Imagine a Hawaii without the ukulele, pidgin, plate lunches, saimin, shave ice, chopsticks or malasadas. What would the islands be like if there was never a Zippy’s, Arakawa’s, Columbia Inn, Charley’s Taxi, KC Drive Inn, Flamingo, Big Island Candies or Yick Lung?
Imagine if there were few Asians here, or no military presence at Pearl Harbor. What if there had never been a Big Five?
It’s hard to visualize, but these things that practically define modern-era Hawaii would never have existed if not for sugar, I believe.
Usually, my column is about historical facts.
In this article I jump off that path into the realm of speculation and what-ifs. I don’t know whether my thoughts have any accuracy, but it’s an interesting topic to consider.
With the final harvest of the islands’ last sugar plantation, Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. on Maui, about to wrap up next month, I thought I’d take a moment to look at some of the ways sugar has changed Hawaii over the past 180 years.
SWEET DEAL FOR PEARL HARBOR
In the 1860s our nascent sugar industry was going nowhere. Import duties to the U.S. made sugar unprofitable. Then came the proposed Reciprocity Treaty in 1875, which eliminated duties between the Hawaii and the U.S.
What did King David Kalakaua propose to the U.S. to “sweeten” the deal? He offered it the use of Pearl Harbor. The U.S. sent John Schofield to Hawaii, and he reported that the entire British and American fleets could easily fit into Pearl Harbor if the entrance was dredged.
If not for Hawaii’s sugar industry, the U.S. Navy would not have been given Pearl Harbor. So the question is: Would the Japanese have attacked Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941? It seems to me that America’s entrance into World War II might not have happened as it did. The U.S. was cautious about entering the war. If there was no attack on Pearl Harbor, we might have sat it out and — who knows? — Germany might have won the war in Europe.
I know this is just speculation, but it boggles my mind to think that the presence of a sugar industry in Hawaii could have affected the rest of the world in such a profound way.
DIVERSE PEOPLE, CUSTOMS, FOOD
Sugar made Hawaii a multiethnic society, a true meeting of East and West. Sugar brought Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipinos and Koreans to Hawaii. Without sugar we might have far fewer Asians and Portuguese living here today. That would mean the businesses they founded and the products they sold would never have landed on our shores.
That suggests Hawaii would have had no Zippy’s, Highway Inn, Wailana Coffee House, C.S. Wo, Servco, City Mill, Shirokiya, ABC Stores, Kuakini Medical Center, Dillingham Saimin, Hasegawa General Store or countless others.
According to Kikkoman, worldwide producer of soy sauce and related condiments, the teriyaki sauce we know and love originated in Hawaii when Japanese newcomers mixed local ingredients such as pineapple juice and brown sugar with soy sauce and used it as a marinade.
You couldn’t order a plate lunch, Spam musubi or saimin. Malasadas, kim chee and even chopsticks might be hard to find in the islands.
The ukulele might still have been invented, in Portugal. It would never have become the dominant instrument of the islands, unless the islands you were thinking of were the Madeira Islands.
Pidgin developed as a way for people from diverse backgrounds to converse. Can you imagine a Hawaii without pidgin? No “da kine”? No “li’dat”? I no can.
If not for sugar, would you have been born? Regardless of your heritage, it’s possible Hawaii (and the world) would be so different that your grandfather might not have met or married your grandmother.
ECONOMIC, POLITICAL WHAT-IFS
Sugar occupied 250,000 acres at its peak. That is about 450 square miles. If not for sugar, other crops or industries might have dominated the business culture in the islands.
In a conversation with writer Keith Haugen, he wondered whether awa (kava) might have become a thriving industry instead of sugar, “shipping roots to other countries for dentists to numb the mouths of patients. Our sweet potato might have developed into a major crop, or poi, once it was learned that it was so healthy.”
When Congress temporarily raised import duties on sugar in the 1890s, planters considered diversifying into tea, tobacco and coffee, according to historian Ralph Kuykendall’s book “The Hawaiian Kingdom: 1874-1893.”
Consultant and author Stephany Sofos told me she wonders whether we would have become a major producer of fish or coconut products.
The business community from the 1890s until the 1980s was dominated by what was called the Big Five. These were the big five sugar producers: Amfac (originally known as H. Hackfeld & Co.), Alexander & Baldwin, C. Brewer, Castle & Cooke and TheoDavies.
These companies dominated local politics for the first part of the 20th century. Without them, different policies and politicians might have arisen in Hawaii.
Returning World War II AJAs — Americans of Japanese ancestry — and other minority groups took the Democratic Party to pre-eminence. Without sugar it’s possible the Republicans would have stayed in charge. Sam Slom might be governor, and the one Democrat in the state Senate might have just lost his re-election bid.
A DIFFERENT LANDSCAPE
The sugar growers brought many arborists and agriculturalists to the islands to grow trees and plants to cool the islands and increase rainfall. We might not have the variety of foliage we have today if sugar had never grown as an industry. We also wouldn’t have tilapia, buffos and the mongoose, all brought by planters.
Producing a pound of sugar took a ton of water, and to that end rivers were diverted, and ditches and flumes built. One of the first, the Hamakua Ditch on Maui, was 17 miles and moved 40 million gallons of water a day. Many of our neighborhoods were built around sugar plantations. Some, such as Waipahu, were named by the plantations. (Its Hawaiian name, Goro Arakawa told me, was Aualii.)
Maui writer and radio personality Kathy Collins, in her message for HC&S’s commemorative book, said “tomorrow’s history books will remember 2016 as the year of the Last Harvest, the final chapter in the remarkable story of Hawaii’s sugar industry. No entity has had a greater impact and influence on our island way of life, from politics to pidgin, than the sugar industry.”
When HC&S closes down in December, and you’re rushing around shopping and cooking, take a moment to pay your respects to an industry that affected all of us profoundly.
Bob Sigall, author of “The Companies We Keep” series of books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him via email at sigall@yahoo.com.
