Hawaii and Louisiana: The Plantation's Shadow, 1887-1889

This episode is part of Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodes

exploring the cases that shaped American history from every corner of the country.

Hawaii, 1889. A Japanese shopkeeper is lynched from a telephone pole on the main street of Honoka'a for

speaking English on behalf of plantation workers. Louisiana, 1887. Ten thousand sugar cane workers strike for cash

wages instead of scrip -- and armed paramilitaries sweep through residential streets at dawn, killing between 35

and 300 people. Two plantation economies. Two communities who challenged the system. The same answer.

The Victims

Katsu Goto was twenty-seven years old when he was killed on October 29, 1889. Born in Japan in 1862, he

changed his family name from Kobayakawa to Goto to qualify for the Hawaii immigration program. He arrived in

Honolulu Harbor on February 8, 1885, aboard the SS City of Tokio -- one of 944 immigrants in the first wave of

government-contract Japanese workers under the kanyaku imin program. After three years cutting cane at nine

dollars a month on the Hamakua Coast, Goto opened a general store in Honoka'a, the second-largest town on