The Imperial Cruise

by James Bradley

  John Stevens, U.S. minister to Hawaii. Stevens gave the order for the coup d’état in the Hawaiian Kingdom. Afterward he wrote the secretary of state: “The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.” (Library of Congress)

  On Monday, two days after the queen had declared her intention regarding a new constitution, she posted a more modest official proclamation throughout Honolulu. It was a pledge from the queen that she would seek to change the constitution “only by methods provided in the constitution itself.”51 But while Lili’uokalani had moderated, the colonizers had no intention of responding in kind. The Committee of Safety drafted an appeal to Stevens in which they noted the “general alarm and terror…. The public safety is menaced and lives and property are in peril…. We are unable to protect ourselves without aid, and therefore pray for the protection of the United States forces.”52 After signing this “general alarm and terror” document, the Committee of Safety adjourned for the day and its members ambled off through Honolulu’s quiet streets for lunch.

  Minister Stevens boarded the USS Boston at 3:00 p.m. and handed this written request to her captain:

  UNITED STATES LEGATION

  HONOLULU, JANUARY 16, 1893

  Sir: In view of existing critical circumstances in Honolulu, indicating an inadequate legal force, I request you to land Marines and Sailors from the ship under your command for the protection of the United States Legation, and the United States Consulate and to secure the safety of American life and property.

  Very truly yours,

  John L. Stevens53

  One hour later, 162 heavily armed United States Marines from the USS Boston marched through Honolulu’s peaceful streets. The only large group of Hawaiians to be found were those enjoying the weekly Monday night Royal Hawaiian Band concert under the gazebo of the Hawaiian Hotel. The marines, making no effort to pretend that they had landed “to secure the safety of American life and property,” surrounded the royal palace and forced out Queen Lili’uokalani. As the British minister to Hawaii, William Cornwall, observed, “If the troops were landed solely for the protection of American property, the placing of them so far away from the… property of Americans and so very close to the property of the Hawaiian Government was remarkable and suggestive.”54

  The next day, representing the United States, Stevens recognized the Hawaiian provisional government. The new president of Hawaii was Sanford Dole, a son of missionaries, a white and blue-eyed Haole.

  Sanford Dole. Son of missionaries and cousin of the founder of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now the Dole Pineapple Company), Sanford Dole served as president of the Hawaiian Republic after the American coup d’état of the Hawaiian Kingdom. (Hawaii State Archives)

  There were at long last no dark-skinned Hawaiians in the new Hawaiian government. Stevens raised the American flag in Honolulu and declared Hawaii an American protectorate. Then, in a letter to the secretary of state, he suggested, “The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.”55 Meanwhile, the new government began enforcing its regime by putting into practice a series of repressive policies to silence its critics.

  President Dole dispatched five Missionary Party members to Washington to make a deal. President Harrison proclaimed, “The overthrow of the monarchy was not in any way promoted by this Government… and the change of government in the Hawaiian Islands… was entirely unexpected so far as the United States was concerned.”56 Added the new secretary of state, John Foster: “At the time the provisional government took possession of the Government buildings no troops or officers of the United States were present or took any part whatever in the proceedings.”57

  After seven meetings over a short ten days, Secretary of State Foster and the White “Hawaiians” signed the annexation treaty on February 14, 1893, less than a month after the U.S. Marines had captured Iolani Palace. The next day Harrison submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification.

  The president hoped the senators would approve Hawaii’s annexation before the truth came out, but time was against him: Harrison had lost the election of 1892 and had less than a month before he would leave office.58 Things started well. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hastily approved the annexation treaty and sent it to the full Senate on February 17. But on that day a visitor appeared in Washington with a different story than what the president had told. He was Paul Neumann, Queen Lili’uokalani’s personal attorney and envoy.

