Category Archives: Hawai’i

by Joel | 24 April 2007 · 9:11 pm

Did Leopold & Loeb Inspire Myles Fukunaga?

Just as the immense publicity surrounding Harris and Klebold‘s shooting rampage at Columbine in April 1999 explicitly inspired Cho Seung-hui‘s copycat massacre at Virginia Tech in April 2007, the “Trial of the Century” of Leopold and Loeb for kidnap and murder in Chicago in May 1924 seems to have inspired Myles Fukunaga‘s copycat crime in Honolulu in September 1928.

Antiquarian bookseller and publisher Patterson Smith links the two plots:

In 1924 two precocious University of Chicago students, the sons of very wealthy Chicago families, planned the perfect crime. In 1924 Richard Loeb and his close friend Nathan Leopold selected a younger boy at random from the student body of an upscale private school in their neighborhood. They lured Bobby Franks into their rented car, bludgeoned him with a chisel, suffocated him with chloroform, and left his naked body in a marsh. They notified the Franks family by telephone that their son was in their hands and would be returned unharmed if the kidnapers’ instructions were followed and the police not notified. Loeb and Leopold then sent the Franks family a special-delivery letter detailing how $10,000 in ransom should be prepared.

So far everything had gone according to plan. But the plan proved faulty. The site for disposing of the victim had been ill chosen, and the body was discovered and identified before any ransom was paid. Worse, Leopold had dropped his eyeglasses at the site. The police traced them to their owner, uncovered his connection with Loeb, and interrogated the two young men separately. Their loosely prearranged alibi fell apart and both confessed. Only ten days had passed between the commission of the perfect crime and its solution. The perpetrators were indicted on separate murder and kidnaping charges, either of which subjected them to the death penalty for which the public clamored.

Enter Clarence Darrow for the defense. He elected to have the case be heard without a jury and their guilt or innocence be decided by the judge. The prosecution had over one hundred witnesses, the confessions of the accuseds, and an airtight case. The only hope for the defense seemed to rest on an insanity plea. Darrow had his clients interviewed by psychiatrist after psychiatrist in what looked like a search for congenial experts. But Darrow had been planning an altogether different course which he kept secret until the very last moment, even from his clients. In one of the most astounding ploys in an American courtroom, Darrow changed the plea of his clients from Not Guilty to Guilty on both counts of murder and kidnaping. The prosecution was thunderstruck; as the cliché has it, reporters raced for the telephones.

Darrow’s stroke had shifted the contest from guilt or innocence to the question of the punishment. The sentence was within the judge’s discretion—death or life imprisonment. By pleading his clients guilty to both counts, Darrow had prevented the prosecutor from retrying the case on the second count should the prisoners escape hanging on the first….

Another demented kidnaper who did not escape the death penalty was Myles Fukunaga, a Japanese-American who in 1928 abducted Gill Jamieson, the ten-year-old son of a bank vice-president in Honolulu. Fukunaga, aged 19, employed the familiar call-at-the-school tactic and drove the boy away in a cab. The next day a messenger delivered to his father a rambling letter signed “The Three Kings.” It demanded $10,000 in ransom, which the father paid.

The day after that a newspaper received a note from The Three Kings saying that “Gill Jamieson, poor innocent lad, has departed for the Unknown, a forlorn Walking Shadow in the Great Beyond, where we all go when our time comes.” Shortly thereafter the body of the boy, who had beaten to death, was found in a shrubbed area. It lay on a couch formed of burlap and sand surmounted by a cross. A cardboard containing a misquotation from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” lay on the boy’s chest.

The story of Fukunaga is told in The Snatch Racket, published by Vanguard in 1932 and written by Edward Dean Sullivan, a Depression-era author of two other crime books. In addition to dealing with the celebrated cases I have discussed above, it provides a good picture of many lesser-known abductions, including those of underworld figures preying on their own kind.

UPDATE: The photo shows Myles Fukunaga’s jarring, pseudonymous grave marker in Mo‘ili‘ili Japanese Cemetery in Honolulu. The jagged red upright stone is engraved with 因果塚 ingachou ‘karma gravemound’ or ‘heap of misfortune’. Only Fukunaga’s posthumous name is given (釈祐寛信士 Shakuyuukan shinshi lit. ‘explanation/Shakyamuni-help-leniency honorific.title’), but the date of birth and death corresponds to his own: b. Meiji 42 (1909) February 4, d. Showa 4 (1929), November 19.

