Bulletin of Tokai Women’s College 20 (2000) A Look at the Political Process of Hawaii’s Second Revolution: From the Standpoint of Jack Kawano, a Nisei Labor Organizer. Mariko Takagi-Kitayama 1, Introduction: Revolutionary Changes in Paradise? Hawaii would remind many people of the islands where they find blue ocean, white-sand beaches and palm trees. They may assume that people would live there peacefully without having any trouble. To so many people in the world, Hawaii represents a “paradise.” To their surprise, however, the residents of Hawaii experienced a lot of hardships in their history. It is a fact that two “revolutionary social changes” occurred in Hawaii. The first revolution, or social change, was the 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii by the white residents of Hawaii who were the off-spring of American and European missionaries and merchants. After this revolution, Hawaii became a Republic under the rule of those who overthrew the Mon- arch, The Republic of Hawaii was not democratic in many ways, since the political power was concentrated within a small number of white residents, while the Hawaiian sovereign leaders and indigenous Hawaiians were deprived of political power. Even the right of suffrage was limited to a small number of people. A few years later, it was annexed to the United States as the Territory. Although the 1893 overthrow’ of the Kingdom and 1898 annexation of Hawaii to the US were “revolutionary,” Hawaiian society after the US annexation did not become a place where all residents were able to live peacefully and equally. In fact, it was close to a feudalistic society, with a white oligarchy class on the top of the society, exploiting non-white residents. Thus, there had been a need for the second revolution in order to make Hawaii a modern democratic soci- ety in its true sense. The second revolution, or the second revolutionary social change, was actually a set of happenings that occurred from the end of World War II through the 1950s. It started with a series of successful strikes in the latter half of the 1940s by a strong labor union, the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). With the victory of the ILWU, the name of Jack Hall, its Regional Director of Hawaii, became well-known. Due to the 49Hawaii's Second Revolution strikes led by the strong leadership of Jack Hall and other leaders, working class people from various ethnic groups won the power they deserved to have. This was a victory for the ordinary people of Hawaii, and it had a strong impact on the political arena of Hawaiian society. In the 1950s, the revitalized Demo- cratic Party of Hawaii, supported by many union members, succeeded in des- troying the old Republic monopoly of Hawaiian politics. The landslide victory of the Democrats in the 1954 Territorial election became known as the “Demo- cratic Revolution” and the young democrats of Japanese ancestry who won the political seats became well-known. Among them were Daniel K. Inouye, Sakae Takahashi, Sparky Matsunaga, to name a few. Jack Burns (John A. Burns) who had worked very hard to reorganize the Democratic Party for years, was elected as the Governor of the State of Hawaii in 1962. During the second revolutionary social change, both in the labor movement and political arena, some heroes (and heroines) played important roles. Many of them were remem- bered for the prominent deeds that they had done for Hawaii’s people. How- ever, as is true with many other revolutionary changes, some people were for- gotten, although they also had played very important and crucial roles when the change was going on. In the course of Hawaii’s second revolution, the important part played by Jack Kawano, a Nisei Japanese American originally from the countryside of Hawaii, was indispensable to the success of labor organizing. It is not overstating that the strikes could not have been successful without Kawano’s effective organizing of rank and file workers. Why did his name have to be criticized and buried in the process of social change? In this essay, I will reconstruct what happened in the process of Hawaii's second revolution through the eyes of Jack Kawano. To better understand Jack Kawano’s view of what was happening, I would like to examine what Jack Kawano said regarding the process of the labor movement and Hawaii’s politi~ cal and social changes at the interview for John A. Burns Oral History Project (BOHP). I will also make use of Sanford Zalburg’s memos from his own interview with Jack Kawano when writing his masterpiece, “A Spark is Struck!” and Jack Kawano’s testimony for the HUAC hear gton DC in 1951. 2. Born as a Nisei: Jack Kawano in Prewar Haw: Jack Kawano was born in Kapoho in 1911, on the Island of Hawaii (the Big Island). Jack was the eldest son and had three brothers and two sisters. One of his sisters was born and lived in Japan, so the other children, includ- ing Jack, had never seen her. His parents came to Hawaii from Japan as con- tract labor, so they were Japanese nationals. All children, except the one born in Japan, were born Americans In the prewar years, most Japanese residents in Hawaii belonged to the 50Mariko Takagi-Kitayama working class. The Issei generation came to Hawaii in order to work for the sugar industry with their American dream of earning enough money to become rich back home in Japan, The Japanese Issei regarded education as a ticket for Nisei children to move ahead in American society. At the same time almost all of the Japanese Nisei were sent to Japanese language schools run by the Japanese community. In this way, Nisei children were supposed to learn important sub- jects at local public schools in English, and Japanese language and values at Japanese language schools. Just like other Japanese children, Jack went to a local public school nearby. He also went to Japanese school. Since he was from the countryside where they had no secondary schools, he lived in the dormi- tory of the Buddhist church in a bigger town which ran the Japanese language school he attended. He quit school when he was supposed to enter the eighth grade. His father decided to make him quit, when Jack was told by the princi- pal that he could not go up to the eighth grade without attending summer clas- ses. His father could not accept this, and he said, “if our boy is that stupid, he should not go to school any more” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). After that, he went to work at the age of fourteen. Prewar Hawaii was already a multi-ethnic society that had a clear distine- tion between the rich and the poor. In 1900 Hawaii was incorporated into the United States as its Territory. Since its beginning as the Territory, Hawaii had only two social classes, a haole (white) elite class of those who came from American missionary or merchant families at the very top, and a working class of those who originally came to Hawaii as laborers for the sugar industry at the bottom of the society. The