Communism in Hawaii and the Obama Connection ,63 F3 V R #, 'tf Six famous men tell how ^,w* ^gy changed their minds about Communism Richard Wright Arthur Koestler FAILED Ignazio Silone Louis Fischer Stephen Spender Andre Gide This report is published and distributed by America's Survival, Inc. Cliff Kincaid, President. 443-964-8208 Kincaid@comcast.net www.usasurvival.org Note: Nothing in this report shall be construed as an attempt to influence any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office or any political party. Introduction By Cliff Kincaid Of Barack Obama's contacts and associations with anti-American political figures, none is more controversial than Frank Marshall Davis, a writer and poet identified as a member of the Communist Party USA by several sources, including some sources sympathetic to him. Obama and Davis met in Hawaii, at a time when a young Obama was in need of a black role model and a mentor. Obama's relationship with Davis, including subsequent associations with radical, communist and socialist figures in Chicago, should be investigated for the benefit of promoting the public interest and the public's right to know. Indeed, America's Survival, Inc. believes that any public figure with links to foreign and hostile interests should be asked to explain those associations. In the case of Obama, a new figure on the national scene, the facts suggest that he could have serious difficulty getting a security clearance in the U.S. Government. 1 An FBI background check was once used to examine one's character, loyalty to the United States, and associations. The evidence shows that Obama's friends chose him. But he chose his friends carefully as well. Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has strident anti- American views, links to such figures as Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, and has traveled to Cuba. 2 But Frank Marshall Davis is a far more controversial figure because he was a member of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He was in Hawaii at the acknowledged suggestion of two other secret CPUSA members, actor Paul Robeson and labor leader Harry Bridges. Davis had been a writer for a CPUSA-controlled newspaper, the Honolulu Record. All of the evidence, summarized by veteran investigator and researcher Herbert Romerstein in the special report that follows, suggests that Davis was a key member of a Moscow-sponsored international communist network. First, a word about Herbert Romerstein. He retired from the United States government after 25 years of service, including Investigator for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Minority Chief Investigator for the House Committee on Internal Security, Professional Staff Member for the House Permanent Select Committee on A presidential candidate, of course, does not have to undergo a background check. As president, he would have an automatic security clearance and have immediate access to all state secrets. 2 See Humberto Fontova, "Jeremiah Wright's Cuban Friends," April 30, 2008. TownhalI.com Intelligence, and head of the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation for the United States Information Agency. Romerstein examines Davis's time in Hawaii. Davis had come to Hawaii from Chicago, where Obama would eventually end up. It was in Chicago that Davis had been in contact with Robeson and Bridges and had edited another newspaper, the Chicago Star. In other words, communist networks were in existence in the same two places that would provide the backdrop for Obama's upbringing and political career. It could very well be the case that one network was connected in some way with the other. But more investigation needs to be done in this regard. Significantly,the basic facts of the Obama-Davis relationship were originally disclosed by Professor Gerald Home, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, who talked about Obama coming under the influence of Davis during a speech at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University. The remarks were posted online under the headline, "Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party." 3 Home, a history professor at the University of Houston, noted that Davis, who had moved to Honolulu from Kansas in 1948 "at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson," came into contact with Obama and his family. As Home describes it, Davis "befriended" a "Euro-American family" that had "migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago." From Hawaii, Obama would first go to Occidental College in Los Angeles, then to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, and finally Chicago, where he would start his political career. Occidental College might have been well-known to Davis because in 1948 it offered to host another black poet, Langston Hughes, who was to speak on a poem of his entitled, "Goodbye Christ." It declared: "Goodbye, Christ Jesus Lord God Jehovah, Beat it on away from here now. Make way for a new guy with no religion at all— A real guy named Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin wonder ME " The California Legislature's Fourth Report of the Senate Fact-finding Committee on Un-American Activities, dated 1948 and covering "Communist Front Organizations," described Hughes as someone "said to rate with Paul Robeson" as a notorious black 3 Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and bfogger, noted Home's speech naming "Frank" as Frank Marshall Davis in a posting in March of 2007. communist. It called the "Goodbye Christ" poem blasphemous. However, conservative opposition forced Occidental to cancel the event. Hughes later broke with the communists. It could be said that Obama didn't choose to be associated with Davis. He was young and Davis was much older. On the other hand, Romerstein closes his report with a quotation from Obama's own book, Dreams From My Father, in which he talks about how he chose his own associates and friends, and that they were among the most radical. These decisions may have reflected Davis's influence over him. It was at Occidental College that Obama says he came into contact with the "more politically active black students," foreign students, the Chicanos, the "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets." He chose these people to associate with, Obama says, because he wanted to avoid being perceived as a "sell-out." At night, he said, "we discussed neocolonialism." 4 The Marxist influence continued when he went to Columbia University. The intense political discussions he had at Occidental, he wrote, "came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union or the African cultural fairs that took place in Harlem and Brooklyn during the summers..." 5 But it all started with Davis. Romerstein describes Davis as a key member of a communist network sponsored by Moscow in Hawaii that included Robeson and Bridges. He describes this network and its objectives in detail. The influence of this network was the subject of hearings by official government bodies because it was perceived to be a major threat to U.S. national security. Some of those hearings concerned "The Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States." Romerstein also explains that, after the CPUSA collapsed, Davis continued in Hawaii promoting communist propaganda and influencing people like a young Barack Obama. That is why it is so important to get to the bottom of what kind of relationship they had. Curiously, Obama himself tried to obscure the identity of "Frank" in his book, Dreams From My Father, by concealing his middle and last names. Still, he acknowledges (page 22) that he came to respect "Frank" and other black men he knew "for the struggles they went through, recognizing them as my own..." Obama wrote about "a poet named Frank," who visited them in Hawaii, read poetry, and was full of "hard-earned knowledge" and advice. Obama also wrote about "Frank" having "some modest notoriety once" and being "a contemporary of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago..." Obama said that "Frank" was "pushing eighty" and giving him advice before he left for Occidental College in 1979 at the age of 18. Obama refers to "Frank and his old Black Power dashiki self." 4 Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father, Three Rivers Press, 1995, New York, page 100. 5 Ibid, page 122. Interestingly, Obama displays some awareness of Davis and his significance. But as Romerstein notes, Davis called Wright's decision to expose the CPUSA after leaving the party an "act of treason." Davis said Wright had "aided only the racists who were constantly seeking any means to destroy cooperation between Reds and blacks" and had "damaged our battle." 6 Was Obama aware of Wright's break with the CPUSA and Davis's decision to stay with it? What knowledge, in fact, does Obama have of Communist efforts to exploit blacks? The continuing influence of Davis's communist views over Obama could help explain why, when he went to college, he selected Marxist professors among his friends and admittedly attended socialist conferences. It could also help explain why, when he arrived in Chicago to pursue a political career, he came into contact with individuals associated with socialist and communist activities, such as Bill Ayers and Quentin Young. (These connections are explained at length in the second report in this series, Communism in Chicago and the Obama Connection). Links between the Hawaii and Chicago networks should be actively investigated. Home is not the only significant figure to talk about the influence of "Frank" on Obama. Dr. Kathryn Takara of the University of Hawaii, who knew and interviewed Davis and wrote a dissertation on his life and career, confirmed to me that the "Frank" is, in fact, Frank Marshall Davis. Takara confirmed that Davis was a significant influence over Obama during the three or four years that he attended the Punahou prep school. These would have been the years 1975-1979. She said Obama had been introduced to Davis by his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who considered Davis a "strong black male figure" and thought he exerted a "positive" influence over the young man in his high-school years. "His grandfather was one of Frank's closest friends," she said. "They played chess or cards together." Takara, an Obama supporter, thinks the influence of Davis was positive as well and considered Davis a "loving man" who "did not have a hateful bone in his body." She said that Davis was a black role model for Obama and gave him a sense of democracy, equal opportunity and justice. She said Davis gave him "a sense of believing that change can happen" through "living in a diverse world." Asked why she thought Obama didn't identify Davis in his book by his full name, she replied, "Maybe he didn't want people delving into it" She said that this could have had something to do with Davis's lifestyle, rather than his politics. "Frank's was a place where you could have drinks," she said. Yet, Obama has been open about some things - such as his past drug use. It is 6 Frank Marshall Davis, Livin' The Blues. Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet, Edited with an Introduction, by John Edgar Tidwell, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1992, p. 243. difficult to understand why he would not name "Frank" as Frank Marshall Davis simply because "Frank" drank or hosted people who did. Regarding his political views, Takara said of Davis that, "He studied democracy. He knew democracy. He knew the value of democracy. And yet he was a critic." She added that Davis "had a sense of who he was" and a "sense of self-esteem." The record shows, of course, that Davis was so much of a critic of the U.S. that he joined the CPUSA, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the old Soviet Union. Takara disputes this, saying she didn't think his CPUSA membership had been proven. But a congressional committee identified him as a party member (See Exhibits 1 A and 2A). and John Edgar Tidwell, a professor at the University of Kansas and expert on Davis's writings and career, has confirmed that Davis joined the Communist Party but publicly tried to deny his communist affiliations. "Sometime during the middle of the war, he [Davis] joined the Communist Party," Tidwell writes in his book about Davis's poems. 7 Tidwell says that Davis "felt betrayed" when Soviet dictator Stalin signed the 1939 nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany, which triggered World War II, but that Stalin's eventual decision to join the U.S. and its allies in a war on the Axis powers "restored a measure of Davis's confidence in the USSR." Similarly, The New Red Negro, by James Edward Smethurst, says that while Davis had said he was disturbed by the Hitler-Stalin pact, he did not break his alliance with the CPUSA over it. 8 Max Friedman, a longtime writer and researcher on internal security affairs, discovered that Davis testified in 1956 before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) and took the Fifth Amendment on his Communist Party membership. (See Exhibit 3A). William Rusher, who served as associate counsel to the SISS in 1956-1957, has written that "It is hard for most people to imagine the influence that even a relatively small number of dedicated people can have, but the CPUSA exerted significant power in its heyday — a heyday, be it remembered, in which the Soviet Union impressed many people as the wave of the future, destined to overwhelm a weak and fading West, including the United States." Most telling, as noted by Romerstein, is the eyewitness account of how "Comrade Davis" came into a meeting of the NAACP and tried to maneuver it into support of "the Stalinist line." (See Exhibit 4A). 7 Frank Marshall Davis. Black Moods. Collected Poems. Edited by John Edgar Tidwell, University of Illinois Press. Chicago and Urbana, 2002, p.xxviii. 8 The New Red Negro. The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946. James Edward Smethurst, Oxford University Press. New York. 199. P. 45. This pro-Communist view was the mindset of Frank Marshall Davis, who spent many hours advising and reading poetry to a young Barack Obama. Takara admits that Davis was accused of being a communist and that the FBI investigated him but she tried to insist that any black activist at this time faced such a charge. "Any group that was progressive was considered communist," she said. "So I have never found yet that Frank was actually a communist. He certainly associated with people that were communists. But he certainly associated with people that were not communists." In fact, however, as Romerstein documents, responsible black and progressive groups viewed the communists, and Davis in particular, as agitators who hurt and damaged the cause of legitimate black rights. Takara insists that Davis "loved America." But the tone of his poem, "Smash on, victory-eating Red Army," could give people the opposite impression. It goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution: "Show the marveling multitudes Americans, British, all your allied brothers How strong you are How great you are How your young tree of new unity Planted twenty-five years ago Bears today the golden fruit of victory!" Takara commented, "That's not untypical of that time. Remember many black intellectuals in the 40s went to Russia. He didn't go to Russia. But many of them went to Russia. All of them were very disillusioned after the war about their treatment — to go and fight fascism abroad and come back and get lynched and not be able to vote." In reference to another poem, "Christ is a Dixie Nigger," Takara said that she believed that Davis was an atheist or agnostic who came to appreciate religion only later in his life when he was approaching death (he died in 1987). Religion, she said, was a major reason why most blacks did not go into the CPUSA, which was officially atheistic. The poem dismisses Christ as "another New White Hope" and declares: "Remember this, you wise guys Your tales about Jesus of Nazareth are no-go with me I've got a dozen Christs in Dixie all bloody and black. . . " One Davis poem, "Onward Christian Soldiers," mocks the Christian hymn by the same name. It talks of Africans being killed with a "Christian gun" instead of a spear by the missionaries following "the religion of Sweet Jesus." Another Davis poem refers to Christians "who buy righteousness like groceries." "I would say that Davis was more atheistic or agnostic and I think that that follows kind of the tradition of some of the black intellectuals of that period who really didn't understand if there was a God, how he could be so unjust," Takara explained. Obama writes in Dreams From My Father that he saw "Frank" only a few days before he left Hawaii for college, and that Davis seemed just as radical as ever. Davis called college "An advanced degree in compromise" and warned Obama not to forget his "people" and not to "start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit" Asked to interpret this advice, Takara said that Davis was trying to tell Obama that while college does teach people to assimilate into the society, "institutional racism is still around." She explained, "You can learn a lot but you can lose a lot. I think Frank was giving him some practical advice. Frank was reminding Obama not to forget his people and who are his people? Mixed race. For me, thafs the exciting thing about Obama. He has a sense of black people and black people's problems but he has also a sense of the white [people]. He has a sense of other minority groups." Obama was the child of a white mother and black father. Davis, who was black, had married a white woman in Chicago. Alluding to the absence of his father from his life, Obama has said, "I was raised in a setting with my grandparents who grew up in small town Kansas where, you know, the dinner table would have been very familiar to anybody here in Indiana - a lot of pot roast and potatoes and Jell-O molds." On January 29, 2008, Obama had been in El Dorado, Kansas, where his grandfather attended high school. Governor Kathleen Sebelius declared that Obama had inherited the "Midwestern values" important to Kansas voters. "He got them from his grandparents and his mother," Sebelius said in a speech that gave him her endorsement. "He will lead with those values." But those are not the values held by Frank Marshall Davis. And Obama has not spoken publicly about the influence of his childhood mentor. The public deserves the truth. The Communist Assault on Hawaii By Herbert Romerstein The American Communist Party was established in 1 91 9 only months after the Communist International was established in Moscow. The Comintern, as it was called, micromanaged the American Communist Party through an Anglo-American Secretariat. For many years a representative of the American Communist Party resided in Moscow where he supplied the Anglo-American Secretariat with information on the work of the American Communist Party and also sent the orders from Moscow to the American communists. For some time the American representative used the code name "Sherman". In 1 935, "Sherman" was William Schneiderman, later the head of the Communist Party of California and an agent of the Soviet intelligence service, NKVD, later KGB. 9 On February 1, 1935, a meeting was held in Moscow of the Anglo-American Secretariat. Schneiderman was there under his code name "Sherman". Also present was Minguiin, the head of the Anglo-American Secretariat. Schneiderman was ordered to prepare a draft of a message to the American Communist Party on the "Hawaiian Question". 10 Under the guidance of Minguiin, a confidential letter was sent to the American communists advising them that they were required to establish a Communist Party apparatus in Hawaii. They were told that the reason was "American imperialism with its policy of militarization of the Hawaiian Islands makes it essential for the CP USA to give every possible assistants to the development of the mass revolutionary movement in Hawaii...." One of the slogans they were ordered to promote was "the withdrawal of the U.S. armed forces" from Hawaii. 11 Of course, the Hawaii Islands and the naval base at Pearl Harbor were essential for the defense of the United States. The Comintern, with its eye on possible Soviet expansion in Asia, wanted to remove that impediment. Over a period of time, American communists were sent to Hawaii to colonize the island and to promote the growth of the communist movement there. Of particular use to the communists was Harry Bridges' International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union. For many years Bridges denied being a Communist Party 9 Schneiderman's NKVD code name was "Nat". Venona, San Francisco to Moscow, April 18, 1945. Venona was the US code name for the NKVD messages between their officers in the United States and Moscow headquarters that were intercepted US government during World War II. See: Herbert Romerstein and Eric Briendel, The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors, Regnery, Washington, DC, 2000. 10 Comintern Archives, Moscow, Fond 495, Opus 72, Delo 277. Although some parts of the Comintern Archives have been made available this section Opus 72 has been closed. My wife and I were able to obtain copies in Moscow while those sections of the archive were still open. Exhibit 1 11 Comintern Archives, Moscow, Fond 495, Opus 20, Delo 541 . Exhibit 2 member. On numerous occasions the U.S. government attempted to deport him back to his native Australia. But, with clever lawyers and some help from his friends in government, Bridges avoided deportation. In 1 938, the American Communist Party sent a list of names to Moscow of the people that it wished to keep on the Central Committee. They needed Moscow's permission before they could allow a party member to have that position. One of those accepted by Moscow to remain on the Central Committee of the American Communist Party was identified as "Rossi (Bridges) - CP USA Central Committee member and president of the Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union". He was described as "He is a strong leader in the trade union movement and mass worker, but up till now has only domestic party knowledge and experience." 