It took 25 years of blood (literally), sweat and tears to get the bill through Congress, primarily because of reservations caused by our mostly non-Caucasian population mix.
U. S. statehood had been considered even by King Kamehameha III before he died in 1854. But after 1900, when Hawaii became a U.S. territory, the ruling Caucasian establishment minority was happy with the status quo because they had leverage in Washington to influence appointments of our territorial governors and judges.
Most of the elite weren't willing to trust their Asian workers with voting equality.
This smugness changed in 1934 after the Massie rape-murder cases brought forth proposals to have a naval commission govern Hawaii and a sugar act by Congress treated us as foreign.
The moment was seized by Joseph R. Farrington, 37, whose father published this newspaper, and Samuel W. King, 47, a part-Hawaiian retired naval captain. They were for statehood all along but had to settle for incremental steps like getting Hawaii into the federal highway program under an "equal rights" banner.
In 1919 Farrington, on bended knee, proposed marriage to a fellow University of Wisconsin student with the caveat that his life would be dedicated to statehood.
King was elected delegate to Congress in 1934 and Farrington to the territorial Senate. They pressed the cause in Washington and at home.
King got two congressional delegations to come to Hawaii for hearings. Then World War II delivered Hawaii into military rule. King activated with the Navy. Farrington took his place in Washington, selling Hawaii to the point that Harry Truman played the piano at the Farrington home the night before he learned he was president.
The war record of peace and order on the home front after Dec. 7, 1941, and of remarkable heroism in bloody combat by Hawaii's soldiers of Japanese ancestry ended loyalty doubts for all fair-minded people. Prejudice then took refuge under a cover of fear of communism in Hawaii's labor ranks.
A 1950 state Constitutional Convention was organized to show Hawaii as true blue American. King was its president.
NEVERTHELESS, in Washington, Southern Democrats lined up against us, correctly seeing us as a civil-rights state whose senators would dilute their filibuster power. With help from GOP conservatives they produced frustration after frustration - stopping bills in committee when they could or linking Hawaii to Alaska on the floor to unite under one banner the opponents of each.
In 1956 Jack Burns, Democrat, was elected delegate to Congress by defeating the widow of Farrington who had died of a heart attack in 1954. Burns had the political courage to risk something the Farringtons never could have stomached - let Alaska go alone to be the 49th state, even though it had far fewer qualifications than Hawaii.
It worked. Alaska statehood passed in 1958 with a Democratic congressional leadership commitment that Hawaii would follow in 1959 if President Eisenhower, a Republican, okayed Alaska. It worked. On Aug. 21, 1959, Ike signed the Hawaii bill and unveiled a 50-star flag.