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| Index / Volume 4 / Volume 4 No. 12 |
pages 2 l 3 l 4 l 5 l 6 l 7 l 8 |
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Cop Roughs Girl In Arrest After "Date" Try Falls
When Mrs. Inez Orta, a special police matron, asked Officer Raymond Gay why he was arresting her, he said, "Disorderly."
But when she faced Judge Joseph Akau next morning, she found herself charged with profanity.
Still Mrs. Orta, her friends, Anne Magasaya, Diane Whittaker and Gertrude Lamadrid, and others who work in the same Hotel St. area as Mrs. Orta, feel the real reason for the arrest is something that happened weeks ago. "Gay has been giving her the stink-eye for weeks," said one employe on Hotel St. "I've noticed it before. So have a lot of other people around there."
The arrest came on Nuuanu Ave. Sunday about midnight when the girls were standing in the block between Pauahi and Beretania Sts., talking. Mrs. Orta, off duty from the dancehall where she is employed, noticed Gay pass on his motorcycle. He rounded the block, she says, came back and dismounted.
"No one called you," she said as the officer approached. "What do you want?"
The officer allegedly seized Mrs. Orta by her wrists, swung her around and told her: "You're under arrest."
"What the hell for?" Mrs. Orta says she asked.
"Disorderly," was the answer. At this point, it is reported, the other girls, two of" them taxi dancers and the other the owner of a taxi stand, intervened, protesting that if Mrs. Orta were to be arrested, they should be arrested, too.
As the patrol wagon came, it is reported, they said they should be taken away, too, but they were ignored.
May Lose Job
Because of the arrest, Mrs. Orta's credentials as a special police matron were taken from her, but she was told they would be returned if she were acquitted. If she is convicted on the charge of profanity, they will not be given back.
'If she loses her credentials, Mrs. Orta can no longer work as a special police matron in dance-halls.
But the real reason she was arrested, Mrs. Orta believes, is that she refused some time ago when Officer Gay asked her for a date. She and her friends say he's been giving her the "stink-eye" ever since. The attitude is not new for the policeman, says one of them, who says: "He always goes in the amusement places and bothers the girls. When he comes, you'll see them all walk away."
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Why was Tadao Sakae, Kauai construction man, awarded a contract for a portion of the Waimea flood control project while he still owed back wages to many of his employes and ex-employes?
That is the question of a Kauai man who has filed his claim with the Territorial department of labor to get wages owed him since early summer. The former employe, Danny Mizumoto, says there are many others whom Sakae owes much larger amounts. Mizumoto and the others were employed by Sakae at the Waimea Quarry. Robert M. Sroat of the department of labor says only three claims against Sakae for wages have been received here, though others may have been processed on Kauai and the duplicates may not have reached this office.
Many Failed to File Others, it is believed, may have failed to file because of the law which forbade the labor department's accepting any claim in excess of $200. The limit was raised to $300 July 1, by legislative act, but much of the labor in question was performed before that time. Many of the workers, Mizumoto says, were kept mollified by Sakae by a system of small advances and credit at a store, but he believes the amount of these emoluments was small compared to the wages owed them. In addition to the wages, Sakae is understood to have been in debted to a number of creditors, principal among them being the Nawiliwili Transportation Co., Ltd. That particular debt was reported as settled by the agency which has bonded Sakae for the Waimea flood control project.
Kauai County Chairman Anthony Baptiste, contacted in Honolulu, said he had heard that Sakae had fallen behind in wage payments on a job done for the Territory, but he had not heard of any delinquency on the county job.
"We have a letter on file from his bonding company," Mr. Baptiste said, "guaranteeing payment of all such claims."
The bonding company, National Mortgage & Finance, Ltd. is represented in this case by Clifton Yamamoto.
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In my youth I generally turned to construction projects when I was looking for a job. Thus, when I came to Honolulu in 1935 I became a construction laborer.
I remember shoveling mud for weeks during a rainy season. I was a bricklayer's helper for a while. I drove trucks.
Construction work did not provide steady employment. Therefore, whenever I was out of a job I spent my days at the public library. There, in a stumbling manner, I went from the works of one author to another, plodding through their writings with the help of a dictionary.
When I worked I was too exhausted to read books but never too tired to read the Hawaii Hochi, particularly its editorials. I am sure a great many of my generation were influenced by this forerunner of the present Hawaii Herald. It gave us ideas. We thought over issues it discussed. The Hochi was courageous and it championed the common people, and as its publisher, Fred Makino, told me once, it was a paper" that fought for the "underdogs."
In those days the Hochi raised its voice sharply, criticized the Big Five policies, the corrupt politicians and stepped on the toes of the privileged.
Because Makino had led the successful fight against the outlawing of the foreign language schools, I had a great admiration for him. This was more so because my father participated actively in this struggle and we kept up with developments as the case was fought right up to the United States Supreme Court.
The fight Makino carried on wiped out the illusion from the minds of many that the government is always right. To the older generation of Japanese who came here as immigrants, practically worshipping the emperor as God and ruler, Makino's constant campaigns and crusades for the people as against the practices and decisions of constituted authority, were inspiring education in democratic processes. The aliens followed closely, for instance, his defense of Pablo Manlapit when the Filipino lawyer was being deported for his labor activities here.
The Hochi was a fighting and crusading paper and through its fearless policy it inspired courage among its readers. The fact that it carried no Big Five or big business advertising was proof to its readers that it was not controlled by powerful interests. It gave the side that the other big employer-controlled dailies did not print. On the other hand, it forced the dailies to publish items that they would have left out. Progressively, I came to this realization. I can see now that the Hochi gradually opened my eyes by throwing light on events which would have passed me by unnoticed, without even raising my curiosity.
Our Understanding of Unions Came from Reading the Dailies
Since construction work was irregular, the family with which I lived obtained a job for me through a friend at Theo. H. Davies & Co., Ltd. I became a truck helper and made frequent trips to the docks. At that time my alien Japanese friends advised me to stay on with Davies, "even as a janitor," they said. There is security in a big firm and opportunities for promotion, I was told. This view was widely held until recently when five clerks were laid off, one with 31 years of service. The fact that all were of Japanese ancestry caused bitterness and resentment among some employes. Oldtimers I knew at Davies have now organized themselves into a union, after all these years, for protection.
When I worked at Davies about 15 years ago, union was an unpopular subject. Most of us were ignorant about this subject. Whatever we read about unions was picked up in the dailies and looking back, I can see that the articles were unsympathetic, if not hostile to the trade union movement.
Many Waited for a Few Jobs
When I started working at Davies there was a shipping strike (1936) on the West Coast. The waterfront became a beehive of activity once the strike was over and I heard longshoremen say there were plenty of jobs on the docks. I left my Davies employment to work as a longshoreman.
The regular longshoremen belonged to gangs and casual employes like me were picked up only when steady gang members did not show up for work. A timekeeper stood on a box at the corner of Queen and Awa Sts. and filled the vacancies in gangs as foremen went to him with men they had picked from among 200-300 who waited for jobs.
A Hawaiian foreman picked me practically every day. since one of his men was sick. The piers were then crowded with ships and we worked from seven in the morning to eleven at night. Almost every day I worked in the ship's hold and just like old-timers, I carried a towel with me to wipe away perspiration. We wrung our towels and hung them around our necks and soon they would drip with perspiration from our heads and faces again,
Took Stevedoring As An Adventure
The work was hard but to me it was extremely exciting. I liked the sound of the grinding winches and the warning call of the operators as the cargo came swinging into the hold. I remember my great satisfaction when a foreman, for whom I had never worked before, picked me on the second day for "machine sugar," which was loading sacks of sugar brought to the ship on a conveyor from the warehouse. "Machine sugar" was considered hard work and dangerous. This was the first time that I had done it, and I was able to perform my work because I had handled sacked material in Kona as a truck driver and coffee mill worker.
Some of us who felt that stevedoring was a great adventure, took pride in being picked up to fill vacancies in "number one" and "star gangs." These were high-production gangs which were assigned more skilled work such as "heavy lift" and cleaner cargoes, while some other gangs handled sacks of cement and such other material. This preferential treatment of gangs was a speedup technique of the company but a great many of us didn't see it that way. We competed with each other, between gangs, and exhausted ourselves.
My reaction to stevedoring was that of a rugged individualist. Every morning we casual employes waited to be picked up. We wished more regular gang members would be exhausted and stay home so that we would all be hired. We crowded around the foremen, made ourselves conspicuous and every man was for himself. It was dog-eat-dog competition for a day's work and this shaped our behavior.
Could Not See Eye To Eye With Oldtimers
While working as a stevedore I wrote a series of articles on the plight of coffee farmers in Kona. I did this when I read in the papers that the legislature was being asked to provide assistance to the distressed farmers. The Star-Bulletin published the series, which told of the poverty, the bootlegging of coffee, overcharge by the company stores and so on.
