Six—
Reopening Chinese Immigration:
Washington, D.C.: June 1922

Governor McCarthy and the "Japanese Threat"

On the morning of May 4, 1921, three months before the indictment of the Federation of Japanese Labor leaders, members of the Hawaiian economic and political elite gathered at the Honolulu pier to send off the Matsonia , departing for San Francisco. Three men in linen suits—Walter Francis Dillingham, Charles F. Chillingworth, and Albert Horner—smiled and waved from the ship. They were members of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission on their way to Washington, D.C., to attend hearings of the Immigration and Naturalization Committee of the House of Representatives on the "labor problem" in Hawaii. The May 4 Honolulu Advertiser praised Governor McCarthy for his selection of the three: "There are not three other men in the whole territory better posted in regard to the labor situation."

After spending six days in San Francisco to lay the groundwork for their efforts, the group boarded the transcontinental train headed for Washington, D.C. It was late May, and the banks of the Potomac River were bright green when they arrived. A month later, on June 21, the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee began its hearings on the emergency labor issue in Hawaii. In advance of the hearings, a summary statement, "The Sugar Industry of Hawaii and the Labor Shortage—What it means to the United States and Hawaii," had been distributed to the committee. The cover was stamped Top Secret to prevent leaks.

"Hawaii has always been American," the summary statement began.

From the days of 1820 when the brig Thaddeus brought to the shores of "the Cross Roads of the Pacific" a hardy band of New England missionaries—the advance guard of civilization—American thought, institutions, and ideals have predominated in these islands. A century ago was laid the foundation of the sturdy American citizenship that today signifies the Paradise of the Pacific as the outpost of Uncle Sam in the Pacific. . . . The seeds sown by those earnest missionaries have yielded fruit in abundance. . . . It was the dollars of Americans that financed the sugar plantations which were the earliest industry, and which have been the chief basis of Hawaii's development, and it was the indomitable spirit of the American pioneers that tided the sugar industry over distressing periods when agricultural industry was at its lowest ebb. . . . Hawaii has won the right to be recognized as an integral part of the American union; has won the right to generous consideration at the hands of the American people of the mainland. For Hawaii has demonstrated her Americanism beyond peradventure of a doubt. And today, Hawaii is seeking the help of America in solving the greatest problem that has yet confronted her. [The problem, it seemed, was a looming industrial paralysis, unless additional labor was brought to the island.]

Many thousand acres of luxuriant cane will soon lie fallow unless relief is provided through the instrumentality of the Congress at Washington. Also, it is but good judgement from a national standpoint to allow Hawaii to diversify the alien population within her borders, instead of permitting the continued domination of the nationals of one race. . . . If you would preserve Hawaii to Uncle Sam, help her. Otherwise, Hawaii cannot answer for consequences that loom darkly menacing on the horizon.

REMEMBER, HAWAII IS THE OUTPOST OF AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC, EVER STANDING GUARD TO INTERCEPT ANY UNFRIENDLY HAND THAT MAY STRIKE.

The summary, which repeated the words "America" and "Uncle Sam" over and over again, appealed to congressional patriotism, and it blamed Hawaii's problems on its "Asiatic" plantation field workers. It continued:

The labor shortage is due, in effect, to the generosity of the sugar plantations to their employees. This sounds paradoxical but the truth of the statement is evidenced by the fact that, over and above regular wages, the plantations in 1920 paid to the laborers an enormous sum as a bonus. When the final installment of the bonus was paid at the end of the grinding season of 1920, the laborers, their pockets lined with gold, had more wealth than they had pictured was ever possible. Immediately began an exodus of plantation hands, principally Japanese and Filipinos migrating. In 1920, 5,386 Japanese left Hawaii for Japan according to the figures of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha.^[1]

In 1921, when the summary was written, the total number of plantation laborers in Hawaii was 39,502. Of these, 45.5 percent were Japa-

nese (17,981), and 31 percent were Filipinos. Compared to the plantation labor force in 1919, before the strike, the number of Japanese laborers had decreased by more than 6,000, but the number of Filipinos had increased by 2,000. The exodus of the Japanese laborers, in other words, was the cause of the labor shortage. As the summary noted, "The Japanese through racial cohesion and nationalistic bonds are a preponderant power in the industrial life of the islands. In the immediate past, this solidarity has been evidenced in an attempt at dictatorship and control to the great embarrassment of the American industry." To solve its labor shortage and to break up the national solidarity of the Japanese, the summary statement called for the importation of Chinese laborers: "The Chinese are wonderful agricultural pacemakers. Experience has proved that they make splendid American citizens. No more desirable offshoot of an alien race is to be found in Hawaii today than the generation of Chinese born here in Hawaii. There is no racial solidarity among them that breeds hostility to the government under which they live."

The problem was that after annexation the laws excluding Chinese immigration had applied to Hawaii. "Bear in mind that not Hawaii but the United States government is responsible for the preponderance of an alien race in Hawaii," the statement averred, "for while the republic of Hawaii had, just prior to annexation, taken steps to limit Japanese immigration, its prerogative of action was lost with annexation, by which it automatically came under the laws of the United States." In fact, at the time there had been strident criticism of Chinese immigrants in Hawaii because it was believed they were impossible to assimilate, and Japanese laborers were recruited aggressively to replace them because Japanese immigrants allegedly became accustomed to Hawaiian customs more quickly. But circumstances had changed, and now it was the Chinese once again who seemed preferable.

Four years earlier the movement to relax the Chinese Exclusion Act began to gain momentum in Hawaii, just about the time that the Japanese-language schools question was being debated. Behind the scenes the Chinese merchant community in Honolulu, who saw the Japanese aggressively intervening in their homeland, lobbied to resume the importing of Chinese laborers. The Chinese population of Hawaii in 1921 was 22,000, a mere fifth of the Japanese population. The desire of the HSPA to rein in the Japanese laborers, the largest segment of the plantation labor force, meshed with the hope of the Chinese to increase their influ-

ence in Hawaii. Both supported a push for revision of the Chinese exclusion legislation.

At the end of 1917, when a congressional delegation visited Hawaii, Consul General Rokuro^[*] Moroi had reported to the Japanese Foreign Ministry that territorial leaders had brought up not only the "issue of the various problems related to Japanese" but also the issue of a "special clause in the immigration law related to the importation of Chinese." According to Moroi, some congressmen "agreed with this, while others expressed disagreement."^[2] Given this response, the HSPA, which wanted Hawaii to be made an exception to the law, decided to put off efforts to seek liberalization of the Chinese exclusion law. But when the Japanese laborers organized a union movement to demand higher wages, they raised the issue anew.

The first voice was raised in an editorial in the Honolulu Advertiser on January 12, 1920, when it became clear that a strike was unavoidable: "The importation of a large number of Chinese laborers into Hawaii would not only solve our labor problem but would help solve some of our other problems." Two weeks later, under the headline "Hawaii Should Work for Chinese Labor," it urged that revision of the law be considered by the U.S. Congress.^[3]

On February 3, 1920, three days after the Federation of Japanese Labor decided to strike, a request to resume importing of Chinese labor was put forward in the U.S. Senate by the representative from the territory of Hawaii. Despite the rising tension between labor and management on the islands, on New Year's Eve of 1919, McCarthy, the territorial governor, departed for the capital to lobby for a revision of land laws protecting native Hawaiians and for the granting of statehood to Hawaii. While in Washington, McCarthy made important statements, not on land law or statehood, but on the issues concerning U.S.-Japan relations. In effect, he launched a campaign to reopen consideration of the Chinese exclusion law. On February 28, 1920, the very day that the HSPA rejected the effort at mediation by Reverend Palmer, members of the Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization met with the Hawaiian governor and five territorial legislators. The minutes of this informal discussion were treated as top secret to prevent leaks to the press. The topic was "The Japanese in Hawaii."

Governor McCarthy began by stating, "I have lived in the islands for 39 years, and the Japanese began to be imported about 8 years after I first went there, and I have seen the Japanese population increase from

nothing to the present number 120,000."^[4] McCarthy, a Bostonian who went to Honolulu at the age of twenty as a salesman for a fruit wholesale company in San Francisco, had married a Caucasian woman born in Hawaii and settled down. His wife, however, was not a kamaaina or a descendant of missionaries. McCarthy was a haole outsider, but he soon acquired a reputation as a man of ability while he was a territorial legislator. He promoted the development of Waikiki, then an uninhabited swamp, into a prime residential area. He was appointed governor in 1918 with the backing of the HSPA. When he arrived in Washington, McCarthy was fifty-nine years old. His blond hair was thin, and his mustache was noticeably gray, but he was a voluble man, who spoke with enthusiasm, opening his large blue eyes wide with a surprised look.

The meeting with the Senate subcommittee lasted three hours, most of it an exchange between McCarthy and Sen. James D. Phelan of California. Governor McCarthy argued that when the Chinese exclusion law was applied to Hawaii after annexation, the planters were compelled to bring in Japanese as a cane field labor force. When one senator from Idaho asked whether "Japanese coolies" had been brought to the Hawaiian Islands before the Chinese were excluded, Senator Phelan promptly suggested that "we did not then know the character of the Japanese coolies." And when Governor McCarthy touched on the unusually high birthrate of the Japanese picture brides, three times that of Caucasian women, Senator Phelan added that in California one in three births was Japanese.

The senators were particularly interested in the Hawaii-born nisei. Governor McCarthy brought up the problem of dual citizenship: "You are aware of the fact that Japanese born in Hawaii, of course, he is a citizen of the United States: but his father can register him at the Japanese consulate at any time before he is 16 years of age, which makes him a Japanese citizen."

McCarthy emphasized the point that issei parents pushed their nisei children to be educated in Japanese-language schools. These schools, he said, prevented second-generation "Japs" from assimilating into American culture. When Phelan noted that "a Japanese source" indicated "that in less than 14 years they would control the politics of the island," McCarthy replied, "We have a suspicion—we do not know whether it is so or not—but we have a suspicion that the Japanese in Hawaii, even though they be citizens of the United States, are acting under instructions from their own Government, and therefore not exercising the right

of suffrage. There is something that is holding them back, because we are satisfied that there are at least a thousand of them that are eligible and there is something that is holding them back." (The governor did not suggest that the low voting rate among the nisei may have been due to their exceedingly low political and social consciousness.) He went on to argue, "What it is we do not know, and if it is the policy of the Japanese Government that very few of them exercise the franchise, and that policy of their Government could change, and they were all instructed to register and vote, we might be swamped." By contrast, he said, the voting rate among the second-generation Chinese was always high. "The Chinese voter down there is not looking to China at all, he is looking to America. There is nothing back in China that is drawing him at all."

Senator Phelan had no interest in the Chinese Americans but wanted to know more about suspicions about the nisei. He asked the governor, "You spoke of control by their consuls, is it not a fact that they have some agents in every settlement of Japanese on the several islands?" Robert Shingle, a territorial senator who had accompanied the governor, replied that as the director of the war bond and stamp campaign during World War I, he had negotiated with the Japanese consul general, who had been cooperative but had insisted that rather than have the territory go directly to the Japanese immigrants to seek contributions, the consulate would make all the contacts through the agents it had in various local areas. The "agents of the consulate" that Phelan referred to were the individuals on each plantation, like Juzaburo^[*] Sakamaki on Olaa Plantation, who were designated to handle tasks such as birth and death notifications in the family registers. They were unpaid, honorary agents chosen to represent their plantations. The Japanese bought a large number of war stamps, Shingle said, but in contrast to the Filipinos, who cashed them when hard up for money, the Japanese held onto them. "The Japanese have not cashed them, they have held them, as a rule," he said, "The Japanese are very shrewd and seem to know the value of these stamps."

At this point Senator Phelan brought up the pending strike for the first time:

I have read in the Hawaiian Pacific Commercial Advertiser that there is a great strike going on now in the islands, and that the Japanese have formed unions, and that in order to coerce the men to join the union and engage in the strike, that they have threatened to report their names to the burgomas-

ters of their cantonment at home in Japan, which probably would entail severe penalties on their families. . . . That seems to be a favorite method with the oriental, to punish the family of the man doing wrong.

Phelan asked McCarthy whether the fact that the consulate condoned this method of discipline meant that the Japanese government was behind the Federation of Japanese Labor, urging the Japanese workers to join the organization and inciting them to strike. McCarthy replied that a report from the acting governor indicated that the acting Japanese consul denied this, and he added that the strike was confined to the island of Oahu.

But Senator Phelan pressed on: "I see that there was a Japanese warship came into the harbor out there the other day, was there not?" McCarthy replied that he had learned of the arrival of the Japanese warship Yakumo from the Washington newspapers as well, but he could not say why the ship had put in to port. Phelan responded in irritation, "I understood it came in to take off the Japanese. . . ." The chairman interrupted Phelan to call a recess, perhaps because he felt that Phelan was talking too much about U.S.-Japan relations.

When the meeting resumed ten minutes later, Phelan made no further reference to the warship. Instead, he brought up the Japanese-language schools control law and wanted to know why it had not passed the Hawaiian legislature. Governor McCarthy explained that at the time President Wilson was proposing the racial equality plan at the Paris Peace Conference and Secretary of State Robert Lansing had strongly urged the governor of California to postpone the Alien Land Law, known to Japanese as "the Japanese exclusion land law." When this news reached Hawaii, the territorial authorities decided that passage of the Japanese-language school control law would damage the goals of the federal government.

The meeting finally turned to the expansion of the American army and navy bases in Hawaii. When Governor McCarthy observed that 90 percent of the construction workers on these bases were Japanese, the senators were shocked. "Are they employed in simple construction work or are they employed in gun emplacement?" asked Phelan. McCarthy responded that Japanese laborers were needed to build "actual fortifications, gun emplacement, etc.," but that the responsibility lay with the U.S. Engineer's Office.

"You say that [the Japanese] were employed in the building of the first Pearl Harbor dry dock?" asked Phelan.

"Yes sir."

"Well, is it not a fact that the dry dock collapsed?"

"Well, that was through the fault of the specifications."

"You think so?"

When other members of the Hawaiian delegation raised doubts about whether Japanese laborers had worked on gun emplacements, Phelan cut them off. "Well, it is immaterial who builds the fortifications, so long as we have 120,000 aliens owing foreign allegiance—in case of trouble with Japan they could take the fortifications and massacre the native population without trouble, could they not?"

Sen. James Phelan, a contemporary of Governor McCarthy, had been an attorney in San Francisco during his youth, then had taken over the real estate and banking interests left him by his father. Known as a patron of young Bohemian artists, this handsome and wealthy man remained single all his life. After serving a term as mayor of San Francisco, from 1897 to 1901, he was elected to the Senate. As mayor he was well known for his opposition to Asian immigration, and he played a leading role in the movement to strengthen the anti-Japanese land law passed by the California legislature in 1913. The law prohibited land ownership by "immigrants without the right to become naturalized" (i.e., Asians), but it left other ways open for Japanese to acquire land: by giving title of the land to their nisei children who had citizenship or by becoming their guardians. To plug these loopholes, Republican state senator J. M. Inman had proposed a revision of the law in 1920, and Phelan supported it from the Democratic side. Not to be outdone by Inman, Phelan affirmed his reputation as a staunchly anti-Japanese by backing a voter initiative to put the revision into law.

Absent from the meeting with the Hawaii delegation was Sen. Hiram W. Johnson, chairman of the California Japanese Exclusion League. Together with Inman and Phelan he was at the center of the anti-Japanese movement. Five years earlier, when Bunji Suzuki of the Yuaikai^[*] participated in the AFL annual convention in California, the three men protested to Paul Scharrenberg, the California AFL representative. Though he had a deep interest in the "Japanese problem in Hawaii," Johnson was mentioned as a serious candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and was unable to attend the meeting with Governor McCarthy because he was campaigning around the country.

Phelan himself was facing a reelection campaign in six months, under the slogan "Keep California White." In March 1920 a ban on picture brides, "who bred like rabbits," was instituted under his leader-

ship. For Phelan, who had helped to place the new anti-Japanese land legislation on the ballot, the opportunity to hear how Japanese immigrants were putting Hawaii in harm's way was a political windfall. He now had a new slogan: "Keep California from going the way of Hawaii."^[5]

In November 1920 the revised Alien Land Law on the California ballot passed with a margin of three to one. This did not necessarily mean that the voters of California supported anti-Japanese politicians. Phelan lost the election and his seat in the Senate. As for Hiram Johnson, after a split vote, he lost the Republican presidential nomination, and Warren Harding walked off with the presidency in the 1920 election.

But anti-Japanese sentiments were kept alive in California by the Hearst newspaper chain. In March 1921, for example, the Los Angeles Examiner began a six-part series on the Japanese in Hawaii with the headline "Jap Menace Lies Black on Pacific!" "Hawaii," the paper proclaimed, "is a menacing outpost of Japan ruled invisibly by a carefully organized government that functions noiselessly and whose mainspring is in Tokio."^[6] A political cartoon accompanying the article showed the black shadow of a Japanese soldier with a sword spreading across the Pacific Ocean. His military cap nearly touches the West Coast, and the words "Hawaiian Islands" are etched where his heart would be. The Los Angeles Examiner boasted the largest newspaper circulation in California.

The series was written by a Caucasian reporter who had gone to Hawaii to investigate the "astounding situation" there. The third in the series was entitled "Hawaii's Jap Peril—Jap Anti-Americanism Blazes Out in Strike." Not only did it charge that Hawaii was a "vast incubator for American Japs" and that "Hawaii Japs" held alien ideas dear, it also reported on the dubious morality of the "Japs."

