Biography Hawaiʻi; Koji Ariyoshi; Interview with Helen Chapin 7/14/04 #1

If we can start talking a little bit about the role of newspapers in Hawai'i and just starting off with who usually tended to control these papers or publish newspapers in Hawai'i. Well 1834 was the first printed paper, the Hawaiian language, Kalama, and that was brought out by the missionaries, but they taught young Hawaiian men journalism at the same time, including print, and from there all else followed the different kinds of newspapers in different languages through the century and into the present time, a control by always, by the establishment, the power and control wherever you are, the people with the money and the power, they may not have a majority of numbers or readership, but they control the purse strings and the print process, and that happened in Hawai'i. About what point did you start seeing newspapers appear, we're talking again in the monarchy period, but when did you start seeing newspapers that in some ways were questioning the status

quo? What were they like? That started almost immediately. The second paper was in the English language, and it was by a young gentleman from Boston, he lied to the missionaries, but independent, Stephen McIntosh, and he brought out the sandwich island Gazette and journal of commerce, which tells you that it was going to have advertising, which is absolutely necessary to the commercial press, and he took issue, for example, with an issue of toleration, a religion. He was very much a free speech, free press person, and he took issue with the king who was goaded by the missionaries to not have religious toleration, and I think they kicked the Jesuits out of the kingdom for a while, and so that was within two years of the first Hawaiian language paper. After that, it snowballs, and you have dissident papers.

There are only four kinds of newspapers, there's the establishment press, the alternative press, the independent press, which is very rare, everybody says they're independent, but very if you are, and then the official press, the government press, and those all came into play in the next decades. Can you talk a little bit about the role and prominence of the Honolulu advertiser in the Hawaii-Towns paper mystery? The advertiser is very interesting, it's not the first newspaper, the friend is the first, is the oldest paper in still publication, but the advertiser came into being in 1856, had a young radical named Stephen Whitney, descended on missionaries, he was a fire-eater, well they soon brought him under control, the rising sugar planter oligarchy, then boycott at his paper, he went broke out of business, and they brought in then publishers who would do what they say, and that lasted through to almost the present, and anyways, so that

PCA-specific commercial advertiser 1856. That was the first continuous paper commercial enterprise establishment. In what ways would the paper like the advertiser sort of maintain control, or how would it exert control in trying to affect public opinion? Well they thought alike, you know, I mean they weren't all of a piece, but the missionaries from New England that educated, they tended to have the same goals, if one of them stepped out of the role, they were quickly brought back into the community that they had. People generally want to get along, they want jobs. There was the rise of the Hawaiian nationalist press, that was more alarming, because when that began 1861, and Kalakawa was a backer, he was a chief at the time, not the king. He became known as editor king because he had such an interest in newspapers. And when that started, you had much more dissent because the nationalist papers were wedded

from the beginning, to keeping Hawaii as an independent country, saying that Hawaii's knew what was best for them, and you know, they didn't need to be told by these white New Englanders what to do, and so forth. It was a very clear agenda, and they had actually most of the newspapers and most of the ringters in the 19th century, they were the majority, but they didn't have the power. My favorite subject is how the ethnic papers began in the kingdom. The first immigrant group remember the contract labor groups, Chinese, well, they started the first newspapers, along with the coolies, as the white press called them, came an educated cadre of newspaper men and women, Chinese first, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipino, and then all else follows, Korean, Spanish, and so forth, down to the present, what he has

the most diverse press in the world, 27 different languages and culture groups to the present. It's a remarkable story, and the ethnic papers were viewed by an establishment as opposition from the very beginning. They didn't fall into line, they didn't have the same agenda, and so they were viewed with suspicion, but they made their way, they served, they served an incredible purpose of getting that particular ethnic group into, first, the Hawaiian way, the language and so forth, and then the American way, teaching their readers how to file immigration papers and just how to shop and such things like that. What kind of efforts did the dominant community make to try and either shut down or censor or affect those papers? How did the establishment censor the papers or keep people in line?

