Joseph Kahahawai, Jr (1909-1932), a Native Hawaiian American boxer, was accused of raping Thalia Massie, a White woman. He was shot dead in what the White press called an honour killing. The Massie Affair was huge news across the US in 1932.
On the night of Saturday September 12th 1931 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Thalia Massie told police she had been raped by four or five men. It was clear that someone had beat her up. But since it was pitch dark and she was drunk, she did not know what the men looked like. The only thing she could remember about their car was a flapping top.
Meanwhile, Kahahawai and four of his friends were out drinking and nearly got into a car accident. In the argument that followed Kahahawai slapped a Hawaiian woman, who then called the police. Their car had no flapping top.
After Kahahawai’s near-accident was reported to police, Massie suddenly remembered the licence plate number.
US Navy: Massie was married to a Navy lieutenant, Thomas Massie. Admiral Yates Stirling, commander of Pearl Harbour, believed her story and wanted action.
The police dismissed eyewitness accounts of a White man following Massie right before the rape – as well as eyewitness accounts that placed Kahahawai and his friends miles away at the time.
The press called Kahahawai and his Native and Asian friends “thugs,” “fiends,” and “gangsters.”
Doctors said there was no sign Massie had been raped.
It went to trial. Massie’s tearful story was backed up by no proof. The jury was hung.
Enter Grace Fortescue, daughter of a New York millionaire banker and niece of the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. She had many powerful friends in New York and Washington. She was also Thalia Massie’s mother.
Fortescue, along with Massie’s husband and two Navy sailors, pulled Kahahawai right off the street into a black limousine and drove to her house. They questioned him, trying to get him to confess to the rape. One of the sailors had a gun drawn on him. The gun went off. Kahahawai died. When Fortescue went to throw Kahahawai’s body over a cliff, the police pulled her over. They saw the body in the back seat.
She admitted to the murder to the New York Times! Off the record she noted:
“You know, I originally come from the South and where I come from, we have a way of dealing with niggers and that’s what this was all about.”
Her friends got Clarence Darrow to defend her. He is famous for the Scopes “Monkey” Trial in 1925, defending John Scopes, a Tennessee schoolteacher who broke the law by teaching evolution.
Darrow, like the White press, defended it as an honour killing. The mixed-race jury found the Massie 4 guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The judge sentenced them to ten years in prison.
Admiral Stirling leaned on Governor Lawrence Judd to pardon the Massie 4. The governor reduced their sentence from ten years to one hour.
– Abagond, 2016.
Source: mainly PBS (2005).
See also:
- The pure white woman stereotype
- 1920: The 1920 Duluth lynching
- 1923: Rosewood
- 1930: The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith
- 1930: The Watsonville Riot
- 1955: Emmett Till
- Kingdom of Hawaii
- The term “thug”
- The N-word
- Phantom Caucasian Justice
577
-_- <— This face says it all…..
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Interesting. How come V.S. Naipaul and/or his racist views have not interested you to the point of posting about him?
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“4. The governor reduced their sentence from ten years to one hour.”
.
It’s (commonplace and regular) white privilege cases like this that completely dissolves the legitimacy and accuracy of the so-called FBI Crime Statistics, as far as I’m concerned.
These white people should have gotten, as a minimum, life imprisonment. I doubt that they actually served the one hour.
Never forget or underestimate how HATED and LOATHED we are in Amerika!
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Fan …
“4. The governor reduced their sentence from ten years to one hour.”
.
“It’s (commonplace and regular) white privilege cases like this that completely dissolves the legitimacy and accuracy of the so-called FBI Crime Statistics, as far as I’m concerned.”
This is why i always say to black people on this forum and in real life, for the love of god, stop wasting your time arguing with white people, when they bring up FBI crime stats on black people!
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Appalled, but not surprised. what has changed since the 30s?
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@ Abagond
Do you have a racial breakdown of the jury?
Probably the murderers were surprised not to have an all-white jury like on the mainland. Probably also why they weren’t acquited of all charges — although in the end they got off without punishment, anyway. 😦
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If the nice socialites need to kill a low-class drunkard, so be it.
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@ Solitaire
According to a newsreel: “The mottled jury was made up of three Chinese, a German, five Americans, one Hawaiian, a Portuguese and a Dane.”
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I am not surprised by this. What a horrible story.
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They do this today nothing has changed.
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This link goes into more detail.
http://murderpedia.org/female.F/f/fortescue-grace.htm
“First there are the accused men themselves. Horace Ida, Joseph Kahahawai, Henry Chang, David Takai, and Benjamin Ahakuelo. One of them was nearly beaten to death. Another was kidnapped, then shot and killed with a single bullet to his heart. All of them endured months of vicious defamation in the press and the threat of lengthy imprisonment for a crime they did not commit. And police and prosecutors tried all the usual tactics — including individual offers of immunity if one would inform on the others — and some that were not so usual, such as pitting the men against one another racially. Despite the threats and enticements, none of them ever budged from their insistence that they had done nothing wrong.
Then there were the lawyers who stepped forward in the first trial to defend the accused men without compensation. William Heen, of Chinese-Hawaiian ancestry, perhaps the best attorney in the Islands and the first non-haole Circuit Court judge in the Territory. A young local Japanese lawyer, Robert Murakami, recently graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. And a prominent haole originally from Mississippi, William Pittman.
Not only did they put their careers on the line, defending five almost penniless young men amid racial and political near-hysteria, but they did so by publicly exposing that turmoil for what it was. And none did so more effectively than Pittman, in a Southern drawl, summing up his defense by accusing the prosecution of bending to the will of “a conspiracy of white people — the small group of hypocritical haoles more anxious to satisfy the Navy than to seek justice.”
After the murder of Joseph Kahahawai the grand jury at first refused to indict the killers, despite the fact that they had been caught with the dead man’s body in the back seat of their car. Of the grand jury’s 21 members 19 were white. And, as one of them openly said, they were fearful of what would happen to their “standing in the community” if they voted to indict four well-connected white people for the murder of a poor Hawaiian. But the judge, Albert Cristy, who also was white, risked disqualification from the case and possibly his entire judicial future by repeatedly demanding an indictment from the grand jurors — and finally getting it.
Then there was Jack Kelley. Originally from Montana and a former law partner of William Heen, Kelley was trying his first case as a prosecutor when he went up against Clarence Darrow. Not intimidated by the immense political pressure he was under or by the legendary reputation of his opposing counsel, he matched Darrow point for point. Describing Darrow’s defense as advocacy of the “serpent of lynch law,” he warned the jury that nothing could be worse than allowing that to become the law of the land.
The jury was made up of three haole-Hawaiians, two local Chinese, one Portuguese, and six whites. After two days of deliberation — and fully aware of the ominous larger consequences — they brought in their unanimous verdict of guilty.
Darrow was outraged. Of the non-white jurors, he complained that during the trial “it was not easy to guess what they were thinking about, if anything at all.” Adding that “obviously they do not think as we do,” he concluded that “a jury of white men would have acquitted.” With this last comment Darrow conveniently forgot that a single negative vote from among the jury’s half-dozen haole members would have blocked the convictions.
Together with the first jury that had deadlocked in the rape trial, 24 jurors had heard both cases in an intensely politicized and menacing environment. Among them were seven whites, nine haole-Hawaiians, four Chinese, two Portuguese, and two Japanese. None had anything personal to gain — and a great deal to lose — by facing down the local and national white power structure and voting their consciences. They did it anyway.