The sordid facts are that geishas are prostitutes and tea-houses are houses of assignations. . . . This popularity of the geisha and tea-house institution is symbolic of the character of the Japanese population of the islands. . . . As in Japan, pleasuring and politics and business revolve around the geisha. Banquets are held in the tea-houses. Geishas, not the wives, are the companions of the banqueters. . . . Two thousand nine hundred geishas and helpers are listed in the Japanese Consul General's tables of occupations of Japanese in the Hawaiian islands in 1919. . . . When labor delegates came into Honolulu from the other islands last year, disposed in part to oppose the strike, they were banqueted and given over to the seductive charms of the geishas. The geishas promptly brought them into line.^[7]

Reverend Takie Okumura's Americanization Movement

In early 1920, when the Japanese plantation workers went out on strike, tensions had risen between the United States and Japan on a host of issues: the failure of the Japanese to withdraw military forces from Siberia; the granting of the Japanese mandate over the island of Yap; the issue of independence for Korea; and the continuing Japanese occupation of the Shantung peninsula in China. The Mainichi nenkan (Mainichi Yearbook) painted the prospects for Japanese relations with the United States in 1920 in uncertain colors: "The re-occurrence of the Japanese exclusion issue in California has plunged relations between the two nations into greater instability. Unless the citizens of both nations awaken to the problems and remove the root of evil that will affect the future, the relations between Japan and the U.S. will likely face an unmanageable danger in days to come."

At the end of September 1920 Kijuro^[*] Shidehara, Japanese ambassador to the United States, met with Roland Morris, U.S. ambassador to Japan, in Washington to discuss the problem of anti-Japanese movements in the United States. The two ambassadors met twenty-two times between September and late January 1921.

Time and time again, the federal government in Washington had been at wit's end about how to deal with anti-Japanese activities in California. Whenever problems over Japanese immigrants arose in California, they turned into diplomatic problems. The two ambassadors met to minimize diplomatic damage at a time when anti-Japanese feelings were aggravated by the debate over the anti-Japanese land initiative in California, but they engaged in informal discussions to allow a frank exchange of opinions without binding either government.

When Ambassador Morris's ship docked in San Francisco, the Democratic National Convention was being held in the city. At the suggestion of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, Morris met with Senator Phelan and state senator Inman to hear their views. As a prelude to his meeting with Shidehara, Morris wanted an accurate understanding of the viewpoints of these anti-Japanese politicians.

The Shidehara-Morris conferences focused on abolition and prevention of discrimination against Japanese and revision of the Gentlemen's Agreement. The two men agreed that the key to resolving the anti-Japanese problem was the assimilation of Japanese immigrants into America, but they differed on how to accomplish this. For example,

when Ambassador Morris pointed out that the dual citizenship of the nisei fueled anti-Japanese arguments, Shidehara observed that as this issue touched on the Japanese Nationality Act itself and that unless Congress revised U.S. immigration laws in a thoroughgoing manner, eliminating dual nationality for the nisei was not possible.

The Japanese had ceased issuing visas to picture brides at the end of February 1920, but the U.S. side sought to go one step further by having the Japanese stop issuing passports to all except those returning to America. Shidehara disagreed, asserting the need for Japanese immigrants to be able to send for wives and children left in Japan, for immigrants to return to the United States with wives they had married on temporary visits to Japan, and for them to bring over those adopted into the family.

The "Japanese problem in Hawaii" was taken up on October 23 at the eighth of these meetings. The second Oahu strike had ended just three months before, and Ambassador Morris pointed out that since the strike, "relations between the Japanese laborers and the plantation owners have not been smooth and this has given rise to the development of anti-Japanese sentiments." To stamp out the roots of anti-Japanese and anti-immigrant feelings in the future, he said that he would strongly urge a revision of the Gentlemen's Agreement so that Hawaii would be treated on the same basis as the mainland. Ambassador Shidehara refused to yield on this point too. "The labor conditions in Hawaii are entirely different from those on the American mainland," he said, "and Japan is already strongly restricting immigration to Hawaii on the same basis as to the U.S. mainland."^[8]

In the end the two ambassadors agreed on a compromise proposal. In principle the restrictions on immigration would be applied to Hawaii. The United States would allow Japanese immigrants in Hawaii to send for their wives and children, but this practice would be prohibited on the mainland. The Shidehara-Morris conference can be considered a history-making attempt by both sides to approach the immigration problem, a constant source of friction in U.S.-Japan relations, from every angle and in good faith. Although there were many differences of opinion, or, rather because of these differences, the differing perspectives of the two nations were brought into clear relief. For this reason the conference was of no small import.

While these meetings were in progress, however, the Republican party ousted the incumbent Democrat from the White House in November. Because of the change in administration, the results of the Shidehara-

Morris conference did not become a formal declaration of the two governments and the matter was deferred. In his autobiography, Shidehara wrote that the Shidehara-Morris talks "served only the role of temporarily calming the domestic moods in both nations."^[9]

On January 22, 1921, two days before the last of the Shidehara-Morris meetings, FBI headquarters issued a report, "The Japanese Problem in the United States." The bureau's first overall summary concerning Japanese immigrants relied heavily on military intelligence reports on the Pacific region. Its analysis of the reasons for Japanese immigration was, to say the least, unique. "The Japanese are physically a peculiarly constituted people," it reported. "It is known that they cannot stand either the extreme cold climate or the extreme hot climate. Therefore, it is not possible to extensively colonize the Japanese in Siberia or in northern China, neither is the colonization of Formosa or other equatorial land feasible." Hence the Japanese tried to emigrate to California, where the climate was ideal. "This peaceful penetration finally became obnoxious to California, who saw that ultimately if the Japanese were permitted to emigrate to the United States, the white race in no long space of time would be driven from the state, and California eventually become a province of Japan, as the Hawaiian islands are, practically, today until the entire Pacific Coast region would be controlled by Japanese."^[10]

This extremely pessimistic prediction echoed comments Governor McCarthy had made the year before. At the end of January 1921, immediately after this overview was issued, the FBI began to make weekly reports on Japanese affairs in Hawaii. The first of these reports, focusing on the "problem of Japanese laborers in Hawaii," provided detailed information about Tsutsumi and other Japanese labor leaders. Of particular interest in this report was a two-page document asserting that the Japanese community had come to feel that it was "misled in [the] strike." It quoted Reverend Takie Okumura of the Makiki Japanese Church when he was invited by Reverend Palmer of the historic Union Church to preach to the kamaaina congregation. "Many Japanese of Hawaii," he said, "are coming to realize that during the 1920 strike they were bulldozed by agitators and that the difficulties did not constitute an industrial strike, but between two nationalities which should not have been." The report stated that Reverend Okumura's pronouncement, made as it was by a Japanese, was of great interest to the kamaaina elite.

Unusual for a Japanese, Takie Okumura was listed in the Hawaii Who's Who , which noted that he came from a long line of samurai. He

was one of the few Japanese close to the center of haole power, and he was recognized by the Who's Who as a leader of the movement for the Americanization of Japanese. Indeed, in January 1921, when the FBI report mentioned above was issued, Okumura, appealing to second-generation Japanese, or "new Americans," began his "anti-Japanese prevention and edification movement."

In his small booklet, "An Americanization Primer: Preparing Our Hawaiian Compatriots," Okumura urged the Japanese immigrants to settle permanently in Hawaii. Beginning a five-year campaign to promote assimilation, he traveled to all the Hawaiian Islands preaching his ideas. Okumura was already over sixty years old, so he had not undertaken this task lightly. As the vast majority of the Japanese immigrants were Buddhist, Reverend Okumura was often denounced as a traitor in his travels to the plantations. Undaunted, Okumura was not hesitant to counterattack. In one speech he criticized the Japanese immigrants for trying to "reestablish idolatrous practices" in "this Hawaii which became Christian after strenuous efforts of its [kamaaina] forefathers." Not only did they build shrines and temples, they also built "images of the Inari, the god of harvests, stone sarcophaguses, and worship halls." Of all the Japanese religious groups, Reverend Okumura viewed the Honganji, the most powerful sect in the Japanese community in Hawaii, with particular enmity. "Buddhism is the greatest obstacle to assimilation," he proclaimed. This assertion may have been correct from the perspective of Americanization, but it leaned so far toward the viewpoint of the Caucasian elite that one can see the limitations of Okumura's Americanization movement. When he boasted of his samurai origins, acting as though he had exchanged his sword for the Bible, many were offended by his authoritarian righteousness.

Rumors about the source of funds for Reverend Okumura's Americanization movement constantly floated around the Japanese community. Despite the small number of Christians in the Japanese community, Okumura had built the Makiki Church, an elaborate rendition of the donjon of the castle in Kochi^[*] , his hometown, in an expensive neighborhood of Honolulu. He also operated a dormitory for promising nisei from other islands who came to study in Honolulu, yet his own son was the first Japanese to go to Punahou School, attended by the children of kamaaina. What is more, this appeared to be due to Okumura's close association with Frank C. Atherton, one of the powerful kamaaina sugar planters. Okumura was a frequent guest at the Atherton house, and

through Atherton he had made connections with other members of the haole elite.

Reverend Okumura often went to Japan on what he called goodwill visits to improve U.S.-Japan relations. He departed on such a trip on July 14, 1920, shortly after the strike ended. "Adverse feelings between Japan and America being on the rise," he recalled, "the situation was such that if things were left alone, anti-Japanese movements such as in California might erupt. After consultations with the Japanese Consul General and a few Americans [Atherton, Castle, and Cook among the Big Five], I went to Japan to obtain support from Hitoshi Asano to start a movement to prevent anti-Japanese actions."

Three days after his arrival in Yokohama, Okumura visited Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa, with whom he was acquainted. Not only did Shibusawa arrange for Okumura to meet with Foreign Minister Uchida and other government officials, he also threw a banquet for the Japan-U.S. Friendship Committee, whose members included the top executives from major business conglomerates such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Sumitomo so that Okumura could inform them about the conditions of Japanese in Hawaii. These economic leaders unanimously agreed with Okumura's anti-Japanese movement prevention idea and promised financial support. Shibusawa twice sent to Okumura 1,000 yen as his personal contribution. It was such contributions from capitalists in Japan and Hawaii that funded his campaign to Americanize the Hawaiian nisei.

Reverend Okumura was one of the few Japanese who had been strongly opposed to the 1920 strike from the start. Throughout the strike he publicly criticized the Federation of Japanese Labor, and at every opportunity he spoke of Tsutsumi and the other federation leaders as being enemies of friendly relations between the United States and Japan and the Americanization movement.

At the Sakamaki dynamiting trial the prosecution claimed that the motive for the conspiracy of the federation leaders was to teach turncoats a lesson and to crush the anti-strike movement. If this was so, then the federation overlooked Okumura, a major figure in the Japanese community who denounced the federation head-on. But rather than deal with Okumura, which would have drawn the greatest attention, the federation had, according to the prosecution, plotted the assassination of Sakamaki, whose anti-strike activities were limited to distributing the anti-strike newspaper Kazan on a plantation where no strike was taking place.

Even after the strike ended, Okumura denounced it and the Federation of Japanese Labor that had led it. "It is true," he said, "that the attitude of the Americans toward us had changed substantially due to the effect of the anti-Japanese movement in California reaching Hawaii as well as the occurrences of the Korean incident and the Shantung incident. But what clearly brought out the anti-Japanese feelings here has been the problem of the Japanese language schools and the strike."

According to Okumura, both the aloha spirit and the Christian spirit of the missionaries' descendants had put a brake on anti-Japanese feelings and preserved harmony in Hawaiian society, but the strike had destroyed this social balance. Just as "a cloud spread over U.S.-Japan relations" when the English-language press took up the anti-Japanese cry in the debate over the Japanese-language school problem, "the strike darkened the clouds. It is nature's course that when clouds thicken rain will fall." After the strike, he said, "even pro-Japanese Caucasians began to feel strong doubt and apprehension." The surfacing of the movement to renew Chinese immigration and the enormous sums and great effort the territory expended on the issue, he pointed out, came in the main from the strike. The result of the strike was "loss of faith in Japanese laborers and the arousal of misgivings in Americans."

Dillingham Joins the Debate

The Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission was organized on April 12, 1921, to work for the importation of Chinese laborers, banned under the Chinese Exclusion Act, to work in the sugarcane fields in Hawaii. It came into existence a mere three weeks before its members left for Washington to begin lobbying Congress. It seems clear that the commission was put together through the careful work of the HSPA.

Royal Mead, secretary of the HSPA, had been posted to the capital in November of the previous year as the organization's special labor relations representative. Publicly it was stated that Mead was working to recruit laborers from Puerto Rico, but his main effort in the capital was to lay the groundwork for an appeal to Congress to renew the immigration of Chinese.

Not everyone in Hawaii was in favor of once again allowing Chinese laborers to come in for a fixed period. Opposition was heard from Reverend Palmer and other religious leaders and academics as well as from some planters themselves. Opponents of the measure took the position that letting the Chinese immigrants in again was a step backward to the

old contract immigration system and that this would contradict the goal of Americanization, which had been the major reason for opposing the Japanese-language schools. Despite this opposition, the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission took shape under the direction of Governor McCarthy, a Democrat who was about to retire and be replaced by a Republican appointed by the new president, Warren Harding.

Explaining to the territorial legislators that Noboru Tsutsumi was agitating for a general strike on the sugar plantations and pineapple fields of the islands, Governor McCarthy on April 27, the last day of the legislative session, guided the passage of an appropriation of $15,000 to send the commission to Washington to represent Hawaii "upon this important and vital mission." In effect, the HSPA was attempting to deal with labor problems in the sugarcane fields with territorial funds.

The three members of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission appointed by Governor McCarthy were influential men among the Hawaiian elite. Charles F. Chillingworth, a politician of mixed Hawaiian heritage, was a suitable person to represent the territorial legislature. His heavy physique, typical for a Hawaiian, made him look older than his forty-four years. Chillingworth had been a central figure in the passage of the foreign-language schools control act, which had been drafted by the American Legion under the leadership of Captain Stafford, who later served as a prosecutor in the Sakamaki dynamiting trial.

Fifty-eight-year-old Albert Horner, the second member, was a head shorter than Chillingworth and thinner, and his sunken eyes made him look almost gloomily cautious. After arriving in Hawaii at the age of sixteen, he worked his way up at several sugar companies. He went to Washington as a representative of the Pineapple Association, but for many years he had been known in the territorial legislature as an expert on sugar cultivation. Horner was an avid supporter of the plan to bring in Chinese immigrants from the start.

But the most important member of the commission was its chairman, Walter Francis Dillingham. On learning of the Dillingham appointment, The Hawaii hochi^[*] predicted, "It is not difficult to surmise that the movement to re-import Chinese immigrants will proceed fiercely."^[11]

Still lining the streets of downtown Honolulu today are wooden Japanese and Chinese shops that look like they could easily go up in flames. But across a boundary marked by the Honolulu police station lies an entirely different world of three- and four-story solid-looking buildings with stone-faced exteriors in shades of gray and cream, red-tiled roofs, and decorated window frames. Pushing open the heavy door of one of

these buildings, one enters into a cool interior where thick walls block the outside sunlight. Even now when tall skyscrapers cast shadows over them, these old stone buildings are impressive. This was the world inhabited by Walter Dillingham.

Six years after he published Treasure Island , the British novelist Robert Louis Stevenson visited Hawaii. In a photograph taken at the luau held to welcome him appears the face of fourteen-year-old Dillingham standing amid the Hawaiian royalty. No account of Dillingham would be complete without touching on the host of the luau, his father, Frank. Frank (formally Benjamin Franklin) Dillingham, a merchant sea-man from New England, was injured when his ship put in to Honolulu to replenish food and water. His life took an unforeseen turn when the ship departed, leaving him behind. After starting a successful general store in downtown Honolulu, he married the daughter of a leading missionary, and as he rapidly expanded his business, he began to buy land for sugar plantations. In fact, Olaa Plantation, where the Sakamaki house was dynamited, had been owned by Dillingham.

Indeed, the history of Olaa Plantation traces the life of Frank Dillingham. The land at Olaa was originally owned by Hawaiian royalty. At the suggestion of Lorrin A. Thurston, a cabinet minister in the Hawaiian monarchy and later the publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser , Dillingham joined in investing in development of the land into a sugarcane plantation. It was the largest plantation planned in Hawaii. When Olaa company stock was offered publicly, investors were so confident of Dillingham's ability to succeed in any business that it sold out immediately. But the price of sugar began to fall, and soon the operation of the plantation was in trouble. The harvest was no worse than on other plantations, but the plantation was so large that production costs were enormous. Even an entrepreneur like Dillingham found himself in a tight spot.

To raise new capital Dillingham turned to San Francisco. East Coast capitalists were not inclined to invest in the Hawaiian sugar industry, even when they had extra money, because they saw Hawaii as an unstable land, an "exotic" place populated by lots of yellow-skinned people. Dillingham tried to raise funds from the general public by selling Olaa company bonds in California, the first time a Hawaiian sugar industry had ever done so. But the bonds were extremely slow to sell. One reason was the burning down of buildings in Honolulu to prevent the spread of the bubonic plague some six months earlier (1900). Using the plague as an excuse, the authorities set fire to congested buildings in

Chinatown and expelled their inhabitants. Overnight the assets of the Chinese merchants, who had been expanding their economic power independently, were turned to ashes. (The fires also spread to the neighboring Japanese shopping district, where 177 buildings belonging to Japanese were destroyed.) The incident was reported widely on the mainland, reinforcing the impression that Hawaii was uncivilized territory. Coupled with concern about labor shortages in the sugarcane fields owing to the migration of Japanese workers to the mainland, California stockholders panicked, sending the Honolulu stock market into a tailspin. The Olaa fiasco caused Dillingham to have a nervous breakdown, and he secretly admitted himself to a sanatarium in San Francisco. Thirty-five years of constant work to expand and finance his businesses had taken its psychological toll. He had changed so much that he was hardly recognizable as the man who had hosted General Arthur MacArthur (Douglas MacArthur's father) the year before on a visit to study the feasibility of constructing American military facilities in Hawaii.

