My visit to Georgia's Tobacco Road, where I talked to and closely observed the poor white sharecroppers, was a landmark in the development of my thinking.
Here were starving people, too exhausted to scratch the wornout soil to make it produce. I had never in my life, especially in Hawaii, seen white people in such a pitiful condition. In Kona, my birthplace, the white families were rich landlords, whose predecessors in the past somehow had taken over land from the Hawaiians.
In Honolulu, in the various places I had worked, even on the waterfront, I had noticed that the haole firms did not seem to approve of white laborers working with us. Haoles became clerks or watchmen, holding down what appeared to be cleaner jobs. Only a rare haole became a longshoreman or was hired as such.
There was such a man, an adventurous person, whom I came to know intimately because of our mutual interest in literature and writing. We non-haole longshoremen felt that he was a source of great discomfort to our white employers. Years later I learned from him that after he had come to the Hawaiian Islands from the Mainland, he had gone to Aiea plantation on Oahu and to Kohala plantation on the island of Hawaii to find work even as a field laborer. The haole employers turned him down, saying a white employe only served on the supervising staff. The white man's "prestige" had to be kept.
I was to see this manner of upholding white prestige carried out in the same manner but to the extreme in colonial countries of the Far East when war. took me there. These observations brought sharp realization to me that the treatment of a large majority of the non-whites in Hawaii by the haole employers was semi-colonial, with double-standard pay and fewer opportunities for advancement.
But in Georgia, as well as in other southern states, a whole mass of white people were stricken by poverty and in their helpless position, they were further exploited by the merciless landlords. Here, the white man exploited the "poor whites" who were treated as peasants and coolie laborers are in colonial territories. But being propagandized by white supremacy doctrines, these poor whites believed they were superior to any Negro.
I could see how this poisonous propaganda worked. It divided the Negroes and whites of a class—these toilers who lived on Tobacco Road, which is the belt road of the poor that runs through state lines and across international boundaries. It pitted one people against another. It kept both down. Thus the poorly productive countryside kept the cities that much poorer. The poor pay scale in the farming areas also held down wages of workers in cities.
In principle, these divide and conquer tactics were the same as those used on Hawaiian sugar plantations where workers from different countries were imported, housed in segregated camps and used against each other, particularly during times of demands by laborers for better conditions.
First Amendment Denied Workers of South
Organizations like the unions would bring people of one social class together to implement and protect their rights, interests and win decency and dignity, but even the right of assembly as spelled out in the First Amendment, is denied by the ruthless employers to workers in the South.
In the summer of 1941, Governor Eugene Talmadge packed the board of regents and fired eminent and progressive educators from the state university system on charges that they were "n - - - - r lovers." This was costly to Georgia's educational system, particularly to the segregated white institutions. As long as the disease of racial prejudice remains, no one is free—not even the whites.
Labels To Whip People Into Conformity
To Talmadge and his kind, anyone who even spoke sympathetically of the Negroes was labelled "n - - - - r lover." A southerner who believes in democratic traditions and the Constitution should be proud of being labelled such, for it represents a progressive attitude, but it carries heavy penalties of ostracism, loss of job or even attacks by Ku Klux-minded mobsters. This labelling is no different in strait jacketing the thinking and behavior of people from the use of labels today against those who! fight for peace and for civil rights, who are called "Communists."
While in Georgia, I was thoroughly convinced that I must fight against discrimination at every turn. The fight for Negro rights was a fight for my rights also. And this was sharply brought home to me when war came and I was locked behind barbed wire and watchtowers in a Mainland concentration center. While 110,000 of us, all of Japanese ancestry, were thus impounded as dangerous people, the anti-Negro and the anti-Oriental congressmen from the South and the West Coast, got together in "racial alliance" to kick us around.
The Marines Turn Me Down
In the summer of 1941, Japanese assets were frozen in this country. The embargo had already been slapped on shipment of strategic materials to Japan. We had been registered by the selective service and special military training programs were going on at the universities.
One day the Marine recruiters came to the University of Georgia at Athens. A friend persuaded me to enlist with him so that we could go to Quantico for officer training. I told him that the Marines would not take me because I was of Japanese extraction, but finally, to satisfy him that I was not backing down in serving my country, I went along with him and was rejected. He could not get over the fact that ancestry made such a difference. So I mentioned to him how ancestry and not merit was used to keep Negroes down in the South.
The year in Georgia had passed rapidly. The world scene had changed drastically. England and Russia were fighting Germany and Italy, and our government had pledged all possible aid to the former.