political and economic power was in the hands of the top white elite oligarchy group that was more likely affiliated with the Big Five, the five large companies controlling all sectors of the sugar industry. They had a strong voice in the political arena by manipulating the Republican Party of Hawaii. Among the white people, Portuguese in Hawaii had a unique social position because, being laborers for plantations and being white, they were treat- ed differently not only from other non-white (mostly Asian) working class, but also from white elite of the old missionary/merchant families. It might be more precise to say that Portuguese were among working class people, but were usually put above other non-white workers within the working class. Indigenous Hawaiians were also placed at a unique social status. In spite of being indigenous to the Hawaiian islands, they were deprived of their sovereignty and many of them were placed with other non-white working class people in the multi-ethnic society. They had a political voice, though, since they were the citizens of the Republic of Hawaii when it was annexed to the US and had been automati- cally granted citizenship. Therefore, Hawaiians were able to get political posi- tions as well as Territorial office clerk jobs. Some part-Hawaiians even held political offices, or worked within the white elite class. Generally, however, 51Hawaii's Second Revolution prewar Hawaii was an unequal society where non-white working class people were barred from climbing up to the ruling class. Since Hawaii became a territory of the US the Asian immigrants were treated as aliens ineligible for citizenship. Nisei like Jack Kawano were born American, but the Issei immigrants were never able to become naturalized Americans.? However, those from European backgrounds such as Portuguese immigrants, had the right to take the naturalization examinations to become Americans. It was part of the racist legislations the US used to have. As early as 1900, Japanese and Chinese respectively made up about 40 percent and 17 percent of the total Territorial population, It was threatening for the white elite class, which constituted only 7 percent of the total population, to let all Asians become American citizens. It would make the white elite unable to hold their steadfast political and economic position as a “majority” ruling class In the 1930s a lot of Nisei Japanese came of age, finding that they lived in a place where they were not treated equally. Although they learned at school the meaning of democracy they had to realize that the real world was not truly democratic, Since they had arrived on the Islands, the Issei workers were under very harsh working conditions. The white elite class exploited the immigrant workers in a quasi-feudalistic system. In the early days the Issei Japanese sugar laborers stood up against the planters, and went on strikes, but they failed The planters were able to break up strikes easily by employing strike breakers from non-Japanese groups, because these strikes were being carried out only by Japanese immigrant laborers. In fact, strikes did not happen very often. Most of the time, the Issei workers regarded their conditions as something they could not help (Shikataga nai koto). They kept quiet and accepted their situations. The change came with the coming of age of the Nisei generation. The Nisei were born locally on the islands, and they were brought up with other work- ing class children from different ethnic backgrounds. Their first language was Pidgin, which was English with a mixture of different languages. Children of different ethnic immigrants shared similar backgrounds and language. This made a large difference compared to the first generation immigrant groups, Jack Kawano went to work on a sugar plantation on the Big Island at the age of fourteen. He had to do many different kinds of jobs, such as spreading fertilizer, cutting cane, fluming cane, and cutting grass. At one time he was working in the sugar mill for 29 dollars a month. He knew a sugar boiler who was getting 45 dollars, He wanted to discuss the matter with the manager, but had a difficult time getting to see him. When they finally met, Jack said he wanted the same pay as the sugar boiler. The boss told him he was willing to give him 30 dollars a month, one dollar more, but no more, to which Jack re- plied, “Well, so long.” He did not want to work for the plantation any more (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). This episode shows that even in his low teens Jack 52Mariko Takagi-Kitayama Kawano was a boy with a strong will who could not tolerate injustice. He moved around from island to island. In the Great Depression he came to Honolulu on the island of Oahu. The Depression was severe and many peo- ple in the city of Honolulu were jobless. He shared a hotel room with eight others, and as he was the only one with a job, he used to feed them by work- ing part-time. In the middle of the depression he got married and started working as a stevedore, Around 1936 Jack overheard that the West Coast longshoremen went on strike. ® “After the strike a lot of s going on on the waterfront in San Francisco, how much more money they were making over us, what kind of working conditions they are enjoying over us, and what kind of job security they are enjoying over us. And that made us kind of drool a little bit, and we wanted part of that. So everything that we did, if we felt that it was unfair, those things used to irritate us and get us kind of mad and it used to get me quite mad myself” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975) So Kawano joined the union in November 1935, and he became an enthu- siastic member. * Kawano and his friends started organizing the longshoremen, but it was Jack who really did the organizing. Since they were not allowed to go around the docks and persuade people to join the union, the way of going from house to house was the most effective way. Kawano said: “[GJoing house to house, contacting people. I think 1 was about the only one that did that. [ used to wait until people get through working — they 20 home, and around evening time I visited them. It was a tough job because many times you'd catch an individual, convince him, have him pay his initiation and dues then when you leave him, the next month he forgets to pay his dues... The turn-over of people coming in and getting out and for- getting was terrific” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975) In the mid-1930s some labor conflicts occurred between the white elite class of the Big Five and the emerging union. In fact, the union organizing had started at a grassroots level, and was supported by the union leaders liv- ing in Honolulu. Some of the leaders in Honolulu were white (haole) from the mainland, and usually had some experience with union activities before coming to Hawaii, and sometimes were more or less affected by the ideology of communism. They included