Dillingham's second son, Walter, then took over his father's businesses. As his older brother had died early, Walter was for all intents and purposes the family heir. He had dropped out of Harvard a few years before to help his father, who was already showing symptoms of psychological distress. Though only twenty-nine years old when he took over for his father, he had already had a reputation as a man of ability, and he quickly cut company employees and began to tighten control over the Dillingham companies. At Olaa Plantation the Caucasian manager was fired for being too lenient with the Japanese contract labor bosses. Two years before the 1920 strike, Frank Dillingham died of cancer, and leadership of the Dillingham interests passed to the next generation in name and reality. Walter was not merely his father's successor; the kamaaina heritage from his mother made him a legitimate member of Hawaii's elite, as his father had not been. Making good use of his prerogatives of birth, he was able to achieve plans for the future far greater than his father's.

Dillingham was eminently suited to represent the Hawaii business community. He was president and director of ten companies, including Oahu Railway and Land Company, Hawaiian Dredging Company, Ltd., Hawaiian Hume Concrete Pipe Company, Honolulu Bond and Mortgage Company, Haleiwa Hotel Company, Realty Syndicate, Mokuleia Ranch and Land Company, and Woodlawn Stock and Dairy Company. He was also vice president and director of the Bishop Trust Company,

Hawaii Macadamia Nut Company, Honolulu Rapid Transit Company, Oahu Sugar Company, Olaa Sugar Company, Waipahu Sugar Company, and Waikiki Water Company. He was director of the B. F. Dillingham Company, Bank of Hawaii, the Advertiser Publishing Company, and other corporations. And he was not merely a figurehead. His voice was influential in all these companies.

One of them was American Factors, Ltd., formerly a German sales agency engaged in a wide range of businesses. During the First World War its assets had been frozen as enemy property, and the Big Five collectively bought the company from the U.S. government for a fraction of its actual worth. Reorganized under its patriotic new name, the company became the largest of those that handled sales and office management for sugar plantations and also recruited workers and procured seeds and fertilizer. The top executives of the Big Five held major posts in the firm. Although Dillingham was listed simply as a director, his voice was one of the most powerful in the company's operations.

On the island of Hawaii Dillingham was best known as the president of Oahu Railway and Land Company, which was founded by his father, who had foreseen the need to transport sugarcane from the plantations to Honolulu. Walter bought up land around the railway to expand the company's holdings and make it the most important transportation agency on Oahu.

In May 1920 it was this powerful haole businessman that the strike support group formed by Masao Kawahara, president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, and Dr. Iga Moori, thought would be the best person to mediate the strike. Kawahara had explained to Acting Consul General Furuya that Dillingham would be suitable because he was a third party, not involved in the sugar industry. This decision shows how little the leaders of the Japanese community knew about Hawaii's business circles, for Dillingham was a major stockholder of the Ewa and Waipahu sugar companies, both of which had been struck. According to Kawahara, Dillingham expressed interest but had to leave on business for the mainland and promised that he would hear them out when he returned a month and a half later. But, for some reason, after his return his attitude changed and he refused to negotiate.^[12]

Dillingham had gone to the mainland on business for the Hawaiian Dredging Company, which he had started on his own and which served as the contractor for construction of the Pearl Harbor dry dock, the largest of the American navy. As Senator Phelan had mentioned in the informal hearing with Governor McCarthy, many technical problems had

plagued the project, but after ten years of construction the Pearl Harbor dry dock finally opened one month after the strike ended. On August 11, 1920, the territory celebrated by welcoming the first visit to Hawaii of a secretary of the navy with a public holiday for schools and government offices. The Honolulu Advertiser proclaimed the dry dock's contribution to world progress, and Congress appropriated additional funds to expand it under contract with Dillingham's firm.

The large Dillingham estate overlooking the ocean near Diamond Head was constructed of marble in the style of a Florentine palace where Dillingham and his wife, Louise, had spent their honeymoon. It was a social gathering place for Honolulu's elite. Dillingham also owned a weekend country house in northwestern Oahu. On its vast land were a pool, tennis court, polo field, and stables for polo horses. Polo was Dillingham's favorite sport, and he was said to be Hawaii's best polo player. Dillingham married at age thirty-five after he had brought his businesses under control. He had four sons and one daughter. A photograph taken at the country house six months before his trip to Washington shows him standing in a one-piece bathing suit with his legs apart and arms outstretched. Hanging on his arms are his four sons, the oldest ten years old.

When Dillingham became chairman of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission, he was forty-six, two years older than territorial senator Chillingworth, but in photographs of the three commission members, his physique, trim from polo and sailing, gives him the appearance of a man in his twenties. With chest out and posture upright, he looked even taller than the heavyset Chillingworth, and his gentle facial features expressed intellect and character. Though he never went to the front, Dillingham served in the military during the First World War and became one of the organizers of the American Legion in Hawaii.

On his trip to Washington as chairman of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission, Dillingham used his title as president of the chamber of commerce of Honolulu, the most powerful group of businessmen in Hawaii. At the time of the 1920 strike the chamber voted "unanimous support of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association in its fight against the control of the sugar industry of Hawaii by an alien race." But even before the strike, in 1918, it had petitioned, under the name of Dillingham as president, the secretary of the interior in Washington to allow the renewal of importing Chinese indentured labor.

One of his father's legacies was the great importance Dillingham

placed on his relations with the mainland. From his youth, he had worked hard to build business connections in California and Washington. In particular, through the construction of the Pearl Harbor dry dock, Dillingham had cultivated goodwill among the military leaders in the capital. According to Albert Horner, lobbying for the importation of Chinese labor was Dillingham's "one man show."^[13]

In a nine-page document addressed to President Harding the commission placed the blame for the labor shortage in Hawaii's sugarcane fields on Japanese immigrant laborers. Its conclusion summarized the issue as they saw it:

To sum up the foregoing, our problem is definitely to conserve the prosperity of the Territory through its industries. We believe that it is vital that steps be taken immediately looking to supplying the shortage with labor which is suitable for the requirements of our tropical industries, which will neutralize, as far as possible, the effect of the preponderance of any one alien nationality, and which, further, will stimulate higher efficiency among the labor in the Territory.

On May 22, 1921, three days after their arrival in Washington, the commissioners visited the White House with their petition in hand. According to the Honolulu Advertiser , the newly inaugurated president promised them that he would do what he could.^[14]

As a senator from Ohio, Warren Harding, fifty-six, had been chairman of the Committee on the Philippines, and he had been involved in bringing Filipino laborers into Hawaii. Whether or not this was the reason, for many years Harding was known as a politician willing to lend a hand to the territory of Hawaii, which could send no representatives to the U.S. Congress. In Congress he made statements defending the interests of the Hawaiian sugar industry. Two weeks before the 1920 presidential election, John Waterhouse, the president of the HSPA, observed that "if Harding is elected, he has guaranteed that he would increase tariffs on sugar imported from foreign countries in order to protect the Hawaiian sugar industry."^[15] It seems likely that the HSPA contributed to Harding's presidential campaign.

This may have been why the new president, despite his busy schedule, took time to meet with the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission. Reporting on this "good news," a Honolulu Advertiser editorial observed, "President Harding knows Hawaii and he has always been known as a friend of the Islands and their people. There are other men in the administration also who know us, and are friendly toward our in-

terests."^[16] An effort to invite President Harding to Honolulu for the Pan-Pacific Commercial Conference planned for the summer of 1922 was already under way in Hawaii.

As a politician Harding was poles apart from his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, who was known as a man of principle. In contrast to Wilson, the former college president who entered politics burning with ideals, Harding started his career as a reporter on a local newspaper and turned to politics after becoming its publisher. Rather than a master of compromise, Harding was a conservative politician with an opportunistic streak. In his presidential campaign speeches in California, Harding expressed his support of the revised Alien Land Law to the governor, Senator Phelan, and other state representatives. "Orientals" had a bright history of contribution to world civilization, he said, but their national character and their style of life were vastly different from Americans. It was obvious that it would be impossible for them to become Americanized. To prevent problems with the Orientals from spreading to the eastern United States, he said that it was perhaps necessary to enact laws permitting immigration of only those foreigners able to assimilate and to limit the immigration of Orientals.

The Shidehara-Morris meetings were beginning at the time, and Ambassador Shidehara criticized Harding's statement: "I must say that Americanization is possible to proceed only when there is an atmosphere of amicable goodwill; antipathy and persecution are its great obstacles." Morris, who had been appointed ambassador to Japan by President Wilson, stated that he agreed entirely. Harding's statement became an issue in Japan too. When Harding was elected, the press in Japan reported it alongside news about the passage of the revised anti-Japanese land law in California. For example, under the headline "New U.S. President Mr. H. Is Anti-Japanese," the Kokumin shinbun warned, "We must be prepared for the worsening of Japan-U.S. relations."^[17] Immediately after the election, the Japanese consul general in Honolulu, Chonosuke^[*] Yada, reported to the Foreign Ministry, "With the Republican victory, the sugar companies are placed in an even more favorable position."^[18] He had already predicted that the HSPA would make concrete moves in Washington to lobby for bringing in Chinese laborers.

The House Hearings on "Labor Problems in Hawaii"

To most people living on the U.S. mainland Hawaii was an unfamiliar place. The Honolulu Advertiser was astonished that a major publisher

in New York had mailed a letter to the newspaper addressed to "Honolulu City, Hawaii Island, the Philippines."^[19] Dillingham began his work as chairman of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission by visiting each member of the Immigration and Naturalization Committee before the hearings, explaining to them Hawaii's geographic location. Harding helped to arrange interviews with high-ranking government officials. As there was only one month to lay the groundwork, Dillingham was extremely busy in Washington.

The House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization consisted of fifteen representatives, ten of whom were Republicans. The chairman, Albert Johnson, fifty-two, from the state of Washington, had been a newspaper reporter. He entered politics after he became a leader of a citizens' movement to quell a paralyzing IWW-led strike against the Washington State lumber industry. During his twenty years in Congress he had been involved in immigration issues, and it was said that no one in Congress stood to the right of him on the issue. Indeed, he was so conservative that even within the Republican party he was called a nationalist. When the revised Alien Land Law was being debated in California in 1920, Johnson had taken members of the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee there to inspect the situation of the Japanese immigrants. The conclusion he reached was that Californians were not overreacting in their concern about the "invasion" of their state. Before the hearing began Dillingham reported home that chairman Johnson was extremely sympathetic to Hawaii's position.^[20]

The House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization began its hearings on labor problems in Hawaii at 10:30 A.M . on Tuesday, June 21, 1921, with Dillingham as its first witness. From the first day committee members focused their questions not on the main issue of whether to renew importation of Chinese laborers but rather on the 1920 Oahu strike that had been led by "frightening Japanese agitators."

A few minutes into the hearing, Rep. Robert S. Maloney from Massachusetts asked whether the strikers were American-born or foreign-born or mixed. Dillingham replied, "Very, very few Hawaiian-born Japanes. . . . will do work in the cane fields." Of the six thousand who went on strike, he said, probably very few were American citizens or American-born. But he then introduced Royal Mead, representative of the HSPA, as a person more familiar with the strike. Mead had dealt directly with Federation of Japanese Labor during the strike, so he must have known that there had been no nisei among the federation leader-

ship. But Mead quickly asserted, "Oh, yes, some of the very worst agitators among the Japanese strikers were American-born Japanese young men. In very many instances, they were the heads of the unions on the plantations which created a great deal of troubl. . . . and, while we had no direct evidence, we had good reason to believe that they were the ones that were firing cane fields."^[21]

Rep. Guy L. Shaw of Illinois then asked Dillingham, "Is it not a fact that the Japanese are organizing and endeavoring to get control of nearly every line of business in the islands, building trades and everything else where they can—stores and all that sort of thing?"

Dillingham replied, "That is correct, whether they are organizing to do it or not, we do not know; that they are doing it, we do know."

The reply must have come as a surprise to Keiichi Yamazaki, who had succeeded Chonosuke^[*] Yada as consul general in Honolulu. In reports to the Foreign Ministry, he had appraised Dillingham as "a person who has been considered pro-Japanese all along." As Dillingham was not a man to reveal his emotions and behaved in an even manner at all times, he may well have given Yamazaki this impression. His well-bred self-control made others trust him. He seemed to keep people at a certain distance, but this was no disadvantage for it projected an air of dignity. With his calm gaze fixed directly on the congressmen in front of him, he spoke in measured tones about the "fearsome Japanese conspiracy."

On the second day of the hearings, Wallace R. Farrington, the newly appointed territorial governor, spoke as a witness. The fifty-year-old Farrington, a native of Maine, had gone to Honolulu twenty-five years before as a newspaper reporter. Eventually he had become publisher of the Honolulu Star Bulletin and one of the founders of the Republican party in Hawaii. He hit it off well with President Harding, a former newspaper publisher, whom he had known since Harding visited Hawaii as a senator. The Hawaiian sugar planters had probably recommended Farrington for governor because it would be easy for him to approach the new president.

Like Albert Horner, Governor Farrington was an early advocate of the plan to renew the importation of Chinese workers. Freely sprinkling his testimony with the words "Japs" and "Chinamen," the new governor supported the plan from the perspective of the Japanese conspiracy theory. "The strike of last year opened the eyes of a good many of us to a condition which has become more acute as time has gone on," he said. "It stands to reason, and I think that it appeals to all of us, that the main industry in any part of our country should not be in the hands of, or sub-

ject to the dictates of, an alien element, regardless of the origin of that people."

When the Los Angeles Examiner ran its sensationalist series about the Japanese problem in Hawaii, some in Hawaii objected that the territory was being portrayed against its will as a negative example of the yellow peril in order to underpin the anti-Japanese cause in California. During the strike the two Honolulu English-language newspapers fanned the flames of the Japanese takeover theory, but they were exceedingly critical of the anti-Japanese movement in California. The Honolulu Advertiser denounced California as "playing with fire," and Farrington's Honolulu Star Bulletin remonstrated against the hysteria in California.^[22]

The Hawaiian elite felt that Hawaii's labor problem differed from the anti-Japanese problem in California, and they did not want to bring California's exclusionary policy to Hawaii. Waving the banner of "aloha spirit," these descendants of missionaries wanted to resolve the problem through paternalism. Although it may go too far to call their position hypocritical, it was clearly two-faced. Nevertheless, a year after his paper proclaimed Hawaii different from California, Farrington tried to focus attention on the Japanese at the hearings on the renewal of Chinese immigration, and so did Royal Mead of the HSPA, whose testimony followed Farrington's.

"I have had to do with the two different strikes we have had out there of the Japanese," Mead said, "and I have never had any delusions in regard to Americanizing them—without doubt, as a race, the absolute coherence and solidarity of the Japanese is marvelous." In response to Rep. John F. Raker of California, he said this was true whether they were born in Hawaii or not.

On June 30, the last day of his testimony, after the press was excluded from the room, Mead read with deliberation the special petition entitled "Hawaii and the Japanese," whose contents dealt with the Japanese government. The document began by stating the need to trace the Japanese problem and the history of Japanese immigration in order to achieve an accurate understanding of Hawaii's labor shortage. After citing the problem of the schools and the control of Buddhism over all aspects of the lives of Japanese immigrants, it described the 1920 strike as follows:

The intractability and hostility of the Japanese as a class toward the American community was forcefully demonstrated during a strike of Japanese plantation laborers on the island of Oahu during 1920. The strike, it has been sufficiently proved, was planned and fomented by the Japanese language

press, the principals and heads of Japanese language schools, and the Buddhist priests. . . .

There is no proof of charges that were frequently made during the strike that it had been called in obedience to orders from Tokio, but it is certain that some of the strike leaders led their followers to believe that such was the case. Many Japanese laborers were reluctant to strike, probably on account of the large wages and bonuses they were then receiving, and some few of them actually refused to strike. These latter were persecuted, abused, maltreated, even beaten and kidnapped by the strike leaders and their fundamental love of and respect for home, family and country were played upon to keep them in sympathy with the strike. During this strike, there appeared in the Japanese language newspapers, statements and advertisements to the effect that those recreant laborers who refused to go on strike would be reported to the municipal heads of their native towns in Japan so that their relatives living there might be ostracized and otherwise punished. In pursuance of this policy of intimidation, there appeared in the Japanese press lists of names of Japanese who had defied the strike leaders.^[23]

After reading the document, Mead stated that the real purpose of the second strike was not wage increases but a Japanese conspiracy to establish a "Little Japan" in Hawaii. As proof he brought up a plan by Japanese to purchase the Olaa sugar plantation. "Within the past several months," he said, "Japanese or persons representing them have made two actual offers to purchase outright, or to purchase the control of, Olaa Sugar Company." During the rest of the hearings no further details were given, nor were the names of these Japanese mentioned. Since Dillingham was the major stockholder in Olaa Plantation, could he have been the source of this information? However, Japanese knowledgeable about the situation at the time, including Tazuko Iwasaki, the widow of Olaa's major contract boss, Jirokichi Iwasaki, did not recall hearing of any such overtures by Japanese.

It is true that in 1920, the year of the strike, Tomekichi Konno, a labor contractor on Hawaii, attempted to raise capital from Japanese businessmen to buy undeveloped Lanai and grow sugar for direct export to Japan. Four years before, Konno had operated a small sugar refinery at Kona on Hawaii, the first such effort by a Japanese. The Yokohama Specie Bank, acting as its agent, sold stock in Japan to finance the operation, but it went bankrupt in a few years. It was after this that Konno tried to develop land on Lanai, but it was clear from the start that the HSPA would not sit idly by, and that probably doomed the project.

Consul General Yamazaki later speculated on the real reason that the territory of Hawaii brought up the "Japanese threat" in its petition to Congress. "Shortage of labor alone was too weak a reason to import

Chinese coolies and it would not draw the attention of the congressmen," he reported to Tokyo. "It is clear that, as the congressmen were generally ignorant about the situation in Hawaii, the plan is to focus the attention of the congressmen on declamations of the Japanese peril in order to seek passage of the resolution."^[24]

Some committee members at the hearings sensed that this was the territory's aim. Raker pressed Governor Farrington on the point: "The real truth of the matter is that this resolution while generally drawn, is somewhat uniquely drawn, with a good deal of ingenuity and with a good deal of handling of the language—the purpose really is to bring in Chinese?" Raker, fifty-eight, had served many years as a judge in California. He had worked hard on labor issues after being elected to Congress and had the overwhelming support of the AFL. Referring to the circumstances on the West Coast that had led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, he probed Farrington about the implications of importing Chinese indentured labor once again.

