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First Sunday Burl Burlingame |
COURTESY "KAMEHAMEHA -- THE FIRST AND LAST KING OF PARADISE"
Historian or "journalist of the past"? Writer and filmmaker Tom Coffman looks back to find out where Hawaii might be going in the future.
TOM COFFMAN: HE'S STILL RIDING ...
History’s wave
Tom Coffman grew up loving journalism, then walked away from it just as he was making a name for himself in the field. Disliking what he believed were the craft's artificial, professional barriers between writer and subject, Coffman threw himself into a new type of history-writing -- highly personal, expertly written, atmospheric and clear-eyed.
Almost as soon as he graduated from journalism school in Kansas, Coffman moved to Honolulu to write about politics for the Honolulu Advertiser and then the Star-Bulletin.
This experience formed his first book. "To Catch a Wave: A Case Study of Hawaii's New Politics" created a sensation in local literary and historical circles and is still considered a primary work about politics in Hawaii.
While making ends meet preparing slide-tape presentations for Hawaii schools, Coffman became interested in making film documentaries. His filmed works include "O Hawai'i," "May Earth Live: A Journey through the Hawaiian Forest" and "Arirang: The Korean American Journey."
Coffman's newest
"The Island Edge of America -- A Political History of Hawaii" by Tom Coffman (University of Hawaii Press, $16.95)
As the 100th anniversary of annexation approached, Coffman wrote "Nation Within: The Story of America's Annexation of the Nation of Hawai'i," which won several awards and was featured by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
His latest book is "The Island Edge of America," characterized by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin as the "first must-read book of 2003."
It is a political history of modern Hawaii, focusing primarily on the Japanese-American experience of World War II and the rise of iconization of John Burns and George Ariyoshi.
He and his wife, social worker Lois Lee, have three children. Their home overlooks the brilliant blue-green waters of Kaneohe Bay.
-- Burl Burlingame
The Kansas connection
Burl Burlingame: How about a capsule history of yourself?Tom Coffman: I grew up in Kansas and I was always interested in writing. I had this image of the country editor in front of me -- literally, William Allen White, the famous editor of the Emporia Gazette. It was the sort of a world in which everything was knowable if you worked at it.
My dad was in Hawaii during the war and taken into the home of a Hawaiian family. And these brown-skinned Hawaiians showed up at our home in Linden, Kansas, when I was 4 years old, and I was enveloped into these warm hugs and flowing muumuus. I grew up with my little aloha shirts and a coconut that my father had mailed to me. I still have it with all the stamps affixed to it! As soon as I left the William Allen White School of Journalism (at the University of Kansas), I headed to Hawaii and was hired onto the Advertiser by Buck Buchwach.
BB: What was it about journalism that drew you in?
TC: I was always interested in writing and I was politicized by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Journalism had a tremendous appeal because I felt that, for social change to occur, knowledge had to get out. (In) the first serious historical adventure I ever went on, I traveled all over the American South -- 11,000 miles that year -- writing about the civil rights movement.
BB: What was it about journalism that drove you out?
TC: The newspaper chains! I also felt that I was repeating myself and that I reached a point -- to be real honest -- I felt that being a newspaper person was a barrier between myself and other people. I craved the depth of relationship that isn't possible when you are using people simply as sources, and they are using you as a conduit to the world.
BB: Objectivity? Subjectivity?
TC: I initially viewed the world in a subjective way, and yet I have never abandoned the ideal of objectivity. It sounds like a paradox, and is a paradox, but that's the conflict all journalists live with. There's a great deal to be said for examining events from multiple points of view. I'm very wary of ideologically based analysis. Inside I've wanted to be a journalist all my life.
BB: How did you move from journalism into history?
TC: I kept going back and back. I kept seeing the events I was covering as a reporter had deeper meaning than appeared on the surface. So I've always been going backward in time!
BB: What is it about Hawaii that kept you here?
TC: Hawaii is a beautiful universe. It is so complicated, the relationships so rich, that the questions that arise from being involved with Hawaii are so fascinating that it has kept me happy.
BB: You work in such different mediums -- why?
TC: I love the depth you can get in a book, and the complexity. I like the audience connection that you can get with a film. But even documentaries are an illusion of complexity compared to books.
BB: Your books are non-linear ... is the world too complicated to examine in chronological order?
TC: It's a fallacy to think that history progresses in tidy chronologies. There seems to be sort of looping cyclical changes that eventually intersect and create -- some day of reckoning. It's a complicated and uneven process. I don't try to write tidy history, and I'm sometimes critiqued for that by historians, which is OK. It's up to historians to reduce history to tidiness.
BB: Are you a historian?
TC: I view myself as a journalist of the past!
STAR-BULLETIN / 1959 The Great White Father
BB: You arrived in the islands in the middle of the (Gov. John) Burns era ...TC: I arrived here Dec. 5, 1965.
BB: Burns is the seminal figure in postwar Hawaiian political history.