12 The Comintern was preparing the American Communist Party for its role in international affairs and the coming war. In 1949 the CIO investigated some of its member unions on charges that they were communist controlled. The charges made against the ILWU were that "the policy and activities of the ILWU are consistently directed to the achievement of the program or the purposes of the Communist Party rather than the objectives and policies set forth in the constitution of the CIO." Among the findings of the CIO commission investigating ILWU was that "Harry Bridges had, over a period of years, participated in numerous secret meetings between Communist Party functionaries and officers of the Communist- controlled unions in the CIO at which the party functionaries instructed the union officers as to the party line and as to the positions that they were to take in the CIO and in their unions. The communist unions were expelled from the CIO. The CIO reported that although the communist unions had opposed Nazism during the 1930s that changed with the Soviet Nazi Alliance. According to the CIO: "With the signing of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the ILWU suddenly discovered that the war in Europe was of no concern to it. It attacked President Roosevelt and his policy of giving aid to the allies. "In April 1940, Harry Bridges in his report to the ILWU District 1 convention, state: 'It generally recognized that the present administration's policies in regard to the international situation, its pro-allies sympathizers, the endorsement of millions of dollars being sent abroad while millions of Americans suffer unemployment and poverty can result in the embroiling of America into a foreign war in which she can have no concern except the protection of the investments of the large bankers and industrial interests of the country.' 12 Comintern Archives, Moscow, Fond 495, Opus 74, Delo 467 (As with Opus 72, Opus 74 is part of the closed section of the Archives. No longer available. 13 The CIO reports were printed by the U.S. Congress at the request of Sen. Hubert Humphrey under the title "Communist Domination of Certain Unions", Government Printing Office, Washington, 1951; pp 79- 96, particularly see 92. Exhibit 3 10 "The District 1 convention endorsed the slogan The Yanks are not coming.' "The 1940 convention of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific adopted a resolution submitted by ILWU denouncing the war profiteers who 'have attempted to create a war scare' and demanding that Congress cease 'playing chess with the lives of Americans by encouraging loans to warring nations.' Newspapers published by ILWU locals carried headlines such as 'Convoys mean shooting, shooting means war,' and news stories on the activities of the American Peace Mobilization, a front set up by the Communists to promote isolationism. In his report to ILWU's April 1941 convention, Harry Bridges attacked the idea that labor should make sacrifices 'in the interests of so-called "national defense. 1 " Through this period, which ended with the attack upon Russian by Hitler, the ILWU consistently urged a policy of isolation, and criticized aid to the countries fighting Hitler. " Y4 The Communist Party and its front organizations were not only opposed to American aid for Britain but did all they could to help Nazi Germany fight against England. Through out the communist movement the slogan was "No convoys! No AEF!" The AEF (American Expeditionary Force) was the official name of the U.S. Army that fought against the Germans in Europe in World War I. The convoys were American war ships assigned to escort British merchant ships through the U-boat infested Atlantic. The merchant ships carried not only weapons and food for embattled England, but also, on the return trips, carried British children to North American safety. (Exhibit 4 shows leaflets of the communist fronts, Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the American Peace Mobilization against the convoys.) After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the line changed. The ILWU and the rest of the communist controlled organizations now wanted us to aid Britain. The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which had fought in the Spanish Civil War, started to clamor for American support for Britain. In November 1941, they issued a pamphlet written by their leader Milton Wolff saying, "Let us show the British and the Soviet people that we are with them all the way. ... The guarantee of full American military support to the British Government would remove the last doubts from their minds as to their ability to open a Western front." 15 The VALB magazine Volunteer for Liberty published a few days before Pearl Harbor called for a declaration of war and said that, "Every Veteran will be ready to bear arms against Hitler again and to rally others to do the same." They demanded "We call for the opening of a Western front immediately by Britain and the United States together. We call upon our government to declare war now on Nazi Germany!" 16 14 Ibid, p 87. 15 Milton, Wolff, Western Front Now!, Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, New York, November 1941, p 14. Exhibit 5 16 Volunteer for Liberty, New York, December 1941, pp 2 and 3. 11 When the United States entered the war, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade pledged "To our Government, The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade state again that we are completely at its disposal to be used as the Government deems best. This turned out to be not exactly their real intentions. On May 13, 1942, Pavel Fitin, head of the Foreign Department of the NKVD, wrote to George Dimitrov, head of the Comintern, that an NKVD representative had met with "Comrade Ryan" (actually Eugene Dennis, an official of the American Communist Party) who advised him about the activities of the "Commander of the Lincoln Brigades veterans, member of the CP USA [Milt] Wolff." According to Fitin, "in November 1941 Wolff met a representative of American intelligence, Colonel Donovan ... [Donovan had been appointed by President Roosevelt to head an intelligence service later called OSS.] At this meeting, Colonel Donovan said that it would be a waste to use the participants of the Lincoln Brigade as rank and file soldiers in the American Army as some had been very experienced and qualified officers to the Spanish Army. Donovan suggested that reliable veterans be selected to be placed at the disposal of English intelligence to be sent behind enemy lines for diversionary work. Wolff informed the head of the Communist Party of the intelligence service proposal and received permission to do this." Donovan put Wolff in contact with a British intelligence officer and for a period of time Wolff carried out the work. Donovan was also in direct contact with Eugene Dennis who suggested to the NKVD that the Communist Party not provide people as Donovan had requested but that individual American Communists who are called up to serve in the armed forces should be used as "commandos." The NKVD's statement to Dimitrov, in the same document, was "we estimate this affair as a political mistake of the Communist Party USA leadership, which would allow American and English intelligence to penetrate the channels of not only the American Communist Party but other Communist Parties as well. Comrade Ryan [Dennis] asks for your instructions as soon as possible on all matters relating to the American, Spanish, Italian and Canadian Communist Parties. Please inform us of your decision on the subject." 18 On the same day Dimitrov sent a message to the NKVD to transmit to the American Communist Party. The message read: "On the question of Wolff, the following directive is given to the American friends" 'We consider permission for Wolff to recruit people for English and American intelligence to be a political mistake. This would give the services a chance to penetrate the American and other Communist Parties. We propose a serious discussion of the most expedient measures and forms of stopping this recruitment and all contact with the indicated services. Warn the Spanish and Italian comrades about this also'." 19 17 Volunteer for Liberty, New York, Jamuary 1942, p2. 18 Comintern Archives, Fond 495, Opus 74, Delo 484, pp 27-31, marked top secret and personal. 19 Comintern Archives, Fond 495, Opus 73, Delo 188, p 10. 12 In June 1 942, Fitin sent Dimitrov the contents of a message from the American Communist Party that had been sent through NKVD channels. The message was from Ryan (Eugene Dennis) and read: "We fully agree with your suggestion regarding Wolff's activities, and we have taken all necessary measures to halt this activity and to prevent his influencing leftist organizations to join with him. We have discussed the matter with Earl [Browder] and we ask you to instruct us....'' 20 So much for the Communists' willingness to do anything that the American government wanted to advance the war effort. They were not willing to jeopardize their networks on behalf of the common struggle against Nazism. The Donovan-Wolff project was aborted. The Communists were only willing to join the OSS as individuals. A number of the Spanish Civil War veterans as well as other communists infiltrated the OSS. Two of the infiltrators were Communist Party members Karl Yoneda, a California communist, and Koji Ariyoshi, a communist from Hawaii. Yoneda explained in his autobiography that he had been invited to join U.S. military intelligence. He recommended his friend Ariyoshi. He went on to say, "Koji practiced speaking Japanese with me for many hours at our quarters because he spoke a Hawaiian pidgin- Japanese. 21 Both Yoneda and Ariyoshi were assigned to the Far East. Ariyoshi was sent to work with the Chinese Communist forces in Yenan. 22 In 1978 a pamphlet eulogizing him was published in Los Angeles by the U.S.-Chinese Peoples Friendships Association. It was later reprinted, in 2004, in hard cover by Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. According to the official Communist Chinese Foreign Languages Press "The China Society for People's Friendship Studies (PFS) in cooperation with the Foreign Languages Press (FLP) in Beijing has arranged for re-publication in the series entitled Light on China, of some fifty books written in English between the 18670s and the founding years of the People's Republic, by journalistic and other sympathetic eyewitnesses of the revolutionary events described." 23 This book was certainly sympathetic. It was edited by Hugh Deane, who had been on the editorial board of the Chinese Communist propaganda organ China Monthly Review and took the 5 th Amendment when asked if he was a Party member by the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security. The Forward to the book was written by John Stewart Service, a State Department official who stole a large number of classified documents and turned them over to a communist magazine called Amerasia. The Justice Department attempted to have him indicted for espionage but a Soviet agent in the White House named Lauchlin Currie obtained the services of a corrupt wheel-dealer named Thomas Corcoran. Corcoran fixed the case by influencing high officials in the 20 Comintern Archives, Fond 495, Opus 74, Delo 484, pp 14-15. 21 Karl G. Yoneda, Ganbatte, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1983, p 145. 22 to/dp 154 23 Hugh Deane, Editor Remembering Koji Ariyoshi, An American Gl in Yanan, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, People's Republic of China, back cover. Exhibit 6 13 Justice Department. The FBI knew how the case was fixed because they had a wiretap on Corcoran at the request of President Truman. 24 The Soviet intelligence service, NKVD, had a number of agents among the communists working in Amerasia. Two of them were identified by true name and code name as a result of the Venona intercepts. One was Thomas Arthur Bisson, code name "Artur". The other was Joseph Milton Bernstein, code name: "Markiz". 