WCC take on Massie affair adds details, perspectives

To understand the importance of Taurie Kinoshita’s production of “Massie/Kahahawai” at Windward Community College, a play about one of the darkest events in Hawaii’s history, it is necessary to first review the facts of the case.

In September 1931, Thalia Massie, the wife of naval officer Thomas Massie, told police that she had been kidnapped and raped by five Hawaiian men on the outskirts of Waikiki. At first she said everything had been so dark that she couldn’t describe any of the men or the car they’d been driving, but the more time she spent talking with the police the more details she seemed to remember. Five young men who’d been out cruising that night — two Hawaiians, two Japanese and a Chinese-Hawaiian, three of whom had criminal records — were brought in as suspects. The men and their car were a close enough match to the men Massie had eventually been able to describe, and so Benny Ahakuelo, Henry Chang, Horace Ida, Joseph Kahahawai and David Takai were charged with raping her.

As the trial progressed, two huge holes appeared in the prosecution’s case. One was that there was no physical evidence that Massie had been raped. The other was that the five men had been involved in a beef with passengers of another car on the other side of Honolulu during the time that the alleged gang rape was taking place.

Despite those unquestionable facts, the trial ended in a hung jury. The five men were released on bail pending a second trial.

This did not sit well with the members of Hawaii’s Caucasian ruling elite who sympathized with Thalia Massie and her socially prominent mainland haole mother, Grace Hubbard Fortescue. Nor did it sit well with Rear Adm. Yates Stirling Jr., commandant of the U.S. Navy’s 14th Naval District (which included Hawaii); given his druthers, Stirling would have had the five men lynched.

A group of Navy men kidnapped Ida for what would now be euphemistically described as “enhanced interrogation,” but couldn’t beat a confession out of him. Three weeks later, Thomas Massie, Fortescue and two sailors kidnapped Kahahawai and took him to a house in Manoa. There he was killed with a single shot to the chest; Massie, Fortescue and one of the sailors were apprehended as they were driving to Makapuu with Kahahawai’s body under a sheet in the back of the car.

Thomas Massie, Fortescue and the two sailors were charged with murder, but convicted of manslaughter. They were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Stirling announced that if the sentence were allowed to stand, he would put Hawaii “off limits” for all naval personnel — a tremendous blow to the islands’ economy. In Washington, D.C., more than 100 members of Congress called for a full pardon. Other politicians suggested that the territorial government be replaced by a presidential commission.

In compliance with orders received from the federal government, the territory’s appointed governor, Lawrence Judd, commuted the sentences of the four convicted killers to one hour in the custody of the territorial sheriff.

The Massies, Fortescue and the two sailors left Hawaii immediately afterward. Their departure made it impossible to retry Ahakuelo, Chang, Ida and Takai for rape. The charges were dropped.

IN 1973, University of Hawaii-Manoa professor Dennis Carroll wrote “Massie/Kahahawai” using court records, newspaper articles and other published sources. Thomas Massie was still living at the time, and the university was warned that Massie would consider legal action against anyone involved in a dramatization of the Massie/Kahahawai story.

The university decided to play it safe. Carroll’s play was shelved indefinitely.

Thomas Massie died in 1987, but “Massie/Kahahawai” was not staged for the first time until 2004, when Kumu Kahua presented the drama. At that time, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin described it as “imaginative theater on all counts — script, cast, direction.”

“I think it’s good to remember the past so we don’t repeat it,” Kinoshita said last week. “Once we stop talking about our history in a frank and honest way, we are likely to repeat it.”

In staging “Massie/Kahahawai” for what she describes as “a different audience and a different time period,” Kinoshita has made additions to Carroll’s script. Many of them were inspired by UH professor David Stannard’s 2005 book, “Honor Killing: How the Infamous ‘Massie Affair’ Transformed Hawaii,” which has become one of the definitive modern references on this miscarriage of justice and its aftermath.

“His book is exhaustive,” Kinoshita explained. “It has so much excellent detail, so what I started to do was fill in the details and extra facts and information. Then I decided to add narration and Kahahawai’s perspective, and extra scenes, to fill in some of the emotional journey.”

Carroll’s fact-only script notwithstanding, the story is often framed in broad agitprop terms as an example of a white racist elite in Hawaii being supported by the racist American military and racist U.S. government in brutally oppressing “people of color” in Hawaii. Kinoshita, however, points out that two of the people who took the lead in bringing Kahahawai’s killers to trial were Caucasians. Judge Albert M. Cristy insisted that the grand jury issue indictments for Kahahawai’s murder. And Territorial prosecutor John Kelley pulled no punches in handling the case.

“Those people I really wanted to highlight.” Kinoshita said. “(Cristy) insisted that the grand jury indict. (Kelley) was personally conservative — he was a Republican — but he stepped into a very unpopular case and refused to allow Hawaii to become the land of lynching.

“‘Evil haoles, innocent local people’ — there’s so much more to it than that,” Kinoshita said. “Instead of just remembering the bad things, you can also remember the heroes.”