO: "I have no personal debt owing as auto hire, but while I was a picket, I had some auto hire that I had used, some automobile, and the bill has not been paid."

LYMAR: "Didn't you tell Kondo^[*] all of this about your outstanding bills for auto hire, your outstanding bill with Soma, and other debts, didn't you tell Kondo that shortly before this assault?"

MATSUMOTO: "I remember having a talk with Kondo^[*] after the assault, when he came to me to—as a go-between to have this assault—have the matter settled up."

Matsumoto did admit that after he had received $300 from Kondo to treat his wound, he went to the Oahu union office to see Kawamata.

LYMAR: "Did you not go to Kawamata, one of these defendants, and ask him to pay your money so that you could get away to Japan?"

MATSUMOTO: "At the time I received three hundred dollars, I was asked not to tell."

He also said that Kawamata suggested that he leave for Japan. Kawamata assured him that since the federation ordered the dynamiting, he would be paid as promised and should keep his mouth shut. He continued, "The same day that I was assaulted, I made up my mind to give myself up. I asked Matsumura what is the best to be done, and he told me he thinks it best to give myself up."

This was the first time that the name Tamotsu Matsumura came up at the trial. In the FBI report of January 22, 1921, there are numerous mentions of Tamotsu Matsumura, who was thirty-six years old at the time of the trial. After graduating from middle school in Kumamoto, he worked as a minor clerk in the Taiwan colonial government and then left for Hawaii in 1909 to become secretary to Emo^[*] Imamura, the head of the Honganji Hawaii mission temple. Shortly after he arrived in Hawaii, he was arrested on suspicion of spying when he was discovered wandering near Diamond Head taking photographs of American military fortifications. After being released for lack of evidence, he became principal of the Kaawa Japanese-language school, where several years later he was fired on suspicion of embezzlement. When the school burned down, Matsumura was investigated on suspicion of arson, but the case was also dismissed for lack of evidence.

According to military intelligence, "He was a close friend of former Consul General Yada" and "was very prominently associated with the Japanese Federation of Labor, it being claimed that he was the silent head of that organization."^[13] He was teaching at the Waialua Japanese-language school when the strike began. He was eager to give advice to the local union, and he also frequented federation headquarters. But Tsutsumi and the others, who considered him a dangerous opportunist, were wary of dealing with him.

Indeed, federation headquarters announced in the newspapers that Matsumura was a "planters' dog" who urged laborers at Waialua Plan-

tation to return to work. The Military Intelligence report noted, "During the strike, he appeared to have had a break with the Hawaii Laborers' Association, and he went to work for the Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association. However, it was never believed that he was sincere in his efforts to aid the Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association, but that he did so for personal reasons."^[14]

After the strike ended, Matsumura bought the Hawaii choho^[*] with remuneration received from the HSPA. Through the newspaper, he called for the restructuring of federation headquarters and made personal attacks on its leaders. In late December 1920 Terasaki reported in his diary, "Afternoon, Matsumura comes to the [Hochi^[*] ] company and says that there are improper funds of $_0,000 (illegible) issued secretly by the federation."^[15] In other words, Matsumura was feeding information to Makino, who disliked the federation officers. Since the readership of the Choho^[*] was considerably smaller than that of the Nippu or Hochi , Matsumura was fulfilling his aim by urging the Hochi to make similar attacks on the federation.

Matsumoto testified that he had gone to Matsumura, known to be a "planters' dog," to seek advice on a legal matter. At first he did mention that it was his trouble with Sakamaki. Matsumura immediately took Matsumoto to see Frank Thompson, the HSPA lawyer who had duped Manlapit into issuing a stop strike order to the Filipino workers. Matsumoto talked with Thompson and with his partner John Cathcart, who was also an attorney for the HSPA. At the time of the trial, Cathcart was serving as special assistant prosecutor.

LYMAR: "And that Matsumura told you, did he not, substantially this, 'You are in a tight place. One way to get immunity, to get out of this thing, is to go to Mr. Frank Thompson, the planters' attorney, and tell him that the labor union was responsible for blowing that thing up,' isn't that what he told you?"

MATSUMOTO: "I have violated the law, I don't expect to get any remuneration."

LYMAR: "Didn't Matsumura tell you it would be necessary to implicate all of these twelve men there on trial, it wasn't enough to implicate part of them, that every one of the twelve must be?"

MATSUMOTO: "He told me to tell the truth, and I told the truth."

LYMAR: "Between November, 1920, when the trouble took place and—between November of 1920 when this assault took place, and July or August, 1921, when the arrests were made, you were in Mr. Thompson's office over and over again, weren't you?"

MATSUMOTO: "I did."

At the end of his four days of testimony, Matsumoto finally admitted that since the handing down of the indictment in August 1921, even when he was on the witness stand, he had been employed at Thompson's place on Tantalus. This meant that in the midst of the trial HSPA lawyer Thompson was taking care of, indeed providing a livelihood for, the most important territorial witness, the man who had confessed to attempted murder in the Sakamaki dynamiting case. Incidentally, no charges were filed on the complaint that Matsumoto had lodged concerning the Kyorakukan^[*] assault, and the matter was not pursued further.

The Driver Aragaki Testifies

The third prosecution witness, Goichi Hamai, was the chief clerk at the Okino Hotel where Matsumoto had stayed in Hilo at the time the Sakamaki house was dynamited. Referring to a thick hotel register (prosecution exhibit E), he testified that the names Matsumoto, Saito^[*] , and Murakami were entered as guests in rooms 19, 20, and 21 beginning on May 23, 1920; and that two days later they moved to rooms 12, 13, and 14. For some reason the prosecution did not submit the Matano Hotel guest register for the important night, June 3, when Murakami returned from Honolulu and the crime was committed.

The last witness of the day was I. Aragaki (the fourth prosecution witness), the driver hired by Murakami on the night of the crime whom Matsumoto had said was from Okinawa.^[16] He testified that on the night of the crime one year and eight months before, after picking up three Japanese in Hilo, he first went to a stable near the Olaa church where he stopped the car for about thirty minutes. He was ordered to stop again near the railroad tracks for about fifteen minutes while the two passengers in the backseat stepped out to discuss something. He started the engine again and, shortly after passing the Olaa sugar company office, he was told to go slow. The two passengers in the back jumped out and disappeared, and he stopped the car at Shipman Road where he waited for about thirty minutes. The two men came running to the car and yelled at him to drive as fast as he could toward Hilo. Aragaki found out the following morning that the Sakamaki house had been dynamited. Aragaki testified, "A few days afterwards, I found a pistol, revolver, fully loaded on the right side pocket in the rear right door." According to Aragaki, he thought someone would come to pick it up, but in the summer of 1921, after a year had passed, he went to Chikao Ishida, the princi-

pal of the Japanese-language school at Wainaku Plantation, to ask his advice.

(The trial records show that at this point prosecutor Heen pointed to one of the defendants to have Aragaki confirm that it was Ishida, the school principal. Even by the eighth day of the trial, Heen had not yet memorized the faces of the fifteen defendants seated in two rows on the defendants' bench and pointed to the wrong man. Even after Aragaki said, "He is a small man with eye-glasses," Heen was unable to pick him out. In the end Heen asked Aragaki to leave the stand and place his hand on Ishida's shoulder.)

According to Aragaki's testimony, when he asked Ishida about the revolver that was left in his car, Ishida said, "If you don't need that pistol wouldn't you give it to me?"

HEEN: "I will ask you whether or not you recall any talk about the strike in 1920 and about the dynamiting of Sakamaki's house first and after that you mentioned about the finding of the pistol?"

ARAGAKI: "No."

Heen was attempting to establish that Ishida asked for the revolver so that he could destroy the evidence, but even after Heen asked the question again in several different ways, Aragaki still replied in the negative. Finally the frustrated Heen asked, "Do you recall having a conversation with me at my office about two or three days ago? Do you recall saying at that time that you called on Ishida one night and you happened to talk about the strike and also about the dynamiting, and then you said, 'By the way, I remember taking three men up there that night of the dynamiting, and found the pistol, and he asked you for it'?"

Defense attorney Lymar objected, but finally Aragaki answered to Heen's satisfaction: "I went to Ishida's place and told him I found a pistol in my car and asked him what to do with it. He asked me when I found it. I told him that the day after that Sakamaki's house was powdered I found the revolver in my car. He asked me who that pistol belongs to. I told him, 'I don't know who it belongs to.' He says, 'If you don't need it, won't you give it to me?' I gave it to him."

In his cross-examination, Lymar pressed Aragaki on two important points: the time that Aragaki said he picked up the three men and confirmation of their facial features. Matsumoto had testified that he got into the Hudson after 8:00 P.M . Calculating backward from the time of the blast at shortly after 11:00 P.M ., this time fits. But according to Ara-

gaki's recollection, it was about 6:30 P.M . Yet he also testified that because "it was dark" he could not make out Matsumoto's face, even though it is still quite light at that hour in June. Even without bright moonlight, it should have been possible to make out a passenger's face in the reflection from the headlights. Matsumoto had sat next to the driver, and at Shipman Road the two had waited together in the car.

LYMAR: "Isn't this true, that you really are not at all sure whether this man Matsumoto was sitting in the front seat with you, but that he went down for the prosecution here a few months ago to Hilo and presented himself to you and told you, 'I am Matsumoto,' and that's the reason you are saying that he was Matsumoto?"

ARAGAKI: "Yes."

Even in the middle of this important questioning, because it was after noon Judge Banks adjourned the court. Aragaki had been on the witness stand for fifty minutes or so, but he was not recalled to testify the following day. Matsumoto had testified that he was in the car when he was told for the first time that dynamite was to be used to kill Sakamaki. Saito^[*] said that "Murakami told him that he brought some powder from Honolulu; that he is going to set the powder tonight." Aragaki could have heard this conversation in the driver's seat, but Lymar did not give him a chance to confirm this point in cross-examination.

Another Key Prosecution Witness, I. Saito

The fifth witness for the prosecution, I. Saito, escorted to the witness stand by interpreter Maruyama, hesitantly swore to tell only the truth. Saito, whose first name remains unknown, was the only other defendant (besides Matsumoto) whose charges Heen dismissed before the trial.

In contrast to the rotund Matsumoto, Saito was tall and thin. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, and his eyes darted about nervously as he testified. The twenty-seven-year-old Saito was five years younger than Matsumoto. His brother had brought him over to Hawaii when he was sixteen, and he worked on a sugar plantation doing the lowest-paid holehole work. After a few years in the cane fields, he became a hand on an interisland steamer and worked as a stevedore. Ten months before the strike, he had started working at Waipahu Plantation as a hapai , loading cut sugarcane. After being evicted as a striker, Saito worked as a concrete mixer at a military base. About two months later he was called back to Waipahu Plantation by Shoshichiro^[*] Furusho^[*] , the president of the Wai-

pahu Plantation union. Furusho^[*] instructed him "to go and find out who is obstructing the strike and also to stop anybody going back to work on the plantation." He was put in charge of a picket troop at Waipahu Plantation at about the same time that Matsumoto became involved in the picket troop at Wahiawa.

The gist of Saito^[*] 's testimony was that on May 22, 1920, federation secretary Noboru Tsutsumi telephoned the Waipahu union picket troop leader, Takematsu, with orders to send Saito to Hilo. Takematsu told him to get the details from Furusho at the Oahu union headquarters. He left Waipahu on the noon train. After he reached Honolulu, he went to the Oahu union office, arriving at about 2:00 P.M . Furusho told him that one person had been chosen from each Oahu plantation to go to Hilo. Saito was to go as the representative from Waipahu, and he was to act on orders received from the Hawaii Island union officers.

Saito testified that Takizawa and Kawamata, also from Waipahu, gave him the same orders. With $50 Furusho gave him, Saito hurried to board the Maunakea , which was about to leave for Hilo. As it was close to departure time, Saito purchased his ticket on the ship, and only after he had boarded did he notice that Murakami, whom he had known at Ewa, was also on board. He testified that he met Fujitani and Matsumoto for the first time after arriving in Hilo. Saito also corroborated Matsumoto's testimony about the May 27 dinner when Miyamura ordered the killing of Sakamaki, about Miyamura's threat that they would be publicly labeled "planters' dogs" and would be ashamed to show themselves in public if they ran off as Yoshimura had, and about Miyamura's promise of a $5,000 reward.

To establish that the conspiracy presented in the indictment had taken place, it was legally necessary to have at least two witnesses. The prosecution clearly was attempting to establish the validity of the indictment by turning Matsumoto and Saito into the prosecution's witnesses in return for a dismissal of charges against them.

Saito's testimony about June 3, the night of the crime, neatly corroborated what Matsumoto said had happened up to the time the Hudson stopped at the railroad tracks, and he testified in more detail about what went on after that:

Myself and Murakami got off the car, to the side of the road. Murakami told me at that time that what he went to Honolulu for was to get some powder. He told me if I knew how to fix powder. I told him 'I haven't handled any powder before,' and I told him I don't know. Then he told me that he will fix the powder. 'Have you got a handkerchief?' Then I have got three strips from

my handkerchief and handed that over to him. The powder that length of powder (indicating about a foot) was at three place. . . . tied it three places.

Murakami had brought the dynamite wrapped in a black cloth. Using Matsumoto's flashlight, Murakami attached the fuses to the dynamite before wrapping the handkerchief around it. Their preparations completed, Saito^[*] and Murakami returned to the car. After jumping out of the slowly moving vehicle just before Sakamaki's house, Saito and Murakami crept under the floor of the house and set the dynamite under what they thought was the kitchen.

SAITO^[*] : "I had a pistol and Murakami told me to give it to him, so I gave it to him. I put the powder underneath that place. Murakami saw where I was putting the thing, and he told me to put it farther in. Then he gave me the pistol and he told me to watch, and he went and put the powder two foot farther than where I had put the powder before, farther in. He lighted the thing with a cigaret. We ran towards the automobile and get into the automobile."

At this point, Saito's testimony differed from Matsumoto's. He said that it had not been decided where the car would pick the two men up. Saito saw a black shadow ahead of him in the moonlight and, thinking it was the car, ran toward it. It was Saito who shouted to the driver, "Start the car and drive fast," as soon as he jumped in the back. Saito then added, "Afraid of being arrested by the police, the clothes that I wore at that time, it was working clothes, I threw that away."

Oddly, although the two men had taken so much care in planning and devising the dynamiting, Saito had mistakenly left the revolver, the most traceable object, in the car.

The day after the crime, Murakami, who was returning to Honolulu, told Saito that "the work has been done." Three days later Saito left Hilo on the Maunakea , boarding separately from Matsumoto. As a precaution, he told Heen, on the trip to Hilo he used as an alias the name of an Okinawan acquaintance, A. Akamine, without permission, and he did the same on his return trip to Honolulu as well.

The passenger list of the Maunakea departing Honolulu for Hilo on May 22 (prosecution exhibit F) contained one hundred twenty names. "Akamine" was one of them. It immediately followed the names H. Fujitani, M. Taniguchi (an Oahu union member), H. Tabata (same), T. Murakami, and J. Matsumoto. Among the federation members only Saito had used a pseudonym. From the passenger list it is clear that "Akamine" boarded with the other federation members, but this seems a careless act for someone cautious enough to use an alias.

The passenger list of the Maunakea departing Hilo for Honolulu on June 8 (prosecution exhibit G) also listed the name Akamine. Although both Saito^[*] and Matsumoto testified that they were careful to board the ship separately, "A. Akamine" was listed directly after "J. Matsumoto" on the passenger list.

Matsumoto testified that on his return from Hilo he had gone immediately to federation headquarters, where Tsutsumi and the other defendants thanked him. Warned not to go near the office by Furusho^[*] , Saito stayed away. It was only toward the end of June, when Furusho contacted him, that Saito visited federation headquarters. Waiting for him were Waipahu union members Furusho, Kawamata, and Takizawa, who told him, "'You did a fine work, and all the spies of the plantation are afraid now.'"^[17] Saito told them that since he had violated the law and could not stay in Hawaii any longer, he wanted return fare to Japan. Kawamata promised that he would arrange for payment of the promised $5,000 at a special meeting to be held soon, but when nothing was forthcoming, he went with Matsumoto to Hilo to ask for the money.

In his testimony about the Kyorakukan^[*] assault incident, Saito said that it started when he, Matsumoto, J. Suzuki, and D. Suzuki were talking about the federation financial report one night at the Tohoku^[*] Hotel. Saying "it is for us to go and investigate," Matsumoto stood up and ran off. Concerned, Saito and Suzuki followed him twenty minutes later.

SAITO^[*] : "As I put my foot on the steps, I heard the voice, 'kill him,' and as soon as I heard that, I jumped into the place to part them, with Suzuki."

On February 13, after a weekend recess, Heen probed Saito's memory about the phrase "kill him."

SAITO: "As I entered the place, they were grappling and Furusho was about to strike with a pitcher. I struck him on the ribs. Tsutsumi was knocked down, he was on the floor and holding Matsumoto's leg. Tsutsumi was about to get up and grapple with Matsumoto and I told him to stop, wait a minute. I think then Matsumoto ran away. . . . Then Miyazawa said that he was going to telephone to the police, and he went, he left the place."

