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A**G
Little known history with lessons for today.
This is an amazing book. It’s not just a history book but an object lesson for Americans dealing with government mandates triggered by the covid pandemic, or scamdemic as my husband calls it. This book tells a WW2 story that I’ve never read elsewhere in incredible detail presenting what I perceived to be a very balanced and comprehensive picture of martial law in Hawaii and the internment situation on the mainland. At first glance I thought it would be rather dull, but I ended up reading all 300 some pages in a few days. (Of course experiencing government mandated covid lockdown helped.) I’m a lawyer and have lived and practiced in Honolulu for 48 years. Originally from Detroit, I married into the King family. My husband’s grandfather was Samuel Wilder King who is mentioned quite often in the book. He was an Annapolis grad who was the Hawai’i delegate to Congress when there war broke out. He was so well known for his stand against the wholesale internment of Japanese Americans he was called “Sampan Sam.” My late father-in-law, federal judge Samuel Pailthorpe King was a young lawyer and was in Manoa when Pearl was hit. His father called him to confirm the reports, which he did before the phone was cut. I had read J. Garner Anthony’s book Military Law in Hawaii. It was interesting from a legal point of view as Anthony was one of the attorneys, if not the key attorney in Hawaii fighting against the overbroad application of martial law and its continuation long after any realistic invasion threat had passed. He was still alive when I came here in 1972.This book, however, delves into the personal, varied and wide-ranging attitudes of innumerable officials, including especially FDR and cabinet members, and the policy decisions resulting therefrom. It addresses the racial animus against Asians that existed in the U.S. prior to the war. Thus a surprise attack by a race hardly prominent among the overwhelming majority of Americans of European or African extraction hardly engendered the trust of those people charged with the country’s defense.But what struck me about the book was not racial bias, but the absolute dictatorial attitude of the military officers in general, in Hawai’i. It didn’t matter what race you were, if you were in violation of any rule set out by the military, here basically the army, you were in a military “court” with soldiers dispensing “”justice” as they saw fit.It was eerily similar to me to our current government blaming the citizens for the virus spread because we are not obeying orders perceived as confusing, inconsistent and contradictory!The other compelling aspect of this book, especially for anyone interested in the politics of Hawai’i, is how the abuse of labor by the then BigFive companies in the state affected and still influences Hawai’i politics. But that is a subject for another day, let’s just say, to use the current vernacular, “it’s complicated.” I’d suggest also reading Midnight in Broad Daylight about a Japanese American, who though he lived in Japan prior to the war, became nevertheless an interpreter for US forces in the Pacific. My husband and I are good friends with Roy Yempuku whose father was in the Military Intelligence Service behind enemy lines in Burma—-while his two brothers, born in the US, but living in Japan when war broke out, were conscripted to serve in the Japanese army. The brothers saw each other at a ceremony in Japan but never acknowledged each other at the time. There are many such stories that few Americans know—-but the local Japanese know very well and elected Daniel Inouye to the US Senate to remind people of the sacrifices these true patriots made. There is a saying of the Japanese, oft repeated during the war: “Shikata ga nai.” It cannot be helped. They bore the pain and humiliation and turned the negative into a positive.But the past is prologue.Maybe, too, my younger political son can bridge the multiple gaps that still exist in Hawai’i, many known but unspoken remnants of those past experiences.After all, Samuel Wilder King II, Esq. is part Hawaiian/Chinese/Polish/Scottish/Irish, etc. married to a beautiful woman who is half Japanese and part German. Her grandfather was local Japanese who was a decorated 442nd veteran. Hawai’i is a melting pot/stew/salad, more than most places in America. We were a radical experiment in the 1770s. We’re still experimenting.One lesson from this book is not just the wisdom of civilian control over the military, but how tenuous that control can be. Even a civilian government can make rules and emergency orders that are overbroad and last too long.The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.Never assume those in charge actually know what the hell they are doing.I can’t recommend this book highly enough, for anyone and everyone.
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