Following this initial writing venture, I did a series on stevedoring. Longshoring to me then was a romantic undertaking—hard labor fit only for a "man." This attitude ingenuously flavored the articles. I felt too that the shipping company treated the stevedores comparatively well, a view which I soon learned oldtlmers on the waterfront did not share.
I could not see eye to eye with them. For six years I had worked at some of the toughest jobs at small pay. On the waterfront a day's pay, including overtime, was more than half what Davies had paid me for a whole week.
Problems of the Farmers and Workers Are Similar
At this time I came to know a brilliant young Chinese American who was associated with the YMCA. One day he told me that my articles on Kona coffee farmers were splendid. But he saw no reason why I should glorify stevedore work and praise the company. He asked me if it wasn't the same thing— the coffee farmers being squeezed by the company and the stevedores overworked by the shipping companies?
"But stevedores are well paid," I said to him.
He said I had written that we worked 14 hours a day. That's almost two days' work, he said. I had written that we worked 36 hours without sleep, sweating on the docks and in the holds of ships. He remarked that it was no wonder that I received) the pay I mentioned.
When I said that I was man enough to take it, he was not pleased. He asked me if the old stevedores, in their 50s and 60s would be able to take the grind day after day. We intensified the speedup. They became exhausted. And we waited to take their places, actually like vultures picking a man's bones.
Competition To Exploit Laborers
Discussions with this friend made me see that he was right. The coffee farmers, the plantation workers at Pahoa and the longshoremen were all struggling for a living. Unorganized, they were pitted one against the other. Those of us who were seeking steady employment competed with the regular stevedores and in this way we stepped up the competition for their jobs from the outside.
New vistas were opened to me through associations like this. I began to have new ideas. On many Sundays I rested from work to attend breakfast gatherings at the YMCA and there listened to young men of my age discussing local and world problems. All these were entirely new experiences to me.
Kamahoahoa's Answers Gave Me Satisfaction
One Sunday Frederick Kamahoahoa was our guest. He was a pioneer of the longshoremen's union here and we asked him questions after he told us about the fledging union. I had read a few leaflets on the waterfront but I had not paid much attention to the union movement. On the job, we worked long hours and we were tired. Close to midnight we rushed home in order to recuperate ourselves for the following day. We were thus kept from getting acquainted with unionism. We knew that some of the longshoremen were union members, but membership was more or less a secret, for it was tacitly understood that this might cause an employe to lose his job.
On that Sunday I asked Fred Kamahoahoa numerous questions, and most of them were not sympathetic. He was patient as he explained what a union could da for employes. We had a long session and Kamahoahoa's answers gave me great satisfaction. It was a great surprise to me that while union activities went on in our midst, many of us had been oblivious to them.
YMCA Sessions Were a Turning Point
On another Sunday, Arnold Wills of the NLRB, spoke to a larger group and we had a discussion period. These sessions were valuable in giving me an understanding of trade unionism. On the job, I began to take greater interest in the union and as I talked to longshoremen like Benjamin Kaito or Sam Kohunui, I discovered that they were union members. Both of them were in my gang.
A lesson I learned from this period is this: That union consciousness does not come spontaneously. People learn from personal experience and from each other, some faster and others slower. Many learn from others who champion a good cause like unionism which at the particular moment may be under the sharpest attack from the dominant ruling class.
Another lesson I learned is that there is need of patience to explain to people in order to raise their understanding of the problems confronting them. It was a young man close to the YMCA who helped me to appreciate trade unions, although he was not a worker and I was one. I am ever grateful for the interest he took in me. He helped me acquire, generally, a liberal outlook.
Thus today, when I hear that certain individuals do not appreciate unions and what their organizations are doing for them, I first raise the question—how well do the people understand their unions and the role they should play to strengthen them and improve their general welfare.
The YMCA sessions were a turning point for me, for there I began to think differently of unions. The basic YMCA approach of working together helped me to rub off the rugged individualism. I began to take greater interest in union and not long after that I was asked to join the organization.
At that time, membership in the longshore union was considered a conspiracy against the shipping company and I remember wearing the union button inside my cap. Sometimes I pinned it inside my pocket and showed it to longshoremen I wanted to recruit into the union.
All this comes back to me. I am now charged by the government of alleged conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. A little over a decade ago it was a conspiracy in the eyes of employers for laborers to belong to a union and union-minded men were blacklisted and denied employment by the conspiracy of employers. Today, militant unions are still the main targets of employers but it is not "dangerous" to discuss union problems. Today, people are persecuted for criticizing the government's war policy, which profits big industry, for advocating peace, and the extension of constitutional rights as they should be, to all.
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We have received inquiries as to how and where contributions can be made for the defense of the Hawaii Seven who have been indicted under the Smith Act. We learn that others have been asked similar questions.
Until such time as a committee is formed to take care of such matters in the defense of the seven, the RECORD will receive the contributions and turn them over to the committee.
The defense of the seven will be costly and the committee will need every cent it can raise. You can send or bring your contribution to the RECORD office at 811 Sheridan St., Honolulu.
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"Once there were seven shows here at once," says Tatsuro Matsuo. "When that happens, people get to thinking of shows from Japan as just something ordinary."
That is the explanation of the well known Honolulu impressario for the lack of financial success which has attended theatrical importations from Japan.
Divide Enterprises
Attendant to that failure, too, is the splitting of the promotional team of Tatsuro and Fred Matsuo, and an actual divorcement of their business affairs, which will affect Honolulu theatergoers, especially those of Japanese extraction, in months to come.
Tatsuro will, in future, manage the International Theater, while Fred will center his attention upon Lau Yee Chai, the Waikiki restaurant in which the brothers have long had a joint interest.
Contrary to reports that Fred had sold all his stock in the International Theater and Tatsuro all his in Lau Yee Chai, the elder brother, Tatsuro, says he still retains some interest in the restaurant.
The temporary glutting of the theatrical market with Japanese shows will not, Tatsuro assures, prevent him from bringing other troupes in the future. But they will be fewer and farther between. A large part of the attraction of foreign artists, he explains, is the fact that they come from a long way off. When they are made too readily available, the public loses interest. But Mr. Matsuo has his eyes open to possibilities which might attract audiences in Hawaii. "I am going to Japan again very soon," he says.
Future importations might, Mr. Matsuo said, be sponsored by the International Theater, by himself, or by himself and a partner.
Want Mainland Tours Financial difficulties with Japanese troupes, it was "learned from other sources, have arisen from a number of causes. For one thing, the cost of passage alone for performers is extremely high. For another, most troupes are dissatisfied if they are booked only to Hawaii and riot to the Mainland as well. But they do not draw as well on the Mainland as in Hawaii.
The difference is not as great, Matsuo says, as one might think, for the Mainland charge per capita is $2, so that even with smaller audiences, box office receipts may be high.
With some shows, as with the Japanese amateur boxers who competed recently against Hawaii's amateurs, the goodwill involved is more important than the actual gain or loss of money.
"It will do the pictures good," he says. "It will do everything good."
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Six Filipino laborers who have not received a cent for working 19 days each for a California grape producer and packer who recruited them here with the assistance of the Territorial labor and industrial relations department now have hopes that they may be able to collect their pay.
One of the laborers has been asked to make a report for the Territorial labor department which is said to be interested in investigating the Hamilton recruiting and in getting the money due the six men.
Arrested on Pay Day
On pay day the six were picked up by Federal agents at Dinuba, Calif., taken to the San Francisco Immigration Service station and shipped back to Hawaii.
Feliciano Alconsul, spokesman of the group of 22 Filipinos who were recruited by L. R. Hamilton, said that the California employer was asked to carry out the terms of the contract which he never did. Instead Hamilton made reports about Alconsul and five others to the Immigration Service which then brought charges that the six had violated immigration laws. The returned laborers do not know why the other five, besides Alconsul, were picked up. Alconsul had been the spokesman and leader of the group from the time they left here late in July.
Wanted Contract Enforced
"I was asked by Thomas Miles of the labor department to look after the boys and that is just what I did. I wanted to have the contract which Hamilton signed to be fully enforced," Alconsul said. "Hamilton did not want to send only me back here. I believe he realized that this would expose him. Therefore he shipped five others back with me."
In sending the five others, Alconsul said, Hamilton must have felt that he was not only eliminating the spokesman but potential spokesmen of the group who would not permit him to shove the men around and exploit them.
As an example of Hamilton's treatment of the men, Alconsul mentioned that the grape grower told them to sleep under the olive trees. When they protested, John Salazar, Hamilton's foreman, told the men, "what's the difference if you slept under olive trees. It's hot inside the house too." Work Satisfactory Salazar told the men that food was ready shortly after they arrived at Hamilton's farm. When the 22 Hawaiian laborers went into the dining hall they saw flies swarming over the food.
"This also left me speechless," Alconsul said. "We could not stand this kind of treatment. So I asked Salazar to find us a room in town for which we paid. Later Hamilton emptied a few rooms where Mainland Filipinos and Mexicans were living and gave them to us. These men slept under olive trees. They did not have a contract. They had no spokesmen, so they got kicked around."
The work wasn't hard, Alconsul and two others who had returned said. They picked grapes at such a fast clip that Salazar sometimes told them long before quitting time that they had gathered enough for the day.
Told of Labor Inspector "We wanted to stay for the year of the contract. We liked it there, except for the treatment. So I tried to make Mr. Hamilton live by the terms of the contract, but he would not."
When the men left here they were told by a labor department official that a government labor inspector would visit Hamilton's farm frequently. No inspector came.
"I once asked Mr. Hamilton what he was going to do about the files in the kitchen and the dining place. He did not give me a satisfactory answer. I said that the board of health should be called in," Alconsul explained. Neither Hamilton nor Salazar gave the men any money when they asked for a loan until pay day since they ran out of money.
Because Salazar did pot take one of them to the store to buy groceries one day, all 22 did not have food the next day. They did not go to work.
Federal Agents Used A few days later when the men had gone back to work, Federal agents picked up six of them and locked them up in Visalia. Joel Zaballa, a Filipino checker working for Hamilton, visited the prison and asked the government what the charges were. The answer was, they did not know. Zaballa asked for the release of the six and got them out. He is reported to have left Hamilton's employ. A few days later Hamilton told the six to look for farmers who would put up bonds for them. He said he was willing to transfer them. The six found bondsmen, hut before they could do anything else, Hamilton had them arrested. He said that the contract was cancelled. The warrant for the arrests issued by the San Francisco Immigration Service, said that it "appears by evidence submitted" the men had "violated immigration laws."
Letters Never Arrived
The six were to be given a hearing and were told to engage counsel to defend them. If they lost, they were told they faced deportation to the Philippines. They waived hearings and asked to be sent to Hawaii, to which the immigration authorities agreed.
"We wanted to work and we did work. Salazar was satisfied with our work. Our work week was 48 hours. We put in 60 hours. But we were arrested, locked up and sent back. We have not been paid yet," Alconsul said.
From Dinuba, Alconsul wrote letters to Mr. Miles and another official, explaining the conditions, shortly after the men arrived there. Neither Thomas Miles nor any other official has received Alconsul's letters, the RECORD learned. Alconsul had asked Hamilton's "Number One Man" Salazar to mail them for him.
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Behind the extensive renovation of the Liberty House building, estimated to cost more than $1,500,000, lies the story of a mid-town financial maneuvering that threatened for a time to shift the business center of Honolulu.
Liberty House put the pressure on the James Campbell Estate, its chief landlord, business circles say, threatening seriously to move its entire operation to the site now occupied by May's Market on South Beretania St. if it could not get the type of renovation it desired in the ancient building which now houses its chief operation. "But the other big businesses along Fort St. were worried," says a man involved, "for fear that a move by Liberty House might tend to take business away from the area. Of course, the companies that lease to the businesses were worried most."
Bent Said Quarter-Million
For the rent Liberty House pays, reputedly in access of $250,000 per year, the firm is said to have argued that it deserved all the improvements it asked, especially since the building had begun to show considerable signs of age and wear.
Consequently, business circles have it, the Campbell Estate and other owners of [the property agreed to the renovations now being made by Nordic Construction, Ltd.
Largest single item among the elements which will modernize the Liberty House building is probably the steel bolstering structure.
Another item, the air conditioning system, is said to cost in excess of $350,000.
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Consul General Alzate Leaves With Belongings; Not Expected To Return
Consul General Manuel A. Alzate may not return to Honolulu to head the local Philippines government office. All his belongings have been shipped home and he-has sold his house, a reliable source told the RECORD this week. His departure was without fanfare.
Technically, still the consul general here, Mr. Alzate is on leave to the Philippines to help in the Quirino Liberal party's election campaign as second man on the finance committee headed by millionaire Vicente Madrigal.
Awaits Reassignment
After the election, it is said locally in the Filipino community, Mr. Alzate hopes to be reassigned abroad, preferably in Europe.
His position is presently filled by Consul Juan C. Dionicio, who is acting consul general.
A sore spot for Mr. Alzate, observers say, is the recent ap pointment of Aurelio Quitoriano as undersecretary of labor by President Elpidio Quirino. Mr. Quitoriano was formerly consul under Mr. Alzate at the local consulate general. Relationship between the two was "frigid if not hostile," according to an informed source. Mr. Quitoriano had ambitions of becoming consul general here when the position was vacated by Modesto Farolan, who returned to the Philippines.
After Mr. Alzate's arrival, the consulate general staff was sharply split between pro-Quitoriano and pro-Alzate followers. Mr. Quitoriano was finally reassigned to San Francisco. When the foreign service reduced its staff members, Mr. Quitoriano was released from his post and returned to the Philippines.
"Victory" Short Lived All this was regarded as a "victory" for Mr. Alzate by political observers here and in the Philippines, but whatever the victory was, it was short lived. Mr.
Quitoriano was made undersecretary of labor in the Quirino cabinet.
Mr. Quitoriano is a protege of Quirino and a fellow townsman.
Locally, Mr. Quitoriano is reported to have lost prestige when he became tied up with phony Philippines corporations which took savings away from Filipino plantation laborers.
Before coming here he was a public defender in the Philippines and is known as a chief advocate of the 70-30 sharecropping regulation which still has not been carried out by the government. The tenants under this regulation would get 70 per cent of the farm income, while the landlord would get 30 per cent. The prevailing practice gives the landlord the bigger take because he does the bookkeeping and the dividing.
Mr. Alzate is a strong supporter of Sen. Jose Avelino who ran against President Quirino for the chief executive post in 1949. Avelino, who attacked Quirino sharply during the campaign, abruptly turned around to form an alliance with the president.
This behavior confused many of his supporters and politicians who . had formed a coalition with him against the graft-ridden administration. Avelino himself had been expelled from the senate presidency and suspended as a senator prior to the election of 1949 on charges arising from the beer surplus scandal which shocked the country and became an important political issue.
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Retired Banker In New Civil Rights Group
Lawrenceville, N. J. (FP)—Formation of an Emergency Civil Liberties Committee by more than 150 men and women was announced here by its acting chairman. Prof. Paul Lehman of Princeton Theological Seminary, and its acting secretary, James Imbrie, retired investment banker.
They said the committee is pledged to a strictly nonpartisan policy and, where constitutional rights are involved, will defend accused or persecuted persons irrespective of politics, race, color or creed. The committee will not compete with existing civil liberties groups, they said, but hopes to be able to move with dispatch in situations where these organizations are unable or unwilling to act.
As examples of the kind of cases it will handle, the committee cited: Arrests under the Smith Act, as in the Communist cases; denials of passports and the right to travel, as in the case of Prof. John K. Pair-bank; loyalty discharges, as in the case of
James Kutcher, Trotskyist legless veteran, and state sedition law prosecutions, as in the recent indictment of Prof. Dirk Struik of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. THE FOUNDERS come from 39 states and include over 50 clergymen and many educators and professionals.
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The tax bill to soak the small-income earners is still being kicked around.
Under the Senate-House compromise bill which the House rejected, those who earn less than $27,000 would have paid an additional 113/4 per cent beginning November 1. Their take-home pay would have been that much smaller.
But in the compromise bill there was much brighter news for big-income earners. The Senate-House conferees dropped the House-approved provision which would have clapped a withholding tax on dividends, royalties and interest payments by corporations.
For those who are single and make $27,000, the regular income tax would have been boosted by a 9 per cent surtax. A married person earning $45,000 would have been taxed 9 per cent surtax also.
Experts figured the surtax meant an increase of only 11/2 per cent on married couples earning $1,000,000 and about 41/2 per cent on incomes of $100,000.
The more one makes, the less he pays.
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While tens of billions go for war preparation, government production authorities have halted construction on 731 school projects and denied steel to 800 others in the fourth quarter of 1951. Pointing to this neglect of educational facilities. President J. Cloyd Miller of the National Education Association October 11, branded the mobilization policy as "shortsighted."
The increased birth rate in the nation will require 200,000 classrooms to house students eight years from now; but the construction program is lagging far behind, President Miller said. In eight years there will be 5,000,000 more students than there are today.
Never in American history have conditions been so critical, according to President Miller. Nearly 4,000,000 children of school age are not enrolled in any school. Millions of others are not attending full-day sessions because of classroom shortage.
The building program, prior to the current curtailment, was already far behind present-day requirements because of a decade of depression followed by a decade of war and its aftermath.
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"I am always hoping that you folks at home are doing something so that we will have 'peace.' When 'peace' has been secured then I can come home," wrote Private Joseph Gregory Kekipi to his sister in Wailuku, Maui, from a POW camp somewhere in North Korea.
