 Okay, four o'clock, I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Life After Statehood with our informed citizen, Ray Tsuchiyama. Thank you for coming down again, Ray. Thank you very much. Since this topic is so important, I'm excited to decide what the topic is. Well, go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm taking your time. So casting about for something really interesting, because Ray and I get so excited and interested, especially Ray, about some of these topics in life and analysis of life after statehood and before, at this time we struck on religion as a phenomenon in Hawaii, historically, socially, reaching every corner of the development of our state and still today. And Ray immediately wrote, how many was it? A thousand words. He sent me a little email with a thousand words about his reaction to the subject. So at that point I realized this was a really, really good subject. So Ray, let me ask you, in the old day, in the day that we spoke about in our last meeting, in the day, the elegant time of King Kalakaua, what was the religion here in Hawaii? It was heavily Protestant, Protestant because of missionaries who came here in the 1820s and founded a series of churches. They began to really interact with Hawaiian language, codifying, creating an alphabet, translating the Bible into Ollala Hawaii right there. Some of the words like Christo, K-R, still survive. They're like violating a Hawaiian grammar because of Christian words that they're around. So they were a huge cultural, religious, and educational catalyst to Hawaiian society throughout the 19th century. And he was Protestant. King Kalakaua? Of course, of course. So here you had within a 50-year period in the development of the sovereignty of the kingdom, you had people turning from the Hawaiian, native Hawaiian religion, I'd like you to tell me about that, to Protestantism. So my question is, what happened? And why? Well, you've got to go back to just around the time before the missionaries came, Queen Haramanu really was a leader in the destruction of the older religions, Kapu, all kinds of regulations that codified how the lower classes in Hawaiian society, women, and what they could eat and not eat, all kinds of things. And she really was a leader in kind of overthrowing the old gods and adopting Christianity. How instrumental were the missionaries in that move? They were of tremendous impact to Hawaiian society. And of course, this led to the adoption of Western dress, speaking English, and of course adopting all kinds of things, using nails, houses, all kinds of things came in. And of course, new foods began to be planted in Hawaii, and of course, the transformation of the economy, sandalwood, sugar, and so forth. You know, people talk about the 19th century, you know, the old days, a couple hundred years ago and all that, as slow moving. But here in Hawaii, that wasn't true. There was something happening every minute. There was so many transformations going on. I don't think we realize today that relative to the rest of the world in that time, there was a lot of action here, a lot of international action, a lot of social action, a lot of changing. That's correct. And when King Kalakaua was elected as king, he departed for a worldwide tour. He visited the emperor of Japan. He went to Thailand. He went to India, the Middle East, to Europe. He met Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, other Christians. He had a wealth of knowledge, insights to the world. In fact, the first attorney general of the Kingdom of Hawaii was Paul Newman. He was Jewish from Russia, but he was a loyal subject of the kingdom, as many, many people who came from Europe and the United States. So it was an inclusive society and accepted other religions than Christianity. And of course, by the time King Kalakaua and Queen Kalani were in power, there were thousands of Chinese who were here already, bringing Taoism and Buddhism. Japanese began to come in also, bringing Buddhism and Shintoism. So again, there were other religions in the streets. Yeah, let's talk about that. So a bunch of guys realized that sugar beets out of the south is not enough. They can make a lot of money doing cane here, so they change everything around 1850 and thereafter. And now we need immigrants. We need labor. So we invite labor. We make all kinds of arrangements to get labor out of Asia and to a limited degree Portugal or the Canary Islands as a case. So they bring their own culture. They bring their own race, if you call it that, and they bring their own religion. This changes everything. How did this change what we would otherwise find because all these immigrants are coming and they're bringing their own religion with them? Well, by the 1880s and 90s, there were Buddhist priests, missionaries that accompanied a plantation with the immigrants. Well, yeah, they were coming in. Don't just take your priests with you, yeah. Well, the Japanese government wanted to, of course, promote Japanese religion and culture abroad. And also, the priests, like any other priests, acted also as what we would see as psychological counselors. I mean, in families, there were fights, you know, and there were drunken brawls by men. They had to control them. Life was tough. Yeah, and priests would come and counsel people. So at the same time, counseling we see today of crystal meth or of abuse within families, they were treating and trying to deal with those issues. How did the Chinese? They were mostly men, as you know, in the early part, and