Japanese Immigration to Hawaii

This monument honors the Japanese who reshaped Hawaii. It begins with the gannenmono, the first year men. On June nineteenth, eighteen sixty-eight, in the first year of the Meiji emperor's reign, a group of about one hundred fifty men and women reached Honolulu Harbor after a month at sea from Yokohama, recruited to cut cane on the sugar plantations. Many were mistreated, and Japan recalled them, but about one hundred chose to stay and put down roots.

For seventeen years Japan endorsed no organized emigration. Then, after King Kalakaua sailed to Japan and met the emperor in eighteen eighty-one, the door reopened. On February eighth, eighteen eighty-five, the steamship City of Tokio delivered the first government sponsored laborers. Tens of thousands followed, building one of the islands' enduring communities.