Asia and the Pacific: the Hawaiian Sampan Fishing Industry

Asia and the Pacific: the "Hawaiian" Sampan Fishing Industry

Hans Van Tilburg

This paper is about the physical and social creation of the Hawaiian sampan fishing fleet, a local phenomenon which flourished for about four decades following the turn of the century. It is a story which combines elements of migration history, technological development, maritime archaeology, identity issues, World War II history, and a small amount of maritime lore. It is syncretic in nature; it crosses the boundaries between Asian and Pacific history, between micro history and global history. The topic is therefore difficult to classify. This is not, for instance, an ethnographic study of any one recognizable Pacific culture. Such messy academic truth is reflected in the messy title of this paper, "Asia and the Pacific: the Hawaiian Sampan Fishing Industry." One word in particular demands its own introduction, the term "sampan." Originally, this term comes from the Chinese language, meaning three (san) boards (pan). The textbook definition has it that these craft are "typical small and light boats of oriental waters and rivers...The harbor sampan usually has an awning over the center...the coastal sampan [is] fitted with a single mast and junk-type sail."[1] But this definition has always been fairly loose. One source made the claim that if a water buffalo could go on board athwart ships, then the vessel in question was a junk; but if the animal had to lie down fore-and-aft style (or perhaps couldn't board at all), then it was probably a sampan.[2] Now in Hawai`i the only thing that can really be said about the term sampan is that it actually infers some kind of past Asian (Japanese) influence. It has become quite inclusive. Modern Japanese 138-foot long steel fishing vessels are called sampans, as well as 80-foot long wooden motorized trollers and long-liners, as well as small oared skiffs ferrying kids about the harbor. "Sampan," really, is like the term "junk." Both are of Asian origins but have become much more inclusive, have really taken on a "life" of their own, in the multicultural environment. They are multicultural hybrid terms, terms that imply familiar use by outsider groups, not those included in the designation. (Chinese don't use junk, but "chuan" for vessels; Japanese don't use sampan, but "fune" or "kobune" for small craft.) The more familiar nautical terms in question will be retained here for clarity.

How did "Hawaiian" sampans come about? The abundance of contemporary records allows us to actually pinpoint the beginnings of the tradition in the Islands. Originally they were Japanese sampans. In December 1899 a man named Gorokichi Nakasugi, a shipwright and fisherman from Tanami village on the coast of Wakayama prefecture in southern Honshu, arrived by steamer in Hawai`i. This was, of course, during the period of labor migration to locations all around the Pacific. On the deck of the steamer was a 34-foot Japanese sailing sampan. This wooden square-sailed boat was a descendant of the traditional Yamato-gata style Japanese fishing vessel, a distinctive craft previously endemic to Japan due the long periods of enforced isolation.[3] The light square sail rig was common on traditional Japanese ships. The wide keel and tall stem and diagonally-nailed edge-joined planking and prominent bulkheads were Asian features more indicative of maritime traditions hundreds of years old. Large-scale Japanese shipbuilders had been encouraged by the Meiji government to reform their construction practices post-1868 in order to build larger wooden vessels, but the older traditions lived on in small beach-built fishing craft on the southern islands. Indeed, skipjack (also known as bonito) fishing as a pole-and-line tradition in Japan dates back at least to the eighth century A.D.

Features of the Yamato-gata style traditional craft were thus imported across the beach in southern Honshu to the rough open waters around the Hawaiian islands, and Kewalo Basin soon began to see larger amounts of ahi (yellowfin tuna) and aku (skipjack tuna) unloaded on the docks. At this same time large-scale tuna canning became established on the Mainland. F. Walter Macfarlane (a pineapple planter facing financial difficulties) opened the Macfarlane Tuna Company at Ala Moana and Cooke street.[4] By 1916 Mr. Nakasugi was skipper of the gasoline motor-powered sampan TENJIN MARU I, and five other sailing sampans made up the cannery's fleet. By 1922, after having changed hands a couple times, the original company was incorporated by local stockholders as Hawaiian Tuna Packers Ltd. One report states that Mr. Nakasugi and sampan fishing was so successful that he actually received death threats from other local fishermen.[5] No doubt other operators felt the effects of the falling prices of fresh and canned tuna from a new successful industry.