There were others. Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, Hawai’i’s conservative Republican National committeewoman and a wealthy heiress to the Hawaiian monarchy, received a telephone call one night at her elegant home. It was from someone she had never met, a poor Hawaiian woman whose son had been arrested for a crime she said he didn’t commit. After speaking to Joseph Kahahawai’s mother for a while, the Princess hung up and called William Heen, urging him to take the case. She followed the subsequent events closely, speaking out publicly against what she called the “travesty” of a two-tiered justice system in the Islands, “one for the favored few and another for the people in general.”
At a very different place on the Islands’ social scale, George Wright was the haole editor of the English-language section of the Japanese newspaper Hawaii Hochi. Wright had been a civilian machinist at Pearl Harbor before being fired for union activities. Along with his boss, Hochi publisher and editor Frederick Makino, of haole and Japanese parentage, Wright maintained a lonely editorial drumbeat of criticism throughout the entire Massie affair — pointing out crippling flaws in the charges against the five men from the very beginning and never wavering from a demand for justice in the face of an avalanche of racial prejudice.”
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According to Wikipedia, Thalia Massie’s father and Theodore Roosevelt were first cousins. That family was connected in some very high places.
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dont you just love amerikkka?
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@Solitaire – exactly, the good, nice American people need to be given the benefit of the doubt. I’m glad you realized that.
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@ Bobby M
You really do need lessons in reading comprehension.
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That is the saddest point in Hawaiian history. Just like the Central Park Five, the men were innocent. Just like Jim Crow South, the white mob killed an innocent man. SMH.
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What an awful propaganda cartoon of “savage” Hawaiians brutalizing pristine White women. And the smiles of the defendants are sickening knowing they got away with murder.
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“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival….” – Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852
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blakksage,
Also Britain because both America and Britain are alike when it comes to cruelty and racism. American racism originated from the same Island that practice genocide and xenophobia.
SB
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The Massie case: Injustice and courage
By David Stannard
Seventy years ago last month, in the pre-dawn hours of a Sunday morning, two Honolulu police officers awakened a young man named Horace Ida at his home in Kalihi-Palama. Ida dressed hurriedly and went with the detectives, thinking he knew what they were after.
The four defendants and their supporters were at ‘Iolani Palace shortly after being found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to serve a one-hour “prison term” in 1932. From left: Clarence Darrow, chief defense counsel; defendants E.J. Lord and A.O. Jones; Maj. Gordon Ross, high sheriff; Grace Fortescue, mother of Thalia Massie and niece of inventor Alexander Graham Bell; Thalia and Lt. Thomas Massie; and George Leisure, defense counsel.
Advertiser library photo • May 4, 1932
Two hours earlier, while driving his sister’s car, Ida had a near collision with another auto at the corner of King and Liliha streets. An argument broke out and one of the men riding with Ida got in a brief scuffle with a woman in the other car. Ida assumed the woman remembered his license plate number and decided to file charges.
But soon after arriving at police headquarters Henry Ida found himself under arrest for a far more serious crime. The 20- year-old wife of a Pearl Harbor Navy officer identified him as one of five local men who allegedly had kidnapped, beaten, and repeatedly raped her earlier that evening after she had left a Waikiki nightclub alone.
The woman’s name was Thalia Massie, the daughter of a wealthy and politically powerful Washington, D.C., couple. And for the better part of the next year Honolulu was swept up in an unprecedented frenzy of accusations, threats, and violence.
“The Massie case” remains the most notorious criminal incident in the modern history of Hawai’i. Associated Press editors in 1932 voted it, along with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the biggest criminal case in the country. Books and articles have been written about it, and at least one Hollywood film was based — very loosely — on it. But by now many people have forgotten what actually happened, and many more have never heard of the case.
The story deserves retelling because it remains powerfully relevant today. Not only because of the tragedy and racial injustice associated with the case but also because of its less-heralded lessons in straightforward moral courage.
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Controlling the story
All the men accused of raping Thalia Massie were from impoverished or working class backgrounds. Two were Hawaiian, two were Japanese, and one was Chinese-Hawaiian. From the start, based on little or no evidence, local newspapers assumed the men were guilty and referred to them in print as “thugs,” “degenerates,” and “fiends.” Their alleged victim was described as “a white woman of refinement and culture.”
Although the Honolulu press would be filled for months with racially inflammatory articles and editorials on the case, few in the business, political, or military communities wanted the story to spread beyond the Islands. During the preceding decade tourism had begun to take off, Hawai’i’s semi-autonomous political status remained precarious, and the Navy commandant at Pearl Harbor was not eager for Washington to question his ability to maintain order. A blanket was thrown over news of the events, and at first the story was confined almost entirely to local newspaper accounts.
At the same time, authorities pressed for an aggressive prosecution to placate an enraged Navy and local haole community. Few expected anything but a quick conviction and lengthy prison sentences for the five men.
Vicious, racist violence
Benny Ahakuelo was accused of taking part in a gang rape.
Henry Chang was defamed as part of a gang of young bucks.
Horace Ida was beaten over a crime he didn’t commit.
Joe Kahahawai was killed after a rape trial ended in hung jury.
David Takai, like others accused, stuck to his word.
Advertiser library photo
But after a three-week trial and the longest jury deliberation ever in Hawai’i, the jurors declared themselves deadlocked. A mistrial was declared. Before a decision could be made about retrying the five men, however, Thalia Massie’s supporters and family took matters into their own hands.
First, Horace Ida was seized on a Honolulu street by a carload of sailors and was beaten, clubbed, and whipped with leather belts. Then, with the aid of two Navy enlisted men, Thalia’s husband and mother kidnapped and murdered one of the other defendants, Joseph Kahahawai. Police captured the killers with Kahahawai’s naked corpse, wrapped in a bloody sheet, lying on the back seat of their car as they were driving toward Koko Head to dispose of it.
At this point the story could be contained no longer. As the story erupted in the United States, the president called a special Cabinet meeting at the White House. Congress held emergency weekend hearings. The Justice Department and the FBI sent a team of investigators to Hawai’i. Every major American newspaper ran front-page stories on the case.
Sympathy for white woman
Almost without exception, the expressed sympathy of America’s politicians and journalists was not for the murdered young man, but for his killers. From coast to coast newspapers, magazines, and radio commentators described Hawai’i as — in the words of a syndicated Hearst editorial — a place where “the roads go through jungles, and in those remote places bands of degenerate natives lie in wait for white women driving by.”
Not to be outdone, Time magazine blamed the killing of Joseph Kahahawai on the victim and his friends, describing them as “five brown-skinned young bucks” who demonstrated the well-known “lust of mixed breeds for white women” when they raped Thalia Massie in the first place. The fact that the men had not been convicted of the alleged crime by a local jury only proved to the American press that Hawai’i itself was a “cesspool” of anti-white racial hatred that did not deserve territorial status.
Accordingly, the New York Post called for a battleship to sail into Honolulu harbor and rescue the killers from the civil authorities who had them under arrest. And everywhere the cry went up for the United States to impose martial law in the Islands.
Darrow defends killers
Into this furor, then, stepped Clarence Darrow, the most famous criminal lawyer in American history. Much of Darrow’s celebrity was based on his spectacular courtroom defenses of the oppressed and downtrodden.
But now, at age 74, he was broke, financially ruined by the Depression. So, for the equivalent of about $400,000 today, he agreed to defend four white people charged with killing a young Hawaiian man — a murder that even Darrow later admitted they were guilty of committing.
