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Executive Editor, Journals Dept. University of Hawai‘i Press
by | 10 November 2004 · 2:28 pm

Collaboration Potential in Hawai‘i: Universal

Collaboration is a pejorative word. Often misused, it is inappropriate for those Japanese-Americans whose circumstances and inclinations led them to serve Japan during World War II. On the other hand in Hawaii, potential collaboration was by no means confined to Japanese-Americans. Any resident of the Islands in 1942, regardless of ethnicity, probably speculated on what life would be like in the event of a successful Japanese invasion. Any rational mind considering that contingency would most likely conclude that a degree of collaboration would be hard to avoid. Unlike the Philippines, Hawaii was physically too small for anyone to avoid contact with occupation authorities. A guerrilla movement would have been virtually suicidal. There is little evidence that either the military or civilians were prepared to fight to the last man should Hawaii have been assaulted. On the contrary, many probably shared the views of a State Department special agent who in a report written several weeks before 7 December 1941 acknowledged: “If the Japanese fleet arrived, doubtless great numbers of them [Hawaii Japanese] would then forget their American loyalties and shout a ‘Banzai’ from the shore. Under those circumstances, if this reporter were there he is not sure that he might not do it also to save his own skin, if not his face.”

These words were not written by a coward. Dying to the last man, woman, and child (gyokusai as the Japanese called it in those desperate defenses of Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa) was neither a tenet of American military doctrine nor consonant with American historical experience, the Alamo notwithstanding….

Consequently, if the choice were to collaborate or face suicidal odds, there is little doubt but that Hawaii’s residents would have opted, in the British phrase, to “carry on” with as much dignity as possible. The scale and degree of collaboration would probably have depended upon many obvious and subtle factors, among them individual character, the content and style of occupation policies, the conduct of occupation authorities and garrison troops, and the local assessment of Japan’s prospects for winning the war or at least for repelling an American counterattack.

SOURCE: Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor, by John J. Stephan (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1984), pp. 8-9

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by | 8 November 2004 · 7:53 am

Gunboat Diplomacy in Cambodia, 1880s

Between 1881 and 1887 France steadily, and in many cases bloodily, moved to assert its control over the whole of Vietnam…. Yet France’s position in Cambodia was only assured after three uncertain years between 1884 and 1887, after French gunboat diplomacy on the Mekong led to a major rebellion against French control.

Ever since the conclusion of the treaty granting France a ‘protectorate’ in 1863, French officials in Phnom Penh, and their superiors in both Saigon and Paris, had looked on King Norodom with an ambivalent eye….

By the early 1880s French officialdom’s patience with Norodom was wearing thin. French troops had had to put down a rebellion led by one of Norodom’s half-brothers, Si Vatha, who then retreated to the jungle fastnesses beside the Mekong near the Sambor rapids. In actions that echoed King Satha’s attempt to gain support from Manila in the sixteenth century; the king himself had tried unsuccessfully to enter into a secret treaty with the Spanish government. And, against strict French direction, Norodom had allotted the rights to the kingdom’s opium farm to one of his court cronies, without consulting his ‘protectors’. This last act he sought to excuse as the result of his having been drunk at the time. Two factors finally brought a French decision to act against him in 1884. There was renewed concern that the British were seeking to increase their influence in Siam, a prospect that prompted French officials to tighten their grip over Cambodia. At the same time, the newly appointed Governor of Cochinchina, Charles Thomson, decided to increase French control over the kingdom and that an end had to be put to Norodom’s financial profligacy. To achieve this goal Thomson told the king that, henceforth, France would be responsible for collecting the kingdom’s customs duties….

The stage was now set for one of the best known tableaux in nineteenth century Cambodian history. On 17 June 1884, Thomson strode into the king’s private chambers within the palace in a brusque display of lèse-majesté, waking Norodom with the noise of his entry. He then read aloud the terms of new administrative arrangements for the kingdom which gave France much greater power over Cambodia’ s affairs than it had previously exercised. Hearing these terms, Norodom’s interpreter, Coi de Monteiro, a Cambodian of Iberian ancestry who had once also acted as an interpreter for [Mekong explorer] Doudart de Lagrée, is said to have cried: ‘Sire, this is not a convention, it is an abdication’. Thomson’s aides hurried de Monteiro from the room, leaving a furious Thomson confronting a worried Norodom.

At this point, if one of the accounts of this dramatic encounter can be trusted, Thomson pointed to the gunboats moored within sight of the palace. If Norodom refused to sign the new convention, Thomson told him, he would be confined aboard one of the gunboats. ‘What will you do with me aboard the Alouette?’ the king is supposed to have asked. ‘That is my secret,’ was Thomson’s reported reply.