Jack Hall, Maxie Weisbarth, Bill Bailey, Ed Berman and others (Zalburg, 1979, 10/16-17). They came to Hawaii one after another, usually as seaman, and then decided to stay in Hawaii. Although the local workers on different Islands were fighting for better working conditions at one time or another, they were having a hard time getting recognition as a workers’ union. These white people from outside of the Islands, or malihini haoles, looked helpful to the workers under the semi-feudalistic working con- ditions because they had useful knowledge. The local workers heard of these amen came over and let us know what was. 53Hawaii's Second Revolution labor leaders and came for help. In 1937 a strike broke out among Filipino workers on Maui on April 20 and lasted until July 17, It was the last racial strike for Hawaii, The Honolulu labor leaders helped organize the workers upon a request from the Maui Fili- pino laborers. The Honolulu leaders sent Jack Hall and Bill Bailey, two malihini haoles. Although Jack Hall tried to persuade a Filipino leader on Maui to make the union more inter-ethnic by including workers of other nationalities, he did not listen. In the end, the Filipino workers won a slight pay raise and recognition of the union, but nothing more. But it was the first time the sugar industry officially recognized strikers (Zalburg, 1979, 24-25). In the same year, the workers on the Island of Kauai were trying to organize and go on strike for better pay and better working conditions. They went to the Honolulu labor leaders for help, and Jack Hall and George Goto were sent to Kauai. They organized on Kauai, with the help of local-born organizers. Jack Hall com- mented, recalling those days. We used to have lots and lots of meetings and lots of interest and, of course, the meetings used to go on for five or six hours. I guess in those days they had to be conducted [in] three or sometimes four languages... And we used to go right into the camps even though they had trespass laws and defy them to throw us out. Sometimes they would take you out, but we went back in, But they would never make any arrests... (Zalburg, 1979, 28) In 1938, there was a confrontation between union members and the police in Hilo on the Big Island. In May of that year, the Inland Boatmen’s Union (IBU) and ILWU Local 1-37 (headed by Kawano) struck at the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company. Soon the AFL Metal Trades Council of Honolulu (MTC) joined the strike. As a result, the majority of the Inter-Island longshore- men, seamen, boilermakers, carpenters, machinists, and electricians walked out. The Inter-Island ships were unable to move. The aim of the strike was to establish a closed (union) shop where only union members could work and wage increases. However, the company was using nonunion workers as strike breakers. It aggravated the union workers. Although it seemed prudent for Inter-Island to cancel further sailings, the businessmen forced them to send out a ship, because shipping cancellation was costing them money. On August 1, there was a dem- onstration when the ship Waialeale docked at the Hilo waterfront. The dem- onstrators marched on the waterfront, singing, shouting, bantering, moving toward the yellow lines the police had put up. The demonstrators did not know that no one was allowed to venture past the yellow lines. When the demonstra- tors passed the first yellow line, the police threw tear gas grenades at the crowd. But the people kept on marching. Finally it led the policemen to shoot the unarmed demonstrators. People were screaming and running. The shooting lasted one or two minutes, and fifty people most of whom were union mem- 4Mariko Takagi-Kitayama bers were wounded. This incident was called the “Hilo Massacre.” The strike ended on August 15. The strike was a failure. The union did not get a union shop nor a wage increase. All they received was the recognition of the union, which according to Jack Kawano was absolutely nothing In the 1938 Inter-Island Strike, Jack Kawano represented the longshoremen and Ed Berman represented the seamen. When they walked out, they walked out together. Kawano believed that they should go back together since they had come out together. However, Berman wanted to go back to work. If they continued, they would lose everything, Berman argued. On the other hand, Kawano argued that they should go on. Well, we wanted to go on. We insisted that we go on because what happened was one day at the seamen’s union all of the group was in the same hall and they were planning to go back to work... They say, well, they settled the strike... So I told them: “You fellows hold off... while until we have this thing checked.” And we got hold of Berman, who said, “That's true.” So that’s where the beef came up. They had no business to settle the strike unless they settle it together with us... You fellows have no business to have a settlement by yourselves. So they say, “Well, we can’t take it any- more. Morale is low and we can’t take it anymore because we got no food” and so on. We say, “Don’t worry about food. We feed you. But if you guys have to go back to work, at least give us a chance to get our settlement before we all go back to work, Meantime, we feed you.” But they refused and they went to work (Kawano/by Zalburg, 1974, 6-7). Afterwards, Kawano had a hard time collecting union dues from the workers. As a result, Kawano lost their longshore union and the IBU also went out of existence. Regardless of the failure of the strike, people at the grassroots level started organizing with some help from the Honolulu union leaders. This was more important than the result of the strike itself. About the time when they were fighting the Inter-Island Strike, there was an organization creeping into the lives of workingmen on the islands, which was completely different organization from the labor union. That was the Commu- nist Party (CP). Although it started as a small group of people gathering secretly at one member’s home, this organization helped organize the working people into a union, Some of the labor union leaders and organizers were pulled into the CP of Hawaii, and so was Kawano. Some became instrumental to the CP. Kawano was taken to the CP meeting without being notified that it was a Communist meeting. At that meeting he joined the CP. According to Kawano’s testimony in front of the HUAC hearing held in July 1951, he testified that the n organizing was under way, and that the meetings of the CP were held fairly regularly, one of whose purposes was to help organize the workingmen’s 55.Hawaii's Second Revolution union.