 Bingo! We're back, four o'clock rock. We're calling this discussion Threads of Hawaii. The implication is that we're going to talk about threads of history in Hawaii, with Ray Tsuchiyama, who is an informed citizen, and joins us for discussions like this today. And we're going to find the essence and the evolution of this place, really important. Today we're talking about finding a plan, weaving a plan after statehood, I guess. But we will range far and wide, won't we, Ray? We're going to look at the whole enchilada all the time about how this place was started. What is actually happening under the hood? Where do you want to start today, Ray? Well, you mentioned a good question or issue. What is Hawaii? And where is this going? And has it ever really evolved to a state where we would be quite happy that we have reached the state or what we want Hawaii to be? And when you go back in time, of course, Hawaii grew out of a dream under the first king, Kamehameha Great, who unified the islands as one kingdom. And that has propelled us throughout the 19th century. And then we became a republic and a territory. And even when there was a territory in the late 30s, the territory of the Hawaii government was planning a lot, looking at the future. What would Hawaii be? But it was derailed by Pearl Harbor and the years of martial law, and then it started up again in the 40s and 50s. Let me ask you, can you paint a picture for us the day before Pearl Harbor? What was this place like then? Well, it was in population quite smaller. It was like maybe 200,000 people or fewer. And it was, if you broke down the population back then, it was highly Japanese. Even Maui was maybe 40% Japanese in terms of residents. It had people working for one of the big five companies, Castle and Cook or Amphak or Theo H. Davies or Seabroor, one of those big companies. Very few small companies back then. And people lived outside the city. They were in camps. Like my father was living in Pune in a camp in Maui. There were many camps in Haleiva, Waipahu. People were segregated more or less, but they were integrated, working together in the fields. They would come back. And there were a lot of families, Chinese, Japanese, and so forth, that had larger families back then. And five, six children were the norm in those days. A couple of things. And the families were not necessarily in one place. Sometimes they were scattered among the islands. Isn't it true? That's true. And they were, say for Maui, they would have relatives on Lanai and Molotai. Why was that? Was it because the jobs were there and you went where the jobs were? And were there jobs in Honolulu? Or if not, was that why people were not coming to Honolulu? Well, I think Honolulu was just evolving as a city. Of course, it had Pearl Harbor, a very big base. It had Scorpio Barracks. It had Bishop Street, of course. The major banks were there. It was a very beautiful, tropical kind of capital headquarters of all the big five companies. And University of Hawaii, of course, which was growing. And so there was some manufacturing also, Kakaako, what used to be Mapuro. All these areas would have small factories turning out a lot of things and repairing machinery for the plantation and sugar and pineapple. So it was kind of a small city. When you think about it, west of Red Hill was just fields on Oahu. And it was a small concentrated community. And it was served by a small system of what we would call trolleys. There were trolleys going to the Elks Club near Diamond Head. There were trolleys going up Manoa. There were trolleys going up Waila Avenue, which was Kamuki. Kamuki was a fabulous neighborhood in those days. And oddly enough, by coincidence, there was a spur that went to the western part of Honolulu called Four Chapter, which is very near Middle Street. And that concentration of people who worked at Four Chapter and the military. So the military was quite large in those days before the war. There was a Hawaiian division of School Field and Four Chapter, and of course Pearl Harbor. And you could see all the ships lined up at older battleships and so forth. And River Street, of course, had a very substantial Japanese presence. A lot of Japanese hotels, restaurants, bookstores. There was a whole kind of ecosystem of Japanese and Chinese and other life, plus a reliquely small hotel street in Chinatown catering to the military. Yeah, but the people weren't coming off the neighbor islands so quickly. They didn't have the opportunity or the incentive to move to Honolulu. They couldn't necessarily find work. They stayed on the neighbor islands and the plantations with their families. It was like they lived in remote locations rather than in the center of the state. Correct. And you could use a word that may or may not fit, but what we are referring to is feudalism. You're completely right. You were constricted in time and space and travel. There were plantations in Handa, for example, or Kohala, or on Molokai, way out on Kauai. I mean, they were distributed throughout the islands and they had to be near the fields. You're absolutely right. And so you couldn't, there were contracts and you had to fill out your contracts. So you were more or less tied to the plantation. There was no freedom to move and even if you came to Honolulu, you had to find a job and there weren't many in Honolulu at that time. And the power, the political power and the economic power was divided on racial lines. Correct. And of course, until after the war, the Republican Party, of course, held sway. And now the racial lines are very complicated because as you recall, there were many Hawaiians who voted Republican. Prince Kuhio was part of this. And so there were, in voting, who could vote? U.S. citizens voted. Remember there were laws against my grandparents becoming citizens