Was it right to bring in an alien race, hold them in bondage for five years, and then send them back, breaking up their families if they have married Chinese-American women? . . . But if they gave birth to a child, that child would be an American citizen. Now you would send the husband back home, leaving a wife on the island with an American citizen as a child. That does not look very good, does it, to our country? . . . Do you think the American people would submit to a law that would permit people to be brought in here to work and would deny them the right to have a family? . . . If you brought these Chinamen there and their wages were not satisfactory and they struck and refused to work, they would be a perfect drag on the market—They just absolutely refused to work. What would you do with them?

To such questions, Governor Farrington's replied that Hawaii had had very few troubles with Chinese workers but would send them home if it did.

Although the committee members showed inordinate interest in the "Japanese conspiracy," that did not necessarily mean they would approve the Hawaiian plan to renew Chinese immigration. But Dillingham remained calm. On June 28, when the hearings entered their second week, Dillingham sent the HSPA his assessment of the committee: "I think that all of the members are convinced that our situation is serious and that we must have relief. Unfortunately, however, several members of the Committee are from labor sections of the country and are afraid of their jobs."^[25]

The AFL Erects a Wall

There were others at the hearings who suggested that the Hawaiian representatives were using the Japanese as an excuse to obtain a source of cheap labor. Around the time of the hearings America's largest labor organization, the AFL, was holding its national meeting in Denver, Colo-rado. On June 21 the AFL executive council was instructed to prevent revision of the Chinese Exclusion Act that would reinstate contract labor immigration. The AFL further declared the "gentlemen's agreement" negotiated by Shidehara and Morris a failure. Asserting that the Japanese had cunningly outwitted the intent of the California anti-alien law, the AFL convention voted in favor of the total exclusion of the Japanese and other Orientals from the United States.

The AFL, which had a membership of more than 5 million, was an organization that politicians could not ignore. On June 3, shortly after arriving in Washington, Dillingham and his colleagues, through the good offices of the secretary of labor, met AFL president Samuel Gompers for three hours. Dillingham came away from the meeting optimistic. As he told former governor McCarthy, "Gompers and the officials next to him are not hostile themselves to the Chinese labor plan." But Gompers's craftiness may have given such an impression. "Sam" Gompers was a small-statured man of sixty-seven when he met the members of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission, but he exuded an obstinacy that brooked no deceit. He gauged his opponents as he puffed on the cigar constantly in his mouth or dropped ashes from it. He was known for never showing his true feelings and controlling the pace of his conversations. The people he most despised were those born with silver spoons in their mouths, privileged from birth, like Walter Dillingham.

Gompers emigrated from London when he was thirteen years old and became active in the labor movement as a cigar maker. He was the founding president of the AFL, a post he held until his death in 1924. Under Gompers, the AFL pursued a course of harmony between labor and management. Clearly distancing itself from radical socialist groups like the IWW, the AFL avoided direct involvement of labor unions in political struggles. During the First World War, Gompers was on the advisory board of the Council of National Defense, and he aligned organized labor with national policy. It was his multifaceted flexibility that allowed him to bear the burden of preserving his large organization.

Gompers's name was known in Japan from the early days of its labor

movement. Fusataro^[*] Takano, who organized the first labor union in Japan, was awakened to the labor movement after witnessing the activities of the AFL when he was a struggling student in San Francisco. Indeed, he directly sought advice from Gompers about starting a labor movement in Japan. Impressed by Takano's enthusiasm, Gompers appointed him the AFL agent in Japan, and after he returned home he sent dispatches to the AFL journal on labor issues there. At times this was his main source of livelihood. In 1897 he established the Society for Formation of Labor Unions (Rodo^[*] Kumiai Kiseikai) with others who had also recently returned from America, including Sen Katayama.

From the beginning the AFL worked to raise living standards for skilled workers but did not concern itself with organizing unskilled laborers. It also denied membership to African American laborers, and it maintained a policy of racial discrimination toward the alien laborers from Asia. One of the AFL's first activities was to support the passage of the anti-Chinese immigration legislation in the 1880s.

Interestingly, while the American Congress was passing anti-Chinese immigration laws, the issue of immigrant Chinese laborers also arose in Japan. The Rodo Kumiai Kiseikai led by Takano and his colleagues, taking an anti-foreign stance, called on Japanese workers to unite against letting in Western capitalists who might exploit Japanese workers or Chinese laborers who would work for cheaper wages than Japanese. In short, rather than confront the AFL's policy of racial discrimination, the early leaders of Japan's labor movement followed the same line.

In 1905, when the increase in Japanese laborers migrating to the mainland from Hawaii was becoming an issue, Gompers proclaimed, "The Caucasians are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by Negroes, Chinamen, Japs or any others."^[26] After Congress passed anti-Chinese immigration laws, the AFL turned to targeting Japanese laborers, who, like the Chinese, worked for low wages, sent their savings back to Japan, and had no intention to settle in America.

Japanese business leaders like Eiichi Shibusawa were apprehensive about the anti-Japanese problem on the West Coast. They regarded the Japanese immigrant laborers as the cause of anti-Japanese sentiments and concluded that anti-Japanese sentiments were casting a dark shadow over U.S.-Japan relations. To alleviate that condition, in 1915 Bunji Suzuki and other members of the Yuaikai^[*] attended the AFL convention held in California, in the heart of the anti-Japanese exclusion movement. Ignoring the objections of Phelan and other anti-Japanese legislators, the AFL gave Suzuki the opportunity to make a speech declaring that no na-

tional borders divided the common interests of workers. Suzuki attended the following year's AFL meeting, but its anti-Japanese policy did not change. During the 1920 referendum in California on the revision of the Alien Land Act, an AFL resolution supporting it swayed the outcome of the ballot. The California state AFL was the strongest branch within the organization.

On June 25, the fifth day of the hearings, Paul Scharrenberg, secretary of the California AFL, testified as a representative of mainland laborers. He cited the "Japanese problem" in Hawaii as a bad example that should not be repeated in California and made it clear that the AFL was strongly opposed to permitting Chinese immigration. Two days later an AFL representative read a telegram from George W. Wright, president of the Honolulu Central Labor Union, the Caucasian workers' organization in Hawaii, declaring opposition to the renewal of Chinese immigration. "Hawaii's emergency commission misrepresenting conditions," it began. "Statistics in our possession indicate no actual labor shortage in Territory. . . . Japanese here striving for American ideals and standards. Strike purely economic. No nationalistic issues involved." It called the HSPA's charges of Japanese conspiracy to control industry "a ridiculous falsehood." Another statement was presented by the Iron Molders' Union in Honolulu: "To-day we are competing with the Jap, which is bad enough, and if the planters are allowed to flood this territory with cheap foreign labor we Americans will be compelled to leave here."^[27]

The AFL mounted the strongest opposition to the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission's efforts. After the AFL convention in Colorado, Gompers directed local branches throughout the United States to send telegrams opposing renewal of Chinese labor immigration to Albert Johnson, chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. At a press conference in Washington on July 11, Gompers denounced the Hawaiian sugar planters for hiring the most easily exploited workers. Now, he said, they were targeting Chinese coolies who were used to exploitation and unmerciful conditions. He characterized the touting of a "Japanese conspiracy to take over Hawaii's sugar industry" in the commission's petition as "a Hawaiian conspiracy."^[28]

The first round of the hearings closed on July 8 for a two-week recess. Washington had already entered its hot, humid summer season. In Honolulu the evening trade winds bring cooler temperatures, but in Washington the summer temperature changes little between day and night, offering no relief while people sleep. Dillingham had been living in a hotel

for two months, but he was undaunted by the AFL's firm opposition. On the contrary, he was determined to overcome this challenge.

When Scharrenberg testified against the renewal of Chinese immigration, Dillingham sent a telegram to Frank Thompson, the HSPA attorney: "One of the Gompers crowd has tipped me off twice that our bill would be half won if we could pull off or split the opposition from home. I hope that work to that end is going on." He also directed that a petition campaign be mounted to show general public support in Hawaii for the renewal of Chinese immigration. The campaign was so widespread and intensive that the Iron Molders' Union of Honolulu complained to the secretary of the interior, "We, the Molders of Honolulu, as taxpayers, object to the office that has been created by the Planters Association and the Chamber of Commerce for the sending of telegrams, letters and wireless messages to congressmen and influential friends in the states at the expense of the taxpayers of Honolulu."

On June 28 Dillingham had wired George M. Rolph, general manager of C&H Sugar in San Francisco to request an introduction to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Just before the hearings recessed, on July 8, Dillingham wired his thanks to Rolph, saying that he had a "satisfactory meeting." He also contacted former Senator Phelan for advice on how to handle the AFL representative from California.

The Exquisite Timing of the Sakamaki Case Indictment

When the hearings resumed on July 24, the first witness was Henry T. Oxnard of the American Beet Sugar Company, the man who had started the beet industry in California. He proclaimed his firm opposition to Chinese immigration for reasons quite different from the AFL's. He saw it as a scheme by his competitors, the Hawaii sugar planters, to import cheap labor. According to Oxnard, it cost 4 cents to produce sugar in Cuba, 6 cents in Puerto Rico, 7 cents for mainland beet sugar, and 7 cents for cane sugar in Louisiana. So Hawaii's production cost of 5 cents was not especially high. "We oppose Chinese immigration," he said, "but we want the same deal for our interests as the Hawaiians got, either no Chinese for Hawaii or Chinese for the mainland as well."

While admitting frankly his demand was a selfish one to protect his own industry, Oxnard accused the Hawaii planters of being selfish as well and of putting the blame on the Japanese. "If you will say that they are patriotic, then put me in the patriotic list," he said. "I do not think the Hawaiian planters are asking for Chinamen to help the Government.

They asked for them ten years ago, and they have always asked for what they believed would get the cheapest and best labor." When a Hawaiian delegate countered that the mainland beet sugar growers had used cheap labor from Mexico, Oxnard replied, "We pay them current American wages and we are perfectly willing for the Hawaiians to use Mexicans." He suggested to the Hawaiian representatives that if there really was a labor shortage in Hawaii, they should solve it by bringing in laborers from the Philippines, which was also American territory.

John M. Rogers of Louisiana, representing the American Cane Growers Association, echoed Oxnard's views. He was "strongly opposed to any man coming to America unless he had the uniform traits essential to full-fledged American citizenship." The majority of the labor force in Louisiana was made up of African American laborers, however, so the southern cane growers were no different from the Hawaiian in seeking workers at the bottom of the economic ladder to protect their profits. U.S. mainland sugar industry representatives testified against the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor for two days.

On the morning of Friday, July 29, AFL president Samuel Gompers, accompanied by several aides, made his first appearance at the hearings. Tension ran through the hearing room, making onlookers forget the humidity for a moment. Seated next to Gompers were George W. Wright, president of the Honolulu Central Labor Council, and Wilmot Chilton, the organization's financial officer. The two men had arrived just three days before from Honolulu.

Before the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission left for Washington, two of its members, Albert Horner and Charles Chillingworth, had paid a call on George Wright. The forty-four-year-old Wright was younger than Walter Dillingham, but his wind-ruffled hair was already speckled with gray. He looked like a man used to physical labor, but he had a degree in physical chemistry, a subject he was said to have taught at his alma mater in Pennsylvania. After working in mining, in 1917 he went to Hawaii as an engineer on the construction of the military facilities at Pearl Harbor. He was a civilian employee of the U.S. military, not an employee of Dillingham's construction company.

In August 1920, after the second Oahu strike was over, Wright was elected to the Honolulu Central Labor Council. An effective writer, he had contributed to the council newsletter. The council's membership was limited to Caucasian and Hawaiian skilled workers who had American citizenship. Since it claimed only some one hundred fifty members, it was not a powerful group, but it did represent Hawaii's Caucasian la-

bor unions. Although under the umbrella of the AFL, it was not recognized as its official Honolulu chapter. After meeting with Wright, Chillingworth and Horner left with the impression that he would not be easily persuaded to their cause. Jack Butler, the new executive secretary of the HSPA, who succeeded Royal Mead, sent Dillingham a letter from Honolulu during the hearing recess. It stated in part, "Wright is the real leader from all information I can get. He claims not to lead at all and gets more strength by such claim. In his presence, those who desire to take our side, remain silent."^[29] Dillingham was rather sanguine, thinking that Wright was far away in Hawaii, but now Wright and Chilton had arrived in the capital.

On July 29, betraying no hint of fatigue from his lengthy trip, Wright read a long statement opposing the importation of Chinese indentured labor. Representative Raker questioned him about the relationship between the Hawaiian sugar industry and the territorial authorities.

RAKER: "Is it your intent to convey to this committee that the president of the Hawaiian Sugar Association went to the governor to get this matter started?"

WRIGHT: "Absolutely. That is the explanation that Mr. Bishop (HSPA president) himself gave us in a conference at which I was present."

RAKER: "In other words, instead of taking it up themselves personally, they started through the governor to make it an official act?"

WRIGHT: "Yes. That's right."

Walter Dillingham surely wished to avoid this testimony about the close connection between the sugar planters and the Hawaiian political-economic circles that controlled the territorial administration and legislature. Kuhio Kalanianaole, the elected delegate to Congress from the territory of Hawaii, raised frequent objections during the exchange between Raker and Wright.

On Monday, August 1, an outburst by Kuhio brought the hearings back to the issue of the Japanese laborers. He attacked Gompers for calling the territory's petition for the importation of Chinese labor "a Hawaiian conspiracy" a few weeks earlier. "My impression is that we were not discussing Japanese," said Gompers, "but Chinese." But Kuhio continued his diatribe. He shouted at the congressmen on the Immigration and Naturalization Committee: "You sent there shiploads of Japanese and put them in the Territory of Hawaii. The people there had nothing to do with the dumping of those Japanese into the islands, and we are coming to you, who dumped them in there, to solve the problem that

they make today for Hawaii. We did not bring them into Hawaii, you did it!" Dumbfounded by this historically inaccurate charge, the hearings fell into a momentary silence. Kuhio's outburst would have been easier to understand if it had been directed at the kamaaina sugar planters rather than congressmen.

Known in Washington as a "prince," Kuhio was more directly connected to the Hawaiian royal family than was Acting Governor Iaukea. His wife came from a branch of the Hawaiian royal family that had ruled Maui. Prince Kuhio, who had studied in England, was known for his dignified British-style manners. With his title, a rarity in America, he was an ideal person to advocate the territory's position on various issues to the Congress. He had been at his post for eighteen years. Suffering from rheumatism since going to Washington, he left the capital each year when the cold winds began to blow and spent the winter months at his residence in Waikiki. It had been rumored for about two years that his heart was weak as well.

An important part of his job as the Hawaiian delegate to Congress was to protect the profits of the Hawaiian sugar planters. In other words, Prince Kuhio was serving the interests of the new Hawaiian governing class, who had overthrown the Hawaiian monarchy of his ancestors. For this reason Kuhio's feelings toward his job must have been ambivalent. This was clear from his passionate effort to petition for the return of lands to Hawaiian natives.

Did the emotions that had built up subconsciously under the burden of defending the Caucasian sugar planters' policies prompt his sudden outburst at the hearings? Or was it the cloying heat of the capital that made him lose his princely dignity? It must have been more than the heat—his face was flushed and his breathing heavy. Resting his corpulent body on the table, perspiration poured from his forehead. The emotional excitement must have put a burden on his weakened heart.

Taking this to be a bad turn of events, Dillingham quickly attempted to change the direction of the dialogue: "One fact must come to the fore, and that is that the people of Hawaii for 40 years have realized that the only way to secure American control of that country was to keep the races in balance." But Representative Raker was disturbed by Kuhio's charge. Noting that Chinese and Japanese immigrants entered Hawaii under the Hawaiian monarchy, he said, "This was the first time that an official request had been made to have Japanese immigration stopped." When Gompers agreed, Kuhio became more agitated. He shouted,

If you do not believe in the solution we are presenting to you, for God's sake give us something else, but do not condemn us for coming over here and trying to save ourselves. It seems as though you think we are a bunch of damned crooks and that we are trying to sneak something through Congress—I tell you that you must solve our problem and not let it continue until a condition arises in Hawaii similar to the condition that arose in the South, and let lynch law solve it.

The charge made by the obviously upset prince cannot be treated as mere hysterics if we assume that his words were meant for the kamaaina sugar planters, that is, for Dillingham.

The hearings finally quieted down when Chairman Johnson said, "We will suspend this line of debate." George Wright continued his testimony by suggesting that while there was a labor shortage at the sugarcane plantations, the number of laborers needed was 2,000 to 3,000 rather than 5,000 to 6,000, as Dillingham and the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission had asserted. The main reason for the labor shortage, he said, was that despite soaring sugar prices that put more money in their pockets than they had dreamed, Japanese laborers had left the sugarcane fields because labor conditions on the plantations were so bad that they could not bear to live there.

Wright was by no means protective of the Japanese. "Our efforts have been directed with this point of view, of keeping the Japanese on the plantations as far as possible," he said.

Our fear, our menace, has been the upward crowding of the Japanese, and we have believed that any means that could be devised to keep the Japanese on the plantations where he was originally brought to do his work, would be the solution of the problem. If Chinese were imported, the Japanese would yield to the pressure from below of this lower grade of Orientals—and absolutely, they would crowd out those at the top, and we who consider ourselves on the top level would be the ones crowded off the islands.

In other words, keeping the Japanese on the plantations was a way of protecting Caucasian workers.

Representative Shaw, citing the Honolulu Advertiser article about Tsutsumi's statement that the warship Yakumo had come to pick up striking Japanese, asked Wright, "Do you still believe that the strike of 1920 was purely economic and that no national issues were involved?"

