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GOLDSEA |
ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Is Honolulu an Asian American Paradise?
magine a place where everyone looks like Jason Scott Lee and Kelly Hu. Where trade winds keep the air balmy year-round, day and night, and the horizon is always piled with dazzling cumulus. Where you can always find a Zippy's for saimin and teriyaki plates heaped with rice and macaroni salad. Where it's the Whites who are the minority.
AA Paradise?
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A stroll through Ala Moana Shopping Center or Kapiolani Park will satisfy anyone that in Honolulu Asians are the majority. This impression is borne out by the numbers. The city's 610,000 Asian/Pacific Islanders comprise 68% of its 900,000 total residents, making the Honolulu area the nation's third largest AA population center. Even excluding about 100,000 native Hawaiians, Samoans and other non-Filipino Pacific Islanders, Asians make up 57%, over twice the percentage for Whites (26%).
Honolulu is also unique in being the only major metro area in which Japanese Americans outnumber all other Asian nationalities. JAs (200,000) are followed by Filipinos (170,000), Chinese (54,000), Coreans (23,000), Vietnamese (8,000) and Indians (1,500). McKinley High, Honolulu's first public school and the alma mater of Daniel Inouye, Hiram Fong and Bette Midler, is known as "Tokyo High".
Racial harmony, marketed as Aloha Spirit, has become the island's trademark, but the various Asian nationalities originally arrrived not in the spirit of multiculturalism but to serve as strikebreakers to help the Big Five keep each preceding nationality of laborers in line. It is only during the past half century or so that Hawaii's Asians have come to see the advantage of joining forces to resist an exploitative white minority.
Asian immigration to Hawaii began in 1789 with the arrrival of a few Chinese artisans. Hawaii was still an independent kingdom. Asians were few until various European and American entrepreneurs began seeing the potential for big profit in sugar cane. They used cold-blooded machinations to gain power over native Hawaiians, then brought over 46,000 Chinese laborers between 1852 and 1899.
As Chinese workers grew in number, they began making demands for better wages and working conditions. The Big Five's response was to recruit 180,000 Japanese between 1886 and 1925. As the Japanese became the islands' largest ethnic group, they too began organizing to fight inhumane working conditions. The plantation owners sought to break them by bringing over 100,000 Filipinos. As citizens of a U.S. territory, they were exempt temporarily from the barrage of anti-Asian legislation directed against Chinese and Japanese immigration. About 3,500 Coreans were also recruited between 1904 and 1905.
The first instance of inter-Asian cooperation on the islands was seen in 1919 when 12,000 Filipinos and Japanese jointly staged a strike. For the most part, however, the Big Five's ruthless tactics and absolute economic dominance remained intact until World War II. Only after Hawaii became a state in 1959 did Asian numerical strength begin translating into political and economic power. Today Honolulu's commercial and professional life is dominated by Asians, though many Whites enjoy above-average affluence thanks to old-money connections and a steady influx of wealthy mainlanders seeking a retirement home.
The surf and luau lifestyle is, of course, only a pretty myth for most Honolulu residents. Like other Americans, they spend most of their days earning a living. Unfortunately, the majority are employed in tourism, an industry that had been stagnating for nearly a decade even before 9/11. The islands' strategic location between East Asia and North America -- not to mention its appealing lifestyle -- has begun attracting a small influx of tech jobs, but Honolulu's economic prospects remain uncertain for the forseeable future.
Is Honolulu an Asian American paradise? Or is it just a remote outpost irrelevant to the most ambitious Asian Americans?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:02:48 PM)
Pake Girl and Masa,
I like pull your ears. Come on, you two make me laugh.
Why you two have to argue? Hug each other and make up.
You're both right a little bit. Sorry, I can't stop laughing. You two. I have to come back later, when I'm not laughing so much.
Pake girl, pigeon is part of our heritage in Hawaii. We don't have to be ashamed of it.
Masa don't be so quick to write her off. She has the right to her opinions.
I'm Chinese Hawaiian, and I can't stop laughing at you too. I'll come back later.
Xie Xie
Thursday, May 16, 2002 at 02:13:57 (PDT)
The one thing that is different about Honolulu is the number of south Koreans who are moving into the city. When I was a kid, Palama Supermarket (a grocery store specializing in Korean foods) was an obscure store near Honolulu Community College. Now, it has experienced a lot of growth, and is in the stages of branching out into an area near the Kaheka Holiday Mart.
From my perspective, Koreans seem to like living in Honolulu. In fact, I encountered a Korean American woman who came back to Honolulu after living on the mainland for short period.
Hitmonlee
Wednesday, May 15, 2002 at 17:51:36 (PDT)
My daughter is a hapa and she lives in Chicago and she loves Asian culture. She is proud of her Asian roots and Masa go you know what your Nazi self.
Chicago father of a hapa
Wednesday, May 15, 2002 at 13:33:22 (PDT)
Proper English?
Californians? Like, you know, I gotta see some ID (Instead of "May I please see some ID.)
Texans? Let me show ya som'tin that cha ain't never seen! (Let me show you something that you have never seen before.)
New Yorker? For breakfast? Po-ack soah-sage and coah-fee! (For breakfast? Pork sausage and coffee!)
Ebonics? I finna ax the ol lady if she goin go. (I will ask my wife if she intends to go.)
Let's not limits our criticism of the lack of proper English to the residents of the Hawaiian Islands.
Navy LCDR airdale
Wednesday, May 15, 2002 at 13:17:01 (PDT)
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