and so forth. So the number of registered voters was quite small and quite controlled. And the jobs at a big five firm, up till maybe as late as the late 60s or early 70s, it was very difficult for non-concretion to even go and apply at a big five firm. You have to remember, 1968, a year before the Apollo Moon landing, was when the Pacific Club opened its doors. That's scary to think about. That was the time of Woodstock occurred a year later. I mean, this is very much a time so close to us, but they were trying to hold on. But remember, again, as we began this conversation, Honolulu was a very small town. Even in the 1960s, there was a book called Men and Women Honolulu. And you knew everybody in that book. The police, the courts, the press, the Star Bowl, everything were very much a part of a whole other ecosystem that we don't recognize. And the great population was out in the plantations. That's the most the people were. Can you describe life on the plantations in those days, say, before the war? Well, you know, I could hark back to my father, my uncles and aunts and grandparents and my grandmother worked at a plantation manager's house. She baked pies and it was really, I didn't know her until she later was much older. So they lived in a plantation house. And there was a plantation hospital. Everything was there. There was a plantation store. But the thing that I wanted to also say is that my father and others of that generation, remember there were many children back then, not the small families that we have now in Honolulu, urban Honolulu, they went to what I feel very good schools. My father graduated from Maui High School in 37. They had Shakespearean plays. His best friend was called Cassius from Julius Caesar. They had proms. They had newspapers. They were learning English at an English standard level. And what I'm pointing this out is that so when you see the 442nd involving as a military unit in the 40s, they already knew how to communicate in English, to read and write, do math and do trigonometry or artillery. So they were the basis of real Americans. And their teachers came from Michigan, from Stanford, from all over the U.S., great colleges, because they saw in Hawaii a grand experiment, as John Dewey said, to create real Americans. And that's what we would say a peace corps today. They were there on Kauai, the island of Hawaii and Maui. It must have been a sweet life then, in a way. I know it's hard to work in a plantation and you're missing a lot of creature comforts you'd like to have and you're under sort of a controlled environment. But still, there was a certain closeness, a certain, the nostalgia isn't only nostalgia. There was real value back then. I think that if you speak to people of that time, they would say they never locked their doors. They also had radios. They could listen to what was happening on the mainland and all kinds of CBS and the radio RKO of that time. They could also listen to Japanese radio coming in. My father and uncle had cars in the late thirties. They were driving around. This is 50 years before China and Vietnam and all India, all these countries that we see as developing nations. They were going all over the place in cars. And my father was a manager of a baseball team from Maui High School and they took the ferry every month or couple of weeks to Honolulu. The steamer. Yeah, they used to come to Honolulu and see the bright lights. But there was a connection because when you look at Wailuku Kahului, that was like an urban little center of life that connected with Honolulu. And there were Japanese radio stations, Japanese newspapers. It was a very culturally very advanced place when you go back in time. And it was unique in these United States. Oh, it was like I said, a grand experiment trying to create a new American because my grandparents spoke no English. And their children, my father's generation, all became very adept in English, even far more than Japanese. So when the war began, of course, that would shatter a lot of people's dreams about living a Japanese life. Yeah, the war would have a profound effect on the environment you described in the day before Pearl Harbor. What effect did it have? First of all, it led to those camps. It must have led to some kind of discrimination on the street, some kind of stress in the society that wasn't there before. I think it was profound stress for everybody in different ways. For example, my grandmother who spoke no English could not speak Japanese outside the house because that would be us if she was a spy. And that gave power to English-speaking children when you think about it. They began to navigate the hospitals. But remember also the neighbor islands was much more controlled, those societies through the courts and police and the plantations then Honlulu. If you lived in a near-Makinoli or neighborhoods and so forth, you were living an urban life rather than a plantation. So one of the stories is that my uncle had beautiful swords and after Pearl Harbor, he wrapped them in newspaper, hurriedly dug a hole and buried them after the war. Of course, they were all rusted through. Oh, too bad. We lost everything. So there were a lot of stories how people would hide evidence that they were ever connected with Japan. And that would, from the 40s and 50s and onward in the 60s, that would also usher in a decline in Japanese language and culture. So the war changes everything. And when the 442nd and the 100th Battalion come back from the war, it's different. And it has a political effect within only a few years because they were war heroes and because it's time, it's their time. It was their time, Dan Inouye and all that. And they became prominent in Hawaii politics. And by the time of statehood in 1959, there was some pretty interesting things happening in politics. And