In the early years the sampan industry in Hawai`i was almost completely segregated with only two Koreans joined the growing numbers of Japanese fishermen in the Islands. Immigrants from Wakayama prefecture were critical to the growing fleet; illegal immigrants known as Mikkosha (which means "to smuggle by boat"), many from Tanami village, were brought into Hawai`i to serve as crews. For $600.00, a sympathetic steward on the N.Y.K. liner TATSUTA MARU hid migrants on board, to be landed in Honolulu while American customs officials looked the other way.[6] In Hawai`i the Japanese immigrant fleet quickly gained a virtual monopoly on deep sea fishing.[7] The Exclusion Acts of 1924, however, put an end to this direct source of skilled labor for the sampan fleet. By the 1930's the fleet's complement began to be more mixed and included Okinawans, Filipinos, and Hawaiians as well as Japanese.[8]

The original square sail and sculling oar (very similar to the Chinese yueloh sculling oar) gave way to Western-style fore-and-aft rigs and more contemporary rudders. By 1905 gas engines were in use by these locally built sampans in combination with sails, and by 1927 more efficient diesel engines were being built into the redesigned craft. Shortly thereafter the prominent deckhouse made its appearance. The lower flatter Yamato-gata features, over time, were transformed into the distinctive high-chested bows and stable outboard sponsons of the more recognizable fishing sampan. Different technologies, as well as cultures, blended together in the Islands. At this point (1940's) the Japanese sampans become something truly unique. (Were they then Hawaiian sampans?) But who was responsible for these modifications? Several notable boat builders, also from Wakayama prefecture, immigrated to Hawai`i and formed profitable local shipyards.[9] Records are scarce because, like maritime traditions almost everywhere, designs did not exist in plans, but in the heads of the master shipwrights, to be passed down from father to son. The earliest recorded designs only date to the 1930's, completed by Hawaiian Tuna Packers Ltd. Men like Gorokichi Nakasugi, Seichi Funai, Joichi Tanimura, Mankichi Murakami, and Kametaro Nishimura continued in the trade practiced by their fathers, but found room for further modifications in Hawai`i. In the 1930's the traditional edge-nailed methods gave way to more Western-style plank-and-frame construction. Many of these modifications were learned while repairing other vessels visiting from the mainland.[10] The small family-run operations, along with the Packers' shipyard, supplied fishing vessels to the sampan fleet at Kewalo Basin. The picturesque setting inspired more than a few paintings and poems dedicating to the bright blue boats of the exotic fishing fleet. Both in Hawai`i and Japan, sampans were traditionally painted blue. Some claimed this allowed the boats to blend in with the color of the sky (and not frighten the fish away). Others attribute this to the cheaper price of blue paint.[11] Whichever it was, the local fishing fleet managed to capture the attention of a few well-known persons. President Roosevelt, while on vacation in 1934, did all his deep-sea fishing on board local sampans.[12] Author Jack London and Kenneth Emory of the Bishop museum also traveled inter-island on sampans. One, the PALMYRA, was outfitted for Bishop museum expeditions in the 1940's.

Designs of sampans reflected the diversity of the catch. Although all were capable of working a number of different resources, certain designs focused on specific catches. Akule boats were the smallest at 20-40 feet. These worked the inshore fisheries using either line-and-pole or traps for crab, lobster, squid and octopus. Medium-sized ahi boats, from 40-60 feet, pursued pelagic yellowfin tuna, usually long-lining. The biggest and most notable sampans, aku boats, were from 70-90 feet long and capable of staying at sea for up to a week at a time. These vessels relied on their ability to carry live bait in salt water wells at the stern.[13] The most common live bait was a small anchovy known locally as nehu. These were caught using lanterns and nets at night, and then the aku boat would put to sea before dawn, its tired crew of five to 15 hardworking sailors subsisting on provisions of pickled onions, miso, dried fish, shoyu, and rice.[14] Once the tell-tale swarm of sea birds was sighted (indicating a school of aku), the crew chummed the nehu into the water, creating a feeding frenzy. Tuna were flipped into the boat using simple poles and barbless hooks. This back breaking labor continued until the deck was full of aku or the school vanished. A good catch would land at the harbor somewhere around 300 20-pound aku. Priority went to the better prices of the fresh fish market, the rest went to Hawaiian Tuna Packers at (in 1936) three-and-a-half cents per pound.[15]

