But where do the Hawaiians come in? will be asked in all reason. They are virtually no more. Of the entire race which at the time of their discovery by Captain Cook numbered some 130,000 to 300,000, only a few thousand are left. At the time of the annexation of Hawaii by America (1898) there were some 31,000 Hawaiians of pure blood, or about 28% of the population. Of Orientals there was about 42% of the population, with 24,400 Japanese and 21,600 Chinese. Then there were 15,191 Portuguese, 2,250 Britons, 1,437 Germans, 8,400 Americans, 1,479 Norwegians, French and others combined. Already there were 8,400 part-Hawaiian. From the rulers down there was a free mixture, even the queen had a white spouse. Some of the best types of Hawaiian women had been married by men of fine caliber, unlike almost any other place in the Pacific. The relationships were of a permanent nature, for, as the governmental report in connection with annexation stated:
The Hawaiians are not Africans, but Polynesians. They are brown, not black. There has never been and there is not any color line in Hawaii as against native Hawaiian, and they participate fully and on an equality with the white people in affairs, political, social, religious, and charitable. The two races freely intermarry one with the other, the results being shown in a population of some 7,000 of mixed blood. They are a race which will in the future, as they have in the past, easily and rapidly assimilate with and adopt American ways and methods.
3
In defiance of prejudice, intermarriage between the races in the Pacific is taking place. What the result is to be, no one as yet knows definitely. The number of white men legalizing their relations with native women is large. The tropics are veritable whispering-galleries sounding the stories of men who have returned to keep their promises even after they have been despatched from the islands under the influence of the cup so as to prevent their marrying. In the mid-Pacific, in the South Seas, in the Far East, white men are marrying native women, even in cases where these have been their mistresses for years.
In Japan, many leading white men have married Japanese women, among whom the most celebrated has been Lafcadio Hearn. The list is long. In the ports, many foreigners have married Japanese women, and though there is a strong feeling against it socially, discrimination is not universal. The French and the British are not nearly so fastidious in these matters as are the Americans and the Japanese. Wherever there is outward opposition, it comes from the Japanese side as well as from the white. Japanese complain against discrimination here, but we are received with no more open arms by them in Japan.
The girl from Japan coming to the West is by virtue of her immigration alone to some extent emancipated; but to the white woman turning her steps east there is only the emancipation, in part, from drudgery by means of ample servants. To the white woman who goes a step farther and links herself in marriage with a Japanese or Chinese there is in the majority of cases only sorrow, soreness of heart, isolation, and regret. It is not that she might not be happy with the individual Oriental, but in the East she becomes part of a vicious family system that strangles her individuality. Though the maid of Japan is not over-welcome in the West, as the wife of a white man she comes into a higher plane of life. By no means is that true in the case of the white woman in the East. There are too many cases, still warm with regret, to be named in proof of the statement. I have come across several cases of American girls who had married Japanese and returned with them to Japan. They were content enough with their husbands, but their position in the Japanese home was intolerable. I remember the loneliness of a New York girl who had gone to live in Kyoto. The contemptuous way in which some notable Japanese looked at their countryman's white wife was only comparable to the treatment she would have received here. The children, born in the same labor, are not respected as are either "pure" Japanese or white. The Eurasian is frequently disqualified. The white father regrets that his children are not Aryan as did Lafcadio Hearn.
This is no attempt to make out a case for the mixture of natives and white in the Pacific. There are not enough facts at hand. Unfortunately, for the next few hundred years the differences between the peoples living on the borders of the Pacific will continue to irritate, and experiments in blood-mixture will probably be tried externally. I have only mobilized such incidents as have come within my own personal observation that will take the problem out of the cold, statistical plane. It is with human flesh and blood, human hearts and affections, human gropings and aspirations that we are dealing,—not with the conflicts of imaginary hordes and with terrifying invasions.
To me, the human elements in Honolulu and throughout the Pacific remain a memory of one perpetual stirring of sounds, colors, and desires. The whole is not confusing, for it is outside one's consciousness. In a sense it is an inverted world consciousness. Instead of nationals thinking outward, they have come together and are thinking inward, recognizing themselves as part of some whole. Eventually, after all the races in the Pacific have been mixed more or less, or have proved mixture impossible, they will find some way in which they can dwell at one another's elbows without nudging. The mixture may even assume an appearance of unity. The color scheme, like a thorough blending of all the colors of the spectrum, may yet become white.