To a large extent Darrow’s strategy was the same one used by defenders of lynching in the South. Asserting flatly that Kahahawai had indeed participated in a gang rape of Thalia Massie — something that Honolulu prosecutors had been unable to prove — Darrow took the position that the murder was a justified “honor killing.” As such, he contended, customary “unwritten law” demanded that the accused should go free.
Facing Darrow across the courtroom was Honolulu’s newly appointed prosecutor, John Kelley. From the first day of jury selection until their final summations Darrow and Kelley went to war with one another.
Years later the New York Times, which ran nearly 200 stories on the case while it was in progress, would recall it as one of Darrow’s three most compelling trials ever. The others were the Scopes “Monkey Trial” over the teaching of evolution in Tennessee and the Leopold and Loeb murder trial in Chicago. But neither of the other two, the Times said, contained a moment of high drama to compare with Thalia Massie — under cross-examination by prosecutor Kelley — tearing a piece of evidence to shreds on the witness stand and rushing across the courtroom in tears to the waiting arms of her husband and the applause of a standing-room-only crowd of spectators.
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Getting away with a lie
A packed courtroom
Hundreds of Hawai’i residents and others tried to gain access to the courtroom during the Massie trial but were turned away.
Advertiser library photo • 1932
Reporters from throughout the world were in Honolulu for the trial, and a special radio hookup was installed so that Darrow’s closing argument could be carried live on the American continent.
Few juries have ever been under as much pressure as this one. On the one hand, there was no doubt that the four accused defendants had killed Joseph Kahahawai. On the other hand, there was equally little doubt that a conviction would bring, at the very least, what was called a “commission” form of government to Hawai’i, an arrangement only one step short of martial law. Congress and the American press had openly warned of such a consequence, and even prosecutor Kelley — while appealing to the jury for a verdict of guilty — admitted that a fair and honorable decision by them could mean the end of civilian rule in the Islands.
In addition, many of the jurors were employed by companies controlled by the corporate oligarchy that then dominated business in Hawai’i or they worked for firms with close connections to the Navy. Thus, their livelihoods and the economic well being of their families were at stake, in addition to the threatened political status of the place that was their home.
Surprising many who expected another hung jury, the panel reached a verdict. The defendants were found guilty of manslaughter. It wasn’t murder, but it was a conviction carrying a mandatory sentence of 10 years imprisonment.
Predictably, the national uproar grew louder. The thought that three white U.S. Navy men and a middle-aged Washington socialite might spend time in the Territorial prison — even if they had kidnapped and murdered a young Hawaiian man — seemed unthinkable.
And, as things turned out, it was. Despite the verdict, the killers would never spend a day in prison. After a flurry of diplomatic maneuvering between Washington and Honolulu, Territorial Governor Lawrence Judd commuted the sentences of the convicted killers to one hour, to be served in his office. In return, Hawai’i was spared martial law until the outbreak of World War II.
Within days of the commutation the Massies, Thalia’s mother, the convicted Navy men, and Clarence Darrow boarded a ship and left Hawai’i forever. Months later, an independent investigation by Mainland detectives, funded by the Territory, demonstrated beyond doubt that the accused men could not possibly have committed the alleged rape. Indeed, compelling evidence suggested that the supposed crime had never even occurred.
Cult of the killers
A multi-ethnic jury
Jury members in Joseph Kahahawai’s murder trial broke from deliberations at one point to attend a baseball game. The jury refused to accept the racism embedded in the arguments presented by the defense.
Advertiser library photo • 1932
The first historical assessments of the Massie case were not written until the mid-1960s.
Although not without sympathy for the accused, most accounts then and since have focused with tabloid-like fascination on those characters in the drama who behaved most contemptibly.
They include Thalia Massie, who falsely charged the five men in the first place; Thalia’s husband and mother, and the Navy enlisted men who helped the other two murder an innocent man; Navy Adm. Yates Stirling, who fabricated lies about conditions in Hawai’i in an effort to advance his own career; and Clarence Darrow, who borrowed a tactic from the Ku Klux Klan to defend his clients.
Heroism left out of story
In contrast, little attention has been paid to those who behaved well under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. And yet it is with them — a true racial and ethnic cross-section of Hawai’i then and now — that the valuable lessons of the Massie case reside.
First there are the accused men themselves. Horace Ida, Joseph Kahahawai, Henry Chang, David Takai, and Benjamin Ahakuelo. One of them was nearly beaten to death. Another was kidnapped, then shot and killed with a single bullet to his heart. All of them endured months of vicious defamation in the press and the threat of lengthy imprisonment for a crime they did not commit. And police and prosecutors tried all the usual tactics — including individual offers of immunity if one would inform on the others — and some that were not so usual, such as pitting the men against one another racially. Despite the threats and enticements, none of them ever budged from their insistence that they had done nothing wrong.
Then there were the lawyers who stepped forward in the first trial to defend the accused men without compensation. William Heen, of Chinese-Hawaiian ancestry, perhaps the best attorney in the Islands and the first non-haole Circuit Court judge in the Territory. A young local Japanese lawyer, Robert Murakami, recently graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. And a prominent haole originally from Mississippi, William Pittman.
Not only did they put their careers on the line, defending five almost penniless young men amid racial and political near-hysteria, but they did so by publicly exposing that turmoil for what it was. And none did so more effectively than Pittman, in a Southern drawl, summing up his defense by accusing the prosecution of bending to the will of “a conspiracy of white people — the small group of hypocritical haoles more anxious to satisfy the Navy than to seek justice.”
After the murder of Joseph Kahahawai the grand jury at first refused to indict the killers, despite the fact that they had been caught with the dead man’s body in the back seat of their car. Of the grand jury’s 21 members 19 were white. And, as one of them openly said, they were fearful of what would happen to their “standing in the community” if they voted to indict four well-connected white people for the murder of a poor Hawaiian. But the judge, Albert Cristy, who also was white, risked disqualification from the case and possibly his entire judicial future by repeatedly demanding an indictment from the grand jurors — and finally getting it.
Methods of murder
Evidence presented by authorities showed that Joseph Kahahawai had been kidnapped, shot to death, and wrapped in a bloody sheet.
Advertiser library photo • 1932
Then there was Jack Kelley. Originally from Montana and a former law partner of William Heen, Kelley was trying his first case as a prosecutor when he went up against Clarence Darrow. Not intimidated by the immense political pressure he was under or by the legendary reputation of his opposing counsel, he matched Darrow point for point. Describing Darrow’s defense as advocacy of the “serpent of lynch law,” he warned the jury that nothing could be worse than allowing that to become the law of the land.
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The jury was made up of three haole-Hawaiians, two local Chinese, one Portuguese, and six whites. After two days of deliberation — and fully aware of the ominous larger consequences — they brought in their unanimous verdict of guilty.
Darrow was outraged. Of the non-white jurors, he complained that during the trial “it was not easy to guess what they were thinking about, if anything at all.” Adding that “obviously they do not think as we do,” he concluded that “a jury of white men would have acquitted.” With this last comment Darrow conveniently forgot that a single negative vote from among the jury’s half-dozen haole members would have blocked the convictions.
Together with the first jury that had deadlocked in the rape trial, 24 jurors had heard both cases in an intensely politicized and menacing environment. Among them were seven whites, nine haole-Hawaiians, four Chinese, two Portuguese, and two Japanese. None had anything personal to gain — and a great deal to lose — by facing down the local and national white power structure and voting their consciences. They did it anyway.
