Pacific Confluence: Fighting over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i by Christen T. Sasaki

Author:Christen T. Sasaki
Format: epub

CONCLUSION: THE LIMITS OF DIPLOMACY

On June 16, 1897, just six weeks after the Naniwa docked at Honolulu Harbor, the McKinley administration signed a treaty of annexation with coup state officials Lorrin Thurston, Francis Hatch, and William Kinney. According to both US officials and the republic’s haole oligarchs, one of the compelling factors that led to the signing of the treaty was the fear of a potential negative international reaction against annexation that could be sparked by the Meiji protest already in play.⁵⁰ At the signing ceremony, US Assistant Secretary Day suggested to Minister Hatch that “he ought to interview Hoshi, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Japan to the United States, and try to agree upon a settlement of the immigration claims in order to help the treaty along towards ratification,” as it was believed that further negative reactions from Meiji officials might stall the ratification process.⁵¹ Whether Hatch agreed with Day or not is unknown, but by this time the former statesman understood that Japan’s objections to annexation could also be used to prime white racial anxiety and win the American public’s support for ratification of the annexation treaty.

On June 19, just three days after the treaty was signed, Japan announced its official objection to the US annexation of Hawai‘i. As part of its protest, the Meiji government once again used the same strategy as it had with its rejected emigrants and turned to the regime of international law. Among the concerns listed by the Meiji officials were the continuance of treaty rights between Japan and the Hawaiian Kingdom, the commercial and industrial rights of Issei in the islands, and, finally, that annexation might lead to the postponement of claims and liabilities “already existing in favor of Japan under treaty stipulations.”⁵² When these objections seemed ineffectual, Minister Hoshi went so far as to suggest to Count Ōkuma that Japan could occupy the islands “by dispatching without any delay some powerful ships under the name of reprisal.”⁵³ Ōkuma’s response revealed that what the Meiji government valued most was not the well-being of the Issei, Kānaka Maoli, or the legitimacy of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Instead, Ōkuma explained to Hoshi that “continuation without interruption or disturbance of our intercourse with the United States is of vastly more importance to Japan than interests that will be menaced by annexation. Consequently good policy dictates that our opposition to annexation should be within the limits of diplomacy.”⁵⁴

Hawai‘i proved to be one of the first instances where the Meiji state’s practice of informal colonization officially failed. The fact that this failure was against the United States made it an even harder pill to swallow for the many Japanese involved. Masanosuke Akiyama, the diplomat who had been sent onboard the Naniwa to aid in the redress negotiations, was so disgusted by his government’s inability to prevent US annexation that he attempted suicide on his return home.⁵⁵ For government officials like Akiyama, who would not invest themselves in the lives of the farming or merchant class at home,

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