Literally outgunned, knowing that his half-brother Sisowath was a French pawn, and recognising that Thomson would indeed force him from the throne if he failed to sign the new convention, Norodom buckled under. The gunboats returned down the Mekong and the kingdom seemed, for the moment, at peace. It was an illusion, and within less than a year a full-scale rebellion against French control was in force. Given the fact that gunboats on the Mekong were vital to Thomson’s having gained Norodom’s acquiescence, there is historic irony in the fact that a French army post sited on the Mekong just below the Sambor rapids was the first target for a rebel attack when the rebellion began. More than two years were required before the French, making major concessions to Norodom, were once more able to claim that their ‘protection’ of Cambodia was untroubled.

SOURCE: The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, by Milton Osborne (Grove Press, 2000), pp. 125-129

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by | 8 November 2004 · 7:03 am

Far Outlying Election Reactions

On U.S. election day, Oxblogger Patrick Belton had an article in The Hill on How world capitals see Bush and Kerry. Here’s what he had to say about Africa.

Ambassador Princeton Lyman, a former envoy in Nigeria and South Africa, fears a Kerry victory “might spell difficulty in obtaining congressional support for Bush’s various initiatives for Africa–President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the Millennium Challenge Account–since Republicans in Congress would be less likely to support these for a Democratic Administration at the same level.”

Many African leaders, accordingly, prefer Bush. According to an official in the Central Intelligence Agency who studies the region, he has shown greater interest in Africa than its predecessor. Africa policy has been largely guided by energy interests, combined with a need for military support for regional peacekeeping missions such as in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Bush has formed close personal relationships with many west African heads of state, including the evangelical Christian Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Paul Biya of Cameroon, whose invitation to a state dinner in Washington in March 2003 represented a breaking point with his country’s traditional alignment with the Elysée. (The shift was reinforced one year later, when Biya visited London and was greeted by working sessions with ministers and a reception by the Queen.) Conversely, there is growing discontent in Nigeria with the increasingly authoritarian and corrupt Obasanjo, whom the same analyst notes in 2003 received from Washington and London “a free pass in a very flawed election.” Whichever administration finds itself in power during the next cycle of African elections in 2007 will have to choose whether to side with Washington’s friends, or withhold its blessing should elections again result–as in 2003–in massive irregularities and evidence of violence and voter intimidation.

South Africa, which harbors ambitions of a global role via a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, is in the opposing camp and prefers Kerry as more likely to support the institution, notes Murray Wesson, a South African law researcher at Oxford.

In light of the results, Macam-macam summarizes the reactions of several Southeast Asian leaders, and Siberian Light discusses the prospects for Russian-American relations.

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by | 7 November 2004 · 9:32 am

Melville’s Model of Madness

BEFORE SHIPPING ON the fictional Pequod, the narrator, Ishmael, was warned that Ahab “was a little out of his mind for a spell” on the passage home from his last voyage. “He’s sick, they say,” Ishmael admitted in reply, “but is getting better, and will be all right again before long”–at which the prophet who had delivered the advice snorted derisively, “All right again before long!”

Captain Ahab had a brilliant mind and was extremely brave, but was also clearly crazy. Captain Norris of the Sharon was all of these, too–he was sharp-witted, courageous in the boats, and patently deranged. On a whaleship, just as on a southern plantation, a brutal master might whip those under him, but only an insane master would whip any of his hands to death, because he was depriving himself of labor.

The character of Captain Ahab is popularly assumed to be based at least in part on the real-life commander of the Acushnet, Captain Valentine Pease. The novelist noted later that Pease ended up “in asylum at the Vineyard”–and this, it seems, was not all that uncommon. The Rev. Joseph Thaxter, minister of the Edgartown Congregational Church from 1780 to 1827, flatly declared, “Insanity prevails much.” Strangely, he attributed it to “the Purity of the air and Water.” Whatever the cause, it does indicate that mental instability was not at all unknown in the clannish communities of New England–which also infers that the shipowners might have had an inkling that some of the men they entrusted with their ships were a danger to their own crews. Perhaps, as Melville suggested, they even believed that a half-mad captain “was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales.”

However, this is hard to credit where the managing owners of the Sharon, Gibbs & Jenney, were concerned–Jenney in particular. The family featured prominently in Fairhaven whaling, the Jenney name cropping up repeatedly in whaling crew lists. While the Gibbs & Jenney-owned Sharon cruised unhappily about the western Pacific in 1842, no less than nineteen family members were at sea in whaleships. They ranged in rank from greenhand upward: six were boatsteerers, five were either first or second mates, and three were captains. Hardheaded as shipowners were reputed to be, it is scarcely likely that Jenney would knowingly appoint a potential murderer to the quarterdeck of one of his vessels.