I Become a Longshoreman in San Francisco
Soon after graduation I headed back for the West Coast and in San Francisco I became a longshoreman. My life revolved around the union hiring hall which provided equal job opportunities to all dock workers. The union dispatcher assigned us to work on ships and docks. We kept within our quota of hours and if we exceeded our quota one week, we put in fewer hours the following week. The racketeering shape-up still used on the East Coast had been swept away during the 1934 longshore strike. There was no dog-eat-dog competition among workers for jobs, only cooperation and unity.
Working conditions were good. Unlike on Honolulu docks where I had worked, sling loads were not high and dangerous. The old men worked with the young at a Steady pace, not at a "killing" pace such as had prevailed on Honolulu's waterfront.
"We Can't Be Merely Working Stiffs"
One night a grievance arose on the job and the steward of our gang argued over working conditions with the foreman. The steward pulled out the contract agreement and he won. But toward dawn the foreman found a pretext and checked out the steward.
This matter came up before the grievance committee for trial and the steward had asked those of us who worked in the gang to be his witnesses. At the trial, I was the only witness present and he won. From that day, friendship developed between the steward and me.
I recall going to his home to read books which were soiled and marked from constant use. He and his wife were strong, class-conscious individuals who had dedicated themselves to the struggles of the workers to improve their lot.
"We can't be merely working" stiffs in the literal sense," he used to say. "We get our practical education down on the waterfront but we must read books and hold discussions to sharpen and broaden our thinking."
New Reading Gave Me Some Answers
I began reading volume after volume of books at my friend's home, at the public library and my own copies which I bought at book stores. In various left-wing books I began to find answers to the questions I had in mind for many years and I wished that I had come across them earlier.
One keeps moving and searching for more knowledge in such a passionate quest. At a gathering one evening I heard a woman lawyer from Oklahoma describe book-burning in her home town. She and her husband, also a lawyer, were imprisoned for running a progressive book store and she was out on bail, touring the country to gather support in the struggle against repression in Oklahoma. She told us how vigilantes and the police wrecked their store, threw the books into the street and set them afire. Among them were copies of the U. S. Constitution, with cover flaps illustrated with the Stars and Stripes.
My Early Experience With Political Repression
This, I believe, was my first contact with political repression, besides the persecution of Harry Bridges.
This woman lawyer spoke at a longshoremen's meeting. She had a responsive audience, for most of the longshoremen understood the reason for such sharp attacks against people who tried to raise the thinking of the working people.
Harry Bridges was then fighting deportation, and we were fighting with him. He was our leader. The longshoremen remembered their animal-like treatment by the bosses before the 1934 strike. If Bridges had not remained loyal to his fellow workers, the government agencies would not have hounded him.
Why Harry Bridges Is a Great Labor Leader
I remember one night when Bridges walked into Eagles' Hall where we longshoremen met. He had taken time out from his hearings to come back to the West Coast. As he climbed onto the stage, a couple of thousand of his membership stood up and clapped their hands in ovation for 15 minutes.
I was deeply agitated by this moving event which left a lasting impression upon me. I looked around at my brother longshoremen. Most of them were immigrants; many had become naturalized. Almost all of them were oldtimers who had gone) through years of inhuman exploitation, the strike struggles, massacre and death at the hands of national guardsmen, goons and strikebreakers. They knew what they were fighting against when they rallied to defend Bridges. He was a symbol to them and to me.
Attack On Bridges Gave Me Deeper Understanding
We were fighting for democratic rights to be enjoyed by the working class as they were enjoyed by the employers. Long ago, for example, under the British monarchy, the nobility enjoyed privileges which they, as the ruling class, denied to tradesmen, farmers and artisans. The rising class of businessmen won their rights through hard struggles. The workers still have theirs to win. And men like Bridges were and are giving capable leadership to the working class, refusing to be softened or to be bought off by the bosses.
I remember buying Bridges defense stamps and carefully pasting them in my union membership book. These acts made me conscious more and more of my role as a worker. And as I saw the sharp struggles all around me, I saw why, by employer propagandists and even in the universities, the doctrine was spread that there is no such differentiation as a class or classes in human society, but that all people were alike and living in harmony. As more workers realize that they constitute a class, they become united to struggle harder to better their common lot.
War came all of a sudden. In looking back, I see that my experiences of December 1941 and January, February and March of 1942, before the evacuation, were weird and are almost frightful even today. I remember being marched off the docks at bayonet point. Uniformed state guards also marched in front and beside me with drawn pistols. I remember the questionings by the FBI, naval and army intelligence officers. I was judged on my ancestry and government agents practically ignored the fact that I, as well as others of Japanese extraction, were products of this country. Their behavior actually showed their contempt of education and other influences in this country that shape the development of individuals.
The hysteria created against those of us of Japanese ancestry was almost beyond description. I see similar aspects in the hysteria created today against political non-conformists. I went through the evacuation and on these points I would like to go into detail in future columns.