Wright responded, "I certainly do."

Representative Free of California took up the questioning. "Do you believe the Japanese are loyal to this country as against Japan? Do you not believe they all pledge their first loyalty to Japan?" "No, I would not

say they all do," Wright answered. "Of course, I have no use for the Japs any more than the rest of you have, but I know that some of them are Americans, and probably just as good Americans as lots of the rest of us. But that does not touch upon the question of this strike that the gentleman has just brought up." Wright, as he later testified, had no Japanese acquaintances except for one or two school boys who were high school classmates of his sons.

The next day, after testifying that neither the mainland AFL nor the Honolulu Central Labor Council had anything to do with the strike, Wright observed, "The strike was not nationalistic, even if all the American papers in Hawaii had called it so for the evident purpose of discrediting the strikers." At this, Free, repeating a question asked earlier by Johnson, asked Wright, "You are on pretty friendly terms with the Japanese, are you not?"

As if on a signal, Chairman Johnson jumped in. "Mr. Wright, I want to ask you if you visited any Japanese before you came on here from Honolulu?"

"I have talked on the street with a part Jap, who is the editor of a Japanese paper, namely Fred Makino."

"Had the Japanese labor association offered you support in any way, financial support in particular?"

"No, sir."

Charging impatiently into this interchange, Representative Free threw out an explosive accusation.

"Is it not a fact that some Japanese put up at least $500 for the expenses of either yourself or your associate, Mr. Chilton?"

"I say that they offered me no support. Now, I will make this thing absolutely clear to this committee, because there are certain things in connection with . . ."

Cutting Wright off, as if he were a prosecuting attorney in court, Representative Free said, "Let us have an answer, yes or no, to the question." Wright responded, "As I told you, personally I do not know. Money has been raised from individual contributions who absolutely do not want to go on record. . . . As to that, we do not consider that it is anybody's business as to who did or who did not contribute."

"We consider it our business," replied Free. "I will tell you right now that I consider it my business, as a member of this committee, to know whether Japanese contributed to the expense of you coming here."

Chairman Johnson pressed Wright for an answer: "How much money did the Japanese contribute to your expense fund?" When Wright said,

"I am not in a position to say," Representative Free asked Chilton the same question. Chilton answered that since the Honolulu Central Labor Council was a small organization, it could not come up with the travel expenses so he went to ask Japanese merchants for contributions. It was suggested that he clear the request with Tokuji Onodera, secretary of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce. But Onodera refused to make a contribution, since it would be unwise to incur the enmity of Dillingham's Honolulu Chamber of Commerce. However, Onodera said, he did not mind if individual Japanese merchants contributed on their own. Calculating that the expenses for himself and Wright to travel to Washington would be $1,500, Chilton sought contributions for that amount. Donations by Caucasian workers in the Honolulu Central Labor Council amounted to only $170, and the rest came from Japanese contributors.

Representative Free resumed his attack on Wright, "You knew that some of the money you came here on, came from the Japanese, did you not?"

"I knew that some of the money did come from the Japanese, yes."

"Why did you not say that when I asked you before?"

"Because I was told I was not at liberty, that this money was collected confidentially."

"You had been in pretty close touch with them on the matter before you came, had you not?"

"Not particularly, no. I have not been in close touch with them."

"You have had their views, you have discussed it with them, and what you would testify to before the committee?"

"No, sir. We did not expect to come before this committee. They knew the purposes for which we wanted to come, and, as Mr. Chilton has just said, they contributed."

One week earlier, in a letter dated July 20, Prince Kuhio had written to HSPA attorney Thompson, "Chilton and Wright appear before the Committee Friday when we hope to have some startling exposure." The Hawaiian side had chosen Representative Free as the person to leak this startling information. A newly elected member of the House, Free was eager for a chance to play to the stands. The other congressman from California, Raker, was skeptical of the hearings from the start. He was an experienced congressman known for his analytical abilities, and he was not someone whom the Hawaiians could easily manipulate. Moreover, he was close to the AFL, which expressed its strong opposition to the petition from Hawaii.

The Dillingham group had targeted Free to use him to destroy the credibility of Wright and the labor representatives from Honolulu as well as the AFL. Toward the end of the first hearings at the end of June, Dillingham, through Thompson, had directed HSPA secretary Butler to try to block opposition by the Honolulu Central Labor Council and to foment internal discord in the organization. When AFL opposition turned out to be far stronger than expected, Dillingham sent an SOS message to Thompson: "Prominent Federation official advises work on Honolulu local council withdraw or split protest against our bill. Urge your best endeavor accomplish this." Two days after receiving this telegram, Butler had invited Wright and others to the HSPA. Wright had refused to withdraw the council's opposition to the importation of Chinese labor. In fact, however, opinion was split within the Honolulu Central Labor Council. Some thought it a bad idea to make an enemy of the all-powerful HSPA. But Wright, who had seized the issue to strengthen ties with the AFL so that the council would be formally recognized as its local branch, overcame the opposition and decided to go to Washington. At that point, however, it was clear that the Honolulu Central Labor Council would not be able to come up with travel expenses.

Just after this Wright had his chance meeting with Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, president of the Hawaii hochi^[*] . Only about two weeks earlier Wright had first met Makino and other Japanese-language newspaper-men at a meeting sponsored by the Federation of Japanese Labor to sound out the intentions of the Honolulu Central Labor Council. When he met Makino on the street, Wright said that he had decided to go to Washington to express his opposition to the renewal but was having difficulty gathering the necessary funds. Displaying his usual magnanimity, Makino not only suggested having the Japanese merchants contribute but also provided Wright with several introductions.

When the council's fund-raising effort became known to the HSPA, it was just the opportunity they had sought. After Wright and Chilton departed for Washington on the Siberia , Governor Farrington's Honolulu Star Bulletin ran a scoop sensationalizing the ties between the Honolulu Central Labor Council and the Federation of Japanese Labor. "The 'Labor' delegates who went on to Washington for the avowed purpose of defeating the Hawaiian emergency labor bill stand convicted of having been financed in their mischievous errand by Japanese money!" The paper reported that the federation had donated $500 to Wright to help the Japanese cause in Washington.

After this "startling exposure" at the hearings, at a press conference

Prince Kuhio issued a statement that for many years the Japanese had plotted to take over Hawaii. Since the story involved the AFL, newspapers throughout the country carried the testimony of the AFL, Wright, and Chilton. In California the Los Angeles Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle fanned anti-Japanese sentiments with headlines like "Japanese Pay Whites to Fight Chinese Labor." The Boston Globe ran the headline "Say Japs Paid Their Way"; the Philadelphia Record , "Honolulu Japanese Behind Fight Against Coolie Labor"; and the Albany Knickerbocker Press , "Hawaii Labor Row Financed by Japs."

By August 2 the two major English-language newspapers in Hawaii ran exceptionally large headlines: "Chilton Admits on Stand that He and Wright Took $1,500 in Contributions," suggesting that the Japanese federation had bought the Caucasian labor group's leaders. The Honolulu Advertiser noted in a sarcastic subheading "Labor's Fight Is Helping, Not Hurting Hawaii."^[30]

Alongside the articles on the hearings in Washington, however, came reports that twenty-one Japanese were under indictment for dynamiting the Sakamaki house at Olaa Plantation. The August 2 Honolulu Star Bulletin's headline screamed: "'Assassination Corps' of Labor Federation Carried Out Campaign Terrorism." The timing of the indictment was exquisite.

In an editorial sending off Dillingham's Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission, the Honolulu Advertiser had pledged that those remaining in Hawaii would do their utmost to support the commission in its life-and-death struggle for the territory of Hawaii. It can be said that those remaining in Hawaii kept their promise. The timing of the hurried indictment of the leaders of the Federation of Japanese Labor more than a year after the Sakamaki dynamiting incident coincided well with the timing of Dillingham's June 25 telegram to HSPA secretary Thompson. According to their trial testimony, Matsumoto and Saito^[*] had confessed to the crime in late November 1920, after the Kyorakukan^[*] incident, yet the territory took no specific action for seven months after the confessions, until things seemed to be going badly for the commission in Washington.

The exquisite timing that connected Washington, D.C., and Honolulu was the real reason that charges were brought on the Sakamaki dynamiting incident. To shore up its efforts to renew the importation of Chinese labor, the territory of Hawaii charged Noboru Tsutsumi and other leaders of the federation with conspiracy in the first degree to per-

petuate a "shocking crime of conspiracy." With the indictment, the territory of Hawaii had already accomplished its real purpose.

Samuel Gompers's Counterargument

Because of the difference in time zones, news of the indictment of the leaders of the Federation of Japanese Labor was reported on the mainland with headlines such as "Japanese Accused of Inciting Sugar Riots!" a day later than articles about Japanese contributions to the white labor representatives. Yet it was treated by the papers across the country as a continuation of the previous day's articles. Many newspapers exaggerated the violence of the 1920 strike. The San Francisco Chronicle , for example, reported, "The culminating act of violence during the strike occurred June 3, 1920, when the house of the Japanese who refused to join the strikers was dynamited."^[31] West Coast newspapers, especially in California where the anti-Japanese movement was strong, played up the story with sensational phrases—"violent incident in the strike," "criminal conspiracy," "dynamiting," "attempted murder,"—and emphasized that these acts were perpetrated by Japanese. At the trial Judge Banks had said that "the Territory was in no way concerned with the strike itself—whether or not it was justified, or even properly conducted." In direct contrast to his words, the mainland press exposed the true intentions of the Hawaiian authorities by emphasizing the connection between the strike and the dynamiting.

Thirty-five years earlier, when dynamite was thrown into a rally of striking laborers in Chicago, the authorities quickly punished labor leaders whom they accused of being under the influence of anarchists. The "Hay Market Massacre" was notorious in American labor history. Subsequently, no matter what the actual circumstances, the radical left-wing labor activists, anarchists, and IWW members were labeled "bomb throwers." The newspapers used "dynamite" as a synonym for such labor activists. The Palmer Raids of early 1920 were the most extreme example of playing on public fears in that way.

The petition of the territory of Hawaii to renew the importation of Chinese labor had not attracted much attention in Washington because it was a problem affecting a far-off territory in the Pacific. But when the issue became entangled with the AFL, the largest union organization in the country, it suddenly became news all over the country. And the articles about it were replete with the word "dynamite," a word that un-

mistakably drew readers' attention. Walter Dillingham must have read the news that morning as he took his customary breakfast in the hotel restaurant. His face no doubt exuded more easy confidence than ever before.

The hearings on August 3 included the testimony of Wilmot Chilton, who had come to Washington with George Wright. He was a member of a unique minority in Hawaii, white laborers. He was born and raised in a class sandwiched between the rich haoles and the Japanese immigrants, who were the majority in the labor force. He had grown up thinking of Japanese as economic competitors, so his perspective differed from that of Wright, who had come to Hawaii from the mainland. In response to questions, Chilton said, "[The Japanese] were prolific, clannish, patronized only their own industries, were masterful in attitude, and were giving the Americans a hard run in all sorts of business." And he added, "They work like a ratchet." By this, he meant that their sole goal in life was getting ahead and that they used any means to achieve success.

In direct opposition to Wright, Chilton characterized the 1920 strike as a conspiracy "wound up on a nationalistic basis." His testimony seemed to show that he had shifted his allegiance to the Dillingham side. Before he had departed for Washington, Chilton had engaged in some strange behavior. Later it was rumored that Frank Thompson, the HSPA lawyer, had bought off Chilton, and his testimony at the hearings seemed to substantiate that rumor.

The AFL did not know that Wright and Chilton traveled to Washington on funds donated by Japanese. Samuel Gompers was particularly incensed that the organization had been embarrassed at the hearings and, even worse, in the press. When Gompers testified on August 4, the day after Chilton, he appeared to be very displeased, his lined face hardened. He sharply criticized the Honolulu Central Labor Council. While he admitted that they may have been "driven to desperation in an effort to help in a just cause," he distanced the AFL from their actions. "I do not exculpate these men, I do not stand for any such procedure, nor do those with whom I am associated in the American Labor Movement," he said. "I regard it as an almost inexcusable blunder on the part of the organization at Honolulu, or the men themselves, to seek contributions from Japanese. I can understand their straits."

Chairman Albert Johnson, however, was intent on treating the AFL president as a surrogate for Wright, who was no longer present. Point-

ing out that Wright had denied twice that the 1920 strike arose from Japanese nationalistic ambitions, Johnson asserted that his testimony could not be trusted as it was clear that he had received money from Japanese. Gompers responded,

The fundamental principle for which I and my associates were contending was the principle of Americanism. Whether Japanese movement in Hawaii was nationalistic or not did not make a jot of difference. . . . The testimony they have given would show clearly that the Japanese have not received value for their money. They have shown the Japanese in their true colors, and yet I can understand how men so far away would grasp at almost anything in order to carry out an honest and high purpose.

Dillingham, who had been on the listening side for several days, tried to return attention to the Hawaiian petition for renewal of the importation of Chinese labor. Dillingham had sent Honolulu a telegram the day before that victory was 99 percent certain, but Representative Raker had thrown cold water on his confidence on this matter. Gompers was happy to return to the main purpose of the hearing, for it permitted him to launch an even more forceful attack: "Intellectually [the Chinese] are living in the year 1921 but industrially they are 400 years behind the times and imagine that the people of the United States will consent to the introduction of a feudal system, or peonage, or a bondman system." Warming up to his topic, Gompers spoke of his memories about how moved he was when he heard of the freeing of the black slaves in America when he was a youth working in a cigar factory in London: "I am a protestant against injustice or a reversion to the old reaction and the old-time conditions of the life of labor . . ." But in his guise as a champion against racial discrimination, Gompers ignored the fact that for many years the AFL did not permit those very blacks he spoke of to become members. No one at the hearings countered Gompers, however. He concluded by proclaiming:

America's workers were not going to stand idly by and see Hawaii "Chinaized" as a remedy for Japanese evils. This resolution would be an entering wedge for greedy profiteers, to bring Chinese to the mainland. The proposal would arouse the ire not only of the Japanese in Hawaii—who could not be deported—but of their government as well. How could Congress on the one hand pass a Japanese exclusion act and on the other a law to admit Chinese coolies?

One week later, on August 12, the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization hearing entered its final day, calling Walter Dil-

lingham as a witness once again. After another series of heated exchanges with Representative Raker, Dillingham renewed his appeal to the congressmen:

Judge Raker, we have sat here for six weeks with an open resolution which would give the Secretary of Labor the power to bring in any alien otherwise inadmissible to meet the situation in Honolulu. Has any constructive plan or suggestion been developed in the six weeks by this body or any one else by which we could meet the situation, which you yourself describe as being deplorable?

Prince Kuhio seconded his protests, but the committe chairman, Johnson, without referring to the validity of the Chinese labor plan, gaveled the two-month hearing to a close with the simple comment, "I think the committee was wise in carrying the Japanese phase of the Hawaiian situation into this matter."

The Senate Hearings

The Senate hearing on the Hawaiian petition started the following day, August 13, at 10:30 A.M . The chairman of the Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization was LeBaron Colt of Rhode Island, but the hearing on immigration into Hawaii was chaired by Sen. William P. Dillingham. At seventy-eight, Dillingham, formerly governor of Vermont, was in his fourth Senate term. His twenty-one years in the Senate made him a veteran legislator. Like Albert Johnson in the House, he had been a member of the Immigration and Naturalization Committee from the start and had served as its chairman for many years. Senator Dillingham was actually a relative of Walter Dillingham of Hawaii.

Perhaps because of this connection, Walter Dillingham appeared quite optimistic as he began his testimony, comfortably choosing his words to maximum effect.

Up until a year ago this spring, I was one of those who believed that the work of Americanizing the Japanese in Hawaii was meeting with success.

A year ago, when 6,000 Japanese laborers, headed by a group of men not from the laboring community, but a group of organizers and agitators, struck and left their jobs, it developed that every Japanese in the country was on the side of the Japanese strikers, and that those who were closely affiliated with the American business interests—meaning by that the large Japanese business interests, banking interests, and the professional interests; that is, the men who were following professions—were all on the side of the Japanese strikers. While they admitted, as a number of the superior Japanese admitted, that the strike was wrong, that it was nationalistic, and that it should not be,

it was not for five or six months that it was possible to get a statement out of any one of these prominent Japanese to the effect that the strike was wrong, that the principle was wrong, or that it was the duty of these people to return to work, although they freely admitted these facts in private conversations. Then, it seemed, and from publications which we will put before you here, it is demonstrated clearly, that when it comes to any big question the solidarity of the Japanese is perfect, regardless of where they were born.^[32]

Dillingham also deployed God and theories of pigmentation to substantiate the theory that Japanese were plotting to take over Hawaii. Anti-Japanese activists on the mainland argued that Japanese aimed to invade California because their physical makeup could not tolerate severe cold or heat, but Dillingham's opinion was entirely the opposite. The Japanese were more persevering than Americans and hardworking in the sugarcane fields, he claimed, and they were suited to working in tropical conditions. As Dillingham continued, however, the senators must have been appalled: "When you are asked to go out in the sun and work in the canebrake, away from the tropical breeze, you are subjecting the white man to something that the good Lord did not create him to do. If He had, the people of the world, I think, would have had a white pigment in the skin and not variegated colors." The senator from South Dakota challenged Dillingham's theory of God's intentions, citing as an example the brutally humid heat of the southern United States.

Following Dillingham, Prince Kuhio brought up the issue of dual nationalities as solid proof that the nisei were under orders from the government of Japan. At the close of the day's hearings, Kuhio issued a statement declaring, "The control of Hawaii has been Japan's objective for many, many years."

The Senate hearings were suspended after two days because Congress was due to recess for the summer in one week. Dillingham and the two other members of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission were forced to stay in Washington until the Senate reconvened in the fall, but Dillingham's attitude was positive. He wrote to Governor Farrington in Honolulu that the majority of the senators should be leaning toward the Hawaiian side when the hearings resumed.

