Change in Hawaii Over the last 50 Years
Price of Paradise · Hawaii Public Radio · aired 1994-04-16
Guests: Eric Yamamoto (Professor of Law, University of Hawaii); Tom Coffman (journalist and author)
Duration: 0:26:16

[00:00:05] Randall Roth: Good morning. I'm Randy Roth, host of the Price of Paradise Radio show. My guests this week are Tom Kaufman, a journalist with an interest in history, who wrote "Catch a Wave," a best-selling book about the 1970 governor's race. And Eric Yamamoto, a legal scholar who has written about what it means to be local in Hawaii. Well, Tom, if I were brand new to Hawaii and asked for a quick explanation of those historical events over the last 50 or 60 years that created modern Hawaii, where would you start?
[00:00:36] Tom Coffman: I think I'd start people on that most famous of events, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the beginning of World War II. And the crisis that that threw Hawaii into and the way that people came together in Hawaii relatively to whether that crisis and form the beginnings of a multiracial, multicultural community, which then asserted itself politically and asserted itself um, really throughout the country in the sense that this community led to the formation of a a different type of political equation. It led to statehood and it led us to where we are today.
[00:01:31] Randall Roth: Well, was it, was it the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or was it the way Japanese-Americans were treated following the bombing of Pearl Harbor?
[00:01:40] Tom Coffman: I think that it was the way that Japanese-Americans um, coped with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, coped with the uh, problems that they were subjected to and the way that a few um, exemplary people of other races um, helped form bonds which uh, saw most of the people of Japanese ancestry through the war.
[00:02:21] Randall Roth: Eric, you've uh, you've written and talked a lot about community in, in Hawaii and on our, our multi-ethnic uh, situation here. Do you see the bombing of Pearl Harbor as being at the core of what we have today?
[00:02:35] Eric Yamamoto: I don't know if I see that as part of the core, but I see the World War II experience as being very significant. I think it was significant for working people in Hawaii of all groups, it was after the war, uh Japanese-Americans went to school, went to professional schools, got training, but also other, uh groups that participated in the war effort got further education. The unions became very important in Hawaii, and it was a coalescence of various groups working together, that began to challenge the existing power structure. Uh, really had been a two class society in Hawaii and it changed after that.
[00:03:10] Randall Roth: Are you describing what some people call the machine, the Democratic Party machine?
[00:03:17] Eric Yamamoto: Um, I don't think there was a Democratic Party machine. In fact, at that time, there pretty much was an Republican oligarchy that existed, and it was a very, but the coming together of [unintelligible — audio glitch] people, you know, after the war, the, the forming of the [unintelligible — audio glitch] groups and the unions and that sort of thing.
[00:03:36] Randall Roth: Was that the beginning of what some people would call the Democratic Party machine? And, and formed of course in in reaction to the existing political situation?
[00:03:44] Eric Yamamoto: Yeah, I, I think that's right. That was the genesis of the current Democratic Party and what some people call the machine. I think Tom might have some additional views on that.
[00:03:53] Randall Roth: What do you think, Tom?
[00:03:54] Tom Coffman: No, I share uh what you're saying, Eric. That, you know, the people who came together um, actually even before the war, uh and certainly during the war. And the correspondence that went on between people who were here in Hawaii and people who were on the battlefield, or people who were in military hospitals who had been badly wounded. And the conversations that went on, formed uh, in uh, you know, very uh, uh heroic ways what uh, this newcomer looks at and says a machine, and ascribes all manner of evil to, to uh, to this machine.
[00:04:43] Randall Roth: So machine is a, is a real negative word, and you would talk in terms of of people having bonded together because of the experiences that they went through. That's right.
[00:04:52] Tom Coffman: That's right. I think machine is an inherently negative word in the American political vocabulary.
[00:04:58] Randall Roth: Okay.
