The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920 PDF
Preview The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920
THE JAPANESE CONSPIRACY THE JAPANESE CONSPIRACY The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920 MASAYO UMEZAWA DUUS Translated by Beth Cary and adapted by Peter Duus University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London Translated and adapted from Nihon no inbo: Hawai Oahu Shima daisutoraiki no hikari to kage, originally published by Bungei Shunju, Tokyo, Japan, 1991. The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Suntory Foundation for the translation and publication of this book. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1999 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Duus, Masayo, 1938-. [Nihon no inbo. English] The Japanese conspiracy : the Oahu sugar strike of 1920 / Masayo Umezawa Duus; translated by Beth Cary and adapted by Peter Duus. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-20484-0 (alk. paper).— ISBN 0-520-20485-9 (pbk. : alk paper) 1. Strikes and lockouts—Hawaii—Oahu—History. 2. Aliens—Legal status, laws, etc.—Hawaii—Oahu— History. 3. Japanese—Legal status, laws, etc.—Hawaii— Oahu—History. 4. Emigration and immigration law— United States—History. 5. Oahu (Hawaii)—Social conditions. I. Title. HD5326.023D8813 1999 331.892*833 61 '099693—dczi 99-17701 CIP Manufactured in the United States of America 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). To Dr. Clifford I. Uyeda whose fairness has impressed and inspired me over the years CONTENTS Preface / ix Prologue: A Dynamite Bomb Explodes / The Japanese Village in the Pacific / 13 A Person to Be Watched / 26 The Oahu Strike Begins / 42 The Japanese Conspiracy / 67 The Conspiracy Trial / 138 Reopening Chinese Immigration / 230 The Japanese Exclusion Act / 300 Notes / 341 Bibliography / 351 Index / 357 PREFACE My interest in how the history of Japanese Americans has intertwined with that of U.S.-Japan relations began with my first book, Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific, about the trial of Iva Toguri, a Japanese Ameri- can woman accused of treason for making wartime propaganda broad- casts for the Japanese government. Since then I have published other books on this theme: a history of the iooth Battalion and the Regi- mental Combat Unit, the Japanese American army units in World War II; and a biography of Tazuko Iwasaki, the first Japanese woman to work as a labor contractor on a Hawaiian sugar plantation. And with this book I return to that theme again. During the years following World War I, relations between the United States and Japan, though cordial on the surface, were troubled by un- resolved tensions. Many Americans distrusted Japan because of its ag- gressive policies in China, and many Japanese resented discrimination against Japanese immigrants in the United States. The immigration issue was a highly emotional one for the Japanese, whose attempt to include a "racial equality clause" in the League of Nations charter had been re- buffed by President Woodrow Wilson. The anti-Japanese movement in California and other parts of the West Coast has attracted the attention of many historians, but the immigration issue in Hawaii, then not yet a state, has not. A critical event that revealed anti-Japanese sentiment in Hawaii was the 1920 Japanese plantation workers' strike on Oahu, the subject of this book. I first heard about the 192.0 Oahu strike while interviewing Japanese American veterans whose families had been forced off the plantations ix x I PREFACE at the time of the strike. But it was during my research on Tazuko Iwa- saki that I first sensed that a thread might link the strike with the anti- Japanese immigration law passed by the American Congress four years later. That thread was the alarm of the Hawaiian plantation owners, who were upset by the defiance of the Japanese cane field workers. While the planters succeeded in waiting out the strikers, who eventually aban- doned their demands for higher wages, they were determined to reas- sert control of the labor force. Not only did the plantation owners work with the Hawaiian territorial government to indict the strike leaders on trumped-up conspiracy charges, they went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for lifting restrictions on the immigration of Chinese laborers. As I argue in this book, their testimony that a large Japanese immigrant community in Hawaii threatened the national interest contributed to the passage of the so-called Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924. What confirmed my commitment to this research project was my dis- covery of the transcripts from the trial of the 19ZO strike leaders, charged by the territorial government with conspiring to dynamite the house of Juzaburo Sakamaki, the Japanese interpreter on the Olaa Plantation. I had despaired of finding the transcripts after I learned that the First Cir- cuit Court of the State of Hawaii had thrown out many old records be- cause it no longer had space to store them. By chance I discovered that Professor Harry Ball of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawaii collected documents discarded by government agencies. Thanks to his help I was able to find the transcripts in the basement of the Ham- ilton Library at the University of Hawaii, where he had stored them, and began to pursue the project in earnest. In conducting research for this book, I found materials in several other archives. After several years of effort, under the Freedom of Infor- mation Act I obtained Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Depart- ment of Justice documents on Noboru Tsutsumi and other strike lead- ers; the record of the House and Senate hearings on the renewal of the importation of Chinese labor was in the National Archives; other official documents came from the Department of the Interior and the Territorial Government of Hawaii; and the diplomatic archives of the Foreign Min- istry in Japan provided important source materials on the Japanese side. To the staff persons who helped me in these archives I would like to of- fer my thanks. I interviewed many individuals in Japan and Hawaii, including the widows of three of the strike leaders, to learn as much as I could about the strikers. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the following
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