Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945 [Paperback]

Gary Y. Okihiro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 1992

Challenging the prevailing view of Hawaii as a mythical "racial paradise," Gary Okihiro presents this history of a systematic anti-Japanese movement in the islands from the time migrant workers were brought to the sugar cane fields until the end of World War II. He demonstrates that the racial discrimination against Japanese Americans that occurred on the West Coast during the second World War closely paralleled the less familiar oppression of Hawaii's Japanese, which evolved from the production needs of the sugar planters to the military's concern over the "menace of alien domination." Okihiro convincingly argues that those concerns motivated the consolidation of the plantation owners, the Territorial government, and the U.S. military-Hawaii's elite-into a single force that propelled the anti-Japanese movement, while the military devised secret plans for martial law and the removal and detention of Japanese Americans in Hawaii two decades before World War II. Gary Y. Okihiro is Associate Professor of History at Cornell University.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Much has been written about persecution of Japanese Americans on the U.S. West Coast, and little about Hawaii, where they were imported as farm workers. Discord over economic and social matters increased as the Japanese demanded fair treatment from the exploitive plantation owners, and the emergence of Japan as a world power complicated the issue. Hawaii's Japanese experienced selective relocations during World War II, but these hardships and the history of discrimination were just as important as that on the mainland. Though the influence of the California situation on the U.S. government's perceptions of Hawaii could have been better explored, Cane Fires remains a well-researched and well-written treatment of the subject. Recommended for specialists.
- Kenneth W. Berger, Duke Univ. Lib., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Okihiro's account is an important corrective to our understanding of the Japanese American Experience in World War II."
—The Hawaiian Journal of History

"Scholars of American race relations will want to read this book. So will anyone interested in Hawaii's history or in the experiences of Japanese or Asian Americans. It will go far in putting to rest any residual notion that the WWII experiences of the Japanese Americans represented 'aberration' or 'hysterical' reaction to wartime exigencies."
—Franklin S. Odo, University of Hawaii at Manoa

"A well-researched and well-written treatment of the subject."
—Library Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 330 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press; 1st edition (January 8, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877229457
• ISBN-13: 978-0877229452
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #844,293 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gary Y. Okihiro is professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, and is the founding director of Columbia's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies, and the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Studies Association.