Seichi Yonashiro was born in Aza Gaza, Okinawa, on June 17, 1889. A few years earlier, the Kingdom of Okinawa was dissolved, and Okinawa was annexed into the Japanese Empire as a prefecture. Taxes on the Okinawan people were harsh, with some accounts reported as high as 50%. This was especially hard on poor farming families like Seichi's. The lure of the Hawaii sugar plantations to recruit laborers was the promise of high wages and the warm relaxing climate of Hawaii. He could work hard, make lots of money, and return to Okinawa a rich man. In 1906, at the age of 17, Seichi made a decision that would take him away from his family and his beloved homeland to a strange foreign land called Hawaii. Perhaps his family, hoping for economic help from their son, encouraged this. He would sign a contract that would bind him to work for the sugar plantation as a field laborer, but that was fine, he would fulfill the contract and return to Okinawa with lots of money, and maybe a lot of respect. Little did he understand the vast consequences of this one decision.
After arriving in Hawaii, Seichi was assigned to work in the sugar plantation fields on Maui. Field hands like himself were assigned to bunk houses located in Puunene, which would eventually become the largest plantation camp on Maui. The work was grueling, the hours long, and the weather was hot and humid, nothing like the idyllic paradise that the recruiters had promised. Nevertheless, he was determined to fulfill his contract and return to Okinawa a rich man.
Language was a problem. He did not understand his bosses, or lunas, who spoke English, Portugese, Norwegian, or German. He was grouped with Japanese immigrants, but they did not completely understand his Okinawan dialect of Japanese, or the Uchinaguchi (Native Okinawan language, or Hogen) that he spoke with his fellow Okinawan immigrants. Other workers that he had a hard time communicating with were the Hawaiians, Chinese, and Puerto Ricans (the Koreans and Filipinos would not come until later). To communicate between these diverse groups, they devised an ingenious language composed of the parts and structure of all the languages. This became known as Hawaiian Pidgin, and has evolved into what we now call Pidgin English. The original Pidgin was very different from the Pidgin spoken today. It contained many more Hawaiian and foreign words, although some of the structure has carried over to modern Pidgin.
Life on the plantation must have been lonely for a single man. In such situations, single males would gather at night to gamble, drink, sing, or fight. Some would write letters home, and send money if they could. Many felt trapped in this life because the sugar company followed the path of many plantations of its day. The recruits were destitute to begin with, so the company would "loan" them the money for various living expenses, transportation, working clothes, food, etc. This of course, meant that the workers were in growing debt to the company. This was true indentured labor. As the debt grew to unmanageable levels, the company could relieve some of that debt by extending the duration of the contract (which is what they really wanted in the first place). The workers were legally obligated to work for the company for the duration of the contract or extended contract. The extending of the contract could go on, it seemed, forever, as long as the worker was in debt to the company. Many workers fell into this trap, and the future began to look grim.
Two years after landing on Hawaiian soil, Seichi's family made another life altering decision for him. It did not look like he was coming back to Okinawa soon, and he was 18 years of age, the age when a man should be getting married and raising a family. Back then, families would arrange the marriages for their children. This was called shimpai. They knew of a girl one year younger than Seichi who had just gotten out of a brief failed marriage. Not much is known about that marriage, only that it was a sad and unfortunate situation. She did not have any children from that marriage. Her name was Kame Miyahira.
In 1908, most Okinawans were living in dire poverty. For 17 year old Kame, who also just had gotten out of a failed marriage, there must not have been much to look forward to in Okinawa. The local government began pushing emigration to relieve Okinawa of over population and lack of food. Grandma Yonashiro recalls that the local government would loan money to those wishing to emmigrate out of Okinawa, and receive repayment through remittances sent from the host country. This must have been the case with Kame. She would board a ship headed for Yokohama, and there transfer to another ship headed for the port of Honolulu, and like Seichi, should would never see her parents again.
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3 comments:
(Sorry, I just wanted to correct my spelling errors so I'm re-posting this comment.)
This account of my great-grandpa & grandma and is a bittersweet record. It is heart-wrenching to read because he left Okinawa to be liberated from suffering only to be entraped with hardships in Hawaii. It also stikes me how we are all so similar in our aspirations and dreams - to be prosperous, to take care of our families and bring honor to them. However, I'm grateful to him for making the choice to go to Hawaii and I hope that he can see how he has affected generations of his family for good. I don't mean to say our lives in Okinawa wouldn't have been as good, just that we have been blessed with freedoms, education and the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have such a unique heritage - we're Third Culture Kids!
Thank you for sharing their story as well as the other stories of our family - it gives me perspecitive and I draw strength from the parallels in our lives.
Thanks for your comments, Jackie. It must have really been bad in Okinawa around this time. Grandma Yonashiro never wanted to go back because of the suffering. She does not even want to recall some of the memories of this period. Once I asked her why she sold all of her farmland in Okinawa for a very cheap price. Her answer was simple and telling, "because no mo toilet."
From other conversations I had with her, I found that they fed their hogs human excrement, as the family would eat any other "food" that they came across. Eventually, these dung-fed hogs would be eaten as well. This no doubt contributed to the Okinawan's "eta" ("burakumin", or unclean lower class) status in Mainland Japan.
It can be said that these were truly desperate and hopeless times for the Okinawan people. Starvation and malnutrition were rampant. The government taxed high, but did not give much in return. It seems that the Okinawans were expendable to the ruling government. Many of these poor farming families sold their daughters into prostitution in the main city of Naha.
It is best for us not to judge, as these people were on the verge of starvation and extinction. They were in survival mode. Without them, you would not be here. If they did not leave Okinawa, you would not be here. If we did not join the church, you would not be here, as we were not planning to have children. And if you were not born, beautiful Elise and Elijah would not be here. And it goes on and on.
Some things in our past may not be praiseworthy, but all we can hope for is that with each passing generation, we will see progression and growth in our posterity. We hope that our children will be better than us (and I believe you are), and hopefully, your children will be better than you (and I think they will).
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