they intermarried a lot with Hawaiian women and created a whole new niche within Hawaiian society. What was their religion? Well, they brought Buddhism, Taoism, to religions there. Many have converted to Christianity, and so the acceleration of conversions we will see very early on by people from Asia. You know, it strikes me that these religions that were imported with the immigrants and all that, they were bound to decline over time. In other words, you didn't find a Hawaiian citizen that would convert to Taoism or convert to Buddhism. They wouldn't do that. It was only for the people who brought them, and those people were assimilating elsewhere. The result was those religions had a decline, right? When did that happen? No, you're correct. When Buddhists mentioned our escape, there weren't really active proselytization agents. Right. Number one. Not part of the deal. Yeah, there were not. When people brought their own form of Christianity, Christianity came to the Philippines the 16th century under Magellan, when you think about it. So they were already 200 years before Captain Cook, already dealing with Christianity. But you're correct that many, many people, especially children of immigrants, began to be converted and go to Christian schools. They saw Christianity as a way of becoming 100 percent Americans. So this is an interesting part of the whole plantation process and the assimilation process. And they wanted to become American. And the easy way to do that, I mean, one is I suppose you could change your political party, and some of them did. But the other is that you change your religion, and now you could look more like the person you wanted to assimilate to and improve your prospects, both individually, per family, for the community. And over a period of time, all those Japanese Buddhists shouldn't say, oh, but a great percentage, a huge percentage of them became Christian. When would that happen? Well, especially during the 20s and 30s. And a good example is a son of Ninoe. His mother from Maui was unfortunately orphaned, but she was adopted into a Methodist minister's family, became a very raging Methodist. And of course, that Ninoe was raised in a Methodist world. And of course, when he became a teenager, he started going to the YMCA, which was a bastion of very liberal, secular ideas, democracy, sports. And you could read Life Magazine and look and discuss time. And it was, I mean, the difference between the mother and the son was like worlds apart when you think about it. And you can see already by the 30s and Pearl Harbor, if you knew all about proms and Christmas and, you know, and all about sports, you could do very well in the U.S. Army. I mean, you were at the same level or even better than people coming out of Arkansas or Montana. So it was a very huge change that occurred at that time. So what about that generational shift now? You know, you have the parents and they're clearly Buddhist and the kids are, they go to the YMCA and there's not much religion there. It's kind of ersatz religion because it isn't really happening. And they're trying to assimilate and they're turning Christian. How do the parents feel about that? Did that stress the family? How do you deal in a family in those generations with one generation, one religion, next generation, predictably another religion? Well, it depends on the family. But in my own family, I have my parents who were buried in Buddhist rites. I have an uncle who was also Buddhist. I have another uncle who was buried under a Christian, very Protestant rites. I have cousins who are evangelical Baptists and beyond. I am a Buddhist also, but my wife is a Biscopalian. And I also go to Shinto Shrine during New Year. So it depends on the family. But I think even within families, you just don't talk about those things. You go with the flow of where your friends are going to, I think. This is so interesting. And neighborhoods. Because whenever as a child, I attended Kali Union Church, a very Protestant, but if you see what Kali Union is today and 30, 40 years ago, it used to be very Japanese. And now it's very Filipino, I would think, or immigrants. So you can see the whole historical change within society by looking at the demographics of a church. But nobody criticized the other guy for wearing a different religion. It was OK. It was part of the assimilation process. Am I right? I would say yes. I would say that if you go to Punchbowl, I had friends from the mainland, and they were well aware of our international cemetery on the mainland. When they went to Punchbowl and looked at a chapel, there's a small prayer chapel in the larger area of Punchbowl. They saw three symbols, the Christian Cross, Star of David, and a Buddhist mandala. And that is when you think about it, to see that in Arlington National Cemetery, that is quite a leap. That is quite a leap. But in many, many of the grave sites, including my parents, there's a Buddhist mandala. There could be a Star of David. Or nothing at all. So nobody really cares what you have. But you respect others. Let's take a moment about the schools. We have a lot of religious schools here. I suppose there are religious schools elsewhere too, so we're not unique. But the schools, Shamanad and St. Louis, for example, come to mind, and the schools attached to the churches otherwise attached, those had a big effect on assimilating people, drawing them into the mainstream, the American mainstream, if you will. What role, and why did that happen? And why was it so interesting for