* It was around 1938 when he joined the CP. In those days Kawano had been working very hard to organize the longshoremen into a union on the waterfront and he participated in the Inter-Island Strike. He thought it was beneficial to get help from this secretive organization, the CP, ® since, to him, the CP was really helping unionization by supporting working people. As a union man, Kawano proved himself dependable and was elected as president of the Honolulu Longshoremen in 1938 for the first time, and kept the posi- tion until 1949. Kawano gradually started to learn what communism really meant to the CP. Jack Kimoto, a Japanese American communist, urged him to go to San Francisco and study labor economics at one of the special schools conducted by the Communist Party of the USA in California. “He told me that it was only a S-week course, and that I could learn a lot, and I would be able to do a more effective job of organizing after I returned from school” (Kawano/ Testimony, 1951, 17). So Jack Kawano set for San Francisco in September or October of 1938, attended the course, and came back to Hawaii on January 1, 1939, The relationship between the CP members and the labor union members was complicated. Among the union members there were communists and com- munist sympathizers on one hand, and non-communist but earnest union men on the other. Among the Communist Party members, there were also union- member communists, and nonunion communists. To make things more compli- cated, among those who belonged to both the CP and a labor union, some regar- ded communism as priority and unionizing as secondary, and others thought vice versa. All the interviews of Kawano and also of his HUAC testimony, prove that Kawano valued his union business above all else. He was not able to toler- ate communist orders that contradicted the well-being of union. In his July 1951 testimony, Kawano explained that there were two groups, a downtown and an uptown group within the CP of Hawaii. The downtown group Kawano belon- ged to consisted of the longshoremen and a few non-longshoremen. The up- town group was for professional people (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 14). In the testimony, Kawano spoke as though he did not regard non-longshoremen as members of the downtown group of the CP. He testified: “when the longshore- men group met and they were not attended by outsiders like Hall, Reinecke and people like that, when the longshoremen alone met, the subject they talked about was how to organize, how to handle grievances, whom to recruit in the union, strictly trade-union subjects” (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 15). This com- ment demonstrates that the union was most important for Kawano. Thus, Kawano was able to function as an effective union organizer, attend- ing the CP meetings at the same time, as he believed the CP was helping unionization. With the knowledge gained from the communist school or com- 56Mariko Takagi itayama munist friends, Kawano became a more effective union organizer. Upon com- ing back from the San Francisco communist school, he set forth organizing on the waterfront, as passionately as ever, in the beginning of 1940, Leaflets began to flow down the water front; pier-hand meetings began pop- ping up along the water front daily; and personal contacts during the eve- nings by myself and to some extent assisted by William Halm began to bear fruit. The boys on the water front began to believe that the union was OK... (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 19) Kawano and his fellow organizers found it impossible to get the majority of the longshoremen into the union just by following the same old method, so they invented a new way of getting the pledges from the longshoremen instead of recruiting them directly. This new method was a hit. The longshoremen began to sign the cards. “You see, just before the war broke out, we won a representation case against Castle & Cooke and McCabe. Until then it was always trying, trying and trying — no success” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). What Kawano meant by “winning a representation case” was the election for representation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The organizers petitioned the NLRB for an election that determined the ILWU as the exclusive collective bargaining representative in Castle & Cooke; McCabe; and also later in Con- tractors’ Pacific Naval Air Base; then later in American Stevedores, Ltd (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 19). Through this process, they finally organized the waterfront in 1941 In 1939 World War I broke out on the European warfront. For the residents of Hawaii, however, the Pearl Harbor attack by Japanese planes on December 7, 1941 had a greater impact. The labor movement had to be limited for a while because of the war. And the CP of Hawaii was disbanded follow- ing an order from the San Francisco headquarters. 3. World War Il: As a Nisei Staying at his Home of Hawaii. It is well-known that the Nisei soldiers of the 100 Infantry Battalion and the 442" Regimental Combat Team fought against the prejudice within the country as well as the enemy. Also the Nisei in the MIS (Military Intelligence Service) played an important role. The Nisei proved their Americanism toward the people in the U.S. who had been suspicious of their loyalty to America. During the war Hawaii was put under military control. The US govern- ment imposed martial law on Hawaii. The military government denied workers the right to change jobs and froze their wages. The Big Five worked closely with the military government, Sometimes “ ular longshore crews to help handle the increased military shipping. But the employers kept them on the lower wage plantation payrolls while pocketing the higher longshore wages paid by the government for their work” (Beechert, plantation employees joined the reg- 57Hawaii's Second Revolution 449). As for the CP (Communist Party) in Hawaii, interestingly enough, it was temporarily disbanded by an order from the Communist Party headquarters in San Francisco. From the beginning of World War II the slogan of Communist Party was that “the Yanks were not coming to this war,” advocating that they fight the idea of sending soldiers to Europe to fight. In June 1941 Hitler invaded Russia, which totally changed the tone of the CP. They must fight against Hitler to save communism in Russia (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 21). The CP headquarters conveyed the message to the CP in Hawaii that “because Hawaii was such an important outpost for defense they wanted them to coop- erate so the Army and Navy would have no suspicion of communism in Hawaii” (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 21). Although Jack Kimoto and Jack Hall opposed this order, after a heated discussion, they finally decided to follow the order from San Francisco. However, Kawano recalled, “after the party was ordered to disband and the party disbanded, there were no official Communist Party meetings, yet occasionally some of the people used to gather at some of the houses” (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 23). Jack Kawano was 30 years old at the outbreak of the war. At the begin- ning of the war, there was a suspicion against Japanese Issei and