THE RACIAL CHAOS OF HONOLULU

Evening Star, Issue 21073, 9 April 1932, Page 24

THE RACIAL CHAOS OF HONOLULU

PARADISE OR NIGHTMARE? In the Hawaiian Islands and particularly in their capital, Honolulu, are gathered together all the diverse peoples of the Pacific with many others of European descent, writes Dr C. M. Yonge. The liners coming from San Francisco, Vancouver, or Yokohama, or from Australia by way of Fiji and Samoa, are met by the Hawaiian band playing their welcome, ‘ Alohoe Oe.’ Hawaiian women bear garlands of leis to deck the arriving passengers. But once in the bustling modern city of Honolulu the native Hawaiian is hard to find. The centre of the city is a typical American town with fine shops and hotels, but adjoining this are Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino quarters with a teeming Asiatic population. The history of the Hawaiian Islands since their first discovery by Europeans, and particularly since the development of the sugar cane and pineapple plantations, has been the story of the influx of one race after another. First of all came the Portuguese, bringing with them the guitar, from which the natives evolved the ukelele. Gradually they left the land and congregated in the towns, and their place on the plantations was taken by Japanese, who swarmed over in their thousands. In time they, too, followed the Portuguese to the towns, and the labour problem was solved. by the introduction of Filipinos, who now form the bulk of the plantation labour. Meanwhile the Chinese, the traders of the Pacific who penetrate so quietly yet so effectively into every country open to them, increased in numbers. Particularly since the Hawaiian monarchy ended in 1893 and the islands were finally annexed to the United States in 1898 Americans have come over in increasing numbers. The establishment of the great naval base at Pearl Harbour and the great development, especially since the war, of the tourist traffic, have brought a host of hotel and shopkeepers and others who make their living out of the visitors. The Hawaiians themselves have inevitably been pushed farther and farther into the background in their own country. In common with all the Polynesian peoples, they have declined in numbers except in $o far as they have intermarried with the various Asiatic and Caucasian peoples. Only in some of the outlying islands are they found still living under their original conditions. ELEVEN RACES. And so toMay the 350,000 people of the Hawaiian Islands are divided into no less than eleven races or racial crosses. The Japanese are the most abundant of all, numbering over onethird of the total population. After them come the Filipinos with some 00,000, then the Americans, with the Portuguese and Chinese almost as numerous. The Hawaiians make a poor fifth, with only 20,000, but there are, almost as many Asiatic-Hawaiians, and if the Caucasian-Hawaiians are added to these they outnumber the pureblooded Hawaiians. To complete the motley collection of peoples, there are Koreans and Porto Ricans, 6,000 of each, a few thousand Spaniards, and some hundred “ unclassified ”• oddments. Honolulu proclaims itself the paradise of the Pacific. To the American tourist the claim may appear justified, for Nature is very bountiful in these fertile volcanic islands. But to the traveller who comes to Honolulu from Tamoa or Tonga or the other unspoiled islands of Central Polynesia it seems rather the nightmare of the Pacific. To the anthropologists it is indeed a paradise of which they have freely availed themselves, with the help of the famous Bishop Museum at Honolulu, which is endeavouring to complete a survey of Polynesian civilisation before its' last traces disappear beneath the ever-rising Asiatic and Caucasian tide.