There were others. Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, Hawai’i’s conservative Republican National committeewoman and a wealthy heiress to the Hawaiian monarchy, received a telephone call one night at her elegant home. It was from someone she had never met, a poor Hawaiian woman whose son had been arrested for a crime she said he didn’t commit. After speaking to Joseph Kahahawai’s mother for a while, the Princess hung up and called William Heen, urging him to take the case. She followed the subsequent events closely, speaking out publicly against what she called the “travesty” of a two-tiered justice system in the Islands, “one for the favored few and another for the people in general.”
At a very different place on the Islands’ social scale, George Wright was the haole editor of the English-language section of the Japanese newspaper Hawaii Hochi. Wright had been a civilian machinist at Pearl Harbor before being fired for union activities. Along with his boss, Hochi publisher and editor Frederick Makino, of haole and Japanese parentage, Wright maintained a lonely editorial drumbeat of criticism throughout the entire Massie affair — pointing out crippling flaws in the charges against the five men from the very beginning and never wavering from a demand for justice in the face of an avalanche of racial prejudice.
Need to remember
Just as it is essential that we continue to remember those who stood up to the likes of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, so it is important that we honor those who publicly opposed the forces of racism and oppression during the Massie case.
It took character and courage to speak out against the racial and political injustices that permeated life in Hawai’i at that time, at a time when a former Advertiser assistant editor recalled how American naval officers commonly referred to Hawaiians as “niggers.”
The example should cause all of us to consider what we would have done under those circumstances — and to reflect on what we are doing now, as more subtle forms of oppression tear at Hawai’i’s social fabric. What will people think, 70 years from now, as they look back on how we treat the poorest and the weakest and most damaged among us? How we behave now will be our most enduring legacy.
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The legacy of the Massie-Kahahawai case, 80 years on
John Rosa January 08, 2012 09:57 PM
In Kalihi-Palama on School Street, just between the United Public Workers building and the bus terminal for Kamehemeha Schools lies the small Puea Cemetery where Joseph Kahahawai, Jr. is buried. I always show my UH Manoa students a photo of his grave marker and ask them, as good historical detectives in training, what they notice. Yes, the tombstone indicates he was born on Christmas Day slightly over a century ago in 1909, but when pushed a little further, students see that it reads “Killed Jan. 8, 1932” – a defiant statement indicating that a young man’s life was cut short much to early.
Eighty years ago the killing of Kahahawai brought about the second criminal trial in the well-known Massie-Kahahawai Case. Joseph Kahahawai and four other young local men had been accused of raping Thalia Massie, the twenty-year-old wife of a Naval officer stationed at Pearl Harbor. The rape trial against Kahahawai and his friends, Ben Ahakuelo, Horace Ida, David Takai, and Henry Chang had ended in a mistrial in the fall of 1931. Before a second trial could be convened, however, Thalia Massie’s husband, Thomas Massie, her mother, Grace Fortescue, and two hired Navy personnel kidnapped Joseph Kahahawai from the front steps of a courtroom in downtown Honolulu where he had been checking in daily on condition of his bail. The “Massie-Fortescue” group drove Kahahawai to a rented cottage on Kolowalu St. in Manoa and tried to coerce a confession out of him for the alleged rape of Thalia Massie. When Kahahawai refused to comply and asserted his innocence instead he was shot and then bled to death.
The Massie-Fortescue group tried to dispose of Kahahawai’s body near the Halona Blowhole, but Honolulu police had been following their automobile and caught them red handed. Photographers from both the English and Japanese-language newspapers were close behind the HPD, documenting the crime for audiences locally, in the continental U.S. and even internationally. The evidence against the Massie-Fortescue group seemed to provide an open-and-shut murder case in the spring of 1932. Territorial prosecutor John Kelley, in fact, defeated the well-known Clarence Darrow who defended the group. The Thomas Massie, Grace Fortescue, Edward Lord and Albert Jones were found guilty of the lesser-charge of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years at Oahu Prison. In the end, however, as many keen observers of Hawai‘i’s history already know, Territorial Governor Lawrence McCully Judd – under tremendous pressure from the U.S. Navy and politicians in Washington, DC – commuted their sentences to one day. Many say that Thomas Massie, Grace Fortescue, Lord and Jones spent a mere hour in the governor’s office at ‘Iolani Palace, perhaps either sipping tea or champagne while signing paperwork and posing for newswire photographers.
The true crime details about the Massie-Kahahawai Case are by now, very well known – especially in the last decade with the appearance of books like Honor Killing (2005) by UH American Studies professor David Stannard, Hawaii Scandal (2002) by veteran newspaper reporter Cobey Black, and Mark Zwonitzer’s PBS documentary The Massie Affair (2005). But we also must recall that for decades, the event was deemed too painful, or at least too delicate a story to be repeated in public or in the press. By the 1980s, however, retelling the case in UH Manoa Ethnic Studies courses and eventually in high school curricula became ways to have students talk more openly about racial and ethnic relations, about tensions with a military presence in the islands, and about the need to have accurate and balanced media coverage regarding Hawai‘i and its peoples.
I first heard about the case, not in school, but through the Blood and Orchids television miniseries that aired in the mid 1980s. Like others of my generation from Hawai‘i who watched this fictionalized account while away for college, I was surprised to learn that the miniseries was based on true events. Some twenty years later, Kumu Kahua Theatre did a highly successful run of Dennis Carroll’s play, Massie/Kahahawai that had been painstakingly written by piecing together primary source writings and documents from 1931-32. Carroll, the recently retired chair of UH Manoa’s Theater Department, had originally written the play in the early 1970s, but threats of litigation from Thomas Massie himself caused him to shelve the play for three decades.
Because the Massie-Kahahawai Case involved the alleged rape of a white woman by non-white men of Native Hawaiian, Japanese, and mixed Chinese-Hawaiian ancestry, it is often seen as the first time that the term “local” was used in Hawai‘i with any salience. During the 1930s, during World War II, and onward, island residents of Hawaiian, Asian, and other immigrant descent often saw their working-class, local experiences as much different from – and even opposed to – that of a kamaaina, Big Five elite or representatives of the military or federal government. The case still retains much of that meaning today, but it is also a way to discuss whether local residents always have the power to determine what is right – what is pono – for themselves and the land that they live in. Will Hawai‘i always fight an uphill battle against people and places that do not understand it well, whether it be the “Mainland” or other nation-states in the Asia-Pacific Rim? Are the rights and needs of Hawai‘i and other islands in the Pacific ever to be addressed aqequately? Can justice be fairly and consistently administered, despite pressures from the outside?
Like any event in Hawai‘i’s history, the Massie–Kahahawai Case will continue to raise pertinent questions that current and future generations can think deeply about, seek to answer, and hopefully, resolve. Today (Sunday, January 8th), for example, a group led by Darlene Rodrigues will be going on a walk from downtown Honolulu to Puea Cemetery to call to mind the life of Joseph Kahahawai, Jr. and the continuing relevance of the case. When the group arrives at Kahahawai’s gravesite to offer their thoughts, prayers, and flowers, they will notice a slightly faded inscription on the tombstone that my students do not often see. The inscription is usually too difficult to see in photos, but it is nevertheless, important. It reads HOOMANAO – to remember.
Grave of Joseph Kahahawai:
Ain’t nothing changed!
SB
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Reblogged this on Steph's Blog and commented:
Evil travesty of justice that fueled the need for statehood so that future injustices won’t happen. RIP Joseph Kahahawai.
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From an interview with David Stannard, author of Honor Killing:
HONOLULU: Did you ever find out whether Thalia Massie was really raped?
STANNARD: Very probably she wasn’t. There was an independent report commissioned from the Pinkerton Agency, the biggest and the oldest detective agency in the United States. It invented the term “private eye.” The Pinkerton Agency was known to be very conservative. Its agents went in, interviewed judges and journalists, doctors, nurses, neighbors. Others were on the Mainland interviewing people who worked on the estates where the Massies had lived. When they finally put the whole thing back together again, they made it absolutely clear from the very beginning that these guys were innocent, that they should never have been charged in the first place, that it was evident from the start that it had been a frame-up, and that it was highly unlikely that she was ever raped.
HONOLULU: I was shocked, from a contemporary perspective, to realize how public and explicit the racism was in Hawaii and America during the 1930s. What was it like?
STANNARD: While researching the book, there was a story that leapt out at me about The New York Times journalist who was covering the trials. Before the murder trial, he got Grace Fortescue essentially to confess. He printed it in The New York Times. He didn’t have to do anything; she was happy to say it: “I’ve been sleeping better than I have any day since the murder,” and “the only mistake I made was pulling down the curtain in the car,” and so on. Years later, writing about that story, he said there were a couple of things he didn’t say—she also said, “I’m originally from the South, and we have a way of dealing with things, and that’s what this is all about.”
Another thing the journalist didn’t put in the article: After dinner one night with one of the movers and shakers in Hawaii’s white community, he was told, in a lighthearted way, “Maybe [the five local men] were just getting even”—because his hosts when they were young, for fun, they used to go out and find a Hawaiian girl and rape her. [Raises eyebrows] I mean, what???
HONOLULU: Despite the fact it was run by a white oligarchy, Hawaii was condemned in the national press simply for being multiracial.
STANNARD: Time Magazine, in classic Time style, said, “The problem with this is the miscegenation. It’s the mixing of the races and the brown-skin mongrels lusting after white women,” really heavy-duty stuff….
HONOLULU: What was at stake for them [the jurors]?
STANNARD: Individually, there was pressure from the jurors’ friends, from their neighbors, from their families, and in their workplace in particular. The Navy tried to boycott the butcher’s store afterwards, to have him fired. The owner of the store was haole, and said, “Walter stays. Take your business someplace else.”
The real sword of Damocles hanging over everyone in Hawaii, not just the jurors, was the political situation. An effort was being made in the Hearst newspapers across the nation—and more than a hundred congressmen said they signed on to support this—to strip Hawaii of all autonomy. The Territorial legislature and city council would have been wiped out. There would have been no elections for anything. It would have been a complete dictatorship. That was the threat from Congress, from the military, from the president’s cabinet.
HONOLULU: So the threat of martial law was real?
STANNARD: Everybody—everybody—expected that at least one person would vote not guilty. There was no expectation that there would a guilty verdict of any kind. So when it hit, it just exploded across the country.
Remember, at that time, to have a personal memory of the overthrow [of Hawaii’s queen] and annexation [by the U.S. government], you only had to be in your forties. It wasn’t ancient history. According to Gladys Brandt and others, people were saying, “This is like the overthrow. They can do whatever they want to do.” In the aftermath of the overthrow, you couldn’t speak against the new government without being thrown in jail. People saw this new reign of terror coming….
In the Massie case, there was a fear all over these Islands that the little freedom people had was going to be taken away if they did the right thing—if they voted to convict these people, who had obviously committed murder.
It’s a hard decision when—because of what you decide—food isn’t going to be on the table, you’ll lose your job, your friends don’t talk to you anymore. Or when you no longer can vote because of it. It’s a hard decision to make, and they made the right one.
http://www.honolulumagazine.com/core/pagetools.php?pageid=7463&url=%2FHonolulu-Magazine%2FApril-2005%2FThe-Crime-That-Changed-the-Islands%2F&mode=print
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White people have committed some of the worst crimes in history. Yet they have managed to convince the world Blacks are a threat.
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*Blacks and other people of color are a threat*
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And this is why I always say “black and brown” people in relation to white supremacy because mixed-race, brown, and other non-white European people, both inside and outside of the USA
have learned the hard way that white Americans or Europeans never came in peace and they loved to sling the N word around to any group of people who had brown or dark skin
They brought their guns, their subversion tactics, their nasty racist views, and forced their agenda on our ways of life; and changed or undermined our governments.
Due to the Hawaii being invaded and occupied for 200 years, many of the “native Hawaiians” are now mixed-race
Pick almost any island in the Caribbean, the Pacific or Indian ocean and you will find the tentacles of the beast firmly latched on.
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and this is why white people are disliked in Hawaii. Common phrase is “go home haole”
(they also have this attitude towards black people and other non-native Hawaiians, but not as venomous- they seem to be anti-foreigners)
Its interesting reading the online responses by white people who just learned that they are not “universally loved” — the tears and rationalizing are interesting reads:
7 Reasons Hawaii Hates You (White People)
http://infolific.com/travel/usa/7-reasons-hawaii-hates-you/
and there is a separatist movement that wants to revive indigenous Hawaiian culture (kanaka maoli) and have their own “Brexit” out of the United States of America. (and I wish them all the luck)
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/30/historic-election-could-return-sovereignty-to-native-hawaiians.html
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Kiwi
please don’t start your bullsh’t here and ruin a good post (like you have been doing in the other posts recently)
As a long-time poster, your new outlook is not cute, it’s been downright disrespectful and it stinks
nobody on this thread is making this thread is “twisting” anything to make it all about black people
and even if a black commenter saw similarities and expressed empathy with this story… so What?
why are you intent on being the new “Biff” of Abagonds blog… are you bored?
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@ Kiwi
Sometimes East Asians make me feel like a different race. Based on the way they treat me. I’m not saying all the time. But it gets there.
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What kind of STOOPID name is Kahahahawai anyway? He should have Americanized it, maybe to Conway. Then maybe Americans would have respected him.
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@Kiwi: I realize this is about Asian/Pacifics and so what if I added a Black narrative. So I see your have devolved into a troll now. Wow I thought you were better than that. But okay carry on if it makes you feel better.
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Kiwi @ “All the victims of this story were Asian/Pacific Islander, this is a story where White racism was directed against non-Black people of color and you think pointing this important fact out is “disrespectful”Nice to know where your true sympathies lie”
Linda says
Point out WHAT??? … you didn’t point out sh’t..except that you’re trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents.
The only Truth that you have brought forth, is the fact that you want to create Drama where there is NONE !!
All the comments on this post have been on topic .. all except Yours!
your comment is nothing but Fake outrage, which only emphasizes my point that you’re trying to start sh’t with other people..
and please, don’t try to be cute and turn this around and make it about me or my supposed “beliefs” according to you.. I’m not interested or down with playing games with you
You need to keep your arguments with GroJo between the 2 of you and stop trying to expand to include other people.
you’re a commenter who has contributed many insightful thoughts to this blog in the past, but this trip you’ve been on lately, has got you looking trollish and yes, Disrespectful
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I can tell you all it happened a long time ago. Hawaii is very much more local based than anything else. A local (long standing resident) has more privileges than a new comer.
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Linda:
“http://infolific.com/travel/usa/7-reasons-hawaii-hates-you/”
Interesting read….very interesting indeed. @ : o l ) >
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Some of the articles I’ve been reading say this case spurred the creation of the “local” identity.