The letter reached Mrs. Henrietta Kama recently. In publishing the letter the Maui News said that Pvt. Kekipi was the first Maui soldier known to be a prisoner of war in Korea. A few months ago (Aug. 9) the RECORD published that Pfc Larry Kawamoto, a Maui soldier, was a prisoner of war in Korea. He was captured last year. His letter to his parents was also carried in this weekly. Kekipi was reported missing in action on April 25, 1951. Pvt. Kekipi's letter follows, in part: "Dearest Sis:
"I do hope this letter will reach you in the best of health. Please do not worry about me, as I am in good health and doing very well. I am a POW and I am being treated very well.
"The Chinese are always giving us their best food to eat. They also share whatever tobacco they get, and give us meat rations and also sugar rations.
"I am always hoping that you folks at home are doing something so that we will have 'peace.' When 'peace' has been secured then I can come home . . .
Your brother, Gregory."
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". . . Last year one of the plantations made a gift of a medal which cost $1.50, to the Filipino who was the best cane loader. To win that medal a man had to carry on his back, up a ladder onto the cane car 6 days a week—no, 7 days a week, 31 days a month— Sundays he did other work besides loading—15 tons of cane. The man made $4 under that speed-up system."—Henry A. Rudin, 16 years personnel director at Waialua Plantation, testifying before a Congressional committee in 1937.
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By Special Correspondence
San Juan, Puerto Rico—Unemployment is an acute problem in this island which was ceded to the United States at the close of the Spanish-American War by the Treaty of Paris.
The island, approximately 100 miles long and about 35 wide, with an area of 3,435 square miles, has a population of 2,200,000.
Plantations Profitable Sugar, its outstanding agricultural interest, is an annual crop. The harvesting season begins in January and continues through June. During the harvesting season the plantation workers have moderately regular employment; at its close, most of them are without work.
The employed worker, a usually reliable source says, receives $2.50 per day, but may be employed only two or three days per week. He and his family live in rude, unpainted shacks on or near the plantation, with little in the way of living comforts or sanitation. Puerto Rican plantations are said to be very profitable and stocks in them rate high on the New York Stock Exchange. To reduce unemployment, Puerto Rico has adopted a policy of encouraging American industrialists to locate factories on the island. One hundred forty-three new industries have been established under this plan. Products of the local industries include needlecraft, canned fruits and vegetables, ceramic products, rugs, hats, gloves, shirts, shoes, soft drinks, mattresses, bottles, cement, beer, furniture, raw and refined sugar, alcohol, molasses and rum.
Government Offers Cheap Labor
Under the policy of encouraging new industries the local government offers freedom from taxation, including income taxes until 1962. In some cases the government has built the factories for the capitalists. The RECORD'S correspondent met one American manufacturer of textiles and dry goods who had refused to accept the Puerto Rican government's offer because it would not agree to build the factory, though he agreed that Puerto Rico furnished an enormous reservoir of cheap labor.
In addition to sugar, the agricultural products are tobacco, coffee, coconuts, vanilla, grapefruit, pineapples, sea island cotton, guavas, papayas and other tropical fruit.
San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital city, has agencies for most of the American motor car and truck manufacturers; makers of agricultural machinery are also represented. The Chase National Bank has two or more branches in San Juan. An imposing building houses the National City Bank.
To all appearances, American capitalists do well in Puerto Rico.
One of the earliest known conspiracy charges was leveled at a group of bakers' servants in 1349. The workers were indicted in London, England, for "conspiring among themselves that they would not work for their masters except at double or treble the wages formerly given."
The 25 largest insurance firms in the U. S. are doing more than three-fourths of all the business.
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Charles M. Hite was probably as surprised as anyone else Tuesday when the board of supervisors confirmed his appointment to be C-C attorney. Hite, who had been visiting Mayor John H. Wilson only the day before on another matter, told reporters then that ha had no thought of returning to public office. After the appointment Tuesday, he told reporters he had nothing to say except that the whole thing came as a complete surprise.
There is reason to believe, too, that the appointment suggested itself to Mayor Wilson by the visit and that he had said nothing to Hite at all prior to presenting the name to the supervisors.
The real surprise came then— at a meeting of the supervisors in the mayor's office, when the Republicans made it quite clear they would block the appointment of Nathaniel Felzer and asked for another name. Mayor Wilson mentioned Hite, Jimmy Trask said he was favorable, Nick Teves followed suit quickly, and within a minute it became apparent that Felzer was out and Hite chosen. There could have been little prearrangement, if any, but the rapidity of the whole thing might have led the casual observer to conclude it was rehearsed.
Of course, there had to be a little more formality even in the informal meeting, and Ichinose held up a finger and warned: "Organization." Whereupon, the four Republicans filed out and came back a moment later to repeat the decisions they had indicated a moment before.
Land Expert Needed In the short discussion that accompanied the informal approval, Ichinose indicated a lack of information similar to that he has displayed on numerous other occasions.
"I don't know the man," he said, and then wondered, aloud: "Wasn't there some publicity about him as prosecutor?"
There was a moment of silence and no one bothered to enlighten Dado Marino's manager about the vigorous campaign of Circuit Judge John E. Parks against Mr. Hite's administration of the prosecutor's office.
After a moment, Mayor Wilson explained that Hite is an authority on land laws and that's what the attorney's office needs just now.
Sakae Takaehashi was the only supervisor opposing the appointment and he preferred not to give a reason for his action. The reception Mr. Hite may expect from the deputy attorneys is somewhat dubious since it is known a number of them hoped for the appointment of Mr. Felzer.
One had visited the mayor to predict that if a secret ballot of the deputies were taken, the vote would be 6-0 in favor of Felzer. There are presently six deputies on duty with two vacancies to be filled by the new attorney.
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Not $20 a foot, but $14 a foot is the real cost of the Manoa Intermediate School now under construction, said a local building authority recently, contradicting a statement made by a department of public instruction official who recently mentioned the $20 figure in speaking to a PTA group.
"And you have to remember," the expert said, "that it was estimated in the beginning that a great deal more could be spent on the building because the price of the land was so low." The land for the Manoa School is estimated to have cost something like one-half cent a square foot. Neighboring sites, suitable for the school, were generally priced at about 80 cents a square foot.
The $20 estimate was made by a DPI man explaining to a PTA group in Manoa that, while the school promises to be. an excellent structure in many ways, the price is prohibitive for future structures. The price the DPI generally expects to pay he said, is something nearer $12 a foot.
Piles Necessary
Difficulties were experienced in setting a foundation for the Manoa School because of the spongy, uncertain nature of the land. It was this spongy quality which induced the builders to support the structure on a number of piles as stanchions for holding the buildings against possible movement, should the land shift.
Those who approve the building, along with the Manoa PTA, have pointed out a number of features which represent adaptations to local conditions. Among these is the roof constructed without openings which often give way eventually to permanent leaks, especially in rainy climates.
Even in other climates, such roofs are being adopted to a higher degree and, writing in a recent issue of a builders' magazine, Alonzo Harriman, architect of Auburn, Maine, says: "The best roof is one with no holes in it."
This oversimplification merely refers to the fact that skylights and other intentional openings often lead the way for leaks around their edges which can never be permanently repaired. Harriman also points out that companies which bond roofs will refuse to bond such skylights and other openings.
"All in all," said the builder, "I think Manoa School will be the best building of its sort around here. And don't forget that it is built so that it may be used as a bomb shelter if that's ever necessary."
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San Francisco (FP)—The International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union has entered the fight to win reduced bail for a group of men and women arrested under the Smith Act and held without trial in a Los Angeles prison since July 26, unable to raise bail of $50,000 each.
In a friend-of-the-court brief submitted to U. S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the union said its "concern with the pending matters arises not from any identification with the views of the defendants, but from its own experiences, which have demonstrated time and again how the denial of bail or the fixing of bail in excessive amounts can be, and is, used adversely to a union in industrial controversies.
"In the 1934 strike in San Francisco, the union's experience was that bail for its members was fixed in amounts up to ten times the amount fixed for strikebreakers charged with substantially the same offence." The brief recalled the revocation of bail of ILWU President Harry Bridges in 1950, which the circuit court held to be in the nature of punishment because the union leader advocated peaceful settlement of the Korean War. It
also recalled the recent arrest of the ILWU's Hawaiian regional director, Jack Hall, while he was in the midst of sugar contract negotiations. Hall, also charged with violating the Smith Act, was held in $75,000 bail at the request of the government, but this was later reduced by a U. S. district judge to $7,500.
The brief said the union's experience over the years "demonstrates its interest in obtaining a clear and definite reiteration of the rule that the sole purpose of bail is to insure the presence of the accused at his trial and that bail may not be used for any other purpose." Excessive bail also denies the basic American presumption that defendants are innocent until proved guilty, the ILWU said.
