Katsu Kobayakawa Goto

“Early on the morning of the 29th the body of K. Goto, a Japanese storekeeper, was found hanging to a telephone post not far from the Honokaa court house between that and the Lyceum, with his arms tied behind him and his legs also tied.  He had been dead several hours.”  (Daily Bulletin, October 30, 1889)

Katsu Kobayakawa was the eldest son of Izaemon Kobayakawa.  Katsu (Jun) was born in the Kanagawa Prefecture in 1862.  He worked as a store clerk in Yokohama, where he became fluent in English by associating with Englishmen and Americans.  (Nakano)

He was anxious to go to Hawaiʻi; but being the first born son, he was expected to take over the family business.  Katsu changed his surname to Goto so he could travel Hawaiʻi to make a better living for himself.

In the Islands, Hawai‘i’s economy turned toward sugar in the decades between 1860 and 1880; these twenty years were pivotal in building the plantation system.  By 1883, more than 50-plantations were producing sugar on five islands.

A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge; the answer was imported labor.  The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.)

In March 1881, King Kalākaua visited Japan during which he discussed with Emperor Meiji Hawaiʻi's desire to encourage Japanese nationals to settle in Hawaiʻi; this improved the relationship of the Hawaiian Kingdom with the Japanese government. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

The first 944-government-sponsored, Kanyaku Imin, Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi arrived in Honolulu aboard the SS City of Tokio on February 8, 1885.  Katsu was on that first boatload of Japanese immigrants, included with 676-men, 158-women and 110-children on the first of 26 shiploads of government contract Japanese immigrants between 1885 and 1894.

Katsu fulfilled his 3-year contract commitment, working in the Hāmākua sugarcane fields.  After that, he took over a small, general merchandise store previously run by Bunichiro Onome in Honokaʻa, then the Island’s second largest town.  (Niiya)

He was very successful selling to the Japanese, native Hawaiian and haole population and was soon viewed as leader in the Japanese immigrant community. (Kubota)

On October 28, 1889 Goto was killed.

Four were accused and stood trial: Joseph R Mills, Thomas Steele, William C Blabon and William D Watson.

Steele was Overend’s overseer.  Blabon was teamster for Mills.  Watson was head teamster for Overend and a former employee of Mills.

Deputy Attorney-General Arthur Porter Peterson notes, “The prosecution would show that Goto was not killed while hanging to the telephone pole, but when he was waylaid and dragged from his horse, and was only hung to the post as an act of bravado, within sight and almost within sound of the temple of justice.”  (Daily Bulletin, May 13, 1890)

Some suggest the motive for killing Goto was a fire at the Robert McLain Overend plantation.  Testimony at trial noted, “Mills had told me that Goto had been up to Overend’s camp. Mr. Overend’s cane field was set fire October 19th, a little after 9 o'clock.”

“We had Goto for an interpreter, and he did not act on the square, and a new interpreter was got and he gave matters away. I only heard Mr. Overend say that he would break his damned neck.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, May 20, 1890)

Others note Goto was successful in his store and other store operators were concerned about losing business because of him.  Joseph R Mills operated a store a few yards from Goto’s (Goto was the only Japanese storekeeper in the area.)

The testimony of star witnesses Richmond and Lala, who had both taken part in the incident, yielded the following description of how Goto ultimately died.

“The two of them were summoned separately on the night that Goto was killed. Richmond was summoned by Steele and sent to watch for a Jap who would be leaving the (Japanese) living quarters on horseback”.

“When they got to where Mills and the others were waiting, Mills told him to grab the bridle of the horse that (Goto) would be riding toward them. After Richmond reported that (Goto) was on his way they lay in ambush.”

“Steele and Blabon dragged the man off the horse. … Steele, Blabon, Mills, and Watson carried him to a location away from the road where he was placed face down and his hands and feet bound. … Mills sent Richmond to pick up a rope at the foot of the telephone pole, a rope that, he found, already had a hangman's knot at one end.”

“When he returned with the rope someone in the group said, ‘My God! He is dead.’ Richmond then bent over and put his hand over the man's heart but could feel no heartbeat. …”

“The body was then carried over to the telephone pole. Watson threw the rope over the crossbar, Mills put the noose around Goto's neck, and the body was hauled up and suspended.”  (Kubota)

After deliberating for more than six hours, the jury returned verdicts of manslaughter in the second degree for Steele and Mills, and manslaughter in the third degree for Blabon and Watson.  Judge Albert Francis Judd subsequently sentenced Mills and Steele to nine years imprisonment at hard labor, Blabon to five and Watson to four.

