p229  Chapter XV

Our Friends the Japanese

I have already told of my first visit to Hawaii, when those beautiful gems of the Pacific were ruled over by a dusky Hawaiian Queen, and when the proud Hawaiian race constituted the most important subjects of that small monarchy.

In the course of my years of sea duty, I returned to Hawaii a number of times, after having sailed away in the cruiser San Francisco in 1892, just a few months before Queen Liliuokalani was deposed by a bloodless revolution, composed principally of white Americans. I returned the first time in 1897, at which time the Islands were a Republic under President Dole; then in 1899, after the United States had annexed the Islands and established a territorial government. Then again in 1903, 1905, 1908, and in 1927. All these visits were short, some only for a few days duration.

Now I had arrived back in the Islands for an indefinite stay; two or possibly three years. During my former visits I gave little thought to the complexity of the races in the Islands, except to regret that the delightful Hawaiian coloring of the picture had been gradually disappearing, leaving in its place a distinctive tinge of the Orient.

The naval command to which I had come was called the 14th Naval District and consisted of the naval base at Pearl Harbor and all naval activities permanently based on the Islands for their protection. After getting my bearings and flying in Navy planes to  p230 all the islands of the group to look over the situation on each, I began gradually to see the evident dangers confronting us in the event of war, especially if our antagonists were of an oriental race.

The Islands, as everyone should know, are overrun with a mixed population of 363,000, a great part being orientals, coming from the coolie class, practically the lowest caste in the Orient. But all now have an equal vote in the government of our Island outposts. There are scarcely 22,000 of the lithe, athletic people of pure Hawaiian blood left. The picturesque simple Hawaiian civilization, which everyone loved and made much over, I found had wellnigh passed away, never to return. The Caucasian race in the Islands in 1930 numbered 26,000, excluding the 20,000 soldiers and sailors of the Army garrison and the Navy.

Economically the Islands are important because of the raising of sugar and pineapples, both of which find a market on our mainland; and the income from these exports brings in higher taxes to our government than those of fourteen of our poorest states.

I discovered soon after my arrival that the population angle was one of the greatest concern to the Army and Navy in the Islands, and that this subject had caused a clash of viewpoints between those two national services on the one hand, and those administering the Islands under a territorial form of government on the other. These viewpoints seemed as opposite as the poles and in my opinion never could be reconciled.

The Navy has been more articulate than the Army because probably it feels itself more intimately concerned. The Navy looks upon Hawaii as its own discovery, and as a vital part of our sea power in the Pacific. The Navy knows that Hawaii, if made invulnerable from attack, will give full security to our nation in the eastern Pacific, and if captured by an enemy could be held as a sword at the throat of our Pacific coast.

In addition to the dangers of having such a polyglot population in the Islands, the Navy people were loath to forgive the substantial citizens for their neglect in permitting many conditions to exist that have caused our naval base at Pearl Harbor to suffer severely from the lack of available land for the scientific expansion of that important naval possession. Due to sugar cultivation primarily, land values contiguous to the naval base had risen in value to such an extent that extra land had not been bought by the national government to protect and make secure the millions of dollars of  p231 valuable property and naval material and fixtures needed for the Fleet's use. This, in my eyes, was a serious consideration and I often gave my opinion of it in talks before important gatherings, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Hawaiian branch of the American Legion. I felt strongly that the Territorial Government should take steps to see that this fault was corrected and that the naval base at Pearl Harbor be given patriotic consideration and support. I told these people that the policy of the well-to‑do island residents was most shortsighted, for the security of Hawaii was to their interests as well as to the interest of the national government.

One most serious aspect of this shortage of available naval land was the necessity of having the fuel oil tanks for the Fleet so near the industrial sections of the base that a conflagration would certainly do great damage to other property. These oil tanks should have been located far away from the base and guarded from bombing. I selected an extinct crater for the construction of under­ground storage, but met the most outlandish prices for the land because of its availability for the raising of sugar.

I maintained that the Pearl lochs should be absolutely in the possession and under the control of the Navy so that undesirables could be eliminated from the neighborhood. But, being residential property, this land bordering on the lochs was held at very high prices, and that has always discouraged the Government from buying it for naval use. I felt the entire water front of the lochs should belong to the United States Government.

Again going back to the population angle, which, although most unfortunate, cannot be changed except by wholesale deportation, naturally what concerned me most was the large proportion of people with Japanese blood. The human background tells the story of why the United States cannot afford to treat these Islands in the same manner as it does territory on the mainland. Here is the population picture:

Great Britain at Singapore is faced with a similar problem, but the curse is taken off because there the large majority are not Japanese but the docile Malay and Chinaman. Britain maintains there a military government, because it knows from long experience that under such a government military and naval interests will receive, as they should, paramount attention.