[00:04:59] Eric Yamamoto: Yeah, and I think maybe to make this a little concrete, uh I was talking to my father and and some of his friends, actually, many of them now are passing away. And um give you a good example, when they came back from World War II, went to school, went to law schools, professional schools on the mainland, a number of them came back in the early 50s. And it was very clear to them that not one of them had a chance to join any law firm in town. They were all white law firms, all established with big five roots.
[00:05:31] Eric Yamamoto: And so the the plan was to get at least one of them of all these brightest people, heroic people in the war, uh well-educated, to get one interview with one firm.
[00:05:43] Randall Roth: Just an interview. Just an interview.
[00:05:44] Eric Yamamoto: So they pulled all of their strings to get the best and the brightest Masado Doi. And I hope I'm getting all the details exactly right to get one interview with one firm. And so, he did indeed get that interview, a very short, perfunctory interview and when he left, he never heard another word from them, but the victory was simply to get an interview.
[00:06:06] Randall Roth: Tom, was is, was that kind of racial prejudice in in your mind, you know, a major explanation for how things have developed in Hawaii?
[00:06:16] Tom Coffman: Very much so.
[00:06:19] Randall Roth: And today, um, it's very different.
[00:06:23] Tom Coffman: I think it's very substantially different, and I think that the [unintelligible — audio glitch] definition of difference uh, best comes from people really working at understanding the, you know, progression of things that happened, and the significant ways in which I think everybody's lives have been improved. Um, but it's it's a it's a process. It's not a an end product. It's not a uh, a perfect thing.
[00:06:56] Randall Roth: Yeah. Eric, how does this fit into what what you've written about as localism, the idea of being local in Hawaii?
[00:07:06] Eric Yamamoto: I guess it fits in in two ways and maybe I'll talk a little bit about one now and a little more about the other later. I see a couple of things happening. One really, uh is point that Tom made. In many respects, things had been or have been a lot better than they were during the days of the oligarchy. More people have jobs, more people have opportunities um of most groups, and I think the native Hawaiians are one group that really had struggled and really had been sort of kept down, but other groups had moved up, had more opportunities.
[00:07:38] Eric Yamamoto: Uh, people had a chance to own houses, own land um and society opened up. In a sense, there's a real exhilaration in this post uh World War II era that that society is going to open up. Politics were changing and I think that was for the better for the l uh for the most part. There's a lot of other things that came with it somewhat later, feeling of frustration and loss of control uh, which creates a tension here between opening up and exhilaration and then losing control and being frustrated and maybe I can talk a little bit more about that later.
[00:08:12] Randall Roth: Well, well, tell us the this this loss of control. I'm interested in that. What would cause a a sense of loss of control when everything is going so well where where the racism is uh is falling by the wayside and is there there are opportunities and economic prosperity. Why would there be this sense of loss of control?
[00:08:31] Eric Yamamoto: Well, I think part of the opening up was an expansion of the economy. Part of the expansion of the economy was from the use of land for development purposes, and rapid development which accelerated upon statehood changed the social structure of the state and and the people and the people in the state. Most particularly, it changed the structure of neighborhoods. You know, where I, my, my family grew up, uh my mother and my uncles and aunts and my dad grew up in Paloma, small neighborhoods with the stores on the corners and everybody knew everybody and never locked your door.
[00:09:09] Eric Yamamoto: You had problems, people helped you out. You looked out for one another's kids. Uh Nuuanu, Moiliili, Lower Manoa, the areas that I played in. The streams are no longer there. You can't uh go go fishing the same way you used to. You can't go pick guavas and fruit the way we used to. Things have changed in terms of communities and I think people have felt a real loss of that, a real loss of connection to place and to people.
[00:09:36] Randall Roth: Tom, what what caused that change? Is that something that that has happened everywhere in in this country or is that unique to Hawaii? Was there something going on in Hawaii that would cause that?