By 1925 there were 250 sampans in Honolulu alone, as well as a growing number among the outer islands.[16] Sampans were also being built on Maui and the Island of Hawai`i. But whether built in the Hawaiian Tuna Packers shipyard or in somebody's backyard, vessels slid into the water festooned with both Japanese and American flags and other rituals considered proper to the moment. Banquets were held, libations of sake were poured into the sea, and prayers were intoned in what amounted to ancient Japanese-style ship launching ceremonies. Sometimes the sampan's builder was thrown into the water as well, symbolizing a sacrifice to the sea in payment for the safe working life of the vessel.[17] By 1940 there were over 400 sampans in Honolulu, making the commercial fishery Hawaii's third largest industry behind sugar and pineapple. At this point the aku boats ran into certain operational limitations. These sampans relied on live nehu, only a percentage of which survived the tossing and rolling bait wells. Canneries on the Mainland had already switched to purse seining for tuna, eventually bringing in 20 times more fish than the Hawaiian industry. Since schools of tuna in clear water can better avoid the huge nets, the aku sampans were stuck with the traditional pole-and-line method.[18] But there were other larger problems in store for the sampan fleet.

The growing presence of the United States Coast Guard led to tensions between sea and shore. It was becoming increasingly apparent that illegal migrants, Japanese nationals, had complete control over a wide-roving fishing fleet that observed no regulations at all. Were these vessels spying for an increasingly aggressive Japan? were they resupplying submarines at sea? One secret document sent from a planning committee to the Commandant of the 14th Naval District stated that the sampans were:

...manned in large part by alien Japanese whose loyalty to Japan as opposed to the United States is a practical certainty…Their personnel would, in time of war, serve to provide Japanese vessels with a sufficient number of able, competent pilots thoroughly familiar with all local waters…They can obtain exact soundings by means of weighted fishing lines…They would serve as a means of secretly landing intelligence or sabotage agents shortly prior to war.[19]

The immigration service in Hawai`i stepped up its operations, and by 1940 most of the Mikkosha (illegal crew) had been deported back to Japan.[20] Confiscation of sampans began before the December 7th attack. A case study can provide details of the prewar months.

The remains of one of the navy sampans, the 71-foot long Funai-built aku boat designated YP-183 (previously FUJI MARU), was recently the subject of investigations for a University of Hawai`i team of student archaeologists. The engine, fuel tanks, depth charge rack, and assorted debris were discovered in and around Mahaiula Bay on the island of Hawai`i. Portions of the deck and stack had been lifted onto the 1800-01 lava flow behind the beach by the tsunami of 1946. (It was the first time the team had investigated a shipwreck on top of a broiling lava flow.) The FUJI MARU exemplifies what happened to the Japanese fishing fleet in Hawai`i in the months before the war. By May of 1941, cases had been built against 71 people and three fishing companies, mainly alleging the falsification of bills of sale. They faced federal charges of conspiracy to violate US laws, and even espionage.[21] The FUJI MARU, built in 1930, had indeed been operated by a Japanese national Wada Mitsuyoshi between 1936 and 1939. As enforcement laws increased, he transferred title to his wife, Wada Sawayo, who then sold the vessel for $10 to Shigeru and Akira Tamura.[22] By May, 19 of the large aku sampans had been seized by federal customs officials. Some, like the FUJI MARU, were released after complaints from the Hawaiian Tuna Packers that the seizure was unfairly hurting their business (only to be taken by the navy at a later date). Others, such as the pride of the fleet NIPPON MARU, were transferred directly to navy control in October 1941. The arrival of the US fleet brought about a multitude of changes on the waterfront, for instance a tremendous shortage of patrol vessels.