Crawford's Reinforcement of the Racial Divide Between Haoles and Native Hawiians

As is evident in many readings from Pacific Passages, there is an underlying racial divide between the first two predominant political/cultural dynamics in Hawaii, the Haoles and the Native Hawaiians.   In missionary/traveler writings from the 18^th and 19^th century, this divide is often glaringly obvious, as they reduce the Native Hawaiians to “amphibious beings” or simply refer to them as “heathens” (87, 117).  Unfortunately, this racial subjugation of Native Hawaiians bleeds into into texts from the 20^th century, as in the excerpt from M. Leola Crawford’s Seven Weeks in Hawaii.  While the racial undertone in Crawford’s text is slight, one cannot ignore is presence.

Crawford’s begins her description of Duke Kahanamoku in a completely laudatory way: not only did “he [carry] the honors at the Olympic Games in Stockholm…[but] he is a splendid looking fellow” (151).  However, she closes her portrayal of her “champion swimmer…guide” with an adjective that reinforces a harmful stereotype from Americas past: that the Duke is “dark as an Indian” (151).  To the untrained eye, this seemingly harmless simile merely allows the reader to understand the the color of Duke’s skin via a reference that most early 20^th century readers would recognize and understand.  However, the average modern reader can comprehend that this does much more than express the color of his skin: it equates the Duke, and thus Native Hawaiians, with his mainland relative, the Native American, who for centuries had been referred to as savages of a lower species.

Crawford includes another detail in her depiction of the Duke again reveals a minor, yet discernable, racial undertone within her text: at the end of the next paragraph the Duke laughs and shows his “pearly white teeth” (152).  This image of a dark skinned person with “pearly white teeth” is eerily reminiscent of the Uncle Tom caricature that was used to reinforce the divide between white Americans and African Americans on the mainland (see examples here).

Now, this is not to say that Crawford is an outright racist.  Her praises of the Duke in the beginning of the text along with the fact that she interacts with him throughout her day of surfing reveals that she doesn’t necessarily think that Duke is a lower class of human.  However, this excerpt from M. Leola Crawford’s Seven Weeks in Hawaii reveals that the racial subjugation of the Native Hawaiians continues into the beginning of the 20^th century.

America and Masculinity

What are the images in Clifford’s poem? What is the role of native Hawaiians?

     James Clifford’s “Year of the Ram: Honolulu February 2, 1991” is a seemingly random collage of images, But there is a specific duality to the images in the poem. There are two Americas as well as two versions of masculinity featured in the poem. The poem presents America as imperialistic and violent through war images, “In a desert the tank is hit, explodes inside” (242). These war images are in reference to Desert Storm. Another image of America that presents it as a multicultural hub by describing a scene on a crowded street. The duality of America in the poem relates to the duality of masculinity. On the one hand, masculinity is tied to militaristic America. A quote from an “Anglo” man shows this, “just get rid of those people” (242). On the other hand, through the image of a native Hawaiian man playing with his children it is shown that masculinity can also be maternal. The role of the native Hawaiian man is to show this duality in masculinity. 

Lecture Notes through Jack London

Rob's Lecture Notes & Question Prompts

Melville's Scornful Musings (plus a beautiful poem that has nothing to do with this class whatsoever)

Melville, the visiting writer, on the missionaries and their poorly organized mission:

"To read pathetic accounts of missionary hardship, and glowing descriptions of conversions, and baptisms taking place beneath the palm trees, is one thing; and to go to the Sandwich Islands and see the missionaries dwelling in picturesque and prettily furnished coral-rock villas, whilst the miserable natives are committing all sorts of immoralities around them, is quite another" (Melville 86).

These visiting writers penetrated the Hawaiian milieu of the time with their caustic and "vitriolic" remarks about the culture. Melville seems hell-bent on criticizing everyone who was involved with the missionary era, choosing to condemn both missionaries and natives in his unforgiving portrait of Hawaii. It seems Melville himself is a quasi-missionary, at least in his scathing castigations, as he belittles the inhabitants of Hawaii and calls attention to this period's ineffectiveness. 