both the schools and the people who came to the schools? Well, if you go back in time, Pudongho started out as Oahu College, and there was a missionary school. So the royal family received a very missionary New England education. St. Andrews prior, we were started by Queen Emma, of course, to give an Anglican education of the 1850s. So those top schools had a religious component. But if you mention Pudongho, you don't think of a Christian education, but it's very secular today. In those days, am I right to say this? In those days, schools and religion were wedded. That's correct, yes. Education was all really a part of the church, of many churches. And in fact, secular schools, as we know them today, were not nearly as popular. That's very true. And you could see that even Harvard started as a divinity school in the late 17th century. And Columbia was a King's College, and so forth. You're exactly right. But at that same time in the mid-19th century, there would be schools like Bates and so forth that would be much more liberal outside of, or Quaker related, that would be separating education. And MIT started up after the Civil War. Remember, it's purely focused on technology again. So at that time, religion was branching out, but it did have a start in Hawaii based on religion. Well, it had a big effect in Hawaii, I think, and it still does today, although it's vestigial in many ways. The religious aspect is vestigial. But let's talk about 1941. Let's talk about the way it was, how things were growing in the Japanese and Chinese community, for that matter. But I suppose mostly the Japanese, because that was the involvement. And all of a sudden, we have Pearl Harbor, and we have reaction by the United States government. And we have a Japanese community that is vulnerable to that attack on their culture, on their religion, their race. What happened? Well, the day after Pearl Harbor, almost all the Buddhist priests, Shinto priests, journalists, others connected to Japanese culture, or teachers, language teachers, were all taken away. And they were interned first at Hono Uli, and then to the mainland. Because they were thought leaders. Right, exactly. They were community leaders. The government was concerned about that. Exactly. They were community leaders. They were leading the Nisei, or the Japanese market population, to support the Japanese imperialist clause. And all these temples and shrines were closed for the duration of the war. I mean, if you were Buddhist or Shinto, practically, you had to perform at home. It was like a secret religion. It was against the law. Oh, yeah. I mean, remember, even in the plantation where my grandmother was in Kahului, you couldn't speak Japanese. So you spoke Japanese only in your home. You couldn't even listen to Japanese broadcasts. They were all banned, of course. But during that time, and after the war, it was slow to come back. The temples was reopened. Shinto shrines, there was one Isimotai Shrine that took until 1961 to return to the religious order. It was held by the city council. That's a long time. What, is there a reason for holding it that long? Well, again, there were Shinto shrines, and particularly were seen as agents of the Japanese government. Even in 1961. Yeah, yeah, for a long time. And so there was a Shinto priest on Maui who couldn't have a job. He was a bartender at the Waaluku Grand Hotel for a while. And of course, the only one shrine on Kawaii was shut down, never reopened. So the Buddhist temples, though, did reopen and began to deal a lot with funerals. And then they reopened their schools. The Shinto shrines never had real schools attached to their shrines, okay? So there are Buddhist K-12, or K-8, or K-6 academies, the Honpa Honganji and others, and that's where they got parents to come back. And of course, there was a relationship to funerals. You had to put your ashes of your parents or grandparents, and they would take care of your ashes. Like, my grandparents' ashes are at the Waaluku Honganji on Maui, when they were four ages. So that, and then so they began to come back on the mainstream in the 60s and 70s. And so they were no longer seen as enemy religion. Yeah, but in the meantime, the Japanese community probably lost a lot of people from the Shinto shrine. To Christianity, because they had nowhere to go. That's right, that's right. Let's say we have a way to go. We can take a break. That's the freedom here of Tinktac. You should take a break here, you know, around halfway through. That's Ray Tsuchiyama, an informed citizen. We're talking today about religion in Hawaii. Life after statehood, this is so interesting, we'll be right back, you'll see. Okay, so I'm Crystal. If you haven't tuned into QWOP Talk before, you better do it because you're missing out on all the information. We talk about sex, we talk about religion, we talk about everything, and nothing. So we've got two gentlemen here gonna validate that, right? Greg Kinkley and Roy Chu. What's your take on the importance of talking about these issues? It's very important. It's due, I think, expressing ideas and exchanging ideas that we come to a better understanding of the world and each other. And without that, we live in ignorance and fear. Yeah. Fear is based on ignorance. Amen, Greg. Amen. What more could I say than that? Something in Yiddish. I think, sure, it was not a Yiddish. Oh, very! Come, listen to QWOP Talk Tuesday mornings. Hi, I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, the host of Working Together on Tinktac Hawaii. Join