Interracial Marriage in Hawaii

1937

The book deals with interracial marriage in Hawaii, but this includes more than just Japanese x white American, as it includes a variety of other races plus the native Hawaiians themselves.

The Japanese immigrants were following a pattern laid down by other, earlier, immigrants to the islands.

Those of Japanese ancestry became a major part of Hawaiian society. In many areas, as of 1930, persons of Japanese ancestry formed around 20% or more of the population. On the U.S. mainland, particularly in California, the PJAs formed about 2% of the population yet, when the war started, it was there that the anti-Japanese prejudice hit hardest, and the PJAs were moved off the West Coast to internment camps.

It's fairly easy to see why this wasn't done in Hawaii. For one reason, if about 20% of your workforce or more consisted of PJAs, and you were to remove all of them to internment camps, then you would have had an immediate drop in the labor pool, just at the time when the need for workers was greatest. Taking all the PJAs out of Hawaii would have dealt a severe blow to the economy at the very least, not counting it would have required replacement workers from somewhere else to come in, and tied up a large number of boats transferring the PJAs out of Hawaii and some other people in.

I find this to be quite fascinating, as it may have played a part in the lower level of anti-Japanese prejudice in Hawaii. By not using the term “whites” for all people of white origin, but using the country the person was from to refer to them, it helped lower the “us versus them” psychology that was so strong on the West Coast.

One of the words I have seen used over and over in various books is haole, and this is the first book that I have found that has bothered to really go over the origin of the term and explain it. The author adds that the word came more to mean those of superior economic and social status.

The term was an Hawaiian one, and it could be modified, and it could also identify persons who were hated.

The book then devotes an entire chapter to The Japanese as an Organized Group. The author starts by saying the Japanese form the largest group in the islands. He then starts talking about the marriage system of the Japanese, noting that much of the marriage is arranged for by the parents. (Even in today's world, this is still done in Japan, although to a much lesser degree.)

He says, though, that the young Japanese have been educated in Hawaiian schools, and that this, plus other things, causes their attitudes about the marriage process to change, and that some of the parents are going along with that, allowing the young adults to pick out their own marriage partners, but doing the actual marriage ceremony in the traditional way.

He also discusses how the Japanese have not lost their social groups since there are enough of them in the islands that they can still have many of their Japanese social groups. They are not isolated from the others on the islands. Their organizations helped them to adjust to life in Hawaii, and their morale was good.

This is an important point; the white society looked down on interracial marriage due to race prejudice, basically, while the Chinese or Japanese looked down on it from the viewpoint of the marriage probably not being successful.

The author notes that there was more intermarriage in the districts than in the city of Honolulu, but, in either case, the total rate was quite low. He uses a chart to note that the tendency for Japanese women who marry someone from another race is to marry a Caucasians, Filipinos and Chinese.

Referring to Okinawans and how they were then considered to be Japanese but, by the Japanese, they weren't considered to be fully Japanese.

This is one of the very few books to talk about the outcaste group in Japan known as the eta.

The author notes that he expects that the rate of out-marriage will increase as more and more of the Nisei generation have an education in American schools and gradually become socialized to American customs.

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