  Neumann made the case that the queen had been unfairly dethroned and that Minister Stevens had improperly landed U.S. troops and had illegally proclaimed a United States protectorate over the islands. Neumann told senators and the press that native Hawaiians had not been consulted and would not favor a treaty. Suddenly senators went on record calling the American actions in Hawaii “an outrage” and “an act of war,” and they “ridiculed annexation as a Hawaiian sugar planters’ scheme to obtain American bounty.”59

  Neumann delivered a letter from Queen Lili’uokalani as head of government to president-elect Grover Cleveland, requesting that the United States oust the usurpers and restore Hawaii’s independence.

  Cleveland smelled a rat. On March 8, Cleveland withdrew U.S. support for the Hawaiian annexation treaty. Two days later, he dispatched the former congressman James Blount of Georgia to Hawaii on a presidential investigation. Blount sailed immediately and lowered the American flag in Honolulu on April 1, which ended Hawaii’s status as a U.S. protectorate.

  Many Americans opposed annexing Hawaii—but not for reasons of sympathy. Some claimed that “the framers of the Constitution intended the Republic’s territorial expansion to be restricted to contiguous land which would be settled by Americans of Anglo-Saxon lineage.”60 Harper’s Weekly wrote, “History had shown that Anglo-Saxon democratic institutions could not survive in tropical colonies.”61

  On December 18, 1893, Cleveland sent a scathing report to Congress:

  There is as little basis for the pretense that forces were landed for the security of American life and property. When these armed men were landed, the city of Honolulu was in its customary orderly and peaceful condition. There was no symptom or disturbance in any quarter. Men, women, and children were about the streets as usual, and nothing varied the ordinary routine or disturbed the ordinary tranquility, except the landing of the Boston’s marines, and their march through the town.62

  …

  The Provisional Government has not assumed a republic or other constitutional form, but has remained a mere executive council or oligarchy, set up without the assent of the people. Indeed, the representatives of that government assert that the people of Hawaii are unfit for popular government and frankly avow that they can be best ruled by arbitrary or despotic power.63

  One month after President Cleveland’s criticism, President Dole’s provisional government celebrated its one-year anniversary. Missionary Party leaders realized that if Cleveland hadn’t acted to restore the queen after twelve months, Hawaii was safely within their White hands.

  A few days later, on February 7, 1894, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 177 to 78, with 96 abstentions, to condemn Minister Stevens. But nothing was done about the situation on the ground in Hawaii. And Dole was working hard to make sure that the Aryan would now dominate, consulting Teddy’s law school mentor, the Columbia professor John Burgess, regarding a new constitution. In a March 31, 1894, letter to Burgess, Dole explained that Hawaii had “many natives… comparatively ignorant of the principles of government [and a] menace to good government.” Burgess responded:

  If I understand your situation, it is as follows: You have a population of nearly 100,000 persons, of whom about 5,000 are Teutons, i.e., Americans, English, Germans, and Scandinavians, about 9,000 are Portuguese, about 30,000 are Chinese and Japanese, about 8,000 are native born of foreign parents, and the rest are natives.

  With this situation, I understand your problem to be the construction
of a constitution which will place the government in the hands of the Teutons, and preserve it there.64

  Dole thanked the professor: “Your letters showed a clear knowledge of our peculiar political circumstances.”65

  In fact, Hawaii would remain as Cleveland had described it: an oligarchy “set up without the assent of the people.” But the president had been discreet about such imperial efforts—too discreet for some. Theodore Roosevelt was outraged that Cleveland had not proudly followed the sun to Hawaii. Indeed, it was this failure that sparked Roosevelt’s interest in Pacific expansion. In 1896, Teddy fumed in the Century Magazine: “We should annex Hawaii immediately. It was a crime against the United States, it was a crime against white civilization, not to annex it two years and a half ago. The delay did damage that is perhaps irreparable; for it meant that at the critical period of the islands’ growth the influx of population consisted, not of white Americans, but of low caste laborers from the yellow races.”66