[00:09:49] Tom Coffman: Well, I think it was the uh rapid rate of population growth if you want to be really dispassionate and objective about it and it most impacted, I mean, Eric's list of places where there was this sense of loss were the old uh relatively urban neighborhoods uh and they were the urban neighborhoods which grew up uh around the core of the turn of the century city of Honolulu when a lot of people came in from the plantations.
[00:10:25] Tom Coffman: So that sense of place uh was in itself temporal. It wasn't the timeless sense of place that you know, we like to romantically think about. I'm not trying to dismiss that as important, Eric, but but I think that that's a historical perspective on it. Um, you know neighborhoods like Moiliili and um um, you know, um Paloma around the Ala Park and places like that um have you know, been in a state of constant change for a century.
[00:11:01] Randall Roth: You're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio show. I'm Randy Roth, and my guests this week are journalist Tom Kaufman, and UH law professor Eric Yamamoto. Well, Eric, to what extent was this loss of control related to ownership of assets here in Hawaii by people who weren't in Hawaii, non-local control? Is that a part of it?
[00:11:22] Eric Yamamoto: That was a part of it in the early uh 1970s. There was a uh so-called yellow scare again about the Japanese coming in and buying up the islands, much akin to the scare that that emerged, oh maybe about six or seven years ago here. So there's a feeling that there was part foreign investment taking control, but also at that time there was a real strong sense that uh the population growth that Tom just spoke about was fueled mainly by um people from the continental United States who were moving over to partake of paradise but bringing with it all the problems and headaches.
[00:12:02] Eric Yamamoto: And so there was a very strong movement in the mid 70s to shut off in-migration, not immigration but in-migration. And in part that was a response to the feeling of a loss of control, a loss of home sense of community. Uh however temporal the actual community was there was a tremendous amount of anger. If I could read something, just something that someone said in the early 70s, which I have written down here. And he said, uh "Pearl City is my home, construction has changed the place, it's made Pearl City one big apartment." "There's a highway fronting my home, highway in the back. I can't sleep well because of the constant rumbling of the trucks."
[00:12:38] Eric Yamamoto: "The water patches too have been paved over. The government shoved their decisions down the farmers' throats and destroyed their land. Kind of screwed. Sometimes I get mad." Now, however historically situated or appropriate that comment is, it really did reflect a feeling of that time.
[00:12:55] Randall Roth: Well, in fact, in in a paper of yours that I read, you reported on a 1977 advertiser poll where people were asked uh what they thought of the quality of their life here in Hawaii, and I was very surprised to see that 40% of the respondents at that time said that the quality of life in Hawaii was bad. Uh, Tom, does that surprise you hearing it now in 1994 or do you recall 1974 as being a time when a lot of people were very concerned about the quality of their life?
[00:13:28] Tom Coffman: No, I, I it doesn't surprise me at all. Um, I think that this, you know, intense change, intense uh acceleration of development, intense acceleration of in-migration which really was triggered by um um, you know, the dynamics of statehood and the dynamics of uh a lot of investment, overseas investment, and including in foreign investment, but it was also domestic investment. And it was also triggered by um the jet, the jet connecting. All those things happened in 1959, 1960 around there and by the late 60s, this acceleration of change and sort of shock of change was really uh causing people to react. And uh that was a lot of what the 1970 election was all about.
[00:14:30] Tom Coffman: And it was a lot of what all of the politics of throughout the 70s was about and it's why you have the poll data.
[00:14:39] Randall Roth: Your your book, "Catch a Wave", uh goes into great detail talking about the 1970 governor's race. And it's it's a fascinating account. Uh, it seems to me anyone living in Hawaii who hasn't read it uh ought to. As I was reading it, from time to time I was struck by some similarities between your description of things in 1970 and what I'm seeing now in 1994. What are your thoughts about that?
[00:15:07] Tom Coffman: Well, I think the reason that the book survives and rattles around is that the basic issues that were defined in that election have continued to be the basic issues that uh have defined much of the politics of Hawaii in these 24 years since then. And uh I think it's just coming back around again because it's it's an another election time.
