Hawaiian Japanese
pp. 42-43 · Read in the full issue
Should They Be Used As American Colonists?
AN American friend, writing from Honolulu, appears perturbed be cause the American authorities, in sending Hawaiian-Americans to “colo nise” the mid-Pacific islands, refrained from including any Hawaiian-born Japanese in the parties, although the latter nominally are American sub jects. He says:— “The Government argument, in fluenced by army and navy opinions, which of necessity are unflinchingly anti-Japanese, is that the American born Japanese do not get along with the other youths, who mostly are part-Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, and so on.
“This seems a strange argument, because the children get along to gether in the schools throughout the Hawaiian islands. Indeed, the schools feature the fact. It is only when the children leave school, and become ex posed to the bitter racial hatreds and complexes of the workaday and ser vice world, that any exception is taken to American-born Japanese youths.
“It seems they must remain un happy marginal people, pushed here and there. Especially in Hawaii, where the army and navy behind the scenes dominate so much of the policy concerning what is called the normal occupation of Pacific isles for commercial air service uses.”
This is typical of the sentimental twaddle which comes from a large section of American commentators.
Let us quote from Willard Price’s new book, “Japan Reaches Out”:— “More than half of the Japanese in Hawaii (about 152,000, now—Ed.
“P.1.M.”) were born there, and there fore are American citizens. Does this mean that they are not Japanese?
Japan still thinks of them essentially, if not legally, as her own—if we may judge from the fact that Japanese Government statistics, under the head of ‘Japanese Residing Abroad’, give the number for Hawaii as 150,832. That includes, not only Japanese citizens, and those who have dual Japanese and American citizen ship, but also all who are solely American citizens, and have no legal tie of any sort to their grandmother land. But Japan counts hearts, not votes, and she believes those hearts still beat for her. . . . Eighty-five per cent, of the Japanese children who attend the public schools also attend the Japanese schools, which open immediately after the day’s
work in the public schools is finished.”
All other races become assimilated in the great American republic, and their children and grandchildren are more than ready to forget racial hatreds and antagonisms. But not the Japanese. It is their own choice.
Any weeping for “unhappy marginal people” is so much balderdash.
Every American who lives in Hawaii, and keeps his feet on the earth and his head out of the clouds, knows that if ever American vigilance re laxes, Japan will try to seize Hawaii, and 99 per cent, of Japanese in Hawaii will help her. Nearly half the popu lation of Hawaii now is Japanese, and that community is increasing rapidly.
There is plenty of evidence that Japan hopes ultimately to control Hawaii, just as she plans domination of the Philippines—first by economic penetration, then by increasing migration, and finally by force of arms.
Britain has offered no serious ob jection to the “colonisation” by U.S.A. of Central Pacific islands which, for many decades, have been shown upon all maps—including American—as British. But the posi tion would change in a moment if America were to send Japanese to those islands in the guise of “colo nists”. Idealists may cackle about “Japanese Americans”; but the British know “there ain’t no such animal”.
In view of the clear and definite probabilities of the next decade, the distribution of Hawaiian Japanese among Central Pacific islands, which may be key-points in an American or British Imperial defence plan, would be sheer idiocy.
The stand taken by the American military and naval people, in regard to this matter, may be commended by all who know the Pacific, and the implications of the present inter national position, in the Pacific.