25 According to Hugh Deane in his eulogy to Koji Ariyoshi, "In February of 1945 John S. Service, the chief political officer of the Yenan mission , and his Foreign Service colleagues attached to the U.S. Embassy in Chunking urged in a carefully prepared policy recommendation that the U.S. desist from giving exclusive support to the Chiang Kai-shek regime...." 26 Soviet agents and American communists working in China during the war did the best they could to undermine our ally the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. Years later during the Sino-Soviet dispute the Soviets, to prove the help that they gave to the Chinese Communists, revealed, "After Japan's capitulation China continued to be divided into two camps. Chiang Kai-shek with his army of many millions controlled three quarters of the country and practically all her cities. "Like the rest of China, Manchuria, too, was split into two camps. People's rule with the CPC at the head was established west of Changchun and North of Kirin, and also on Liao-tung Peninsula where Soviet troops were stationed. In keeping with the people's free expression of will people's democratic organs of power were established throughout this huge territory, where they began to pave the way for the introduction of fundamental socio-economic transformations. ... In 1945 and 1946 the People's Revolutionary Army continued to increase in size and enhance its fighting capacity. By the end of 1945 the CPC had a well-armed group of troops numbering 3000,000 men in Manchuria. ... The fighting capacity of the People's Army increased tremendously when the Soviet Army turned over captured Japanese weapons to it. Another important factor of its victory was the presence of Soviet Armed Forces in Port Arthur and Dalny. These key strategic points became inaccessible to the Kuomintang and US troops." 27 In his forward to the eulogy to Koji Ariyoshi, John S. Service wrote: "Then, suddenly, President Nixon decided that he wished to visit China. Koji wrote me at once. Surely, he thought, this would change the situation. Yes, I replied, but it might take time for the privilege to trickle down to the citizenry. But it was not really very long. The next month, I was among a lucky few invited by Premier Chou En-lai. On my way to China in September, 1971, 1 stopped in Honolulu to meet an exuberantly hopeful Koji and to carry letters from him to Madame Sun (Soong Ching Ling) and others in China. It was not many months until he was following me across the pacific to his old friends." 24 FBI logs of the wiretap on Thomas Corcoran in Case Philip Jacob Jaffe, et al, File 100-2673601516. 25 Venona, New York to Moscow, June 16, 1943 and June 17, 1943. 26 Deane, op cit, p 35. 27 O. Borison, The Soviet Union and the Manchurian Revolutionary Base (1945-1949), Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, pp 97 and 107-8. 14 The International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union had become a political power in Hawaii and it helped the Communist Party colonizers to establish themselves on the islands and do their job for communism. As an indication of the extent of communist infiltration in Hawaii, in 1976 the House of Representatives of the state of Hawaii passed a resolution honoring and commending Koji Ariyoshi. They then sent certified copies of the resolution to the US- China Peoples Friendship Association of Hawaii. 28 In 1947 the communists in Hawaii suffered a serious setback when Ichiro Izuka, a Japanese-American communist, born in Hawaii, broke with the party and wrote a pamphlet exposing them. He identified himself in the pamphlet as Ichiro Izuka, American. He said "The Communist Party in Hawaii is a secret, underground organization. It works in the dark— fears the light of day." 29 He particularly exposed the ILWU as a communist instrument operating in Hawaii. In 1948, an American communist named Frank Marshall Davis decided to go to Hawaii. In his autobiography he said, "I had also talked with Paul Robeson who the previous year had appeared there in a series of concerts sponsored by the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), the most powerful labor organization in the territory. Paul enthusiastically supported our pending trip and told me how much he wanted to return to that delightful place. I also wrote to Harry Bridges, head of the ILWU, whom I had met at Lincoln School. He suggested I get in touch with Koji Ariyoshi, editor of the Honolulu Record, a newspaper that was generally similar to the Chicago Star." zo Of course, both Robeson and Bridges were members of the Communist Party. 31 The Honolulu Record was also cited as a front for the Communist Party in 1950. According to the report of the Commission on Subversive Actives of the Territory of Hawaii, most of the newspapers income was not from subscription or advertising but for the job printing that they did for the Harry Bridge's union. 32 Davis, who came from Chicago, had been an active communist there. During the Soviet Nazi alliance, he sponsored a 1940 meeting of the communist front National Negro Congress. The theme of the meeting was "Negroes and the whole American people are being called upon to 'sacrifice for national defense.' Our country may soon be actively engaged in another war. Facing this crisis, the people are forced to think and 28 Deane, op.cit pp 101-3/ 29 Ichiro Izuka, "The Truth About Communism in Hawaii", self-published, November 1947. Exhibit 7 30 Frank Marshall Davis, Livin' the Blues, Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1992, p 311. 31 Paul Robeson's Party membership, see the Communist Party pamphlet "Paul Robeson, An American Communist" which contains a speech by Party leader Gus Hall identifying him as a fellow communist For the identification of Bridges see above. 32 Mimeographed Report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to The Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii, February 28, 1955, p 225-6 15 to act lest, under the wave of war hysteria, they be bludgeoned into situations against their best interest." (See Exhibit 8) This was of course consistent with the line of the Communist Party during the Soviet Nazi alliance against national defense. In 1 949 the Hawaiian branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP) realized that they were being infiltrated by the communists. The national NAACP was fighting against communist infiltration, and that fight lasted a number of years. An example of that fight was a letter that Roy Wilkins, the acting Secretary of the NAACP, wrote to Communist Party functionary William L. Patterson. Wilkins turned down any cooperation with the communists because as he wrote: "We remember the Scottsboro case and our experience there with the International Labor Defense, one of the predecessors of the Civil Rights Congress. We remember that the present Civil Rights Congress is composed of the remnants of the ILD and other groups. We remember that in the Scottsboro case the NAACP was subjected to the most unprincipled vilification. We remember the campaign of slander in the Daily Worker. We remember the leaflets and the speakers and the whole unspeakable machinery that was turned loose upon all those who did not embrace the 'unity' policy as announced by the communists. "We want none of that unity today. "We of the NAACP remember that during the war when Negro Americans were fighting for jobs on the home front and fighting for decent treatment in the armed services we could get no help from the organizations on the extreme Left. They abandoned the fight for Negro rights on the ground that such a campaign would 'interfere with the war effort.' As soon as Russia was attacked by Germany they dropped the Negro question and concentrated all effort in support of the war in order to help the Soviet Union. During the war years the disciples of the extreme Left sounded very much like the worst of the Negro-hating southerners." 33 In 1951 the NAACP took over a case in New Jersey from a communist front organization. In a letter to supporters they wrote, "We have taken over the defense from a Communist-controlled organization. We believe it is time for patriotic Americans to undertake the defense of innocent men instead of leaving these cases to those who too often exploit them for propaganda purposes." The NAACP assigned Arthur Garfield Hays and Thurgood Marshall, NAACP Special Consul to handle the case. 34 The same year the NAACP magazine Crisis carried a lengthy article by NAACP official Herbert Hill outlining the many instances when the Communist Party betrayed 33 Press release from the NAACP, November 23, 1949. Exhibit 9 34 Letter from Joint Committee to Secure a Fair Trial of the Trenton Six, a joint project of the Princeton Committee for Defense of the Trenton Six and the Committee of 1 00, April 5, 1 951 . Exhibit 1 16 Negro rights. Hill wrote, "It is therefore inevitable that American Communist Party interest in the Negro can be neither genuine nor sincere. Quite the contrary. Strategic needs of the party as dictated by Moscow take precedence, not the goals and aspirations of Negroes. Whenever the interests of Negroes come into conflict with the political interest of Russia, the Communists abandon Negroes like rats a sinking ship." 35 The NAACP chapter asked for help from Roy Wilkins. In 1 949, a letter written by Edward Berman revealed that: "I (Berman) was at one of the election meetings at which one Frank Marshall Davis, formerly of Chicago (and formerly editor of the Chicago Communist paper, the Star) suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize the membership about our 'racial problems' in Hawaii. He had just sneaked in here on a boat, and presto, was an 'expert' on racial problems in Hawaii. Comrade Davis was supported by others who recently 'sneaked' into the organization with the avowed intent and purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line. "These others were the same party liners who tried to take over and dominate an organization known locally as the Hawaii Committee for Civic Unity. The organization collapsed, due to their tactics. "Having destroyed that organization they would now destroy the local branch of the NAACP. "They create a mythical racial problem here. They agitate with the same fervor that the Communist press does on the mainland. The result is discord and distrust, not unity. "We have no Harlems, little or big, in Hawaii. We have no Chinese quarter, or Japanese quarter, or Hawaiian quarter. "I am a Caucasian. A Hawaiian lives to my right; a Japanese family across the street from me and a Chinese family to my left. We are staunch friends. "There in no segregation here." Berman presented the letter at a hearing of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities on April 19, 1950. With it he provided a letter from Roy Wilkins that the NAACP had revoked the charter of the Honolulu branch. 