The Specter of Communism in Hawaii |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Hawaii History > Item 266
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The Specter of Communism in Hawaii
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by T. Michael Holmes
Sales Rank: 2844036
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List Price: $9.95
$9.95
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on 4-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 272 pages
Published by: University of Hawaii Press March 1994
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0824815505
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0824815509
Book Dimensions:
9.5 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 1.1 pounds
Reader Reviews
Early in 1947, Territorial Gov. Ingram Stainback alerted the citizens of Hawaii to the danger of Communists in their midst. Thus began, years before Sen. Joe McCarthy ever met the Catholic bishops' agents that taught him redbaiting, the story of McCarthyism in the islands. 'Most Americans think about anticommunism as a cold war phenomenon,' writes Michael Holmes. They are right so to think, although in Hawaii it got confused with already existing political issues, which centered around business and labor, and a clash of interests defined ethnically. A lot was going on in Hawaii between 1947 and 1953, when the furor slackened, but the story Holmes tells demonstrates, if anything, the bromide that all politics is local. Certainly, the red scare in paradise had more to do with local politicking than with missives from Moscow, which does not also mean that Stalinism had nothing to do with it. Stalinism had everything to do with it. Stainback's opportunism cannot cancel that out. The crucial event in Hawaii's red scare was the dismissal of two public school teachers, John and Aiko Reinecke, for their alleged failure to adhere to 'the ideals of democracy.' The Reineckes became a celebrated cause of local leftists. 'My role in support of the Reineckes remains the greatest satisfaction of my professional life,' writes Holmes. The ideology of Leninism-Stalinism had -- still has, for that matter -- an amazing capacity for confusing moral and legal issues that, one would think, should be fairly easy to keep distinct. No better example exists than the case of Dr. John Reinecke. He and his wife were denied due process, there is no doubt about that. The self-appointed guardians of the ideals of democracy abused democracy grievously in hounding the Reineckes out of the classroom. And yet . . . John Reinecke was a Stalinist. He did not adhere to the ideals of democracy. Morally he was unfit to teach or even be around impressionable young people. That's certain. But democracy has a hard time defending itself against people like Reinecke, and he was masterful and cynical in using principles he abhorred against it. (I don't know about Aiko Reinecke. She has not, so far as I know, published a poltical apology, like her husband did in 1952. This has been conveniently reprinted, with an adoring introduction, by Alice and Edward Beechert as ' A Man Must Stand Up.' It is transparently deceptive. At this writing, 2006, Aiko Reinecke is the doyenne of Hawaiian leftists.) John Reinecke was a Stalinist. Holmes fails to understand what this means. He writes, 'Whether (Reinecke) was a member of the Communist Party or not was irrelevant to the question of whether he possessed the 'ideals of democracy." ' To the contrary, it was the key fact. Reinecke, the embittered son of a failed Kansas farmer, hated 'the stupidity of the the 100-percent Americans,' which in Hawaii at that time meant aligning himself with the struggling labor movement, especially the ILWU of Jack Hall and Harry Bridges. Holmes asserts that almost all Hawaii union members were Communists. The Communists were the only people ready to teach workers to organize. These men and women, isolated and poorly educated, were initially drawn to the glittering promises of Soviet Communism. As they gained experience, they quit the party. But Reinecke was no mere naive leftist, though that is how he portrayed himself. He had the finest education available and trotted the globe. In the early '30s, he concluded that the Soviet Union was going ahead 'to build a socialist order in which everyone was sure of useful employment.' Except kulaks, of course. Whether Reinecke was an active agent of worldwide revolution is irrelevant. Whether he chose Stalinism is not. The question is not whether John Reinecke was important to Josef Stalin but whether Josel Stalin was important to John Reinecke. He denied, in 1952, having been a party-liner, but he had dropped his antifascims in August 1939 and resumed it in June 1941. This is diagnostic. There were other incidents during the scare, including the trial of the Hawaii seven (Reinecke was one of them, too) under the Smith Act. It was an exciting time, and Holmes interviewed many of the participants. (Many were young in the late '40s-early '50s and were still around when this book was published in 1995, like Tom Yagi, since deceased, and Frank Fasi, still running for mayor of Honolulu from time to time.) But 'Specter of Communism' is tendentious and while it is constantly interesting, I cannot recommend it to anyone who is not already familiar with the ins and outs of McCarthyism, or, more properly, Trumanism, since Harry Truman started it with his Loyalty Boards. It is curious that this crisis, described by all who took part in it as profoundly important, disappeared almost overnight. Most of the participants did well out of it. Stainback got what he wanted, a temporary advantage in a local election. The union movement suffered a setback, but in its time of peril it purged itself of doubtful members and emerged with a core of adherents who really were committed to ideals of democracy. They collected their rewards in 1954 (when the unionist Democrats ousted the Republicans from the Legislature, where to this day they stay ousted). John Reinecke did best of all. Had he ever fallen under the jurisdiction of his idol, he would certainly have gone where other high school teachers went -- as a slave to build the White Sea Canal. As it was, the government he despised and that acted so unfairly to him made handsome amends, with a $260,000 settlement (a direct outcome of Holmes's dissertation, which 'Specter' is) in 1967; and he and Aiko have been virtually canonized by Holmes and the Beecherts. Mayor Johnny Wilson of Honolulu -- the man who invented the Hawaii Democratic Party -- was the big loser, with his political career ended by Fasi's red-baiting in the '54 primary. Wilson was one of two people involved who came through the affair with their honor and ideals intact. The other was Jack Burns, who stuck by his leftist friends without soiling himself with any Stalinist muck. The citizens of Hawaii rewarded him with the governorship.
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The Specter of Communism in Hawaii
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