Nisei in Hawaii that they might sabotage. Nisei soldiers were promptly discharged from the military and put in the category of 4-C by the Selective Service, meaning a military draft status equivalent to “non-draftable alien” (Kotani, 1985, 83). In Kawano’s case, although he was the local longshore president, he and other union leaders of Japanese ancestry were barred from going to the docks unless called for (Zalburg, 1979, 67). The docks were of great military importance, so people of the enemy race were not allowed. It was one of the disadvantages that residents of Japanese ancestry had to deal with during the war. Kawano, as the ILWU longshore leader, asked for pay raises for the Honolulu longshoremen although he knew that the military government had frozen the wages. Since the cost of living was going up, it was becoming har- der for the workers to live. At that time the longshoremen in San Francisco earned 1.15 dollars an hour, whereas the Honolulu longshoremen were making 75 cents. However, the employer, the Big Five, did not allow raises, with the reason that “the company would be subject to severe criticism if it defied the military and granted a raise” (Zalburg, 1979, 66). As a union man, Kawano started to do more organizing from the latter part of 1943 through 1944. It was still in the middle of the war. Although the sugar industry was the main industry of Hawaii, the workers were getting poor wages. Bert Nakano, the union organizer from the Island of Hawaii, wrote to Honolulu to ask for help. He said to Kawano, “the plantations are ripe,” for organizing.Mariko Takagi-Kitayama Only with some donations from the local longshore workers, Kawano started on his organizing drive. On the Big Island he got half a dozen men from the plantations and “gave a lecture in the union hall for about three days to show them how to approach the plantation people and what to talk about, what kind of evidence to show and so on” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). Kawano assigned Yoroku Fukuda as the chairman of the group, and when they went down to the plantations, they swept over the whole island in a few days. Kawano’s group had all the plantations signed up. Kawano delivered very effective speeches on the plantations, and the following is an example of one of those speeches, according to Arakaki, who also worked with Kawano. If you enter into the ILWU, you'll get support from the railroad workers [hauling sugar], the dock workers [loading sugar], and even in the refin- ery [at Crocket]. You will have a connecting link from the sugar pro- ducers right up to the refinery. The ILWU will organize everybody from top to bottom. We don’t discriminate against any trade (Zalburg, 1979, 86) It surprised Jack Hall, who had mentioned to Kawano before the organiz- ing drive started, “nobody can organize the plantations, and the best thing for you to do is to forget it” (Kawano/by Zalburg, 1974, 15). It also surprised the ILWU in San Francisco. Kawano tried to get the international offices of the ILWU interested in sugar organizing, “but Harry Bridges and others were never interested, and it was not until they got the definite news that Kawano’s group was signing thousands of plantation workers that they got interested” (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 24). Since they had about 150 railroad workers signed up, Kawano asked Bridges whether he approved these railroad workers as members of the ILWU or not, although the constitutions of the AFL and CIO had no room for these employees. Bridges answered “Well, since you have got them signed up, we will take them into the ILWU.” Kawano then asked about the sugar workers, and Bridges gave him the same answer (Kawano/ Testimony, 1951, 25). In similar ways, Kawano went to the other islands of Maui, Kauai, and Oahu, and organized the plantation workers. “The number of dues-paying ILWU members increased from 970 in January 1944 to 6610 in January 1945" (Kotani, 1985, 116). Although Kawano laid the valuable foundation for the organizing drive and played a crucial role in organizing all the plantations across the islands, Mat Meehan, the official dispatch from the headquarters of ILWU, made Jack Hall regional director for the ILWU. He wrote to Goldblatt of the ILWU headquarters. Everyone has great confidence in Kawano. He is the spearhead of the labor movement in the Islands as far as the CIO is concerned. And I find him very capable. He is under a handicap at present, however, because he is of Japanese ancestry. Therefore it will be necessary to have a haole ~~ white 59Hawail’s Second Revolution to you =~ to front for him” (Kawano/by Zalburg, 1974, 16) When Hall, not Kawano, was chosen as regional director, it did not disap- point Kawano. He said, “I felt that anybody that represents the ILWU, as long as that man is good enough for the ILWU, he’s good enough for me.”? But it did disappoint local longshoremen (Kotani, 1985, 124-5). During the war Kawano became acquainted with a different type of peo- ple from those he used to associate with. It had to do with the fact he was of Japanese ancestry and knew labor organizing well. The new organization in which he was asked to participate, ® was called the Emergency Service Commit- tee (ESC) (Kawano/IBOHP, 1975). It was established under the Moral Sec- tion of the Office of the Military Governor, which was planned to act as liai- son between each ethnic group and the military, and to promote morals among the residents under the emergency of war. They planned to establish Moral Committee within each ethnic group and the Japanese version of Moral Com- mittee was the ESC, which was originally composed of highly respected Nisei whose occupations ranged from medical doctors to businessmen. The members of the ESC were not fixed, and they increased the number of members as many as twenty (Shiramizu, 1998, 32-35). The members of the Moral Section of the Office of the Military Governor, the important non-Japanese people from the elite class of Hawaiian society, helped the Nisei of the ESC. Another person who played avery important role for the ESC was Jack Burns (John A. Burns), then captain of the Honolulu Police Department, who was going to be the governor of the State of Hawaii. Toward the end of war, Kawano became better acquainted with Jack Burns, Ernest Murai (Nisei dentist), Mitsuyuki Kido (Nisei former public school teacher) from the ESC, and later with Chuck Mau, a second-generation Chinese American politician. They gathered regularly on weekends to talk over their ambitions in postwar Hawaii. Chuck Mau was a Democrat, and an elect- ed member of the Honolulu Board of Supervisors since 1940, Since they discus- sed over coffee a more idealistic shape for Hawaii, they were later called “Cof- fee Drinking Group” that pushed the political revolution forward (HSB, 2/25/ 1975). The Coffee Drinking Group wanted to change the second-rate society of Hawaii into a truly democratic society where everybody