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, U.S.

by Joel | 8 February 2007 · 9:59 pm

Barry Obama at Punahou School in Hawai‘i

Today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin features a fluffy front-page profile of Barack Obama’s time at Punahou School in Hawai‘i.

Long before he became Barack Obama — junior senator from Illinois and presidential candidate — he was just Barry, the good-natured, unassuming kid.

He loved basketball. He loved books. He always wore a smile. He got along with everyone.

He did not come from privilege, but was able to attend the exclusive Punahou School based on his achievement and with the help of financial aid….

“In retrospect, everybody enjoyed having him as a classmate,” said Mitchell Kam, another member of the Punahou Class of 1979.

That is also why many say they were surprised to read about his internal personal struggle, which he detailed in his 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

“In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American,” the book’s jacket reads.

In it, Obama recalls the experience of his childhood and how he dealt with some discrimination, even in a racially diverse location such as Hawaii….

In an essay for the Punahou Bulletin, published in 1999, two decades after his high school graduation, Obama wrote, “The opportunity that Hawaii offered — to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect — became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, U.S.

by Joel | 8 January 2007 · 10:17 pm

Earliest Filipino Immigrants to North America

In 2006, the State of Hawai‘i celebrated its centennial of Philippine immigration, but the earliest Filipino immigrants to North America arrived in 1763, and their story was first brought to the attention of Americans by a writer chiefly famous for his ties to Japan, Lafcadio Hearn, according to The Filipino Americans (1763–Present): Their History, Culture, and Traditions, by Veltisezar Bautista (Bookhaus, 2002), excerpted at length here.

About 235 years ago, a settlement was established by Filipino deserters from Spanish ships at Saint Malo in the bayous of Louisiana, near the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. The people who settled there were called Manilamen, who jumped ship during the galleon trade era off New Orleans, Louisiana, and Acapulco, Mexico, to escape Spanish brutalities. Known as Tagalas, they spoke Spanish and a Malay dialect. They lived together—governing themselves and living in peace and harmony—without the world knowing about their swamp existence.

Thus, they became the roots of Filipinos in America.

It was only after a journalist by the name of Lafcadio Hearn published an article in 1883 when their marshland existence was exposed to the American people. It was the first known written article about the Filipinos in the U.S.A.

(Note: This write-up was adapted from Hearn’s article entitled Saint Malo: A Lacustrine Village in Louisiana, published in the Harper’s Weekly, March 31, 1883.)

The Times-Democrat of New Orleans chartered an Italian lugger—a small ship lug-rigged on two or three masts—with Hearn and an artist of the Harper Weekly on board. The journey began from the Spanish fort across Lake Ponchartrain. After several miles of their trip, Hearn and the artist saw a change in scenery. There were many kinds of grasses, everywhere along the long route. As Hearn described it, “The shore itself sinks, the lowland bristles with rushes and marsh grasses waving in the wind. A little further on and the water becomes deeply clouded with sap green—the myriad floating seeds of swamp vegetation. Banks dwindle away into thin lines; the greenish, yellow of the reeds changes into misty blue.”

UPDATE: In the comments, Lirelou expresses some doubts about the location and date of this account.

There are some definite disconnects here. First, no treasure galleons operated anywhere near Louisiana. Spanish treasure from the Philippines was off-loaded at Acapulco and transported across the country (through Mexico City) to Veracruz, from where it travelled to La Habana, and after that, off to Spain. Second, Filipinos were not unknown in Mexico. Indeed, the Mexican national dress (la Poblana) is generally agreed to have been inspired by the the Filipina wife of a prominent colonial official in Puebla, who was known throughout the city as “la china poblana”. The “chinese” allusion is in reference to her race. Filipinos were classified as “chinos” in Mexican colonial records. More to the point, when the city of Los Angeles was founded in the 1780s, one of the founding families was listed as “chinos” whose place of birth was “Manila, Islas Filipinas”. So, Filipinos played some minor roles in Mexican colonial history as far north as California. The tone of the original article suggests that it was written at a time when tales of Spanish atrocities against their colonial subjects abounded. This does not mean that Saint Malo was not founded by Filipinos who had jumped ship from Mexico. Spain received Louisiana from France in compensation for the loss of Havana in the Seven Years War (1[7]63), and had a tough time recruiting colonists. After several failed attempts in Spain, they turned to Acadians recently paroled to France, with the end result that enough of these latter volunteered to leave us the Cajuns of today. The colony was, until its return to France, sustained and supplied out of Mexico.

