Posted on: Sunday, December 5, 2004

Filmmaker relates how Burns upheld Nisei loyalty

By Ron Staton
Associated Press

The story of how thousands of Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps on the Mainland after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 is well documented.

More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were sent to 10 internment camps during World War II, but the story of why so few in Hawai'i were forced to leave their homes is not commonly known.

Filmmaker Tom Coffman hopes to change that.

The former Honolulu political reporter and author is working on a documentary that explains why — and how — the communities' working together on behalf of local Japanese-Americans influenced both Hawai'i's and the nation's history.

"I believe this laid the basis for statehood," said Coffman.

An interracial group started meeting in Hawai'i in 1939 in anticipation of war, fearing the effect on the U.S. territory would be devastating, he said.

"Their premise was that how well we get along during the war will determine how well we get along after," he said.

"The greatest sense of urgency came from the Japanese community," Coffman said. "But overlooked are the Caucasian community, business community, Chinese community."

The group began working as the Council for Interracial Unity.

"They had no religious origins, but Christianity was a common denominator," Coffman said. "But there was no religious orientation. It was a combination of pragmatism and idealism."

The group had several stalwarts:

• Shigeo Yoshida, an educator, writer and speaker, who was obsessed with creating a historical record, said Coffman, who found Yoshida's unarchived files at the University of Hawai'i.

• Hung Wai Ching, a UH engineering graduate, "restless spirit," and YMCA worker who had attended the University of Chicago and Yale Divinity Schools, where he was exposed to progressive ideas.

• Myles Carey, principal of McKinley High School.

• Charles Hemenway, a business executive and UH regent.

"The group struck on the idea of involving military intelligence and the FBI," Coffman said. Intelligence agencies had been keeping watch on the Hawai'i populace.

The group made contact with Robert Shivers, who had come to head the Honolulu FBI office and was in charge of determining whether the Japanese population would be loyal. The group enlisted Shivers in their cause and surrounded him with Nisei advisers. Nisei are second-generation Americans of Japanese ancestry, commonly known as AJAs in Hawai'i.

A speaking campaign was started, and a huge rally was held at McKinley High School in June 1941 to demonstrate loyalty to the United States. "The head of Army intelligence stood up and told them 'support the war effort and we will support you,"' Coffman said.

As a result of the rally, a few young Nisei went to the Police Department and volunteered their service in event of war. They were assigned to Lt. John A. Burns, who began planning a network of Nisei who would function as a communication morale-boosting network.

Burns, a Democrat who went on to be elected governor in 1962, was deployed to Shivers with a four-man team who gave the FBI help in the interrogating process.

Burns wrote in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin column that the Japanese-Americans were loyal to the United States and it was in the United States' interest to cultivate their loyalty. "It was a gutsy move; it put him personally at risk," Coffman said.

After the initial period of crisis following the Dec. 7 attack, the council regrouped and went to work, with Hemenway and Shivers in key roles.

Yoshida, Ching and Charles Loomis, an assistant to prominent businessman Frank Atherton, became the civilian component to the martial law government, essentially the "morale section," Coffman said.

"Their aim was to get through the war in better condition than before it started," he said. "It was an effort to create a more multicultural society."

The council formed organizations on each major island in each ethnic group. The best known was the Japanese community's Emergency Services Committee.

Yoshida and Ching proposed the Varsity Victory Volunteers, a labor battalion that would work at the Army's Schofield Barracks to show support. Word of the group spread up the ranks to Washington, and they became a significant factor in the formation of the Army's storied 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Coffman said he has been working on the project for about 10 years, including a month one summer at the National Archives collecting archival film.

It started with his book "Catch a Wave," which chronicled Burns' final campaign for governor in 1970. He said he asked Burns where he was on Dec. 7, and Burns replied that he had met with Shivers that day.

Coffman hopes to complete the documentary by next fall, and plans a series of community showings before it is aired.