In a very, very ordinary way, they arrested them, fined them and jailed them and put them out of business, and but particularly the Hawaiian nationalist papers, George Bush, Robert Wilcox, Joseph Navahee, Emma Navahee, these, the point point brothers, these were very brave journalists, and they started, they, Hawaiian took to the press, they took to the printed word, the vast number of readers were Hawaiian, native Hawaiians, and they worked the papers after, at Lahainaluna school, and then after at the Kamehameha school for boys, they became the printers, and they worked on the papers, and so the, when things got really hot and the overthrow took place, right, and then Viliokalani is, is dethroned, then there is a counter-revolutionary revolution led by Robert Wilcox, George Bush, Robert Wilcox, they were all newspaper men, they were political radicals and newspaper men, and their wives were too, when Wilcox later went off to Congress as a, as a first delegate

to Congress, his wife Teresa ran the paper at home, and that was not an unusual story, so yes, they, they were fine, they were jailed, George, excuse me, John Bush, John Bush edited Kaleo O'Kala Hui, the voice of the nation, the titles of the papers will tell you where they were, the voice of the nation, the Hawaii Patriot, Kaleo O'Kalaina, they, he edited his paper from jail. The early immigrant papers, the ethnic language papers came in with the ethnic groups pretty much in order that they were, they were enrolled as contract laborers, that's not quite the right word, they were brought in as contract laborers, but there was always this educated

cadre of people, Chinese first and Japanese, Portuguese, Filipino, and so forth, in the 20th century Korean, in the 18th day Vietnamese, Samoan, all these language, languages are represented by ethnic papers, and they have a dual function, they make a living for the person, the editor or the publisher, they make a living for that person who is bringing them out, and they serve as, they serve to absorb or assimilate that particular ethnic group into the community. Their past hand to hand, for example, on the plantation, so people can read them and understand what they need to do with immigration papers or whatever, so they have, they play a very important role, and Hawaii has the most diverse press in the world. We have some 27 different language, language groups, African-American, for example, all kinds, church papers, school papers, put out by ethnic groups or cultural groups. In terms of the ethnic newspapers, at what point did they start publishing ones in English

and why did that start happening? Well, by the time you have your second general, they start, back up. They start publishing in English, the ethnic language newspapers start publishing in English after the first generation, the first generation you'll have, for example, Portuguese language people, right, when they came from the Azores of the Mandir Islands. By the time they have their children and their children are going into school, and we had, in Hawaii, from the 19th century on, a uniform school system, public school system, they're learning English, so they don't have the comfort zone with the parents language that the parents had with their own language, and that happens with the Japanese language, for example, Frederick McKino in Hawaii Ho Chi was printing in Japanese first, and then he started printing in Japanese in English, and finally, after World War II, predominantly in English, because those are the people with the language, right, second generation Misei Sansi, and so forth reading

the paper. So Koji Ariosh is growing up in Conor, and he's clearly reading from very early on, who are his role models, and what does he, what kind of things would make him fall in love with the idea of becoming a journalist? Koji Ariosh is a very good example of a budding journalist, and he is second generation, as he's dissay, his parents are immigrants from Japan, they're coffee farmers, and they're poor. And Koji, who knows why or how, but he started walking to the library, the public library, to check out books, he started, he was a reader, he got a scholarship to the University of Hawaii, and he worked on the Kaleo newspaper, but it wasn't enough of a scholarship to really pay his way, so he worked as a stevedor on the docks. This was in the 1930s, and he was balancing making a living with working as a journalist, bitten by that journalist's bug, however that happens to people.

They love the feel of the newsprint and the printer's ink, and it just came to his heart that that's what he really wanted to do, but he couldn't do it. Then he was arrested on the San Francisco docks after World War II on December 7th, he was a stevedor on the docks. He was arrested for carrying a hook, a longshoreman's hook, which is how you move the cargo, and was sent off to Monsonar, prison camp, relocation center, quote unquote, where he met his wife, got buried, had a couple of children, to get out of Monsonar, he enrolled enlisted in the U.S. army. So it's a kind of typical Nisei AJA part that he played, but in the back of his mind is to become a newspaper man. He goes to China as an intelligence officer in the army. When he comes back from China, he decides he wants to go back to Hawaii and brings his wife and children, and he starts the Honolulu Record in 1948. Started on Independence Day, his first issue is July 4th of 5th, 1948, because he, like

every other journalist, really believes in First Amendment rights, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and so he starts his paper on Independence Day, just like Benjamin Franklin did. Just going back a bit and we're going to come through again. What was Kaleo like when he was writing for it? Kaleo Hawaii, the voice of Hawaii. He started in 1922, that's Kaleo has a long, rich history, and it started in 1922, and its early editors included, for example, Hiram Phong, who later became a U.S. senator. A school paper, a college or a school paper has a unique role, it has a double role in our society, because it is owned by the establishment, which is a school, and yet students who are a budding journalist and are going to become professional journalists, many of

them, are the people putting it out. And they are, of course, at a very educable age. They're beginning to read, you know, Thomas Jefferson and all the, and, and, and, and Benjamin Franklin and the founding father's reasons for guaranteeing freedom of the press, which was, of course, to save them from being licensed and closed down by the British before the Revolutionary War. So, so they're believers in this, and it just follows the, better ask me that again, I'm getting off track. I just wanted to know what, what kind of experience Kouji would have had writing for Kaleo? All right, we got back to Kaleo, yes, Kaleo, the University of Hawaii student newspaper. Kouji Arioshis' experience would have been that of probably many typical students who are interested in journalism, take journalism classes, work on the newspaper. They have an independent streak in them, but the, but the administration is always ready to call you in and shut you down if you're, if you begin to embarrass them.