  FROM BOYHOOD TO MIDDLE age, William McKinley—a devout Methodist—had witnessed Christianity’s conquest of the North American continent. Once president, he concerned himself with the souls of Pacific pagans. McKinley’s Republican Party had run on the platform that “the Hawaiian Islands should be controlled by the United States and no foreign power should be permitted to interfere with them.”67 Once in office, McKinley resubmitted the Hawaiian annexation treaty to the U.S. Senate. Because the United States had for so long dominated Hawaii, the president said, “Annexation is not a change. It is a consummation.”68

  Senator David Turpie of Indiana believed that native Hawaiians should be heard, arguing, “There is a native population in the islands of about 40,000. They are not illiterate; they are not ignorant. A very large majority can read and write both languages, English and Hawaiian, and they take a very lively and intelligent interest in the affairs of their own country…. Any treaty which had been made without consulting [native Hawaiians] should be withdrawn and ought never to have been sanctioned.”69

  His was a minority viewpoint. And native Hawaiians were not to be heard.

  A more powerful and persuasive voice was that of the assistant secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt. Teddy wrote that if the United States did not annex Hawaii, “it will show that we either have lost, or else wholly lack, the masterful instinct which alone can make a race great. I feel so deeply about it that I hardly dare express myself in full. The terrible part is to see that it is the men of education who take the lead in trying to make us prove traitors to our race.”70

  Export-minded U.S. businessmen imagined four hundred million customers in China, with Hawaii as an American coaling station and naval base. In January of 1898, McKinley—in a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)—declared that using the U.S. military to pry open foreign markets was a legitimate function of the U.S. government. Senator William Frye of Maine urged the same room of NAM members to lobby Congress for a Central American canal and the annexation of Hawaii. Senator Cushman Davis of Minnesota proclaimed, “The nation which controls Hawaii will control that great gateway to commerce.”71 The Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a majority report declaring that all of the traffic passing through a Central American canal would pass through Hawaii before continuing on to Asia.

  The war with Spain provided a further excuse. Congressman De Alva Alexander of New York declared, “The annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, for the first time in our history, is presented to us as a war necessity.” Added Representative Richmond Pearson of North Carolina, “I believe that this is a necessary step in the successful prosecution of the war with Spain.” The historian Thomas Osborne writes in Annexation Hawaii, “Potential trade with China was the primary reason for the annexation of Hawaii. War with Spain was about timing.”72

  On July 6, 1898, Congress passed the Hawaii Annexation Resolution, and President McKinley signed it the next day. The New York Sun cheered: “The America of the twentieth century has taken its first and most significant step towards the grave responsibility and high rewards of manifest destiny.”73

  On July 8, a distressed former president Grover Cleveland wrote to his former attorney general: “Hawaii is ours. As I look back upon the first steps in this miserable business, and as I contemplate the means used to complete the outrage, I am ashamed of the whole affair.”74

  On August 12, 1898, in the “Hawaii Annexation Ceremony” in Honolulu, President Sanford Dole formally handed the former independent kingdom to the U.S. minister, Harold M. Sewall. The white Haoles applauded. Queen Lili’uokalani did not attend.

  AFTER THE LUNCHEON, THE Taft party scampered off to world-renowned Waikiki Beach, the birthplace of surfing. Princess Alice donned a bathing costume—a high-necked, long-sleeved mohair dress with long black stockings and bathing shoes, her hair tucked under a tightly fitting cap. Alice recalled, “Mr. Taft thought that there was too much skin showing,” and that he pleaded “with photographers not to take photographs of me in my bathing suit. It was considered just a little indelicate.”75

  Beachboys paddled Nick and Alice out into Waikiki Bay’s famous waves in an outrigger canoe. A newspaper reported, “Cameras by the dozen snapped and clicked as she swept by. It was always with those on shore: ‘There’s Alice, see her now!’ ”76 When she returned to the beach, a reporter heard her exclaim, “I never knew there could be so much enjoyment in a Hawaiian canoe, racing along with the billows, as I have found at Waikiki beach today. It was perfectly delightful, and I wish I could stay to enjoy more of it.”77