TC: He was already this figure of history by the time I got here. Nonetheless, I was quickly thrust into writing about him and covering him. On one level he was sort of awe-inspiring; on another level he was sort of difficult. He didn't like inquiring reporters. He didn't want an open process. The longer I live, the more I realize there aren't many -- or any -- chief executives who do. And so it was a relationship with quite a bit of tension. Part of the tension revolved around events and politics, and part of the tension was somehow very personal.
BB: The great white father ... autocratic ...
TC: Yeah! People did call him the Great White Father. It sounds tongue-in-cheek today but they were serious about it then.
BB: Was a "great white father" necessary to smooth the transition from a largely white oligarchy to a primarily Asian political arena?
TC: Burns' ethnicity played a crucial transitional role. All the symbolism and mythology about Burns needs to be understood in the realm of non-white people in Hawaii, and it needs to be understood particularly in the terms of Japanese Americans.
BB: Burns excelled here in Hawaii. How would he have done elsewhere?
TC: Burns is a prime example of an incredibly intelligent person who wasn't very well educated, or self-educated, and so he transmitted a kind of mixed message -- a rough-hewn person who's brilliant. He had an astronomical score on his police department entrance exam. He rose very, very quickly within the police department. He would have risen in Congress had he remained there, and the effectiveness of the relationships he developed in the short time he was there is proof of that.
BB: Burns went back to high school in his 20s ...
TC: He was the product of erratic temperament and hard times, no doubt. My own grandfather only went to school until the fifth grade, and when he retired there were 1,500 men under him at his Santa Fe locomotive shop.
BB: Burns was in Hawaii at the right place and the right time.
TC: He was also the right person. Had there not been a Burns, the same process of change would have taken place, but arguably it might not have occurred in 1954 but later. The change had to do with the development of Hawaii as a multicultural, multiethnic community in which everyone was given respect.
BB: Burns came to power in an era when there was tremendous suspicion of Hawaii, with the labor unions and various racial groups and the liberal drift in politics, when the rest of country was getting more conservative.
TC: Burns was really good at vouching for Hawaii to the United States. He'd go up to Washington, D.C., and convince the Labor Department that the ILWU was a union and not a communist cell. He was very good at telling Congress that Americans of Japanese ancestry were primarily Americans, not Japanese. He was very good at bridging that distance. He was the Americanizing figure for both sides.
BB: I sensed a kind of priest-like, rigorous morality to his efforts.
TC: His daughter Sheenagh Burns wrote an analysis of him that said that once he dealt with the demon of drink, and the fact that his wife (who had polio) was not going to walk again, he actually became priest-like, channeling all his frustrated energy into the transformation of Hawaii. I think that's a very credible analysis. He prayed every morning. He walked by himself to the cathedral every morning, in the winter he walked in the dark. He struggled to be the best person he could be, with the kind of stricken conscience of a holy man.
BB: What kind of family psychoanalyzes their own father?
TC: A tension-ridden family, obviously. She describes it as tension-filled. I think Jack Burns was consumed with tremendous tension: I saw it whenever I interviewed him, and I wasn't the only person who found it difficult to be around him. This tension was a constant feature of his life.
Quiet and effective
BB: How about his acolyte, George Ariyoshi? I have this impression that Burns took (then-Lt. Gov.) Ariyoshi under wing and groomed him in many ways, but at the same time they're very different persons. If Ariyoshi was as tightly wound as Burns, he masked it very well.TC: Ariyoshi was definitely mentored by Burns, taught the ropes of how to govern -- Burns either believing that Ariyoshi would have to take over before his term ended, or that he could be elected to succeed him.
BB: Both occurred. What a challenge to be selected as the successor to the Great White Father -- was he as driven as Burns?
TC: Ariyoshi, because he's a relatively quiet person, never projected that kind of tension. But Ariyoshi is an extremely secure human being. I think he took his relationship with Burns in stride. Ariyoshi has this tremendously strong core in which he was his own person. I'm very interested in Ariyoshi as a person. He was the product of his father's training, to some extent, and so when he encountered Burns, here's another very powerful figure from the previous generation. He responded to that, but he was already this fully developed human being. In the early '50s his friend (Democratic organizer) Tom Ebesu and Burns conspired to get him to run. People always saw leadership in Ariyoshi from a very early age. He was president of his McKinley High School class, he was on the school debating team; teachers singled him out and followed him around. They saw a combination of intelligence and absolute sincerity.
BB: His "quiet and effective" groove, from a distance, seemed almost somnambulant.
TC: There's a huge misunderstanding about Ariyoshi. That "quiet and effective" manner is such a dominant impression that we don't see that the 1970s, when he was governor, were among the most turbulent years in Hawaiian history. If you analyze the events that went on -- the protests, the dawn of the Hawaiian renaissance, the Vietnam wind-down, Kahoolawe ... the 1960s in North America were the 1970s in Hawaii. As governor, he presided over all this, and kept everything organized and moving. The other thing that is obscured by his image is that he is a person of tremendously deep conviction and real passion, but it's all bottled up so you don't see it.