This passage in particular presents an antagonistic portrait of the missionaries. At first, it seems that Melville may be siding with those underrepresented Hawaiian natives, but by the end of the paragraph, it becomes abundantly clear that he has even less compassion for the Hawaiian communities. His sardonic tone seems an apt reflection of the more general visting writer style: hyper-critical, self-aggrandizing, and unapologetically demanding. These writers, especially Melville, feel it is their place to revise/rewrite/reinterpret the conditions of a conflicted Hawaiian nation. 

He also claims that "here, as in every case where Civilization has in any way been introduced among those whom we call savages, she has scattered her vices, and withheld her blessings" (Melville 86).

The line "those whom we call savages" creates a dissonance between the writer (Melville) and the denigrated natives of the Hawaiian islands. There is an obvious distance between the righteous visting writer and those lowly "savages." His suggestion that "Civilization" has been introduced to Hawaii is infuriating -- he's essentially claiming that the missionaries were the first to "civilize" the native communities. Furthermore, he claims that any such attempts at civilizing "savages" can only result in failure (a scattering of vices). 

His biting portrayal of the missionary period is pertinent to the larger theme of Hawaii as a penetrable item of re-imagining. Melville doggedly inserts his own ideologies into the framework of Hawaii at the peak of its missionary period in order to assert a dominance and establish an entirely new sense of Hawaiian identity. He and his visting colleagues served only to perpetuate Hawaii as a site of Anglo/American re-imagined communities/cultures and as such, they have played a detrimental role in the development of an autonomous, freely dictated Hawaiian identity. Natives, locals, and anyone else (living in Hawaii or otherwise) who comes across these journals of Melville's and Co. should be quick to realize that these writings are one major source of the inaccurate literatures that permeate the global perception of Hawaii. 

-Jon Vorpe

P.S. Here's a James Wright poem that has nothing to do with the class. I read it this morning and it has yet to leave my thoughts. Enjoy.

"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"

by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   

Down the ravine behind the empty house,   

The cowbells follow one another   

Into the distances of the afternoon.   

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,   

The droppings of last year’s horses   

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

Let's Talk of Graves, of Worms, and Epitaphs

This poem reminds me of a quotation by King Richard II in Shakespeare's play Richard II. He states:

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king? (Richard II, 3.2. 144-177)

At this point in the play, Richard knows that he is going to die and King Henry IV shall take his place on the throne. I find this specific passage relates to Year of the Ram because at this point of the play, Richard acknowledges that there is no hope to hold on to. Like in the colonization of Hawaii, there is no going back. The archipelago is at a point at which, no matter how hard they try, things will never be the same as before the white man came to the islands. At this point, everything is about moving forward and making the best of the hand Hawaii was dealt. Like Richard, the Hawaiian kings just wanted what was best for the people, but a new world order was about to take effect. The only thing to do was to prepare for changes, accept fate, and make the best of what was to come. The key to survival now is to learn from past mistakes and thriving within the new rule.

Foundation of Sand

I find James Clifford’s Year of the Ram : Honolulu, February 2, 1991, slightly hard to unwrap, but interesting none the less. One trope that I would like to examine throughout is the desert. Some of the references are direct:

“In a desert the tank is hit and sends up a plume of black smoke” or “In a desert,/ Where are we?” As professor Wilson discussed in class, these lines correspond to a certain masculinity and military aspect of this poem. However, I think this “desert” can also be understood to be present in the lines about the Hawaiian man, “A Hawaiian man plays with three children on the beach”. Although the term desert is not used – I think it is an important connection between these images – that of sand. Although the image of the Hawaiian man and his children represent a more feminine force or a “maternal father” figure in this work – they both exist on the same substance or foundation of sand. One way of reading this trope that I think would be consistent with the message of this piece is the literal catastrophe that would occur if sand is used as a foundation. This poem doesn’t leave the reader with much hope, and I feel this trope furthers this idea of inevitable destruction of the earth. 

Sarah Eastland 

Year of the Ram

In James Clifford's poem, the line "In a desert the tank is hit, explodes inside, sears the men's faces, and sends up a plume of black smoke," is repeated throughout the poem. The placement of this line creates a stark contrast between itself and the sentences before and after it. On page 134 of the reader, this line follows a stanza that describes "black football players" and "white art-museum directors" during a widely known football event that is taking place at the "Hilton Hawaiian Village." This stanza represents the result of Americanization/colonialism. The Hawaiian village is now owned by the Hilton family, foreigners are flocking to the location (football players, museum directors) and nothing that is part of native Hawaiian culture is included within this stanza. This is followed by the line about the desert tank, which is very different from the imagery of the previous stanza. The "village" stanza is what can come out of colonialism, and the "tank" stanza shows what must be sacrificed to obtain it.