The students are in a, a double role. Their paper doesn't have to make money. It's paid for by student funds or whatever, allocations. So he would have had that experience of independence at, at Kaleo, at the same time that he might have been slapped down if he, or have his, his material pulled, for example, which is what happened to me when I was Kaleo editor, I went over, I went over the top on an issue when I was called in by the University president, told them to do that again, and I, my advisor was called in and said to get a control over us, we were considered hot-blooded rebels. It was a stupid issue. It was over beer, and we wanted beer for Hemingway Hall. You had to walk down a trolley's place and lie down the road to get beer after school. So we said, why not beer in Hemingway Hall? We made an April Fool's issue, every year Kaleo puts out an April Fool's issue, and ours was beer for Hemingway Hall, and we got a photo, incidentally photography is very important to journalism.

It's just key. We got a photo of beer cases stacked up, and then we got a montage of the woman who was running Hemingway Hall. She was the advisor, and we put them side by side, and the April Fool's headline was beer for Hemingway Hall, and of course, the students got all excited and really believed it. But we thought it was obviously a joke, but it was not a joke to the administration. They were embarrassed. The woman's husband was on the board of trustees, the regents. It was stupidity. I never got out of line again, though. Mid-late 30s, Kojiario, she's looking at her eyes, working at Kaleo, we've seen the other papers. Who were those sort of role models, journalist role models for Hemingway Hall? Who were Kojiario, she's journalist role models? When he opened the record, it started writing it, and he had front page editorials and so forth. He gave us his models, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and Hamilton and the people who wrote the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, that was where he was coming

from. He had learned his American lessons well, and that was his point of departure. He was also fed up with the establishment press, which was not printing, quote unquote, the truth. They were not factual. They were slanted. And he attempted, the record, was a general circulation newspaper, and it attempted investigative journalism to tell the facts and let the chips fall where they may. And that was Koji's, every bone in his body that was where he was coming from. He's a very truthful person. The IOWU gave him money to start the paper, he used his own savings. But he soon got away from the IOWU, he wasn't paying attention to them. It was not a labor paper. It became basically an oppositionist alternative newspaper. Could you not just a little bit about the nuts and bolts of how he got it started? How it generally operated in the beginning? How did the Honolulu record get started?

Koji was pretty much a loose aunt. He had some, he had married and children looking for a way, of course, the establishment press would hire him either, nobody would hire him. So he decided to start his own paper, and he had $3,000 in savings. He found Jack Kimoto, who put up the Hawaii Star, and he found a place down in Sheridan Street, and they had an old hand-fed press. The establishment press always has had super-duper, nuanced equipment while the alternative press shrugged this long with cast-offs and hand-me-downs, and he had a hand-fed press on Sheridan Street. Eventually, I had to move into larger quarters because the early issues were really popular. 5,000 circulation, it's a weekly, it's not a daily, it's a weekly. But people, including the mainstream press reporters, are going down and picking up papers when they are published. The newspaper is an article of the street.

Newspaper boys would hock it on the street, extra extra, read all about it, newspapers and so forth. It's delivered to the home, delivered to offices, but it is out and about. It's how everybody gets their information. Print technology and the newspapers are the primary means of information and communication. Radio doesn't come in until about 1927. Television in the 1950s. So television is just beginning when Koji has his hot little record. It is still not a common communication medium. So people want, are reading the record. You've called Koji Arayoshi a Muck Raker, could you explain what you mean by that? Koji Arayoshi is a Muck Raker in the Finest tradition. John Bunyan had a 17th century novel called, what was that called, Pilgrim's Progress. And the Muck Raker in there is the man who rakes up the filth on the floor so that he can disseminate it to the public, he's obsessed with raking up the filth.

