Pacific Institute

Whirling propellers and hopping aviators have, during the last fortnight, brought the Hawaiian Islands into front page headlines of U. S. newspapers. First came the flight of Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger (TIME, July 11). Last week Civilians Smith and Bronte fell just short of duplicating the Army airmen's feat (see p. 28). Thus almost every U. S. citizen, reasonably literate, knows that the Hawaiian Islands are some 2,400 miles west of San Francisco and are so situated as to form an excellent target for far-flying aviators.

Yet even while Aviators Smith and Bronte were skimming the Pacific, westward bound, a less sensational but no less important event was taking place in Honolulu, chief city and capital of Hawaii. Here was meeting the Institute of Pacific Relations, an unofficial but distinguished gathering of representatives from Japan, from China, from Australia, from Great Britain and from the U. S. The purpose of the conference was the interchange of information and ideas concerning Pacific problems, particularly with respect to relations between the Occidental and Oriental populations in U. S. and British insular possessions. Special attention was also to be given to the tangled, complicated situation in China.

The Institute opened with a greeting from President Coolidge, who said that he had heard of the Institute's work and believed that true friendship would result from mutual understanding issuing from frank discussion. Then Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur,* President of Stanford University and chairman of the Institute, predicted that the U. S. would realize that though people of other races are different they are not inferior, and predicted that the quota system of immigration would eventually be extended to peoples of Asiatic countries. Sessions of the conference were to continue until July 29. The Pacific Institute can discuss conditions, deplore evils, suggest remedies; meanwhile the man who holds official authority and responsibility for Hawaiian affairs is Governor Wallace Rider Farrington. Governor (by appointment of President Harding) since July 5, 1921, he has been, is and will be concerned chiefly with one major "problem" the Japanese question. For while the Hawaiian Islands are called Hawaiian on the maps and in the histories, the original Hawaiian stock constitutes less than 10% of the island population. The most recent official figures on Hawaii (the Federal Census of 1920) gave the Islands a population of 255,912. This population was divided into 13 racial groups, of which the Japanese, with 109,274 outnumbered any other single group by a ratio of about 4 to 1. The present population of the Islands is estimated at something more than 300,000, of whom more than 120,000 are Japanese.

Thus about 40% of the population is isolated in a compact, race-conscious, difficult-to-assimilate group which is almost totally disenfranchised. For only those Japanese who were born in the Islands are eligible to citizenship. Since the Islands were annexed in 1898 to the U. S. and since the Japanese were the last large immigration group to arrive in the Islands, very few Japanese of those born in Hawaii have as yet reached voting age. In 1925, for example, there were less than 2,000 registered Japanese voters. On the other hand, however, there are some 60,000 Hawaiian-born Japanese in the Islands, and as they reach voting age they will constitute a considerable portion of the Islands' voting strength. In any consideration of the situation in Hawaii, it must be remembered that a relatively few Caucasian families, descendants of missionaries and traders who came to the Islands long before the arrival of U. S. dominion, control most of the Island wealth. The Islands are dominated by a comparatively small minority of their inhabitants.

"Only organized capital," Governor Farrington, has said, "could have furnished progress at so rapid a pace. . . . They [the "first families" discussed above] own or operate nearly all the valuable lands. Will the time come when these large holdings will have to break up under the pressure of a growing population? No one can look that far into the future."

It is the Japanese question, plus the general situation of the rule of the few by the many that has prevented Hawaiians from realizing their dream of becoming the 49th state. Governor Farrington has been accused of insincerity in telling schoolchildren that statehood can be best achieved by their growing up as "good American citizens." To this charge, however, the Governor replies that "the very fact that statehood is absolutely out of the question at the present time is so much more reason why we should aspire to it the harder." As for the race question, the Governor has said: "There is less race prejudice in Hawaii than elsewhere. We live amicably and recognize that our problems are common problems rather than that they belong to any single race."

Governor Farrington was born in Orono, Me., in 1871. After having been a reporter on various Maine newspapers, he became one of the founders and managing editor of the Rockland (Me.) Daily Star. In 1894 he went to Hawaii as managing editor of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Honolulu. He served on the Territorial Board of Education and in the Republican Territorial Commission (1906-07). While Pacific Institute delegates met at Honolulu, Kilauea (largest active volcano in the world) erupted, flooded its eight-mile-around crater with molten lava. Visitors from Hilo (30 miles away) were driven back from the crater by dense sulphur fumes.

Natives attributed the eruption to Pele, Hawaiian goddess of Volcanoes. Although Hawaiian mythology relates that Pele long ago agreed never to let the lava-flow menace Hilo, the natives, not altogether confident that the goddess would keep her bargain, sought to appease her last week with offerings of fruit and berries.

A more modern, though still semi-mythological explanation of Kilauea's outburst linked Pele with Dr. Thomas A. Jaggar, volcano-legist. Dr. Jaggar has spent many years studying Kilauea, and has resided in an observatory

(known as Volcano House) built on the side of the mountain. For some time, however, he has been away on a volcano-studying mission in Alaska. Natives maintain that Pele has grown fond of Dr. Jaggar and that the eruption is her protest against his absence. In support of this theory they say that when, in 1924. Dr Jaggar left Hawaii for a visit to New York, Kilauea promptly became rampant and that its last previous outbreak (1925) came while Dr. Jaggar was traveling in the Orient.

*Brother of Secretary of the Navy Curtis Dwight Wilbur.