4 Comments

Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, North America, Philippines, Spain

by Joel | 3 January 2007 · 5:38 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Mō’ili’ili, Ishizuchi

For our first meal of the (solar) Year of the Pig, the Far Outliers pigged out on Chinese dimsum at Honolulu’s Chinese Cultural Plaza with old family friends from China who have since immigrated to Hawai‘i. Later that afternoon, I took a long walk through Honolulu’s old Japan town, Mō‘ili‘ili, with camera in hand (see Flickr for more photos). If I have time, I’d like to put together a neighborhood blogpost à la Dumneazu. In the meantime, all I can offer is a bit of etymological talk-story. It all starts with lava rock.

Mō‘ili‘ili gets its Hawaiian name from the small, round pebbles (‘ili‘ili) of lava that were washed down by Mānoa Stream, which has flooded many times, most recently during October 2004, when it destroyed basements and ground floors of several crucial buildings on the campus of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, including the medical school and the graduate research library. According to UH geographer Abraham Piianaia, the area had been referred to as Ka moana ‘ili‘ili ‘the pebble sea’, Ka moku ‘ili‘ili ‘the pebble district’, or Ka mo‘o (‘aina) ‘ili‘ili ‘the pebble (land) parcel’. Ka mō‘ili‘ili is a contraction of the latter two. However, the place name later came to be associated with Polynesian legends of the lizard (mo‘o), and the folk etymology for the name is ‘pebble lizard‘.

In addition to its pebbles, Mō‘ili‘ili was known for its underlying limestone karst from raised coral and its overlying ridges of volcanic Sugarloaf basalt, which provided the stone for many a building in Honolulu, most notably the New England–style sanctuaries of Central Union Church in neighboring Makiki. The Mō‘ili‘ili Quarry employed mostly Japanese workers, whose families lived nearby, turning the neighborhood into Honolulu’s Japantown during the 1920s and 1930s.

Back in those days, Japanese speakers called the quarry face Ishiyama ‘Rock Mountain’, and “the Quarry” is still how everyone refers to what’s officially known as the Lower Campus of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, which is now filled with a huge multistory parking lot and sprawling athletic facilities.

Ishizuchi 石鎚 ‘rock hammer’ is the name of the tiny Shinto shrine not far from the Quarry, a name I thought most fitting after I deciphered it. There are a lot of Buddhist temples of various sects in the neighborhood, and at least a couple of Christian churches with strong Japanese American membership (Church of the Crossroads and Olivet Baptist Church).

The shrine was all decked out on New Year’s Day (top photo). Unlike most Japanese shrines, but in harmony with its geographical and cultural environment, the purification trough (bottom photo) was made of lava rock and offered paper towels to dry off with.

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, language

by Joel | 15 December 2006 · 5:38 pm

Daniel Drezner on the Globalization of Baseball

International relations professor (and Red Sox fan) Daniel Drezner has compiled a range of responses to the signing of Japan’s top pitcher, Daisuke Matsuzaka, by the Boston Red Sox. One of the excerpts he cites comes from Bryan Walsh at Time.com.

Most Japanese fans … are celebrating Matsuzaka’s signing as further proof that Japan’s best players can compete on baseball’s premier stage. Japanese players who move to the majors are no longer seen as leaving Japan behind; they are seen as representing their country in the international game. It’s a sign that the globalization of sport is finally penetrating this often isolationist country, that many fans here would rather watch an international game with the top players in the world than settle for a lessened domestic product. As one Japanese baseball blog put it: “Finally, all the dream matches will come true in 2007. Matsuzaka vs. Godzilla Matsui, Matsuzaka vs. Genius Ichiro, Matsuzaka vs. Igawa! I wish the MLB 2007 season would start soon.” He’s not the only one.

I suspect Mongolians feel the same way about the success of their countrymen in Japanese sumo, as people in Hawai‘i once did. Japanese professional sumo is, I think, more internationalized than Japanese professional baseball, but the latter is rapidly catching up. However, if Japan’s Central and Pacific Leagues are at the AAA level relative to the North American major leagues, sumo outside Japan is barely at the A level, in my opinion.

Last Saturday, I caught the last half of “Sumo World Challenge from Madison Square Garden in New York” on ESPN2. The final four were from Japan, Poland, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands. The Japanese wrestler won, and they were all rather skillful, but I found the dumbing down of sumo ritual for the benefit of those provincials in NYC pretty jarring. I got the distinct impression that the low-key—even taciturn—color commentator, retired pro sumo grand champion Musashimaru, was slightly embarrassed.

Leave a comment

Filed under baseball, Hawai'i, Japan, North America, sumo

by Joel | 10 December 2006 · 1:32 pm

Haruki the Hybrid

Emily Parker in today’s Wall Street Journal profiles the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Here’s a snippet that detours from the primary focus on how Murakami deals with Japan’s dark past.