us every other Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 4 30, when we discuss the impact of change on employees, employers, and the economy. Okay, we're back, we're live with Ray Tsuchiamin, a former citizen here on Life After State, and talking about religion in Hawaii. It's such an important topic. And a topic that streams right through all of our society here. So while all this is happening in the late 19th century, the 20th century, religion in the world is changing. It's relationship to politics, that's changing. But it's relationship to social development. Well, the move of history, it's changing. And the establishment clause, at least in the U.S. Constitution, is having a significant effect. Okay, but somewhere along the line, Hawaii gets kind of synced up to that. And we follow the same trends. Maybe around the time of statehood or after statehood. Now all of a sudden, there are evangelical organizations that use technology to reach a lot of people. There are born-again Christians everywhere. Those things happened in Hawaii too, didn't they? And they had an effect here, didn't they? That's right. Even a traditional church, going back to Vatican II, I mean, the 60s were great changes and switched from Latin to vernacular languages. There were all kinds of issues dealing with, trying to become modern over the traditional. And of course, the spread of new religions. It's also interesting to point out, it's not only Christian evangelical churches like New Hope and others that really appeal to younger people, that they have a lot of new forms of music in their rituals and presentations. I can think of Seicho no Yen, and also Tendikyo, two post-war Japanese religions that came to Hawaii also. Brand new. And one of them sponsors the Latin Festival on Memorial Day off of Waikiki. Huge deal. Oh, big deal. Very popular. Very big. People really believe in that. So these are new religions coming through Hawaii. And also there's been trying to deal with churches as more involved in politics, as you know, during the Vietnam War. We just talked about the Church of the Crossroads, being a sanctuary, and various Quaker Unitarian churches taking a lean in anti-war kind of demonstrate. So you can, and of course, civil rights of that time. So, and also Kauai Hau Church and others really have been affected and buffeted by changes in awareness in native Hawaiian rights also. They're also trying to deal with what is the role of Christianity in the church in the native Hawaiian host culture. Yeah, so again, the platform for political action. And then I can't help but thinking of George Bush and his, that is, W, in his first inaugural time he was sworn in, he made a statement, he says, I'm gonna support faith-based organizations. And he did, he changed the function of the Attorney General around and he supported, and of course the establishment clause was under attack through the entire time he was in office, and still is, by the way. And so, you know, you have this blending of political and religion, and I suggest that it happened in Hawaii too. All of a sudden the establishment clause was not as much a barrier between the two and churches were taking active positions on political issues now. Well, that's a trend, but again, I would argue that we live in a society where one of the US senators is Jewish. There's a congresswoman who's a Hindu. Two Japanese-American women, they're both Buddhists. I mean, Kali Hanabusa is very active in the Hong-Ganjin, dances very well in the Bouddha, which is, again, a good political base to draw from. And of course Linda Lingo, she was a two-term governor, also Jewish, where the Jewish population of Hawaii is very tiny, it's like a sliver. But those religious aspects of their backgrounds were never a factor in whether you voted for or against. I don't think so. There was other parts of their background that you voted for or against, and so... She didn't vote on the basis of religion. No, no. Most people didn't vote on the basis of religion. Very, very, very few, and although Hawaii is predominant in the Christian state, with very strong Catholic base also because there's a strong Filipino community too. But there are... And the Portuguese. The Portuguese are very strong Catholic. And Irish, and John A. Burns was a devout Catholic. And as I mentioned before in the interview, he signed off on a very progressive abortion bill of the early 70s. Well, I think that's iconic. Let's talk about that for a minute. Here's a vowed Catholic, who's a good man and a good Catholic. And, you know, part of a robust Catholic community here. And here's a bill that is anti-Catholic or a Catholic, you know, cannot tolerate that. And yet he signs off. Why? Well, at that time he looked at Hawaii society and it was a society that really backed the bill. He didn't want to use religion as a factor in being pro or con. He was looking at the secular base of the population and kind of really gauging where it was going. And he chose a stance that was very progressive. And yet he stuck his neck out and said, this is something that is of the time, that we're living in a different time. It is a different time in the history of Hawaii. And we have to go forward. And Hawaii has never looked back since then. Yeah. And it made a statement. I mean, for example, today, you know the church would oppose death with dignity. It does oppose. It has opposed death with dignity for 20 years. But you don't see it in so many words. It may be, you know, at a quiet level, that opposition. And