[00:15:37] Randall Roth: Is that true because nothing has been done, or because these are issues that will never go away? What are the issues that that are still here?
[00:15:48] Tom Coffman: Well, I think the issues are issues of, you know, managing growth and striking a balance between economic development and uh fulfilling people's needs and quality of life needs and economic needs. And uh getting all these different people together from all over the globe and having us all become a community. That's a that's a big one and that's a tough one. And uh, uh some phases it works better than others.
[00:16:25] Randall Roth: As Tom, you're talking about striking a balance, Eric, I'm reminded of some things that I I read that that you had written, and as I was reading them, I was thinking there's a difference between quality of life and standard of living. Could you talk about that just a bit?
[00:16:42] Eric Yamamoto: Standard of living at least to me, uh refers to specific economic indicators, education levels, uh income levels, um whether or not you have a house. I think quality of life is something that we uh look at in terms of our communal interactions, that's how I define quality of life. And that's how I see, and Tom mentioned the term community, actually the larger community, and I think that's what we all are after.
[00:17:09] Eric Yamamoto: And for me, quality of life and the issue of quality of life now focuses on how can we in a society that's becoming increasingly uh more competitive and individualistic structure our neighborhoods, our schools, uh our general relationships in a way that make us feel more connected to one another and to the place, the actual earth, the ground, the ocean, and to culture.
[00:17:38] Eric Yamamoto: And so in many ways for me quality of life issues involve questions of land, people and culture. And the question is how can we deal with what we have now, the economic system we have, the need for jobs and housing, but do it in a way that pays attention to those kinds of things.
[00:17:55] Randall Roth: So our standard of living can be going up and up and up without the quality of life going up, and in fact the quality of life could be going down?
[00:18:02] Eric Yamamoto: Sure.
[00:18:03] Randall Roth: Something else that Tom was saying is that we need to to manage growth well, and Tom, you were commenting about how rapid population growth growth was the reason there was a lot of uh discontent about the way things were in 1974. Right now, it seems as though we don't have this tremendous in-migration, but I think it's primarily because the cost of living is so high in Hawaii. If the cost of living in Hawaii were brought down, would we have these same problems that we had 20 years ago, tremendous influx?
[00:18:40] Tom Coffman: Well, yeah I think I'd like to back up to a basic idea that um, in the longer view, life in Hawaii has really substantially improved and I'd like to sort of maintain that as the center of of my viewpoint.
[00:19:00] Randall Roth: What would you point to in supporting that?
[00:19:03] Tom Coffman: Hawaii was a uh feudal oligarchy. Hawaii became a contemporary multi-racial society that is a an inspiration to people all over the world. And uh it's not perfect but it is um certainly remarkable and uh all of the um outpouring of uh uh criticism of status quo and criticism of the way things are in Hawaii today is I think obscures that really most basic fact.
[00:19:40] Randall Roth: So you feel things are are headed in a in a very good direction. That we've got challenges that we have to address but you're fairly happy with the direction.
[00:19:50] Tom Coffman: I am um um I'm not sure that we have a direction uh that's implicit in in your uh question. Uh what I think is going on is uh sort of an ending of this era that began in 1941 and is an era of, you know, really substantial change which led us to where we are now and I think that this, you know, uh great outpouring of criticism of the status quo is part of a kind of death knell of this era.
[00:20:34] Tom Coffman: And uh and it's the beginning of [unintelligible — audio glitch] some other phase of our history and uh I don't think we know what that is. I think we've got to work at uh creating an I think that's what's really remarkable about, you know, this moment in time and and challenging and um uh you know, and I think it calls on people to to stop and think and stop and learn and and stop and listen as well as speak.