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"We have gone along for years," says President Joseph Kealalio of ILWU Local 136 (longshore), "and the company didn't question the way we loaded. Then they suddenly want to change the loads on, a certain type of skip." The protest of the Honolulu stevedores to the proposed alteration in system is really a protest against a type of speedup, the longshore president explained, which stevedores feel is an arbitrary action on the part of the company. It was this dissatisfaction which led to a walkoff on one Matson ship and a refusal to load another over the weekend before future union-company meetings were agreed upon to discuss the matter.
Decreed By Bigwigs Castle & Cooke had announced, according to the dallies, that the opinion of the. Honolulu chief of operations on the loads was not final, but subject to the approval of higher officials. Longshoremen have indicated that the C & C chief operating superintendent, Edmund Jensen, has expressed no dissatisfaction with the present size of the sling loads.
The question, President Kealalio stressed, is not one of mere weight of sling loads, though he said, it is true West Coast loads, and even those in Hilo are lighter than those loaded according to Honolulu practice.
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Chicago (FP)—If they can't afford steak, let 'em eat baloney. That is the advice food experts hired by the gravy-minded big packers have been instructed to pass on to meat hungry consumers. Women's pages in the commercial press are blossoming forth with stories and recipes, planted by dieticians of Armour & Co. and the other major meat packers, advising housewives how to "stretch" their meat dollars.
Cheaper Cut No "Solution"
Most of the recipes call for plentiful portions of noodles, spaghetti and other starchy fillers spiked with hot sauces and just enough chunks of low-grade sausage and so-called luncheon meats to make a hungry worker really yearn for a man-sized portion of beef.
"No matter how it's sauced, it's still baloney." And so is— according to research Director Lyle Cooper of the United Packinghouse Workers (CIO)—the argument of packer spokesmen that housewives can solve the high price-of-steak problem by buying "cheaper cuts." This solution "seems to have a certain plausibility," Cooper said, but he pointed out: "Inspection of meat price quotations, as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics over the past year, tells an interesting story. These quotations show that, percentage-wise, hamburger has increased considerably more than steak, and salt pork more than bacon. Clearly, this cheaper cut 'solution' is one which packers welcome with open arms.
Monopoly Stranglehold
"Incidentally, in terms of their own supply-and-demand explanation, consumers, by force of circumstance, have been turning to cheaper cuts—without benefit of advice from packers. But this course has hardly solved their own meat price problem—not to speak of failing to bring down the price of steak. For, at present prices, good steak has become a luxury normally limited to the well-to-do."
Cooper noted that what the packers call "cheaper cuts" actually are not cheap. "If you can find spareribs at 50 cents a pound," he said, "it might be instructive to weigh the bones after eating the spare meat. Or if you want to grasp the other horn of the dilemma, see how much a dollar will buy of such a boneless item as liver—classified as 'offal' in the packing industry."
The union researcher traced the high price of meat directly to the monopoly stranglehold exerted on the industry by Armour, Swift, Wilson and Cudahy. Among thousands of so-called competing packers, these four companies together account for over three-fourths of the federally-inspected cattle slaughter and beef supply.
Packers Wrecked Price Control
The nation is still suffering from the effects of the packers' sitdown strike against OPA in 1946, which succeeded in wrecking price control. "The big packers are once more predicting that meat price controls won't work," Cooper warned. "It is vital to understand that this small group of packers has it in its power, in large measure, to make controls work—or fail.
Continued ignorance on such elementary matters as to the correctness, of their methods of allocating costs between meat, and by-products—remembering that meat-parking is a 'dissembling' process which lends itself to arbitrary allocation of costs—is simply inviting a repetition of the mystification which arose in OPA days."
Meanwhile, Cooper said, the fight to get edible low-priced meat on workers' tables would be aided by an investigation that would "throw the searchlight on such matters as why the marketing margin on cattle (the difference between what the farmer gets for his animals and what the consumer pays for beef) mounted 28 per cent last year."
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On the eve of Aloha Week Saturday afternoon, to be exact —a man in working clothes was seen at the corner of Fort and King Sts., the following message written boldly in ink on the back of his blue denim shirt:
"On Aloha Week I love you you love me because I no money I no happy happy."
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Istanbul (ALN)—Forty thousand Turkish children are roaming about, hungry and unprotected; the newspaper Cumhufiyet reported. In Istanbul alone there are over 5,000 of them and their number is constantly growing, the paper said, adding: "These unfortunate children are leading an extremely miserable life. They are often offered for sale, sent to beg or steal. Many of these children, lacking any medical help and all social care, fall ill and die of tuberculosis. The government does not do anything for them at all."
In 1846, women operators in the cotton mills of Lowell, Mass., were earning $1.50 a week plus board, and wages in Fall River were even lower.
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Harold Godfrey has not been cleared of charges brought against him by Donald Jones, that he failed to record payments to Kapiolani Home, of which Godfrey is manager, the RECORD learned this week.
Although it had previously been reported that he received a letter from the executive board of American Legion Post 17, which operates the home as a charitable institution, an authoritative source said no such action has been taken and no such letter has been sent.
A letter was sent to Donald Jones, former Kapiolani Home employe, who brought the charges, absolving Jones of any blame in the matter.
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In spite of the use of the name of the Democratic Party in promotion and sale of tickets, many Democrats are still wondering just how the testimonial dinner for Acting Governor Frank Serrao got started. Both central and county committee members profess to know nothing about the origin of the dinner, to be held tonight, Oct. 18, at Lau Yee Chai.
Prominent in preparations for the dinner have been Willard "Honey" Kalima, candidate for C-C secretary in the last campaign, Jim Camp, merchandiser and head of the Jim Camp Organization. These two are listed as co-chairmen. Another well known Democrat who has taken an active part is Mrs. Thelma Monaghan.
Regardless of their bewilderment about the origin, most Democrats approached by the RECORD said they were buying tickets and they think there is hope that some sort of unity may be furthered among leaders of various widely split Democratic factions.
Aloha For Serrao "I don't think there's an official in the government," said one, "who has fewer enemies than Frank Serrao."
Anyhow, Democrats agree, you can't blame those arranging the dinner for feeling free to use the name of the Democratic Party without much reference to the central and county committees. After all, they point out, neither committee is meeting with what anyone could call regularity.
"This kind of chaos" said one, "is a good indication of the work the Democrats will have to do if they expect to elect anyone in 1952."
Tickets for the dinner cost $2 each.
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Guests from Honolulu and rural areas attended the baptismal party given for Jose Corpuz Jr., by his parents at their Kawailoa home Oct. 14.
Vice Consul Erineo Cornesta who recently arrived from Seattle to his present post at the local consulate general spoke to the guests. He spoke of the need of the foreign office here to service the Filipinos and to maintain close relationship with them.
Among the guests were Mr. and Mrs. Pete Racela, Antonio Rania, Justo dela Cruz and Edward Araki.
The Corpuz family include Jose and Mrs. Angelita Florentin Corpuz, and children, Javita, Jeanette. Roger, Marilyn and Jose Jr.
About 400 strikes were called by American workers during 1853-54.
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Co-education — an idea which still meets with strong opposition among educators in the more backward areas of the Mainland—is the eventual goal of a program set in motion jointly at Koolau Boys' Home and Kawailoa Girls' Home under the supervision of Director William Among of both institutions and Miss Eileen Ukauka, superintendent of Kawailoa.
"It is a part of the teaching and training of youth," says Mr. Among, "to help them make adjustments and prepare themselves to fit into society when they return."
Now inmates of both schools are looking forward to the joint Hallowe'en party to be given Oct. 30—an occasion which will mark one anniversary in that particular phase of the program. The first mixed Hallowe'en party was last year.
Ballroom Dancing
Other parts include the Koolau-Kawailoa Community Council, and a schedule of parties and dances which feature ballroom and square dancing.
Although such programs are very new at correctional institutions, they are not unheard of. Mr. Among recalls one in Kentucky which has a co-educational program, but which practices racial segregation.
There is no such segregation either at Koolau or at Kawailoa.
Union Donates Music
Music in the past has been donated by the musicians' union, (American Federation of Musicians) and the authorities at the school hope the union can come to their aid again, October 30. As for the girls, Miss Ukauka says, "I think music is their favorite form of recreation." At present, the total inmate population of the two schools is 197, 122 coming from Koolau and the other 75 from Kawailoa. But not all these participated in the early stages of co-education.
The program was begun on a small scale, Mr. Among says, with selected groups participating. Later, for large parties to which parents and visitors were invited, most of the inmates participated.
Girls Learn Home-Making
Social training and home-making are high on the curriculum of Kawailoa, and regular periods are devoted to such subjects as baking, etiquette, sewing and maid training.
Special lectures embrace such subjects as boy and girl relationships, choosing a mate, marriage and parenthood, and child care and training.
