Biography Hawaiʻi; Koji Ariyoshi; Interview with Helen Chapin 7/14/04 #2

you're book that with the record or with some of these papers they were literally throwing them over the fences into the plantations. Oh yes. Yes. Yeah that's good that distribution on the plantations and labor papers too. Okay that's a good point you can talk a little bit about the problems the record encountered tried to distribute itself neighbor islands plantations. The record had a hard time distributing on the neighbor islands it could be distributed in Honolulu rather easily but you try to go to the outside islands as they were called labor papers the Honolulu record the dissident papers the alternative press had a difficult time because the plantations were of course controlled by the oligarchy the management was controlled by the republican oligarchy and these papers were very often seen as democratic rags and so they would resort to subterfuge to get their papers read they would for example take bundles of papers and throw them over the fence to a plantation

community or however they could get them they couldn't just put them on the general stores from Lennon because they'd be destroyed. That is an old trick to get your material out is to have somebody or have several several people then take it take the bundles and distribute them on their own. A little bit about Kojiarioshi as a writer and as an editor how would you describe the sort of working methods his style the kind of tone he's at with the paper. Kojiarioshi as an editor was not exactly a one man show but in fact he wrote most of the material the important material in the record himself and then he had contributing editors or contributing people. These are all Jack Hall newspaper men Bob McElrath who was a radio personality. They were John Rhino Key who was a school teacher they wrote for him fairly regularly and then people with submit book reviews for example or cartoons

and he would print them and he tried if it was material solicited by him he would try to pay a few dollars for the material so much a column which is what the newspapers did. Otherwise he was writing it himself he also used a lot of clippings from other newspapers all over the world not just in the United States. Associated press for example you know you would have he subscribed to the Associated Press and would carry material so that helped to fill the gaps when he needed that or if it was something a really prominent case where he felt he needed outside writers he would get material that way. You seem to be a pretty prominent editorialist. If you can talk a bit about him as an editorial writer there always seem to be an editorial every week and when she was certainly trying

to inform people what kind of issues did he raise and what kind of things did he want to sort of explain or share with people. Roger Arioshi was a very scrupulous editor and he separated his opinion or his editorial opinions from the news content of the paper. Not every newspaper does that they sometimes mix it up you don't know whether your reading the editorial appears on the front page which you don't know that's what you're reading. For example the Honolulu advertiser during the great McCarthy scare years Lauren Thurston the publisher wrote a series of dear Joe letters and they appeared on the front page of the paper and these letters were ostensibly written by a labor organizer from the Kremlin back to Joe Stalin in Russia to the effect of tell us what to do because we're ready to overthrow the government of the United States so dear Joe please tell us what to do. It was a Shibai it was a giant Shibai. People could read those letters and really think that there was this union organizer from

the Kremlin in Hawaii when it was really Lauren Thurston. Lauren Thurston owned up after about a week or two they carried it said yes he was writing the letters but he carried those letters on the front page of the paper in editorial position for six months or so wrote some 70 or 80 columns. Koji Arioshi would have none of that if it was an editorial and his opinion you knew it he would byline it with his name and he would usually have it on the editorial page which was the second or fourth page of the paper or he would if he put it on the front page it was he didn't put it on the front page it was very seldom if he printed the declaration of independence that would be on the front page all right that's some kind of editorial statement but otherwise it would be a news article within facts of the case. For example police brutality police go into bars in Honolulu and they beat up on the men who were in there he would report that as an incident of crime by the police so it would be written objectively but anybody reading it could understand that

that was you know a straight news article if he editorialized on it it would be on an inside page saying he got a clean up the police department. How much of a vehicle for international news was the Honolulu record? The Honolulu record was a general circulation paper with news from all over the world but it had it had foreign news too but it mostly focused on local news and then this was the heyday of union organizing it it had a lot of local news and a lot of California news for example because of the dock strikes it had so what it did carry I thought it carried associate press it would have things out of New York or Paris or Chicago or whatever at times. Could you talk a little bit about the relationship between the record and labor because you've sort of talked a bit about how we try to keep that separate. How much of a labor man was code area? The Honolulu record was not

strictly speaking a labor paper it was independent even though the ILWU originally had given some very little bit of money to it. The labor papers were as labor papers were papers for organizing they were really meant as organizing tools so the voice of labor for example which was a primary labor paper in the islands was clearly an organizing tool it would come out and tell on a certain day of the week or what they were weak least mostly telling people where to meet where the where the strike lines were going to be how to how to pack their lunches for the strike and how long they might be away from their jobs they were instructional they also of course printed damning political cartoons against the bosses you know they were very vituperative they were they were they were propaganda instruments they had good solid news they had letters to the editor they had sports news and so forth

but basically they were biased papers so if you wanted to read about the strike well say you wanted to read about the Smith that case when Cochiario she was arrested for trying to overthrow the government the record and notice its name the record printed the daily entire in its entirety the daily trials of the what you said they printed the whole transcript of the trials if you read the whole voice of labor on that same day you would get just snippets of it or some snippets that you know support their position if you read the home of the star book and home of advertising you would never even know there was a strike except that they would be you know screaming at people that they were convened communist agents and taking advantage of for walking off the job you would never get for example the real issue of the 1948 strike which was wages is a differential wage system on the coast stevedores got I don't remember exactly but just say four dollars an hour in Hawaii