  Hawaii Annexation Ceremony, Honolulu, August 12, 1898. Americans cheered while native Hawaiians boycotted the ceremony. (Hawaii State Archives)

  At 5:30 p.m., Taft ordered the Manchuria to pull out from Honolulu harbor even though Nick and Alice were not aboard. Remembered Alice: “We stayed on the beach at Waikiki until it was time to go back to the steamer. I did not want to leave. I missed the boat at the wharf, as it had to sail at a definite time because of the tides. So, in a launch with Nick… and a few others, leis about our necks, regret in our hearts at leaving, I pursued the Manchuria out into the open Pacific.”78

  Alice Roosevelt and Congressman Nicholas Longworth, Honolulu, 1905. (Library of Congress)

  Chapter 6

  HONORARY ARYANS

  “The average Westerner… was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on the Manchurian battlefields.”1

  OKAKURA KAKUZO, 1906

  FOUNDER OF THE TOKYO SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS, JAPAN INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS, AND THE FIRST HEAD OF THE ASIAN DIVISION AT BOSTON’S MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

  As the Manchuria steamed from Hawaii to Japan, the numerous reporters on board busily wrote articles for their hometown newspapers describing friendly breakfast conversations, a mock trial, fancy dance parties, and what Alice called “a sheet and pillow-case party.”2 But the story that seemed to delight readers most was when Alice spontaneously jumped into a pool with her clothes on. The reality was quite different: the plunge was a planned event, with an expectant crowd watching as workers laboriously poured water into an improvised canvas pool. Alice remembered: “Of course, I left shoes, watch, and such things that the water would hurt, in the care of onlookers.”3 But these antics as retold by grateful newsmen were exactly what the American public expected—and a useful distraction from the cruise’s secret mission.

  TAFT WAS CARRYING SECRET oral instructions that would alter America’s course in Asia. Roosevelt had told his wife and a few trusted friends about his plan, but he kept it secret from his own State Department and Congress. The U.S. Constitution required Roosevelt to put agreements with foreign countries in writing and submit them to the Senate for review. Teddy considered such protocols a waste of time when Big Bill could button things up in Tokyo on the q.t. Only now can history understand it was these events in the summer of 1905 that would doom more than one hundred thousand American boys to d
ie in the Pacific theater decades later. Operating as a two-man diplomatic tag team, Roosevelt and Taft would green-light what later generations would call World War II in the Pacific.

  Before Taft’s visit in the summer of 1905, relations between Japan and the United States could not have been warmer. After the deal, things changed. Knowing a lot about race theory but less about international diplomacy and almost nothing about Asia, Roosevelt in 1905 careened U.S.-Japanese relations onto the dark side road leading to 1941.

  WHEN THE MANCHURIA DOCKED in Yokohama on Tuesday, July 25, 1905, it ignited the most boisterous welcome Japan had ever extended to foreigners. Tens of thousands of Japanese waving both countries’ flags crowded the wharves, shouting, “banzai”—the traditional Japanese exclamation of good wishes meaning ten thousand years of good luck.

  “American guests… banzai!”

  “Alice and Taft… banzai!”

  “Japan and America… banzai!”

  At the Yokohama train station, rows of policemen held the cheering crowd back as the Americans boarded the emperor’s personal train. The exact timing of their one-hour journey to Tokyo had been publicized and at each stop enormous smiling crowds banzaied the Americans. Entering Tokyo’s Shimbashi train station, the dazzled Americans were buffeted by the banzai roar. The Japan Weekly Mail reported, “It is not within our experience that Tokyo ever previously offered such an ardent reception to any foreign visitors.”4 The New York Times wrote that Japan’s welcome of the Taft party was “absolutely unprecedented in warmth and friendliness.”5 The American minister, Lloyd Griscom, helped Alice into his open carriage to take her to her quarters at the American legation. The horses were skittish as they pulled Alice through narrow streets lined with people waving Japanese and American flags and shouting, “Banzai!” Alice clutched Griscom’s arm and shouted in his ear: “Lloyd, I love it! I love it!”6