However, on September 29, the day before the scheduled resumption of the Senate hearings, Dillingham was suddenly called in to meet with Henry P. Fletcher, undersecretary of state, who told him that the State Department was extremely concerned about upsetting the Japanese government. The following day, September 30, Secretary of State Hughes

met with Dillingham for thirty minutes to explain the importance of an international conference about to be held in Washington. He asked Dillingham's cooperation in postponing the hearings on the importation of Chinese labor until the conference was safely over.

The Washington Conference and Japanese Immigration

Four days later, in a letter to Dillingham, Hughes explained the Washington Conference.

It would be most unfortunate if, while the coming Conference were holding its sessions, this legislation should come up for debate in Congress. The Bill, in essence, relates to the immigration of Orientals and it would be impossible to avoid in its consideration a general discussion of our Far Eastern policies. It is quite within the range of possibilities that the Conference itself might in this connection become the subject of debate. . . . The hopes of many nations of the earth for future peace are centered on this Conference and it is felt that nothing should be permitted to mar its deliberations or cause embarrassment or uneasiness to any connected with its work.^[33]

The three members of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission had already concluded that they would have to postpone consideration of their petition by the Senate. There was no advantage in defying the secretary of state. Chillingworth and Horner immediately left the capital, where chilly winds had begun to blow, for the ever-summery Hawaii, while Dillingham continued to make the rounds of congressmen. He finally left Washington on October 28, three days after the other two men had arrived in Hawaii. On the way home he attended the national meeting of the American Legion in Kansas, to seek their help in speaking to their congressmen. On November 15, just before he boarded the ship bound for Honolulu, he told local newspaper reporters in San Francisco why Hawaii was petitioning Congress for the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor: "It has been a case of bringing Congress to see that America needs a colonial policy, that the conditions and requirements of Hawaii, the Philippine Islands and Puerto Rico cannot be judged by the mainland standards."^[34]

The Washington Conference, the success of which had so concerned Secretary of State Hughes, had begun four days earlier, on November 12. The purpose of the conference was to put a brake on an incipient naval arms race that had escalated after the First World War. Already on its first day, Secretary Hughes had proposed a naval disarmament plan es-

tablishing the ratio of capital ship tonnage among Great Britain, the United States, and Japan at 5 : 5 : 3. Behind the proposal for naval arms reduction were Anglo-American concerns about Japan. Not only was Japan stretching its reach on the Asian continent as China was riven with internal strife, it also was extending its influence to the western Pacific, where it had acquired League of Nations mandates over islands in Micronesia.

The Japanese delegation arrived just after Prime Minister Takashi Hara was assassinated. The only Japanese-language newspaper reporter from Hawaii to cover the Washington Conference, Yasutaro^[*] Soga^[*] , president and editor-in-chief of the Nippu jiji , reported,

It was fruitful just to have been able easily to read the countenances of the galaxy of powerful men of various nations who gathered this conference to discuss disarmament, so significant an issue in the world. From Japan alone, there were Ietatsu Tokugawa, Tomosaburo^[*] Kato^[*] , Kijuro^[*] Shidehara, Masanao Hanihara, and other plenipotentiaries, as well as advisors in various fields. With a group of over fifty reporters, the stately Japanese Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue seemed practically like a little Japan.

Hughes's proposal for naval arms reduction was enthusiastically supported not only by the American press but also by foreign reporters. The Japanese plenipotentiary, Navy Minister Tomosaburo Kato (later Prime Minister), indicated his support of the Hughes proposal, but he disagreed about the ratio. Britain, the United States, and others refused to budge, and in the end the Japanese negotiated the maintenance of the status quo of military presence in the Pacific in return for the 5 : 5 : 3 ratio of capital ships.

The Washington Conference also discussed Pacific and Far East issues, including Japan's special interests on the Chinese continent and its Siberian intervention, and it reached agreement on such issues as the territorial integrity of China, the Open Door policy, and equal economic opportunity. At the same time, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which had restricted America's expansion into Asia, was allowed to lapse.

The four-month Washington Conference ended on February 6, 1922, with a treaty signed by the nine participating nations, just as Matsumoto was testifying in Honolulu about the Japanese conspiracy. This conference was clearly a way for the United States to consolidate its Far Eastern policy. The reaffirmation of the open door principle, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of China, also opened the way to future contention between Japan and the United States. For Japan, the capital ship ratio decided on at the Washington Conference relieved Japan of

the heavy financial burden imposed by naval expansion, and given relative national strengths the ratio could be considered fair. Within Japan, however, the treaty agitated the expansionist nationalists who wanted Japan to dominate Asia, and it invited criticism that accepting an inferior level of naval strength was a "national disgrace."

The Japanese community in Hawaii responded to the arms reduction agreement in a way that was no less emotional. It is true that the second Oahu strike was a labor-capital struggle based on economic issues, as Noboru Tsutsumi and the other federation leaders had claimed, but it is undeniable that what allowed the Japanese laborers to endure their half-year struggle was a conviction that their own country was a first-class nation, as strong militarily as the United States or Britain. Perhaps because they suffered racial discrimination by white capitalists, the patriotism of the Japanese in Hawaii became more intense.

This can be easily surmised from the warm welcome the Japanese community accorded Imperial Navy ships when they made port calls in Hawaii. The 1920 announcement of Japan's plan to build an "Eight Eight Fleet" (Hachi Hachi Kantai)—eight battleships and eight battle cruisers—just after the end of the strike was greeted especially warmly by the Japanese community in Hawaii. When a training ship made a port call in Honolulu during the Washington Conference, they turned out in full force, lining the streets and waving small rising sun flags, displaying their patriotism in an unprecedented show of welcome at a time when military disarmament was under discussion.

Over many years the Japanese community had witnessed the expansion of naval base construction at Pearl Harbor. To them, the agreement on naval arms reduction was something real and something significant. It meant not only that Japan's ratio was lower than that of the United States and Britain but also that the Eight Eight Fleet plan would be curtailed and that the construction of large warships in Japan would have to be abandoned midway. It was a disappointment. It was not strange that many Japanese immigrants saw the construction of the Pearl Harbor base as a symbol of American intentions to thwart the development of their homeland. The reaction to the Washington Conference agreement was so vehement that the Myojo^[*] , a monthly of the Jodo^[*] sect of Buddhism, urged, "Britain should abandon its foreign outpost at Gibraltar and the U.S. should abandon its military port at Pearl Harbor."

Before Walter Dillingham left Washington, he received a communication from the Japanese ambassador, Kijuro^[*] Shidehara. According to Dil-

lingham, Shidehara had sounded him out on the proposal to renew Chinese labor immigration: "If assurances of no more labor troubles in Hawaii, would you aid in defeating the planter's bill?" No documents remain indicating Dillingham's response. How was Ambassador Shidehara intending to "assure" that the Japanese immigrants would not engage in further labor struggles? Such a comment by the Japanese ambassador was bound to give weight to the Japanese conspiracy theory propounded by the Hawaiian authorities, who argued that the 1920 strike involved the Japanese government.

Two weeks after the Washington Naval Treaty was signed, the U.S. Military Intelligence Report on the Pacific area took note of the statement made by Eiichi Shibusawa, an observer at the historic conference, that it was regrettable that the immigration issue, which was at the core of the misunderstanding between Japan and the United States, was not on the agenda at the Washington Conference.^[35] But Ambassador Shidehara, one of the Japanese plenipotentiaries at the conference, advised the Foreign Ministry that because it was a bilateral issue between the United States and Japan it was not likely to make much headway:

Letting the immigration issue be decided by this international conference will not be something the U.S. will favor. Even if the U.S. agrees to allow the issue to be discussed, Britain will not oppose the position of the U.S. because of her position of possessing colonies. Many of the other nations will choose not to oppose the position of the U.S. on the whole. We must be prepared to face the fact that, should this issue be discussed at this conference, it will be much more disadvantageous for us than our position was at the Paris Conference and at the League of Nations.

When Shidehara met with Secretary of State Hughes on September 15, two months before the Washington Conference, Hughes had expressed his conviction that although he was concerned about the Japanese immigrants' problem, negotiations on the question should wait for an opportune time so as not to incite public opinion in a detrimental way in both nations. A few weeks later Hughes called in Dillingham to request the postponement of the hearings on the petition for renewal of the importation of Chinese labor.

On October 18, a month after his meeting with Secretary Hughes, Ambassador Shidehara received a telegram from Foreign Minister Uchida: "It is not desirable that we attend the Washington Conference ignoring the immigration issue. Therefore, I instruct you to find out if the U.S. is

ready to give us some sort of guarantee or, in the case of the opening of a new round of negotiations, the approximate position of the U.S." As Uchida noted at the outset,

On this issue we have respected the U.S. intentions by concluding the Gentlemen's Agreement, prohibiting transfers from Hawaii, prohibiting picture brides, etc. Putting that aside, the informal discussions conducted between you and Ambassador Morris have achieved a general agreement. Even with this result, the current U.S. administration, despite having been in office more than half a year, has not initiated any effort to resolve our differences. This is in great contrast to the Imperial government which has been making steady efforts based on the spirit of mutual compromise. This impasse is of great regret to our government.

Referring to the situation within Japan, he continued,

As a matter of reality, the situation in California is so urgent that the resident Japanese report feeling threatened and are concerned about their own well-being. The stubborn course of action pursued in California and other regions perturbs public sentiment in Japan in no small way. . . . With the Washington Conference about to begin, arguments are running rampant as the Diet session approaches. At this critical time, we cannot possibly accept the U.S. side's position that it will consider negotiations on this issue after the end of the Washington Conference. To attend the Washington Conference while keeping the status quo is undesirable for us. I direct you to explain our position to the Secretary of State.

As to the time frame of the negotiations on immigration, he emphasized the importance of the success of the Washington Conference.

The Imperial government wishes the U.S. government to agree on negotiations to be based on the "Shidehara-Morris" draft. Should the U.S. government guarantee this to the Japanese government, we will consider holding these discussions after the Washington Conference is concluded.

As the man most directly involved in the U.S.-Japan negotiations on immigration matters, Shidehara was called back to Japan after the Washington Conference. At a meeting with Secretary Hughes before his departure, Shidehara touched on the immigration problem, sounding him out again on issuing the Shidehara-Morris agreement as an official statement by the two countries. Hughes expressed concern that bringing up the immigration problem at a time when hawkish elements in Congress, angered by the gentle treatment of Japan at the Washington Conference, were "arguing in a thoughtless manner with no concern about offending a friendly nation," might bring a further eruption of anti-Japanese sentiment on the West Coast. Shidehara suggested, "We look forward

with anticipation toward the coming of an opportune time to resolve this issue after the Washington Conference when emotions in both countries are improved and calmed."^[36]

As mentioned earlier the Japanese consul general in Honolulu, Chonosuke^[*] Yada, had departed for Japan on February 21, 1922, during the Sakamaki dynamiting trial. On board the Taiyo-maru^[*] bound for Yokohama were a group of the plenipotentiaries from Japan, including Admiral Tomosaburo^[*] Kato^[*] and Vice Foreign Minister Masanao Hanihara, on their way back from the Washington Conference. It is not difficult to imagine that Yada told these high-ranking Japanese officials about the territory's petition efforts in Washington, about the Hawaiian authorities' attempt to label the 1920 Oahu strike a Japanese conspiracy at the hearings, and about the trial of Tsutsumi and other federation strike leaders.

Eiichi Shibusawa had stopped off in Honolulu on his return to Japan about a month before the Japanese plenipotentiaries arrived there. The FBI report noted that Viscount Shibusawa, the "grand old man of Japan," was "probably one of the most sincere Japanese who has ever visited the United States."^[37] During his four-day stay in Hawaii, it continued, Shibusawa had made a special effort to investigate the Hawaii Laborers' Association and conditions affecting the Japanese laborers in Hawaii. Before arriving in Honolulu, he had met in California with pro-Japanese elements about the anti-Japanese problem in California. Shibusawa was one of the few key Japanese leaders who had shown an early interest in the U.S.-Japan friction over the Japanese immigrant labor problem. Indeed, he had sent Bunji Suzuki, president of the Yuaikai^[*] , to attend the AFL convention and had supported efforts to achieve harmony between labor and capital at home.

Even so, according to the FBI report, for the first several days of his visit he made no effort to get in touch directly with the Japanese labor leaders. Instead he confined his activities to obtaining information from the Japanese consul and influential members of the Japanese community. Just before he departed for Japan, Shibusawa reluctantly agreed to meet with a few federation representatives for a short time. It is known that the federation secretary general, Jiro^[*] Hayakawa, met with him, but it is not clear whether Tsutsumi and the other former federation leaders, who were free on bail, did so too. After listening to the federation representatives, Shibusawa suggested to the labor leaders "that they should appoint several prominent Japanese to act as go-betweens, between the

labor federation and the capitalists." Leaders of the Japanese community in Honolulu, such as Reverend Takie Okumura, Dr. Iga Moori, and Assistant Professor Harada (Japanese studies, University of Hawaii) also attended the meeting, and Shibusawa hoped that they would act as the go-betweens.

According to the FBI report, the federation members opposed this suggestion because they thought that "any prominent Japanese in the community, who might be called upon to act as a go-between, would in all probability become pro-capitalist, as such had been in the past." They pointed out that the recent attitude of Consul General Yada was a good example of how "the capitalists might influence any go-between that may appear among the conservative Japanese."^[38]

It is clear that Shibusawa was upset with the federation leaders. After they had left, according to the FBI report, he suggested to another prominent Japanese that the Japanese labor federation should be broken up. Reverend Okumura, who had met Shibusawa several times before, agreed. Among the Japanese in Hawaii, Okumura was closest to Shibusawa. Six months earlier, while in Japan seeking contributions for his "anti-Japanese prevention movement," Okumura had been supported by Shibusawa. He now asked Shibusawa "to take steps to have the Japanese Labor Federation broken up when he arrived in Japan."^[39] The discussion at this meeting among Japanese was known to the Hawaiian territorial authorities before the day was over.

As the result of his visit, Shibusawa concluded that the causes of the Japanese problem in Hawaii were "labor union, Japanese language schools, dual citizenship, Buddhist activities." When his ship docked at Yokohama, Shibusawa told a group of reporters: "As a member of the Japan-U.S. relations committee I see the need for solving the problem of labor organizers in California and Hawaii. . . . The immigration issue is one that always casts a deep shadow on Japan-U.S. relations."^[40]

The Baptism of Noboru Tsutsumi

A month after the conclusion of the Washington Conference, Noboru Tsutsumi and the other federation leaders were convicted in the Sakamaki house dynamiting case. Of the fifteen defendants found guilty of conspiracy in the first degree, thirteen appealed immediately after Judge Banks had sentenced them to imprisonment for not less than four years or more than ten years and raised their bail from $3,000 to $5,000. On March 10, the Hawaii hochi^[*] reporter Teisuke Terasaki noted in his di-

ary that because Noboru Tsutsumi and five others were unable to come up with bond money, they were placed in detention at 2:00 P.M .

Even had the Federation of Japanese Labor headquarters been so inclined, it had no financial resources to pay bail for its former leaders. It left the responsibility up to the local unions on the plantations where each defendant resided by having them raise bail using reserves of funds contributed by laborers. As a result, many local unions announced their dissolution. The tactics employed by the territory of Hawaii to force the dissolution of the federation by assaulting it financially were finally succeeding.

As if to make doubly sure, the territory of Hawaii indicted four of the Sakamaki house dynamiting case defendants—Fumio Kawamata, Honji Fujitani, Shunji Tomota, and Kan'ichi Takizawa—on charges of conspiracy to bomb the house of Hayaji Nakazawa, a "planters' dog" on Ewa Plantation. Kawamata and others, who had served as federation leaders after Tsutsumi and others resigned, were free on bail paid by the Waipahu Plantation union, but they were immediately required to post another $2,500 in bail per person. The Waipahu union was the largest on Oahu, and it had survived even after the other unions disbanded, but with this additional expense it announced its intention to dissolve. The indictment for bombing of the Nakazawa house was never brought to trial; it was later withdrawn by the territory as not a worthwhile use of the taxpayers' money.

On May 21, some two months after Judge Banks handed down his sentence, Terasaki noted in his diary that Noboru Tsutsumi had been baptized that day at 4:00 P.M . at the Japanese Hospital. And on a fair Sunday two weeks later, he met Mr. Tsutsumi at church "after not having seen him for a long time." An ardent Christian, Terasaki was a member of the Nuuanu Union Church in Honolulu. An English record of Tsutsumi's baptism by Reverend Teikichi Hori still remains in the church's archives.

Of the three secretaries of the Federation of Japanese Labor who led the strike, Hiroshi Miyazawa was a pastor and Ichiji Goto^[*] was known to be a fervent Christian. Could their religious piety have piqued Tsutsumi's intellectual curiosity when they were in jail together, unable to make bail? Or had Tsutsumi resigned himself to dying in Hawaii? Tsutsumi suffered complications resulting from influenza contracted during the strike, and he was still not well at the time of the trial. Immediately after the strike he had been admitted to the Japanese Hospital where he was baptized. Yet Tsutsumi's family never knew of his baptism. Accord-

ing to family members, from his youth he had been a romantic, prone to enthusiasm. That he was baptized as a Christian, even though born and raised in a family that had been Buddhist priests for generations, may substantiate this aspect of his character.

Thirteen of the fifteen convicted defendants appealed the guilty verdicts, but neither Noboru Tsutsumi nor Chuhei^[*] Hoshino was among them. While Tsutsumi was in Hawaii, his wife, Chiyo, lined up their two children once a year for photographs to send to their father far across the Pacific. When he had left for Hawaii, Tsutsumi had promised Chiyo that he would send for her, but he had never shown any inclination to do so. Hawaii was a stepping-stone to meet with his brother Ekan on the American mainland, not a place where he intended to settle. As he told Judge Banks before sentencing, "I have no reason to be in Hawaii any more." He wanted to go home.

