TY - JOUR
AU - Tamura, Eileen, H.
AB - Officials in Hawaii in 1942—with its 158,000 Nikkei (ethnic Japanese, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens)—have been applauded for avoiding the unconstitutional actions that were meted out to the 110,000 U.S. West Coast Nikkei, who were incarcerated en masse during World War II. Less has been noted, however, about the military regime imposed on the territory immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In response to the attack, the territorial governor Joseph Poindexter placed the islands under martial law, giving the U.S. Army control over island residents' juridical, economic, political, social, and personal lives. Examples of areas affected include curfew and blackout hours, censorship of mail, the schooling of children, the amount of cash people were allowed to hold, food production, restaurant hours, and the prices of goods. Civilian jobs, wages, and working conditions proved to be a contentious issue between labor unions and the military. The replacement of civilian courts by military tribunals also created sharp public disagreements between military officials and their critics. The army's consistent position—even toward the end of 1944, two years after the Battle of Midway made it evident that little or no threat remained of a second attack on the islands—was that the large numbers of ethnic Japanese (37 percent of the population) made martial law necessary for the security of the territory. The army maintained its position despite the lack of any case of sabotage in the islands as well as public acknowledgement of the heroic performance of Japanese American combat units—the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The military's continued control of the territory, in particular, of all judicial functions, did not go unchallenged. Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes believed it was unconstitutional and unnecessary, a view joined in mid-1942 by the newly appointed territorial governor Ingram Stainback, Hawaii's delegate to Congress Samuel Wilder King and his successor, Joseph Farrington, and Hawaii's attorney general Garner Anthony. All of these officials argued publicly and with federal officials that civilian offenses unrelated to national defense should be handled by civilian courts. In 1955 Anthony, a legal scholar and vocal critic of the army's actions, published Hawaii under Army Rule. In it, he excoriated the federal government for its heedless disregard of the U.S. Constitution. Sixty years later, mining rich and wide-ranging documents released well after the publication of Anthony's book, Harry N. Scheiber and Jane L. Scheiber offer a more extensive examination of this important episode in U.S. history, including the motives and inner workings of the military before and during the period of martial law. The book is divided into eighteen chapters within seven parts—examining prewar planning, the decision to declare martial law, civilian daily life, racial profiling of ethnic Japanese, political and legal challenges, and the termination of military rule. This prodigiously researched volume illuminates in detail the tensions between civilians and the military, raising important issues of constitutional protections during times of national security threats, issues that continue to confront American society today. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
TI - Bayonets in Paradise: Martial Law in Hawaii during World War II
JF - The Journal of American History
DO - 10.1093/jahist/jax096
DA - 2017-06-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/bayonets-in-paradise-martial-law-in-hawaii-during-world-war-ii-FMN20XQa8B
SP - 237
VL - 104
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -