Biography Hawaiʻi; Harriet Bouslog; Interview with Samuel P. King 1/9/03 #3

the whole way you're becoming a state and congressional resistance. Yep. Well, we're actually ready to cross that. I know the block of Southern Democrats and a lot of them were opposed to it, and... They thought we had a point where we'd like Republicans to turn it out just the opposite. If you just talk briefly about sort of congressional resistance to statehood and what kind of reasons or explanations they gave for why they didn't want to why you become a state. All the time that my father was in Congress and Joe Feinjard was in Congress, Hawaii was pressing for statehood. And we got a committee to come out here when my father was dealing to look at over and it started moving a little better all the time. Then when it became possible that we would become a state, we got a lot of opposition from

Southern Democrats who thought that Hawaii would elect Joe Farrington and Sam King as Republicans and they would be for all kinds of racial tolerance which they didn't like. So they wanted to investigate and there were two things they could hang their hands on to say that Hawaii was not ready for statehood. One was the allegation that we were full of communists and that may have been one of the reasons why the Smith Act trials were held here with pressure from the Congress. Another reason was that we had such a large proportion of persons of Japanese ancestry and they would point to people who had dual citizenship which was a phony argument because those who

had dual citizenship had nothing to do with it. Their parents had registered them in some book in Japan and they hadn't done anything about it and they didn't want to recognize that they were. Anyway, and it's another reason among the persons of Japanese ancestry, there were so many aliens. Well, the reason there were so many aliens, the Japanese ancestry were not eligible to naturalization. You know, it's kind of chasing the dog's tail around but those two arguments with the increasing tension between Japan and the United States and almost certainly that we were going to be in very strong conflict that held us up for a long time. And then when the 442 and the 100th Infantry showed their metal doing World War II and

we defeated Japan that was gone and by that time communism was pretty well gone too. But during all of that period, those arguments were used against Hawaii to keep us from being a state. As far as the general population of the United States was concerned, they thought we were somewhere over there by the Philippines. I gave a, I want to trip to Washington as part of the National Historical Contest and I spoke on state it for a way that I didn't win in the United Washington. I got a trip to Europe though and I got a good reception but people didn't even know what was going on out here.

And of course, so many little things, national businesses that sent things to Hawaii had us in the foreign department. So if you want to order something by catalog from some national catalog company, it went through the foreign department. And it wasn't until we became a state that they put us back along with the rest of the states. And you try to tell them, you know, we're not foreign, we're part of the United States well, you're fighting uphill, you're still in the foreign department. So a lot of that was still little by who you had to beat it down. And it was the advent of the jets that changed everything. Well, World War II, 450,000 U.S. citizens in the military.

And I think almost all of them loved Hawaii and many of them stayed married locally and stayed here. That exposed us to the country as a whole and spread the whole way throughout the, now when you talked about Unlulu, they knew what we were talking about and of course the big battles that got all kinds of publicity, like Midway, but prior to that, we were just this place that had a lot of communists and alien enemy persons of Japanese ancestry. Well, for one thing, I think she was the only woman litigator, I don't think there was another one, secondly, she was a breath of fresh air, she wasn't old and fuzzy, she did

new things, they came as big shock to people, you mean you do, we don't do that here, well they do it every place else, you know, secondly, she was smart and thirdly, she represented the underprivileged, now that always entails you to a spot in the, in the whole picture. She represented them successfully. I've got some questions, but they don't have to do that, you know, you've got to do that. And this might not be a good time to ask them, but you know, down the road, we are going to do another biography about PBO, and I'm wondering if you, any other answer is, I mean this is not now, but if you, maybe we could interview you in a future about his doings in Congress, you know, I don't know.

Well, I wouldn't mind except I didn't know him, I saw his funeral, I was, see he died in 1920, and 1920, I was four years old, and I was standing alongside the road, the new one who took him up to the, the buried. Do you know any of that history or what kind of, well, he pointed my father to anapolis, and I heard quite a lot about his, how he got long in, in Congress, through my father who told me about it, and they had the story about him being thrown out of the Bobby Shop because he was too dark, I mean the guy wouldn't shave him, so he's, and I'm glad to see how she pronounced that Coo-Hee-Oh, not Coo-Hee-Oh, you should tell her the reason why it's important.

No, I, she knows, I said, you know, people who call him Coo-Hee-Oh, Coo-Hee-Oh is a fat, so. Yeah, that's the wrong pronunciation of Coo-Hee-Oh anyway. But I don't, I never knew him. But you, I'm sure you probably are familiar with this role in every part of your career. Yes, and Hawaiian Homes Commission. Yes. And that would be good for down in the role, but probably be working on that one. In fact, his brother ran as a Democrat, he ran as a Republican. But then next year, we'll be working on that.