Bob Dye
Hawai'i AJAs no longer voting in lock-step
By Bob Dye
Kailua-based writer and historian
We've had two Irish, a Japanese, a Hawaiian, and a Filipino governor. Save for that first Irishman, a Republican, all of our governors were Democrats. And it was unionized, party-loyal Japanese voters who got credit for their victories.
Because Mazie Hirono jumped races, from governor to Honolulu mayor, Hawai'i's Japanese American voters miss a chance in 2002 to lodge one of their best-known politicians in Washington Place.
So which gubernatorial candidate will get the coveted Japanese vote? Among the early leading candidates, for instance, nouveau Democrat "Andy" Anderson, who is of Portuguese, Hawaiian, Norwegian, English, Scottish and Irish descent? Or moderate Democrat Jeremy Harris, who is descended from Scots, Irish, English and Swedes? In the general election, will they switch to moderate Republican Linda Lingle, whose ancestors were from Germany, Russia and Poland?
In lesser races, local Japanese have plenty of chances to vote their ethnicity. Mazie for nonpartisan mayor, Dalton Tanonaka for GOP lieutenant governor, Jon Yoshimura for Democratic lieutenant governor, and on and on. But will they?
Jim Hall, a longtime student of Hawai'i politics, analyzed the 1984 election on O'ahu for the GOP. Among other things, he reported Japanese "supported other Democrat candidates except when the Republican candidate was of Japanese ancestry."
"That didn't happen 10 years later," pollster Don Clegg reminds me. "In 1994, Japanese voters left Republican Pat Saiki, a Japanese, to vote for Democrat Ben Cayetano, a Filipino."
Has time modified the voting behavior of Japanese?
"Solidarity has dissipated," Clegg says. "The Japanese vote is less homogeneous than it once was, because young AJA voters are more independent than their parents."
The strength of the Japanese vote is "waning," agrees Hall.
There is consensus among other observers, too, that the Japanese vote "ain't what it used to be." But the myth remains.
Japanese first voted in the territorial election of 1902. Of the 12,612 voters, only three were Japanese. So? I bet folks guessed they voted as a bloc. Kyodotai!
And maybe they worried about what that portended.
No need. Not yet. The number of Japanese registering to vote was trifling.
There were just 287 AJA voters in 1918, and a mere 2.5 percent of those registered in 1920.
But eight years later, the number grew to 4,389 in an electorate of 46,058.
Japanese were now the largest ethnic group in Hawai'i, numbering 134,600.
Although they had sufficient numbers in some districts to win easily if they voted in a bloc, no Japanese had yet won elective office.
To pooh-pooh the notion that AJAs would bloc-vote for one of their own, a Japanese commentator wrote: "A ballot in the hands of an American citizen of Japanese ancestry is not like a razor in the hands of a baby. Experience shows that he can use it judiciously without injuring his own cause or menacing the welfare of others." He added, it is "our duty to vote for the best candidate regardless of color or race."
The following year, Japanese won public office for the first time. Elected outright in the primary was Republican Noboru Miyake to the Kaua'i Board of Supervisors. On O'ahu, Democrat Andy Yamashiro won a seat in the House.
And on the Big Island, Republican Tasaku Oka also won a representative seat.
In the '30s, the party of choice for most Japanese candidates was the GOP.
As the dominant party, candidates hopped aboard the winner. Of greater import, there was a genuine effort made to bring Japanese into the GOP.
In the 1940 primary, when Japanese were 31 percent of the population, 13 of 29 Japanese on the ballot won.
A.T. Spalding, Republican chairman of Hawai'i County, was especially supportive of Japanese candidates. When The Advertiser questioned the character of Hilo Republican Sanji Abe, a territorial Senate candidate in the 1940 general election, Spalding accused the newspaper of attacking "a man because of his racial origin ... You are inflaming the very feeling that we have been so careful never to kindle — racial animosity."
Abe won and took his seat as the first AJA elected to the territorial upper house. In 1943, he resigned his office because the U.S. military governor refused to release him from detention. Like others during World War II, he was interned because he was a leader in the Japanese community. Earlier, other AJA office holders were persuaded to remove their names from the ballot. Only one, a supervisor on the Big Island, kept his seat throughout the war.
After the war, Japanese re-entered politics, and in the '50s took control of the Democratic Party. The political victories that followed are familiar history.
But by 1989, "Andy" Anderson, then head of the state GOP, observed that the old ethnic loyalties were dying. That has accelerated today, he claims. The third- and fourth-generation local Japanese don't "blindly follow" in their fathers' footsteps.
"They are an independent bunch," he says. "But they continue to respect their elders. If I can get their moms' and dads' endorsement, they will listen to my message, at least."
GOP leader Linda Lingle, who is Jewish, says Hawai'i's Japanese are a lot like Jews: "They value education, are self-reliant and look out for people in need."
Because of their group values, they support those people who share them. She said she's not sure that's bloc voting.
Mayor Jeremy Harris says the Japanese community is "extremely important" in the political process. "They take their role in it very seriously. Their turnout is high. And they vote their values: family, education, hard work and the well-being of the next generation."
Kodomo no tame ni: For the sake of the children.