they were making like three twenty an hour so it was a wage issue but you would have thought that it was you know political and that they wanted to overthrow the government you would not read that in the voice of labor well you might read in the voice of labor you would certainly read it in cogees paper you would not read it in the star bulletin or bullet or the advertiser the record was able to keep going for several years what do you think contributed to the fact that you had to go out of business the record lasted from 1948 till 1959 it had eleven good solid years papers unless they're the New York times of the Los Angeles times the great big guns war street journal they go in and out of business even then although they're certainly going out of business now he he was tired and it was not making enough money his head growing children he had to send them to school and he just decided that he'd had enough and so he closed it down people work for him to the very end you know try to keep it going but he sort of made up his mind when it a business

for himself he had very small business enterprises and that's what he did in 1976 when he died the Hawaii state legislator recognized his contribution to the state of Hawaii what he thought and they recognized him on the basis of the home of the record he just talked about how it's daily publishing the Honolulu record made sure everybody knew it was an opposition newspaper what it was about they don't have the news how the record how would the record explain but it was doing how would the star bullet or the Hawaii star or the Hawaii any kind of newspaper advertised what it was doing in those days

they were not aware as much as we are now of the type of newspaper they were doing they would get out of paper and they would think more in terms of say general circulation or particular interests we have since them I have since then classified them as establishment opposition or alternative independent or or official as the governing categories but that is a later addition so code you would have seen his paper as just I think a general circulation paper the fact that we could classify today as opposition is that it falls into that general category of all of the dissident papers including the Hawaii nationalist papers so it's an overall umbrella term now that was not necessarily so at the time given the fact you started the paper you clearly thought that why you needed a paper like the record what did he think he was adding into the community is a paper that either wasn't there when

the paper started or almost deliberately was being kept down. Koji Aryoshi I think decided to start the record because he had something to say and he had been a newspaper man he had written for newspapers he had been published by the Honolulu star bulletin which was pretty remarkable the bulletin you know got away from it's very very conservative past and and they wanted statehood the farrington really wanted statehood so they backed off of being really racist and anti-union and so forth and they hired Koji Aryoshi to write a series of articles on Kona coffee farming for example he when he came back to Hawaii in the 1940s he had it in his mind that he would write a paper he went to the University of Georgia and got his degree in journalism on a scholarship in the late 1930s early 1940s so he was already a journalist and then I think when he came back to Hawaii he saw the need for a good truthful objective paper and he went about putting it together and his friends helped him out.

How do you think he would have responded to having his paper characterised in any way as an ethnic newspaper? It's really not an ethnic newspaper it doesn't print in Japanese it was not the record what he record was not an ethnic newspaper it was the ethnic newspapers are the language newspapers and Koji I think he ran a few columns in Filipino you know and maybe some in Japanese but it's basically not an ethnic paper. What do you think of his constituency as being the ethnic community? The records constituency was general working man working woman anybody who having to make a living school teachers. He would I think he saw his readership as a lot of the people on the downside of the economy those who were having to scramble for a living and he but he also of course because of his intellect was writing to other educated people too so it's a sort of interesting combination at the time of the Honolulu record what do you think the primary values and

interests were that papers like the advertiser what were they serving what was there? Where were they coming from basically? We have said speaking about the newspapers of Hawaii in the time of the record 1950s 1960s somebody has said is written that the situation in Hawaii was the last gasp was the last gasp of the big five the oligarchy they were on the ropes already because of the strikes in the economy was going bad but the extensive strikes which were their lifeblood you know their big five the big five the oligarchy controlled shipping the plantations they control the

schools there's a double schools standard English schools and non-standard they controlled the lifeblood of the territory and the last gasp was in this period that the record was writing so it was an interesting meeting of the right paper for the times and they were they were the oligarchy was in a life and death struggle for its own survival and it got very very nasty and the advertiser in bulletin were both very very nasty papers and they thought they thought hard the bulletin began to give in gracefully a little earlier lost writer Farrington the bulletins first publisher editor wanted statehood that was his dream from the time of annexation wanted statehood so they began to pull back off of nasty accusations of being a big communist and they wanted they wanted to what you to enter the mainstream

of the American public and and all the the word was out all over the country there were articles about how what he was in the grips of communists and that they shouldn't get statehood because they weren't ready for there were all these communist agitators out there and that hurt that hurt the big five as much as anybody as anything could have they they fought with what but when it was I wish I could remember who the last who said it was the last gas but anyway everything began to change and statehood came in and everything changed after that what would you say just as a kind of summarizing comments what would you say that cogerio she's major contributions to me cogerio she's major contributions contribution was the record itself it was his life which he led in an exemplary manner he was a he

was imprisoned in a you know an American concentration camp in Montenar he enrolled in the U.S. Army enlisted in the U.S. Army to go to war to fight against Japan the home of his immigrant parents and he was an intelligence officer so we had a captain in an illustrious career he went to China when it was being overtaken by the communist revolution there came back I mean he had in other words his education everything that he had done led him to writing the record the home of the record and it was a singularly forthright intelligent very accessible newspaper that if you really wanted to know what was happening you would read it you would still read the warning advertiser or the bulletin you would read the Hawaii star you would read the how well they're all kind all kinds of newspapers are hundreds of newspapers in Hawaii there are 1250 between 1834 and the year 2000 I counted them for

a book I wrote off the newspapers of Hawaii approximately 1250 and so he but his stands out his paper stands out and so I think it was a major contribution and I think he was recognized in his own time as making that contribution oh thank you