[00:21:05] Randall Roth: You're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio show. I'm Randy Roth, and my guests this week are journalist Tom Coffman and UH Law Professor Eric Yamamoto. Look Eric, what do you think about what Tom's just been saying?
[00:21:17] Eric Yamamoto: I think there's a lot to what Tom says and and What's this new era look like uh that we're entering if if you do agree that we're entering a new era?
[00:21:28] Eric Yamamoto: I think part of the new era and part of the the create our abilities to create this new era will turn on how we as a society in Hawaii address native Hawaiian issues and native Hawaiian concerns for sovereignty because in many respects, uh, Hawaii did address the needs of the working people in the 1930s, 1940s and in in from statehood, it addressed the needs of people who wanted to have a middle class uh life and a more stable life and in working environments, schools, and whatnot. And I think it addressed a number of social justice issues, but it hasn't addressed the native Hawaiian issue. And until we do that, we really cannot move forward collectively as a society.
[00:22:13] Eric Yamamoto: We do need to address and I'm a little more, I think a little more critical of of um politics and economics at the present time. I think we have a number of problems that need to be addressed, but I too also believe that this intense criticism now has obscured uh our historical perspective and how many how much Hawaii has changed and how much good has come about from that change. I think the challenge for a creative future is how can we take what's really been good about that change, appreciate it, uh and then work with what's not so good and deal with our social justice issues for the future.
[00:22:48] Randall Roth: As I was listening to you, I was reminded of of something of of yours that I read. Back in 1974, you were saying at that time that the people of Hawaii were being pushed to shoot to choose which direction to go. One possible direction you said was reactionary provincialism. Another possible direction was capitulation to the forces of modern growth, and then the third was a constructive statement of and movement toward fulfillment of the needs of Hawaii and its people. And it sounds as though you're still thinking that that's possible and you're optimistic and certainly you're feeling that's the direction to go.
[00:23:24] Eric Yamamoto: I think that's a direction to go. I think we probably are moving in all three directions still at the same time. Haven't really as a community haven't really chosen. Haven't really embraced. Would you agree with that, Tom?
[00:23:34] Tom Coffman: Yeah, I would agree.
[00:23:36] Randall Roth: Okay. Uh Eric, any any parting thoughts? We've got just a couple money a couple minutes left.
[00:23:42] Eric Yamamoto: Uh other than to say that um I've heard a number of people talk about the Price of Paradise books and the shows and I think there's been a wonderful uh community conversation that's developed from it. I've also heard comments that it's important for us to make sure we have a deeper historical perspective and not think about our conversation simply as occurring in the last uh about events occurring in the last 10 years. So I think having this show today has really helped me uh think about things that I think are really important.
[00:24:14] Tom Coffman: I would um you know, turn to this idea of mutuality and community and a really tremendous challenge facing us to uh listen and to learn from one another in the process of speaking.
[00:24:37] Tom Coffman: And uh I think it's certainly going to stretch everyone to deal with the the um problem posed by sovereignty uh for the for the Native Hawaiian community. Um I think there are a lot of issues that are unresolved and I think that in the process, uh you know, I don't uh um want to be mistaken as a mindless optimist, but I think there are reasons for optimism that we can create an even better community than exists now and um in the process feel good about ourselves and the role that we play.
[00:25:26] Randall Roth: But we need to talk and and listen. Is that what you're saying?
[00:25:30] Tom Coffman: That is.
[00:25:31] Randall Roth: Okay. And act. And act. Thank you Eric. Thank you Tom. My guests this week were journalist Tom Coffman and UH Law Professor Eric Yamamoto. This week's show was produced by Suzie Roth with technical assistance from David Stroop. Next week, my guest will be Amy Agbayani, UH Vice President for Student Affairs and Robbie Alm, Business Executive and one time member member of Governor Waihee's cabinet. They'll share their thoughts about next week's question, are we losing our sense of community? You've been listening to the Price of Paradise Radio show. I'm Randy Roth, aloha.