This article introduces the little-known contribution of Japanese immigrants to the modernization of Hawaii’s fishing industry.
Fishermen from Wakayama, Okinawa, and other parts of Japan developed fishing methods, vessels, and seafood processing, leaving a profound legacy in Hawaii’s maritime history despite exclusion, war, and hardship.

November 18, 2019.
Hawaii remains highly popular as an overseas travel destination.
Last year marked the 150th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Hawaii, but it is probably not widely known that the Japanese “people of the sea” nurtured the fishing industry there.
The following is from the book review section of the Yomiuri Shimbun of November 10.
Dialogues over the Sea: Hawaii and Japan.
By Manako Ogawa.
Review by Ken Mori, journalist and part-time lecturer at Senshu University.
Unearthing an unknown contribution.
Hawaii remains highly popular as an overseas travel destination.
Last year marked the 150th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Hawaii, but it is probably not widely known that the Japanese “people of the sea” nurtured the fishing industry there.
This book excavates the history of such Japanese involvement in Hawaii’s fishing industry.
The first immigrants to Hawaii, known as the “Gannenmono,” were 150 people who arrived in the first year of the Meiji era, 1868.
After that, many people emigrated under the government-sponsored immigration system from Yamaguchi Prefecture, Wakayama Prefecture, and other places.
Fishing in Hawaii at that time, initially a kingdom and later a U.S. territory before becoming a state, was largely self-sufficient, but men from Wakayama and others transformed it into a modern fishing industry that caught large quantities and sold them on a large scale.
They used fish-attracting lights, introduced longline tuna fishing, and brought gasoline engines onto fishing boats.
Some even established fishing companies.
By 1917, out of Hawaii’s population of about 250,000, Japanese alone numbered more than 100,000.
In the 1920s, Hawaii’s fishing industry came to be dominated by Japanese, and seafood processing industries such as canned tuna also developed.
However, the rise of the Japanese provoked resistance from the territorial government and the U.S. federal government.
Political moves to exclude Japanese gradually came to the surface, including repeated attempts to introduce bills restricting fishing by foreigners.
In the 1930s, the federal government taxed the catches of non-citizens and enacted laws allowing only U.S. citizens to own and operate fishing boats.
Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor.
When the war began, leading figures among the Japanese were sent to internment camps.
Seafood processors were converted for use as military industries and the like, but overall Hawaii’s fishing industry was devastated.
How difficult this period was for the Japanese is revealed by the fact that, even in the author’s research, there was much “silence.”
After the war, Japanese again stood up for the revival of Hawaii’s fishing industry.
This time, the central figures were people from Okinawa.
Through careful research, including public documents, the author depicts the contributions and footsteps of Japanese in Hawaii’s fishing industry.
In those footsteps one can see qualities characteristic of Japanese people, such as ingenuity and the overcoming of hardship.
Readers will feel both surprise and quiet pride that there was such a buried story in those islands.
Manako Ogawa completed the doctoral program in American Studies at the University of Hawaii.
After serving as associate professor at the National Fisheries University, she became professor at Ritsumeikan University.