Furusho was standing still, blood dripping from his nose.

According to Saito, the next night Tsutsumi called him and Suzuki to the same room at the Kyorakukan. Saito testified, "He told Suzuki that 'if you bring this small thing up before the authorities, that the matter of Hawaii (the Sakamaki house dynamiting) would crop up, would become big,' and for Suzuk. . . . for us to change our residence to some

other island." Nevertheless, Saito^[*] and the others continued to stay at the Tohoku^[*] Hotel. Two or three days later, Kondo^[*] came by. Saito continued: "He told me that if Matsumoto reports about this dynamite case other case may crop up, and 'it is no good for him to bring up a small matter like this now.' . . . He says, 'if you would hide and keep away that I would have everything settled up for you, go in hiding.'" About two weeks later Furusho^[*] , who came with a similar warning, left them $35.

After Saito and Matsumoto moved to the Kobayashi Hotel, Murakami came with Kondo to visit them there. Saito told Murakami that his conscience was not clear and that he "want to give [himself] up and confess to this crime." At that moment Detective McDuffie immediately burst in from the next room.

Saito's testimony established that Oahu union member defendants Furusho, Kawamata, and Takizawa were implicated in the conspiracy to go to Hilo. This had hardly been mentioned in Matsumoto's testimony. At the end of his questioning, Heen returned to the time in Hilo when Miyamura ordered the dynamiting of Sakamaki's house. "Miyamura," said Saito, "spoke about getting rid of Sakamaki and two or three others, Yamamura of the Kazan newspaper, Onodera of Eleven Miles (a contractor). . . . He told me, 'The quickest way to do this is to do them up by powder,' and for me to take the easiest party first and do him up." This was to give the jury the impression that federation leaders were planning other assassinations.

Defense attorney Lymar began his cross-examination by focusing on Saito's character and attitude. Despite his initial denial, Saito was forced to admit that he had gone into hiding from a month or so after the Kyorakukan^[*] incident until March 1921. Under direct questioning by prosecutor Heen, Saito had said that he had never been arrested, but in fact he had been arrested with two friends for distilling sake. One of the friends involved, "Mr. Jinbo," had been named in a grand jury indictment,^[18] but happily Saito slipped by under the name "Sato" because the police mispelled his name by omitting the "i." He had been released on bail when an older acquantance lent him $150. Taking advantage of the man's goodwill, he skipped town, hiding away in Wahiawa until a few weeks before the grand jury issued its indictment in the Sakamaki house dynamiting case. Although he had gone into hiding while on bail, Saito was not sent back to jail. Indeed, at the time of the trial, like Matsumoto, he was employed by HSPA attorney Frank Thompson, living

on his grounds and helping out as a gardener. He was earning $60 in wages, more than a skilled sugar mill worker.

LYMAR: "Mr. Thompson paid that $150 booze fine for you, didn't he?"

SAITO^[*] : "I paid that fine. I got fifty dollars from my elder brother and a hundred dollar was the money that I saved up from my work at Mr. Thompson."

Lymar pointed out that the fine had been paid with a check signed by Thompson. Saito^[*] replied that he had given the money to a nisei clerk in Thompson's office named Noguchi to take care of and that he did not know who had signed the check. Despite repeated prosecution objections, Lymar continued to probe Saito's background and character.

LYMAR: "You've had a good deal of trouble, haven't you, the last few years in connection with your work?"

HEEN: "We are going to object to that."

LYMAR: "Before the strike started, before you became a picket or detective, you were a professional gambler, weren't you?"

SAITO: "No, I am not a professional gambler."

LYMAR: "Weren't you discharged from Ewa plantation for gambling just before you went to Waipahu before the strike?"

SAITO: "No, I left of my own volition."

LYMAR: "Yet you and your fellow desperadoes gave yourselves up without any promises of immunity from punishment?"

SAITO: "I did, my conscience hurt me."

In fact, Saito had been given immunity from prosecution. He answered questions just as Matsumoto had—as if he had rehearsed his testimony. Lymar's cross-examination tried to show that this key witness, who was essential to establishing the prosecution case, was not trust-worthy, but Lymar was not able to refute specific points of testimony about the vital matters of the conspiracy and the crime. The Honolulu Advertiser noted that since Saito's testimony matched Matsumoto's, the defense attorney was unable to overturn testimony that established the guilt of the fifteen defendants.^[19]

The Japanese-language newspapers reported on the trial in a very simple manner, perhaps in keeping with Judge Banks's warning at the start of the trial. The English-language newspapers treated the trial as front page news, and the Honolulu Advertiser , in particular, added commentary in seeming disregard of Judge Banks's warning.

Testimony of a Mysterious Former Federation Leader, Seiichi Suzuki

The sixth prosecution witness, Seiichi Suzuki, looked quite different from Matsumoto and Saito^[*] , who looked like manual laborers. The Honolulu Advertiser described him as "dapper, excited and 'dressed to kill' in white flannels and a blue serge coat." The thirty-two-year-old Suzuki was a former comrade of the defendants. During the strike he had served at federation headquarters as an elected director from Maui. In a photograph of the federation directors, Suzuki is seated next to Tsutsumi wearing a wide necktie with a bold wavy pattern, one side of his mouth raised in a smile. Suzuki had succeeded Etsuta Inoue, who had died of influenza, as the Maui union representative in late February 1920. But by the end of April he quit. Suzuki had been at federation headquarters in Honolulu for only two months, but he testified that while there he had "organized the picket." It had been unclear so far in the trial by what organization and under whose responsibility the picket troop had been formed.

Suzuki testified, "We held a meeting at the Oahu union office and then had a special meeting at the Kyorakukan^[*] , and at that place it was decided that each plantation was to supply me with a pickets and to report me. . . . It was after I became head of the picket, this talk about dynamite cropped up at the directors of the organization. [It was mid-April, shortly after the 77-cent demonstration march, that, Suzuki said, he had talked with Furusho^[*] and Kawamata about dynamite.] Furusho said there's lots of strike-breakers and want to use a place right on the top of Kipapa gulch [where the plantation train carrying laborers ran]. I had some sticks of dynamite."

Suzuki had "six sticks of dynamite" that he had brought from Maui. (Under cross-examination he said he carried the dynamite to Honolulu in a suitcase.) When Heen asked whether he had talked with the federation about the dynamite, Suzuki looked slowly over at the defendants and answered, "Yes, two or three amongst these defendants." Then, as if counting them out, he gave the names "Tsutsumi," "Hoshino," and "Sazo^[*] Sato^[*] ." "I talked to Tsutsumi," he said, "and told I brought (from Maui) six sticks of dynamite. . . . There was no talk about how the giant powder to be used. It was soon after the strike and the strike was conducted peaceably at that time and there's no talk of dynamiting Sakamaki's house or anything improper was talked at that time."

As Heen continued to question him, however, Suzuki changed his an-

swer: "I could not tell you who said this, but somebody said that until the strike proceeds farther, and in case there should be many strike-breakers, and then we may use it at that time. . . . I myself had said about scaring the strike-breakers, and Tsutsumi, Sato^[*] , Hoshino maybe said it too. . . . There was no talk of killing anybody with the powder at that time, just scare the strike-breakers with the powder."

It was in mid-April, shortly after the conversations with the federation directors, that Furusho^[*] came to inquire about getting dynamite. Suzuki testified: "He (Furusho) told me that one Filipino at Waipahu who is on the side of the plantation and that we were to knock him down, and he drew a plan and showed the plan."

Suzuki gave two sticks of dynamite to Furusho at federation headquarters. Kawamata was there at the time. Several weeks later, on May 5, Suzuki received orders from the federation to return to Maui.

SUZUKI: "Before coming to Honolulu, I have made the powder into package and gave to my brother to have this package sent to me in Honolulu and, after I came back to Honolulu, I got the package."

HEEN: "What did you get on Maui?"

SUZUKI: "Giant powder."

HEEN: "How many sticks?"

SUZUKI: "My recollection is thirty sticks."

This was truly an explosive piece of testimony. The Honolulu Advertiser headline read: "Dynamite Sent by Mail Says Witness, Enough High Explosives to Destroy Steamer Brought from Maui to Honolulu."^[20] Suzuki said that he had gotten these thirty sticks of dynamite from N. Fujii, a guard at the plantation equipment warehouse.

SUZUKI: "Before I went to Maui, I have a talk with Tsutsumi and S. Sato at the Tokiwaen tea house. He told me that 'You are one of the picket and you are being watched by the police. Why don't you go to Maui and get your wife and live here in Honolulu?'"

It will be recalled that just before the strike began, during the first secret meeting of representatives, a director from Maui had stood guard with a loaded revolver watching for supporters of the planters. There was no gun control law, so it was easy to acquire a revolver on any island. Nevertheless, according to the testimony, Tsutsumi and the other federation leaders had gone to the trouble of sending Suzuki to Maui to obtain a revolver, even after Suzuki had quit the federation. According to Suzuki, he received $125 to $150 in cash as expense money for his

trip to Maui. When he reported to Tsutsumi that the package of dynamite had arrived, Tsutsumi said, "Is that so?"

HEEN: "I will ask you whether or not he told you to distribute the giant powder among the picket men according to your best judgment."

SUZUKI: "He didn't say anything on our first meeting, when I first met him."

HEEN: "Did you meet him another time and spoke [sic ] about the giant powder?"

SUZUKI: "No."

HEEN: "Did you meet him another time?"

SUZUKI: "Any business between the pickets and the federation office I could go down there and meet S. Sato, or Tsutsumi."

On Thursday, February 16, the next day of his testimony, however, Suzuki changed his story about Tsutsumi and the dynamite: "A few days after Tsutsumi said, 'Is that so?' he came to my house at Smith Lane and he told me in case of necessity, to supply them to the pickets. . . . I gave six sticks of dynamite [from Maui] to Yokoo."

Suddenly changing his line of questioning, Heen asked, "Did you have a talk with Murakami at any time about some dynamiting that was supposed to have occurred in Hawaii?" Suzuki responded, "I met him on Beretania and Nuuanu, opposite the Liberty Theater. I asked him, 'I didn't see you for some time, where did you go?' He told me he went to Hawaii. I asked him why did he go for? He told me that he went and had this done. We didn't have very much to talk about this secret, thought it wasn't good to talk on the street, so we left. . . . He told me that he did it."

Lymar began his cross-examination of Suzuki as he had with Matsumoto and Saito^[*] —by asking how long he had been in this country. Suzuki had arrived from Japan at seventeen. He had spent most of his time on Maui, an island known for its many deep valleys. In fact, during the strike, HSPA president Waterhouse's daughter had died in an automobile accident on a precipitous mountain road. Suzuki had worked on a mountain tunnel, and dynamite was one of the tools of his trade. With help from a former fellow worker, Suzuki was able to obtain large amounts of dynamite. His friend assumed it was to be used in his work. Suzuki's testimony included information about some terrifying uses of dynamite, totally incongruous with his dapper, gentlemanly appearance.

During breaks from work on the tunnel, Suzuki was part of an acting troupe that traveled around Maui. A handsome man, he was a lead

actor, popular especially among women. When the strike began Suzuki was working as a boilermaker at the sugar mill at Paia Plantation, Maui's largest cane field. His experience as a performer made him a forceful speaker and an activist in the plantation union. When Inoue died suddenly, he was sent to the Federation of Japanese Labor headquarters. Lymar asked him why he had resigned after only two months. "The regulation of the Paia Union calls that non-resident of the place could not be a director and for that reason, I resigned," he said.

But Lymar suggested another reason for his resignation: he had been relieved of his duties in a recall.

LYMAR: "Didn't you ride around in an automobile a good deal, hire one, while you were a member of the federation?"

SUZUKI: "Whenever I had any business, I would take an automobile and ride around but without any business, I haven't rode around."

LYMAR: "Do you deny that you had trouble with Tsutsumi, particularly about an accounting for the amount of money that you claimed was due you in the car?"

Suzuki owned an automobile that, although used, would have cost more than a boilermaker's wage would allow. When he became a federation director, he took the car to Honolulu from Maui, and saying that he was lending it to the federation, he rode around in it.

LYMAR: "Just before you resigned as director, wasn't there some trouble between you and the other officials of the Federation of Labor about an automobile charge that you had incurred, and wasn't there dissatisfaction about an accounting that was demanded of you and that was the reason you resigned? . . . Do you deny that you had trouble with Tsutsumi particularly about an accounting for the amount of money that you claimed was due you on the car?"

SUZUKI: "No."

LYMAR: "Did you not state repeatedly that you would get even with Tsutsumi for the treatment that had been accorded you in this automotive matter?"

SUZUKI: "No."

Though pressed, Suzuki did not change his testimony that he had organized the picket troops on Tsutsumi's orders after he had quit federation headquarters. He said that he knew Matsumoto as a member of the picket troops, but he had not come to know Saito^[*] , also a picket, until after the strike. It was only when he, Matsumoto, and Saito stayed in the same hotel at the time of the Kyorakukan^[*] assault that they "were a great deal together." Of Tamotsu Matsumura, who had taken Matsumoto

and Saito^[*] to Thompson's office, Suzuki said, "It was at the Federation office, Mr. Matsumura came in regard to Manlapit matter and at that time, Tsutsumi and myself met him."

Changing his line of questioning, Lymar threw out another question: "Didn't the manager of that plantation [Harry Baldwin, Paia Plantation] tell you to take dynamite down to Oahu and try to plant some around, distribute to some around the Japanese down here?" Lymar may have been trying to pump Suzuki for information, or he may have had some evidence to back up his question. In either case Lymar's questioning was persistent. "Didn't you report to the manager or to your superiors there at Paia what you were doing, every time you went back to Maui, report what you were doing in regard to getting dynamite down on Oahu? . . . Weren't you a plant or decoy duck,—whatever they say,—weren't you a 'plant' interjected into this strike by the plantation interests up there on Maui?" To all of these questions, Suzuki simply answered, "No."

Be that as it may, in September 1920, a month after the strike ended, Suzuki was hired by a leading haole-owned automobile dealership that sold expensive cars. (His dapper dress style was part of his job.) Although boilermakers were among the higher-paid workers on the plantations, Sazuki had been earning only about $40 a month. When he became a high-class car salesman, he earned a regular salary of $80 in addition to commissions. With some pride he told Lymar that he got to ride around in his favorite cars every day and that he earned more than $100 a month.

The lawyer for the automobile dealership was none other than Frank Thompson, the HSPA lawyer. Lymar asked whether Thompson had gotten him the job in return for his services as an informer during the strike. But Suzuki responded that he had talked with Thompson for other reasons: "I thought some day the police will ask questions about dynamite, so I went to ask advice from Mr. Thompson."

The following two witnesses confirmed Suzuki's testimony. One was N. Fujii, a young man in charge of the warehouse at Paia Plantation, who said that he gave Suzuki thirty-some sticks of dynamite, and the other was M. Morikawa, Suzuki's brother-in-law, who mailed the dynamite at Suzuki's request. Each was on the stand for less than ten minutes. At the end of their testimony at 10:50 A.M . on February 16, the prosecution rested its case of conspiracy in the first degree against nineteen members of the Federation of Japanese Labor.

Defendant Chuhei^[*] Hoshino's Alibi

On Friday, February 17, the thirteenth day of the trial, the case for the defense was begun not by Lymar but by Francis Brooks. The fifty-six-year-old Brooks, like Lymar a graduate of Harvard Law School, had lived for several years in Shanghai and Bangkok. In Hawaiian legal circles he was known to be knowledgeable about Asia. As a preamble to his presentation of the case for the defense, Brooks said that he did not intend to call all the defendants to the stand as that would take four or five weeks, but he did intend to put on four or five.

His first witnesses were two physicians. The first, Gensho^[*] Hasegawa, a native of Chiba prefecture, had practiced medicine in Honolulu for twenty years. The Hawaii nihonjin meikan also listed his son as a physician, so it can be surmised that Hasegawa was more than sixty years old. Perhaps because there were many unlicensed physicians in Hawaii, Brooks first confirmed Hasegawa's professional qualifications before questioning him about defendant Chuhei Hoshino, who had been his patient.

According to Dr. Hasegawa, the first time he diagnosed Hoshino, who had been sent to the Federation of Japanese Labor from the Hawaii Island union, was on February 12, shortly after the strike began. Hoshino had contracted influenza and was quite weak. Three months later, on May 22, the day that prosecution witnesses Matsumoto and Saito^[*] said they had been ordered to go to Hilo by Hoshino and other defendants at the federation, the Kyorakukan^[*] telephoned Hasegawa requesting a house call shortly after 9:00 A.M . Between 10:00 A.M . and noon Hasegawa went to Kyorakukan to treat Hoshino, who was wrapped in his bedding and shivering intensely. He had a very high fever and severe cough, and his condition was so critical that unless he could be admitted to a hospital immediately, his life was in danger. But the Japanese Hospital was filled with influenza patients and had no beds available. Hasegawa was able, however, to make arrangements for Hoshino to go to the hospital from May 23 to May 28. In other words, on the morning of May 22, 1920, at precisely the time that Matsumoto and the others alleged they received orders to go to Hilo, according to Dr. Hasegawa's recollection and his notes, Hoshino was lying shivering from a high fever at Kyorakukan.

