Introduction Unlike most books about Japanese Americans in Hawai''i, this work includes both contemporary and historical aspects of their experiences in the islands. I did not want to write a primarily historical book because a substantial and valuable literature on Japanese American history already exists and continues to be written by trained historians, unlike myself.1 Moreover, I have a greater research interest in ongoing problems and issues in the Japa nese American community than in its history, so I have included a few chapters on contemporary topics that are very related to some of the subjects I discuss in the three chapters concerned with Japanese American history. Indeed, some knowledge of the latter is necessary to understand fully the current status and circumstances of local Japanese since so much economic, political, and cultural change has occurred among them as well as in Hawai''i as their host society.2 These changes are especially evident in the race and ethnic relations of Japanese Americans. From Historical Race to Contemporary Ethnicity Obviously, a single work cannot be expected to encompass the entire scope and diversity of the historical and contemporary experiences of Japanese Americans, at least not one written by me.3 In its more than a century and a quarter of sustained immigration and settlement beginning in 1885, the community has developed its own institutions, such as businesses and temples; has played major roles in the larger society in government, politics, and the economy; and has led and participated in some of the major historical events in Hawai''i. These numerous accomplishments and contributions are one of the principal reasons why in organizing this book I decided to focus on particular social themes that highlight especially the changing race and ethnic relations of Japanese Americans with other such groups in Hawai''i.

As is evident from the chapter titles, these themes include struggle, re sis tance, advocacy, advancement, power, domination, and activism and hence can be seen to emphasize the political and economic dimensions of their evolving race and ethnic relations in island society. By organizing the book and thus Japanese American experiences in this way, I have obviously devoted less consideration to other significant aspects of their history (for example, World War II) and contemporary situation (economic power). Another scholar with different theoretical and research interests than mine would have discussed other important issues, and perhaps themes, concerning local Japa nese and hence would have interpreted their experiences differently. However, based on my accumulated knowledge of the community and of Hawai''i society, I have chosen to frame Japanese American experiences according to what I consider especially significant if not necessary in interpreting and appreciating their experiences. Above all, these experiences are viewed and analyzed from racial and ethnic perspectives because historically race was the dominant or ga niz ing principle that structured social relations in Hawai''i. By the 1970s, ethnicity had assumed that paramount role, which continues to the present. Accordingly, chapters 2 through 4 provide a racial history of the first eighty-five years of the Japanese American presence in Hawai''i from 1885, when labor migration to the then kingdom of Hawai''i commenced on a sustained basis, to 1970. In the latter year, George Ariyoshi was elected as the state of Hawaii''s first lieutenant governor of Japanese ancestry.

More importantly, this placed him in the lead position to be the first Japanese American governor, which he became four years later. As a racial history, I describe and analyze Japanese American historical experi- ences from a racial perspective that emphasizes the primacy of race in structuring their social relations with others and in their perception and treatment as a subjugated minority in island society. In doing so, I am to some extent ignoring other possible analytical frameworks, such as class, culture, or gender, but I focus on race and racialized experiences because they provide the most illuminating insights for interpreting and analyzing local Japanese history. Another major reason for highlighting race is because, as noted above, it was the primary or ga niz ing principle of Hawai''i society during the historical period encompassed by chapters 2 to 4, as is evident in the anti-Japanese movement discussed in the first introduction two of those chapters. A summary of each of the three chapters is given below, but suffice it to state here that considered together they demonstrate the historical transformation of Japanese Americans from a highly racialized minority of immigrant plantation laborers to one of the most politically powerful ethnic groups in Hawai''i, despite the virulent racism and discrimination to which they were subject for most of this period until well after World War II. As for contemporary experiences, chapters 5 through 7 discuss in different ways the considerable power and status of Japanese Americans as one of the dominant ethnic groups in Hawai''i, especially politically, in their relations with other such groups. Underscoring the significance of ethnicity (and no longer race) as the principal structural principle of island society, chapters 5 and 6 are concerned with the ascension to political and socioeconomic power by local Japanese and how they have maintained their power in electoral politics since 1986 when Ariyoshi left the governor''s office after twelve years. Chapter 7 is about four individual members of the fourth or yonsei generation, the most recent adult generation of Japanese Americans, who have been activists and advocates on behalf of the people of Hawai''i, especially minority groups, rather than only local Japanese.

Regarding the transition from race to ethnicity as the primary organizing principle in Hawai''i, during the period from 1885 to 1945 when race unquestionably was preeminent, it can be seen to have worked against Japanese Americans in excluding them from full and equal participation in society and in subjugating them as a working-class, racialized minority. However, at the same time, race worked for haoles in demarcating the paramount political, economic, legal, and social boundary that separated them from nonwhites and privileged them over the latter in innumerable ways in daily life. The reason that race operated on behalf of haoles is because, as the most powerful group in island society, they could insist and enforce that society be structured according to race rather than other possible regulating principles such as class or merit. Race thus functioned differentially for whites and nonwhites in structuring their social relations with each other, much to the disadvantage of the latter. However, during the quarter century after World War II, as local Japanese and other nonwhite groups challenged haole supremacy on the picket lines, at the voting polls, and at workplaces, ethnicity emerged as the foremost organizing principle of social relations by the early 1970s. In marked contrast to race, ethnicity worked for Japanese Americans rather than against them because, like haoles before them, they had become, along with local Chinese, one of the politically dominant ethnic groups in Hawai''i and therefore could ensure that it was organized based on ethnicity and no longer race. However, ethnicity continued, like race, to be an exclusionary and subordinating barrier for Native Hawaiians, Filipino Americans, and other ethnic minorities, who did not enjoy economic and political advancement to the same extent as had Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, and initially Korean Americans. In advancing themselves in Hawai''i, Japanese Americans used their ethnicity, that is, their shared identity, culture, and social relationships, to their advantage, for example, in bloc voting for Japanese American candidates, but other ethnic groups, including haoles, did the same.

To clarify, in this book I use the concept of ethnicity in two different but related ways and with two different meanings. The first and more frequently invoked meaning is that ethnicity is an or ga niz ing principle of social relations in the same way that race, class, and gender are insofar as they structure or regulate relations among racial, class, or gender groups, respectively. The second and much less frequent way in which I discuss ethnicity is in terms of the combined identity, culture, and social relations of an ethnic group, as in the notion of Japanese American ethnicity, although this meaning of the term could also apply to Filipino American ethnicity or Korean American ethnicity.4 As for how ethnicity became increasingly significant as a structural principle of Hawai''i society after World War II, this process was not unique to the islands. In the continental United States in the 1970s, the persistence of ethnicity among the third and fourth generations of the white ethnic groups, that is, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and Polish Americans, was accounted for by social scientists in highly influential works, such as The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in the Seventies by Michael Novak (1972) and "Symbolic Eth- nicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America" by Herbert Gans (1979). This sociological emphasis on ethnicity (and culture) rather than race resulted in what race theorists Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1994: 20) have critically referred to as the "ethnicity approach to race" insofar as it obscures and ignores the continuing greater impact of race as the foremost or ga niz ing principle of American society. In Hawai''i, the nonhaole ethnic groups, including Filipino Americans, Native Hawaiians, Portuguese Americans, Chinese Americans, and Japa.