BB: Ariyoshi has faded from the radar since he left office.
TC: Yeah. He's done a lot of public service. He did a lot to keep the East-West Center on track. More than any other private citizen, certainly. He does consulting and traveling in Asia. He's very well-known throughout Asia.
BB: The time period of Burns and Ariyoshi is now far enough back to look back upon it with dispassion. What is their legacy? What was your goal is writing this book?
TC: I was just trying to connect Hawaii's political history under the American system without being encyclopedic about it ... at least what I thought the high points were. Their legacy is an open society, a society that is safe for diversity. The Hawaiian movement was nurtured by the atmosphere that Ariyoshi created. It would have happened on its own, certainly, but they created an atmosphere in which it could thrive.
COURTESY PHOTO
“It was important to ... read the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention. What’s in those proceedings is quite stunning today.” --Tom Coffman, Hawaii historian and journalist
The last liberal state
BB: The feel-good atmosphere in Hawaii during the 1960s, when JFK was exclaiming that Hawaii was what democracy was all about, has persisted. We're the last liberal state in the United States. What is it about us? Are we about how we prefer to perceive the American ideal?TC: We're a semi-separate society, and a semi-separate culture. Politically, this translates into something people see as more liberal or open. It's certainly more tolerant. Mutual respect among people is much greater here than it is on the U.S. mainland. People feel secure enough here to be themselves, and to thrive being themselves. That's really remarkable.
BB: And yet the vision of an ideal society inverted during the 1960s. The decade began with the notion we were blending together culturally -- James Michener called it the "golden race" -- but by the 1970s we were ethnically divided. What's the deal?
TC: People were proud of whatever they were, but that made them more ready to mix. What caused the reversal? It's a great mystery. There was an upwelling of interest in ethnicity, and it was planet-wide. Obviously the American civil rights movement had something to do with it. People got enough airspace to retrieve their stories, own history, a greater sense of identity and dignity. It all leads to the issue of the modern age, greater diversity.
BB: The human animal craves a smaller cultural identity rather than a larger political identity?
TC: Hawaii has the most interesting tribe on the planet!
BB: What was your impetus to write about this particular subject?
TC: I was obsessed with two events. One was annexation and what resulted from annexation. And the other was the wariness toward the Japanese population in Hawaii and the lead-up to World War II -- and the spontaneous effort to protect the Japanese community here from mass internment. I felt those are the two huge events that haven't been adequately identified in past histories of Hawaii. I wanted to reconnect those events to an evolving understanding of Hawaii, not just as a state, but as a society.
BB: It's striking that all the federal officials who were sent to Hawaii during the war to deal with our "Japanese problem" became their biggest champions, almost overnight. In 1941, it was still within many memories that Hawaii had once been independent.
TC: That these people would come out from Washington and be transformed into advocates for the Japanese community said that there had already been a lot of social evolution in Hawaii up to that time. The Japanese-American citizens could emerge in interaction with these big Feds in ways the mainlanders could relate to, and understand. They were citizens they could identify with, people they could trust. That says something about the development of society in Hawaii. That kind of communication wasn't possible in the heavily racist environment of the United States.
BB: Did your notions of how Hawaii evolves change while you were researching? Anything surprise you?
TC: I was surprised by the depth of calculation and the intensity of effort that went into the protection of the Japanese. I was really stunned by that. I was interested in the turmoil of the 1970s as well and the furthering of society in what was like some sort of post-early statehood period, which led to these multiple ethnic movements and to the Hawaiian movement, and Ariyoshi's role in that, which is generally overlooked. I think Ariyoshi played a very important role in that. The 1970s are a least far enough back to explore it as history. It was important to go down to the archives and read the proceedings of the (1978) Constitutional Convention. What's in those proceedings is quite stunning today, in light of what's happened since then. Those were exciting thoughts that were moving around Hawaii.
BB: The only constant about Hawaii is change.
TC: Certainly Hawaii was reinventing itself then. And we presume that Hawaii is still reinventing itself, but other than the Hawaiian movement, I can't tell in what way today.
BB: Modern histories of Hawaii seem to end around statehood, as if we had reached the Holy Grail ...
TC: Statehood wasn't the end of history, but a transition to a new history. Statehood allowed Hawaii to open up, and to let people assert themselves more, and allowed the genie of the Hawaiian movement to get out of the lantern. The definitions of Hawaii actually became more complicated even as it appeared that Hawaii was becoming more homogenous. It actually became more complex and diverse. And as it was becoming less and less like the United States on the level of politics, it was becoming more and more like the United States on the level of nationalization, colonialization, globalization. These two trends about Hawaii are very much in conflict with each other -- and the question isn't settled.
Mark Coleman's conversations with people who have had an impact on our community appear on the first Sunday of every month. If you have a comment or suggestion, please send it to mcoleman@starbulletin.com.