(In questioning witnesses Brooks not only did not order his questions well but also sought information about several different things, making

it difficult to understand what he was after. This was so trying that Judge Banks more than once made him clarify his questions.)

It was John W. Cathcart who stood to cross-examine Dr. Hasegawa from the prosecution side. Cathcart, a native of Minnesota, was sixty-two at the time. He had arrived in Honolulu when he was thirty-eight years old, and he had spent many years as city and county district attorney. Because they both hailed from the same state, Cathcart and Frank Thompson had been acquainted with each other. After retiring as district attorney, Cathcart went into a law partnership with Thompson. Shortly thereafter Thompson became the lawyer for the HSPA, and the Thompson Cathcart law firm was considered the most powerful in the islands. Cathcart alternated with Thompson as the president of the Hawaiian bar association.

As the testimony of Matsumoto and others made clear, at the time of the indictment Thompson was employing the key prosecution witnesses, Matsumoto, Saito^[*] , and Suzuki. And now Thompson's partner, Cathcart, was assisting the prosecution as deputy attorney general.

In contrast to Brooks, Cathcart got to the core of things with short, succinct questions. He asked Dr. Hasegawa about Hoshino's condition by dividing it into diagnosis, house call, and medication. On May 22, Dr. Hasegawa testified, he gave Hoshino medication to reduce his fever and liquid medicine for his cough. After Hoshino was admitted to the hospital the following day he was given similar medication there. The status of Hoshino's illness on May 22, the crucial date, was obvious from this extremely detailed questioning. According to Hasegawa, Hoshino was so delirious from high fever and was racked with such strong coughs that he could not have stood to talk to others. Cathcart pressed him by asking, "If he wants to go he could go to the Federation Headquarter, didn't he?" Hasegawa responded that he could have gone had he been willing to risk his life. The interpreter phrased this so that the meaning was "if he could bear it," causing defense attorney Lymar to object and start another round of disputes on the interpreter's English.

The second defense witness, Hajime Fujimoto, a clerk in the Japanese Hospital, confirmed that Hoshino was first admitted as Dr. Hasegawa's patient on February 24 and released seven days later, then was readmitted at 9:30 A.M . on May 23 for influenza. Kazuo Kurusu, the third defense witness, was the Japanese Hospital physician who entered information about Hoshino on the patient's chart. He testified that "Hoshino was suffering from acute catarrh of the throat, and hypertrophy—

a disease of the nose." Under Cathcart's cross-examination, Dr. Kurusu confirmed that Hoshino was in critical condition.

Federation Official Hiroshi Miyazawa's Testimony

The first of the defendants called to the witness stand was Hiroshi Miyazawa. The trial transcript indicates that his testimony was given "partly in English and partly through the special Japanese interpreter." As previously noted, Miyazawa, who was proficient in English, served as negotiator for federation headquarters with outside organizations, including the HSPA, and acted as liaison to the Filipino union.

After being sworn in in English, Miyazawa started out by answering defense attorney Brooks's questions in English. But Cathcart soon objected, "I don't understand." Judge Banks also said, "His English is broken, it is so broken that I don't get it. I don't know whether the jury understand it or not." As Miyazawa could understand questions in English, Brooks suggested, "If your Honor would prefer the Japanese interpreter, . . . I thought, may I suggest that just the answer be given through the interpreter."

The questioning of Miyazawa began on explanations of several federation documents (defense exhibits 4–7). The documents were federation bylaws, circulars to each island, and documents addressed to the HSPA and English-language newspapers during the strike translated by Miyazawa. These indicated that Miyazawa could write English, but it would not have been strange if his spoken English was difficult to understand. It appeared, however, that the prosecution was intent on casting doubt on Miyazawa's English-language ability.

In photographs of federation members, Miyazawa always appeared in a bowtie and wearing the boots he wore when he rode around the cane fields. His rimless glasses and high forehead gave him a very earnest look. Miyazawa, thirty-three years old when he stood trial, was the second son of a farm family living outside Ueda City in Nagano prefecture. At the age of eighteen he went to Hawaii to learn English. Since this was in 1906, just before transfers to the mainland were prohibited, he may have been influenced by Sen Katayama's Tobei annai .

After working in the cane fields for a few years, Miyazawa became a school boy and studied English. Like many school boys living with Caucasian families, Miyazawa converted to Christianity. But Miyazawa went one step farther and became a pastor. The only photograph of Miyazawa displayed at his family's home in Japan shows him when he was

twenty-three, five years after he had gone to Hawaii. His expression suggests a gentle cheerfulness. Two other young Japanese are in the photograph, and on the back of it he had written in square characters, "Fellow volunteers who are my right-hand men and active in evangelism and studies." By then Miyazawa had finished his studies at a seminary.

As Miyazawa made the rounds of the plantations preaching and doing missionary work, Japanese labor contractors often asked him to interpret during negotiations with the sugar companies. Eventually the contractors began to pay him for his interpreting. Involvement in these negotiations familiarized him with plantation work and the need to improve the lives of the laborers. Miyazawa also taught Japanese at a school run by his church. It was through that connection that he must have become acquainted with Tsutsumi. The two men had organized cane worker unions in the Hilo area, and when the Federation of Japanese Labor was formed, Miyazawa went to Honolulu as Tsutsumi's right-hand man. Miyazawa had sent for a picture bride from his hometown. During the strike he had left his wife and children in Hilo and stayed in Honolulu alone. At the time of the trial he had a six-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son.

At federation headquarters Miyazawa was known for his genial personality. Though normally quiet, he was a man of action. During the "silent send-off" campaign to put psychological pressure on the scabs as they departed by train to work on the plantations, only a few strikers joined in, but Miyazawa was always there. And to find out about the scabs' labor conditions, Miyazawa frequented the plantations disguised as a Chinese, risking his life had he been discovered.

Miyazawa's defense of the Filipinos during the strike put him in a difficult position within the federation. He was the only federation official whom the Filipino Labor Union trusted. When he resigned from his position as federation secretary after the strike, Miyazawa planned to start a labor movement newspaper that would appeal to all the immigrant communities.^[21] This project never materialized, perhaps because of HSPA interference.

Defense attorney Brooks began with questions about what happened at federation headquarters on May 22. Refuting Matsumoto's testimony, Miyazawa said, "Morning of May twenty two, I stopped at the office of Japanese Federation of Labor and soon went to check the Filipino strikers. I was not at the Federation office most of the time in the morning." He also testified that he had never seen Matsumoto until the Kyorakukan^[*] assault incident, nor had he met Saito^[*] until then. (Regarding the

Kyorakukan^[*] incident, Miyazawa said, "We were there all in that room when J. Matsumoto jumped into the place, and I told him it is not right to do that, and as I was going out to telephone to the police Saito^[*] asked me not to do so.") According to Miyazawa, Tokuji Baba as well as Chuhei^[*] Hoshino was suffering from influenza during the strike and was in and out of bed. At the time Matsumoto and Saito claimed that they received orders to go to Hilo, Baba had not been in the office. On the morning of May 22, when Miyazawa had dropped by Kyorakukan to check on Hoshino, he was lying in bed, limp.

Although Matsumoto, Saito, and the others testified that they had been ordered to kill Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki, Miyazawa said,

[Sakamaki] is a good friend of mine, over ten years. . . . While I was in Hilo and while I was pastor of a church in Hilo and, as I have recollection, I think he became a Christian at that time, and there was a pastor by the name of Ban. I am a good friend of his. He became a good Christian after that, and sometimes he came to my place and slept in my house and, when his child died, I went up there at the funeral. . . . I was never present at any meeting at any time when these defendants were present, about Sakamaki was discussed, not a single time.

On his second day of testimony, Miyazawa testified that Tamotsu Matsumura was an acquaintance of his. He had heard from Matsumura himself that he was doing work for the Thompson Cathcart law firm. About a month before the indictment, Matsumura had told him that he was helping in the investigation of the Sakamaki house dynamiting case and that he would be a witness at the grand jury proceedings.

BROOKS: "Well, you made no attempt to go to Japan or escape from the jurisdiction of this court while the grand jury were investigating this matter, did you?"

MIYAZAWA: "No."

The cross-examination was conducted by prosecutor Heen, who took over because Cathcart was ill. It took nearly two hours. Most of that time was focused on Miyazawa's qualifications as a pastor. Heen's first question was, "Have you got any certificate showing that you were ordained as a priest or minister of the Episcopal Church?" Miyazawa answered in English, "I was ordained as a catechist in Episcopal Church." Although this was a short exchange, Miyazawa did not speak in broken English, however problematic his accent may have been. But Judge Banks had insisted, "Give your answer in Japanese, I didn't understand you."

The previous day's Honolulu Advertiser had carried an article suggesting that Miyazawa was a bogus pastor. It reported that according to a Honolulu Episcopalian priest, Miyazawa was not a qualified priest but merely a lay reader.

HEEN: "How much did you get at that time as lay reader, fourteen years ago?"

MIYAZAWA: "At first twenty dollars, later on forty dollars. I haven't quit yet, but it is about five or six years that I haven't received any pay."

He said that as interpreter for the labor contractors, he earned about $70 a month and that he also interpreted for coffee growers, so he could make a living without a wage from the church.

Prosecutor Heen fired off questions as if he were representing the HSPA.

Q: "What were the laborers getting before the strike?"

A: "The pay was 77 cents a day."

Q: "Were they getting bonus, too, at that time?"

A: "I believe there was some bonus."

Q: "Not much?"

A: "Very little."

Q: "Little bonus. In February of 1920 do you know what bonus the laborers were getting?"

A: "I don't remember."

Q: "About 200%, wasn't it, or more?"

A: "The average of that year I think was over 200%."

Q: "Over 200%. Do you remember when the bonus became very high, started to become very high?"

A: "I think the highest was from May to July. . . ."

Q: "No, no, when it started to rise, wasn't that in the latter part or the middle part of 1919?"

A: "It was after the war started."

Q: "After the war started, when sugar was selling around $125 a ton, the bonus went up, didn't it?"

Clearly Heen was trying to insinuate that even though the workers were doing well, the federation was organized and the strike was started to drive the Hawaiian sugar industry to the wall. He then turned his ques-

tioning to speeches made at various plantations by the federation directors during the strike.

Q: "Wasn't Fujitani one of the speechmakers?"

A: "Yes, he is a fine speaker."

Q: "How about Tsutsumi, he used to make speeches during the strike?"

A: "Yes, he is a fine speaker too."

Q: "You gave speeches, you urged the laborers to go on strike, didn't you? Because you thought they didn't get enough pay?"

A: "Yes."

Heen once more returned to questions that tried to show that the federation wage increase demands were unjustified, but Judge Banks issued a warning.

JUDGE BANKS: "I want to make this suggestion, gentlemen, that I am not going to permit any extensive inquiry into the merits or demerits of the strike, because I don't think we are concerned with that. I would permit any questions which show the activity of any one of the defendants in the strike, but whether the strike was a just one or unjust one, why I don't believe that we are concerned with that in this inquiry. . . . As far as this case is concerned it doesn't make any difference whether the strike was justified or whether it was not justified, and to bring that feature into the case might prejudice the jury one way or the other, you know. We must confine ourselves to the charge and the evidence must be limited to that."

After this warning, Heen turned to questions about the pickets. Prosecution witnesses Matsumoto and Saito^[*] had said that they were members of the picket troop, and Seiichi Suzuki, a former federation director, had testified that he organized the picket troop, but Miyazawa stated, "As far as I know, each plantation had a watchman. If you called a watchman a picket, might have been a picket, that's all, as far as I know." Although he had been a federation headquarters secretary, Miyazawa said that he had never heard of "pickets," nor did he know whether the Oahu union or each plantation union paid the expenses of the pickets.

Appearing incredulous at Miyazama's answers, Heen repeated his questioning.

Q: "Did the Oahu union report about picketing to the Federation on its activities?"

A: "No."

Q: "Well, when the Federation paid money over to the Oahu union they didn't inquire what they wanted it for?"

A: "I don't know how the treasurer did that."

Suddenly, prosecutor Heen changed his line of questioning.

Q: "Did you have anything to do with the manufacturing of tools or implements at the Waipahu Japanese theater for setting fire to sugarcane?"

A: "I don't know."

Q: "Did you or the Federation have anything to do with setting fire to some cane at Waimanalo on May 7th, 1920?"

A: "Absolutely not." (in English)

Q: "Did you or the Federation have anything to do with setting fire to some cane near the cement bridge at Ewa on May 7th, 1920?"

A: "No."

Q: "Did you or the Federation or any officers of the Federation have anything to do with setting fire to some cane on field no. 2 and 13, on Waialua on May 12th, 1920?"

A: "No."

Q: "Did you or the Federation or any officers of the Federation have anything to do with setting fire to some cane at Waimanalo on May 14th, 1920?"

A: "No."

Q: "Did you or the Federation or any officers of the Federation have anything to do with setting fire to some cane at Waimanalo on June 7th, 1920?"

A: "No."

Q: "Did you or the Federation or any officers of the Federation have anything to do with setting fire to some cane at Waipahu, near Camp No. 10 on June 11th?

A: "No."

Q: "1920?"

A: "No."

Q: "Did you or the Federation or any officers of the Federation have anything to do with setting fire to some cane at Ewa in the night time on June 11th, 1920?"

During the strike, after Reverend Palmer's attempts at mediation had broken down, incidents of arson occurred on various plantations. The planters insisted that they were the work of striking laborers, and they kept asking Acting Governor Iaukea to call out the territorial troops. But the federation made counterclaims that the planters had staged the

incidents using "planters' dogs" to make it appear that the strikers were behind them. The Hawaii hochi^[*] had reported, "It appears that the planters see a court trial as a way to break the resolve of the laborers and end the strike."^[22] Indeed, union members on various plantations were arrested when the management accused them of being arsonists. Even those with airtight alibis were jailed for several days. On Kauai, the principal of the Japanese-language school, who had just made a statement supporting the local union, was arrested for arson even though a Filipino worker was later arrested as the actual culprit.

The Hawaii hochi had frequently proposed countermeasures: "Seeing the recent rash of fires in cane fields, we propose that a guard team be organized by the striking laborers. By organizing a guard team and hiring special watchmen to guard against cane fires together (with the planters) the laborers could show that they are sincere about protecting the industry." To judge from Miyazawa's testimony that each plantation had a watchman and from when Matsumoto and the others became pickets, it seems likely that the the pickets referred to by the prosecution were security guards organized to prevent misunderstandings about the arson cases.^[23]

In any event, Heen brought up the arson cases to give the impression that the Federation of Japanese Labor was behind them. Lymar raised obections to Heen's questions, but Judge Banks, despite his warning that no information not directly related to the dynamiting of the Sakamaki house was to be introduced in court, summarily overruled each of his objections. The jury therefore heard about the arson cases during the strike involving a director of Federation of Japanese Labor headquarters.

Heen continued to fire questions at Miyazawa on an even more unsettling line of examination.

I will ask you whether or not you have anything to do with the placing of some dynamite under the house of one Hayaji Nakazawa at Ewa, in May, 1920, because he, Nakazawa, went back and worked for the plantation when the strike was on?

Do you know anything about the placing of some dynamite by certain Japanese, the name being Y. Matsumoto, Z. Matsumoto and Miyake, under the house of a Filipino by the name of Alcara at Waipahu in the latter part of April or the first part of May, 1920, because this Filipino was working against the strike?

Do you know anything about the assault and battery committed on Manpachi Ogata of Waipahu, on or about the 10th day of March, 1920, by the defendant Furusho^[*] , Fujita, Kobayashi, and a man by the name of Takematsu who used to be the head of Wahiawa picket?

Manpachi Ogata had served as a federation director until January 1920 when he and Hayaji Nakazawa were publicly denounced in the Japanese press as planters' dogs and informants for the HSPA. His son was so bullied at Japanese-language school that he refused to go, and Ogata was so upset at the federation that he went around urging the striking laborers to return to their jobs. When Shoshichiro^[*] Furusho^[*] , a leader of the Waipahu Plantation union, tried to stop him, the two men got into a fistfight. This was the assault and battery on Ogata that Heen referred to. A full year after the incident, on May 6, 1921, Furusho and the two other leaders of the Waipahu union were suddenly charged, tried, and sentenced to a year in prison. When indicted on conspiracy charges three months later, Furusho was already in prison.

The jury had heard Furusho's name several times from prosecution witnesses. Saito^[*] had testified that Furusho had ordered him to go to the Oahu union office and given him travel expenses to board the Maunakea . After the Sakamaki house dynamiting, Saito said Furusho had commended him for his action ("You did a fine work") and told him "some other things" might need to be done. The jury had also heard Furusho's name in connection with the Kyorakukan^[*] assault incident, when Matsumoto said that Furusho attacked him with a pitcher and Saito struck Furusho to protect Matsumoto. Saito also stated that Furusho had come to his hotel and given him $35 to go into hiding, because if Saito was caught the investigation would extend to the federation leaders.