36 35 Crisis, June-July 1951, pp 365-371, 421-2 36 House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, "Hearings Regarding Communist Activities in the Teritory of Hawaii— Part 3, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1950, p 2067-9 17 By 1950, the Communist Party of the United States including its Hawaii section was in bad shape. As a result of the conviction of the eleven national leaders of the Party for Smith Act violation various elements of the Party including the Hawaii section went underground. The Commission on Subversive Activities of the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii reported February 28, 1955 "About November 1950, the communist party in Hawaii was reorganized on an underground basis. ... In the new organization, party groups were to consist of not more than three members. Groups were identified by numbers (1-10) rather than by names, as formerly." Among those identified as having been members of the underground groups were Frank Marshall Davis and his wife Helen C. Davis. 37 On December 5, 1956 Frank Marshall Davis testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security where he invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions. 38 His attorney at the hearing was Mrs. Harriet Bouslog Sawyer. She also testified at the same hearing and invoked her Fifth Amendment privileges rather than testify truthfully. 39 According to the 1953 annual report of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, she had been identified as a Communist Party member by two witnesses, one in 1951, the other 1953. 40 The Communist Party USA and its Hawaii section were in bad shape. The 1956 Khrushchev secret speech denouncing Stalin resulted in a severe decline in Party membership. What did continue, however, was the Soviet funding of the American Communist Party. 41 Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party USA received regular stipends of millions of dollars. American scholars published copies of the receipts signed by Gus Hall, the head of the Party. 42 Despite the collapse of much of the Communist Party in the 1 950s, it still left behind people to carry on its propaganda work. Even the Honolulu Record had collapsed. Harry Bridge's union, Koji Ariyoshi who had become head of the communist front US-China People's Friendship Association of Hawaii, and Frank Marshall Davis continued to carry on communist propaganda for many years. 37 Previously cited Report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to The Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii, February 28, 1955, p 51. 38 Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate, Part 41, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1 957, pp 2518-9 39 Ibid, pp 2504AL 40 Annual Report of the Committee on Un-American Activities for the Year 1953, US Government Printing, Washington, DC, 1954, p65. 41 See John Baron, Operation Solo, Regnery, Washington, DC. 42 See John E. Haynes and Harvey Klehr, "'Moscow Gold', Confirmed at Last?" in Labor History, Spring 1992, Taminment Institute, New York, pp 279ff. 18 EPILOGUE The Communist Party is on its last legs. But it still boasts of its history. On February 16, 2008 some of their heavily excised files were made available to the Tamiment Library at New York University in New York City. The spokesman for the Communist Party, Gerald Home, made a speech at the ceremony, which is available on the internet. He mentioned in his speech Frank Marshall Davis, who he rather disingenuously says was "certainly in the obit of the CP - if not a member". Of course, he was a member. According to Home, he "was bom in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson. Eventually, he befriended another family - a Euro- American family - that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago. In his best selling memoir 'Dreams of my Father 1 , the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as "Frank" as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation - though you and would never know it from reading so-called left journals of opinion. At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack's memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis' equally affecting memoir, 'Living the Blues' and when that comes, I'm sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside." In his autobiography Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama tells of meeting Frank (Davis), who was a drinking companion of Obama's white grandfather. Davis boasted of his association with the great black writers Richard Wright and Langston Hughes during his years in Chicago. 43 At least, thaf s what Obama remembers. We don't know whether Davis admitted hating Wright and Hughes because they had broken with the Communist Party and exposed its activities, in his own autobiography, Livin' The Blues, Davis refers to Richard Wright's "act of treason" for exposing the Communist Party. 44 Wright had written a chapter in the book The God That Failed where he denounced the Communist Party- 45 Obama's autobiography tells more about the incident when his white grandmother was accosted by a Black panhandler demanding money. Obama cited the incident when he said he could no more repudiate his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, than he could repudiate his white grandmother. He had been shocked by the incident not because his grandmother, who loved and raised him had been threatened, but only because the person making the threat was Black. Obama went to Frank Davis for 43 Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2004 revised edition, p 76. 44 Frank Marshall Davis, Livin' the Blues, Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet, previously cited p 243. 45 Richard Crossman, Editor, The God that failed, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1950 19 advice. Davis responded to Obama, "What I'm trying to tell you is, your grandma's right to be scared. ... She understands that black people have a reason to hate. Thafs just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it's not. So you might as well get used to it." 46 In his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he wrote, "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets." 47 46 Barack Obama, previously cited, p90-1. 20 47 Ibid, p 100. rt 'i ' l* ! ' - f OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES HEARINGS BEFORE THE . SUBCOMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE :piMSTEATION Of THE INTEENAL SECUBITY 1CT ASD OTHEE INTEENAL SEOUEITY LAWS Off THE COMMITTEE OK THE JUDIOIAJiY ■ -UMTE])ST1TE8 8EMTE V :- EIGHTY-TOTJETH COTOEESS SECOND SESSION ON ■SCOPE OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES ' * i PART 41-A, APPENDIX II 1953 and 1954 Reports of l*e Commission on Subversive Activities of the Territory of Hawaii Printed for the use of the Commute e on the Judiciary m x i '4 m UNITED STATES QOVEKNMENT P RINT1N(3 0MTOB WASHINGTON ; 1957 A: 2696 SCOPE OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES In the reorganization of the party on an underground bas?« st *«tt58 have been transferred to members not previously Identified ft L G ^^Mi Uc eye Other persons, still not openly identified as party mS 1 k u*l sumed f auctions in Communist operations. Of foremost cono2?? er? > V to keep intact as far as possible its organization and pronaeaS to <&e &£ party operations may be reactivated when the time is rine t! *£ UUe k * SS t ?SSLL oamomI,era of tlie LMU ' ty are wmins and aM ° to W^tK HCRC; and Jean Sadako King, a secret party functionary ^^mum 1 he formal membership of the Communist Party of Hawm i- , ^ a relatively few ''hard core" members. It has i^SarteSl toexiSw« tf,,taato4 l»^ and members. Others have reportedly resigned or simnlv stonS mm E **«'* "" m party activities. However, the commission believes it ^S^P^^^^ THE HONOLULU RECORD vihM,TT iS Pai ' ( i y ^ as aIways yarded the printed word as a medimi vital to the implementation of Its program. Experience Sows ttatStr* leaders have used newspapers and other periodical °5 «2toTiSainSiiSS* * » ™A° f H5 U ^f', a ( nd to , ^ermine and destroy tlie existing fouia of goroft i mml Lh *«^ un ^ where the Communist Party has operated. Tlnouglf% H SJL 5 " 1 Rations in tins country, the Communist Party lias transmitted to if ™Sl^ d sympathizers the various facets of the ever-changing party "Ifo&l lo^ifl. '^°., "i? Gomm -Untet Party of Hawaii, realizing the limited popit- ' i»ri M th £ D , aily p «>Dlea World and the Daily Worker, official ban Enmctosf* and New York organs of the Communist Party, respectively, and seeking, at the same time to broaden their sphere of influence in the Territoiy, eBta&lnMt - ™«VSr n We t fl ne wspaper, the Honolulu Record, in August 194S This »"** was the result of a resolution adopted at tfie Territorial convention ot tlie ■?£? A t? lty of HnwaI1 lleId at HauulH and Kuliouou Beach in April .meic H. Kawano, a member of the executive board of the Communist rat Hawaii m 194S, has testified: tt wrr ,* i^ ?? rt 7 cth0 Communist Party] instructed its meuibeis to ge ILWU behind the Honolulu Record, and urge the union to buy subscriptions i^ ads. Every, cell of the Communist Party was instructed to designate son tale rue nrls anri cni»Hi V infi n .,>. j„ «.„ .,..;.... £„,. ^ tij the People* »' to handle the ads and subscriptions in the union - - and the Honolulu Record," "\ ^ ] take publication of the Honolulu Record, Communist Party »«2fali ** " informed that each was expected to purchase a minimum of 10 &**$#&". m the corporation. Although only 7 Identified Communist Party : ™*™l m *V listed m the original corporate exhibit of tbe Honolulu Record* u0 Sb|f3 Ltd., as owners of 10 or more shares, the contributions of othei w m 3~ : the party may well have been embodied in the 7,500 shares » ste ^" &&***' of Kojl Ariyoshi. Fourteen of the original 60 shareholders J^gjji members of the Communist Party of Hawaii. These persons offneu*^ original total of S,133 shares— 90 percent of the Honolulu Raw"* t V ""* For ttlfltlV wtin.Ua nvlnu i-« «..).ll.«»!„ «fl «.« «~r.f- IfcilP flU AU»"f . „, '"smut Luuai or s.ios snares— yu percent oi the jaonoium *«-*■- fc - jg* For many weeks prior to publication of the first issue on Aug" ^m organizers of the Honolulu Record Publishing Co., Ltd., eirCnl S pi*sf|S characterizing their forthcoming publication as one that ^"'^ to™ other side of the news" and serve as a champion of organised i» | fc. OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES 2697 ijLortnears to have been chosen deliberately to attract the support of $$a nersons in the community and to insure a following among the 1*mia : Territory's labor unions. Sale of the stock in the nssw corpora- nP 5 in the hands of such dependable identified Communists as John £**e a nd Robert Greene. By the end of August 1948, the solicitors gSfihares f s toek having a total par value of §39,405. The- majority a ni stockholders were either Communists or palpable Communist ^■although a representative number of so-called liberals also agreed mt\ek. in the new corporation, ££ rtavs the Honolulu Record made a determined effort to u'in support Shoring class in the Territory, particularly in the ILVVU, which ir daimed a membership of some 30,000 workers. Operating through Natives within the ILWU, Communist Party leaders arranged for Is union support of their publication. Said Kawano ii his testi- Me Honolulu Record got all the help from tlie ILWU through thti &gjn it" ambers were led to believe that the- Honolulu Record was a labor fefiiat it was the only newspaper in the Territory that dared print -fecores f self-styled liberals welcomed the Honolulu Record as Son. of the downtrodden, the defender of the underdog. Notable among ""William K. Bassett, administrative assistant to the mayor of Hono- Mt not only gave public commendation to the Record, but wrote a lupin for the publication. itor of the Honolulu Record since Its