All four were transferred under guard from Hilo jail to Oʻahu Prison immediately after the trial. Steele later escaped and presumably stowed away on a ship bound for Australia; Blabon also escaped and probably stowed away, too.  Mills received a full pardon in 1894.  Watson was the only one to serve out his full sentence.

At the same time of the Goto killing, the Annual Meeting of the Planters’ Labor and Supply Company was being held.  They adopted a resolution against racial prejudice, resolving that they “strongly disapprove of every act and publication intended or calculated to excite any distrust or prejudice in the minds of the native Hawaiians against those of foreign birth or parentage, or to excite feelings of contempt or distrust toward the natives”.  (Daily Bulletin, October 29, 1889)

(Peterson was Attorney-General at the time of the overthrow in 1893. He was arrested and jailed by the Republic of Hawaiʻi in the aftermath of the 1895 Counter-Revolution and then exiled to San Francisco where he died of pneumonia.)

(Peterson had conferred upon him the decoration of the Imperial Order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan for services rendered to the Japanese Government.  (San Francisco Call, March 17, 1895))  (Lots of information here from Kubota.)

The image shows some of the locations noted in the summary in and around the town of Honokaʻa.  (Google Earth)  In addition, I have added other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook  

Follow Peter T Young on Google+    

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn   

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Hāmākua

In very ancient times, the lands were not divided and an island was left without divisions such as ahupuaʻa and ʻili, but in the time when the lands became filled with people, the lands were divided, with the proper names for this place and that place so that they could be known.  (Kamakau)

Prior to European contact, each of the major islands or independent chiefdoms in the Hawaiian chain comprised a mokupuni (island.) Over the centuries, as the ancient Hawaiian population grew, land use and resource management also evolved.

Each island was divided into several moku or districts, of which there are six in the island of Hawaiʻi, and the same number in Oʻahu. There is a district called Kona on the lee side and one called Koʻolau on the windward side of almost every island.  (Alexander)  The moku of Hawaiʻi Island are: Kona, Kohala, Hāmākua, Hilo, Puna and Kaʻū.

Initial settlement of the Hawaiian Islands is believed to have occurred along the wetter windward sides of the Islands, along the fertile coastline.    On Hawaiʻi Island, that included Hāmākua.

Waipi‘o (“curved water”) is one of several coastal valleys on the north part of the Hāmākua side of the Island of Hawaiʻi. A black sand beach, three-quarters of a mile long, fronts the valley, the longest on the Big Island.

For two hundred years or more, Waipiʻo Valley was the Royal Center to many of the rulers on the Island of Hawaiʻi, including Pili lineage rulers - the ancestors of Kamehameha - and continued to play an important role as one of many royal residences until the era of Kamehameha.  (UH DURP)

Royal Centers were where the aliʻi resided; aliʻi often moved between several residences throughout the year. The Royal Centers were selected for their abundance of resources and recreation opportunities, with good surfing and canoe-landing sites being favored.

In 1872, Isabella Bird traveled by horseback along the Hāmākua coast from Onomea to the Waipiʻo Valley and described the landscape she travelled through. The journey was over very rough and steep trails and took five days.  Bird noted, “this is the most severe road on horses on Hawaiʻi, and it takes a really good animal to come to Waipiʻo and go back to Hilo.”

The Isabella Bird description that follows helps give a perspective of what Hāmākua was like about 150-years ago:

“The unique beauty of this coast is what is called gulches - narrow, deep ravines or gorges, from one hundred to two thousand feet in depth, each with a series of cascades from ten to eight hundred feet in height.”

“I dislike reducing their glories to the baldness of figures, but the depth of these clefts cut and worn by the fierce streams fed by the snows of Mauna Kea, and the rains of the forest belt, cannot otherwise be expressed.”

“The cascades are most truly beautiful, gleaming white among the dark depths of foliage far away, and falling into deep limpid basins, festooned and overhung with the richest and greenest vegetation of this prolific climate, from the huge-leaved banana and shining breadfruit to the most feathery of ferns.”