Teddy Roosevelt, when he is president many, many years, centuries later, uses it as a word of derision. He attacks people who are exposing the standard oil, for example, newspaper people. He says they're muck rakers. All they're interested in is the filth, they're not interested in what is good for society. And the newspaper men, Lincoln Stephens and people like that, take it as a badge of honor. They twist it around and take it to themselves as their badge of, yes, this is what we are. We are muck rakers. And Koji Arayoshi knew that history. And he becomes a muck raker. You're an investigative journalist as what you are. You're out there getting the facts, whether it's police brutality, whether it's the Maui Chamber of Commerce hiring strippers for their annual meeting and whatever it is. Police brutality, substandard housing in the plantations. And he gets the facts, he's never wrong.

They can deride him, they can call him names, but they cannot ever prove him wrong. In fact, in the record every week, he picks up all the errors of the establishment press and prints them on the front page every week, all the errors that they've made. That drives him nuts. Would you pick up a copy of the record in 1952, open it out? What would you find in a typical issue? In a typical issue of the record, General Circulation, 12 to 14 pages, tabloid and size, real easy to handle, lots of ads, union ads, bars and grills, the major players are advertising in the major newspapers and not advertising in the record. But he's making a living, it's steady. You would find general news, you would find sports, you would find beauty queens, book reviews written by Jack Hall of the ILW, Bob McElrath, contributes, letters to the editor, cartoons, very good political cartoons.

It was a pretty much, we don't have anything quite like it today, but it was not an unusual format. And do you mention a couple of names there, who are sort of the cast characters involved in the record, who was involved and what did they do? And Jack Hall, of course, was an organizer for the ILW, and the labor papers had already become very important. The major players in the labor movement in the 1930s were union organizers, and Jack Hall was one of them, started the Kauai Herald, and then that moved to the Kauai Herald. And Bob McElrath was a radio man from Washington State, I think. So these people coming in to organize are actually newspaper people, and they are putting out the labor papers, which are free, or they sell for a nickel or a dime. There's disseminated spread out in the union hiring halls, for example, in the bars and grills. And those were pretty much Kauai Haryou, she's friends and fellow travelers. They didn't all see eye to eye.

This was during the era of great hysteria, the anti-communist hysteria that gripped the United States, 1947, 1948, 1950s, Joseph McCarthy, not Eugene McCarthy, Joseph McCarthy, who said there were 400 commies in the U.S. government, and he could name them. He had this list, and he could name all these communists, well, of course, he didn't have any, or he tried, think he had maybe one or two. And the local labor leaders, and all, were tarred with that brush. Haryou Bridges really was a member of the Communist Party, but they were very few. They were reformers. They were attempting to get a better government for the people, rather than what they viewed as a capitalist, quagmire of greed and money controlling. And so his friends would have, but he was very independent. And Jackie Motto was one of the Hawaii's seven. I suppose I should say something about the Hawaii seven, because in 1952, 1953, seven

seven people were arrested for conspiring to overthrow the United States government. It was not against the law to be a communist, a member of the Communist Party. You could be a member of the Communist Party, but so they wrote the Smith Act, the Congressional Smith Act, which made it against the law to conspire to overthrow the U.S. government. That's very hard to prove. But they thought they proved it with these seven people, and Koji Haryou, she was one of them. Jackie Motto was another, not the Rhino keys, they were, he was a school teacher, John Rhino Key and Iko Rhino Key, they were teachers, Jack Hall, yes, and so forth. And they were imprisoned and jailed, jury found them guilty. And it was fought all the way up to the California Court of San Francisco Court of Appeals, which threw it out.

It was clearly unconstitutional, nobody conspired. Everything he did, everything he believed in, he wrote in the record. He printed the Declaration of Independence, for example. His heart was on his sleeve, and he was a very open person, and I think he went to labor organizing meetings once or twice, but he didn't even do that, he was not much of a joiner. So he didn't go to meetings, but they tried to prove that he did, but anyway, he finally won that. So if you're going to sort of talk a little bit about how did they get the record out of the people? It was a medium of the streets, they put it out in front of the office building, and they got the record out to the street by putting it in stationary, but we have them today, those blue machines that have the star bulletin or the advertiser in them, or you could walk into the office and pick one up, or you could subscribe and get it to your home or your office.

5,000 circulation and sold out every week, people would walk over to get it, people from downtown businesses, and it was lively, you know, it was entertaining and lively. The mainstream press tried to kill it by making it ridiculous, I think the star bulletin called it a pipsqueak of a paper, and advertiser called it that little pinco rag, and that kind of stuff, because this was mass hysteria in the country, and what you unfortunately led in that hysteria, a House on American Activities Committee came out to Honolulu, Hawaii, to investigate the communist scare, a communist threat to Hawaii, and that was ahead of the mainline states, so Cody was very much caught up in that, but he was never a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, never conspired to overthrow the government, but anyway the papers were a medium of the street.