Recalling gannenmono the first-year men | News, Sports, Jobs
Sentaro Ishii (left), one of the first immigrants to Hawaii from Japan, married a Native Hawaiian woman named “Kahele.” The two lived in East Maui.
One hundred fifty years ago, Oleanda Ku’uipo Kanaka’ole’s great-grandfather was one of the first immigrants to come to Hawaii from Japan.
The 76-year-old Hana woman’s great-grandfather was Sentaro Ishii, a samurai and later a widely known gannenmono, or “first-year man,” who came to Hawaii in 1868.
“First-year men” referred to Japanese immigrants who arrived in Honolulu in the first year of the reign of Emperor Meiji. And, they were the first group of people from Japan to board ships and sail to Hawaii.
As a samurai, Ishii faced a changing world in Japan. The former rulers, the shogunate, resigned power, and the reign of the imperial court of the Meiji era began.
Other Japanese citizens were attracted by the $4-a-month wage and free travel. There also was an option to return to Japan following a three-year contract. The original 150 gannenmono included craftsmen and peasants.
“Japanese laborers on Sprecklesville Plantation,” an oil on canvas painting by Joseph Dwight Strong, 1885, is from a private collection. The gannenmono paved the way for a future wave of 180,000 Japanese immigrants in 1885.
But little did they know that their voyage to a foreign land would be so much more. It paved the way for more Japanese to come to Hawaii to work, put down family roots and establish themselves on plantations, in stores and in construction trades.
“If it wasn’t for the gannenmono, there wouldn’t be any 1885,” said University of Hawaii American Studies professor Dennis Ogawa. That year marked the influx of 180,000 Japanese immigrants to Hawaii to work on plantations.
Today, many Japanese-Americans in Hawaii can trace their ancestry back to immigrants who made the trek to Hawaii between 1885 and 1924.
Immigrants to be commemorated
To honor the 150th anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii, this week’s Maui Matsuri festival will incorporate a variety of commemoration events. These include the arrival of the Japanese training ship Kaiwo Maru on Wednesday and “Maui County’s 150th Gannenmono Celebration Honoring Our Plantation Heritage” on Friday.
Kanaka‘ole
Other celebrations are being held on Oahu and throughout the state. (For more information, go to kizunahawaii.com.)
Kanaka’ole is still debating whether to attend events on Oahu. She’s eager to share her unique family history, with its Japanese and Hawaiian roots, but she’s weighing that against the cost and travel logistics.
Ishii married Kanaka’ole’s Hawaiian great-grandmother, known only as “Kahele.”
And Ishii was not alone. According to reports, at least a handful of gannenmono married Hawaiian women.
Ishii and Kahele met on a hillside in Kipahulu, Kanakaole said, recalling stories passed down to her from her grandmother, Marie Komatsu Silva. Kahele had been struggling to load a donkey while working on a sweet potato farm.
Sentaro Ishii, a gannenmono, or one of the “first-year men” who made the trip from Japan to Hawaii, is buried in Kipahulu.
“She was having hard time, so he wen’ help her,” Kanaka’ole said. “It went from there.”
Ishii made Maui his home. A cook and sugar plantation worker, he was 103 years old when he died on Sept. 18, 1936, and was buried in Kipahulu. He was the last surviving member of the gannenmono, Ogawa said.
According to a Dec. 3, 1915, Maui News story, Ishii was the only Hawaii resident to qualify for an Emperor’s Cup by reaching 80 years old. The cup was given in commemoration of Japan’s Emperor Yoshihito’s coronation, the story said.
Ishii was one of around 150 gannenmono to come to Hawaii. Of that number, about 70 came to Maui, according to the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu.
But within three years of working on sugar plantations as contract laborers, only 50 remained in Hawaii, said Ogawa, who teaches American Studies on Oahu.
Those immigrants “became living testimony for (King) Kalakaua” that the Japanese could come to Hawaii to live and work, Ogawa said. “He went to Japan and asked the emperor to send Japanese to Hawaii.”
Kalakaua’s visit set the stage for many Japanese to come to Hawaii between 1885 and 1924. The 1885 immigration period is known as Kanyaku Imin, or “contract laborers.”
Ogawa is completing a book, “Who You? Hawaii Issei,” which features stories of the Issei, or first-generation Japanese in Hawaii.
Initial trip to Hawaii
The origins of the gannenmono immigration to Hawaii stemmed from 1860 when King Kamehameha IV proposed a friendship treaty between Japan and the Kingdom of Hawaii, according to the website, “Gannenmono, Celebrating 150 Years.”
In 1865, the Kingdom of Hawaii appointed Eugene Van Reed, a Japan-based American businessman, as consul general of Hawaii in Japan. Around that time, the shogun government in Japan surrendered power. Rule was restored to the imperial court under Emperor Meiji.