Watching Furusho in the defendants' bench every day, jurors must have found that he drew their attention in a very different way from Kondo^[*] , the local boss. Not only was Furusho a large man, his posture was erect, his expression intense, and his gaze unusually steady. He was then thirty-seven years old. The eldest son of a farm family near Otsu^[*] City in Kumamoto prefecture, he graduated from agricultural school. At twenty-one he realized his dream of traveling abroad by going to work at the Waialua plantation on Oahu. The following year he had married his cousin, and at the time of the trial he had an 11-year-old daughter, an 8-year-old son, and a 4-year-old daughter.

Ten years before the strike, Furusho moved to Waipahu Plantation to become a contract cane grower. In the 1918 Hawaii Nihonjin meikan (Directory of Japanese in Hawaii), his profile stated, "The area he is in charge of has had good harvests for several years, and is among the highest producing in the plantation; this year's production is said to be

greater than last year's." The directory said that Furusho^[*] had decided on permanent residence and had purchased land for a home.

As a contractor who employed several hundred workers at Waipahu, a major Oahu plantation, Furusho was a man trusted by the company. He was not a laborer who demanded higher wages, or one who could not make ends meet. If the strike had not taken place, he might have earned large profits as labor contractors on the other islands did when the sugar price soared in 1920. But because he had urged his workers to make Hawaii their permanent residence, he took the lead in demanding wage increases. After the strike ended, he helped to organize the Oahu Shokai^[*] , a company to sell workers food and sundry goods. The sugar companies monopolized profits by deducting from wages the amounts workers and their families spent on essentials at company stores. The Oahu Shokai, a new concept proposed by Furusho, was like a consumer cooperative that sold goods directly to the workers at low prices. Furusho served as the company's president, and Tsutsumi and other former federation leaders were on the board, but all were indicted before the company got off the ground and it soon went bankrupt.

Furusho was a man given to action, and as his granddaughter, Sachiko Ueda, recalled, "He was always yelling." This trait seemed to have become more pronounced as he grew older, but Furusho was already known for being short-tempered during his Waipahu days. Details of the Ogata assault and battery case are obscure as trial records no longer exist, but from contemporary newspaper accounts, it can be surmised that it was merely an argument that escalated when tempers flared on both sides, with Furusho striking the first blow.

Heen pressed Miyazawa about the Ogata case as if it were a crime committed by federation leaders. A Mr. Takematsu, who had been charged along with Furusho, Heen pointed out, was the man who prosecution witness Saito^[*] said had given him the revolver he took to Hawaii. But Miyazawa told Heen that Takematsu had died after the strike, so the witness who could confirm or deny Saito's testimony was no longer alive.

Lymar objected, saying, "Just a moment. If your honor please, counsel has stated something that was not in the question. The question was assault and battery, they were not convicted of assault with intent to commit murder."

But prosecutor Heen continued to ask Miyazawa similar ques-

tions: "Do you know anything about some assault and battery committed on T. Harada by a man named T. Hiroyama, Fujimura, and Matsumoto . . .?"

Even Judge Banks thought he had gone too far. "I think you are getting beyond the limit," he told Heen.

In the redirect questioning, defense attorney Brooks asked just one question: "Did you or any of the officials of the Federation of Labor have anything to do with the dynamiting that occurred in Los Angeles, the McNamara dynamiting, or the blowing up of the Lusitania , or the Wall Street or the Mooney and Billings dynamiting in San Francisco, did you or any of the Federation have anything to do with that?"

Judge Banks seemed to be appalled: "Mr. Brooks, I hardly think you can be propounding that seriously." Brooks replied, "I consider it just as relevant as the questions of [Mr.] Heen."

An Alibi Confirmed

Tokuji Baba, the defendant who took the witness stand after Miyazawa, was thirty-three years old. He wore rimless glasses similar to Miyazawa's but was much shorter and thinner. As the eldest son of a wealthy farm family near Shibata City in Niigata prefecture, he might have inherited the family lands, but when he was fifteen years old he went to Hawaii where his uncle lived.

Aside from Tsutsumi, Baba and Ichiji Goto^[*] were the only Federation of Japanese Labor officers mentioned in the FBI files. According to one FBI report, "Upon his arrival [in Hawaii], Baba went directly to Waialua plantation where he worked for four years and then returned to Japan. He stayed in Japan about one year and then again he came to the territory and obtained work at Waialua plantation where he has been up to the time of last strike. He was active as the head of Buddhist Youth Association and he wrote to Buddhist magazines and short stories etc. He likes to write and contributes to Japanese newspapers occasionally."^[24]

At the time of the strike Baba worked at the Waialua sugar company mill and was one of the higher wage earners. Along with H. Fujitani, he became involved early on in the local wage increase movement. When the Waialua union was organized, he was named its chairman. According to the FBI report, "At first Baba was very conservative in his views and actions, but gradually through his association with Tsutsumi, Miyazawa and others, became more or less radical in his views and actions."^[25]

Defense attorney Brooks started his direct examination of Baba by focusing on his health on May 22, 1920. Baba testified that after coming down with influenza on February 18, he had been ill all during the strike. He denied giving orders to Matsumoto to go to Hawaii on May 20. "I was not in the office that day," he said. He recalled seeing Matsumoto at Fujitani's home "for a little while," but he did not talk to him. And the first time he saw Saito^[*] , he said, "was when he came here and was on the witness stand."

Brooks completed these direct examination questions in about fifteen minutes. His method of operation was to present his witnesses quickly; then, after allowing Heen to press them during his cross-examination, he tried to overturn those points during his redirect questioning.

In response to Heen's cross-examination, Baba provided further details of his illness. After coming down with influenza after a speaking tour of Maui, Baba remained in bed at the hotel housing workers evicted from Waialua, but so many people were staying in the same room that he could not rest. Both Hoshino and his doctor, Gensho^[*] Hasegawa, feared that his life was in danger if he stayed there. Indeed, Hasegawa took Baba home to stay with him in Honolulu.

BABA: "I went to Dr. Hasegawa's place and stayed there. On the third of April I came with Dr. Hasegawa in his automobile to see the flag parade.^[26] My health was not very good and my friends thought that I could not do any business as an official so they telephoned me one day and wanted to know if I would go back to Japan. I told him if they are going to send me back to Japan I want to go back to Japan. It was about the 17th of May."

The following day, May 18, Baba returned to Waialua Plantation, where he stayed for eight days. It was May 26 when he returned to Dr. Hasegawa's house. On May 22, the day that Matsumoto said Baba had issued the order to go to Hilo, Baba was still in Waialua.

The cross-examination brought out details of Baba's movements around the crucial date of May 21. When Baba returned to Waialua, he sent a resignation letter dated May 20 to the Oahu union, giving poor health as his reason. (The May 25, 1920, Hawaii shinpo^[*] suggested that Fujitani might take Baba's place as Waialua delegate.) His fellow workers objected to his resignation because they felt the strike would soon end, so his offer to resign was deferred. "It was about the time the strike was to end," he said, "that I was asked by Tsutsumi to come to Honolulu to confer with him as to the settlement of the strike. He said, 'we want to have some laborers to be connected with this settlement.'" De-

spite his illness, Baba had to attend the final negotiations with HSPA president Waterhouse at the Young Hotel.

Heen asked Baba, as he had asked Miyazawa, about the daily wage of the workers at the time of the strike, making it seem that their wage increase demands were unjustified. He also sought to show how much Baba (and the other defendants) were being paid by the federation or the unions during the strike. Baba said that he received no pay, only expenses, when he served as a federation director. His monthly salary of $85 began only in August, after the strike ended, and continued for about six months until he returned to Niigata in January 1921.

An FBI report of January 22, 1921, stated, "[Baba is] among the Japanese returning to Japan by the Shunyo Maru tomorrow morning. He is returning to his native land for recuperation." Heeding Dr. Hasegawa's advice, Baba returned to Japan for a time to recover his health. He also married a local woman, who came back with him to Hawaii, and he turned his family home over to his younger sister and her husband. It was clear that he intended to make Hawaii his permanent residence. About two months after he got back to Waialua Plantation he was indicted. Although Baba had resigned as Waialua union chairman, when he returned from Japan he agreed to take on the job again.

Changing his line of questioning, Heen asked Baba in conclusion, "Isn't it a fact that the Federation or the Hawaiian Laborer's Association is paying nine thousand dollars for the defense of all of you in this case?" To this, Brooks interjected, "Not to me."

The first female witness to take the stand was Sajo (Sayo?) Inoguchi, a middle-aged woman whose face reflected a difficult life. According to her testimony, she had worked in the cane fields with her husband on Ewa Plantation until they were evicted during the strike. After going to Honolulu she worked at Kyorakukan^[*] from February 28 until the beginning of June doing cleaning and washing. At that time, about ten federation leaders were staying at Kyorakukan, among them Hoshino, who was in bed most of the time she worked there. It was witness Inoguchi who had seen that Hoshino's condition was dire on May 22 and had telephoned Dr. Hasegawa.

INOGUCHI: "As he was unable to eat normal meals, I had made him rice gruel, but he could no longer eat that. His fever was very high, and I cooled his forehead with ice. He couldn't even make it to the lavatory across the hall, so I had to take him by the arm and lead him there. I think it was just before noon that Dr. Hasegawa arrived. The next day, Mr. Hoshino was admitted to the

hospital. I took his arm and led him to the car. The night before he went to the hospital, I was at his side all night, changing the ice to cool his head. No, he was in no condition to leave his room at Kyorakukan^[*] during that day (May 22) and go to the Federation office. . . .

There were many people connected to the Federation who came and went, but I remember well Mr. Hoshino from his condition. His high fever and serious cough continued particularly seriously for four or five days before the doctor came to see him. Mr. Hoshino took the medicine the doctor gave him, but just when his fever seemed to go down, it would go up again. This situation was repeated, and he gradually got worse.

In his last question to Inoguchi, Heen asked, "Did they tell you what you are to testify of?" She replied, "He told me not to tell lie, to tell pololei [the truth]," Inoguchi replied. "I also became ill with influenza about the time of the strike's end, and I'm still not back to normal health even after a year and a half." Inoguchi left the witness stand with unsure steps.

The Honolulu Advertiser noted that Inoguchi's testimony established Hoshino's alibi for May 22.

The seventh defense witness was thirty-four-year-old Yasuyuki Mizutari. His face was almost too delicate for a man, but his firm mouth expressed the strength of his will. Mizutari came from Mashiki County in Kumamoto prefecture. His father was a spear-fighting teacher, and his family had served the Hosokawa clan for generations. Until the strike Mizutari had worked in the mill at Pioneer Plantation in Lahaina on Maui. Mizutari and Inoue, who died of influenza, were the only two federation headquarters directors from Maui. It was Mizutari who, armed with a revolver, stood guard at the first meeting of delegates from all the islands at which the issue of whether to strike was discussed. At federation headquarters, Mizutari at first dealt with finances, but after the increase in influenza patients, he was active in the health department. After the strike, at the end of October 1920, Mizutari left the federation and returned to Kumamoto with his wife and three children. He came back to Hawaii two months later, on Christmas Eve, went to work at the Oahu Railway. Perhaps it was for these reasons that he was not indicted with the other federation leaders eight months later.

In response to Brooks's direct examination, Mizutari said that he went to Maui on business several times during the strike. In May, however, he went only once to Maui. Mizutari remembered this trip well because it was the only time that he went with Tsutsumi. In cross-examination he stated, "I am a laborer, I couldn't talk very well, and I asked

Mr. Tsutsumi to go along and have this explained." The two men went to Maui on May 19 and returned to Honolulu on May 22.

On May 22, after their ship from Maui arrived in Honolulu at 6:30 A.M ., Mizutari and Tsutsumi walked to federation headquarters. Tsutsumi telephoned Umemoto, another director, asking him to come in. Umemoto arrived with Nippu jiji reporter Gen'ichi Okubo^[*] at about 7:00 A.M . They talked until after 8:00, then Mizutari and Tsutsumi headed by car for Suigoro^[*] in Waiau. (The driver of this car later died of influenza.) On the way they stopped off to see Mizutari's family, which was renting a house in Honolulu. It was only after 9:00 A.M . that the two arrived at Suigoro. As they had a meeting scheduled for 7:00 that evening at federation headquarters, they spent the time until then at Suigoro, ate an early supper, and returned to Honolulu.

In other words, Mizutari's testimony directly conflicted with that of Matsumoto and Saito^[*] , both of whom had stated that they received orders from Tsutsumi at the federation headquarters office during the day on May 22. Mizutari confirmed Tsutsumi's alibi. The Suigoro was located near Waiau station, standing alone on a narrow road facing Pearl Harbor. It was some distance from Honolulu, but it was beyond the reach of bothersome newspaper reporters and there was no chance for planters' dogs to enter there. Federation leaders often gathered there, including the meeting that decided on the strike's end, because it was possible to maintain confidentiality.

In response to Heen's cross-examination, Mizutari spoke in detail about the day at Suigoro: "I was hungry, I had some rolled rice and, while we were eating, the nine o'clock train passed. Well, we went in the boat to crab fishing and we took some food along with us and, while we were eating the food in the boat, that a train that passed there a little after nine o'clock."

The Oahu Railway schedule for that year shows a train leaving Honolulu at 9:15 A.M ., the only one around the time Mizutari heard a train pass by. This train arrived in Waiau at 9:45 A.M .

When Mizutari and Tsutsumi reached Suigoro, they changed into cotton kimonos. It seemed that they were hit by the accumulated fatigue from four months of rushing around night and day since the strike started. The two men relaxed to prepare for the struggles ahead. Pearl Harbor was calm as usual that day. No doubt they were able to see several U.S. warships in the distance as the construction of the naval base was in progress. Then they fished until after 2:00 P.M . After returning to the Suigoro, they asked that the crab they had caught be cooked, played

some go in a room overlooking Pearl Harbor, and left at about 6:30 P.M . to attend the meeting.

Take Hamamoto, the manager of the Suigoro^[*] , confirmed Mizutari's account. Her husband was a fisherman who went out to sea every day. While caring for her four children, Take had operated the Suigoro on her own since its opening seven years before. Her testimony was summarized as follows:

Many Federation members came, but I remember Mr. Tsutsumi well. I think it was Mr. Mizutari who first started to come. The first time that Mr. Tsutsumi came a while later, he said he had a cold and wasn't feeling well. He slept in for a couple of days. After that, I think he came about three times other than when there were meetings.

It was just once that he and Mr. Mizutari came together. I can't give the exact date, but it was in the middle of May and I know it was a Saturday.

When they came they says, "Well, fix up something for us, we want something to eat, we have just come back from Maui." I was making sushi, that is rolled rice, and my husband was not there, and I told them, "Why not take some of this sushi?" and they says, "Well, if you have that we don't need anything else." And they took that sushi and went to the pier, eating sushi.

I remember distinctly the time that they came together they took these two rolls of sushi and went out, eating, and looked funny to me and, for that reason, I remember the time.

I think they were in their suits [this is the only point on which her memory differed from Mizutari's], and they went off with the towels I lent them draped around their necks.

Take Hamamoto's testimony, devoid of extraneous emotions, seemed very solid. The Honolulu Advertiser noted, "The cross-examination of [Mizutari and Hamamoto] by Judge William H. Heen for the Territory, failed to bring out any contradictory testimony each holding to the fact as stated in direct examination."

Noboru Tsutsumi Takes the Stand

The trial went into recess on February 22, Washington's birthday, a national holiday. Late that night Cathcart, the special deputy attorney general, died of a sudden heart attack, and when the court began its session the next day at 9:00 A.M ., at the suggestion of defense attorney Lymar, it was adjourned out of respect for his memory. Just twelve days earlier it had been announced publicly that the Republican party convention

unanimously recommended that Cathcart be appointed judge of the U.S. district court, the highest post in the territory's judiciary. Naturally, it was only possible with the backing of the HSPA. At the time the sixty-two-year-old Cathcart stood at the pinnacle of his nearly forty-year career.

On the morning of Friday, February 25, the seventeenth day of the trial, defense attorney Brooks noticed Tamotsu Matsumura in the courtroom gallery. Brooks raised an objection. He said that he intended to call Matsumura, who had taken Matsumoto and other prosecution witnesses to the Thompson law office and had helped the prosecution gather evidence for the charges, as a witness. Judge Banks ordered Matsumura to leave the courtroom and then defendant Chuhei^[*] Hoshino took the stand.

The facts of Hoshino's background are sketchy. He came from a farm family in Chiba prefecture, and he worked for a time at a shipyard in Japan. After coming to Hawaii when he was twenty-eight years old, he worked at the Papala sugar mill in Kau County on Hawaii. At the time of the trial he was forty-three years old. In photographs Hoshino has a long jaw and a languid expression. During the strike the Japanese-language newspapers often described him as "moderate" (onken ). Yet on his card in the immigration directory at the Japanese consulate in Honolulu there was a notation in thick red ink: "Warning: dangerous person who attempted to bring charges against Consul General Yada."