 

A Multicultural Existence

 There's a strange dynamic that goes on when a culture is placed within a culture. For one, keeping true to one's culture is made difficult when outer forces impede on that culture's values. On the other hand, the the impeding culture has is own paradigm-- placing those who are in different cultures with specific expectations. This is the relationship dynamic is what Kiyo and his brother, Tosh, struggle with. Culture is a social structure is born into. However, that same individual can just as easily accept and reject parts of their culture and other cultures as well.

    In the case of Kiyo and Tosh, their Japanese culture has essentially indebted them to their father's debt. However, they're no longer in Japan they're surrounded by an immigrant Hawaiian culture. In a developing Hawaiian culture at that! (During a time of war and increasingly progressive times) Kiyo out of the context of his culture is individually already inquisitive in nature, but is also attached to his cultural obligations. Kiyo is somehow disheartened when his mother tells him "Toshio has been little help as number one son, and we're depending on you to help the family." ( 97). Though he is of Japanese blood and is expected to repay the debt, Kiyo wants something outside of his culture. Things like higher education and freedom from his familial duties.

  In my experience cultural acceptance has been a struggle with me as well. I was born in the Philippines, yet my parents figured that America had more opportunities. I came to California speaking Ilacano, but I quickly gained a fascination with the English Language. Years later, with almost all my Ilacano speaking skills diminished, I'm in college studying Western Literature. Though it wasn't my intention to reject my first language, I strayed far from it because I wanted to explore the wider freedom of Western Literature. I, like Kiyo, wanted something outside of my culture.

  Though there are always imposing outer force that shape the individual, a multicultural existence doesn't necessarily have to be a negative side effect of living within another culture. I for one enjoy literature and had the opportunity of going to college. Kiyo, by joining the army, aligned himself to patriotically fight by America . Though Kiyo wants to reject the cultural position of "number one son", by joining the army consequently helps reshape that imposing culture by proving his loyalty. Yet he does not fully leave one culture for another. Instead he chooses  a multicultural existence, and pays off his family's debt through a series of crap games while in the barracks.

Marielle Argueza

A Poem of Paradoxical Perceptions

 Year of the Ram: Honolulu, February 2, 1991

First of all, I was really pulled into this poem and the author did a wonderful job of leaving a powerful impact. Its complexity and depth had me rereading the mirage of quotes, trying to somehow categorize each sentence and image. Then I realized the poem was meant to reflect the bombardment of cultural and physical control over Hawaii through tense criticism and use of juxtaposition, repetition, and shifts between positive/negative, pleasant/violent, and serious/humorous images. This commentary expresses the general confusion hovering above Hawaii's standing as part of the United States and as a "local nation" staggering between fake smiles for tourists and a dwindling culture left wondering how a collection of rich and vibrant islands could be subjected to the cultural influx draining towards their "pacific basin." The author uses this rhetoric and medium of compiled quotes in order to show the reader a collection of others' words and views in order to convince the reader of the general opinion towards Hawaii and its mixed influx of cultural aspects. The way the poem continues to expand the further you read, specifically the lines "In a desert the tank is hit and sends up a plume of smoke," creates a feeling of prolonged suffering which demonstrates such turmoil found in the islands history. This poem also stretches across a large section of racial diversity by including such lines as "the performance artist in his mariachi suit and Indian war bonnet," and "Available cuisines: Japanese, Thai, Korean, Hawaiian, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Filipino, Singapore, Lulu International, U.S. . ." This poem includes references going back to Cortez overthrowing Montezuma, back up to the Vietnam war, then lingers around modern "Looney Tunes" theme songs, and then flies ahead to "tonight, as the year 4688 gets underway..." It presents a complicated sense of endless cultural assault and leaves me wondering just how securely a certain culture can exist in the world and at what point does it completely blend into the presence of every other group of people trying to express themselves and their countries identity.