would be treated equally. Mitsuyuki Kido, a former public school teacher commented But what triggered me into politics was the fact that youngsters that we enrolled in the 442° combat team who were then in combat in Italy would write back letters from their hospital beds and saying, “We were willing to sacrifice our lives and everything, are we coming back to a second-cle society? What are we going to do when we get back?” We read some of those letters and decided that something had to be done, and we felt that 60Mariko Takagi-Kitayama one way of bringing about full recognition of the people who made this supreme sacrifice was to get into politics and change the political life of the community to make it more democratic, to bring about—idealistically we were thinking about equality of opportunity (Kido/JBOHP, 1975) Participating in the discussions with these people, Kawano learned the true meaning of democracy. Jack Kawano was the sparkplug who initiated the Coffee Drinking Group’s discussion of the possibility of building Hawaii's weak Democratic Party into a genuine political force.... For the five men, the choice seemed clear; none had any intention of being under the thumb of the Big Five... Kido said, “we could make the greatest contribution by revitalizing the Demo- cratic Party.” (Kotani, 1985, 132) The CP resumed its activities after the war and Kawano worked for the CP, the Democrats, and the union. As to the union activities, they finally bore fruit in 1945 when the “Little Wagner Act” passed the Territorial Senate, which extended to all agricultural workers in Hawaii the same collective bargaining right that had been granted to industrial workers nationally under federal law ‘The agricultural workers were authorized to organize a union 4, The Revolution Was Taking Place: Labor, Politics and Kawano. In 1946, the ILWU sugar industrial strike broke out. It was the first Territory-wide, industry-wide strike in the history of the islands. On Septem- ber 1, 28,000 workers on 33 plantations walked out. This strike lasted 79 days. The strike ended with a great victory for the union over the employers. The strike frightened the employers and created a general awe of the union power on the part of workers, employers and the public, For the first time in Hawaiian history the employers had been soundly and definitely thwart- ed. The psychological value of this display of defiance of the employers could not fail to add immensely to union power (Zalburg, 1979, 155) Although Kawano played such an important role in organizing sugar workers, he did not contribute much to the 1946 strike. “I was already assigned to work mostly in the longshore local where I belonged and also to take my spare time out of union activity going to the legislature. I used to be also lobbyist in the legislature” (Kawano/by Zalburg, 1974, 25). After the 1946 strike the ILWU took part in the Pineapple Strike of 1947, and in the Strike in Olaa in 1948. Kawano did not play a major role in those particular labor matters of the ILWU. During the days from the V-J Day of 1945 to 1948, the CP of Hawaii resumed and continued working for the party. They received an order from San Francisco and decided to go through the list of old CP memberships, and recruit back the people who they thought were dependable. The CP organizer 61Hawaii's Second Revolution Jim Freeman was sent to Hawaii from the headquarters. From 1946 to 47 Kawano was elected to serve an the executive committee of the CP, and in 1947, he was voted out. '? The main activities of the CP in those days was to sell Communist literature, recruit new members, and accelerate party activities other than strictly Communist ones such as selling subscriptions for the “Peo- ple's World,” the “Honolulu Record,” soliciting funds for the Reinecke hear- ings, and, a little later, encouraging membership in the Hawaii Civil Liberties Committee (HCLC), and introducing certain uptown Communists to Commu- nists in the ILWU (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 32) Kawano did a great deal of organizing work for the moribund Democratic Party, although he belonged to the CP. He participated in the Democratic Party organizing because he agreed with the Democrats’ slogan, “the Demo- cratic Party is the party of the working man.” “Even though the union won the better wages, if the prices go up it would knock down the wage increase” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). Kawano thought it necessary to participate in polities to safeguard whatever gains they made through negotiations with the employers. In the 1946 election campaign Kawano supported Mitsuyuki Kido, a member of the Coffee Drinking Group, in the election for the Territorial House. In addition to his numerous contacts among former Farrington High School stu- dents, Kido had the whole-hearted support of labor leader Kawano. “I stopped the truck and knocked off all those people to get down from the truck to call a meeting right on the spot.... They went to the precincts to help out (to pass cards and help the candidates.) I think I knocked off from about eighty to one hundred people” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). That was how Kawano helped his candidate to be elected. Kido won. In the 1946 election Kido was one of 14 successful Democratic candidates who had been endorsed by labor's Political Action Committee (PAC). Another election was coming in 1948. The ILWU Regional Director Jack Hall advised union supporters to be active in precinet work and seek election as party officials in 1947, in order to win the 1948 election. In addition to the labor union’s backing, the Democratic Party was receiving Nisei ex-soldiers’ support. A few of their names were Daniel Inouye, Sakae Takahashi, Dan Aoki, and Matsuo Takabuki, all of whom were with Jack Burns and his Coffee Drinking Group. They pursued the same idealistic dream with the Coffee-Drinkers. Kawano worked with those Nisei war veterans for the Democrats. However, the encroaching red-baiting atmosphere was going to greatly influence his life 5. Red Scare in Paradise: Witch Hunting. In the ILWU, Kawano was losing his steadfast position as longshore organizer. When the 1949 Longshore Strike broke out, Hawaii had already been under the influence of the Red Scare. The Territorial Governor Stainback was 62Mariko Takagi-Kitayama particularly interested in red-baiting. In 1947 Ichiro Izuka, a Nisei former mem- ber of the CP of Hawaii, published a sensational pamphlet called “The Truth about Communism in Hawaii.” It was an expose of the CP’s secret activities and a list of communists in Hawaii, The same year, John and Aiko Reinecke, who were both public school teachers, were fired from their teaching positions because they were communists. The CP members were becoming targets of the iting, The ILWU was also becoming a target of red-baiting since it was a good excuse for employers to assert that union workers were communists. It was true that some of