Van Reed recruited the first emigrants to Hawaii to mainly work as laborers in sugar cane fields. Most emigrants were crafts people, peasants and samurais, according to the website, Japanese Emigration to Brazil. Although Reed received departure permission and even passports from the shogunate regime, the new Meiji government did not confirm it, the website said. Gannenmono made the voyage illegally.
But, in May 1868, around 150 Japanese nationals departed the port of Yokohama on the ship “Scioto” and landed in Honolulu on June 20.
According to information from the Japanese American National Museum, those Japanese citizens were attracted to a wage of $4 a month, plus food, lodging, medical expenses and travel to Hawaii and back after fulfillment of three-year contracts.
The immigrants who arrived in Hawaii became indentured to plantation owners, and they faced other hardships because they were living in an unfamiliar climate with harsh labor conditions.
Because of the hardships, Japan and Hawaii suspended labor migration, according to the book “Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945,” by Gary Okihiro.
Then, in 1881, Kalakaua’s visit to Japan reopened the Japanese migration door, thanks to the better experiences of some gannenmono such as Ishii, historians say.
Gannenmono marry Native Hawaiians
Another gannenmono with ties to Maui was Matsugoro Kuwada, who married a Hawaiian woman, Melana Auweko’olani.
U’i Uweko’olani-Aarona, a Hawaiian immersion teacher at Kalama Intermediate School in Makawao, said Auweko’olani is her great-great-aunt.
Unlike Kanakaole, Uweko-‘olani-Aarona does not have Japanese ancestry because she is not a direct descendant of Kuwada.
Through family genealogy, particularly done by her late father, Edward Moanliha Uweko’olani Sr., and his siblings, the family was able to trace ties to Kuwada.
She noted that through the years, the “A” in Auweko-‘olani was dropped, resulting in the Uweko’olani name.
Uweko’olani-Aarona said she wondered how a Hawaiian woman would meet a Japanese man and how the two would communicate.
Also interesting was how the two married “outside the race,” which was unique or maybe even taboo “for people back then,” she said.
The book “Cane Fires” notes another Maui County gannenmono: Toyokichi Fukumura, who married Lukia Kaha of Molokai.
Kanaka’ole said her grandfather eventually landed in Lahaina and made his way to Ulupalakua where he worked as a cook.
Ogawa noted that Ishii was sent to the McKee Ulupalakua Plantation.
In an excerpt from Ogawa’s upcoming book, Ishii described the work as being “not bad . . . they treated the laborers kindly.”
Ogawa said Ishii became fluent in Hawaiian. A 1915 Maui News story reported that Ishii went to Haleakala School where he learned English.
Eventually, Kanaka’ole said, Ishii also became a boiler tender at the Kipahulu sugar mill.
Kanka’ole’s grandmother said she was Ishii’s favorite. As a youngster, Marie Komatsu Ishii went to work with her father. Ishii even made a bed for his youngest daughter at his workplace, and she was kept warm by the plantation equipment.
Kanaka’ole said her great-grandparents had four children. One was her grandmother, who later was known as Marie Ishii Silva and was the youngest, along with the oldest daughter Abigail Umeyo Ishii and two sons, Peter Umemaru Ishii and William Kobai Ishii.
For unknown reasons, Kanaka’ole said some in the Ishii family adopted the last name Starkey.
But Kanaka’ole believed that her grandmother loved Sentaro Ishii so much that her grandmother kept her Japanese last name when she got married. Her grandmother dropped the Starkey name to become Marie Ishii Silva.
Kanaka’ole, a retired teacher who makes jams and jellies, said she’s thankful that her grandmother shared family stories with her as she grew up. Silva was Kanaka’ole’s adopted mother.
Learning of her heritage, Kanaka’ole said she is proud of her Japanese roots, even though her ethnic makeup also includes Irish, Swedish, Cherokee, Hawaiian and Japanese.
“I feel so proud that I’m Japanese,” Kanaka’ole said. “Only one-eighth but that’s OK.”
Over the years, Kanaka’ole and her late husband, Parley Kanaka’ole, a former vice principal at Hana High and Elementary School, made an effort to learn more about Ishii.
(Parley Kanaka’ole himself had impressive lineage as the son of kumu hula and Hawaiian cultural expert Edith Kanaka’ole. In Hilo, the Merrie Monarch hula festival is held at a stadium named after Edith Kanaka’ole.)
Once, when Kanaka’ole and her husband were in Utah, they visited the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. They ventured to the Pacific Section.
The two were looking around when “this book fell off the shelf onto the floor,” Kanaka’ole said.
“The book wen’ open. There was my great-grandfather Sentaro Ishii,” she said.
And when Kanaka’ole lived in Hilo, she and her husband were in a restaurant when Kanaka’ole’s oldest child, then a baby, spilled a glass of milk.
Waitresses came out of help and even put newspaper on the floor to sop up the milk.
Kanaka’ole then noticed a photo of Ishii in the newspaper, although today she doesn’t recall why it was there.
However, it “seems Sentaro, he wanted to be found. Wanted me to know about him.”
* Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.
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