-Jessica St.Martin

Snooky and Kiyo by Matina Tryforos

All I Asking for Is My Body: Snooky and Kiyo

I saw the relationship between Kiyo and the teacher, Snooky as an analogy for the dilemma of being nisei in Hawaii during World War II. Snooky is the only teacher that opens the children’s mind and fosters independent thinking. He challenges the students to think for themselves when he asks them, “But is that all there is to life?...Becoming a cog in a money-making machine?...What about fresh air and freedom for the individual?...What about thinking for yourself?...Freedom means not being part of a pecking order. Freedom means being your own boss” (Murayama 34). As nisei, Kiyo and Tosh have to navigate preserving and respecting the tradition of their parent’s homeland while also fitting in with the culture and loyalties of their life-long home. It is significant that directly after Snooky talks to the kids Tosh and Kiyo contemplate the looming war. Japan and the U.S.A. were enemies, placing Tosh and Kiyo in a dangerous political  position. How can they simultaneously maintain loyalty to their parents’ homeland (Japan) and their homeland (annexed Hawaii)? The significance of Snooky’s questions are bigger than the plantation system the kids think he is talking about. The plantation system is a metaphor for the national conflict looming in the background: World War II.   

It was rumored that Snooky was a revolutionist in Spain (Murayama 96). As a revolutionist, Snooky also had to turn his back on the reigning government of his country. To turn your back on your own group is a difficult decision that can cause feelings of betrayal and guilt- one that Snooky was most likely trying to figure out when he taught the boys. As Kiyo struggles to decide whether or not he should join the Army’s nisei regiment or stay home and care for his parents, it is Kiyo’s advice and teachings he depends on. Joining the U.S. Army caused Kiyo so much guilt that he risked getting in trouble by gambling and winning enough money to pay off his parents’ debt. I believe Kiyo did that in an effort to rid himself of feelings of betrayal and guilt from disobeying his parents and on a larger scale, their home land by joining the U.S. Army. Paying off his parent’s debt while serving in the U.S. Army was his way of maintaining loyalty to Japan (and his parents) and his homeland of Hawaii.

~Matina Tryforos 

Filial Sons

This past week we read All I Asking For Is My Body by Milton Murayama. I really enjoyed this read and several aspects of the book stuck out to me. The one area I wanted to focus on was the role of filial piety in the novel. Before the reading, I had only briefly been exposed to the philosophy of filial piety and I found it quite interesting to learn more about its influence on the Oyama family. From the very first chapter, we see the mom pressuring Kiyoshi into ending his friendship with Makoto by saying,

       “You understand, don’t you Kiyo-chan? You’re a good filial boy so you’ll obey what your parents say, won’t you? Your father and I would cry if we had two unfilial sons like Toshio…” (Murayama 3)

            At that young age, statements like this would surely cause me to obey my parents too! The quote above is just a small example of the continuous expectations the Oyama parents have for their sons. As I read further into the novel, I learned that the idea behind filial piety is to take care of the parents by bringing honor to the name of the family and to perform tasks to support the parents. It is under these notions that Kiyo and Tosh eventually end up taking on the task of repaying the $6,000 family debt by working long arduous hours for the plantation. I thought it was really intriguing to see the transformation made my Tosh and Kiyo in regards to their roles as filial sons. Tosh was depicted as the loose cannon son who couldn’t be depended on. He was the more progressive and outspoken of the two sons and declares through out the novel

“Shit, all I asking for is my body. I doan wanna die on the plantation like these other dumb dodos. Sometimes I get so mad I wanna kill them, you know what I mean?” (Murayama 48)

So when Tosh ends up settling down, getting married, and continuing to work at the plantation to pay off the family debt, needless to say I was surprised. It seemed to me that Tosh never accepted the role but was eventually suppressed into it by a deeper connection for family respect than I had expected. Kiyo on the other hand does a total role reversal for me. His mom says rather frequently that they won’t depend on unfilial Tosh, instead, the family will rely on Kiyo. Truly, I had expected Kiyo to end up chained down to plantation life and family debt, so when Kiyo signs up for the military, I felt proud to see Kiyo break away. I was proud to see him take his life in his own hands and generate some of his own luck. I also appreciate the way in which Kiyo broke away. He didn’t say “Sayonara suckers, deal with the debt your selves,” he promised to come back. He knew that his escape from his role as filial son was only temporary and had always plan on coming back to offer support. His loyalty was always with his family, he just took the opportunity to grab some “freedom from other people’s shit. ”  (Murayama 96) And, luckily, it paid off.