The two other Jenney-owned ships that departed from Fairhaven in 1841–Hesper and Columbus–had men of good reputation in command. Captain Ichabod Handy of the Hesperus was well thought of by the missionaries, later on playing a crucial part in the establishment of a mission in the Caroline Islands. He had a very good relationship with the Pacific Islanders he dealt with, going down in history as one of the pioneers of the coconut oil trade. Captain Frederick Fish of the Columbus, as well as being famous for short voyages and good cargoes, was considered “free-hearted” by a whaling wife who gammed [= visited on board] with him, Mary Brewster of the Connecticut whaleship Tiger–a woman who was not known for her charitable opinions of her husband’s fellow skippers.

If the firm had known what Norris was doing, they would have wanted him stopped. However, the only man on board with the authority to restrain the captain was the first officer–Thomas Harlock Smith. In fact, it was his obligation. The brutality was bad enough, but the murder was the last straw. According to Section Three of the Seamen’s Act, it was Thomas Harlock Smith’s duty to arrest Captain Norris, confine him to his quarters, sail to the nearest port with a U.S. consul–Guam–and hand him over for commitment for trial. But he did nothing, and neither did his cousin, Nathan Smith.

SOURCE: In the Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon, by Joan Druett (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004), pp. 130-132

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by | 7 November 2004 · 8:52 am

A Melville Chronology, 1841-51

  • January 3, 1841, ships as a foremast hand on the whaleship Acushnet.

  • July 9, 1842, deserts ship at Nukuhiva in the Marquesas Islands. Spends a month with the cannibals of the Taipi valley.

  • August 9, 1842, escapes by joining the crew of the Sydney whaler Lucy Ann.

  • October 5, 1842, placed ashore at Tahiti with ten other crewmen, and tried before the Consul for mutiny. Lightly imprisoned in Tahiti. A beachcomber on Moorea.

  • November 1842, ships on whaleship Charles & Henry.

  • May 1843, discharged at Lahaina, goes to Honolulu to work for a merchant as clerk and bookkeeper.

  • August 17, 1843, enlists on U.S. Navy ship United States. Ship calls at Nukuhiva, Tahiti, and Callao.

  • October 14, 1844, discharged from the navy at Boston.

  • 1846, very successful publication of Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life.

  • 1847, publication of a sequel, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas.

  • 1849, publication of Mardi.

  • 1850, publication of White-Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War.

  • 1851, Moby-Dick published to mixed reviews.

SOURCE: In the Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon, by Joan Druett (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004), pp. 233

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by | 7 November 2004 · 8:04 am

An Energetic Norwegian in Lotus Land c. 1900

The presumed riches of Laos … never eventuated during the period of French colonial control. There were opportunities for minor agricultural development on the Boloven Plateau in southern Laos and some possibilities for the exploitation of timber. But this latter commodity … was difficult to extract, and the repeated rapids along the Mekong’s course plus the major barrier of the Khone Falls made thoughts of floating timber downriver to the ports in Phnom Penh and Saigon dubious at best. It is true that there were occasional efforts to use the river in this way; and these included one heroic effort by a Norwegian commercial adventurer, Peter Hauff.

Unknown by historians until an account of his life was published by his granddaughter in 1997, Hauff was in many ways typical of the Europeans who sought private gain in Indochina at the turn of the century. The son of a sea captain, Hauff began his career in Indochina in 1894 at the age of twenty-one working in a Saigon agency house. Fathering children by both a Lao and a Vietnamese woman during the fifteen years he spent in the region, his diaries reveal him as a man of great energy who was fascinated by the exotic world in which he lived, approaching it with a sympathy frequently lacking among the French officials of the time. In 1902, in a remarkable if essentially meaningless achievement, he succeeded in manhandling a sixteen-metre boat through the Khone Falls from south to north. This involved a notable show of spirit and the capacity to organise and inspire his local crew. It did not alter the conclusion that the falls could not be navigated by boats on any regular, commercial basis. A little later, Hauff undertook a commission to ship a collection of logs from Luang Prabang to a river port in the Mekong Delta. This too was a remarkable effort, involving no fewer than twelve hundred logs assembled in a series of rafts. The fact that the logs finally reached the Mekong Delta was indeed a triumph of determination in the face of endless obstacles. It did not, however, herald any continuing use of the Mekong for the despatch of timber out of Laos. In fact, for most of those who were associated with Laos while it formed part of French Indochina, this lightly populated kingdom was seen as a tropical lotus land for those ready to turn their backs on the more ‘serious’ aspects of colonial endeavour.

