Hawaii

IT HAS been more than half a century since President McKinley, trumpeting “manifest destiny” as his reason, accepted an offer of the Hawaiian Republic to be annexed to the United States. A joint resolution of Congress in 1898 made Hawaii an “integral part of the United States.”

This past summer, six days after the Senate had approved admission of Alaska as the forty-ninth state in the American union, Hawaiian Governor William F. Quinn, who had rushed to Washington as part of a delegation to press Hawaii’s statehood, declared that “the Congress can hardly shut the door now in the face of Hawaii, which has a welldeveloped economy, after the admission of Alaska, which is still a frontier area.”

All sorts of reasons have been advanced in the past to prevent statehood: lack of contiguity with the rest of the union (an argument now worthless in view of Alaska), a small population which would dilute representation in Congress of the larger states because Hawaii would have two senators (but Hawaii’s half million population is more than twice Alaska’s and larger than that of four states) and, finally, doubts about the loyalty of Hawaiians.

The loyalty argument, most recently revived by a 1957 Senate internal security subcommittee headed by Mississippi’s Senator James O. Eastland, is basically a question of race. And here, in fact, is the key issue which so far has militated against Hawaiian statehood, just as it has against home rule or national representation for the District of Columbia, which has a population larger than that of Hawaii and Alaska combined. In the district’s case, the issue is the growing percentage of Negro population; in Hawaii it is the polyglot population. In each case the Southern Democrats fear a lessening of their ability to control racial or civil rights legislation, above all in the United States Senate.

In the final roll call on Alaskan statehood, passed 64 to 20 in the Senate, twelve Southern Democrats and one from a border state (Monroncy of Oklahoma) were joined by seven Republicans in the “no" column. Yet since Alaska seemed to be a white man’s area, despite the Eskimo, five Southern Democrats felt politically able to vote for statehood.

Hawaii, however, is different. To understand, a bit of history is necessary. When Captain James Cook, the English explorer-navigator, discovered the islands in 1778, he found them populated by people who had crossed the Pacific from Polynesia hundreds of years earlier. A few years after Cook’s visit most of the hereditary chiefs who had ruled independent kingdoms from time immemorial were brought under control by the warrior King of Hawaii, the largest of the islands. In 1795, Kamehameha proclaimed himself King of Hawaii, establishing a monarchy which lasted until 1893, five years before annexation by the United States.

It was not Cook’s visit, however, but the arrival in 1820 of New England Christian missionaries which set the course for Hawaii. These indomitable and industrious souls brought not only Christianity but Western civilization to the island paradise. Soon the while man began to cultivate sugar, and for this he needed large amounts of labor. From the middle of the last century on, there was large-scale immigration from Japan, the Philippines, and China.

A polyglot population

The result is today’s polyglot population. The 1950 census showed the islands’ largest racial group to be the 37 per cent who are of Japanese ancestry, with 12 per cent Filipino and 6.5 per cent Chinese. Native Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians accounted for 17 per cent, and Caucasians — that is, whites from mainland America — totaled 23 per cent. Of the total population in 1950, some 84 per cent were native-born American citizens.

The Caucasians long have dominated the business and political life of the islands. It was Sanford B. Dole, of the missionary family (later to be associated with the pineapple industry), who in 1894 became President of the Hawaiian Republic, admittedly a rather high-handed move to end the monarchy and put the islands under the American flag. Yet racial harmony has been excellent, and members of many races have held and do hold public office. Hawaii’s fine public school system sprang from the mission schools and has had much to do with welding together the many races from both sides of the Pacific. The missionaries, too, embodied in Hawaiian law and custom the mainland’s democratic principles.

Loyalty to the U.S.

The attack on Hawaiian loyalty is essentially two-pronged. Doubts have been cast on the loyally of those of Japanese and Chinese ancestry, in the years preceding and immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and more recently as the Chinese everywhere have been divided in their loyalties to the motherland. Secondly, loyalty is questioned in regard to labor unions, specifically referring to Harry Bridges’ International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, which dominates the important water front.