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and Kiwi, out of respect for you as a poster whose comments I’ve actually liked in the past on this blog,
I will answer your question (respectfully)
Kiwi @ Linda
Linda says,
Yes, your comment was disrespectful. Instead of contributing to the post like everyone else did
by either discussing how you feel about the story, show sympathy or empathy with the plight of the Hawaiians, or even bring in other articles relevant to Hawaiians
you decided to make your comments about other commenters and their supposed motives– so you turned the conversation away from the topic at hand and made it personal
so yes, to me, that’s showing disrespect — your comment steered the focus away from the Hawaiians and made it about Fan or Mary
you have yet to contribute your thoughts on the Actual topic itself — which is as you pointed out– about Hawaiians, “Asian/Pacific Islanders”, and how they were treated under White supremacy.
black people being able to see similarities between how black and Hawaiian people have been treated by white society and under a white supremacist system — is about acknowledging the Victims… it’s called showing solidarity
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Linda
Kiwi
I’m not taking either side on the this but i will say this…
Kiwi, i have never saw anyone on this site, turn you away on a thread that was mainly or solely target to Black people.
I have seen you and another poster, ( i forget her name, she is Asian) comment on and carry discussions about our oppression from white people.
Truth be told, the majority of topics on this blog are black centered, though Abagond has been covering every race as of lately.
That should go without saying, being Abagond is Black.
I just don’t see why you got upset as its been done many times on threads that clearly target black people, yet you and people of other races have jumped in on the commentary and nobody tried to pull what you did.
Again, i am not taking Linda side, this is just my take on what i am reading between the two of you.
Its silly and shouldn’t go any further than it already has, because at the end of the day, all people of color are under the system of white supremacy.
There is no need for a oppression Olympics by trying to establish who has suffered the worst, among people of color.
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Sondis,
you are absolutely correct.. this blog is black American centered and everyone who comments here needs to remember that
Plenty of times, I wish Abagond would talk about subjects that deal with non-American black and brown people because I feel he ignores us… but it is his blog
and if I don’t like it, I know where the door is 🙂
I think the diversity of this blog (posts) and it’s commenters, makes this blog interesting and it’s great that as people of colour, we can come here to discuss topics that affect all of u.
I don’t believe this blog should be an echo chamber either… all of us “people of colour” should get to talk about internal issues and even disagree about them, without the posts turning too ugly
I don’t have a problem with Kiwi.. I think he is smart and insightful but
I’ve sat in silence these past weeks watching Kiwi fight with GroJo, and other commenters got dragged into it (Afrofem, Fan, Sharina) and after reading back posts, I finally understood what was happening (because initially, I didn’t know what the h’ll was going on)
I don’t like all this arguing that I’ve seen because it brings down the whole atmosphere of the blog… because it is coming from a commenter (Kiwi) who has made significant contributions to this blog.
I do understand why Kiwi initially go upset initially but I don’t like his new methods of trying to retaliate for his hurt feelings…. instead of keeping his disagreement between him and GroJo, it seems he is lashing out at everything and everyone.
Thank you for speaking up, I’m truly not trying to start an argument… I just want this ugliness that has crept in, to stop and go away
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Sure thing… ^_^
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@Mary Burrell
I think you were very spot on whether you changed your post or not. Reality is that whites have made an effort to convince everyone that blacks are the threat. As can be seen with this very case of Joseph Kahahawai, anyone can be a “threat” in their eyes no matter what the situation. And it all rests on a just because.
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Whites supremacy is an equal opportunity exploiter. It matters little if you are Black or Asian as the OP shows. It’s the singular experience of white supremacy that ties everyone affected by white supremacy together.
When the jury returned a guilty verdict it took a phone call to the governor to overturn it. The right outcome is always a white outcome, Justice be dammed.
The only thing that’s twisted is how white people think.
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Like I said, he should have Americanized his foreign surname to Conway. Then then would have respected him.
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Bobby M
How’d that work for black people?
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya0g0EP6eMs&index=1&list=PLHZXrxO4ubfDQA4jhjyB60PNkt6JWPDE6)
The United States of Hypocrisy vs. The Lawful Hawaiian Government (Full Version) – Ken O’Keefe
Published on Dec 25, 2013
Produced by Ken Nichols O’Keefe in early 2001, this is the virtually unknown story of Hawaii and the hidden Genocide being committed by the American government with the use of ‘blood quantum’ for the purpose of eliminating the Hawaiian national; and the reason America does this? Because according to their own laws, America never lawfully annexed Hawaii*, therefore according to law Hawaii never became a state, and if the Hawaiian land was never lawfully annexed, the only true claimant to the land, is the Hawaiian national.
Could Hawaii become a free nation once more? Nichols O’Keefe not only argues the possibility, he shows the peaceful, lawful process by which the Hawaiians (kanaka maoli) intend to free themselves of the American occupation; an occupation that has lasted well over 100 years, an occupation that has turned their island paradise nation into an American Empire military outpost, one that continues to be used as a staging ground for wars of aggression resulting in ever more death and destruction.
In 2008 the legislature of the reinstated Hawaiian Government (with Representative Ken O’Keefe of District 6, Oahu) passed a law that outlaws all weapons of mass destruction in Hawaii. In this bold move the Hawaiian Government has reached out to the world to see just how serious we are about ending imperialism and American domination of the world. Thus far the world continues to be oblivious to this cause and O’Keefe argues is missing one of the greatest opportunities of our time to affect disarmament and increase the chances for peace.
* Annexation was affected by joint resolution because the two/thirds majority that was needed to annex territory was not possible. In addition, the US Congress confessed in UNITED STATES PUBLIC LAW 103-150 that Hawaii was obtained by a conspiracy to overthrow the lawful government of Hawaii and furthermore that the Hawaiian people and nation have never relinquished title to their national lands. And to add to that, the anti-annexation petition that was circulated at the time of the proposed annexation of Hawaii to the United States had the signature of virtually every single Hawaiian living at that time.
Category
News & Politics
License
Standard YouTube License
Music
“Pearly Shells” by The Islandors (iTunes)
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@sharinalr – well, recently Black people have been moving away from nice American names like Daniel, Jonathan, and Christopher, to Eldritch Abominations like DeShawn, Tyrell, and LaQueefa.
So I don’t think you really have an argument.
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@ Bobby M
Isn’t Joseph a nice American name?
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@ Mary
Comment deleted for moderated language.
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@Bobby M
Actually most black people I know are named Jessica, Ashley, and Bradford so my argument still stands.
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@Solitaire – Joseph is a nice American name, but Kahahahahawaiwai surely isn’t.
@Sharinalr (ps. guess what Sharina rhymes with????) Trayvon? Tamir? Sharkeisha? LaToya?
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@Bobby M
You didn’t get past Kindergarten grade did you? You seem to struggle with rhyming words and logic.
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@SharinaTheV****a – Like my father and grandfather before me, I have a college degree.
I bet that’s more than can be said for you.
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@Bobby M
Based on a majority of what you say in here, I believe it is safe to say that the only degree you have is one you find at walmart and you put under your arm.
As for me I can safely say that what I have is more than can truly be said for you. 🙂
Oh and here is a picture of the face that commonly shares my name. Look how black she is.
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I know a lot of people have posted articles and I may have missed them, but has the wrong done to Mr. Kahahawai ever come with a public apology? An acknowledgement of this hate crime as the wrong that it is from the whites or descendants of those whites that did this?
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@sharnalr
That type of acknowledge would never happen. Even bringing this type of thing is considered racism against the Haole, Palagi, Gwai Lo scumbag mothafucka…
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@ Sharina
As far as I can tell, there’s been no apology to the family of Joseph Kahahawai.
