If you've ever seen the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical, "South Pacific," you might wonder what all the to-do was about, particularly when comes time to sing: "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." When this show originally toured in the US, it was controversial. How much times have changed.
Perhaps it's hard to look back and see America as it was for Pacific Islanders. In pre-World War II America, racism and an unscrupulous press was a volatile combination for carefully taught lessons.
KCET's presentation of the documentary, "The Massie Affair," reminds us of the racial issues America faced before World War II and clarifies what "South Pacific" merely suggests. Like the musical "South Pacific," the Massie Affair took place on a Pacific island and involved the military. Yet for those involved, perhaps the least deserving was the person that had the happy ending.
In September of 1931, the wife of a Navy Lieutenant, Thalia Fortescue Massie, claimed that a group of non-whites raped her as she wandered away from a Navy social event on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Despite evidence that the accused five men (two Hawai'ians, two Japanese and one Chinese) could not have committed the crime, they were let off when the jury deadlocked.
Unhappy with the legal results, white sailors beat one of the defendants severely. He lived. Less fortunate was Joe Kahahawai. Massie's mother, Grace Hubbard Fortescue, and some accomplices, including her son-in-law, Thomas Massie, beat and shot to death this Hawaiian when they were unable to extract a confession. Although eventually convicted of murder, these people only served one hour for murder--an hour spent chatting with the governor.
In the musical, "South Pacific," the story is set an American Seabee base on a tropical island during World War II and focuses on the romance that a nurse, Nellie, has with a French planter, who happens to have two half Polynesian children. Another character, an officer, Cable, falls in love with a Polynesian girl named Liat. He's the one that sings, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught," although the same really applies to Nellie.
In the James Michener Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on which the musical was based, Tales of the South Pacific, the reasons are clearer. Nellie and the officer both consider the Polynesians to be black or Negroid.
Article comments
1 - Terry
Man this event and it's reprecussions can still be felt. I'm glad these racist people(Massie and Fortescue) are dead and pretty much burning in the depths of hell!
2 - Chuck
This book is an entry into the history of Hawaii, a history full of occupation and racism. From the Tahitians enslavement of the Hawaiians until the 1954 revolution Hawaiians have experienced nothing less than the Acadians of New France or the Hebrews of Europe, or the "Indians" of North America, at the hands of a misguided group of elitists who feel that their so called honor is more important than the lives and liberties of any other persons.
This true story inflames the local people of Oahu to this day. Even after the 1954 revolution there exists in Hawaii an attitude that the Hawaiian race is inferior to "whites", Portagee, Japanese and Chinese. The treatment of Hawaiians on their own islands is dispicable and not worthy of the Christian values that many of the oppressive elitist who still hold sway over the future of Hawaiians profess to hold true.
Given the attitude of the ruling establishment, it is near impossible to see justice to the Hawaiian people ever take shape. Today there is a movement in Congress to give the Hawaiians the same status as American Indians, the status of a concurred people. The Akaka bill would give Hawaiians the same status as the Oglala Souix, the Caddo Nation, the Cherokee Nation, the Iraqouis Nation, and many others that barely exist today in any tenable fashion as free peoples.
Hawaiians have been granted some of their land to build houses and live out of squalor, but that land is hard to get ahold of and even harder to get the required permits to build. The establishment is still intent on "foreclosing" on the Hawaiians and taking back the land that was granted. To this day very few Hawaiians own their own homes and most are subject to unimaginable rents in a less than adequate job market that cannot accomidate or will not accomidate these tragic people whose land and birthrights have been stolen from them on more than one occassion.
This book is definately worth reading. Take note of all the footnaotes and read the history of Hawaii and you will see what the patterns of treatment of Hawaiians is still to this day.