things were like coming together, but maybe not in the way that we would idealize. There were wrinkles in all of that. And when we come back, when we come back from this break, Ray, I want to talk about the planning that existed prior to statehood and how it changed after statehood. That's Ray Tsuchiyama. He's an informed citizen on threads of Hawaii. And we're finding the essence and evolution of this place. And we're weaving, we're talking about weaving plans after statehood. Join us at Think Tech of Hawaii. Our show is Asia in Review. Our next program is on November 17. This is Johnson Choi, your host. Hi, I'm Stacey Hayashi with the Think Tech of Hawaii show, Stacey to the Rescue, highlighting some of Hawaii's issues. You can catch it at Think Tech of Hawaii on Mondays at 11 a.m. Aloha. See you then. Hi, I'm Kili Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute. I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. for Ehana Kako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state, as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government, and society. See you Mondays on Ehana Kako at 2 o'clock p.m. Until then, I'm Kili Akina. Aloha. We're back. We're live. We're talking about the evolution and essence of this place. We're talking about threads, historical threads in Hawaii with Ray Tsuchiyama, an informed citizen, and more. So here we are. We're approaching statehood. Things are getting pretty exciting. Things are changing. People are coming to Honolulu now. And it's so interesting that even at that time in the emancipation, the political emancipation following World War II, the plantations are beginning to decline. Everything is changing. So how does that reflect itself in the level and quality of planning that was going on? When statehood began or was launched in 1959, the people of that time were quite young. Daniel Inoue was barely in his 30s. Patsy Mink, of course, finished high school in the mid-40s. And there was people like Nara Yoshinaga and others, and Talau Beppu, and many neighboring people, especially, because the neighborhoods felt the pain more than Honolulu. They wanted accelerated economic development much more than Honolulu. In fact, some of them still wrangled, especially on Maui, that Maui is the only neighbor island that proposed Lahaina as the capital of Hawaii, as I said, in Hawaii. But think about that. They were even going ahead at that period. Now, you have a good point. How did, if I was there in 1959, what were people thinking about or planning or talking about in the street, of course? And of course, they were talking about new opportunities, especially in Honolulu. They saw that in the sky, what was coming up when they read the newspapers, a plane called the 707. Right the same year, wasn't it? Yes, the 707 could carry hundreds of passengers and could come to Honolulu and discourage hundreds of passengers at that point. Before, it took a week or more to come from LA or San Francisco. And these were very high-heeled people who would stay at the Royal Hawaii for one month. Now you could have people who could stay for one week and then leave for California. And of course, the ilikai on the Chin Ho was the great symbol of a hotel that was totally unlike the Royal Hawaiian or Moana, the slow kind of pre-war 30s kind of Hawaii. This was built for short-term in-and-out kind of tourism. And all the infrastructure for the in-and-out tourism, all the tiki dolls and all kinds of omiyage, we call, things to bring back to your presence, began to evolve in Waikiki. And all kinds of short-term rentals and all that began to change. My first representative of a short-term rental. In the late 40s, of course, there was a boom time of a man who saw the future, Roy Kelly. He began to buy up hotels also to create a new empire called Outrigger. And so they saw tourism coming out. And all the things to support the tourism infrastructure, restaurants and fine dining and all kinds of things began to pop up, the canvases and all kinds of little restaurants began to come up, cheaper places, too. So there was really a change. But also, remember, in 6061 is the start of the Vietnam War, the early 60s. And that began to push through a lot of soldiers. The strategic importance of UH and East-West Center began to happen. So a lot of threats, planning-wise, began to occur at the same time. The impact of strategic importance of Hawaii plus tourism occurred almost simultaneously with the decline of agriculture. Everything was changing. Right. So Governor Burns, of course, was there. But he was surrounded by young people who came out of the war and saw the world. They went to the South. They saw New York. They saw Europe. Came back and said, wow, or Japan with the MIS. And began to say, wow, we can change Hawaii in many ways. And in the early 60s comes a new office for planning and economic development. That was under Professor Shelley Marx, the Department of Economics at UH. And so... This was the first time. That's right. First time. Let me go back for a moment. Statehood. Was statehood an initiative desired by the young Turk political group with Dan Inouye? Or was it desired by the Big Five? I would imagine the Big Five would like status quo at that time, and the young Turks would like to see statehood. But tell me how it worked. You're exactly right. And remember, governors and so forth were appointed back then. Queen was... Governor Quinn was the last appointed governor of that era and so forth. So every time you had a Republican governor, I mean, I'm sorry, president like Eisenhower, he was appointed Republican. And that was good for the Big Five. And so the Republicans ruled the House, the Senate, and also the newspapers. They were all entrenched. It was a very controlled state. So there wasn't a lot of planning going on in that