From Kona to Yenan The Political Memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi Edited bv Alice M. Beechert and Edward D. Beechert FROM KONA TO YEN AN! THE POLITICAL MEMOIRS OF KOJI ARIYOSHI Biography Monographs The Center for Biographical Research of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa is dedicated to the interdisciplinary and multicultural study of lifewriting through teaching, publication, and outreach activities. In addition to Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, published since 1978, the Center sponsors the Biography Monograph series, designed to further the study and practice of lifewriting in all its forms. A chronological list of previous monographs follows. Anthony Friedson, ed. New Directions in Biography (1981). Gloria Fromm, ed. Essaying Biography: A Celebration far Leon Edel (1986). Frank Novak, Jr. The Autobiographical Writings o f Lewis Mumford: A Study in Literary Audacity (1988). Mari Matsuda, ed. Called from Within: Early Women Lawyers of Hawaii (1992). Alice M. Beechert and Edward D. Beechert, eds. John Reinecke: The Autobiography o f a Gentle Activist (1993). Donald J. Winslow. Life-Writing: A Glossary o f Terms in Biography (2nd ed., 1995). Glenn D. Paige, Lou Ann Guanson, and George Simson, eds. Hawaii Journeys in Nonviolence (1995). George Simson and Stanley Schab, eds. Life-Writing from the Pacific Rim (1997). For further information about the Center or its publications, contact the Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822 USA; telephone/fax: (808) 956-3774; email: [email protected]; homepage: www.hawaii.edu/biograph. FROM KONA TO YENANI THE POLITICAL MEMOIRS OF KOJI ARIYOSHI KOJI ARIYOSHI EDITED BY ALICE M. BEECHERT AND EDWARD D. BEECHERT A BIOGRAPHY MONOGRAPH ASIAN AND PACIFIC PERSONAL PAPERS PUBLISHED FOR THE BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH CENTER BY THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAl'l PRESS 2000 © 2000 Biography Research Center All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 00 01 02 03 04 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ariyoshi, Koji, 1914—1976. From Kona to Yenan : the political memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi / Koji Ariyoshi; edited by Alice M. Beechert and Edward D. Beechert. p. cm. — (A biography monograph) Includes index. ISBN 0-8248-2376-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Ariyoshi, Koji, 1914-1976. 2. Japanese Americans—Hawaii—Biography. 3. Hawaii—Politics and government—1900-1959. 4. Hawaii—Politics and government—1959— 5. Hawaii—Social conditions. 6. Industrial relations—Hawaii—History. I. Title: Political memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi. II. Beechert, Alice M., 1926- III. Beechert, Edward D. IV. Title. V. Series. DU624.7.J3 A75 2000 996.9'004956' 0092—dc21 [B] 00-060763 University of Hawai'i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. CONTENTS Introduction vii Acknowledgments xix About the Editors xxi Prologue: The Meaning of the Arrests 1 1 Kona: The Early Years 7 2 Depression Years: Work and Education 16 3 Georgia: Tobacco Road Explored 33 4 San Francisco Docks, 1941 42 5 Relocation to Manzanar 49 6 Furlough to Idaho 62 7 Return to Manzanar 69 8 Military Service, 1942 78 9 Heading for India and Burma, Winter 1943 90 10 Chiang Kai-shek’s China 100 11 “Red” China and Yenan 111 12 Re-Education and Sanzo Nosaka 123 13 Diplomacy and Special Envoy Hurley 137 14 Changing Relationships 153 15 Withdrawal 174 16 Return to the United States 193 Afterword 199 A Note on the Text 213 Notes 215 Index 219 INTRODUCTION ALICE M. BEECHERT AND EDWARD D. BEECHERT Koji Ariyoshi was born and raised in the coffee growing area of Kona on the Big Island of Hawai'i. This background was a major force in shaping his ideas about society and the economy. His education in the Kona schools, the University of Hawai'i, the University of Georgia, his work experience on the docks of Honolulu and San Francisco, and his experiences in the United States Army in Yenan, China, served to focus the sense of independence and dignity evident in his writings. A glimpse of the importance of this background in shaping Ariyoshi’s sense of justice is seen in a column in the final edition of the Honolulu Record where he recalled watching the arrival of the 1924 Filipino strikers in Kona: I remember as a kid standing on the dusty roads by Marumoto store at Captain Cook, Kona, as a couple of huge trucks packed with men, women and children came to a stop. These were the Filipino strikers who had been evicted from their homes by the sugar plantations.. We soon hired a few of the strikers on our coffee farm and they lived with us. Mother opened credit for them at the cof­ fee company store and helped them through their initial difficult period.1 While a student at the University of Hawai'i, Koji wrote a series of twenty-four