Beyond having special formative importance for the inmates of both institutions, the co-educational program has an immediately practical side, since the Koolau plant is as yet comparatively small.
Inmates of both institutions, therefore, use the Kawailoa gymnasium and other facilities and the Koolau boys have the responsibility of caring for the 150 milk cows which graze on Kawailoa's pastures.
Delinquency Costs Public Although Kawailoa has sold $16,767.48 worth of dairy products to other institutions and on the open market, the high cost of juvenile delinquency to the taxpayer is forcefully brought home by the financial report of Director Eileen Ukauka.
Maintenance and custodial
Explaining why New York tailors went on strike in 1847, one of their spokesmen said: "It was dire necessity and want that compelled us to strike. We were working from 5 o'clock in the morning until 9 o'clock at night, and we could only earn from $4 to $5 a week." costs continue to rise," Miss Ukauka reports. "The daily per diem cost of care and supervision per girl for this fiscal period (July 1, 1949 to July 1, 1950) was $6.81, an increase of 17 per cent or one dollar over the previous period." At Kawailoa, where the inmate population is presently low, the proportion of staff employes is one to two. There are 75 inmates at present and 46 staff members. At Koolau, where the inmate population is higher, the staff-inmate proportion is lower.
As the co-education program advances, it is expected that Koolau boys will be brought more and more into the wide, well-lighted classrooms of the Kawailoa gymnasium.
"These," said a surprised visitor this week, "look like classrooms anywhere."
"And why shouldn't they?" Miss Ukauka asked crisply. "The students are like students anywhere."
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Bad Novel of War-Torn Korea Is Good Expose of American Attitude There
Season For Passion—Lee Manning; $0.25, Popular Library, New York.
Here, under a blurb which proclaims it a "novel-of war-torn Korea," is a book that's so bad it's almost good.
As a novel, it's every bit as bad as any pulp story you can find or just as bad as it's title might indicate. As a sociological study, Mr. Manning's work is one of the most revealing pieces of writing to come out of the Korea of General MacArthur and Syngman Rhee.
The plot is cops and robbers, with the principals being U. S. army and government officials, with considerable "love" interest thrown in. As for the war and its causes and effects on the Korean and American people, they figure in the plot indirectly, but not intentionally.
Types Authentic
The black market and the U. S. supply depot make the bait for an officer with no more ethics than a West Pointer taking an examination and Koreans so poor that they have to steal or starve. No one who has seen the prototypes of these Americans in Asia can doubt the authenticity of Mr. Manning's dialogue and the way his characters think. And that's where the considerable value of this little pot-boiler lies.
A side glance at Syngman Rhee's Korea comes in passages like this: "Koreans were probably the slickest thieves in the world— and with the most justification for their larceny. The wages were low—the money was almost worthless in any case because of inflation—and they had to steal to live. His coolies had taken their jobs because of the opportunity it provided for stealing, not for the wages attached." What is the attitude of Americans toward these people to whom they are teaching democracy? Mr. Manning tells you in a passage in which a Korean girl hopes her American lover will take her to a GI movie:
"He couldn't of course. The wives and children of American officers and men attended the movie, as did army nurses, and they refused to mingle with Korean women. Kirby had to admit that it was a necessary and sensible precaution for the most part; very few Korean girls were like Tonaka and had the GIs been given their way they would have loaded the theater with little dark girls all smelling of kimchee."
A little more of the occupying American's view of Koreans comes from an American girl as follows: '"I thought she was very pretty,' said Millicent. 'So many of them aren't. And they seem to age so quickly. To get fat and dumpy. I suppose it's because they have so many children.' "
People or Animals
Millicent's speech, like many others in the book, is quite reminiscent of a day when Europeans talked of and treated the people of Asia as if they were animals.
Mr. Manning makes you wonder about HIM, too, sometimes, as in the following:
"Tonaka came running up the stairs and into the room. Her sleek brown pelt was dripping water, at which she dabbed ineffectually with one of Kirby's towels."
And again, a few chapters later:
"Tonaka stood close to him in the gloom, the rain droplets striking and sliding down her smooth pelt."
Have you ever heard "pelt" used to describe any skin besides that of an animal before?
The "mysterious Orient" gets into the story through views attributed to Tonaka (her real name turns out to be Korean, all right) from time to time.
For instance, Tonaka says once, "Then you do not love me, Kirby. It is a sure sign. A man always beats the woman he loves."
Old Libel
The same kind of libel has been applied to Hawaiians, Irish, Negroes and a number of other races, but that doesn't stop Tonaka. When she discovers her lover is being embarrassed by the aforementioned greedy officer she calmly suggests that she'd better kill the rotter. Kirby reflects as follows:
"Her suggestion, though, showed how thin was the veneer she wore of Western thought and civilisation." That from a member of a people who have killed more Koreans in the past year than the Japanese did during their entire occupation! What about this veneer?
Where To Put Blame
When the plot thickens to a climax, the villain finds himself momentarily frustrated, but he finds a way out as Communist guerrillas raid Pusan—a way that sounds like an expose of half the radio serials on the air these days.
He says: "But I'm not licked yet, not by a long way. I just got an idea. We're"'all alerted tonight because of Commie raids. So why can't a gang of bandits burn down the warehouses? After I get my cigarettes out, of course. And I'll take all of them, not Just two hundred cases, The Commies will get the blame and there won't be any evidence. There won't be any warehouses."
There you have it. Mr. Manning has written better than he has any idea—and also worse.
His little thriller should be quite revealing to readers who believe the "Police Action" in Korea did anything to endear us to the Koreans.—E. R.
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By John B. Stone (Federated Press)
The Commerce Department has just reported the U. S. spent $4.7 billion on foreign aid during the fiscal year 1951.
Senate and House conferees have just agreed on a military aid to foreign countries bill that will cost more than $7 billion.
The President has just signed a bill authorizing construction of $5 billion worth of military bases, most of them air bases surrounding the USSR.
House and Senate are working out differences over the biggest peacetime military appropriation bill in history that will cost another $59 billion.
Half of U. S. Children Get Sub-Standard Education
Yet the National Education Association was forced to report a little while ago that nearly half of the children in the U. S. get sub-standard education because the schools are broke. These kids have to go to school in dark, dingy, condemned buildings, in basements, in old store rooms. They have to put up with bad sanitary facilities because the country can't afford to build new schools.
The NEA reported that for $131/2 billion the U. S. could build the schools it needs and have money left over to hire competent teachers. Yet we are spending $60 billion a year on military preparations and probably will spend $85 billion a year before long.
And now comes the Children's Bureau of the Federal Security Agency with a truly startling report on juvenile delinquency and an even more startling report on the antiquated means we still take to combat it.
War Hysteria and Juvenile Delinquency Have Direct Relation
From reports by juvenile courts in 37 states, the bureau found that 12 out of every 1,000 youngsters in the U. S. between the ages of 7 and 17 were hailed into court on delinquency charges in 1949. Indicating that war hysteria has a direct relation to juvenile delinquency, the report showed a 4 per cent increase in delinquency cases in 1949 over 1948. Before that the percentage had been going down steadily since the end of World War II.
The average age of the 70,616 juvenile delinquency "cases" in 1949 was 151/2, an age when an adequate school with adequate facilities might turn a child's energies into more wholesome pursuits.
The report revealed a sort of social brutality to girls in trouble which many had thought was burled deep in the past. Most of the boys facing delinquency charges were allowed to remain with their parents. But, the bureau reported, "only 43 per cent of, the girls' cases brought before the judge" were handled in this way. "Difference is related," the report continued, "to the reasons for which girls are brought to court, such as sexual promiscuity with its dangers of venereal disease, pregnancy, etc."
Then comes a portion of the report which must shock any American who has thought of U. S. criminal practice as growing beyond the stage of locking up kids in their teens with older criminals.
Proper Detention of Naughty Children Not More Than Cost of A-Bomb
"Ever since the juvenile court movement began at the opening of the century," the report said, "efforts have been made to keep children out of jails where they frequently were detained along with adult criminals. Many states now have laws to prohibit Jail detention of children. However, the Children's Bureau study shows that jail detention was used in 25 per cent of the delinquency cases of children who were detained overnight or longer. This method was usually used because of the lack of suitable detention facilities, particularly in some small towns and rural areas."
It wouldn't cost very much to buy or rent places to keep naughty children in. Certainly not more than the price of one atom bomb.
It seems if all the billions we are pouring into military preparations are really meant for the defense of democracy, a dune or two could be diverted to bring decent educational and corrective facilities for our wayward youngsters.
In 16 industries, output per man hour in 1950 was the "highest on record," the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
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Kauai people are still wondering how an ex-police officer, discharged from the force some time ago, ever managed to avoid being charged for the offence which lost him his job. The offence, involving a high school girl, would have been brought into court by the prosecutor had anyone else been involved.