American labor leaders such as Samuel Gompers of the AFL and Big Bill Haywood of the IWW were all men who experienced "work that calloused one's hands," as HSPA secretary Mead put it. The determination and the urgency with which they plunged into the struggles for labor were vastly different from Tsutsumi's. For Tsutsumi, it was a case of having become too involved before he realized it. Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, president of the Hawaii hochi^[*] , who had decided to settle in Hawaii, must have detected in Tsutsumi the behavior of someone merely passing through. His thorough distaste for Tsutsumi could not have arisen merely from self-interest.

Along with the thirteen defendants, including Goto^[*] , who insisted on their innocence and appealed, Tsutsumi got out of detention on bail. (It is unknown which union organization put up his bail.) In mid-June, one month after his baptism, Tsutsumi and Hoshino entered the Oahu prison to start serving their sentences. Even though it might seem that he acknowledged his guilt, Tsutsumi simply wished to complete his sentence as soon as possible and return to Japan.^[41]

The Hearings End

On February 8, 1922, two days after the signing of the Nine-Party Treaty at the Washington Conference, Walter Dillingham left Honolulu once again for Washington. A February 1922 survey by the territory showed that with the entry of many Filipino laborers into the sugarcane fields, the total size of the plantation workforce was larger than that immediately before the strike. Despite this, Dillingham still insisted on seeking

the passage of the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor in the U.S. Congress.

On January 9, 1922, at the age of fifty-one, Prince Kuhio had died of a heart attack in Honolulu where he was spending the winter. The Sakamaki house dynamiting trial took place in the midst of an election to choose his successor as delegate to Congress. Several major political figures had declared their candidacies. Votes were split among the native Hawaiian candidates, but the winner was Harry A. Baldwin, a kamaaina and one of the Big Five, owner of a large plantation on Maui. Baldwin left immediately for the capital, but because he was new in Washington, he was not able to help the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission as Kuhio had. After Dillingham had returned to Honolulu, it had fallen to Charles McCarthy, the former governor of the territory, to continue lobbying for the petition, as special representative of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce with a substantial annual compensation of $15,000. With the Washington Conference over, Dillingham and the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission felt that it was their crucial chance to have Congress approve their petition for Chinese labor. They mounted a campaign to influence Congress by arousing public opinion throughout the mainland.

Most kamaaina planters had graduated from elite colleges on the mainland. Drawing up a list of fellow classmates in powerful positions, they urged these classmates to lobby their local congressmen. In the state of Washington, where House Immigration and Naturalization Committee chairman Albert Johnson had his election district, they held an elaborate banquet for the press to publicize the Japanese problem in Hawaii. At the capital, more than five hundred high-level government officials and congressmen were invited to a Hawaiian Night party on March 27 to kick off the campaign. The banquet room was festooned with palm trees, American flags, and Hawaiian flags, and hula dancers brought over from Hawaii swayed to Hawaiian music. The main event of the evening was a film of Prince Kuhio's funeral, which, befitting a member of the Hawaiian royal family, was gloriously decorated with colorful orchids. To the audience in Washington, it was an exotic glimpse of Hawaii. In reporting on plans for this party, which cost the territory a considerable amount, Dillingham wrote to Governor Farrington, "We cannot expect to catch all of the fish with the same bait, but everything that contributes towards bringing a few more into harmony and sympathy with Hawaii will help in the general sum-up."

On April 13, a few weeks after the Hawaiian Night, a document en-

titled "The Hawaiian Situation," prepared by James Phelan, former senator from California, was read into the Congressional Record . On his way back to Hawaii the previous fall, Dillingham had invited the central figures in the anti-Japanese movement in California, Phelan, and Virgil S. McClatchy, the owner of the Sacramento Bee , who was better known as president of the Oriental Exclusion League of California, to invite them to Hawaii.

A few weeks later McClatchy visited Hawaii to attend a world newspaper reporters' meeting in Honolulu. At a Rotary Club gathering arranged by Dillingham and attended by Hawaii's leading figures, McClatchy stated that the Japanese could not be assimilated and that it was suicidal for the United States to attempt to assimilate them. Phelan also stopped over in Honolulu at the end of 1921 during a trip around the world.

Phelan's report was a summary of his observations in Hawaii addressed to Dillingham. It began, "In Hawaii, the Japanese, inassimilable, indigestible, creating economic disturbance and labor distres. . . . steal between the meshes of the law and breed with alarming rapidity. . . . Hawaii has been abandoned to the Japanese by the blundering policy of our government."^[42] While urging the federal government to formulate a policy on Japanese immigration he also recommended the renewed importation of Chinese workers: "The expedient proposed to gain time, namely to admit a limited number of Chinese for five years, might give our government a chance to turn around, like the strategic move of a general confronted with stubborn facts and an agile enemy." Acting Ambassador Sadao Saburi, filling in for Shidehara, who had been called back to Japan, reported to the Foreign Ministry that Phelan "had made exaggerated expressions that Hawaii was under Japan's economic and political domination."^[43]

On June 7, 1922, four months after Dillingham went to Washington, the Senate hearings were reconvened. The hearings were a repeat of the previous year's and focused on the "Japanese problem." Not to be outdone by his predecessor, Harry Baldwin emphasized that the 1920 strike was a "Japanese conspiracy." He described the Japanese nisei in strident terms: "A great many of the Japanese who are born in the islands go back to Japan to be educated. After they get their education, they come back to Hawaii, which they can do, being American citizens. Their feeling is Japanese, they do not assimilate with the Americans."^[44]

Sen. Hiram Johnson seconded this sentiment. "Once Japanese, always Japanese, and you can make all the four-power agreements and all the

alliances you want to, and they will remain Japanese to the end." It was public statements like this that Secretary of State Hughes had wished to avoid during the Washington Conference. Johnson, who had lost the 1920 Republican presidential nomination to Warren Harding, was known as a progressive Republican who supported social and political reform. However, while he was governor of California, Johnson, ignoring President Wilson's intervention, had backed passage of the Alien Land Law.

When Gen. John DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command area, who supervised the dispatch of Japanese Americans on the West Coast to relocation camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, made his remark, "Once a Jap always a Jap," he was merely repeating the words that Senator Johnson spat out twenty years before at the Senate Immigration and Naturalization Committee hearings.

Dillingham continued his testimony by citing the Oahu Ice and Cold Storage Company's complaint about "the silent penetration by the Japanese" into Hawaiian industries. "Individual Japanese who did not purchase ice from the Japanese company," he said, "were being called traitors to their race." Here was a specific example of the Japanese conspiracy. But the reconvened Senate hearings ended without any testimony more explosive than this—or than testimony the year before that the Federation of Japanese Labor had used Caucasians affiliated with the AFL to oppose Chinese immigration.

Dillingham's Bitter Fight

The July 28, 1922, entry in Terasaki's diary was a single sentence: "Mr. Dillingham, who spoke irresponsibly in Washington, returned." The Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission had spent another six months working hard in Washington on the territory's vital mission, but what awaiting them on their return was criticism that they had not encountered before. In particular, Baldwin's statements about the second-generation Japanese Americans became an issue. As a June 30 Nippu jiji headline reported, "Leading Americans oppose Baldwin's slander of American citizens of Japanese descent."

"Local people of sound judgment," as the Japanese-language newspapers called them, had decided that they could no longer keep silent about the anti-Japanese statements the territory's representatives made in Washington. The previous year's hearings had not been reported in detail other than the incident involving George Wright. Dillingham had

suppressed coverage for fear that a negative reaction to the activities of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission would create obstacles to its efforts in Washington. It was only when "people of sound judgment" heard with their own ears McClatchy's declaration at the Rotary Club that Japanese were incapable of assimilation that they felt that the commission might be heading in an unexpected direction. Their doubts deepened when former Senator Phelan's statement in the Senate was reported in detail.

Baldwin's statement about the Hawaiian nisei was the decisive factor in confirming these doubts. The Japanese-language newspapers, beginning with the Hawaii hochi^[*] , raised a furor when they learned of his statement through the English-language mainland press, and prominent haole leaders did their best to mend the damage it did. Twenty days after Baldwin's testimony in Washington, the English and Japanese newspapers in Hawaii printed an open letter to Japanese Americans.

Young Friends,

Recent reports from Washington made in disparagement of our young American citizens of Japanese ancestry prompt us to send a message to you declaring our emphatic dissent from such statements as reported.

In the last few years, while you were approaching young manhood and young womanhood distracted between two conflicting environments, all eyes have been upon you, wondering how you would meet the test. We have seen you, on reaching the age when you must decide for yourself, coming into realization that the land of your ancestors is not your land; that its traditions and customs are incompatible with the education and environment in which you have been growing up, and so your American training and your point of view has often brought you into estrangement in your own homes. In these circumstances you have had our genuine sympathy.

Again, as you have been brought to understand that by reason of your Hawaiian birth you are American citizens, we have been pleased to see you, in increasing numbers, endeavoring at much trouble and expense to establish proof of Hawaiian birth and preparing yourselves with the characteristic idealism and enthusiasm of youth, for the responsibilities of citizenship. . . .

The true-hearted can always afford to wait, knowing that "time will tell." And meantime you can rest assured of the steadfast confidence of those who have come to know and trust you. We strongly deplore always and anywhere statements which minimize your loyalty and capacity for useful citizenship.

The letter was signed by thirteen of the pastors of the major Christian denominations starting with Reverend Albert Palmer. From the academic circles were five professors at the University of Hawaii, including the university president, Arthur L. Dean, who was active in the Palmer mediation attempt during the strike. Among the others were Prescott F.

Jernegan, principal of McKinley High School, where the majority of students were Japanese Americans; Reverend John Hopwood, president of the Mid-Pacific Institute; and even Vaughan MacCaughley, superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction. Business leaders who signed included Clarence H. Cooke, president of the Bank of Hawaii and a major sugar planter, who had just that spring succeeded Walter Dillingham as president of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce. Of the Big Five families, Arthur C. Alexander, department manager of American Factors, also signed the letter. Most notable were members of Dillingham's family: attorney Walter F. Frear, the husband of Walter Dillingham's older sister who had served as governor ten years before; and Reverend John P. Endman, field secretary of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, the husband of Dillingham's younger sister, who had spent a few years in Japan as a missionary.

Many among the haole elite, although involved in the sugar industry, still believed strongly in Christian charity and the aloha spirit. They did not want Hawaii to become like California, and their signatures on the open letter was proof of this.

It should be noted that "Captain" Harold F. Stafford, first deputy city and county attorney during the Sakamaki house dynamiting case trial, also signed. It may have been in the hope of assimilating the nisei that he had submitted a resolution supporting the foreign-language press control bill as a member of the American Legion. Honolulu Mayor J. Wilson had maintained neutrality throughout the labor struggle, but in response to the Baldwin statement, he told the Nippu jiji , "Those who say that the Japanese are a threat are popole (crazy)."^[45]

On June 13, while Dillingham and the other commission members were still in Washington, Paul Scharrenberg, chief of the Pacific Coast AFL, arrived in Honolulu. At that year's AFL convention Gompers had reiterated his opposition to renewing the importation of Chinese labor in words that showed his position was firmer than it had been the year before. He had not even replied to a letter from Dillingham expressing willingness to find points of compromise and modify the bill. Gompers sent Scharrenberg to Hawaii to investigate the local circumstances in order to discover the true intentions of the Hawaiian capitalists. During Scharrenberg's monthlong stay in Hawaii the HSPA tried to accommodate him by having its secretary, John Butler, guide him through the plantations on each island. After finding out that Scharrenberg was fond of drink, Butler made sure that liquor was available at each plantation,

even though arrests for bootlegging were reported daily in the papers. Scharrenberg freely accepted the welcome he received at the plantations, but he felt no constraints about meeting with George Wright and other representatives of the Caucasian laborers, Filipino Labor Union president Pablo Manlapit, and Federation of Japanese Labor secretary general Jiro^[*] Hayakawa.

After returning from the hearings in Washington, Wright realized that the only means to establish workers' rights in Hawaii was a federation of unions that transcended racial lines. Manlapit took part in his effort to build such an organization, and so did Hayakawa of the federation, which was just barely surviving. In January 1922 the United Workers of Hawaii (UWH) was organized with Wright as a central figure. The HSPA immediately attacked the new union in the English-language press, suggesting that Wright was plotting revenge for having been embarrassed at the Washington hearings. The press made a succession of charges against Wright, including allegations that he was connected to the mainland communists who were even more radical than the IWW. Just after the verdict was reached in the Sakamaki house dynamiting case, Governor Farrington rejected the new union's application for official recognition.

Though the UWH claimed to transcend racial boundaries, it did in fact limit Japanese participation. By restricting the number of Japanese workers, who were in the majority in Hawaii, the UWH leadership planned to keep control of the union in the hands of the Caucasians. Even so, Scharrenberg indicated his opposition to the UWH's permitting any Japanese participation at all. Taking advantage of Scharrenberg's visit to Hawaii, Wright sought official participation of the UWH in the AFL, but in the end Scharrenberg did not give his support.

Scharrenberg's report on conditions in Hawaii appeared two months later in the September issue of the AFL magazine American Federationist under the title "Does Hawaii Need Chinese?" He began by asserting that the importation of Filipinos had alleviated the labor shortage in the past year. It was only because the Hawaiian sugar planters had been frightened by the "racial cohesiveness" of the Japanese during the 1920 strike that they wanted bring in Chinese labor. "The expressed hope of the sugar planters to stabilize conditions in the islands by the importation of more Chinamen is based upon topsy-turvy logic," he wrote. "And the prospect of Americanizing the islands in this manner is as brilliant as the idea that petroleum will extinguish a fire."

Scharrenberg also attacked Dillingham's argument that the Hawaiian climate was unsuited for Caucasian manual labor. "With a superb climate," he said, "bracing trade winds ten months of the year, Hawaii could be made a paradise for workers no less than for tourists." Noting that the problem was the mentality of the white governing class, who thought plantation labor unsuitable for Caucasians, he proposed that labor conditions be improved and that a workforce of Hawaiian-born Caucasians be developed. He concluded by observing that unless the policy of seeking cheap labor from abroad was ended, there was no hope of a positive solution.

In the October issue of the American Federationist , Scharrenberg wrote a ten-page article entitled "The Japanese in Hawaii." His argument was simple: "Hawaii is the most complete and convincing object lesson to the mainland as to what would have happened to California if the workers of that state, and the people generally, had not been so determined to hold the state as a heritage to the white race." Scharrenberg was in Honolulu on July 9, when the Imperial Navy training fleet (the Iwate, Izumo , and Asama ) put in to port, welcomed by the Japanese consul general and local Japanese community leaders dressed in tailcoats. Japanese immigrants crowded into the port as if it was a public holiday, singing the Japanese national anthem and waving small rising sun flags. It is not difficult to imagine how this frenzied welcome must have appeared to the AFL representative from California.

Scharrenberg also criticized the Gentlemen's Agreement between the U.S. and Japan, which had failed to curb immigration of Japanese.

In addition to these picture brides, thousands of male laborers came over during the ten years with passports. They obtained passports because of peculiar family relations. Under the regulations, a Japanese in Hawaii may bring over his wife, his father and mother, his children. . . . There should be an early abrogation of the "Gentlemen's Agreement" and the enactment of a law denying admission, as immigrants and permanent residents, to all aliens who are ineligible to citizenship under the laws of the United States.

Scharrenberg's recommendations were not so very different from those of former Senator Phelan, who in his report "The Hawaiian Situation" had proposed to deal with the Japanese immigrants through the abrogation of the Gentlemen's Agreement, depriving the right of citizenship to second-generation Japanese Americans, and an anti-Japanese exclusion act similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act. After the publication of Scharrenberg's report, the AFL not only hardened its opposition to

the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor, it switched its core argument to advocate measures against Japanese immigration.

On learning of Scharrenberg's investigation in Hawaii, Dillingham arranged an interview with President Harding. He complained that it would be unfair for the AFL, which had announced its opposition to Hawaii's bill from the start, to publicize biased results that could influence the congressional vote on the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor. He asked for the formation of a federal investigation commission appointed by the president.

In mid-November, nearly six months after Scharrenberg's visit, a five-member labor study commission arrived in Honolulu. Its members were all involved in labor issues: L. E. Sheppard, president of the Order of Railroad Conductors; H. Davies, commissioner of Conciliation for the Department of Labor; John Donlin, president of the Building Trades Department of the AFL; O. W. Hartwig, president of the Oregon Federation of Labor; and Fred Keightly, secretary of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, AFL.

After a three-week investigation, its report, submitted on January 24, 1923, concluded, "Commission did not find any serious shortage at present and in event emergency arises commission recommends that proof be furnished Congress through Secretary of Labor with a request for authority to import such alien labor as may be shown to be needed. Therefore, do not recommend adoption of pending resolution."^[46] Although Dillingham had appealed directly to the president, his strategy had backfired.

Nor had Dillingham been able to win the support of the Hearst newspaper chain, which had propagated "the yellow peril" idea for years. Hearst was one of the few Americans who, at a time when most saw Germany as the greatest enemy, had already turned his gaze to the Pacific and declared that Japan was America's future enemy. In March 1917, for example, he wrote a memorandum directing the drawing of a cartoon showing a Japanese with drawn knife waiting for the chance to stab Uncle Sam in the back. But Hearst was not about to act as a tool of the Hawaiian sugar planters who wanted to import Chinese workers, also members of the same yellow race, to replace the Japanese. Although he did meet with Dillingham, who sought his cooperation, Hearst did not heed Dillingham's request for help.

Dillingham's efforts to win over the American Legion, whose support he was confident that he could obtain, also failed. Like Hearst, the

American Legion opposed any more immigration of the yellow race. Despite Dillingham's concerted efforts, the petition in the U.S. Congress did not achieve the results he had hoped for. On the contrary, the Japanese problem had become an issue of its own on the U.S. mainland. But even at this point, Dillingham had not given up. He continued to push Congress for a decision on renewing Chinese immigration, urging the solution of a new "emergency situation" created by the Japanese in Hawaii.

