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Hawaii

James A. Michener

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1959

Plot Summary
James Michener’s sweeping, multi-generational saga Hawaii was published in 1959. Drawing on his experiences serving in the Pacific Theater in WWII and on his life on the islands afterwards, Michener created a sprawling epic that traced the history of Hawaii and its peoples from the creation of the volcanic islands through the 1950s. Michener’s novel combines well-researched and historically accurate framework with fictional or fictionalized characters and tells stories about the way new waves of inhabitants made their way to the islands: first the Pacific Islanders, then New England missionaries, and finally Chinese and Japanese immigrants. To fully immerse his reader in the multiculturalism of Hawaii, Michener chose to mix untranslated Hawaiian, Japanese, and Chinese words into the text – as we read, we learn small bits of each language.

The first chapter, “From the Boundless Deep,” covers the emergence of Hawaii as a landmass that forms as a result of lava cooling after volcano eruptions. Gradually, over millennia, the rich and fertile soil erupts with plant and animal life. Some comes in the form of migratory birds which inadvertently transport seeds, and some happens because of ocean currents.

In the second chapter, “From the Sunswept Lagoon,” the novel historicizes some Hawaiian folklore and mixes that with what anthropologists have learned about the first settlers of these islands. A small, 60-person tribe from the island of Bora-Bora grows disenchanted with the increasing political and religious dominance of neighboring Tahiti. Led by King Tamatoa, they leave Bora-Bora on a long double canoe connected by a platform on which stands a small hut. The journey is perilous, but the group uses the three-star constellation Little Eyes to guide their boat. When they land on Hawaii, it looks like the volcano goddess Pere has heard and answered their prayers.



The novel then skips over some thousand years as the third chapter, “From the Farm of Bitterness,” is set in the 1800s. We first see a Hawaiian man, Keoki Kanakoa, preaching to a congregation at Yale University, where he begs the audience for missionaries to proselytize to the Hawaiian population – an event based on the real-life Henry Obookiah’s similar activity in 1809. Two men take up this call: Abner Hale and John Whipple – who are based on the real historical figures Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston. Eventually 11 missionary families travel to Hawaii where they devote their energy to converting the ruling family, reaching success with Queen Malama. The missionaries’ families thrive on the islands, and the Hales and Whipples establish wealthy and powerful dynasties that dramatically influence Hawaii culture and customs.

Switching from voluntary to involuntary migration, chapter four, “From the Starving Village,” jumps forward in time to the late 1800s and to the history of Chinese indentured workers in Hawaii. We meet the Kee family, who join 300 villagers to travel to Hawaii as sugarcane plantation workers. Transported in slavery-style conditions in the hold of a ship, the Chinese immigrants are sent off to do hard work in the fields. But Kee Mun Ki and his wife Char Nyuk Tsin instead go to work for Dr. Whipple, a descendant of the original missionary family. This job eventually allows the Kees to education their children, saving them from the ko-hana, physical labor. Trouble strikes when an epidemic of the infectious bacteria that causes leprosy spreads throughout Hawaii – the Chinese know it as mai Pake. Kee Mun Ki contracts the disease and is sent to die in a leper colony on Molokai. Another issue is the absence of water for agriculture – one that Whipple Hoxworth, another Whipple descendant, solves with the introduction of artesian water wells, which tap reserves of water formerly trapped in the earth. To maximize his profits, Hoxworth, now called Wild Whip, first travels the world and seeks out seeds for farming – and then focuses his energy on getting the US to annex Hawaii, which would hugely enrich the eight most prominent Hawaiian families because their sugarcane exports would no longer be subject to tariffs. In 1893, Whip and the eight others organize a revolution, overthrow Queen Liliuokalani, and after some back and forth, the US eventually accepts Hawaii as a state in 1893. Meanwhile, the descendants of the Kee hui, or large extended family, find themselves in the middle of an outbreak of bubonic plague, another bacterial infection that mainly affected their Chinese neighborhood. To prevent the spread of the epidemic, a controlled burn is attempted – but goes awry when all the houses in Chinatown catch fire. The episode leaves lasting tensions between the Chinese and haole, or white communities, since it seems like Chinese homes weren’t protected from the fire the way those of the whites were.

Chapter five, “From the Inland Sea,” switches to another immigrant group: the Japanese, who were brought in to replace the Chinese as they began to inch their way into the middle class. We meet Kamejiro Sakagawa, whose family sends him to Hawaii in 1902 on a work contract that’s supposed to only last for five years. Again, promises of fair labor practices prove false, and the German lunas, or plantation overseers, keep the Japanese workers in line with violence. Wild Whip, in the meantime, is cultivating pineapples, which he realizes would thrive if grown alongside sugarcane. The chapter skips ahead to December 7, 1941 – the day that would live in infamy as the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese fleet and its pilots. Like many Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans, Kamejiro is detained as a security risk. But several of the Sakagawa children enlist in the armed forces to fight in WWII – and two end up dying heroically when they save 300 Texans trapped in a battle in Italy.



The last chapter, “The Golden Men,” follows the many descendants of the novel’s many characters. Many of them go on to make tremendous, important, and beneficial contributions to the culture, economy, and structure of the Hawaiian Islands.

Michener’s novel has come in for some criticism about his sometimes loose approach to historical facts. Nevertheless, the novel is mostly considered one of Michener’s best works, and has been adapted several times into movies.

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