articles on stevedoring on the Honolulu docks. As the H onolulu Star Bulletin said in its announcement of the series, Ariyoshi attended the University by day and “continues his stevedoring at night. Ariyoshi within the past year has picked up the inside story of stevedoring and will tell it in the Star Bulletin."1 The series clearly indicates the pattern and tone of Ariyoshi’s later writings in the Honolulu Record. Another series of Star B u lletin articles ranging over the years 1937—1939 graphically described the plight o f the Kona coffee farmers and their crushing burden of debt, and the draconian treatment by the credit merchants. The identification of Ariyoshi with the exploited farmers of Kona was evident in his admission to the University of Georgia, where he was awarded a scholarship in jour­ nalism. There he took time to investigate the realities of working-class Georgia, the “Tobacco Road,” with the help of Erskine Caldwell’s parents. viii The Political Memoirs of Koji Ariyoshi Before 1935 and the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), criminal trespass laws and criminal syndicalism laws made labor organizing a hazardous occupation.3 Hawai'i, like most of the states, had enacted laws restricting free speech, and particularly, labor organizing and union activities. The New Deal, with its promises of improvement for the common man, was viewed with some skepticism among Hawai'i’s workers. Charges of misuse of Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers by assigning them to plantation work confirmed the decades long distrust of the political establishment. When Jack Hall began organizing plantation workers on Kaua'i in 1937, he faced a climate of fear and suspicion of haoles (Caucasians). “Weigh the picture,” Ariyoshi said in a 1967 interview, “the 1909 strike, 1920, 1924, 1937, with people starving— these were vivid memories of the total loss possible. For the majority of people there was no margin— no existence outside the plantation. All the strikes seemed to have failed, with people removed from the plantation— exiled with a loss of pride.”4 The decision in 1938 to greatly enlarge Hawai'i’s military defense accelerated the changes brought about by the Depression. Thousands of new, high-paying jobs were created by the need to expand Pearl Harbor and related facilities. Plantation workers flooded into the jobs, which paid, for Hawai'i, un­ heard of wages. The consortium of mainland contractors was long accus­ tomed to paying union wages on such projects. Both the high wages and an influx of unionized construction workers from the mainland helped to cre­ ate a new mood in Hawai'i’s working class population. One of Koji’s Kona High School classmates, working as a carpenter at Pearl Harbor, first learned of the existence of Hawai'i’s Carpenters Union from a mainland worker anxious to deposit his union card at the local office to maintain his retirement and disability benefits. The union, chartered in 1901, was large­ ly unknown to the cottage builders and the many carpenters working on the plantations.5 Before World War II, Hawai'i was largely a two-class society— a small, self-perpetuating ruling elite closely allied with the large military presence in Hawai'i, and a large, low income, plantation laboring class. As a conse­ quence of World War II, Hawai'i underwent a veritable revolution in both its economy and its political structure. Since the end of the war, indus­ try-wide strikes in the basic industries of sugar, pineapple, and longshore trade had upset the traditional, oligarchical structure that had dominated Hawai'i since the formation of a western-style government in 1850.6 The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union7 (ILWU) was a primary instrument in changing the thinking of Hawai'i’s Introduction IX workers. The democratic structure of the union gave workers the opportu­ nity for leadership in their plantation communities. The capacity of the plantation workers for effective leadership was the key to success in the 1946 sugar strike. In effect, this created a new, larger community for the workers, replacing the oligarchic organization which had dominated the plantations: “There were many possibilities of recognition. A hoe-hana (weeding) man could be a unit leader. The abolition of perquisites made people more independent. The union provided a sense of community, par­ ticularly for the Filipinos.”8 By 1948, Ariyoshi judged the time was ripe for a labor-oriented news­ paper which would expose the oligarchical nature of the Hawaiian political economy, and serve to bolster the growing labor movement. Five-dollar shares were sold to the growing labor community and urban liberals. John Reinecke and Dwight James Freeman were especially active in increasing the circulation of the paper among plantation workers in the Neighbor Islands of Kaua'i, Maui, and Hawai'i.