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Reports of Kauai vice appearing in the local dailies are not exaggerated, says one who knows. To the contrary, the "juice, line" is reported at least as strong there as it's ever been in Honolulu in recent years. One Hanapepe hotel is said to operate as openly in prostitution as houses of the old Barbary Coast. And at least one policeman is reputed to have taken a fair amount of his payoff out in trade.
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"Why?" asks an observer of affairs at Oahu Prison, "have they never adopted the simple precaution the U. S. Navy did long ago when they found men drinking wood alcohol?"
That precaution was to use grain alcohol in all cases where alcohol is necessary. If such a precaution had been in effect at Oahu Prison, points out the observer, the Ditto cleaning fluid which killed six inmates and permanently injured others some weeks ago would never have been there in the first place.
* *
There is more to come, according to the prison grapevine, on the fleecing which brought Alex Sumida, presently in Oahu Prison on a narcotics charge, back in the headlines along with the firing of Detective Isma Hapai for alleged connivance.
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49th State Fair sponsors might have been startled this week to hear the direct case that might have been built against them of contributing to juvenile delinquency. This department heard a 15-year-old boy tell how he spent $100 at the fair on "games." He had stolen the money
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The police officer driving the Chevrolet '51 bearing license 8T515 Saturday afternoon at 5 o'clock might have taken action against anyone else he caught driving the way he did. First he drove into the middle lane before an oncoming car without making any signal. Then he picked up speed to 37 miles per hour and moved on up ahead— without causing any obvious consternation to the officer who rode in the front seat beside him.
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For an incredible story of jim crow "justice," read October's Argosy and the story of how Silas Rogers, although proved innocent of the murder for which he was sentenced to die, still continues to do a life sentence in the Virginia State Prison at Richmond. Rogers, a Negro hitch-hiking his way through Virginia, had the bad luck to be in the vicinity of a murder. He was "positively" identified by two GIs who have since admitted that they lied in an effort to cover up their own AWOL status. The sentence was commuted from execution to life imprisonment, but Rogers remains in prison where he has been for the last eight years. His best hope at the moment is from the article in Argosy
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James Middleton, victim of the most recently reported case of roughing and racism by Police Sgt. Paul Shaffer, found himself tailed by Shaffer and a car full of vice squad men when he started out with a girl friend to visit a friend in Tripler General Hospital. Following the pair the whole way to the hospital, Shaffer and his men entered and asked people at the hospital all kinds of questions about Middleton's reasons for coming, the frequency of his visits, etc. Last week the RECORD reported how Middleton became involved in a dispute, called for a cop and had the bad luck to attract Shaffer, who roughed him, called him racist names and arrested him on a charge of vagrancy which the lieutenant at the receiving desk threw out.
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On Hotel St. last week a girl who had rented a gun booth (small shooting gallery space) from the proprietor of an amusement place was amazed when he suddenly asked for his money.
She reminded him she had already paid him $100, but he denied it. Whereupon she produced a receipt. The proprietor asked to see it, took it from the girl and tore it into small bits.
"That receipt's no good," quoth he.
But he had not reckoned with five husky sailors who had been standing around, talking friendly-like with the girl. They advanced on the man and after a moment's indecision, he decided to cough up the $100 which she now demanded from him, telling him she was ready to pack up and move to a situation where a higher degree of honesty prevails.
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A reader tells how her father an old Chinese man, reads the RECORD. Sitting on the front porch with his wife, he carefully puts on and adjusts his glasses, looks the RECORD over, and then hands it to his wife who reads every article aloud for him. He can't read any English, but he can understand what's spoken to him.
"He does the same thing with the Star-Bulletin," says the girl, "but he only wants to hear a few items."
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"Oh come ye in peace or come ye in war?"
That classic line of Sir Walter Scott's might well be a question on the lips of Ray Wright who returned to Alaska after being charged with assault with a deadly weapon following the shooting of Tinei Su'a at International airport. You see, a friend of Su'a is reported to have left for Alaska a little after Wright did.
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Orestes Cavness, now doing time in a Federal prison on the Mainland after being convicted here on a narcotics charge, is $4,500 in arrears in his income tax, according to certain confidential reports. Cavness was often called the "kingpin" of the narcotics racket here by newspapers, as were other men from time to time, but few seem to have much idea whether the assets he left behind are enough to pay the tax deficiency or whether it's likely to mean an additional trial.
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Potato Famine is a phrase reminiscent of Ireland in an earlier day, but now it's being visited on Australia largely by inflation and the manipulation of potato growers who wish to get the highest possible prices for their crops. It's a situation similar to that of Kuomintang China when rice merchants in China's Hunan "rice bowl" shipped the crops to Shanghai and Nanking to get black market prices while peasants died of starvation in the midst of plenty. Poor people are not starving in Australia, according to latest reports, but they're pretty angry over the economics lesson being taught them.
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With her car parked diagonally in the center of Waialae Ave. at 16th Ave., a woman was calling for help about 10 Sunday evening, Oct. 14.
Hearing the woman's voice, a passing automobile stopped to give her assistance. Mrs. Helen Kanahele and Mr. and Mrs. John Krusynski went to the parked car to find the woman drunk. She was alone.
Theatened to Call Police
After talking to the woman a while, the three learned the location of the woman's home. She indicated that she wanted to go home so Mr. Krusynski drove her automobile, followed by the other driven by Mrs. Kanahele.
For about an hour she directed Mr. Krusynski to wrong addresses in the Kaimuki district. Once when he parked her car at the address she had given him, she told him, "If yon don't take me home, I'm going to call the police."
The ingratiating conduct was also frightening, Mrs. Krusynski said, and she and Mrs. Kanahele recalled the Kahahawai frameup and the lynching of the Hawaiian youth that followed.
Took Precaution
"From that time on we followed closely in our car and that woman, who was a haole, directed my husband to go here and there until we finally took her home. We had passed that place before," Mrs. Krusynski said.
The woman did not want to go into her home. The three indicated that they were tired since they had been working all day on the Palakiko-Majors petitions in Waimanalo.
"Those boys should have been hung. Why should they be allowed to live?" the woman asked. "I am John Palakiko's sister," Mrs. Krusynski sold the woman. The woman apologized, then she began to explain her domestic problems and began to cry. She did not want the three to leave her as they stood by the road and talked for quite a while.
"Mrs. Kanahele quickly recalled the Kahahawai case and I did too when we heard the woman threatened to call the police if my husband did not take her home," Mrs. Krusynski said. "That's when he was driving her car. My husband told her that we were trying to help her. We haven't forgotten the Kahahawai case, and that's what we thought of right away when she behaved like that."
[PAGE 7] [back to the top]
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"Q. Suppose a 'contract la, borer' is idling in the field, what do you do?
"A. (By sugar king Claus Spreckels). We dock him; we give him only one-half or three-quarters of a day; and if he keeps it up, we resort to the law and have him arrested for refusing to work.
"Q. What do you accomplish by putting him in jail?
"A. For the first offense he is ordered back to work, and he has to (eventually) pay the costs of court. If he refuses to obey orders, he is arrested again and a light fine is inflicted, which the planter can pay and take out of his pay or else he is put on the road to work. For the third offense he is likely to get three months imprisonment."
—Quoted by Sen. R. F. Pettigrew of South Dakota, 1898
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San Francisco (FP)—To emphasize its demand for a tariff on fresh albacore tuna, the Fishermen's & Allied Workers Union is selling the fish to wholesalers at its San Francisco headquarters for 25 cents a pound. The current price is 49 cents to 65 cents. "We can't make enough to buy oil and gas for our boats," the fishermen say. "The dealers can get albacore cheaper from Japan. The Japanese treaty has wrecked our industry."
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The manner in which government lands are being put into the hands of the Big Five and other land monopolists can be appropriately described by the six-letter word: R-A-C-K-E-T.
Anyone can go through the Report of the Commissioner of Public Lands and get the story of the stinking racket in cold figures.
Sugar plantations on every island are leasing tens of thousands of acres of land from the Territory, not only agricultural, but also pastoral. The annual rental paid is extremely low, 10 cents to 50 cents an acre for thousands of acres of "pasture" land. Some of these are fit for agriculture.
Who among the small farmers or aspiring farmers can get land that cheap? Will the Territory chop up the land into small tracts so that these people can stay on farms and produce for the islands' family needs? When will we have a land commissioner and a governor with guts enough to do these things? Yes, what's the answer?
Not long ago Governor Long said on Maui that to achieve prosperity, the Territory must develop its resources, and he pointed to the land. Last week, Acting Governor Frank Serrao in a speech, also on Maui, told the people not to crowd Honolulu but to stay on their islands. This means one thing—go back to farming.
The Star-Bulletin in editorializing Serrao's speech, said there is "lots of land suitable for cultivation" here but "it isn't available to individual farmers except on leasehold terms which aren't always favorable for long-range development." Mr. Serrao, it said, knows this well because as land commissioner, "he labored hard to get more land into productive use." This job is "far from finished. In fact, it's barely begun."