The consulate's notation was dated 1921, indicating that Hoshino had some altercation with the consul general concerning federation activities after the strike. As no charge was filed, it is unclear what it was about. Had some pressure or accusation by the consulate pushed the normally moderate Hoshino beyond his limits? Or might someone have informed on Hoshino for commenting that he would be willing to take legal action to settle some point?

The jury had already heard testimony from several witnesses that Hoshino was ill during the strike. Now the jury heard directly from Hoshino about his condition at that time. As the Honolulu Advertiser observed under the headline "Testimony Unshaken," "Hoshino's testimony proved to be more or less bullet-proof on cross-examination." Under prosecutor Heen's questioning he affirmed that he had been delirious on the day Matsumoto claimed to have received orders from him.

Hoshino said that he had met Matsumoto and Saito^[*] just once. In the latter half of October, one month after Hoshino had returned to Hilo,

the two men suddenly visited him at the Hawaii Island union office asking for a hearing. According to Hoshino, Matsumoto said, "I have done my best and for that the Oahu union is not rewarding us for the work we have done." Because he was not able to procure any work, Matsumoto wanted to go back to Japan. He asked that the Hawaii union pay his and Saito^[*] 's expenses for the trip. Along with Chikao Ishida and Sazo^[*] Sato^[*] , who were in the office at the same time, Hoshino listened to their story. Explaining to them that they needed to talk to the Oahu union about Oahu matters, and that the Hawaii union couldn't take care of matters related to other islands, he sent them away. Hoshino stated flatly, "They have not claim to us any money for any alleged blowing up of Sakamaki's place."

At 11:08 A.M . on Friday, February 25, Lymar, who relieved Brooks, called the tenth defense witness to the stand. Instantly, the courtroom stirred.^[27] It was "N. Tsutsumi," the strike leader who had been the eye of the storm for nearly half a year and the troublemaker whom the FBI files designated "the most dangerous radical in Hawaii." The atmosphere in the courtroom was tense.

Lymar began his questioning by asking whether his name was Noboru or Takashi, then asked his age. Tsutsumi answered, "Thirty-one and ten months." It must have been evident to the jury that this witness was clearly different from the other Japanese witnesses who had come before. Tsutsumi, thinner since the strike, seemed taller than he really was. Although it had been four years since he arrived in Hawaii, his face was pale, not tanned by the sun. His responses were given through the interpreter, Maruyama, but he faced Lymar squarely and answered in a firm voice.^[28]

Tsutsumi testified that he found out about the dynamiting of the Sakamaki house from reading the Nippu jiji on June 4, the day after it occurred. He had met Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki when he was the principal of the Japanese-language school in Hilo, and he said that he knew that Sakamaki was opposed to the strike. "Mr. Sakamaki is an interpreter for the plantation," he said. "It's no surprise his position at the strike. But his opposition was no influence at all."

LYMAR: "Had you ever discussed with anyone or heard anyone else discuss a plot or a project of a possible trip down to Olaa for the purpose of doing injury to Sakamaki or his premises?"

TSUTSUMI: "I had not."

Regarding his activities on May 22, the date that Matsumoto and Saito^[*] said they were ordered to Hawaii to dynamite Sakamaki's house, his testimony was the same as Mizutari's: the two men had returned from Maui that morning and spent the day at Suigoro^[*] . The only additional points were (1) that he had telephoned the Nippu, Hochi^[*] , and Shinpo^[*] to let them know he had returned from Maui (the only reporter who came to get the story was Okubo^[*] from the Nippu ) and (2) that the house rented by the Mizutari family was near a pineapple factory. (As defense exhibit, the passenger list of the Maunakea with the names Tsutsumi and Mizutari included was presented.) As for Matsumoto and Saito, Tsutsumi said that he had not met them until the trouble at Kyorakukan^[*] . He categorically denied the testimony of Matsumoto and others that he had issued orders on May 22 to kill Sakamaki on Hawaii.

Lymar then gave Tsutsumi the chance to give testimony about the Kyorakukan assault incident.

TSUTSUMI: "I think that evening I was playing go with Miyazawa, a kind of Japanese chess, and I was called by the servant that somebody wants to see me. I went towards the parlor and I saw a big man walking, coming into the parlor. He says, 'Well, I am Matsumoto from Waialua,' he says, 'You know me?' I says, 'Are you Matsumoto?' I said, 'Do you have any business with me?' He says, 'The meeting of the delegates is not satisfactory to me.' So I says, 'What's the matter?' He says, 'You know everything,' he says, 'You know everything in your heart.' I told him it is sudden, I says, 'Don't make so much noise, why don't you be quiet and talk this thing over?' and he stood up, he slapped the table. I told him he looked intoxicated, 'You are excited. Why not talk a little more quietly?' He says, 'You are fresh.' I told him that night, at this time, 'I have no interest in the Federation and if you have any business, why don't you go to the person who is now attending to this business?'"

Judge Banks interrupted his testimony to adjourn the court, but Tsutsumi continued the next day, Monday, February 27.

TSUTSUMI: "As I stated before, the conversation took place in the parlor and the man was intoxicated, so I left the place and went to my room, I went back to the room to continue the game with Miyazawa. The man was standing on the verandah at that time, he called out, 'Tsutsumi, come out, come out.' 'I have no reason to be called by you and go out.' I heard steps and a person calling 'Fix him,' and the person came into the room, S. [Seiichi] Suzuki walked into the room. He had a pistol in his left hand pointed toward me. I stood up. As he was going to press the trigger, Miyazawa hit him on the elbow. The result of Miyazawa hitting this man's elbow the gun flew away from his hands and struck the bureau on the other side room, breaking the glass.

Matsumoto came in at this time, between Suzuki and Miyazawa, and struck me on the eye. Then I grappled with Matsumoto and kicked him on the foot and he fell down. At the time he fell there was a big chess board, he struck his head on this board and he cut himself. When he fell down I held him down, I says 'What you do?' Then Saito came out and asked me to wait."

Matsumoto, known for being quick to fight, was confident of his physical strength. And yet he had been knocked down by a pale intellectual and injured so badly that his head was bleeding. Out of spite at having been embarrassed in front of onlookers, it seems, Matsumoto had gone to the police to report the incident as a case of assault. This was the nature of the Kyorakukan^[*] incident that the defense attempted to prove.

Tsutsumi also testified in detail about Seiichi Suzuki, the prosecution witness whom he said had pointed a pistol at him. When Suzuki had faced a recall, Tsutsumi had accompanied him to Maui. Lymar asked whether the real reason for Suzuki's recall was not that he no longer resided in Maui (as Suzuki had testified) but that he had been involved in money problems in Maui. The prosecution objected to this line of questioning, and Tsutsumi was not allowed to answer. He was, however, given the opportunity to deny that he had spoken to Suzuki about acquiring dynamite or ordering Suzuki to bring firearms from Maui.

Lymar ended the direct examination of his most important witness with the following question. "Mr. Tsutsumi, you had quite a little influence in the organization of the strike, and I want to ask you whether, throughout the strike, you were ever present at any meeting of any Japanese interested in that strike when violent acts were discussed to be used against obstructers of the strike?"

Tsutsumi's response was unequivocal. "As to that," he said, "we have discussed, not what we would use violence against the others but violence has been used against us. At one time, it occurred at Waialua plantation—police have pointed a gun at the strikers, and we discussed what actions to take on that."

Prosecutor Heen's Cross-examination

At 9:20 A.M . Heen began his cross-examination of Tsutsumi by asking about Seiichi Suzuki: "Wasn't he a picket, or the head of the picket in Honolulu during the strike?"

All of Tsutsumi's answers regarding the picket troops were interpreted with a different nuance, causing defense attorney Lymar to raise

objections. The answers quoted here are those that interpreter Maruyama rephrased.

There is no picket organization in the Federation.

I don't know as to Oahu union except what they report to the Federation, we don't know anything outside of that.

Whatever that would come into our attention we would investigate.

We investigated the watchmen at Waipahu. I don't know whether the strikers put watchman at Waipahu or the plantation put a watchman at that place. The Federation didn't have any picket at all. I was informed that they organized these picket gangs by themselves.

I don't know a picket gang at Aiea. I didn't see it at Aiea.

We hired special police at Waialua, I know that. Watchman is men waiting at street corners to keep away the laborers from going to work. I made inquiries and they said they are doing that for themselves.

Heen then changed his line of questioning. "Now, the other day you stated that you were a professor of ethics, is that it, of biology?" he said.

When Lymar had asked him about his educational background during direct examination, Tsutsumi must have answered, "After graduating from Shiga Normal School, I studied agriculture at Hiroshima Higher Normal School, and at the Education Department of Kyoto Imperial University I studied philosophy, biology, and education." Yet what the courtroom heard was Maruyama's English interpretation. It merely strung words together into the answer, "I obtained degrees of higher philosophy, normal school, educational, ethics, natural history." Maruyama obviously was not familiar with the Japanese educational system. Where he should have interpreted that Tsutsumi had qualifications to be a schoolteacher (kyoshi^[*] ), Maruyama instead had said "professor." This was why prosecutor Heen seized this English interpretation of the direct examination and asked Tsutsumi whether he was a professor of agriculture. During the questioning the interpreter must have used the word "teacher" (sensei ) in Japanese, so it was natural that Tsutsumi's answer was "Yes."

Heen then asked if Tsutsumi was a "professor of elocution." Not noticing Heen's sarcasm in using a word similar in pronunciation to "education," interpreter Maruyama took it for a mistake by Heen, and speaking for Tsutsumi, said that it was "education." Heen once again asked whether Tsutumi wasn't a professor of elocution.

By making Maruyama repeat over and over that Tsutsumi was a "professor" in a variety of disciplines, from the humanities to science,

Heen was obviously trying to give the impression that Tsutsumi was misrepresenting his educational background, in an effort to show the jury that Tsutsumi was a charlatan. And Heen added, "You are a professional agitator, too, aren't you?"

In responding to questions about his source of income since arriving in Hawaii, Tsutsumi said that he had left Japan with the promise of receiving $75 as Japanese-language school principal, but once on the job he was told that the school could only pay $65.

HEEN: "When you were secretary of the Federation, how much were you getting?"

TSUTSUMI: "Never got any. They asked me to wait until the meeting of the delegates to decide the salary of the secretary (which was after the strike). But my board and lodging were paid."

HEEN: "Have you received any money at all from the Federation?"

TSUTSUMI: "I had my money at that time."

HEEN: "When you went down to Waiau and had a crab dinner down there, did you pay that out of your pocket?"

TSUTSUMI: "I paid myself."

HEEN: "Have you ever been refunded for the money you advanced?"

TSUTSUMI: "No."

During the strike, in late April, when delegates met immediately after the Federation of Japanese Labor was renamed the Hawaii Labor Association, the Hawaii hochi^[*] reported,

Director Kato^[*] proposed that "salaries be set for secretaries Tsutsumi and Miyazawa." Director Inoguchi explained that secretaries Tsutsumi and Miyazawa had not taken salaries but were only being paid their lodging expenses. The island delegates agreed that salaries should be set. Secretary Tsutsumi, however, declined, stating, "At this time when we have yet to fulfill our promise to the Oahu laborers, and as I have stated to my direct assistant, I will not accept a salary until the problems have been resolved. If you insist on giving me a salary, I will immediately donate it to headquarters." Thus, the Kato proposal was referred to the board of directors.^[29]

It was evident from this article that Tsutsumi and Miyazawa had not received a salary from the federation.

HEEN: "How are you making a living?"

TSUTSUMI: "I have spent all the money I had with me (from Japan and earned as Japanese language school principal) and I am a little hard up for my living at this present time."

No doubt it was due to the circumstances reported in the Hawaii hochi^[*] that at the first delegates' meeting after the strike Tsutsumi's salary was set at an extraordinary $450. The amount was clearly meant to compensate him for not taking a salary during the strike. But Tsutsumi was actually paid that amount only during the month and a half before he resigned. In his testimony, Tsutsumi added that because he was finding it difficult to make ends meet, he intended to return to Japan as soon as the trial was over.

Heen then turned to the secret meetings the federation held frequently during the strike. According to Tsutsumi, when the federation discussed measures that it did not wish to reveal to the HSPA through newspaper reports, it excluded reporters. That was why the newspapers refered to them as "secret meetings." But he added, "There's records and minutes of every meeting. I kept the minutes myself, except ones Mr. Goto^[*] kept."

Prosecutor Heen was not satisfied. As if to suggest that the "secret meetings" not only discussed measures against strikebreakers or picketing but also conspired to carry out illegal strike tactics like the Sakamaki house dynamiting, he kept pursuing the issue in his questions. But Tsutsumi did not waver in his insistence that everything that happened in the meetings was in the minutes. When Heen asked where the meeting minutes were, Tsutsumi answered, "They were taken to the grand jury. All the records were take. . . . by a police officer in a canvas bag to the grand jury. . . . There were a number of books that I couldn't count. I think the treasury department book alone was about twenty. There might have been several hundreds of books in that bag."

When Heen expressed doubt that Tsutsumi had seen this happen, Tsutsumi once again answered firmly: "Automobile came here and as I looked into the automobile I saw a number of books. I said, 'What's the matter?' He said all the books of the Federation is brought here and as I looked into the automobile, there were books there that I remember was in the automobile." (The loss of these records was no doubt the reason that Tsutsumi did not write a sequel to his volume covering the history of the strike up to April.)

Heen's cross-examination ended without making significant inroads into Tsutsumi's testimony. Even the Honolulu Advertiser concluded that the testimony of this "star witness" was not shaken. In particular, it noted that he "told a radically different story of the now-famous 'ruckus' at the Kyorakukan^[*] teahouse."

The Testimony of Kan'ichi Takizawa and Fumio Kawamata

The eleventh witness for the defense, Kan'ichi Takizawa, the federation director representing the Waipahu union, was the second son of a farm family outside Komagane City in Nagano prefecture. Since his older brother was adopted through marriage into another family, Takizawa was to have succeeded as head of the family, but when he was seventeen years old a friend who dreamed of going to America enticed him to run away from home and go to Hawaii. Only thirty-two, Takizawa was short, fat, and balding and looked considerably older than Tsutsumi and Miyazawa, who were the same age. He was a good-natured man who liked to compose Japanese waka -style poems and write essays, even though he was not much good at it. The card on Takizawa in the immigration directory at the Honolulu Japanese consulate bore the same redink notation as Hoshino's: he was marked as a "dangerous person who attempted to bring charges against Consul General Yada."

According to Matsumoto's testimony, when he was ordered to go to Hawaii on May 22, Kan'ichi Takizawa told him that the quickest way to get rid of someone was to use dynamite, and afterward Takizawa shouted at him that he had done the job for their twenty-five thousand comrades so he should not demand payment for it. Not only did Takizawa deny Matsumoto's testimony, he said that he had never met or talked to him. "I only saw him at the office of the Waipahu union, talking to somebody else," he testified. "I never talk to him." The only time he had seen Saito^[*] was on or about June 12 or 13. "There was going to be a [sumo] wrestling tournament at Waipahu," he said. "Before the wrestling tournament took place, everybody practiced in front of the union office. A tall and lean man was there and he was the next, and I asked them who he was and I was told that that was Saito." But he had never spoken to Saito.

Prosecutor Heen's prefunctory cross-examination prompted only one significant response from Takizawa, who said that Ogata, Nakazawa, and other planters' dogs at Waipahu had stirred up trouble throughout the strike and that the plantation had been the site of the greatest number of clashes with scabs. Tsutsumi and Miyazawa had already testified that the strikers on various plantations had organized security groups on their own and that federation headquarters had not known the details. But Takizawa testified, "There were twelve hundred members [striking at Waipahu] and it was divided into several departments and somebody

named one department as picket." At the very least this was an admission that there had been a picket troop at Waipahu Plantation. Heen had tried to establish that prosecution witnesses Matsumoto and Saito^[*] had been pickets and that because they were engaged in "dirty work" during the strike, federation headquarters leaders had ordered them to kill Sakamaki. That was why he had persistently asked the defendants about the existence of picket troops. Nevertheless, when he finally obtained a response confirming the existence of the pickets, he failed to pursue the matter.

Fumio Kawamata, the twelfth witness for the defense, faced direct examination for twenty minutes, cross-examination for another twenty minutes, then redirect for about five minutes. Kawamata, a native of Ibaragi prefecture, had experience as a technician in the shipping industry. He had arrived in Hawaii ten years earlier, and when the strike began he was working at the Waipahu Plantation company store.

Together with Takizawa, Kawamata participated in the Oahu union as a delegate from Waipahu Plantation. About one month before the strike ended, he was selected as Waipahu delegate to the federation, replacing a predecessor who had died of influenza. Kawamata was in the "internal affairs" department of the organization. After the strike, Kawamata was elected the Oahu union secretary. When Tsutsumi and others resigned from the Hawaii Laborer's Association (formerly the Federation of Japanese Labor), Kawamata was elected association headquarters secretary.