SOURCE: The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, by Milton Osborne (Grove Press, 2000), pp. 150-151

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by | 6 November 2004 · 9:20 am

Nexus of Nuance: China-Vanuatu-Taiwan

Vanuatu has a uniquely nuanced stance on relations with China and Taiwan. The foreign minister recognizes the former, while the prime minister recognizes the latter–or at least did so on Wednesday.

via Simon World

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by | 6 November 2004 · 9:06 am

Rising Sun in the NBA

Among the new foreign-born players on the NBA rosters as the season opened this week was 5-foot, 9-inch Yuta Tabuse of the Phoenix Suns, the first Japan-born player in NBA history. However:

The first NBA player of Japanese descent was Wataru Misaka. A 5-7 Japanese-American guard [who] was born in Ogden, Utah, Misaka attended Weber Junior College (now Weber State University), and was drafted by the New York Knicks in 1947. He played in three games in the 1947-48 season before being cut.

Tabuse also has a Utah connection of sorts. He played two seasons for Brigham Young University–Hawai‘i in 2001-2002.

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by | 6 November 2004 · 7:10 am

Raging Waters Flood Hawai‘i’s Largest Library

A torrential downpour over the Halloween weekend caused normally placid Manoa Stream to overflow its banks, overturn cars, and fill nearby buildings with layers of mud. Among the worst-hit was the University of Hawai‘i’s main graduate research library. The whole Manoa campus was shut down for several days.

According to a widely circulated email from Southeast Asia librarian Yati Bernard, “the basement of Hamilton Library, which housed the Government Documents, Map Collection, Cataloging Dept., Acqusition Dept., Serials Dept., Gifts and Exchange is gone.”

“We were informed that approximately 80% of the government documents were completely destroyed, 70% of the maps are gone, all newly arrived materials were destroyed,” she added. About 3,000 books on Asia that were waiting to be shelved “are gone forever.”

“Hamilton library is closed indefinitely, because there is no electricity, and the air is not healthy.”

According to a KITV report on 5 November, the University “has hired one of the largest cleanup companies in the world” (BMS Catastrophe, not Halliburton) to help the campus recover. Cleanup costs could exceed $5 million.

A 10-minute slideshow of the library damage and cleanup efforts was online but was inaccessible when this report was posted.

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by | 3 November 2004 · 8:25 pm

Rip Van Winkle Jenkins Sentenced in Japan

The New York Times reports on the low-key trial and sentencing of a U.S. Army deserter, flying beneath all the flak of the U.S. elections.

CAMP ZAMA, Japan, Nov. 3 – Charles Robert Jenkins, the Army sergeant who left his soldiers and walked into North Korea in 1965 to avoid combat duty in Vietnam, received a light sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty in a court-martial here to desertion and aiding the enemy.

After hearing bleak testimony about his harsh life in North Korea, an Army judge seemed to accept a defense lawyer’s argument that Sergeant Jenkins, 64, had “already suffered 40 years of confinement.” The judge, Col. Denise Vowell, then demoted him to private, stripped him of four decades of back pay and benefits, and gave him a dishonorable discharge and a 30-day jail sentence.

The prosecutor, Capt. Seth Cohen, had called for a tougher sentence, evoking, in a veiled way, the need for military discipline while American soldiers are fighting in Iraq. Referring to noncommissioned officers like Sergeant Jenkins, he said, “We can’t have soldiers going into the field fearing that their N.C.O.’s will abandon them, especially given the state of the world today.”

But the trial and sentencing seemed to reflect American political needs to mollify Japanese public opinion, which has been moved by the drama of the American defector from North Carolina and his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga Jenkins, whom he met in North Korea a few years after North Korean agents had kidnapped her from a Japanese island in 1978.

Apparently to minimize American media attention, the one-day military trial took place as votes were being counted in the American presidential election.

I think this whole affair has been handled with an admirable mixture of punctiliousness and compassion.

Deprived of books, Sergeant Jenkins said he had so treasured a banned copy of the historical novel “Shogun” that he read it 20 times.

I’d say that’s punishment enough (with its hotel bar-influenced mediaeval Japanese). But perhaps he could be further sentenced to his wife’s hometown on Sado Island, off Niigata. “It is one of Japan’s largest minor islands and served as an exile place for important figures since mediaeval times.”

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