On the first count the evidence is impressively negative. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover has testified to the fact that throughout the entire period of World War II, not a single case of sabotage by a Hawaiian was reported. Furthermore, the two Hawaiian units composed of Americans of Japanese ancestry, fighting in Europe, formed what General Mark Clark described as “the most decorated unit in the entire military history of the United States.” Hawaiians served impressively with their fellow Americans again in the Korean War.

On the second count the evidence is also negative. The ILWU has been expelled from the AFL-CIO as Communist dominated, and Bridges’ far-Left views are well known. But despite rumors during the Korean War that Communists in the union would disrupt or sabotage supply lines to the Far East, “nothing of the sort occurred,” as a report of the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee stated in 1954. Further, the union leadership’s opposition in 1950 to the proposed state constitution plebiscite, which contained a strong anti-Communist provision, was unable to prevent approval by an overwhelming majority. As the same Senate report expressed it, “it is apparent that the ILWU leadership lacks the power to play into the hands of the enemies of America.”

Anti-statehood leaders have argued that the prosecution of Communist leaders in Hawaii revealed a dangerous underground. It seems fair, however, to accept the word of Attorney General Brownell when he said that the prosecution of Hawaiians in 1954 was “no more of an indication of tHe strength of the party in that area than the convictions of the Communist leaders in New York, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Los Angeles are indications of party control and domination in those areas.” In March, 1957, the present attorney general said that there had been no significant change in the number of Communists in Hawaii in the past three years.

The faraway islands

The race and Communist issues aside, perhaps the most effective single reason for hesitation is distance. After all, Hawaii is “way out there in the middle of the Pacific.” In fact, the islands, created by volcanic thrusts from the ocean floor, are eight in number (with some smaller ones scattered among them), with the city of Honolulu on Oahu Island, about two thousand miles southwest of San Francisco. The islands stretch some fifteen hundred miles northwest to Midway which, however, along with a number of related islands such as Palmyra and Johnston, probably will be outside the state and under direct Washington control for military reasons.

But distance is far less meaningful today than when Captain Cook or the missionaries arrived. Pearl Harbor day in 1941 forever made the islands part of America in an emotional sense. And the coming jet age will bring the senators and representatives from Honolulu to Washington in about nine hours. Honolulu, in fact, is closer to San Francisco than San Francisco is to Washington.

The race issue, dominant thus far in the opposition to Hawaiian statehood, though few say so out loud in Washington, may well serve to force statehood through Congress before the next election. For majorities in both parties will be anxious to show up well on roll calls involving racial rights. This will become apparent as soon as the 86th Congress meets. For unless all signs fail, there will be a major battle in the Senate to find a way to kill the unlimited debate which the Southern Democrats depend upon to block civil rights legislation.

A look at the record of voting on Hawaiian statehood shows that there is little doubt it can pass, if there is a chance for a vote. The House has three times voted for statehood; in 1947 by 196 to 133; in 1950, 262 to 110; and in 1953 by 274 to 138. The first time the bill died in the Senate committee. The second time the committee favorably reported it, but it never got to the Senate floor. The third time it was killed by a 57 to 28 vote, when it was tied to Alaskan statehood. In 1955, the House voted 218 to 170 to send back to committee a combined Hawaiian-Alaskan statehood bill. That maneuver is no longer possible, of course, with Alaska already admitted.

In 1954, voting on the House measure passed in 1953, the Senate roundly defeated two other delaying moves to grant commonwealth status and to refer to the people of Hawaii the commonwealth question. In 1958, incidentally, a newly organized Hawaiian Commonwealth Party, calling for a status similar to that of Puerto Rico instead of statehood, made such a dismal showing as to all but bury that idea.

Early in 1959, according to current strategy, Hawaiian statehood backers will try first for House action. If the measure emerges from the Interior Committee, it must somehow get past the Rules Committee, where Southern power is great. Yet there is little doubt, especially with Alaska’s star being sewed into the flag, that statehood will win House approval. The real battleground will be the Senate.