In late December 1920, around Christmas time, Honji Fujitani of Waialua Plantation, who had remained at association headquarters after the strike, had gotten into a heated argument with Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, president of the Hawaii hochi^[*] , at a public meeting. The Hochi^[*] had been ridiculing the new leaders of the association, but there were rumors that Makino had demanded $110,000 from the HSPA to act as mediator in the strike. The commotion occurred when Fujitani confronted Makino about this directly.

Since the association had bought the Hawaii shinpo^[*] as its mouth-piece, the debate raged on in the pages of the Hochi and the Shinpo^[*] . But instead of confronting Fujitani, the Hochi made personal attacks against Kawamata. For example, the Hochi ran a front page headline saying that Kawamata was blacklisted for having duped "the Consulate General of the Empire of Japan." In large type, it printed a "notice" issued by the Consulate General two years before the strike.

Notice:

Fumio Kawamata:

For giving untrue statements regarding the existence of a previous wife in the guarantee for proof of sending for a wife submitted to this consulate by Ryosaku^[*] Koike on January 25, 1918, we hereby prohibit you from acting as guarantor for applications to this consulate for the next six months, according to Notice No. 1 of January this year.^[30]

Kawamata may have been unaware of Koike's bigamy and merely guaranteed him as he was requested to do, but the Hochi^[*] cited this document as proof that Kawamata was a "smooth talker." "It would be a simple matter for Fumio Kawamata, who attempted to deceive the Consulate General of the Empire of Japan, to deceive laborers," the newspaper declared. "If the laborers think of the self-serving articles he has published in the Hawaii shinpo^[*] , they will certainly realize what he is up to."^[31]

Kawamata, who had a long face with even features, rarely expressed his emotions. His gaze was aloof, but his "nihilistic" manner was attractive to women. His common-law wife was an older woman who managed a hotel, where he lived with her during his release after the indictment. For this reason, the Hochi called Kawamata a "gigolo."

It was because of the articles in the Hochi that Heen abruptly asked Kawamata during his cross-examination, "Are you married?" When Kawamata answered that he was not, Heen pursued the point: "You are living with a woman, are you not?"

Although Lymar instructed Kawamata that it was his constitutional right not to answer a question about whether or not he was living with a woman, Kawamata answered Heen with composure. "I would not answer how many years, but I am living with a certain woman."

In spite of the tropical climate, the Puritan ethic of the missionaries had taken root, so there was a prudishness about relations between men and women in Hawaii. Hoping to appeal to the moral sentiments of the jury, prosecutor Heen continued to focus on Kawamata's character.

HEEN: "Isn't it a fact that Japanese Federation of Labor gave you certain money to pay to the strikers at the rate of $25 and that, instead of paying the strikers the $25 allotted, you paid the strikers $20 each and embezzled five dollars out of each sum?"

KAWAMATA: "No. I could give a reason to that if you wish to hear . . ." (Heen stopped him.)

Heen stopped this testimony, then peppered Kawamata with questions about his involvement in violence during the strike. "Isn't it a fact that

during the strike, you attempted to dynamite the house of one Alcara at Waipahu?" "Isn't it a fact that, during the strike, you committed assault and battery on Y. Saito at Waipio?" "Isn't it a fact that during the strike, you attempted to dynamite the house of T. Fukunaga on Kauai?"

The prosecution was seeking to paint Fumio Kawamata, Tsutsumi's successor at association headquarters, as a womanizer lacking in morals. Heen did not ask a single question related to the charges in the indictment.

The next witness for the defense was Ichiji Goto^[*] , who was sitting with the other defendants. As noted before, when he was sixteen Goto had been brought to Hawaii by his father and had gone to work on a sugar plantation. Before the strike he was a reporter for the Nippu jiji . His friends regarded him as a very serious and quiet person.

In contrast to Tsutsumi and Miyazawa, Goto's strength was his ability to work quietly in the background. But at public meetings he displayed a passion that seemed wholly uncharacteristic. On the speaker's platform he would recall the unforgettable experience of seeing his father whipped by a Portuguese luna for some minor infraction. Goto reached Hawaii the same year that Sen Katayama's Tobei annai was published. On its back cover was an advertisement for the journal Rodo^[*] sekai: "Rodo sekai sympathizes in particular with the weak in presentday society." Goto may have been one of those who took these words to heart.

After the strike, Goto wrote:

Numerous struggles awaited the Japanese immigrants, who lived under countless unfavorable conditions, when they sought decent treatment as human beings. Confronting them were strong enemies: oppression by the planters who saw them as cattle; public officials who backed the capitalists in their quest for profits first; unfairness of political power; and deep-seated racial discrimination against foreign communities. . . . Harmony and friendly relations can be realized only when both sides are on equal footing; it is utterly impossible when one side acts like the king and the other is treated like beasts of burden.

In responding to Lymar's short direct examination, Goto said that he had first seen Matsumoto and Saito^[*] in the courtroom, and he denied having heard about Matsumoto and the others going to Hawaii on May 22. Prosecutor Heen's cross-examination was simple.

HEEN: "As secretary in the Federation how much were you getting?"

GOTO^[*] : "At first I received a salary of $85 and, in meeting of delegates in June [1920], the salary was fixed at $150."

Goto^[*] was an only child who looked after his elderly parents. That was why Goto was the only federation secretary who had received a wage from the start.

HEEN: "During the strike, did you go around and find out whether anybody was obstructing the strike?"

GOTO^[*] : "No, I didn't make any investigation. I had in mind that capitalists would object, and interfere with the strike."

HEEN: "Well, isn't it a fact that officials of the Federation made it their business to find out who among the Japanese were obstructing the strike?"

GOTO: "In my opinion, everybody thought that our strike was pololei [true] and everybody was in favor of it."

HEEN: "These speeches that you made during the strike were for what purpose?"

GOTO: "My intention was to keep these strikers quiet, to have them use a peaceful method and, being there's lots of number, I was afraid these strikers may go astray."

HEEN: "And you continued to make those speeches throughout the strike?"

GOTO: "Not only that, but I was making speech to strikers to bind themselves with each other and not go back to work until final instruction is given for them to go back to work, and that, of course, has been continued right to the end of the strike."

Goto was the only defendant to use the term "capitalists" or to assert that the workers had a legitimate right to strike. While working as a school boy, Goto had sought solace in the Bible. He was a deeply religious Christian believer throughout his life, and his testimony fully revealed his simple but innate sense of justice.

The Examination of Witnesses Ends

On February 28 the fair weather that Honolulu had enjoyed for several days turned to gray skies and strong winds. The direct examination of the day's first witness, Tsurunosuke Koyama, was conducted by Charles Davis, Brown's law partner, who served as attorney for Koyama and Ishiyama, the two defendants from Hawaii. The thirty-three-year-old Davis had studied law at Stanford University, then served as prosecutor for the city and county of Honolulu.

Davis's questioning of his witness, whom he always addressed as "Mr. Koyama," was orderly and easy to follow. Koyama, who was forty-two years old at the time, gave his answers succinctly, with no extrane-

ous information. Like Kondo^[*] and Hoshino, both forty-three, he was one of the older defendants. On August 2, 1921, at the time of the indictment, the Honolulu Advertiser reported that Koyama was "an active radical agitator among the strikers," but nothing could be further from the truth. In contrast to the other defendants, he was a calming personality.

Koyama was born and raised in Shinonoi, Nagano prefecture. The hill behind his family home, now owned by his nephew, is an apple orchard. Koyama's father had moved to Shinonoi from Kyoto to open a one-room school in a temple. Koyama, the fourth son, was registered as Tazurunosuke, but he disliked this name, which sounded like that of a Kabuki actor specializing in female roles, so he went by the name of Tsurunosuke. After graduating from the Nagano normal school, he hoped to study in the United States. As a first step he emigrated to Hawaii, only to find that he could not cross to the mainland owing to the legal ban on immigration. He worked as a school boy for a Caucasian teacher in Olaa, then worked in the cane fields and used his savings to open a store at Waiakea Plantation. By the time of the strike eight years later, he had succeeded at raising chickens and managed to acquire some land.

Koyama and his wife, Teru, were known to be a very close couple. They had no children of their own but raised a family of five orphaned children. Koyama was a taciturn and placid man who did not mind helping others. Japanese laborers sought him out to discuss their troubles, including those related to women and gambling. He was skilled at calligraphy, and almost every day someone asked him to write a letter or a document.

When the Waiakea Plantation union was formed in November 1919, Koyama was unable to turn down its chairmanship, and soon thereafter he was elected chairman of the Hawaii Island union. As delegate from Hawaii he attended the January 1920 meeting to determine whether to hold the strike, the April delegates' meeting, and the June delegates' meeting, which voted to end the strike. Koyama was chosen to chair these meetings, which had to reach agreement on key issues. Koyama always managed to calm the excited debate with great skill. Because he came down with influenza, he had declined to chair the poststrike delegates' meeting that discussed the restructuring of the federation, but he was finally pressured into service and brought the contentious meeting to an agreement. When Tsutsumi and the others resigned their duties, Koyama also resigned from the Hawaii Island union.

Koyama testified that he had visited Olaa Plantation several times during the strike to make speeches, but he had never seen Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki at these lecture meetings, nor had he heard anything about Sakamaki's activities to obstruct the strike. This was important testimony. If Sakamaki's efforts at obstructing the strike were so negligible to be of little concern to the Hawaii Island union, then the territory's indictment was considerably weakened. He also said that he had seen Matsumoto and Saito^[*] for the first time in the courtroom. And he denied the allegations of Matsumoto and Saito about the conspiracy forged at the teahouse outside Hilo and orders to dynamite the Sakamaki house.

In his cross-examination prosecutor Heen asked Koyama how responsibilities were distributed at federation headquarters, but Koyama answered that he saw the officers only when he went to Honolulu for meetings and did not even know their names very well.

To Heen's question, "Where were you on the 23rd of May, 1920?" Koyama answered, "I was at (Hawaii Island union) headquarters." When asked whether Ishida and Miyamura had been there, he answered, "I think he was there" and "I think everybody was there." For some reason Heen did not ask Koyama if Matsumoto, who allegedly had been given orders in Honolulu, had visited the office, but he did ask Koyama who had been at the office on May 27, when Miyamura allegedly ordered the Sakamaki house to be dynamited. Once again, Koyama said he had been, and Heen merely confirmed that Ishida and Miyamura had been there as well. Heen did not question Koyama about the crucial secret meeting at the teahouse. He simply treated Koyama's response as establishing the fact of the secret meeting at the teahouse.

The next witness, Sazo^[*] Sato^[*] , thirty-three years old, also from the Hawaii Island union, was the only defendant whose place of origin and background I was unable to trace. His testimony revealed that at the time of the strike he was working at the Laupahoehoe Plantation sugar mill and was elected its union chairman. As director from the Hawaii Island union, he was at federation headquarters in Honolulu from the end of February on. Plantation company guards tried to force his wife and child, who had remained at Laupahoehoe, to move out of plantation housing because Sato was not there. Deciding to return to Hawaii to settle the matter, Sato submitted his resignation to federation headquarters on May 20.

Before leaving for Hawaii, Sato visited a friend by the name of Hamano in Kailua. In those days there was no highway cutting through Nuuanupali gorge, so he had to travel along the coastline. Sato left Ho-

nolulu on May 21 and stayed two nights at Hamano's house in Kailua. Although prosecution witnesses Matsumoto and Saito^[*] had said that he was at federation headquarters on May 22, Sato^[*] asserted in his testimony that he was still in Kailua that day. Only on May 23 did he return to Honolulu.

Sato was unable to reach agreement with Laupahoehoe Plantation about his family, so he took his wife and child to Honolulu, where he was in charge of the federation headquarters' warehouse from June to September. His work consisted of managing everything from distributing foods and sundries to the evicted workers to the use of automobiles by federation headquarters. He testified that there was "trouble" between Seiichi Suzuki, a former director of the federation, and federation headquarters.

[Suzuki] brought an automobile from Maui; that was with the proposition of the Federation buying that automobile. We bought the automobile. . . . The agreement was that the Federation was to buy automobile, in case the Federation would become unnecessary with the automobile that they would re-sell this to Suzuki. He came to the place where I was staying on Nuuanu Street, and he broached this proposition to me, he says, "I have sold this automobile to the Federation. I want to be clear of that sale. Would you pay me $300? and that you could do with the automobile just as you please." I told him the automobile is not worth that much and I offered him a hundred dollars and notified him to that effect. I paid him $150 and had the thing settled up. He was dissatisfied and he says that "the Federation had this automobile for a long time and now to just give me $150 for it is not right." He says, "I am hard up for my living and I couldn't go back to Maui for reasons that I was dismissed from the place that I came from," and he said that he was not treated right.

In his cross-examination, Heen made no reference to this trouble between Suzuki and the federation. He focused instead on trying to shake Sato's alibi that he was not at federation headquarters in Honolulu on May 22, but Sato did not change his story. With Sato's testimony, Lymar completed the case for the defense. Fifteen witnesses had been called for the defense, including nine of the defendants, and ten exhibits had been submitted into evidence.

On Wednesday, March 1, when the court opened, Harold Stafford, an attorney for the prosecution, asked the judge, "If your honor please, at this time we would ask to reopen the case for the purpose of putting on the testimony of a certain witness that we discovered. This information was discovered last night between eight and nine o'clock." Defense at-

torney Lymar immediately objected because he had not been notified of this request in advance. After forty-five minutes of argument between the prosecution and defense attorneys, the newly discovered key witness for the prosecution was finally called.

Very nervously, the witness gave his name as Bunkichi Tsuda.

I work at the wireless station at Koko Head now, but was working at Ewa plantation until the strike. After being evicted and going to Honolulu, I worked as a crew member of the inter-island steam ship. But the work was too hard, and I only worked there for a short time. I lived at Kato^[*] shrine which was a camp for evicted strikers. One day I was contacted by Ewa plantation union chairman Yokoo to become a picket.

The headquarters of the pickets wa. . . . behind Tokiwaen. I met Mr. Tsutsumi and Mr. Furusho^[*] there. I don't remember the exact date and time. It may have been about a month after the dynamiting [about mid-July]. I was with two other pickets, Y. Matsumoto and J. Matsumoto [different person from prosecution witness Junji Matsumoto].

Mr. Tsutsumi said he was on his way to visit a friend nearby, and I hardly spoke to him. He may have said something like, things must be hard for you. Mr. Tsutsumi had just dropped by.

Becoming impatient, Judge Banks interjected that he did not think the testimony offered was material, but Heen asked for the court's indulgence.

[TSUDA]: "[About mid-August] I went to the federation office with Y. Matsumoto and told Tsutsumi if he would not give us five dollars a week for our expenses. Tsutsumi said 'I think that could be done,' and says, 'I wish you to act as you were acting up to this present time,' and then we left the place.

"I also talked to Mr. Tsutsumi and Mr. Furusho about Nakazawa. It was also at the Federation headquarters office."

HEEN: "Do you remember you had a talk with Furusho and Tsutsumi after the dynamiting at Olaa?"

TSUDA: "No."

HEEN: "Did you have a conversation with me last night, through the interpreter, about some conversation you had with Furusho and Tsutsumi?"

Lymar objected to the question: "We object to this as an attempt to impeach his own witness, without any showing of hospitality."

Heen then asked Tsuda whether he had not said the night before that Tsutsumi and Furusho had ordered the dynamiting of Nakazawa's house in Ewa and that they had told him he should do the same thing that Matsumoto, Saito^[*] , and Murayama had done in dynamiting Sakamaki's house in Olaa. Lymar objected again, and arguments between

the lawyers continued for a while. Finally, Heen produced a summary of the statement the witness had written for him the night before.

HEEN (to the witness): "Read this over and see if that will refresh your recollection as to the facts stated in it."

TSUDA: "Yes."

HEEN: "Now, when you had this talk with Tsutsumi and Furusho^[*] about Nakazawa, was that before or after the dynamiting of Sakamaki's house?"

TSUDA: "Before the dynamiting."

If Tsuda insisted that the talk had taken place before the Sakamaki dynamiting incident, then the prosecution could not show that Tsutsumi and others had ordered that Nakazawa be dealt with in the same way. Heen, taken aback by Tsuda's answer, asked to have the jury removed and to put on testimony to show that his witness was adverse. After the jury left the courtroom, Judge Banks told Heen that he had a right to withdraw his witness if he wished. Heen replied that he wished to do so, but Lymar was not satisfied. So Tsuda was called again to the witness stand for cross-examination by the defense.

Lymar was about to begin when Heen called out for the judge to wait.

HEEN: "Now I object to the defendant's talking to him, if the Court please. Tsutsumi and this man here, Kawamata, were just talking to him when they were asking that counsel talk to him. That is not right."

JUDGE BANKS: "Just a moment gentlemen."

HEEN: "Furthermore, we have got evidence that Tsutsumi talked to him before he was brought in this morning, that's our trouble. Tsutsumi is still talking to him, right at this moment."

The judge permitted prosecutor Heen to question Tsuda again.

HEEN: "Do you wish to make any change in the testimony that you gave this morning? Tell him to answer the question yes or no [to the interpreter]."

TSUDA: "No, I do not."

HEEN: "Were you advised by anyone not to make any statement this morning?"