Even as he chooses to spend much of his time in Honolulu, Mr. Murakami appears to reveal the punctilious ways of his homeland. (He reminded me to take off my shoes before entering his home, an airy Hawaiian residence that offers a breath of quiet and anonymity for the celebrity writer. Then he promptly sat down at a light wood table–in formal repose–and looked at me expectantly, waiting for the interview to begin.) And as if to confirm this impression, the Kyoto-born Mr. Murakami says that, in some ways, he is 100% Japanese. “The difference,” he says, “is that I’m kind of individualist.”

In truth, he is a cultural hybrid. He has spent time living in the U.S., and in our conversation he jumps back and forth between English and Japanese. His own books are dotted with Western cultural references, and he has translated several American classics into his native language, such as the work of J.D. Salinger, Raymond Carver and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He claims to be somewhat of a black sheep in his home country, in part due to his distaste for drinking parties or social conversation. How about Karaoke? “I hate it,” he says in Japanese. “If I enter a store and there is a Karaoke machine there, I leave immediately.”

I wonder if the author knows that removing shoes at the door is a custom that is nearly universal in Hawai‘i.

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, Japan

by Joel | 2 December 2006 · 8:49 am

Michelle Wie: From Prodigy to Novelty to Joke?

It’s sad to watch the slow train wreck that Michelle Wie’s phenomenal young career seems to be turning into. She can fire all the coaches and caddies she wants to. But she can’t fire her parents.

Japan Times sportswriter Jack Gallagher says it’s Time for Wie to take a break from playing against men.

I was afraid this was going to happen.

Last week’s calamitous outing by American teenage golf prodigy Michelle Wie, at the Casio World Open in Kochi, has reignited the issue of parents pushing their children — often prematurely — into the sporting spotlight.

After carding rounds of 81 and 80 in the JPGA men’s tournament, Wie missed the cut and found herself in next-to-last place, some 27 shots behind the leader.

In the 36 holes she played, Wie did not have a single birdie, while making 15 bogeys and one double bogey.

The showing had people once again scratching their heads and wondering if she would be better off trying to rack up some victories on the LPGA Tour before taking on the men again.

Though it is admirable that the 17-year-old Wie, who nearly everyone agrees is both beautiful and powerful, keeps on trying, her recent results while playing against men show a continuing trend of diminishing returns.

But the worst signal of a train wreck ahead is the following story in The Onion.

HONOLULU—In an announcement that has rocked the world of professional golf, longtime men’s golfer Michelle Wie said Monday that she is planning to participate in the LPGA’s season-opening SBS Open next February, which would make her the first woman to enter such an event since 32 women competed in the ADT Championship last weekend. “I have accomplished everything I am capable of accomplishing on the men’s tour,” said Wie, who finished second-to-last and missed the cut by 17 strokes in the men’s Casio World Open earlier this month. “I’m looking for a real challenge—one within reasonable limits that I actually have a legitimate chance of surmounting. This will inspire girls everywhere to break society’s barriers and begin playing sports against other females.” Wie, however, said that while she had achieved a comfort zone on the men’s tour, she is worried that the women of the LPGA will regard her with coldness, anger, and resentment for trying to join their tour.

via Japundit and Foreign Dispatches

UPDATE: Michelle Wie has come a long way since I posted this. Good for her!

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i

by Joel | 1 December 2006 · 6:05 pm

Latest Filipino Migrant Labor in Hawai‘i: Hotel Workers

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser carried a front-page story by Lynda Arakawa about a new wave of migrant labor coming ashore in Hawai‘i: Hotel workers from the Philippines. And this is happening on the 100th anniversary of Filipino immigration to Hawai‘i.

Twenty-five workers from the Philippines arrived at Kona International Airport yesterday in what could foreshadow a new mini-wave of immigrant labor to the Islands.

The Fairmont Orchid Hawaii arranged with the U.S. Labor Department to bring up to 45 Filipinos here on seasonal work visas through August to help staff the hotel in the face of the nation’s tightest labor market.

A handful of other hotels have also inquired about the process as they are having trouble filling jobs with the state’s unemployment rate at 2.1 percent [emphasis added].

“We’ve done everything we possibly can (to find workers) here on the Big Island and the state,” said Fairmont Orchid general manager Ian Pullan. “And we just have not been able to fill the number of vacancies that we’ve had.”