“Each gulch opens on a velvet lawn close to the sea, and most of them have space for a few grass houses, with cocoanut trees, bananas and kalo patches. There are sixty-nine of these extraordinary chasms within a distance of thirty miles!”

“We had a perfect day until the middle of the afternoon.  The dimpling Pacific was never more than a mile from us as we kept the narrow track in the long green grass, and on our left the blunt, snow-patched peaks of Mauna Kea rose from the girdle of forest, looking so delusively near that I fancied a two hours climb would take us to his lofty summit.”

“The track for twenty-six miles is just in and out of gulches, from one hundred to eight hundred feet in depth, all opening on the sea, which sweeps into them in three booming rollers. The candlenut or kukui tree, which on the whole predominates, has leaves of a rich, deep green when mature, which contrast beautifully with the flaky, silvery look of the younger foliage.”

“Some of the shallower gulches are filled exclusively with this tree, which in growing up to the light to within one hundred feet of the top, presents a mass and density of leafage quite unique, giving the gulch the appearance as if billows of green had rolled in and solidified there.”

“The descent into the gulches is always solemn. You canter along a bright breezy upland, and are suddenly arrested by a precipice, and from the depths of a forest-draped abyss a low plash or murmur arises, or a deep bass sound, significant of water which must be crossed, and one reluctantly leaves the upper air to plunge into heavy shadow, and each experience increases one's apprehensions concerning the next.”

“It is wonderful that people should have thought of crossing these gulches on anything with four legs, formerly, that is, within the last thirty years, the precipices could only be ascended by climbing with the utmost care, and descended by being lowered with ropes from crag to crag, and from tree to tree, when hanging on by the hands became impracticable to even the most experienced mountaineer.”

“In this last fashion Mr. Coan and Mr. Lyons (missionaries from Hilo and Waimea) were let down to preach the gospel to the people of the then populous valleys. But within recent years, narrow tracks, allowing one horse to pass another, have been cut along the sides of these precipices, without any windings to make them easier, and only deviating enough from the perpendicular to allow of their descent by the sure-footed native-born animals.”

“All the gulches for the first twenty-four miles contain running water. The great Hakalau gulch which we crossed early yesterday, has a river with a smooth bed as wide as the Thames at Eton. Some have only small quiet streams, which pass gently through ferny grottoes.”

“The path by which we descended looked a mere thread on the side of the precipice. I don't know what the word beetling means, but if it means anything bad, I will certainly apply it to that pali.”  (Byrd)

In more modern times, sugar defined the landscape.  Production started with initial smaller plantations that later merged into larger facilities.

The Hāmākua Mill Company was first established in 1877 by Theo Davies and his partner Charles Notley, Sr.  In 1878, the first sugarcane was planted at the plantation and Hilo Iron Works was hired to build a mill. The mill was located at Paʻauilo.

By 1910, it had 4,800-acres planted in sugarcane and employed more than 600 people. The company ran three locomotives on nine miles of light gauge rail. There was a warehouse and landing below the cliff at Koholālole where ships were loaded by crane.

In 1914, the Kūkaʻiau Mill Company became a part of the Hāmākua Mill Company. In 1917, the Kūkaʻiau mill was sold and moved to Formosa (Taiwan.)

In 1917, the Hāmākua Mill Company was renamed the Hāmākua Sugar Company. The Kaiwiki Sugar Company was merged with the Theo H Davies Company-owned Laupāhoehoe Sugar Company on May 1, 1956 and operations were merged with the latter beginning January 3. 1957.

In 1978, the Hāmākua Sugar Company, Honokaʻa Sugar Company and the Laupāhoehoe Sugar Company were merged to form the Davies Hāmākua Sugar Company. 

In 1984 the Davies Hāmākua Sugar Company was bought by Francis Morgan and renamed the Hāmākua Sugar Company (1984-1994). The Hāmākua Sugar Company operated until October of 1994, and its closing marked the end of the sugar industry at Hāmākua, as well as the Island of Hawaiʻi.

Hāmākua Sugar Plantation Days Festival is being celebrated 10 am – 5 pm, Saturday, August 16, 21014 in Honokaʻa, commemorates the closure of the Hāmākua Sugar Co 20 years ago.

The image shows cable loading of sugar.  In addition, I have added some other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook  

Follow Peter T Young on Google+    

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn    

© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC