In 1946, the 79th Congress established the House Un-American Activities Committee, a panel of nine representatives charged with investigating subversive activities against the government.
The committee had its roots in the so-called Dies Committee of the late 1930s and early '40s, which originally focused on Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity before turning to suspected communist infiltration of the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Theater Project. By the late 1940s, the Red Scare in America was reaching a fever pitch.
In a speech he delivered on Nov. 11, 1947, Hawai'i Gov. Ingram Stainback, who regularly accused political rivals and adversaries of being under "communist influence," said that communism preached "fanatical violence" against democratic governments and vowed to cast out communists who had infiltrated the local government.
On April 10, 1950, the House committee held a hearing in Honolulu focused on the 1949 dock strike by International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers that lasted for 176 days and crippled the territorial economy. The hearing was spurred by a pamphlet written by a former vice president of the ILWU on Kaua'i, Ichiro Izuka, titled "The Truth About Communism in Hawaii," which suggested the strike was a communist plot masterminded by local ILWU President Jack Hall.
The committee summoned 70 witnesses to testify. Thirty-nine of those summoned — "The Reluctant 39" — refused to testify, citing the Fifth Amendment. They included Jack Kawano, who earlier had identified local Community Party members at a hearing of the Un-American Activities Committee in Washington. Constitutional Convention delegate Richard Kageyama admitted that he was a former Communist Party member and identified other members.
As a result of the hearing, seven Honolulu residents, dubbed the "Hawaii Seven," were arrested and charged with advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
The communism issue, seen as a barrier to statehood, would linger for years. As the House committee hearings concluded, U.S. Sen. Hugh Butler said that communism "seems to be the rule" in Hawai'i.
A Honolulu Advertiser story a few days later said the hearings proved "conclusively" that communists controlled the ILWU and the local Democratic Party. A week later, more than 100 delegates walked out of a Democratic Party convention over concerns about the issue.