the ILWU leaders were strongly influenced by communism, but name-calling worked tremendously well for the Big Five capitalists in order to justify their own position as protector of Americanism. Since the Democratic Party was being revitalized with the help of union power, the party was also vulnerable to red-baiting. Jack Kawano was being put into a maze. He wanted to work for the well-being of working class people, but the CP was telling him to work only for the Party. Being a “loyal” American also seemed more and more valuable to him, especially after talking with the Coffee Drinkers. Which way should he g0? He said later that he had been thinking of quitting the CP even before that, but the time came during the 1949 strike. A CP executive board meeting was held at Jack Kimoto’s house. Before Kawano’s arrival at the meeting the others had already decided to put the sugar workers out on strike in support of the longshoremen who were already striking. Kawano started to argue. He told them that they were “all wet,” and that the on-going strike was a longshore strike and it should not be spread any wider, According to Kawano the reason that the longshoremen were able to do such a good job in their picket lines was because the sugar workers fed them. If they pulled these plantation workers out, it would be only a matter of weeks before the strike would fail. Jack Kimoto told Kawano, “Jack, you are a good union man, there's no doubt about that, But as a Communist you lack. You don’t really belong as a good Communist.” Kawano told him he believed in the rank and file movement. To him, the idea of a dictatorship of the com- munist party was something that he had never really accepted. If pulling sugar plantation workers out on strike ended up in breaking the strike, there might be no union afier that. Kimoto told Kawano that if that were the case, and they could organize half a dozen new Communists, it would be worth it (Kawano/ JBOHP, 1975). This made Kawano leave the ILWU and the CP of Hawaii. Kawano quit the union, He said, “that’s the only way I could get away from the control of the Communists!” (Kawano/by Zalburg, 1974, 37). Even within the organization of the ILWU he was not given appropriate work during the 1949 Strike. Kawano had stayed with the strike committee until red-l 63Hawaii's Second Revolution the longshoremen went on strike, and during the strike he was more or less left out of the strike committee. Instead, he was working at the Legislature, as he was assigned. Since he was the head of the longshore unit, he wanted to stay with the longshoremen. He felt that they were “sort of shunting [him] aside,” since “his real position was supposed to be on the strike...” (Kawano/ by Zalburg, 1974, 36). After 177 days, the strike was settled. It was again a great victory for the ILWU. They won a 21-cent pay increase. If Kawano had only quit and left the union, his name might have been remembered in a good way, as the pioneer union organizer, but it was tarni- shed by red-baiting. The House Un-American Committee (HUAC) hearing was held in Honolulu in April 1950, Kawano was to testify at the HUAC hearing under subpoena. At the hearing, he and thirty-eight other witnesses did not testify, claiming the 5* amendment. ® Around the time of the HUAC hearing in Honolulu, Kawano had many personal talks with his Coffee Drinking friends and Democratic Party members. After the HUAC hearing in Honolulu, Kawano made up his mind to testify in front of the HUAC and answer all questions regarding his communist activities in Hawaii, When he made the decision, he visited Jack Hall. Hall knew that he could not stop Kawano. They parted, calling each other traitors. Hall called Kawano a traitor to the cause, and he called Hall a traitor to his country (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). They shook hands and separated. In July 1951 Kawano went to Washington DC to testify. Just as Hall had predicted, Kawano’s reputation was tarnished. Kawano became a trai- tor to the ILWU. After the testimony he could not find enough work to make a living 6. Final Remarks: Aftermath. Why did Kawano decide to testify and expose his communist activities to the public? What impact did his testimony have on the three organizations he used to belong to, the ILWU, the Democratic Party, and the Communist Party? When asked by the interviewer if his service on the Emergency Service Committee and the feeling of Japanese-Americans during the war in Hawaii— the need to prove one’s Americanism—sharpened his desire to testify, he an- swered: Maybe to some extent, But the thing that was kind of getting in my mind was, you see, | had been made an honorary member of the 442" Club. When these people came back they found out the whole Hawaiian islands had changed in economic status where people used to work for one dollar a day in the plantations, all of a sudden is not working for that kind of cheap wages any more. They found that Kawano had a lot to do in bringing about those changes. And so the 442°* people made me an honorary mem- 64Mariko Takagi-kitayama ber. And in the beginning when they used to have shindigs, there was always reserved a place for me near the head of the table—myself, Jack Burns, and I think Kido and Murai. I think that has something to do. And also 1 have some people from the waterfront that went to war and they did not come back, And at that time when I testified, the Korean War was going on... I think those things have something to do too. Besides, my upbringing as a Japanese to respect their country—T think that has some strong feeling when I grew up as an American to love my country, (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975) What happened to the Communist Party of Hawaii? After Kawano’s testi- mony, seven Hawaii residents — Jack Hall, John Reinecke, Dwight James Free- man, Charles Fujimoto, Eileen Fujimoto, Jack Kimoto and Koji Ariyoshi — were arrested under the Smith Act in August 1951. They were charged with conspiracy for their communist way of “thinking.” They were called the “Hawaii Seven” and their trial continued until 1958, when the US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled, on the basis of a previous Supreme Court decision, that the abstract teaching of communism did not constitute conspir- acy to overthrow the government by force as defined by the Smith Act (Kotani, 1985, 126). During this red-baiting climate, needless to say, the CP was geatly damaged. The Democratic Party was found to have some of the Reluctant 39 as its members after the HUAC hearing in April 1950. The Democratic Party at that time was being revitalized. They had many labor-PAC endorsed politicians and union members as Democrats. Jack Burns had his own faction within the party, with new young Nisei war veterans as his fellow supporters. There was also an Old Guard group of rather conservative democrats. The red-baiting somehow gave the Burns faction a chance to acquire power after the split