From what I’ve read, apparently the governor commuted the sentence not just in white solidarity but to avoid race riots and the imposition of martial law. Thalia Massie was a Navy wife, and the white sailors were so riled up over the murder conviction of the Massie 4 that they’d been confined to base. You can imagine what would have happened if a mob of white Navy men with military-issued weapons had run riot on the Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, Asians, and mixed-race people who made up a large percentage of the local population in Honolulu.
In light of that, I feel like an apology is also due from the federal U.S. government and the U.S. Navy for subverting justice and allowing four guilty convicted murderers to escape punishment.
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@ Sharina
I’m not surprised that Bobby M couldn’t manage to go three days without mentioning genitalia, but I’m appalled about how he did it. FWIW, I never thought your name was pronounced that way but even if it were, it would still be beautiful.
As far as “nice American names,” correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Sharina a form of Sharon, similar to Sharona? And Sharon is a good old American name, going back to the Bible just like Daniel and Joseph.
One thing that really irritates me about white people who make fun of black “made-up” names is a lot of those names aren’t made up at all and were popular names among upper-class white people 100-150 years ago. Keziah (and its variant spellings) is the one that most readily comes to my mind, but there are many others, both male and female, often from the Bible. Also, these idiots don’t know that some of the “white” names they consider traditional were actually made up by authors, like Pamela. (I’m sure you know all this; it’s more for the Bobby M’s out there.)
And at one point in time, every single name out there was made up. Some mother or father at some point invented it. Bobby’s own name, Robert, is a combination of two Anglo-Saxon words, Hroth (glory or fame) and Beorht (bright). Back then, it would have been just the same as naming a kid “Shining Fame” now; everyone would have known exactly what it meant every time it was said. Not any different from translated Native American names like Crazy Horse, which he thinks are stupid.
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For that matter, since when is Thalia a nice ordinary American name?? Why isn’t Bobby M ridiculing her name? Maybe that’s why she got beat up and her jaw broken, Bobby, because her nice rich socialite WASP mother didn’t give her a good ol’ American name.
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@TeddyBearDaddy and Solitaire
Thanks. I was hoping a story like this would get some type of apology, but I guess like all other wrongs done against non-white people “it was the time” is about as much of anything you can get.
@Solitaire
Not sure of the origins of my name, but I agree. Bobby just does not have enough google search capabilities to know anything other than what he has obviously been taught. Regardless I must pity him. His only true accomplishment is being white.
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@Soliterrorist – Ah, but you don’t understand.
Robert, James, William, Catherine, Julia, etc… – these names, like you just said, have meanings.
Sharkeisha, Turell, LaQueefa, DeQuonda, Deshawn, JaMaila, these names don’t mean anything. They are literally just random syllables thrown together.
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Bobby M
You really should consider google your friend..
Turell has a meaning as I am sure the others do as well.
http://www.quickbabynames.com/meaning-of-Turrell.html
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@ Bobby M
“…these names don’t mean anything. They are literally just random syllables thrown together.”
It is completely immaterial if a person’s name has been handed down for 100 generations or made up at birth, every person’s name deserves the same respect. All names deserve the same respect because all people deserve the same respect.
I understand that you and people who think like you like to harp on Black people’s names because it is yet another way to criticize Black people for breathing. That criticism also comes from a place of White entitlement—you feel that only Whiteness is normative. Other people and other cultures are aberrations. Abagond wrote a post that deals with this mindset:
Personally, I love the sense of creativity and individuality woven in modern African American names. I see modern names as part and parcel of a dynamic and creative culture.
The names also remind me why White people and White institutions feel they have to constantly repress and criticize Black people—because Black people are extremely intelligent and resilient.
Master poet, Maya Angelou (1928 – 2014) expresses that quality of
irrepressibility in the first stanza of her poem, Still I Rise
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-i-rise
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@ Bobby M
First off, like Sharina said, you’re easily proven wrong. Deshawn’s probably a form of Sean, and I’d guess JaMaila is a feminine version of Jamal (which I know you’re going to say isn’t an American name, but it is a real name with a history and a meaning).
And some names which white people think are random syllables thrown together actually are combinations of the mother and father’s names, or of both grandmothers’ names, etc. Which I think is very sweet.
But you know what? Who cares if some names are made up of random syllables? Like I said above, Pamela was a made-up name in a novel, just empty syllables thrown together.
Daenerys is another made-up name of empty syllables thrown together, but thanks to Game of Thrones, there are going to be a lot of little white girls running around with that name in a few years. Eighty years from now, it may be considered an old-fashioned name of elderly ladies.
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Bobby M is banned.
He is either unable to or uninterested in calling people by their right names. He also seems unable to stop talking about genitals.
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This link better provides the innocent suspects and the punishment they did not deserve. http://murderpedia.org/female.F/f/fortescue-grace-photos-2.htm
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@TeddyBearDaddy
Thanks for the link. Lots of great images that told their own story.
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mostly these new names yeah it seems like a variant of someone’s name or a combination of two is pretty popular
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This demonstrates the cruelty and insanity of white supremacy. In order to maintain the system, they must demonize nonwhites and even exterminate them to make them examples. White people must lie, cheat and steal in order to rise and keep their position at the top. This is what creates their sense of “white pride”. They can’t have ‘pride’ without stepping on nonwhites.
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Kiwi @ Your singular focus on White racism as being directed mainly against “Blacks and Browns” only serves to detract from the experiences of racial minorities who don’t fit that mold but are nevertheless demonized the same way.
Linda says,
Kiwi, since you don’t mind read, don’t tell me about my “focus”
not one person on this blog said that the “victims” in this story are black…
so once again, you are continuing to make accusations on a situation that doesn’t exist
people showed empathy by comparing the Hawaiians experiences with that of black people in dealing with white racism, as I said, this shows solidarity
it doesn’t mean that people think Hawaiians are “black”…
Kiwi, you are not stup’id, so why are trying to come off that way?
this story wasn’t about Asian people either. this story is about Joseph Kahahawai, a native Hawaiian
and in case you weren’t aware, native Hawaiians are “Brown” people
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Kiwi to Mary@ “Me pointing out that he and his friends are non-Black is trolling but you trying to turn a thread that did not involve Blacks to one mainly focused on Blacks is not. Got it.”
Linda says,
You are making false accusations and twisting people’s words, and assigning intent that does not exist.
Mary made a statement about white racism in relation to black people and other people of colour ;whereas, you didn’t make a comment about the story at all… you focused your attention on Mary and her “supposed” agenda
notice how you conveniently shortened my statement and twisted it to fit your own narrative.
Linda @
Kiwi’s statement to Linda @
so are you trying to tell me that Asians don’t fall into the “non-white European” category?
aren’t Asian people “non-white” and “non-European”??
Indians and other south Asians are also “non-white” and can also be classified as “Brown”… NE Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, etc) are not the only Asian people that exist
so it seems I got everyone who is non-white inside of the mold…so, as I stated previously, you are manufacturing outrage
so yes, Kiwi… your actions are most singularly looking troll-ish because you are purposely trying to be divisive and trying to create drama where there is none.
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if you want to discuss a particular angle of the story, such as Asians in Hawaii dealing with white racism, then YOU need bring it up.
Why don’t you bring in serious comments about the racism that Asians and native Hawaiians experience in Hawaii, so that commenters can discuss the topic in a meaningful way.
everyone else here has brought in articles discussing the topic, expressed sympathy, empathy and solidarity (everyone except you).
by even answering you, I’ve had to come off-topic and this discussion is being derailed.
you didn’t seem to have a problem when black commenters defended you against white racist or if they defended your point of view on Asian women/white men relationships
you didn’t seem to have a problem in the past when commenters discussed black people in posts dealing with Asian people and Asian topics
but now you have a problem with it… all because you got your feelings hurt in an argument with GroJo
you must really be enjoying the blow-back you’ve been receiving lately because you perversely continue down this proverbial slippery hole
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Linda,
I don’t want to get into this, as it is not an issue that I want to be a part of. Besides, I agree with about 98% of what you said and what you told Kiwi.