Our government in Hawaii, as everyone knows, is of territorial form. The Governor is appointed by the President of the United States. His power is curtailed by an elected Hawaiian Senate and Lower House. I found that the authorities of Hawaii were more interested in ways and means to bring in more revenue than in defense measures. Money was spent on sightseeing roads around the Island that, in my opinion, should first have been spent on roads needed by the military for the movement of troops. When I arrived, the only road to the naval bases was in deplorable condition. It was narrow and lined with old trees that were liable to blow down in any wind, and frequently did. I insisted that this road should be a boulevard. It was a stretch from Honolulu of •less than seven miles. I finally succeeded in having the road put in shape, but only after agreeing to furnish all the material and trucks from the base to cart the material.

From personal observation and from talking with many officers of both services, I learned of the inadequacy of the defenses against outside attack and the stupid exposure of many defense functions to attack from within our lines. This was particularly true at the time of our radio systems. The extensive cultivation of the rich volcanic soil had so increased land values that the planting of food products had become uneconomical and would entail a loss of revenue to the landowners, who owned the great estates, inherited from the Hawaiian chiefs through marriage by the early settlers to their daughters.

In time of war, if the Islands were under siege, the people would have to live on sugar and pineapples, or else starve. When I dwelt upon the importance of the Islands to our country, I could  p233 not feel very enthusiastic toward those who were profiting by the sad mistakes of their forefathers who had brought into the Islands this polyglot population. In our Pacific stronghold we had a right to expect the cities of Hawaii, especially Honolulu, to be western in outlook, yet all, I saw, were strongly tinged with orientalism.

I could not help thinking how dangerous, out there, was our constitutional law which gives the right to become citizens to all who by accident of birth in the Islands can call themselves Americans. The law is silent upon any test to prove the loyalty of those eligible. The right was granted purely on faith to thousands of orientals, and their loyalty must be taken for granted until proved otherwise. A dangerous situation in such a locality.

When Seth W. Richardson, Assistant Attorney General of the United States, came from Washington to investigate conditions in Hawaii, growing out of the unfortunate Massie case,​a he asked me to express my opinion of the situation. I wrote a confidential letter to him telling my personal views. At the same time I told him that if the authorities in Washington wished to release it for publication I had no objection. After all, it was my opinion and I was not ashamed of it. The letter was printed in the Congressional Record and then in all the newspapers of the mainland and Hawaii.

After dwelling upon the military importance of the Islands as an important naval rendezvous and base for our Fleet, the letter went on to say:

It was a strong letter and well timed. It stirred up much discussion on all sides. Naturally, my point of view did not please the enthusiastic priests of the melting pot cult nor our citizens of Japanese ancestry. The Chinese and other orientals were silent. They realized they were not really the targets aimed at in my letter.

My principal critics, outside the Japanese Hawaiian press, were two prominent Japanese Americans. One was a member of the Hawaiian Legislature, who amused me by saying for publication, after reading my letter to Richardson, that I gave him a pain in the neck. His name was Andy Yamashiro. The Honolulu Times commented on Andy's remarks about me and reminded Mr. Yamashiro that if he were in his beloved Japan and had unguardedly spoken similarly of a Japanese admiral, it would probably have cost him his head.

The other critic was Wilfred C. Tsukiyama, a deputy city and county attorney and president of the Hawaiian Japanese Civic Association. The latter said:

Mr. Tsukiyama may be entirely loyal at heart himself and may think himself quite honest in what he says about the loyalty of others of his race, but the military services cannot afford to take anything for granted. They require to have facts on which to base their plans for an emergency.

After all this boasting by Mr. Tsukiyama, it developed that both he and Andy Yamashiro had been holding dual citizen­ship. They were citizens of the United States and also subjects of his august majesty the Mikado, both at the same time; and no one had suspected it. The Japanese Consul General in Honolulu disclosed this information when he called them before him, I was told, and compelled them to renounce their Japanese citizen­ship. The Consul General was severely criticized for this by the Japanese Hawaiian newspapers. It was my turn to laugh. I met Mr. Yamashiro later on the floor of the Lower House where, with the commanding general, I was being honored. When I was introduced to him, I said with a smile and a twinkle of the eye:

"Oh, so this is 'pain in the neck' Yamashiro."

 p236  He turned a deep red under his yellow pigment but took my remark in perfect good humor.