inception has been Koji Ariyoshi, jfbYen Indicated for conspiracy to violate the Smith Act Jack H. lilted in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Conir jf£1n,l94S, when the leaders of the Communist Party of Hawaii learned !foshi r a former Honolnlan trained in tlie field of journalism, then laysfew York City, had become a member of tbe Communist Party, they llinvite him to return to Honolulu to assume the editorship of tho Record. jf'a veteran of several ryears wartime service in the Far East, both er in the United States Army and as an OWI representative, is re- prted to have had personal contact with the Chinese Communists. fa series of articles entitled "Inside 'Communist China' " which ap- Ithe Honolulu Star-Bulletin during September 1947. He is the author icie in support of the Chinese Communists which appeared in the J&47, edition of Spotlight on the Far East, official publication of the e&for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. Ariyoshi was listed in 1949 IB East Spotlight, successor to Spotlight on tlie Far East as a con- luie Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. That organiza- |$m cited as a Communist-front by the United States Attorney General Wpaltfornia Committee on Un-American Activities. Jack IE. Kawano, |wu officer and Communist Party leader, testified before the House |an Activities Committee that be understood that Ariyoshi was elected gputive board of the Communist Parly of Hawaii for 1048-49. i^"y°sM in the editorial phase of tbe Record are Edward G. Bohr- BPK Marshall Davis, Wilfred M. Oka, and .Tack DenicM Kimoto. lwnu r° a P la y e ' 1 an important role in the organization and publication ftmWh t*. ' P r °-Communist Japanese language newspaper, became IXv e Communist Party in San Francisco and Los Angeles during llnr S ' t e was tuen employed as a translator for the Daily People's «u west coast organ of the Communist Party. Even before he left juw mainland in 1931, Kimoto was already recognized in certain w.k? ^astute and well read Marxist. After 7 years on the main- lecurned to his home in Honolulu armed with the commission w 7, technique to propagandize in Hawaii on behalf of the Com- &n l &.Wm D reported by a former Communist Party member a£s of a,, rman * form er chairman of district 13, Commuaist Party, BUMbLS? S? a ' 5 0nvicte « °f conspiracy to violate the Smith Act, l a SI. Kimoto prior to the latter's return to Hawaii. Jack fcettfied u> lo- 1 } 1 ^^ ?U Ue execiltiv e noard of tbe Communist Party Ttta fjLm -i « nt Kimoto has been among the "most responsible" Jo stafeff^ ^ ls i-. Party since ifcs reactivation in Hawaii in 1940. Pwtoffi P-S. ¥£ uoto „ B ? l ' vc $ , as a "'ember of the executive board ^_""«c larty of Hawaii in 1940. Kimoto rnfnw«i. on tim ^mimda of ^OWO SCOPE OP SOVIET ACTIVITY I N THE UNITED •fecial OoinmitTeeT'r C P mmi ^ ^^m^^^^^hSi^ i"-'iwi nave shown i ;„7 , " «na, and w„. *r — *" iu '«uon. »«»,. r STAT HP SCOPE OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES 2699 party members testified that they had observed Oka at Com- t» l " l! -tv meetings. Jack H. Kawano, former member of the executive board fci^'iniiiiist Party of Hawaii, has stated that Oka was 1 of 4 members of B^'-nl commission of the Communist Party of Hawaii during 194S. Oka ef' naetl by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but refused -- ifli ' 1 v deny 'his Communist affiliations on the grounds of possible self-in- p\ ^°ihe owner of the Corner Liquor Store, 1042 Bethel Street, Honolulu, ' S -lag -recent years has served as an outlet for Communist propaganda ''"rendezvous for persons of kindred radical political views. Although jj;, 1 } g fl weekly sports column for the Record, he is not known to have been • Ms services. Nor has he been listed at any time as a shareholder in '^niolu Record Publishing Co., Ltd. H " ent j n vestigative agencies have conducted investigations of the Hono- ** I'd an & nave eonclU( 3ed tnax tue Record has been consistent in its support r mitnists and communism and in its denunciation of all forms of anti- Purist activity. On October 1, 1950, the House Committee on Un-American Rt es published a 38-page pamphlet setting forth the results of its conipre- W. investigation and analysis of the Record. The committee's conclusion *. s follows : Ertie Committee on Un-American Activities, after analysis and investigation of Honolulu Record since its first issue of August 5, 1948, draws the inevitable Lyon that the Honolulu Record is a front for the Communist Party, despite !fact that the paper does not make this admission." ' sari r.» >.) y fa i r 4 • .;- EX ' i" 1 i Supremacy, appear t o emanating fl ,, stnlungjy oonfonm Ame to Con nent mittee Dj Pnhl h-VnJ:,?- °*» ie ^^S^i^mTlt 91 ' ^r 4K hn « teen*Q ^yS" nist Pai L > ara*«ti™ board of the Communist Party of Hawaii at one time or another since jjiAriyoshi, editor itDeniehi Kimoto, reporter and circulation department assistant ia E. Eeinecke, advertising salesman and contributor of stories and feature uticles fivo other Smith Act defendants, Mr. and Mrs. Charles .K. Fujimoto, are the m of Record stock. Is Record continues to utilize the services of the Federated Press and the M Labor News. The Special House Committee on Un-American Activities bed the Federated Press as : "A Communist-controlled organization financed is American Fund for Public Service and the Robert Marshall Foundation, principal sources of funds for Communist enterprises." W17 the House Un-American Activities Committee listed Allied Labor *. 1133 Broadway, New York City, among publications and news agencies £* United States receiving cable and radio news from Moscow during 1945. Uiifornia Committee on Un-American Activities has listed Allied Labor Sen-ice among publications which "the committee has found " * " to be "niat initiated and controlled, or so strongly influenced as to be in the Jar system." Honolulu Record and its principal stockholder, Edward 6. Rohrbough, *i*ed as distributors in Hawaii for the China Monthly Review, a magn- Mjshed in Communist China. The China Monthly Review has followed jrial policy that is viciously critical of United States foreign policy and le to Soviet Russia. The Honolulu Record of September 20, 1951, con- *& announcement that the China Monthly Review was available at the Mquor Store and Magazine Shop, 1042 Bethel Street, Honolulu. Wil- %' a ' s P 01 'ts editor of the Honolulu Record and identified member of iH^unist Party, is the owner of the Corner Liquor Store. Again, on ( .o. 1952, an advertisement in the Record called attention to the fact r (t , * China Monthly Review was on sale at the Corner Liquor Store. The fi- ^Qient further stated that sample copies could be obtained at the office Honolulu Record, Sll Sheridan Street, Honolulu. The China Monthly re editoi of Hie Af the legislature, the mayor of the city and county-of Honolulu and the county chairmen of the other counties. Copies also are being furnished to the newly elected members of the legislature. ■ ■ v. ^kejcoWission has found no material errors in any of the tbree reports. It has tried diligently to avoid errors of every type, and has made it known that ■ any W 1 ^ organization or institution feeling aggrieved by any statement in any -,.._ report of the commission would be accorded a prompt heading on the matter No one has requested- a hearing, nor Has even a letter of complaint been- received Communist attempts to discredit the commission, charging it with illegal pro- cedures, have .continued. . Although the courts are readily available to redress _ the alleged wrongs, no legal action has been instituted. In that regard it is pertinent to recall the Communist agitation against the public body which dis- ?^ed John E. Reinecke and wife from public employment in 1948. In that $&& £?£"!& complaining publicly and at great length, the dismissed 'Commu- nists did hot even avail themselves of their statutory right of appeal 1 *° JS a " th « 1 e«Wat*» passed acts 130, 154, 177, and 256, dealing with loyalty il?n ■ e f*fi°J- ¥JP* •"*"* wbrerstva activities.' On the final readings of the ..,4-101]% a total; of 167 votes -were cast in fayor of enactment, with only 6 votes «,^^£x of * 76 ' 000 w ^5 Appropriated, for the commission in 1949, but less -than $45,000 was spent in the first bienniuro. The original appropriation did not - i«^£k wa? s^PPJement^d by appropriations of $32,000 in 1951, and $20,000 Since submitting its 1953 report, the commission has held 28 meetings. In addition, its Oahu committee has met five times for the sole purpose of takine JssttmOTiyv More than 20 witnesses were heard, only a niinority of whom in- voked their privilege against self-incrimination. ' • All personal history statements filed by public officers aid public employees incompliance with act 256 of 1951 have been examined and evaluated by th? commission. It is estimated that more than 24,000 of these sworn statements have been processed since Act 256 became effective. " «^*«ave *J^ !] 2?^ J.report is chiefly confined to theyears 1953-55. In.some instances '■infor^faoaideYeto^ matters previously reported, has been included; . ■ S" : _ ■■ ■ ■ .-■= - . --.. .- ^ 77- -■ "- 'Many- -local and mainland ; sources of information- .have been utilized, in " reporting local matters, the commission generally has based its findings unon sworn. testimony,, much of it given before. the commission. Other ' sources of w^™ Te in<4nded reports of- official Government agencies, investigative interviews, and material originated by or emanating from the Communist Party and its fronts and Comraunistrdominated labor unions. v / Communist Reactions to 1953 Repobt The Communist Honolulu Record devoted an inside-page article to the 1953 report^ and its columnist, Prank Marshall Davis, on August 6, 1953, wrote about tbe commission and the report In his column 'Davis was guilty of the usual Communist editorial dishonesty. The following is copied from his column, and purports to be a quotation from tbe.1953 report : . -'S 01 "-^* 8 P* 1 ^ confined his inflammatory racial propaganda to the columns of the Honolulu Record alone. His story, Hawaii's Plain People Fight White Supremacy, appeared in the November 1951 issue of Freedom, a tabloid publi- «2^ n f^akag fr°i? New York City. * * * Chairman of the editorial board ox freedom is Paul Robeson." However, the commission actually reported :■ 4='S or « as Pa^ confined his inflammatory racial propaganda to the columns of the Honolulu Record alone. His story, Hawaii's Flajn-Teopte Fight White Supremacy, appeared in the November 1S51 issuro^Freedom, a tabloid publica- tion emanating from New York City, whose treatment of interracial problems ■ strikingVy- c . hoard- of F Eartv:? ' [It - ., Again^on »* * * : Negroes of.. > laureate b"£ complains defended." . ■She conn munist sym literature, committee < March 1953 believed in - very largel; bissympatb "TheCiu nistline* I world, with "Mr. Htrc prised; ant . Hughes vi proposed pa sioners of I public schoc ,Ih fairne longer adhe: "TheCiu tobejtteat y in Russia, y a sympathis neither a mi "Mx.-nvs A news it that Robert the Comma article McE Party func McBlrathw The- comr rath was ex alsoawarerl a'Suhcomnii to a subpens JMr-iTAVJ "Mr.McE (The sam As long, t exponent of Party depei As was e taken cogni JJ'-^jii, ^r^s^ ■«5C'W*yj CT?0?*r.'5 , '5r -M' '---^" * -■-■= , . * - - -j-^.*.