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.