of the Party itself between the anti-labor and pro-labor line, Burns faction successfully start- ed to get rid of too much influence of labor union members and hidden com- munists from the Party. Although the ILWU suffered after the arrest of the Hawaii Seven, it sur- vived and remained as one of the strongest unions in Hawaii. There is no doubt that the ILWU helped make the conditions of ordinary working people better. Lastly, what about Jack Kawano? After participating in the Smith Act Trial, Kawano moved to California because he could not make a living in Hawaii, where no one wanted to employ him. “Kawano became a pariah in the Islands. Despised by his fellow union members as a sell-out, Kawano never enjoyed the kind of political suecess which came to the other members of the original Coffee Drinking Group” (Kotani, 1985, 136). Kawano was a union man in the fi t place, so it must have been very 65Hewail's Second Revolution hurtful to be called “a sell-out” by his fellow union members. He could have kept silent in order to remain a “union man.” But what made him testify even though it betrayed his union, must have been related to being an American of Japanese ancestry, He lived in prewar “undemocratic” Hawaii as a Japanese American Nisei. Just as the 100% and 442" soldiers, he felt that a responsibil- ity to prove himself a loyal American. Without the red-baiting atmosphere, Kawano would not have had to go through the nightmare. Under that tremen- dous pressure, Kawano had no other way to tell the public that he believed in Americanism, not in communism. Kawano admitted that he had thought over his actions many times. He said, “no matter how deeply I try to rationalize the thing, I still believe that that was the way for me to go” (Kawano/JBOHP, 1975). Kawano died in exile at the age of 83 in 1984 (HSB, 12/1/1984) Acknowledgement The author would like to thank Barbara Johnston for proof-reading the manuscript of this essay. References Books Beechert, Edward and Long, Edward. “Red Scare in Paradise: ILWU in Hawaii.” The Cold War against Labor, volume IT. An Anthology Edited by Ann Fagan Ginger and David Chirstiano. Berkeley: Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute. pp.447-471. Holmes, Michael T. 1994, The Specter of Communism in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kotani, Roland. 1985. The Japanese in Hawaii: A Century of Struggle, The Official Program Booklet of the Oahu Kanyaku Imin Centennial Commit- tee, Honolulu: The Hawaii Hochi, Ltd. Shiramizu, Shigehiko, 1998. Esunikku Bunka no Shakaigaku: Komyunitii, Riidaa, Media. (Fieldworks on Ethnic Cultures: Communities, Leaders, Media) Tokyo: Nihon Hyoron Sha. Takabuki, Matsuo. 1998. Am Unlikely Revolutionary: Matsuo Takabuki and the Making of Modern Hawaii. A Memoir by Matsuo Takabuki assisted by Dennis M. Ogawa with Glen Grant and Wilma Sur. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Pre Zalberg, Sanford. 1979. A Spark is Struck!: Jack Hall and The ILWU in Hawaii. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii 66Mariko Takagi-Kitayama Newspaper Articles “Some Coffee Drinkers Brewed a Revolution,” 2/25/1975. Honolulu Star-Bulletin (HSB). “Jack Kawano.” 12/1/1984. Honolulu Star-Bulletin (HSB). Editorial Interviews Kawano, Jack. 1974, Interview by Sanford Zalburg. (9/4/1974 in Los Angeles) . Kawano, Jack. 1975. Interview by Dan Boylan for John A. Burns Oral History Project (JBOHP). (8/21/1975 in Los Angeles) . Government Papers Kawano’s Testimony: Hearings Regarding Communist Activities in the Territory of Hawaii ~- Part 4 (Testimony of Jack H. Kawano). Hearing before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives. Eighty-Second Congress, First Session. 7/ 6/1951. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. Notes. + On average, the Hawaiians were a little better-off than other non-white residents in Hawaii * A few Issei from Hawaii who had served in the US military in World War I gained the right for naturalization and became Americans % From 1936 to 1937, there was a maritime strike on the West Coast. Bill Bailey, to be one of the haole labor leaders of Hawaii later, took part in this strike Being a member of Communist Party (CP), he was ordered to come to Hawaii to do some political work by the CP. However, after the Filipino strike on Maui in 1937, he went back to the mainland (Zalburg, 1974, 19-25) * According to Zalburg’s interview with Kawano, when Kawano wanted to join the union with the rest of the people, he was rejected because he was an American of Japanese ancestry, In the meantime, the union people were trying to orga- nize, so they changed their policy and included Kawano and his people of oriental decent. He was one of the first to join up (Kawano/by Zalburg, 1974, 5). At the HUAC hearing of July 1951, when asked whether there were any particular or specific matters in which the Communist Party took a leading part and influenced the union at that time in carrying out any particular project, Kawano replied: “Not that I can remember. During those days their policy to me was not too clear, except I had the feeling they were mainly interested in helping labor unions get organized, and they were doing their best to assist people to form unions” (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 12). © However, he remembered one case in which a little help from the CP did not work 67Hawaii's Second Revolution well in organizing. Jack Kimoto, a good Japanese-English interpreter and also a CP member, was assigned the role of writing all sorts of leaflets to be dis- tributed among the Japanese alien longshoremen on the waterfront. “However, because of the strong tendency to insert communist ideas into the leaflets, th organizational propaganda was rejected by the alien Japanese on the water front, and it did us more harm than good” (Kawano/Testimony, 1951, 12). 7 On Mat Mechan, Kawano commented: “he was more a white-supremacy type of guy.” Kawano said that he had the feeling that Meehan had frequently looked down on the people in the Islands (Kawano/by Zalburg, 1974, 21) ® Kawano participated in the ESC as an advisor because of his ties with labor on the strategic waterfront (Kotani, 1985, 130) ® Actually, the ILWU used its political power by forming with other major CIO unions in Hawaii to make the Political Action Committee (PAC) which pu- shed the pro-labor candidates at the election in 1944. As a result, sixteen repre- sentatives out of a total of 31 and eight senators of the Territorial Congress were elected from PAC-endorsed candidates. They voted for the Little Wagner Act (Beechert, 452) 2° Kawano was elected to be on the executive committee in 1949 again. © In the 1948 election, the Republicans still kept a majority status (nine to six in the Senate, twenty to ten in the House). But the pro-labor candidates endorsed by the union-PAC fought well \ They were called, the “Reluctant 39.” 8 In 1949 Jack Burns persuaded Jack Hall to resign from the Democratic Party. 68