^Ai-.i J --I iVilaV-.a 1 ^^ , i>J*Mi#&c^ J ^fc^w^*rf*£»£>pVi£^-"^^^=i' a a^ , iy:w^v - UNITED STATES the Communist Party has ully create a revolutionary the islands. However, they •y forces liere which prevent able future and are content talents elsewhere while bid- rais on more than one occa- ;presenta'tives of district 13, jeneralized fashion." lined additional information tie post-World War II period, arty- meetings in Hawaii, in rtiere' potential recruits ana . jleared by party security an- but always arranged bo that itside would riot sense that a materials were kept out of on-Communist books, records, hecks of jhe prem4ses ; .outside apers," notes, etc;, were to be %gn party cards were issued xucted "nbtto-carry ; ;tb,e:^aras ir-tr meetings. *Q&*ttalA&#%- . ;ircles,"-and names of Cpmmu- ty members in other cells, a late- 1947, a general reorgan- sur-es were, reemphasjzed. .and ran "slight breaches of these wto'the end of each year- for » issuance of new cards. In rayms ("party names") to be y cards- Was discontinued" in , . "meeting dates "staggered. In :es was' ordered,- and aU party mtrols for /possible' breached of jion'took- p&cevat the " ? endV6f i turned in. at that' time. Ity measures took plaice: '■ The Meetings: in .homes orbnildings. such" as- parks *r breaches; or in . tection in such use of automo- teir homes and a predetermined Iterent places was to be- used. 1 chairmen. were given'- a type- alian Communist party- during m.par'ty.'' ( Tlals" 6utUne7generaV aarty activities during a period men were- instructed -to discuss ^ett understood by all members bered and were brdeted to be-re- SCOPE OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES 2801 am, Stephen Murin, Evelyn Murin, Aiko T. Keineeke," Claude White, Wilfred M. Oka, Esther Bristow, Bobert M. Kempa," Helen C. Davis, Henry Epstein, Frank Marshall Davis, David B. Thompson, and Charles K. Fujimoto. Bach group was headed by a chairman who carried on business concerning the ' group through a '.'contact" at a higher level. This "contact" received oral reports and dues collected from group members. Dues reports did not include the names of party members" supplying the funds. Security rules prohibited the keeping of membership lists at the lower party levels. COMMUNIST-FRONT ORGANIZATIONS Hawaii Civil Bights Comgress <.-. . - The Hawaii Civil Rights Congress is, as far as is known, the only Communist-, . "- front organization now operating in Hawaii, it came into being 1 late in 1047 as •SV - - the Hawaii 1 Civil liberties. Committee. . .Since its. formation the ,control.bf . this - " : organization has remained firmly ih the hands of identified members "of the-Cbm- - . munist Party. Since 194& the offices of chairman, secretary,; and treasurer al- .-.-*' v. . ways have been held by persons identified as 'having been members of the Com-; munisfc Party. * Thirty persons' known to have been members of this organization have been identified as having been members of the Communist Party. Five of these, H^ifc.Bwigbt James;£ > reema]if -Charles K. Fujimoto, -Eileen T. Fujimoto, Jack W;:Ha?l, '^ Vl and John E. Rei'neckeyhave been convicted of violating -the- Smith Act.. .. . '■_ ■ •■'-' During the past 2 years, the activities of the HCRC have been noticeably : *e£$f*estricted. . . The trial 'of the sorcaned-Hawaii 7,normally woula^.have presented. . the Smith Act trial were vetoed by "the party! However, HCRC continued its' efforts to raise~funds for defense of the Hawaii 7. On March 7, 1953*- a party, -^^Hawaii 7 attended these parties.. A copy of the HCRC "News.'circulated iir Qc|i£ I, stated tha $400 was raised in cash and. pledges, at the Hawaii 7. fiihti: . party held recently.-. ■ '*';:.- -.''..'■■:". .= ■-'. .-: --**■■ -""-:-.•;>*■., =VV^e ? ■SU, ber 1953, :%l?%("On'' December- 26, 1953, HCRC held/its' sixth. anniversary partyat theofcome.. j: June : 195i- HQRGJ distributed petitions, addressed, to the iSqveruor ilfijiwaU, , requesting : tbafc ,the::deatfc sentences :o3c' John:,Palakikp.v and; James; "P 1 ^apparently ' enstucwcu -*j«s-^ tion, party groups' were ^W/con- lentified by. numbers (1 through aa^tl$ea^;M^g^eetf^e£i-. . & ^o^^cBIratb? Seis.sieJ^fuc^ fcfrialrteir&'in i i feaWF^cWc^'^cT^aW " f^-vgalspVused to reproduce material, circulated by;t&eTIiW.tk. .,- ..-■-■.-..,.*. - - ?^$%0ie Membership' of jthe-.HGRCris in -'1955. reduced : to\a.hard.'.eore:heade^-by ; . '&'*■ Fi&nk Marshall Davis and Pearl 'Freeman; jdehttfied CtommUnista Tt; is believed" -'-^.-..thafcvcontlnued exposure of its true character, and of. the Communist record., - ":'| r -;|)fel^jleaders, .has reduced the effectiveness of the HCRC to a - small jgroup of •, ' ' .''„- ^^^'l^i^onmiijnists and 'fellow travelers. . - V ■ ■ - ....■-•■ -.-.■. • i, -.;r-":M ■- ,- ; . " ;\'v feS^&^^.>F ; ". ; .f.."^r- ; i ; : ^^. : ^>x€Jp«iBjicri^jiK>B' Jias^cx-.'";ri;;.>-.;r^;v..-.- t - : V .cr/; .v.vV,*^" *'&.'';% '&JJ I s ^' ! -'" ? .;}^i|r committee" was formed for the purpose of ^raising fund^ ^ f or the defeiis^ ■ -" '~- -'■•' V^' .%- dfcthe/Hawaii 1;. Its .onftr. known activity was sponsoring. of. an exhibition:. of ■[ - - ^C^o : Met'.jr6pagahd^rfllin- : Ahd i^' is a'ccbrdkigly .cbnsidereji ia the frohtiCJa^oi^;" ' ■ ' -'•.., - - : ^'it^"^:*'/^. *-■''"-'•- ' " " ■■'."-..';•'-*'■ ' ■ ' -'li "'., "' .-*-.-" ' * *- " ■ ":■!■■" , : ' -V •■> -. ■■,".-" > '.-J- ■- '■^s.^tl&tt party In 1952 and appeared as a chief Government 'witness in the Smith Act trial l.T^-:Z-'''';-^kpA ^^^^.^fes m wmm ?w^^^i ' ^M : ''^-- / '^V-:^^-:V : ^^^: *■ Exhibit 3A SCOPE OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES h- HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE INTERNAL SECURITY ACT AND OTHER INTERNAL SECURITY LAWS OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE EIGHTY-FOURTH CONGEESS SECOND SESSION ON SCOPE OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE 'UNITED STATES DEOEMBEIt 5 AND 6, 1056 PART 41 Printed for tbe use of the Committee on the Judiciary UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE '"S3 WASHINGTON : 1057 2518 SCOPE OF SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES TESTIMONY OF tfRAJJK MARSHALL DAVIS Mr. Morris Give your name and address to the reporter, Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis. Frank Marshall Davis, 47-388 Kam Highway. Mr. Morris. Mr- Davis, when did you come to Honolulu S Mr. Davis. ,In 1948. Mr. Morris. 1948. Where were you born? Mr. Davis. Arkansas City, Kans. . Mr. Morris. What has been your education ? Mr. Davis. Let's see. -Through high school and a year at Friends University, , . ^ Mr. Morris. Where is Friends TJniversitv? Mr. Davis. And at Kansas State College. That is at Manhattan, Kans. ° ' ^ Mr. Morris. You are a columnist, are you not, for the Honolulu Record? (The witness consults with his attorney.) Senator Watkins. Just a minute, Counsel. Did he ask you any- thing before you started to talk? Mrs. Boijslog. Yes ; he did, Senator. Senator Watkins. I couldn't see his lips move. ' ■ Mrs. Bousloq. He had his hack to me. Senator Watkins. I could see that side of his face. : Mrs. Bouslog. I tell you, Senator,hedidaskme. Senator Watkins. I h&ve noticed the tendency, however, for coun- sel, not only in this hearing here but in the hearings on other days, before the witness could even open his mouth, to start to advise him. That amounts to what we call coaching the witness, and it is not per- mitted in this committee. You see, the witnesses are not parties. They come in as any ordi- nary citizen would come in to testify in a matter in which the Senate. is interested, as on ordinary witness would come in to testify in court. Such witnesses are not entitled to have counsel or register objections, and t all of that sort of thing. They may come before the court to testify, as you know, with nobody there except the judge to advise them as to. their rights as witnesses. Wow, to have an attorney present to advise a witness, in this hearing, is a privilege that is granted. It is not a fight. Mrs. Bousr.oo. I regard the fact that my client has the constitutional right to counsel Senator Watkins. Oh, certainly, but not to be coached as to the testimony he shall give in the proceedings. Mrs. Bottslog. He turned to me aM asked me for my advice, and I gave it to him. Senator Watkins. I have been watching this very closely, ever since these hearings out here began, and obviously the witnesses have asked for advice in many instances, but obviously the witnesses never have had time to make their requests for legal advice before counsel has begun to give advice. I just warn vou. That is all. Mr. Morris. We have information, Mr. Davis— did you answer the last question or did you invoke the privilege of the Mr. Davis. No; I decline to answer that, on the basis of the fifth amendment. SCOPE OP SOVIET ACTIVITY IN THE TOOTED STATES 2519 Mr. Morkcs. We have information and evidence you were a member of the faculty of the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago. Is that information accurate, Mr. Davis? Mr. Davis. I decline to answer that, also on the same grounds. Mr. Mokris. Mr. Chairman, the Abraham Lincoln. School was one of the Communist Bchools. Are you a Communist now, Mr. Davis ? Mr, Davis. Same answer. Mr. Moiutis. I have no further questions at this time, Senator. I ask that you order the witness to stand by. Senator Watkins. Stand by. That means you will report to the open hearing room. £2ihid of Davis testimony taken in executive session.] Mr. Mokris. That concludes the testimony of Mr. Davis. One other thing, Senator, I would like to point out, because I think it should be abundantly clear from our record, that the last two witnesses who appeared here today were not subpenaed because they represented anybody. At the very outset these were the first people we subpenaed, and. we told them, these particular witnesses, that they were scheduled to be the first witnesses, and they asked that they testify last. They acknowledged that on the public record, and I would like for the record at this point to show that fact. Senator Johnston. Thankyou. Any other questions? Mr.Momtis. No. Senator. Senator Johnston. There are no questions. The witness will be excused at this particular time. Mrs.BousLOO. Thankyou, Senator. Senator Johnston. The committee will adjourn until 9 : 30 tomorrow morning. ,. , , _ ,. , . (Whereupon, at 12 : 30 p. m., the subcommittee adjourned. ) HEARINGS REGARDING COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES IN THE TERRITORY OF HAWAII— PART 3 Exhibit 4A HEARINGS A , P , . J/ BEFORE THE ° COMMITTEE ON TO- AMERICAN ACTIVITIES jt\* HOUSE OF EEPEESENTATIYE8 EIGHTY-FIRST CONGRESS SECOND SESSION APRIL 17, 18, AND 19, 1950 APPENDIX INDEX Printed for the use of tlie Committee on TJn-American Activities UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE GGG36 WASHINGTON : 1950 COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES IN HAWAII 2065 Mr. Wheeler. Yes, sir. Mr. Tavexxer. 1 have no further questions. Mr. Waltei;. Mr. Wheeler, this man Cvetic you mentioned, during the period between l!>41 and 1S>4!>, was it '( Mr. Wheeler. That is correct, sir. Mr. Walter, When he became a leader of the Communist Party of the United States, lie was actually an FIJI agent ? Mr. Wheeler. That is correct, sir. According to his testimony, he was on the payroll of the FBI during that period of time. Mr. Wal™. All right. Mr. IIarrisox. They paid him a little better than the Communist Party, didn't they* Mr. Wheeler. 