ABSTRACT
T h e activity of Japanese fifth-columnists attending the attack upon Pearl Harbor on December 7 , 1 9 4 1 brings into the spotlight the question of
how the Japanese got into the Hawaiian Islands .1 The answer goes back to 1 8 7 1 , when Hawaii and Japan agreed upon a treaty-terminable only by mutual consent-in which there was a most-favorednation clause. This clause was destined to cause trouble for Hawaii later because Japan maintained that it guaranteed to Japanese residents in Hawaii the right to vote; Hawaii, however, answered that it referred only to economic matters. Im - migration under the treaty amounted to only 1 1 6 Japanese from 1 8 7 1 to 1 8 8 4 . 2
Inasmuch as Hawaii had thus secured for itself a lucrative basis for prosperity, cheap labor was a necessity. The natives were dying out and, moreover, refused to work on plantations because of previous mistreatm ent . 4 After numerous attempts to bring in Polynesians ,5 Portuguese ,6 and others the planters turned to the Far East. China was one source, Japan another. In 1 8 8 6 Japan and Hawaii agreed to a labor convention which caused as much trouble for Hawaii as did the treaty of 1 8 7 1 . Whereas the latter was terminable only by mutual consent, the convention of 1 8 8 6 was to last five years and continue thereafter until either party gave six m onths’ notice of a desire to end the agreement .7 Hawaii could thus cease
3 William Fremont B l a c k m a n , The making of Hawaii (New York, 1899), p. 253; U.S.,Senate documents, Vol. 8 (52d cong., 2d sess., doc. No. 76): Message from the president of the United States transmitting a treaty of annexation concluded . . . . between the United States and the provisional government of the Hawaiian Islands (Washington, 1893), pp. 67 ff.; Russell H. A n d e r s o n , “ Some aspects of tariff remissions on sugar, 1876-1927,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CXLI (1929), 152. See also U.S., House documents, Vol. 27 (53d cong., 2d sess., doc. No. 48): Message from the president of the United States transmitting a report of the secretary of state with copies of the instructions given to Mr. Albert S. Willis . . . . also the correspondence since March 4 , i 88q concerning relations of the government to the Islands (Washington, 1895), p. 51.
