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Hawaii’s World
TO me the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is personified in just one person -- Riley H. Allen. He was editor for 48 years, from the time the Evening Bulletin and Hawaii Star were merged in 1912 until 1960, when a court made him resign by appointing him a trustee of the estate that owned the paper. Riley Allen personified
Star-BulletinHe was one of the most extraordinary men I ever knew -- amazingly quick and sharp of mind, seemingly everywhere, seemingly balancing a zillion balls in the air at once, stern in his rectitude yet always compassionate and with a great sense of humor.
I overlapped him for the last 14 of his Star-Bulletin years. He was about the same age as my father. I had a paternal relationship with him, but he had them with many people, including dozens of youngsters whose education he helped fund.
He kept three secretaries busy -- often to write letters to mainland editors to promote statehood. One of them, Trinidad Peltier, is still at work but will retire tomorrow.
Allen and the Farrington family, publishers during his era, were of Hawaii's ruling Caucasian elite but constantly nudging them toward quality equal education for all regardless of race and the greatest equalizer of all, the enfranchisement that came with statehood.
Allen loved his fellow men but knew their foibles. During World War II he personally wrote the answers to local letters to Dorothy Dix, a pioneer advice columnist.
He stood strongly against communism, which infiltrated the postwar labor movement here, but retained respect from the editor of the party-line newspaper, The Record. Allen had given Koji Ariyoshi his first newspaper break by publishing his writings from the American South when he was a student.
Allen had a wiry build. His energetic gait was recognizable from a block away. I avoided important oral arguments with him for fear his quick mind would snap shut before I had all my facts on the table.
On important issues I wrote him notes and had a fair success rate. One of my greatest compliments was when he said he was glad I was chosen the second editor after him. I am not ashamed to say I was no Riley Allen. Few people could be. His precepts influence me even today.
On Dec. 7, 1941, he was at his office early as usual even though it was a Sunday. He organized the publication within a few hours of the extra edition that became internationally famous: "WAR! OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES."
Neither then nor later did he allow the perjorative word "Jap" in the Star-Bulletin. He and the Farrington owners were unmoved by a staff petition saying the policy made many people consider the Star-Bulletin unpatriotic.
HE was enough a part of the establishment that I doubt if there ever was a labor strike he applauded. But our editorial stands always were for due process under the law for both sides -- even when the ILWU was accused of harboring Communists, whom he denounced.
In the titanic 1949 dock strike the Star-Bulletin urged an arbitrated settlement, which the employers opposed.
We were picketed by a broom brigade of management wives and suffered the withdrawal of advertising by our major advertisers. We stayed with our position, which could have saved a lot of grief had it been followed.
Allen wrote out all the instructions and news releases for his own funeral services, leaving blank only the time and place elements.
A poem he wanted included, that I can only approximate from differing sources, said: "I shall pass this way but once. If there is any good deed that I may do, let me do it while I can. I shall not pass this way again."
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.