After several days, or maybe weeks, of discussion in the press, the Japanese papers giving the subject the greatest prominence, I was invited by the conference of "New Americans" to speak at a luncheon on the subject of the loyalty of citizens of Japanese ancestry. It was a large gathering. Governor Judd and General Wells, the Commanding General of the Hawaiian Department, also spoke. My talk, naturally, was of great interest because of my publicized attitude. I prepared my speech most carefully and shall give it just as it was delivered before several hundred Japanese. It created general comment in Honolulu, where it was published in full in all newspapers and freely discussed editorially by all. Ex‑Governor Farrington's newspaper seemed to think it was a backdown on my part, but actually it was written to save the faces of our Japanese citizens, who cannot be blamed for being born Japanese.

Most of the Hawaiian newspapers very frankly expressed their satisfaction that the subject of American-Japanese loyalty had been dragged out into the open. Here is an editorial that I find in my scrapbook from the Honolulu Times:

Of course it was natural that my recommendation for a more restrictive form of government for Hawaii would not obtain the approval of the citizens nor of the press. At the same time, I felt that the effort was not a loss, if it made Hawaii understand that its position was dissimilar to that of political entities on the mainland. The Islands have a national significance that must not be over­looked. The government of Hawaii must recognize that fact and lend their efforts to make the Islands secure from successful attack by an enemy.

While I was Commandant in Hawaii, the Fleet held winter maneuvers there twice in order to test the completeness and readiness of the defense measures already taken. The maneuvers also gave the warships and airplanes experience under conditions simulating war in that geographical area. My naval command, of course, co‑operated with the Army. Then the Commanding General, although my junior in rank, became my senior because of what was known as paramount interest. This is the way paramount interest was interpreted: In the defense plan, the Army, in the absence of the Fleet, was held responsible for the co‑ordination of both the Army and the Navy in the Islands for defense against an enemy attempting to capture them. On the other hand, when the Fleet was present in the Islands, it became the important defense factor, and paramount interest then passed to the Fleet. The Commander in Chief then was supreme and responsible for the defense, relieving the Army commander of that responsibility.

One important lesson learned through these maneuvers, in  p242 which the Fleet represented an enemy force attempting to capture and destroy the defense and the naval base on Oahu, was that the shore defenses did not have sufficient air forces. The attacking aircraft from the two great carriers, Lexington and Saratoga, made several surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor and constructively destroyed it.

These maneuvers seemed to show that an enemy force consisting of aircraft carriers and fast cruisers might surprise the air defenses while the Fleet was absent and do great damage to the base by air attack. In consequence, the air defenses, together with ground facilities, were largely increased, both for the Army and the Navy. More submarines are also to be provided and their base facilities enlarged. It is hoped that the additions will be of the more modern types of submarines, for these vessels are most useful in the defense of the Islands.

There seems slight risk that an enemy might attempt to land troops to capture the Island of Oahu unless our Fleet happened to be in the Atlantic with the Panama Canal blocked or our Fleet decisively defeated by the enemy fleet. To be on the safe side, however, the Army defenses should be considerably enlarged and more modern artillery, especially anti-aircraft batteries, provided.

We must never lose sight of the possibility of sabotage from the inside. There are many thousands of orientals in the Islands who might be loyal to their race and given such a task by their government, even before a declaration of war. I was told by a high American diplomat, who had stopped off en route from the Orient, that it was at one time seriously contemplated to attack our fleet in Hawaiian waters, because it seemed that war between America and Japan was certain. The Japanese at the same time were said to have been considering attacking the British fleet. In other words committing national hara-kiri. The Army and Navy in Hawaii are quite alive to the danger, with so much material exposed and not too effectively guarded. How much reliance can be placed upon the militia of Hawaii, with quantities of Japanese Americans in the organization, is also unknown. The two services realize that in time of war they must be prepared to fight on two fronts: against an enemy fleet, air force, and army, and also against secret attacks from the inside by enemy sympathizers upon vital defense functions.

We dare not lull ourselves into a false sense of security, when we know the intense loyalty of the Japanese to their own culture  p243 and design for living, which ever eggs them on feverishly to become the leading naval factor in the whole of the Pacific. In Hawaii, the Japanese keep almost entirely to themselves and most religiously attend Japanese language schools after the Territorial school day is over.

The oriental color of Hawaii and the gradual suppression of white prestige was brought home to America most forcibly at this time. The Navy and Washington then felt grave concern for the security of our Gibraltar of the eastern Pacific.

Admiral Stirling and Staff at Pearl Harbor

---

Thayer's Note:

a In which Admiral Stirling was significantly involved, and which is the subject of the next chapter.

◂ previous						next ▸
Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
UP TO:		Sea Duty	American Naval History	American & Military History	History of the Americas	Home
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.