so, I mean, although the churches may take positions on political issues, I don't think the system allows for them to take vociferous, high profile positions on those issues. Maybe this was a slightly different in the gay marriage issue. But at least for death with dignity, they haven't been all that obvious about it. And I guess what this means is that Hawaii downplays religious positions. That it's okay. That everybody can have his own. And no one religion is trying to control the whole field. That we're tolerant and they are. I think Hawaii could be a model for the world. Yeah. And we have to kind of look at ourselves. And we really don't think about it because so many other communities are wracked by religious divisions and how you vote on a religious or caste or base in other countries. And this is a very unusual society when you think about it. Very unusual. And this is just one example of that unusualness, you know. This is part of a whole group of unusual things that make Hawaii special, you know, the diversity. But let me ask you, where are we going with all this, Ray? What's gonna happen in the future? The children who stay here, hopefully a lot will stay here. The institutions they get built in. The churches as they exist and as they will evolve as time goes on, what will happen? Are we gonna be more interested or less interested? Are they gonna be more active, you know, in helping us on helping the community on social issues, on the homeless, on raising money to help those less advantaged? Where are they going? And are they as important today as before? Will they be more important tomorrow? Well, for some Catholic and Christian organizations, we mentioned one IHS, the Institute of Human Services, that was started by a Catholic priest in the 70s, Claude Dutille. And that was a revolutionary moment, I thought, that took homelessness as a really a cause. And that showed great leadership. And he didn't really hear, you know, wonderful Aloha shirt-looking collar, with a collar, and he was out of the community a lot. So I hope to see more of that in the future. And the activist priests, as they say, they have them in Africa and South America, really dealing with medical issues, homeless issues, family issues, children issues, education issues, health issues. These are still issues in Wai'anae and Karuk, you know, Nanakuli, Kalihi, there's a lot of issues out there, at the neighborhoods of drug and crystal meth. And of course, our huge prison population that we export prisoners to the mainland. These are all issues that has to do with counseling and getting people to the right to do the right thing and getting people, you know, kind of moving to the right direction. Yeah, and it comes and goes, it's sign curves, you know, and if you look down the trail of history, sometimes they're more effective and sometimes it's less. But let me offer you this one thought in closing, was that you have these problems, social problems around us, they're difficult problems. The government has one possibility for solving those problems. And the faith-based organizations are another, you know, group of organizations that could solve these problems. And we take a look at one side, we take a look at the other side, we make a decision, maybe without even thinking about it, that one side may be more competent in solving those problems than the other. And if you look at it that way, I would say in the last few years, see if you agree, that the faith-based organizations, the churches, such as they are, they're different certainly on a religious level than they were, but they are more competent in solving these social problems in the government, which appears to be less competent. What do you think? There were more neighborhood-based, the faith-based organizations. I think that's one key advantage that they have. The other one is that they can take a longer term, look at the problems, and they can put in people who are volunteers or paid staff that are there for a longer period. In politics and government, you're there for short periods, and you try to solve it. Two years cycle. You try to solve something in two or three years. It doesn't work. These are sometimes, when we say intractable problems, maybe problems of 23 years, but it could be solved. The other thing that faith-based organizations do better on is disaster preparation and also in relief. That they can come in very quickly and really help out with neighborhoods and so forth. So I think you're correct, but the thing faith-based organizations need is money. They need a lot more resources because they can't do larger things. They're very tiny at this point, dealing with neighborhood issues. What if they could do statewide issues? That's a very interesting proposition. We have to recognize that confidence, you know? And I think the last point for you to consider, I think that going forward, government has to support them, and we have to support them because they are a significant feature in dealing with some of the social problems we have and will have. And so there's a need for them, maybe as never before, there's a need for them in our social structure. Yeah. We never really, yeah, saw, I think we never took the time to really strategize. That's what I think you're trying to say. How they can play an important role in the future of our state, that's it. Thank you, Ray. Great to talk with you, always. Okay, thank you. Before I said this, I'm Ray Tsuchiyama here on Life After State. I'm talking about religion in Hawaii. Thanks so much.