Turning to Judge Banks, Heen asked to withdraw the witness, closing the curtain that he himself had raised on this little drama. The Honolulu Advertiser headlined, "New Witness in Bomb Case Is Surprise," that the prosecution was disappointed in Tsuda's testimony. The prosecution, however, had readied a final move. Heen recalled Seiichi Suzuki

to the stand. The dapper Suzuki was dressed in white flannels, but in contrast to his earlier appearance on the witness stand, he gave the impression of being a professional killer in his answers to Heen's questions.

Yes, first part of April, 1920, Kawamata and Furusho^[*] gave me instructions about this Filipino Alcara, at the Federation headquarter office. They told me that this man Alcara is for the plantation and working against the cause, and wanted me to go and kill him.

Yes, at that time Furusho told me to blow up the bridge at Kipapa Valley. It was this bridge, on the main road, in plantation as it was a bridge where plantation railroad runs.

Yes, I talked with Murakami about T. Harada, a contractor. Harada is the man that tried to get laborers back to the plantation, and we had to fix him up. We talked about beating him up. I talked with Tsutsumi after the assault. He was very happy when I made the report to him. He says, "You did fine," and he gave me some money to be paid to parties working under me.

Yes, sometimes afterwards (after talked about Alcara), it was either Togashi or Sakurai who was returned to work and, for that reason, I received a telephone message and I went to Waiapahu branch. Furusho asked me to kill them.

In contrast to his earlier testimony, Suzuki repeatedly used the word "kill," as Heen had expected he would. Judge Banks ordered Suzuki to stop his testimony at 12:15. He adjourned the court by stating, "Gentlemen, I want to get through with this case this week, I have other matters in court that need my attention and I am very anxious to get through this case this week." So Seiichi Suzuki continued his sinister testimony the next day.

Yes, I knew Sumizawa at Kahuku. I was sent there by Tsutsumi, he told me he got a telephone message from Y. Sato, for me to go there, there's some trouble up there.

I went to Honganji (Honganji Temple where strikers from Kahuku stayed) and talked to Y. Sato and others. I went to the Federation hospital at Kalihi with Y. Sato and others by automobile. We took Sumizawa into stable near the hospital and Y. Sato was telling Sumizawa to go back to the plantation. Sumizawa was asked by N. Baku to come to Honolulu to get the laborers back. Sato was telling Sumizawa to telephone to these two persons Tokimatsu and N. Baku that the laborers are ready and for them to come into Honolulu, but for them not to come by way of Waipahu because it is dangerous but come from outside.

It was a few days after that. I drove Sumizawa from Sato's house to Dr. Hasegawa's place in Alewa Heights. We met T. Baba at Doctor's place. Sumizawa requested that he wanted to work and he asked us to send him somewhere to

work. Dr. Hasegawa said he could not keep him at his place but he would telephone to a man named Okazaki, who had a pineapple field, and he would find out whether he is home or not. After telephoning Okazaki, he wasn't there. Dr. Hasegawa said that there's a man by name of Seikan Saito^[*] at Leilehua and he said, "I think that's the best place to go." And we decided to send him there. Then we all went there.

I was afraid that in case the police get hold of him that everything would come out, and to hide him away by supplying him with some work.

The testimony was cut off when Lymar objected, so it is not clear what they were afraid might come out. Then Heen continued his questioning.

HEEN: "Mr. Suzuki, when you came back from Maui and brought thirty sticks of dynamite, you told us before that you saw Tsutsumi after you got back. Do you recall that?"

SUZUKI: "I did."

HEEN: "Now what did Tsutsumi tell you about the dynamite that you brought back, if anything?"

The court never heard his answer because Lymar raised another objection. Having managed to link Tsutsumi's name to dynamite and to suggest to the jury the connection between the two, Heen ended his questions to Suzuki. Perhaps because Suzuki's testimony was not relevant, defense attorney Lymar did not cross-examine him.

Closing Arguments

On Friday, March 3, closing arguments were presented. It was to turn out to be a long day for all in the courtroom. The prosecution's arguments were opened by Harold Stafford, whom Judge Banks referred to in court as "Captain." An infantry captain in World War I, Harold Stafford had been a central figure in the American Legion in Hawaii. When the legion had presented the Hawaiian legislature with a bill to regulate the foreign-language press, it was Stafford who had drafted it. Although his closing argument and that of the defense do not exist in the trial transcript, the Honolulu Advertiser reported them in detail.

According to the newspaper, although Stafford's argument consumed the entire morning session and stretched well into the afternoon, "it can be truthfully said that there was 'not a dull moment' during the time he was addressing the jury. Even while the prosecutor painted prosaic word pictures of the less dramatic situations of the alleged conspiracy, he commanded the close attention of every person in the courtroom. On the oc-

casions when he rose to oratorical flights, the entire assemblage was, figuratively speaking, on its tip toes."^[32]

"Gentlemen of the jury," Stafford began, "the Territory was in no way concerned with the strike itself—whether or not it was justified, or even properly conducted. Every man has a right to a fair return for the labor and a right to strike in order to get it. Show me a man who is ashamed of a hard spot on his hand put there by honest labor and I will show you a man who has a soft spot in his head." But, he continued, the Japanese Federation of Labor needed money to carry on the strike.

Any man who stood in the way of their raising that money might well have been considered an enemy, and his eliminating a blessing. . . .

Even though [the defendants] had no intention of ordering the three alleged dynamiters to commit an unlawful act when they dispatched them from Honolulu to Hilo with the instructions to see the officials of the Hawaii Union for further details, the mere facts that they were thus dispatched and that they did subsequently dynamite Sakamaki's house, if proven, bound the defendants to pay the penalty in company with the actual perpetrators of the atrocity.

After designating the key prosecution witnesses, Matsumoto, Saito^[*] , and Murakami, as "perpetrators," Stafford said that he did not claim that all defendants had knowledge that the three men were promised rewards: "In our opinion, the offer was probably made by Miyamura without authority. It was a big 'sack of oats' held out to Matsumoto, Saito and Murakami after Yoshimura (who was to have aided in the Sakamaki bombing) had vanished. However these defendants did not dare repudiate the offers because they knew what the three men had done. Consequently, they passed the buck from one to the other until the men got tired and told their story."

In commenting on the defendants who claimed to have alibis for May 22, when the order was said to have been issued, Stafford said, "If the defense had been at all satisfied with any of these alibis, . . . I defy them to say that what they have proves that they had no faith in any of them, nor have we." For example, Stafford termed Hiroshi Miyazawa a liar for claiming that he was a pastor when he had no such qualifications at all. Indeed, Stafford attempted to give the impression that all of those with firm alibis were also suspect. By contrast, Stafford praised prosecution witnesses Matsumoto and Saito, whom he had called "perpetrators": "They could not have stood the long grilling of Judge Lymar, in cross-examination for the defense, had they not been telling the truth." Concluding his lengthy closing argument, he urged that "for the sake of

the peaceful and law abiding citizens of the Territory, no matter what their nationality," a guilty verdict be returned.

After an hour's recess for lunch, defense attorney Brooks spoke first for the defense. "His remarks," the Honolulu Advertiser reported, "were surcharged with forensic vitriol." He characterized Matsumoto and Saito^[*] "as conscienceless rogues and bastards, cold-blooded as snakes, who would just as soon blow up women and little children as eat their dinner." He continued, "The Territory has known for months just who dynamited Sakamaki's house, but they don't care about that. They have deliberately stepped aside, and allowed private interest to intervene. They have dismissed the case against Matsumoto and Saito in order that private interests might break up the Japanese Federation of Labor."

When Brooks finished, the chief defense attorney, Lymar, began his closing argument with the observation that never before in his experience as an attorney had he listened to "a supposed argument of facts in which had crept so much intolerance and prejudice as had characterized the attitude of the prosecution in this case." For the next two hours, he stoutly proclaimed the innocence of the defendants. The prosecution's charges, he said were like "the tale of a thousand and one Arabian nights." As for the key prosecution witnesses, he characterized Matsumoto as "a desperado and a crook"; Saito as "the wrestler who tells anything for money"; and Suzuki as a "fire brand 'fitted in every way for desperate business'—a man who should by all rights be deported." The prosecution, he suggested, had suborned the three witnesses and had fabricated evidence to fit the objective of the investigation. Heen and his colleagues, he said, had mounted "one of the flimsiest cases ever presented by a group of public prosecutors in the Territory."

In concluding, Lymar pleaded with the jury to disregard the nationality of the accused men. Because they were not familiar with the English language, he said, they should be given the same benefit of the doubt that the jurors would give any "underdog" in the interests of the American ideal of fair play.

At 8:15 P.M ., Judge Banks addressed the jury, "If you have any feelings in this case, any prejudice either for the defendants or against them, you must subordinate that to the one great purpose of arriving at a just verdict which, in all the future years, will meet the approval of your conscience." It was after 9:10 P.M . when the twelve members of the jury

withdrew from the courtroom to begin deliberations on the case. They no doubt looked very tired after the long day in court. Two hours later, at 11:21 P.M ., they announced their inability to arrive at a decision and repaired to a nearby hotel for the night.

In selecting the jury, both the prosecution and the defense attorneys challenged everyone with names sounding like those of people of color. The twelve jurors had Anglo-Saxon names. If any were of partly Hawaiian heritage, given the Hawaiian social structure, they would have been close to the white governing class. And one must wonder how many of the jurors would have been able to connect the names and faces of the fifteen Japanese defendants as they deliberated on the verdict.

All of the witnesses had been Japanese, and most of the names mentioned in their testimony were Japanese. Throughout the trial the jury complained that they were confused about the names and that it was difficult for them to grasp the gist of the testimony. The judge and the prosecutors had raised similar questions. Even the trial transcript often erred in reporting names. It referred to Sutsumi (for Tsutsumi), Konda (for Kondo^[*] ), Mujazawa (for Miyazawa), Hashino (for Hoshino), making it seem as if they were entirely different people. Since laborers on the plantations were identified with numbers, it is perhaps understandable that haoles had trouble remembering Japanese names, no matter how many times they heard them. One cannot help but be disturbed at the thought that this linguistic barrier may have affected the verdict.

Indifference to getting Japanese names right was echoed in the failure of either the prosection or the defense to address witnesses with the normal courtesies. Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki was the only one who both the prosecution and the defense addressed as "Mister."

With the exception of Sakamaki's testimony and part of Miyazawa's, the jury heard the Japanese witnesses only through the filter of the court interpreter, Kin'ichiro^[*] Maruyama. But the crux of the problem may have been the way that Japanese was spoken at the trial. Even in spoken English the meaning is unclear unless a subject is named. By contrast, in spoken Japanese it is easier and smoother to omit the subject. Even if a Japanese speaker does not use the first-person singular or the first-person plural, or even the second- and third-person, his meaning can be discerned from the context.

In English, it is also necessary always to clarify the affirmative or the negative. But in Japanese, the conversation often proceeds by using ex-

pressions that can be taken as either affirmative or negative, and there is a tendency to use very few words in expectation that the listener will divine the meaning. If Japanese spoken in this way is converted directly into English, a language that stresses clarity, then the result may be not only misunderstandings but also even a reversal of the nuances of the words used.

Naturally, this characteristic of the Japanese language reflects the psychological structure of a homogeneous society. To outsiders, tacit understanding among those sharing the same history, customs, and traditions as an ethnic group can appear as mutual indulgence, and avoiding verbal confrontations can be seen as evading responsibility. By contrast, in the United States, a heterogeneous nation made up of immigrants from very different cultures, people face many internal social boundaries, so perhaps it is natural that they expect clarity in daily conversational exchanges.

In any case, Maruyama's job at the trial was not easy. That said, however, the English interpretation appearing in the trial transcript raises doubts about how much of the testimony the jurors, who were ignorant of Japanese culture and customs, really understood.

What Was Judged?

The more one rereads the trial transcript, the more doubts arise about the testimony. The prosecution case was based on the testimony of Matsumoto and Saito^[*] , the two accomplices who had "confessed" to dynamiting the Sakamaki house. While their testimony was extremely specific, most of it did not agree with objective facts or material evidence. Odd and illogical statements crop up everywhere.

The prosecution had not established the facts as charged as solidly as Heen claimed. It should have been easy for the prosecution to substantiate the whereabouts of various witnesses through hotel registration records, yet the only one entered as an exhibit was a guest registry of the Okino Hotel. And this merely confirmed the names of Matsumoto, Murakami, and Akamine (not the name Saito) for the night of May 23 when they arrived in Hilo. The hotel in Olaa, where Matsumoto said he stayed after leaving the Okino Hotel until the night of the crime, June 3, was not named in the testimony, nor was its guest register submitted. The accomplice Murakami was said to have arrived in Hilo on the morning of

the crime, June 3, secretly carrying dynamite, and to have returned to Honolulu the following day, but a guest register for the night of the crime, when Murakami stayed at the Matano Hotel, was not submitted.

Nor was a passenger list submitted for the interisland steamer that Murakami used to travel between Honolulu and Hilo. Instead the prosecution submitted the passenger list for the Maunakea of May 22, the day Matsumoto and others allegedly received their orders to go to Hilo. This list included the names Matsumoto and "Akamine," the alias that Saito^[*] allegedly used. Matsumoto and Saito both testified that they had boarded the ship separately and had not met until they were in Hilo. But the passenger list notes the names Fujitani, Murakami, Matsumoto, and Akamine in that order. And although both key prosecution witnesses stated that on the way back to Honolulu they had boarded separately so as not to be noticed, the names Matsumoto and Akamine were together on that passenger list too.

If Matsumoto and the others boarded using their real names, it should have been obvious that eventually they would be found listed together. That made it meaningless for only Saito to use an alias. Saito said that he had "borrowed" the name of his acquaintance, but it makes more sense to conclude that it was Akamine himself who boarded the ship for Hilo. The prosecution needed a second witness to corroborate Matsumoto's testimony, so it was not inconceivable that the prosecution had Saito state that he used the alias "Akamine."

The trump card in the prosecution's case was the testimony of Matsumoto and Saito. It was indispensable for establishing the crime of conspiracy. But the testimony of the two men lacked consistency, raising a suspicion that they perjured themselves. If so, then there must have been a reason why they did so. Matsumoto may have wanted revenge against the federation leaders for the humiliation he received in the Kyorakukan^[*] assault incident, and perhaps for a life so failed that he had attempted suicide. Saito had been arrested for illegally distilling liquor and gambling, and he was also guilty of jumping bail. And it is possible that the district attorney's office had some other things on both men.

Matsumoto and Saito were clearly in weak positions. Each had reached a dead end in life. What if the HSPA had secretly assured them that their slates would be wiped clean and they would receive money to return to Japan? If one recalls the trap that HSPA lawyer Frank Thompson set for the Filipino union president Manlapit to force him to issue a stop strike order, this does not seem far-fetched. There are no clues as

to what happened to Matsumoto and Saito^[*] after the trial, and there is a strong possibility that Saito was using an alias.

The motive for the conspiracy charged by the territory of Hawaii may appear plausible at first glance. But Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki himself admitted in court that his attempts to obstruct the strike were limited to Olaa Plantation and merely consisted of placing the newspaper Kazan (Volcano) where the laborers would see it. If, as the prosecution asserted, the motive for the conspiracy was to serve as a lesson to other "planters' dogs" who were resisting the federation, doing away with Sakamaki would not have had much impact. In fact, the names of several "dogs" working for the planters on Oahu in opposition to the federation were raised more than once in the trial. If the purpose of the "conspiracy" was to restrain anti-strike activities, it would have made more sense to take action on Oahu than on Hawaii where the laborers were still at work.

The aims of the territory in bringing the indictment can be understood if we divide the twenty-one defendants into four groups. In the first group were the three federation secretaries, Noboru Tsutsumi, Ichiji Goto^[*] , and Hiroshi Miyazawa, who led the strike. Clearly these men were children of their time, influenced by the reverberations of the Russian revolution. All three were moved by a clear consciousness that they were reforming the world. Though their actions may not have been tied to an ideology, to the power elite in Hawaii, they were committing threatening crimes of conscience.

Of the three, Tsutsumi, who had resigned his position after the resolution of the strike, remained the brains behind association headquarters. As late as 1921 he traveled around the islands raising money to compensate the laborers who had joined the Oahu strike. Tsutsumi also urged collective action by the cane field workers and the pineapple field workers to demand higher wages. Since the majority of the latter were also Japanese immigrants, from the vantage point of the territorial authorities, a labor struggle involving both of these major industries would have posed the danger of a Japanese takeover of Hawaii. An FBI report issued six months before the indictment reflected such fears: "The Japanese Federation was a weapon in Japan's strategy to take over Hawaii. The Japanese engaged in a radical labor movement as a means and weapon of national and racial policies to dominate the Hawaiian is-

lands economically and politically. The Federation was an example of the frightening unity and teamwork of the Japanese."^[33]

In the second group were the officers of the Oahu union that had gone on strike in 1920: Fumio Kawamata (Waipahu), Kan'ichi Takizawa (Waipahu), Shunji Tomota (Waianae), Honji Fujitani (Waialua), Tokuji Baba (Waialua), Yokichi^[*] Sato^[*] (Kahuku), and Eijuro^[*] Yokoo (Ewa). After the strike, when Tsutsumi and the others resigned, they became the core leaders of federation headquarters, directing the labor movement until the indictment.