The arrival of Filipinos to work in hotels comes on the 100th anniversary of Filipino immigration to Hawai’i. In 1906 a group of 15 Filipinos was recruited by the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association to work at the Ola’a Plantation on the Big Island.

The government approved Fairmont’s plan when it determined there was a shortage of American workers for the hotel jobs and that the immigrants would have adequate housing.

The Fairmont is bringing over Filipino workers who are relatives of hotel employees with whom they can stay, Pullan said. He said 25 workers arrived in Kona yesterday, and the hotel is interviewing candidates in the Philippines for 20 more positions. The 45 positions include housekeepers, kitchen helpers, cooks and dining room attendants.

The seasonal work visas expire Aug. 15, but Fairmont may reapply to extend their stay.

This is the first case of seasonal work visas for a Hawai’i hotel, said James Hardway, a spokesman for the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations….

Seasonal work visas are usually given for white-collar jobs such as teachers, doctors or in the technology sector but have also been given for agricultural workers, Hardway said.

The immigrant workers will be given the same wages and benefits as current employees in the same positions. That ranges from about $13 to $18 an hour for the non-tipped workers, said Wallace Ishibashi Jr., a union representative.

The ILWU Local 142, which represents employees at the Fairmont Orchid, has worked with the hotel on the seasonal work visa program and supports it, Ishibashi said. One of the union’s concerns is making sure local workers have job opportunities, but the state’s low unemployment rate has made it difficult to recruit despite the hotels’ best efforts, he said.

“It’s not that we’re not trying to hire local people,” Ishibashi said, adding that drug test failures are another stumbling block.

1 Comment

Filed under Hawai'i

by Joel | 22 October 2006 · 9:14 am

Wordcatcher Tales: Ha‘i, Puana

Listening the other night to the incomparable Auntie Genoa Keawe singing a Hawaiian song in a style often called female falsetto, I got curious about two things: the possible distinctive features of Hawaiian falsetto, and the exact meaning of a phrase that is ubiquitous in Hawaiian-language songs: Ha‘ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana. So I looked both of them up.

Ha‘i ‘break, snap’ – Honolulu Star-Bulletin music critic John Berger explains it in an April 2002 story headlined That LeAnn Rimes yodel translates to Hawaiian ha‘i.

First, about ha’i. The relevant translation relates to a style in which singers voice a break when moving between their lower register (“chest voice”) and upper register (“head voice”). Hawaiian falsetto singers use this technique to emphasize or add emotional intensity to a phrase or passage, whereas traditional European-American falsetto singers try to eliminate any hint of it.

“When I was studying musical theory (in college), my voice teacher and I spent five years trying to smooth that break out,” [Amy Hanaiali’i] Gilliom said.

Certain women, like LeAnn Rimes, sing ha’i, she said, singing a few bars of Rimes’ hit “Blue” to prove her point.

Keawe agreed. “I’ve heard that recording and I hear her singing, and she sings like us with the ha’i. You can sing ha’i in any language.”

Puana ‘refrain, theme, or keynote of a song’ – Puana is the key word in the phrase, Ha‘ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana. Pukui & Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary (1986) defines puana thus:

Attack or beginning of a song; in music, the tonic or keynote; to begin a song; summary refrain, as of a song, usually at or near the beginning of a song; theme of a song.

The whole phrase is rather awkwardly translated as

tell the summary refrain (this line followed by the refrain is at the end of many songs or precedes the name of the person in whose honor the song was composed).

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, language

by Joel | 21 September 2006 · 8:13 am

Sumo’s Female Executives: Okamisan

Among the long list of expectations Yokozuna Akebono faced were that he become a Japanese citizen and that, believe it or not, he get married. Japanese citizenship is a requirement for oyakata [‘stable bosses’], which as a yokozuna [‘grand champion’] he was almost certain to become. While marriage is not an actual Kyōkai [‘Association’] requirement for its oyakata, tradition dictates that one must be married; it is understood that a heya [‘stable’] cannot be run by an oyakata alone. An oyakata’s okamisan [‘headmistress’] does far more than act as a kind of mom away from mom for the heya’s deshi [‘apprentices’], many of whom are still kids. In many cases, the okamisan is a sumo-beya’s primary administrator. She organizes kōenkai [‘fan club’] functions and dinners with other friends and supporters. She can also be involved in recruitment. If the heya has a sekitori [‘paid professional’], she organizes everything related to his promotion parties and his wedding—sometimes right down to introducing prospective brides. In many cases, she handles all of the money coming through the heya. Hers is the only position of importance and respect for any woman in the Nihon Sumo Kyōkai.