period. Status quo. Let's do status quo. And then only after statehood do we get to John Burns and we get to the initial department of economic development. There was some planning in the late 30s on the territory of Hawaii, but like I said earlier, it was derailed by the war. And really, during the war, it was on the martial law. There was not much planning or anything going on in Hawaii. Now, looking back at that time, you're correct that the status quo would like a controlled society, a plantation, kind of agrarian kind of feudal system sustaining itself. And what was odd about all this was that they did not realize the impact of education, public education. So I'm going back in time and saying the 30s and 40s into the 50s, public education really churned out people who did not want to work at the plantation. They had expectations of a life working in an air-conditioned office. That was the ideal kind of job. And so they looked at all kinds of new areas where they could take this research or information, science-based, I mean, think about all these new jobs and job creation of that time. It's not dissimilar to today. Yeah. And the university became more important. And the university, as we have heard in so many discussions, was a hotbed, if you will. That's correct. In the late 60s. Early throughout the 60s, especially on the Tom Hamilton, President Hamilton for Hamilton Libraries named after, he was in Honolulu at UH for only five or six years, a very short time. But he came in and said something was quite unusual at that time. He said that he wanted to bring UH up to the level of a Berkeley or Michigan, many good public state universities on the mainland. In English, engineering, sciences, comparative literature, and so forth. The basics. He was going off the core curriculum of that period. And so if you went to UH during the 60s, you had a very good education. And there were a lot of faculty, again, coming in from the middle of younger people with the Vietnam War. And of course, it was a top place to study about Asia, Asian languages and culture and history. Including East West Center. That's right. That's right. But what I get is that everything was changing. The state now had the ability to do some planning. But it didn't, I mean, when John Burns was there, it sounded like he was a positive influence and all that, and to a certain extent, George Ariyoshi after him. But it seemed to be so many things changing, it was like running away with itself. It's very hard to plan effectively when your society is running away with itself. And I'm reminded of a lesson that I learned the day I arrived here, which was October 1965, that islands and the society of islands are much different than the society of continents. And these islands were way different. And everything was different in the way people act and react, the way political structures, social structures work. So many things were changing that nobody could get a handle on how to plan for them. Comment? When you talk about planning, in a democracy, in America, in a free market capitalist society, it should figure itself out when you think about it. Automatically. Or Adam Smith, or on the Reagan, a rising tide raises all boats. And when you talk about planning and about plans, I'm reminded of the 10-year, 20-year Soviet or Chinese Communist planning, or India planning, or all that. And then it fell apart. I mean, the government, or even Brazil. And they had all kinds of plans, but you had to compete in the marketplace to win. Brazil did something that people now look back on as a disaster. They tried to develop their high-tech industry by banning imports. So all you had was things developed in Brazil that were second or third rate. And then that completely disrupted the Brazilian high-tech economy. Free market. That's right. But going back to the 60s, yes, they were planning ahead, but you had an economy that was basically running on a paradigm of pre-war Hawaii. And that was going on and providing that. And you had new growth, though, in tourism, dramatic and military, and something else that we see in effect today, which is the growth of the state government. Yes, as an industry. It's very large. If you total up county, state, and federal employment, it's over 20 percent, probably even more. And that's one out of four when you think about a workplace. And if you compare it to Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, no. It's quite half or even a third. And this has had a profound effect on the development of the state that we have government that is so large proportionately. Well, nobody expected that at that time. But also, going back in time, you had to provide for jobs for people with expectations, with a very good education coming out of UH, all through the 50s and 60s, and they didn't want to work in sugar or pineapple. So it was a growth industry, I'm sorry to say, of that period. But it was a natural effect. But there's another thing that happened also that I just wanted to add that we don't really see but invisible to us is the 80s and 90s into the 2000s, about 70 to 80,000 people from Hawaii are now living in Clark County, Nevada. That's about 8 percent of the population, 7 to 8 percent. And that was a safety valve of people who left for Nevada, which has a parallel economy in tourism and hospitality. But if they had remained, I think the Hawaii economy would have had more difficulties and challenges over the last 20 years. Right. This is so interesting. I wish we had more. We will have more time. We'll do this again. I mean, it's sort of wandering through the path of yesteryear, finding the essence and evolution of Hawaii, finding threads in Hawaii with Ray Tsuchiyama, an informed citizen. I really love to have this discussion. Promise me we'll do it again. Okay. We'll do it. Thank you, Ray.