Pathways to the Present U.S. Development and Its Consequences in the Pacifi c Mansel G. Blackford PATHWAYS TO THE PRESENT PATHWAYS TO THE PRESENT U.S. Development and Its Consequences in the Pacific Mansel G. Blackford University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu © 2007 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blackford, Mansel G. Pathways to the present : U.S. development and its consequences in the Pacific / Mansel G. Blackford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8248-3073-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Pacific States—Economic conditions. 2. Pacific States—History. 3. Islands of the Pacific—Economic conditions. 4. Islands of the Pacific—History. 5. Aleutian Islands (Alaska)—History. 6. United States—Territories and possessions—History. 7. United States—Insular possessions—History. 8. Islands of the Pacific—Relations—United States. 9. United States—Relations—Islands of the Pacific. I. Title. HC107.A18B63 2007 338.995—dc22 2006035362 An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBN for this book is 9780824878474 (PDF). More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The open access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For my wife, Victoria. Thank you for coming on the journey with me. Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 Pacific Developments 2 The Hawaiian Islands: The “Healing” of Kaho‘olawe 3 The Pacific Coast: Seattle and Silicon Valley 4 Alaska: The Aleutian Islands 5 Southern Japan during American Occupation: Hiroshima and Okinawa 6 Guam, the Philippines, and American Samoa Conclusions Notes Bibliographic Essay Index vii Preface I have long been fascinated by the Pacific. As a child, I grew up in Seattle during the s and s, decades noted for the dominance of the Boeing Company in the Pacific Northwest. During those years, my father captained a fishing vessel that pioneered in the opening of Alaska’s king crab industry, and I had the opportunity to visit the north on several occasions. I attended college and graduate school on the Pacific Coast, mainly in northern Califor- nia, during the s and early s, a time when Silicon Valley was boom- ing, beefed up by Cold War defense contracts. My interest in Japan dates back to the s. Trawling in the North Pacific, my father came into close contact with Japanese fishermen, trading American cigarettes for Japanese curios. Later, in the s, I spent two years living with my family in southern Japan, where I taught in Fukuoka and Hiroshima as a Fulbright Lecturer and learned about Japanese society. Traveling to and from Japan, I stopped over in the Hawaiian Islands, and during the s I had the opportunity on sev- eral occasions to teach on Maui for the University of Hawai‘i—experiences that brought me into close contact with a broad range of Pacific Islanders, including Chamorros transplanted from Guam and American Samoans. My professional work, including this volume, has allowed me to com- bine interests in business, environmental, and urban history with an abiding concern for the history of the American West and the Pacific. Many of my books have explored intersections of these fields. There have been, we shall see, commonalities in the development of the United States’ Pacific posses- sions. Those commonalities have been perhaps nowhere more striking than in interactions in economic and environmental decision making. However, there have also been marked regional patterns of development within this vast area; after all, the Pacific covers one-third of the globe and has always been complex. Yet, especially with several forms of economic and geopoliti- cal integration that have taken place since World War II, it is possible to ix x Preface begin thinking of the Pacific, including American possessions there, as one region. It would be easy to romanticize developments in the Pacific. I remem- ber many wonderful moments spent living there: sailing part of the Inside Passage to Alaska in a small open boat as a teenager, a voyage cut short, however, by a summer gale; eating Dungeness crabs from the shell in north- ern California; and swimming in ocean swells off white-sand beaches near Fukuoka. There is another side to the Pacific. Until very recently, and even now in much of the region, the economy evolved as a boom-and-bust affair based on extractive industries, just as that of the American West did in the s. I am one of those who can recall, during a recession in the early s, a billboard on Interstate Highway on the eastern outskirts of Seattle that read, “Will the Last Person Leaving Please Turn Out the Lights?” It is on the interactions between economic developments, environmen- tal issues, and political decision making that this volume focuses. My study casts a wide net. Ranging from the sun-kissed beaches of the Hawaiian archi- pelago to the snow-swept shores of the Aleutian Islands and from congested Silicon Valley to rural Guam, it looks at contests over the exploitation of natural resources, land-use issues, and urban planning, among other mat- ters. Beyond individual regional topics lie general debates and decisions over quality-of-life concerns. By looking at this array of issues, my book captures both the commonalities and the complexities of the changes that have oc- curred throughout the Pacific possessions of the United States. Few scholarly studies are truly individual efforts, for most build on the works of others, especially in the field of history. I would like to take this opportu- nity to thank the many people who helped bring this work to fruition. David Lincove, the history librarian at The Ohio State University, aided me in track- ing down many elusive sources, as did librarians at the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa and librarians at the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington. Dirk Ballendorf, James Bartholomew, William Childs, Stewart Firth, Hal Friedman, James Kraft, William McCloskey, Lucy Murphy, Daniel Nelson, Darrin Pratt, Dorothy Pyle, Robert Rogers, Mark Rose, Randy Roth, David Stebenne, Tetsuo Taka, William Tsutsui, Richard Tucker, and Judy Wu read and commented on earlier drafts of all or parts of this study. More generally, I would like to thank my colleagues at Ohio State for providing a stimulating and collegial environment in which to work. I am indebted to the College of Humanities of The Ohio State University for Preface xi released time from teaching, which allowed me to conduct research on this project and for a publication subvention for this resulting book. Finally, I would like to thank Masako Ikeda, Acquiring Editor for the University of Hawai‘i Press, and the two anonymous readers for the press, for their valu- able comments and help in bringing my manuscript to publication. I presented earlier versions of parts of Chapters and as papers at meetings of the American Society for Environmental History in and and part of Chapter as a paper at the annual meeting of the Busi- ness History Conference in , and my work benefited from suggestions made at those gatherings. An earlier version of Chapter was published as “Environmental Justice, Native Rights, Tourism, and Opposition to Mili- tary Control: The Case of Kaho‘olawe,” in the Journal of American History (September ): –; and part of Chapter was published electroni- cally as “Tourism, the Environment, and the Military: The Case of Guam, –,” in the Proceedings of the Business History Conference at <http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHonline/beh.html>. Finally, I must say a few words about languages. I have followed standard practices in including diacritic marks in words wherever they are called for, but I have not added them when they did not appear in the original, as in quotations or book titles. I have chosen to write Japanese names with the given name first and the surname second, adhering to English-language practice, which is the reverse of that in Japanese. Introduction riting in his diary on May , , Dr. Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi of the Japanese Imperial Army observed, “All the patients in the W hospital were made to commit suicide. I am only years old and am to die. Have no regrets. Banzai to the Emperor. I am grateful that I have kept the peace of my soul which Enkist [Jesus Christ] bestowed on me at o’clock.” The medical officer stationed with the Japanese occupation force on Attu, one of Alaska’s far-western Aleutian Islands, Tatsuguchi correctly foresaw his future. He tried to surrender to American soldiers who were retaking the island on May , shouting to them in English, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I am a Christian!” His actions were misunderstood. The Bible he waved in one hand was mistaken for a weapon, and Tatsuguchi was killed.¹ By the time of World War II, Tatsuguchi and his family had moved back and forth across the Pacific Ocean on numerous occasions. Native to Hiro- shima, Tatsuguchi’s father had emigrated to California in . There the elder Tatsuguchi converted to Christianity and attended Heraldsburg Col- lege, specializing in dentistry. In , he returned to Hiroshima as a medical missionary for the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church, where he married.