Furor over the Foreign Language School Bill

In the aftermath of the 1920 strike, the Foreign Language School Bill passed the emergency session of the territorial legislature in November 1920 and was implemented in July 1921. It required that Japanese-language schools in Hawaii be supervised by the Territory of Hawaii Board of Education in accordance with principles of American democracy. Japanese-language instructors were required to pass an English proficiency test, a grave matter for those who had not had to use English in the past. In November 1922 the territorial legislature also approved regulations reducing the number of grades Japanese-language schools could teach. For example, pupils would be allowed to attend language schools only after completion of fourth grade in public school. On the grounds that the Territorial Board of Education incurred additional expenses, a tax of $1 per Japanese-language school student was levied. Many in the Japanese community expressed concern over whether this was an effort to abolish the Japanese-language schools.

The Hawaii hochi^[*] led the charge, stirring up debate by arguing that the matter was "a matter of life and death for the Japanese community" and "a struggle for the rights and honor of the Japanese race." Kinzaburo^[*] Makino, the newspaper's president, insisted on forcing the issue by bringing suit against the U.S. government. Since the newspaper was not directly affected by the law, it could not become a plaintiff. Instead Makino persuaded six language schools in Honolulu to file suit in late December 1922. An uproar arose over whether other Japanese-language schools should do the same, leading to lecture meetings and parents' meetings all over Hawaii, as had happened on the eve of the 1920 strike. The English-language press was also full of reports about the issue.

In the midst of this furor, the federal investigation commission appointed by President Harding visited Hawaii. The labor leaders from the mainland who were members of the commission saw with their own eyes the Japanese community demanding that Japanese be taught on

American soil and filing suit against the territory of Hawaii. It is not at all strange that they felt that the Japanese threat alleged by the territory of Hawaii was quite real.

A week before the commission arrived in Honolulu, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Ozawa case, ruling that a Japanese had no right to be naturalized. This decision cannot be overlooked when discussing the Japanese-language schools turmoil. The plaintiff, Takao Ozawa, had come to America when he was nineteen years old. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, he applied for citizenship in 1902 but was denied. Ozawa did not give up. He applied again in Honolulu, where he moved subsequently. Unbowed by denial after denial, he appealed the decision all the way to the Supreme Court. The Ozawa case had been watched with interest by the Japanese in Hawaii as a test case to determine whether Japanese would be allowed to naturalize. The Supreme Court decision, however, ruled that because Japanese immigrants were a "Mongolian race," they could not. The uproar over the suit against the Foreign Language School Bill in part sprang from the pent-up anger that the Japanese immigrants felt about this ruling.

The Hawaii hochi^[*] , seemingly reawakening to its role as the defender of justice, charged that the Foreign Language School Bill was illegal. Every day the paper argued in its pages for "standing up to the attorney general of the Territory of Hawaii." When the legislature passed the Foreign Language School Bill, it also passed the Foreign Language Press Control Bill, but the Hawaii hochi remained quiet only for a short while. Claiming that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech, the Hochi^[*] reverted to its usual practice of publishing whatever it wanted. Makino was so determined that had the territorial authorities declared that the Hochi was in violation of the law, he was prepared to sue, claiming that both the Foreign Language School Bill and the Foreign Language Press Control Bill were illegal.

FBI reports noted that from the summer of 1922 the Hochi attempted to overcome its desperate financial circumstances by strengthening its pro-Japan and anti-American tendencies.^[47] As is evident from Terasaki's diary entries, the paper's financial difficulties continued. While fanning the debate over the Japanese-language schools, Makino was making the rounds to borrow money. The Hochi had not been silent about the petition for the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor. But since the action was taking place in faraway Washington, where it was difficult to grasp the details, and since its competitor, the Nippu jiji , had taken the

same position on the issue as the Hochi^[*] , its editorial arguments on the issue were more restrained than usual. Campaigning against the importation of Chinese labor was not likely to increase circulation. This was no doubt the reason that the Hochi had not been more zealous in pursuing the issue of Chinese labor.

Regarding the uproar concerning the Japanese-language schools, however, Nippu Jiji 's position was clearly distinct from that of the Hawaii hochi^[*] . On this issue, the Hochi labeled the Nippu "moderate." Nippu 's president, Yasutaro^[*] Soga^[*] , strongly opposed the suit, feeling that it would only fan the flames of anti-Japanese sentiment, but the Hochi 's Makino quickly formed the Association to Support the Japanese Language Schools Suit (Nihongo gakko^[*] shiso kiseikai), and for the next six years he fought hard on this issue. It cannot be denied that Makino's move was a business gamble for the survival of the Hochi , which saw the Nippu as its enemy on the other front.

Judge Banks, who had nine months earlier issued the guilty verdict on the Sakamaki case, issued a temporary injunction preventing the implementation of the Foreign Language School Bill. The lawyer for the Japanese-language schools was Joseph B. Lightfoot, who had defended Makino and others during the 1909 strike. After Makino opened his "law office," Lightfoot had been Makino's adviser and worked with him on a variety of matters.

In late January 1923, less than a month after the initial submission of the suit, Emo^[*] Imamura, leader of Hawaii's Honpa Honganji sect, declared his support. Prompted by this, Buddhist-affiliated Japanese-language schools began to join the suit. Most of the schools opposing the suit were Christian-affiliated, and the Nippu , whose president was an ardent Christian, stood firmly on the side of the anti-suit faction.

Although the movement supporting the Foreign Language School Bill suit was a struggle against the haole territorial authorities, it tore apart Hawaii's Japanese community. Long-standing hard feelings between the Buddhists and the Christians broke through to the surface, deepening the discord. Reports of intimidation and betrayal, as both sides tried to achieve solidarity within the divided Japanese community, filled the pages of the press, and this resulted in a battle on the pages of the Hochi and the Nippu . The dispute became so intense that it scandalized conscientious Caucasians sympathetic to the Japanese. On February 3, 1923, however, Judge Banks dismissed the suit brought by the Japanese-language schools. The association supporting the suit, led by Makino, appealed the decision.

The Failure of the Chinese Labor Immigration Plan

Three weeks later, at the opening of the twelfth session of the territory of Hawaii legislature, Governor Farrington spoke about the Japanese problem in Hawaii.

Hawaii has a Japanese problem. To assume otherwise would be to deny the evidence of our senses. . . . [A]mong people coming to this Territory and enjoying our American freedom of thought and action, an element has arisen that interprets liberty as license and claims exceptional privilege as a right to be demanded. These malcontents and agitators have been more successful among the Japanese than with other resident aliens.

A striking evidence of the operations of these agitators was the attempt to organize in 1920 a general strike among the Japanese for the purpose of dominating the laborers in the sugar industry. The spirit prompting the movement was voiced in vicious and insulting propaganda carried on by units of the Japanese language press. A natural result was a conspiracy to destroy life and property. The people of the Territory are to be congratulated on the self-control shown in effectively dealing with this situation. More exacting laws became necessary to better protect fundamental American institutions.^[48]

Such outspoken references to Japanese on the public record in the Hawaiian legislature had not been heard even during the 1920 strike. A few weeks before, Farrington had sent the territorial secretary, Raymond C. Brown, to Washington with a letter describing the emergency situation in Hawaii. Accompanied by Dillingham, Brown made the rounds to various high-level government officials complaining about the furor over the the foreign-language school situation and the crisis it posed for Hawaii.

In a report to Farrington, Brown said that Albert B. Fall, secretary of the interior, reacted to the situation like "the proverbial bull to a red flag." Fall, like former Attorney General Palmer, constantly spoke of the threat of communism. Brown reported that not only Fall but other highly placed government officials who heard about the Japanese-language school suit were extremely sympathetic to the territory. In other words, as the petition for the importation of Chinese labor was reaching a critical stage in the U.S. Congress, Dillingham and the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission pulled out a trump card—the Japanese-language schools dispute.

Even Secretary of the Interior Fall, excited though he was by the issue, fudged by pointing out that the Department of the Interior could not act by itself on an issue involving foreign policy. Despite Hawaii's

petition to give "bitter medicine for Japanese," Congress did not place the resolution for the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor on its agenda. Both houses of Congress decided not to bring the issue to a vote, as Congress was in the midst of dealing with graver matters.

Dillingham, who was not about to admit defeat after working three years for the bill, hoped for direct intervention by President Harding, who was considered to be a friend of Hawaii. But on August 2 the president died suddenly. During his term countless cases of political corruption surfaced. Fall was embroiled in charges of corruption involving the oil industry. The Teapot Dome scandal, which entangled the attorney general as well, involved siphoning navy oil reserves to private oil companies in exchange for large bribes. President Harding was also mentioned in this scandal, and in the midst of disclosures he died in San Francisco on his return trip from a speaking tour of Alaska. The cause of death is still not known.

After the end of World War I the United States is said to have entered an era of moral decadence and material greed, spurred by the Prohibition Act, which led to widespread corruption throughout the country. The Republican administration under Harding, with the exception of a few officials such as Secretary of State Hughes, reflected this tendency. The Hawaiian sugar planters, with their connections to the Republican administration, thought it an opportune moment to press their case in Washington. However, the hopes of the HSPA to import lower-wage Chinese laborers were dashed by resistance from the mainland labor unions led by the AFL and by objections from the mainland sugar growers, their main competitors.

On August 10, 1923, some of Honolulu's political and economic leaders, among them Walter Dillingham, attended an "Aloha tribute" to President Harding, a man thought to have supported Hawaii's cause.

In an FBI report dated August 6, Reverend Takie Okumura, who opposed the suit brought by the Japanese-language schools, was said to have called for "complete abolition of the Japanese schools." The report cited Okumura as a "consistent worker among the Japanese for Americanization and Christianization."^[49] Takie Okumura had established the first Japanese-language school in Hawaii after persuading the Japanese immigrants with little free time or money to show interest in their children's education. Twenty-six years later Reverend Okumura advocated the abolition of these schools for the nisei. In various localities of Hawaii, the furor over the Japanese-language schools continued.

Makino's Hawaii hochi^[*] called Soga^[*] of the Nippu jiji , which supported Reverend Okumura's position, an "enemy of the Japanese."

Beretania Street, in places a four-lane boulevard running through Honolulu today, parallels Highway 1, which cuts across Oahu east to west. West of Aala Park, from the intersection with King Street, Beretania Street changes its name to Dillingham Boulevard, which turns into Highway 1 just before Honolulu International Airport on the blue waters of Keehi Lagoon. The Oahu prison stands at the western end of Dillingham Boulevard. The prison, sitting today behind walls topped by barbed wire, consists of several buildings built over the years. In the watchtowers one can see sentries holding rifles. The old building facing Dillingham Boulevard is entirely different from the newer additions. The windows in this two-story stone structure are barred, but the side facing Dillingham Boulevard is not surrounded by a wall. It was in this stone building that Noboru Tsutsumi and the other federation leaders were incarcerated.

The prison, the only one on Oahu, had been built four years before Tsutsumi and the others entered it. Prisoners awaiting trial and those convicted were put there regardless of the severity of their crimes. The average daily number of prisoners in 1923 was 355: 119 Filipinos, 91 Hawaiians, 90 Chinese, 17 Caucasians, and 38 Japanese. In proportion to their number in the Hawaiian population, there were very few Japanese prisoners.

The crimes that the prisoners had committed, apart from violations of the Prohibition Act, were mainly robbery, sexual offenses, and drug abuse. Nearly all the drug crimes were opium-related, and those convicted for these crimes were almost all Chinese. In 1923 a large counterfeiting operation was uncovered, involving more than twenty Japanese, and an unprecedented number of arrests were made in Hawaii on charges of bribery and embezzlement. Tsutsumi and the other federation leaders found guilty of conspiracy were put in the category "other crimes."^[50]

Tokutaro^[*] Hirota, who still lives in Honolulu, remembers visiting Tsutsumi at the Oahu prison. When I interviewed him in 1988, he was eighty-seven years old. A staunch member of the Nuuanu Union Church, he had been involved in many church philanthropic activities after he succeeded in business. On visits to meet Tsutsumi, Hirota accompanied Reverend Teikichi Hori, who had graduated from Doshisha^[*] Universitry some years after Takie Okumura and later returned to Japan to become

a professor at his alma mater. A popular pastor, he was greatly admired by young men like Hirota.

It was a trip of some twenty minutes in the church car to the prison. When Hirota and Reverend Hori asked to see Tsutsumi, they were immediately shown to the visiting room, where several other groups were visiting prisoners. According to Hirota, Tsutsumi always entered the room smiling in his faded denim prison garb. No guards monitored their conversation, and they were able to speak freely in Japanese. During the thirty-minute visits, conversation with Tsutsumi was hardly ever about the Bible, despite Reverend Hori's presence. Neither did Hirota recall Tsutsumi saying anything about the Japanese-language schools dispute, a topic that was nearly always raised whenever Japanese gathered at that time. "Mr. Tsutsumi talked on and on," Hirota recalled, "about his hopes and dreams of what he wanted to do after he returned to Japan."

Tsutsumi had already left Hawaii in spirit. During these visits he talked about how he wanted to lead the youth of Japan when he returned to his country. He had expanded his dreams to educating the youth of Japan, based on what he had learned from his experiences in Hawaii. In an essay he wrote a few months before he was charged in the Sakamaki house dynamiting case, he concluded,

Amidst evergreen nature, in the morning sunlight and the dew of the stars, raised on the beneficence of Buddha and Shinto^[*] gods without distinction, working together, living together, talking together, laughing together—this is the way of a true life and a true human being. I yearn for a world without the shadow of the abominable demons like misunderstanding, defamation, calumny, discord, prejudice, and strife, for the revelations of gods and the guidance of Buddha, and for the springtime of peace and the whisperings of love.

On April 26, 1923, ten months after Tsutsumi and Hoshino entered prison, the appeals court of the territory of Hawaii dismissed the appeal of Goto^[*] and the twelve other defendants, who were sent to prison four days later. At the time, public attention in the mainland and in Europe was focused on the appeal in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, but only a few people visited the former Federation of Japanese Labor leaders in the Oahu prison. Goto and the others filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but theirs was a lonely struggle with no supporters. The Japanese cane field workers showed no interest in the leaders they had looked up to three years before during the strike. The Japanese-language newspapers treated them as criminals, and both the Hawaii hochi^[*] and the Nippu jiji published only a mere three lines about their legal appeal.

In those days leprosy was the most feared disease in Hawaii. Its unfortunate victims were forcibly sent by boat to be placed in isolation on the undeveloped island of Molokai. This was a boat trip that meant they would never be able to see their families again, as they were being sent off to die. The Japanese community in Hawaii cast off the imprisoned former federation leaders as if they were lepers.

Life in the Oahu prison for Tsutsumi and the other inmates consisted of cleaning the prison and tending the vegetable plots to grow their own food. At times they were sent out to work on road construction or trash disposal. But they had plenty of time to themselves in the afternoons. Many guards were Hawaiian and not very strict. Goto^[*] told his wife later that during their imprisonment he studied philosophy and other subjects under Tsutsumi's instruction. Goto had gone to Hawaii before he finished middle school, and because he had little opportunity to attend school to learn English, he was eager to study. There were no restrictions on what the prisoners were allowed to read. For Goto, life in prison was an unexpected chance to focus on learning, which he liked, with no need to worry about being able to eat and with no concerns about the discord within the Japanese community.

The Great Kanto^[*] Earthquake struck Tokyo on September 1, 1923, some five months after Goto and the others started serving their sentences. The tragic disaster, which caused the deaths of more than ninety thousand, brought a temporary unity to the Japanese community in Hawaii, which was still divided on the Japanese schools issue but collected tens of thousands of dollars in aid for their homeland. The Japanese-language press reported on the massacre of Korean residents in Tokyo in the wake of the earthquake, and also on the killing of labor movement activists by the military police. But one wonders to what extent the incarcerated federation leaders felt any connection with these events.

On March 14, 1924, seven months after the Great Kanto Earthquake, the Japanese-language newspapers carried front page news that Richard Halsey, head of the Bureau of Immigration in Honolulu, had committed suicide the previous night. The sixty-seven-year-old Halsey had been missing since the day before. He was reported to have killed himself by stabbing his throat with a sharp knife near the Ala Moana coast.^[51] Halsey, who had been head of the Bureau of Immigration for more than twenty years, had lived in Japan as a missionary and had many acquaintances among the Japanese in Hawaii. According to the

Hawaii hochi^[*] , he had been upset deeply by an investigation into the illegal landing of Chinese in Hawaii.

Makino's Hochi^[*] had discovered that young Chinese men were entering Hawaii illegally and had demanded an investigation into the facts. In what the Hochi called "perhaps a major breakthrough in the scandal," Halsey was relieved of his post as head of the Bureau of Immigration.^[52] He had committed suicide just before the investigator from the Bureau of Immigration in Washington arrived. The case was left up in the air. It is impossible to know now how deeply Halsey himself was involved in this case. Corruption in the Bureau of Immigration had been rumored for a long time, however. When Halsey was relieved of his duties, three Chinese interpreters in the Bureau of Immigration were also fired. The top person among the Japanese staff, Katsunuma, as well as several under him were transferred to other assignments.

The illegal Chinese immigrants had arrived by ship from Hong Kong. It was rumored that Chinese merchants in Hawaii, convinced that Congress would pass legislation allowing the importation of Chinese labor, had made arrangements in advance. Halsey's suicide closed this case with no way of finding out whether the HSPA had been involved or not.

Among the materials presented in support of the Hawaiian effort to renew importation of Chinese labor was a letter from a Hong Kong industrialist connected to the Chinese government addressed to Walter Dillingham, indicating full support for the measure. In 1924 Dillingham was still using the title Chairman of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission, but after the case of the illegal Chinese immigrants ended in Halsey's suicide, he no longer used it.