When John Reinecke, a Kansas native, arrived in Hawai'i in 1926 as a professor in Creole languages, he was struck not just by the racial diversity of his adopted home, but by what he saw as injustices against the working class perpetrated by business and the military.
Reinecke became fast friends with union leaders Jack Hall and Art Rutledge. These relationships, along with his work for Koji Ariyoshi's Honolulu Record newspaper, would bring Reinecke under increasing suspicion as the McCarthy era unfolded.
In 1948, Reinecke and his wife, Aiko (nee Tokimasa), were fired from their public high school teaching jobs (they were suspended the previous year) for supposed communist leanings.
Reinecke was later targeted in the Smith Act trials and charged as part of the Hawaii Seven accused of advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
Reinecke and his co-defendants were ultimately convicted, despite no evidence to indicate that their alleged advocacy of communism crossed the line to advocacy for a violent overthrow. He and five others received five-year sentences; another was sentenced to three years. The convictions were overturned on appeal in 1958.
In 1976, just as the Reineckes were to receive the third Allan F. Saunders Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai'i, the Board of Education voted to exonerate them, thereby overturning their 1948 firing.
The exoneration enabled their lawyers, Harriet Bouslog and Myer Symonds, to seek damages for the wrongful termination. In 1978, they agreed to a settlement of $250,000 and received an apology from the state Legislature.