Except for this.
Actually that is not true. Early up in the comments, someone said.
Unless that commenter was native Hawaiian, then he was almost certainly referring to black “victims”. I must admit that it caused me to wince slightly, but I just let it pass, remained quiet and did not go into a rant.
It is great that readers in this blog sympathize with wrongdoings done to various POC (“black and brown” people, if you prefer) and their plight, but there indeed was *some* switch in victimology which others also seemed to chime in with.
I am not condoning the negative tone used (including from Kiwi), but it may help the conversation if we do admit that something did occur instead of denying it. Then maybe we can then let it go and focus on the real issue of the topic of this post.
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Jefe,
no where in Fan’s comment did he say “black” people
Read in context, I took his comment as “we” meaning all people of colour and showing solidarity
why are you assuming he meant “black” victims…. he did not say that
he directly correlating his statement with the fact that the guilty white murderers served no time in this case, so I don’t see how is statement is off track… since he knows he is talking about a case involving a Hawaiian, who is also a person of colour, the “we” reflects that (at least it does to me)
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Linda,
I read his statement in context also, but that is not exactly how I took his comment.
Again, it was not a major issue for me and I did not comment on it.
Thank you for explaining how you took it, but based on how he used “we” in 99% of his other comments across this blog, perhaps you can try to understand why it might be possible that a reader might “take” it differently and not see “we”, coming from him, referring to native Hawaiians.
I don’t want to beleaguer this. I accept your explanation of how you “took” it. Can you see how someone else might get a different impression from reading that? It doesn’t necessarily mean that they have reading comprehension problems.
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Jefe @ It is great that readers in this blog sympathize with wrongdoings done to various POC (“black and brown” people, if you prefer) and their plight, but there indeed was *some* switch in victimology which others also seemed to chime in with.
Linda says,
no I don’t prefer, nothing needs to be said for my benefit … my comment was made to highlight that white racism affects all of us who are non-white… People of Colour works just as fine and fits the same bill
Sorry but you and Kiwi see something that I don’t
I didn’t see any switching of victimhood… as I stated to Kiwi previously, people comparing the black experience with the Hawaiian experience, shows solidarity…
talking about the parallel between the 2 doesn’t mean people are focusing on black people… if anything, it shows that black commenters “get it” and see that white racism was not reserved for them alone.
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Linda,
I said that I agree with pretty much everything you said except for that one point, I even agree with your point about solidarity.
But that sentence had an equivocal interpretation. Perhaps it would have been better to clarify it before attacking it. I am not attacking it.
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Jefe, I think it’s best if we agree, to disagree
I don’t see Fan’s comments as a reference to only black people.. I just don’t see it, sorry
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@Linda
As not to take it off-topic I will leave a post for you on open thread.
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Kiwi,
The main character in this post that Abagond wrote about, is Hawaiian — not Asian
The story mentioned the other victims, who were Asian, and it mentions the perpetrators, who are white
mentioning the other victims does not make this story about “Asian people”
if we were to use your logic, then I can say that:
see, that’s the problem that is caused you lose perspective — unnecessary drama is created
what you are failing to comprehend is that I am not interested in playing along with your bullsh’t
It’s obvious you read what I wrote to Sharina —so you can cut the sh’t about how I feel about anti-Asian or anti-black/brown racism
you Never asked my opinion about how I personally feel about any subject .. until you do, you can keep your thoughts about my supposed “thoughts” to yourself
you and Jefe can continue to hold Fan’s feet to the fire for past comments he has made — I’m not interested in being a part of your little “wars” with other posters.
until Fan comes here to clarify his statement, I will take his comments in THIS post as I believe he meant it: as inclusive
how about sticking to the topic about what this post was written about:
Joseph Kahahawai and racism in Hawaii
then you can talk about Asians without looking like you haven’t read the story
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correction:
that’s the problem that is caused when you lose perspective – unnecessary drama is created
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@ Kiwi
Some people use brown to signify all non-black POC because brown is currently seen as less offensive than yellow and red in regards to race. I’ve used it that way myself. I assumed that’s how Linda meant it, although really only she can say.
We could discuss whether it’s accurate to use brown to describe people of Japanese and Chinese descent. There’s an argument to be made that it isn’t. But yellow has been pretty much discredited as a slur in most circles. If you feel comfortable using it, that’s fine, but many do not.
Keep in mind that trying to determine the correct nomenclature to use can be tricky and potentially divisive. Instead of assuming what Linda meant by brown people, maybe ask her first?
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@Solitaire
Linda was already clear on what she meant by brown people. Kiwi is far from dumb or confused on the matter. He is simply deliberately looking for confrontation.
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@ Kiwi
“On this blog, “brown” does NOT include Asians of Chinese or Japanese descent.”
Has Abagond actually said so? Can you point me to that definition or that statement if it exists? Because I haven’t seen it.
So far, the impression I have is that different commenters are using “brown” in different ways. Some may be using it as you describe above, others may not. The only real way to know how someone defines it is if they clearly state exactly who they do and do not include under the term “brown.”
Same with Asian, for that matter. Pacific Islanders are in some racial classification systems considered a subset of Asians, but not in others. It seems like you are including Hawaiian as part of the larger Asian American classification, and it seems that Linda is not. Both could be considered correct under different systems of racial classification.
Whether or not Hawaiians are included under the Asian American umbrella, it is undeniable that they are part of the Malay-Polynesian group, with close genetic, linguistic, and cultural ties to peoples who are situated in Asia and classified as Asians.
“It became apparent to me as soon as she defended Fan when he has repeatedly applied racist stereotypes of Asians, including me.”
All I saw Linda doing here was providing her interpretation of one statement Fan made in this thread. She even said that the only person who could clarify Fan’s statement was Fan. So far that hasn’t happened, so everyone’s interpretation of that statement, including yours and Linda’s, is theoretical.
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Solitaire
Abagond has not made that stipulation, but on this blog brown is whoever is brown and for Linda that could be Asian’s. Non-Americans who comment see brown quite differently so you are very correct in how it changes per reader. With a large amount of in and out commenters it has always been that way.
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This story was recently covered on a show on the ID channel called “A Crime to Remember.”
White women have gotten so many people of color killed by lying and making false accusations throughout history.
Funny how there is very little representation of this in the media (film and books). I think the most accurate have been “Rosewood” and “12 Years a Slave”.
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“The reason he has been silent is because he knows I’m right about him and saying anything would only confirm what I said. He’s just mitigating damage.The reason he has been silent is because he knows I’m right about him and saying anything would only confirm what I said. He’s just mitigating damage.”
@ kiwi
Yawwnnnnnnnnn ….. what damage?
Since when have you and jefe aspired to become comedians??
Have you two clowns finally been accepted to comedy/circus school?
I hope you got a full (scholarship) ride and won’t have to pay rising academic costs with your (un)exceptional and embarrassing writing! Is the Academy of Comedy and Clowns aware that you’re an active vampire? I imagine it’s not easy piecing words together in your cold, lonely, dark casket during those long restless nights of the living dead.
No cogent reasoning!
No real rem sleep. No Asian lasses. No sun. No vitamin D.
No wonder you’re so cranky of late!
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcyWEaanFvI)
SB
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