The third group consisted of those at the location where the crime took place: Tsurunosuke Koyama, Kaichi Miyamura, Chikao Ishida, Chuhei^[*] Hoshino, and Sazo^[*] Sato of the Hawaii Island union. The prosecution claimed that they were the main actors in the Sakamaki house dynamiting incident.

The fourth group was made up of two men connected with the workers' security organizations, Shoshichiro^[*] Furusho^[*] and Seigo Kondo^[*] . These defendants formed a supporting cast to corroborate the testimony of Matsumoto and Saito^[*] . According to the prosecution, both were semi-outlaw local bosses.

It is also possible to divide the defendants into those able to defend themselves on the witness stand and those who were not given that opportunity. To review, of the twenty-one defendants named in the indictment, fifteen actually appeared in court, and nine of these took the witness stand: the three federation secretaries, Tsutsumi, Miyazawa, and Goto^[*] ; the federation directors, Baba, Hoshino, Takizawa, Kawamata, and Sato; and Koyama of the Hawaii Island union.

At the outset, the defense attorney stated that in the interests of time, and taking into consideration Judge Banks's desire to complete the case as soon as possible, he would not call each defendant to the witness stand. One of those who did not testify was Shunji Tomota, twenty-seven years old, who worked as a mill hand after he arrived in Hawaii from Hiroshima at fifteen and who represented Waimanalo Plantation at the Oahu union during the strike. After the strike and the resignation of Tsutsumi and others, he joined federation headquarters. As his position was similar to that of Kawamata and Takizawa, it is understandable that he would not need to testify.

In the case of Ishida, however, the defense may not have pursued the best strategy. The testimony about Ishida given by the prosecution witness was not sufficiently countered by the testimony of Koyama, who

was also from the Hawaii Island union. The driver of the car Matsumoto and the other perpetrators allegedly used on the night of the crime testified that he had handed over to Ishida the gun he had found in his car. This was crucial testimony that the prosecution used to insinuate that Ishida had wanted the gun so as to destroy the evidence. Yet Ishida was not afforded the opportunity to explain or deny the assertions made. The revolver was not presented as evidence in the trial, nor was any mention made during the trial as to what had happened to it.

Although Honji Fujitani, the Waialua delegate, was not called to the witness stand, Matsumoto testified that not only had he hired Matsumoto to collect subscription fees for Nippu jiji , he had also told Matsumoto to go to Honolulu and receive orders from Baba about going to Hilo. On May 22 Fujitani also boarded the same ship for Hilo with Matsumoto on his way to raise strike support funds in Hawaii. Fujitani appears on the passenger list along with Matsumoto and the others. Matsumoto did not give Fujitani's name as one of the conspirators at the teahouse in Hilo, but he did testify that he asked Fujitani to accompany him the second time he went to Hilo to seek the promised $5,000 from the Hawaii Island union. It would seem that the defense could have clarified many of the facts claimed by calling Fujitani to testify.

But defense attorney Lymar might well have wanted to avoid questioning Seigo Kondo^[*] and Shoshichiro^[*] Furusho^[*] . One of Kondo's sidelines was operating a pool hall, and the Honolulu Advertiser hinted at his involvement in gambling. Furusho had been convicted of assault and battery on Manpachi Ogata.

The other defendant who did not take the witness stand was Tsunehiko Murakami. Thirty-seven years old at the time, Murakami was from Kumamoto prefecture. During the strike he was the delegate from Ewa Plantation at the Oahu union, but not much more is known about him. The prosecution witnesses testified that Murakami was ordered, along with Matsumoto and Saito^[*] , to dynamite Sakamaki's house and that he obeyed the order. Murakami allegedly was the one who set the dynamite, secretly brought in from Honolulu, under the floor of Sakamaki's house and actually lit the fuse.

Murakami's actions were described only in the testimony of Matsumoto and Saito. Although Murakami was said to have arrived from Honolulu on the day the crime took place, the prosecution showed no physical evidence to support this, not even, as noted earlier, the passenger list of the Maunakea . Yet Lymar never gave Murakami the opportunity to counter the testimony. If Murakami associated with Matsumoto and

Saito^[*] after the strike, was there something besides the Sakamaki incident that the defense did not want the prosecution to question Murakami about?

It is also possible to consider as a group the defendants who had already returned to Japan and were tried in absentia.

Eijuro^[*] Yokoo, the Ewa Plantation union chairman, came from Tsukushi-gun, Fukuoka prefecture. After graduating from middle school he became a local primary school teacher, but he went to Hawaii to work on Ewa Plantation to pay off family debts. His wife, who had accompanied him, died two years after their arrival. According to his second wife, Toyo, Yokoo became a staff member of the Japanese Hospital after the strike ended, but since members of the Ewa union frequently went to his place of work, the Japanese doctor who got him the job told him to cut his ties with the labor movement. Two months before the indictment, he returned to his hometown in Fukuoka, for what he intended as a temporary stay. (Yokoo died in an accident five years later.)

Yokichi^[*] Sato^[*] , the Kahuku Plantation union president (33 years old) was a graduate of an agricultural school in Miyagi prefecture. Two years earlier he had been sent from Miyagi prefecture to Kahuku to conduct research on crop practices. Sato won the trust of the Japanese at Kahuku, and as the local Honganji-affiliated school representative he attended the Hawaii education meeting that Tsutsumi participated in. He had been asked to join the movement for a wage increase and had been a central figure among the Japanese at the plantation after the strike. Matsumoto had accused Sato of striking his head with a bottle in the Kyorakukan^[*] incident, and according to Seiichi Suzuki, Sato had assaulted Sumizawa in the stable near the makeshift hospital for evicted workers. But Sato had returned to Japan seven months before the indictment.

It was Kaichi Miyamura whose importance to the case outweighed that of the other defendants who had gone back to Japan. Indeed his return to Japan might have been convenient for the prosecution. Like Koyama and Sato, Miyamura, a contractor at Wainaku Plantation outside Hilo, had been pressured to join the local union movement. The jury heard that Miyamura ordered Matsumoto, Saito, and Murayama to dynamite Sakamaki's house when they met at the teahouse in Hilo. Miyamura was, in effect, the main alleged perpetrator of the crime behind the scenes. Matsumoto and Saito had testified that Miyamura had forced

them into committing the crime by threatening them: "In case you do so, tell this thing to any outsider and to bring any damage to the cause of this strike, that the Federation publicly suppression of my name and also the name of all the relatives." As if to impress this fact on the jurors, the prosecution had Matsumoto and Saito^[*] repeat this several times. Hidden in their testimony was what the territory really sought to bring to judgment in the trial.

In the first stage of the strike, the Federation of Japanese Labor had made public its regulations for disciplining turncoats. Punishment by ostracism, in the eyes not only of the HSPA, the direct enemies of the federation, but also of other immigrant communities in the territory, was a peculiarly Japanese practice that was difficult to comprehend.

Though Japanese immigrants constituted nearly half the population of the islands and were the largest ethnic group, Hawaii was unmistakably an American territory, part of a country that was founded on respect for individual thought and dignity. Though there may have been a gap between reality and ideal, America as a country and society taught that democracy assures the right to opposition on any occasion. Using ostracism to punish those who disobeyed the collective action of the Federation of Japanese Labor, including even their families, seemed reactionary to Americans.

Within the narrow framework of national consciousness in a relatively homogeneous society like Japan, it was reasonable to bundle everyone together in the name of unity. To use ostracism as a punishment to protect an organization in Hawaii, as if it were operating in Japan, underscored just how insular the Japanese immigrant community was. The alarm felt by the Hawaiian elite rapidly transformed itself into the Japanese conspiracy theory.

Judge Banks had warned the prosecution and defense, "I am not going to permit any extensive inquiry into the merits or demerits of the strike, because I don't think we are concerned with that." While not going so far as to accuse Judge Banks of dissimulation, it could be said that what the territory wanted to pass judgment on was the "threat and pressure" (such as that attributed to Miyamura) that lay at the heart of the prosecution's charges.

The Verdict

As the jury deliberated on the morning of Saturday, March 4, rain fell steadily outside. At 9:30 A.M ., Frank James, the jury foreman, told Judge

Banks that the jury wanted to ask about "extenuating circumstances." The request indicated that the deliberations were going in the prosecution's favor. At 11:10 A.M ., the jury foreman again asked Judge Banks about specifics in the extenuating circumstances provision. Fifteen minutes later, the jury returned to the courtroom to report that they had reached a unanimous verdict. All the defendants were found "guilty as charged." However, they recommended "leniency for all the above defendants with the exception of Murakami."

It took the jury less than five hours to reach a verdict on the fifteen defendants. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that the jury had voted a total of twenty-five times. It was obvious that the jury had reached its conclusion during two hours of deliberation on the previous evening and during the morning had been discussing whether to grant leniency.

In his instructions, Judge Banks told the jury,

You are not bound to believe anything to be a fact simply because a witness has stated it to be so, providing you believe from the testimony and evidence that such witness was mistaken or has testified falsely, and if you believe that any witness has willfully testified falsely as to any material fact you have a right to disregard his entire evidence except insofar as it may be corroborated by other credible evidence, facts or circumstances in evidence in this case.^[34]

Thus in finding all the defendants guilty the jury decided that the testimonies of Noboru Tsutsumi, who said that when the orders to commit the crime were allegedly issued on May 22, 1920, he spent the day crab fishing at Suigoro^[*] ; of Yasuyuki Mizutari, who testified that he was with Tsutsumi that day; and of the woman who managed the Suigoro, who testified that she remembered that Tsutsumi and Mizutari had come that day, were not believable. And they also decided that the physicians who testified as to the illness of Tokuji Baba and Chohei^[*] Hoshino and the maid who took care of them at Kyorakukan^[*] were unbelievable as well.

What the twelve members of the jury had taken to be the truth was the testimony of Matsumoto and Saito^[*] , accomplices who had been compromised by the authorities and who had turned state's witness for the territory. They decided to believe the testimony of two men who repeated themselves, as rehearsed, while looking down at their notes, and claimed that the defendants ordered them to go to Hawaii to kill Sakamaki.

The March 5 Honolulu Advertiser headline proclaimed, "Fifteen Japanese Found Guilty of Conspiracy." The paper praised Judge W. H. Heen, city attorney, and H. E. Stafford, deputy city attorney, "both of whom handled the case with exceptional brilliancy."

Six days after the guilty verdict, on Sunday, March 10, the participants in the trial met again in court at 2:00 P.M . Before issuing the sentences, as was customary, Judge Banks asked each defendant if he had anything to say. All except Tsutsumi, who was last, stated through the interpreter, Maruyama, that they had nothing to say. Standing at the defendants' bench, Tsutsumi looked up directly at Judge Banks. There was no longer any reason for him to remain in Hawaii, he said, and he wished to return to Japan if possible. Judge Banks then sentenced all the defendants to "be imprisoned in Oahu prison at hard labor for the term of not less than four years nor more than ten years."

On the mainland, Sacco and Vanzetti were awaiting their death sentences in prison. Petitions for a retrial were circulated, and support funds were raised not only from anarchists and labor union members but also from academics and intellectuals. European labor unions and leftist groups, starting with those in Italy, the two defendants' native land, sent telegrams to President Harding requesting that he overturn the death penalty. Demonstrations opposing the death sentence took place outside American embassies.

In contrast to the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, the trial of Japanese defendants in the Sakamaki dynamite case attracted no attention either from mainland labor organizations or from the defendants' home country. Nor were any voices raised among the Japanese cane field workers who had demanded wage increases under the leadership of the defendants. Perhaps they believed the territory's indictment, but whatever the reason, the workers did not rally to the support of the former federation officers. They flatly abandoned them as criminals charged with the crimes of dynamiting and attempted murder.

The Japanese workers who returned to the plantations after the strike wanted to start their lives anew, determined to become permanent residents in the islands. At a turning point in their lives, they wanted to avoid at all costs anything that might complicate their relations with the sugar companies. The authorities were clearly connected to the sugar companies, and the authorities had determined the defendants to be criminals.

The indifference of the Japanese laborers to the trial also reflected the way the Japanese-language newspapers treated it. Throughout the trial, none of these newspapers carried more than short notices about its progress, almost as if they were indifferent. Even the Hawaii hochi^[*] ,

which proclaimed its support for the underdog, remained quiet. Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, the president of the Hochi^[*] , had constantly feuded with the federation leaders, and the reports in the paper were cold and unsympathetic, treating the defendants as guilty from the time they were charged.

No one in the Japanese immigrant community protested that the trial was intended to teach a lesson to those who opposed the HSPA. This coldhearted indifference was obvious from Teisuke Terasaki's diary. As a newspaper reporter, Terasaki should have had a deeper interest in the trial than did the general public, yet he mentioned it in his diary only three times: February 1, a simple entry, "the trial begins"; February 17, "Miyazawa takes the stand"; and February 22, "a top ranked lawyer who can achieve the conviction of the Federation headquarters Mr. Cathcart died suddenly this evening of a a heart attack." No entry was made the day the defendants were found guilty.

The main concern reflected in Terasaki's diary was the difficulties of the Hawaii hochi^[*] . Finances had been strained since the newspaper's office had moved and expanded. Debts were so high that no money was available to repair a broken printing press motor. At the end of 1921, Makino had sought a $5,000 loan from the Bank of Hawaii, offering his house as collateral, but the bank turned him down. Terasaki thought this was due to intervention by the sugar planters, but in his diary he did not speculate that the HSPA might have been behind the trial.

During the period of the trial, Terasaki also referred several times to the departure of Consul General Chonosuke^[*] Yada. Socializing on the golf course may have helped to give the impression to the haole governing elite that Yada was cooperative. In any case, leaving this reputation behind, Yada departed for Japan on the afternoon of February 27, the day Noboru Tsutsumi took the witness stand. His successor, Keiichi Yamazaki, arrived to take up his post in Honolulu one month later.

The FBI report issued during the trial noted,

The reason for the delay in the arrival of the new Consul-General is to give Consul Yada an opportunity to meet him in Tokyo to discuss the situation in the Hawaiian Islands. A confidential agent informs this office that M. Kurokawa, a secretary of the Japanese consulate, who has been stationed in Hawaii for a number of years, is the "mischief maker" at the consulate. Agent claims that ordinarily when a new Consul-General arrives, he immediately comes under the influence of Kurokawa, who endeavors to influence him from the viewpoint of the old radical Japanistic idea. Informant claims that

this is one of the main reasons for the recent Consul General going to Tokyo to meet his successor so that the former will be able to give him a correct estimate of conditions in Hawaii.^[35]

If this is true, then what kinds of activities had Kurokawa been engaged in during the strike while Acting Consul General Furuya occupied the post, waiting for Yada? Might the shadow cast by Kurokawa be one reason that the HSPA asserted emphatically that the strike was a Japanese conspiracy? The FBI report concluded by stating, "Kurokawa is a reserve Lieutenant of the Japanese Army."

Seven months after the guilty verdict, FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., issued a report on the activities of the Federation of Japanese Labor in Hawaii.

It has previously been reported in the pages of this summary that the Hawaii Laborers' Association, formerly known as the Japanese Federation of Labor [sic ], was steadily disintegrating. The Hawaii Hochi , in an editorial published this week, makes the statement that the Japanese Federation of Labor has become a "meaningless organization," and that although the Federation still maintains an office in Honolulu, the officials have no work to do and furthermore they have no real desire to help the laborers. The Hochi advocates a complete reorganization of the Japanese Federation of Labor. . . . The Hyoron-no Hyoron (Review of Review), a Japanese monthly magazine published in Honolulu, stated, in an editorial, that a group of Japanese labor leaders were planning to inaugurate a new labor union, which would have no connection with already established Hawaii Laborers' Association.^[36]

The new labor union never saw the light of day, and the already existing Hawaii Laborers' Association barely maintained itself in form. The U.S. Military Intelligence Office Pacific Region Weekly Report noted, "According to confidential informants, one of the reasons to indict the officials of the Japanese Labor Federation is to destroy the Federation financially."^[37] In fact, the federation was in dire financial straits because it had to pay bail for the indicted defendants and defense expenses. "The depleted treasury of the Japanese labor organizations," the report continued, "indicates that the labor leaders are losing their hold upon the laborers." The federation was no longer able to collect union fees. The energy of the Japanese laborers that had surged in the 1920 strike suddenly dissipated, just as the rice riots in Japan had. The six-month strike did not provide a firm base for a new labor movement.

In early December 1921, two months before the start of the trial, the HSPA, on the grounds that sugar prices had fallen to 3 cents, reduced

minimum wages for sugarcane field workers from the $30 per month paid just the year before to the prestrike level of $26. The weakness of the Hawaii Laborers' Association is evident from the fact that it did not issue a single statement of protest about this wage decrease. (The HSPA annual meeting report for 1921 clearly showed that even though wages had been decreased, the HSPA suffered no budget deficit that year.)