What the Star-Bulletin should have said is that large chunks of public land have been put into the hands of the dollar-powerful by practically all former land commissioners and the job now is to wrest the land from them and give it to the small farmers and aspiring home owners.
Take Maui, for instance, where Messrs. Long and Serrao spoke. Baldwin Packers, Ltd., leases 14,255 acres of pasture land for about 9 cents an acre. Harold Rice leases about 6,000 acres at Kula for $1 an acre. These are mere samples—and on one island only.
Why not divide these lands into small tracts for intensified grazing by small ranchers? Some parcels are adaptable for farming.
Paragraphs M and N of Section 73 of the Organic Act empower the land commissioner to homestead public land, even withdrawing land under lease for homesteading purposes. Paragraph N directs him to survey land annually for homesteading (agricultural and pastoral) to the amount that "there may be a demand for by persons having the qualifications of homesteaders." This has been and is being ignored.
The public utterances of Governor Long and Secretary Serrao certainly say in plain language that there is such a demand for land.
In this Territory, whenever land is put up for lease by the government, it is not broken up into small acreages, but is held in several hundred or thousand-acre tracts. The small farmers cannot compete. The dollar-powerful walk in and walk off with the leases.
On every island, land monopoly is the rule. Gay & Robinson leases 12,000 acres of pasture land at Waimea, Kauai, at seven cents an acre. This is one example. Why not let some aspiring future farmer lease parcels of such land AT THE SAME RATE?
The rule in the Territory is that whenever small farmers get hold of land, the rental goes up. This is another facet of the racket.
Richard Smart of Parker Ranch leases 44,280 acres for about 52 cents an acre. The Hawaiian Agricultural Co. leases 38,387 acres of pasture land for about 11 1/2 cents an acre.
Does all this make sense? Every time homesteads are discussed, the land commissioner's office says there is no water or roads in an area. But the land monopolists are getting away with murder and by their doing so, the Territorial coffers never get filled. Consequently there are no funds for developing roads and water.
The land monopolists have the land system tied in a knot, and this includes the land commissioner's office. Will the new commissioner, Norman Godbold, show some guts and open land to the people? The chanting of Secretary Serrao for boys and girls and grownups to stay on their islands would reach sympathetic ears if government land, at least, was made available to the land-hungry people.
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Lihue In 1897
Shortly after the fatal riot at Lihue, which was provoked by the brutality of luna William Zoller, the Chinese Commercial Agent, Mr. Goo Kim, investigated the matter. He then issued the following statement.
"From what I have learned, the treatment of the men at Lihue is brutal. Just look at the condition of these men. They come here to work for $12.50 per month of 26 days. Of this, $1.50 is taken each month for the savings bank. That leaves the laborer $11. If he is sick, the doctor calls on him and, after an examination, sends him to the field to work half a day without pay, and this too, when their contracts call for free medical attendance. What right, I would like to know, has a plantation manager to demand service of his men and then refuse to pay them?
Laborers Arrested and Fined for Complaining of Sickness
"Another thing. If the work happens to be slack the luna will tell the Chinamen to go home and go to sleep. They have a half-day's pay deducted for this, though they are not to blame. The contract calls for 26 days' work, and if the laborer is ready to perform it he should be paid for it. Another plan they have for economizing is to arrest men who complain of illness and fine them $3.25. I have written a number of complaints to the Government regarding the methods on some of the plantations, but nothing has ever come of them.
"Now, I think it is time something should be done, and unless some reforms are put into operation, we will have to follow the course recently adopted by Japan—stop emigration. If the planters do not have either Japanese or Chinese to draw from, where will they be? It will not be long before wages will go up to $50 a month, and if the treaty (Reciprocity Treaty with the U. S. A.) is abrogated and wages go up, they may learn to treat our people better. It is only a few years since Chinese laborers in Hawaii were paid as high as $26 a month. Now they get them for less than half and treat them twice as bad.
Chinese Given Five Minutes for Lunch
"Managers growl because men get sick. What can they expect? Sometimes they are allowed five minutes for lunch, sometimes 15; it depends upon how far the men have to go, but if they are not ready when the time expires, they are told to get out, and are kicked if they do not hurry.
". . . Our people have feelings the same as those of any other nationality. They are not brutes that they are to be kicked about and fined for not working when they are sick. Can you expect a man to retain his health who has only five minutes to masticate his food? ... By the time the fines, deductions on account of slack work and savings bank money is all taken out of the man's wages, what does he have? ...
Bosses Use Force and Violence, Laborers Get Punished
"There is a feeling among certain managers here that the more a laborer is abused the more work can be gotten out of him. The fight at Lihue was the result of that impression among the white employes on that plantation. The men are goaded to a point of desperation by the lunas, and in presence of the managers; then, when the Chinamen rebel at the inhuman treatment, they are battered with clubs, shot and put in prison, while the white men, who are responsible for the trouble, are allowed to go free." (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, May 1, 1897.)
Carl Wolters, manager of Lihue, denied all of Mr. Goo Kirn's charges one by one, in detail (P.C.A., May 10). But in view of the report by Hawaiian government representative Wray Taylor, and the general reputation of Lihue plantation, it seems that Goo rather than Wolters was telling the truth. As the Advertiser reported a few days later:
"The treatment of the laborers at Lihue has been the talk of the entire population of Kauai for months."
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By Frank Marshall Davis
Now It's Egypt
A couple of months or so ago in this space, I pointed out that Moslem leaders are getting together in a common fight to halt European domination, colonialism and color bars. The demand by Egypt that Britain release her grip on the Suez Canal, and the anti-British and anti-U. S. riots that followed, are merely the latest chapter in the book.
Let us not make the mistake of considering the Egyptian situation as an isolated incident. It is but the natural development from World War II when India and Pakistan got independence and the Kuomintang was kicked out of China. These events have served as beacons for the millions of other Asiatics and Africans who are sick of colonial slavery and Western domination.
These people may lack the wealth and munitions to lend each other much material aid, but they do have a sustaining spirit and determination to win freedom and equality. Treaties of friendship have been established between India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt and the Arab States. The Moroccan Nationalists have the backing of the entire Moslem world in their fight to win freedom from France.
When Iran rose up recently to put an end to British exploitation of her oil resources, it was with the full support of the rest of the Middle East. Now that the spotlight is focused on Egypt, you may rest assured that she has the backing of all the non-white peoples who want independence. They know full well that any advance made by any one of the group helps all the others; conversely, a setback to one is a setback to all.
There are many reasons for this common attitude. Chief among them are mass poverty, oil-cartel exploitation, outside domination through puppet feudal overlords, economic rivalries between the U. S., France and Britain and the Anglo-American drive to turn the entire area into a monster anti-Soviet war base. Put these things together and you get a revolution.
Demand Foreign Troops To Leave
According to the New York Times, the Middle East has no desire to be used in the West's preparation for war with Russia. On July 28, the Times reported there is "vigorous agitation" in Iraq to end the treaty of alliance with Britain by which Britain maintains two air bases and would be guaranteed use of Iraq's facilities in time of war. In Morocco, the independence movement demands France get out and halt the construction of a network of air bases; most of the population of Libya shouts for the elimination of the great American air base outside Tripoli; there have been riots in Tunis for the French to get out.
But the West has had full warning of these attitudes. Over a year ago when the UN Social Welfare Congress of Arab States met in Lebanon, an American University of Beirut professor of economics, Said Hemadeh, declared:
"The Arab peasants are becoming less fatalistic and are beginning to understand the cause of their difficulties. Their dissatisfaction and desire to be freed from poverty and serfdom are shown by joining the parties designed to bring about substantial changes in the social system. If their problems are not solved, the germs of revolution will grow and multiply and the explosion will take place as it did in France, Russia and other countries, with heavy losses to life and property."
But the West has ignored this, just as it has other warnings. Observers have pointed out that even the ruling classes, held in power by the West, have changed their minds since the announcement in 1949 of the explosion of the Soviet A-bomb. They now want neutrality. According to Wilton Wynn of the Overseas News Agency, the Middle East does not believe that Russia will launch an aggressive war.
Background for Present Happenings In Egypt
This is the kind of background against which one must view happenings in Egypt. In fact, the Egyptian parliament has cheered talk of a non-aggression pact with the Soviets in order to give the lie to Britain's claim that British troops are needed along the Suez to "protect" Egypt.
It is also known that Egypt currently has good trade relations with Eastern Europe, exchanging cotton for Czech munitions. There has also been discussion of a cotton-wheat exchange with Russia.
The picture, therefore, is not encouraging for Britain. And as Britain's chief backer, the U. S. comes in for its share of hate.
And until we decide to help the peoples of Asia and Africa reach their goals of full independence and equality and put an end to imperialism, all we can hope for is hate and more hate.
[MR. DAVIS]
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