A Fascinating Interracial Experiment Station : Remapping the Orient-Occident Divide in Hawai\u27i

During the 1920s and 1930s, American intellectuals on the U.S. continent often described Hawai\u27i as a racial frontier, a meeting ground between East and West where unorthodox social relations between Native Hawaiians, Asians, and Caucasians had taken root. The frontier metaphor evoked two very different images, the racial paradise and the racial nightmare, and in both characterizations, Asians figured prominently. In 1930, of the islands\u27 civilian population of nearly 350,000, about 236,000 or 68 percent were classified as Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, or Korean.2 Political, religious, and educational leaders in Hawai\u27i were the main propagators of the racial paradise image, which expressed optimism in the ability of Caucasians and Asians to live together, while also celebrating the presence of Portuguese, Spanish, Puerto Ricans, Native Hawaiians, and an array of mixed-race groups.3 They touted the assimilative powers of American institutions and promoted Hawai\u27i as a model of colonial progress to audiences on the U.S. mainland. David Crawford, the president of the University of Hawai\u27i,4 summarized this view during a 1929 visit to Los Angeles where he spoke before a group called the Advertising Club. Hawai\u27i society, explained Crawford, was demonstrating the possibility of the meeting of Orient and Occident on terms of friendship that practically eliminate race prejudice