1 think so. Mr. Tavexxer. Do you recall that during the course of his testi- mony he described a Communist Party cell which he assisted in or- ganizing in the Crucible Steel Co., where the membership was as low as 10 or 12 members, that is, a cell of the Communist Party % Mr. Wheeler. Yes, sir. Mr. Tavexxer, Did his testimony develop that that cell, composed of 10 to V2 members, was able to organize and take over a union com- posed of *J,S00 individuals? Mr. Wheeler. That is correct, Mr. Tavenner. Mr. Tavexxer. And that the cell did control that union until the leadership of that union were identified as members of the Communist Party, when the union members ousted them ? Mr. AYiieeler. Yes, sir. Mr. Tavexxer. I have no further questions. (The witness was excused.) Air. Walter. The subcommittee, will take a short recess. ( Recess was taken from 2 : 55 to 3 : OS p. m.) Mr. Walter. The subcommittee will be in order. Call your nest witness. Mr. Tavexxer. Mr. Ed. Berman. Mr. Walter. Raise your right hand, please. Do you swear the testimony you are" about to give will be tfie truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God ? Mr. Ber:max. I do. TESTIMONY OP EDWARD BERMAN Mr. Tavexxer. What is your name, please? Air. Beiuiax. Edward Berman. Mr. Tavexxer. Where do yon live, Mr. Berman ? Mr. Ber^iax. At 5311 Paiko Drive, Aina Ilaina, Honolulu. Mr. Tavexxer. What is your occupation ? Mr. Berman, I am an attorney at law. Mr. Tavexxer. How long have you lived in the Territory of Hawaii? Mr. Beratax. I first came to Hawaii in 1931 ; I left in 103S to study law and I returned in 1940. So I have been of the islands or close to the islands since 1081. Mr. Tavexxer. Were yon ever affiliated with an organization known as the Hawaiian Association for Civic Unity ? 2066 COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES IN HAWAII Mr, Bermak. I joined that organization and was a member of it for about two meetings, in 1947. Mr. Tavenner. Tell the committee briefly the history of that organization. Mr. Bekmax. The Hawaiian Association for Civil Unity was or- ganized back around 19-±G, was supj^osed to be a liberal organization for the purposes of civic unity, and so on, and social matters, and as I got the background of the organization it had a very good response from the liberal and conservative people of this community, as an organization that they could join. I learned in 1047 that a lot of peo- ple had moved into the organization who were repugnant to the orig- inal membership and that the organization, which had originally had about 200 members, dwindled down to around 25 or 30. At the meeting where I was invited to attend, where I joined, I was invited to see if something could be done to neutralize the group that entered into the organization, who had practically taken it over. The situation on that particular night was that the organization was try- ing—I believe it was during a legislative session here — to put over a FEPA bill, a Fair Employment Practices Act, and that they were trying to propagandize the organization, this small element there, that there was need for a bill here to eliminate racial discrimination, and were, trying to create the impression within the organization that racial discrimination was very, very wide in these islands. The group that 1 joined with there included Mr. Arnold Wills, of the National Labor Relations Board, and I remember specifically was trying to show that no evidence had been produced by this other element that there was rank discrimination against races in these islands and until such evidence could be produced before the legislature itself, it would be almost hopeless to get such a bill enacted. This element argued that regardless of whether there was any evidence of discrimination or not, I recall in this meeting, a bill like this should be forced through the legislature so that if any discrimination should develop here they would have an ax that they could chop someone's head off with, anil so forth. Finally, as a result of this fight and conflict between what I would call the left-wing and right-wing groups of HACU, Hawaiian Association for Civic Unity, the organization just collapsed. In other words, the left-wing element lost its strength and it just went out of existence, and that was the end of HACU, toward the end of the legislative session of 1947. Mr. Tavexxeis. Then, did you become associated or affiliated with another organization, that is known as NAACP, meaning National Association for Advancement of Colored People? Mr. Bekmax. Yes, I did. Sometime in 104S I got a call from a Mrs. Catherine Christopher, who lived at that time at Pearl City, whose husband was in the Government service, and also from a Miss Mary Noonan, who is secretary of the local Republican Club, and they asketl me if I would not get into the NAACP, that the same elements who had once controlled HACU had moved into the NAACP, and she mentioned the Reineckes and the Fujimotos and a few others. I went out there to the first NAACP meeting, and I found that the same group that had been in the HACU meeting had now moved over to the colored people out there at CHA 3, out there at Pearl City, and had prac- tically taken over that organization and were using that as a spring- COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES IN HAWAII 2067 board for putting over an FEPC bill among the colored people who are working in the Government service. We. got a few more people and moved in there and were soon in a position where our own strength was about equal to theirs. As a result of bringing in about ItS or 20 ii£;iji-yi iii^ j-fJi-^ivic-iJi, iiju Ji^iil- "-t«iJl u.uivjjl^; out* aim U1U JUll WiJlg another, in which the election resulted in a tie vote. Following that, there was another election a few months later* and again the election resulted in a tie vote. Both groups were trying to bring in people to offset each other. Finally, Walter White came through here, secre- tary of the NAACP, on the. Denny Tour of the Air that was here last year. And as a result of a report made to him of the situation, members of the executive board of the NA.ACP received letters from the national headquarters as to Mrs. Catherine Christopher's position and not to hold a third meeting because of the situation in the NAACP, and we were asked to correspond with the organization. And as a result of correspondence back to New York, the charter of the NAACP was revoked over here. . Mr. Tavenner. T hand yon what purports to be a photostatic copy of a letter written by you on September 20, 1040, to Mr. Roy Wilkins, acting secretary. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and I will ask you if you can identify that as a copy of your letter? Mr. Berman. Yes. This is the letter that I wrote. Mr. Tavexxer. Will you read it, please? Mr. Bebman. This is elated September 26, 1949, and is addressed from Honolulu [reading] : Mr. KOY WlLKIXS, Acting Secretary, National .^uncintion for the Advancement of Colored People, 20 West Fortieth Street, New York IS, N. Y, Dear Sik: In reply to your letter of the 16th, this is to advise yon that I am a member of the executive committee of the Honolulu branch and believe that Mrs. Catherine Christopher, acting president of the Honolulu branch, NAACP, acted in good faith and for the best interest of the organization by not holding an election under the circumstances that prevailed here in Hawaii. 1 was at one of the election meetings at which one Frank Marshall Davis, formerly of Chicago (and formerly editor of the Chicago Communist paper, the Star) suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize tlio membership about our "racial problems" in Hawaii. He had just sneaked in here on a boat, and presto, was an "expert" on racial probles in Hawaii. Comrade Davis was sup- ported by others who recently "sneaked" into the organization with the avowed intent and purpose of converting it. into a front for the Stalinist line. These others were the same party liners who tried to take over and dominate an organization known locally as the Hawaii Committee for Civic Unity. The organization collapsed, due to their tactics. Having destroyed that organization they would now destroy the local branch of the NAACP. They create a mythical racial problem here. They agitate with the same fervor that the Communist press does on the mainland. The result is discord and dis- trust, not unity. "We have no Harlems, little or big, in Hawaii. We have no Chinese quarter, or Japanese quarter, or Hawaiian quarter. 1 am a Caucasian. A Hawaiian lives to my right: a Japanese family across the street from me and a Chinese family to my left. "Wo are staunch friends. There is no segregation here. You have probably heard there are one or two disreputable barrooms on Nuunnn Street (slum area) that exclude Negroes. My answer to that is that no self-respecting citizen of African descent or any other race would go near 206S COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES IN HAWAII those places with a 10-foot pole. The Royal Hawaiian, the Jloana, the Haleku- Innl (there Walter White stopped) do not exclude Negroes or anv other race. The point I am making is that the Communist Party was deliberately trying to stir up racism in an area where there is fine racial unity and harmony. It is better to have no organization than to have these tactics continue, airs. Christopher acted in good faith. She knew what was going on and it was her method of checking them. Already, scores of Negro members were frightened away from these meetings because of the influx of this element. Only by a reorganization with a policy that will check this infiltration, can we hope to get former members back into a local NAACP branch. We are going to have to have that authority over here — otherwise you'll have a branch exclusively composed of yelping Stalinists and their dupes — characters who are more con- cerned about the speedy assassination of Tito than they are about the advance- ment of the colored people of these United States. Mr, Walter. You ought to write that same kind of letter to Bill Boyle, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Tavexneu. I desire to offer the letter in evidence and mark it "Berman Exhibit No. 1." .- Mr. Walter. It will be received. 35 Air. Tavenner. I now hand you a letter and ask you if that is an acknowledgment of the receipt of the former letter ? Mr. Berman. I received this subsequent to October 26, 1949. It is addresed to my law office [reading] : Dear Mr. Berman : Your letter of September 2G. addressed to Mr. Roy Wilkins, has been referred to me for submission to the committee on branches. The com- mittee meets on November 4, at which time it will review the Honolulu matter. Very truly yours, Gloster E. Current, Director of Branches. It is out of New York City. Mr. Tavenxer. I desire to offer the letter in evidence and mark it "Exhibit Berman 2." Mr. Walter. Let it be marked and received for the record. 30 Mr. Tavenxek. I hand you a third letter and ask you if that repre- sents the action taken by the national organization of the NAACP? Mr. Berman. Yes. This is a copy of the letter I received, which is addressed to Mrs. Christopher, who was acting president of the Hono- lulu branch while these elections were going on. Mr. Tavexner. Will you read it ? Mr. Berman. It is addressed to Sirs. Christopher, acting president, Honolulu Branch, NAACP. SOS Fifteenth Street. CH A 3, Honolulu 60, T. H. [reading] : Dear Mrs. Chbistopheb: The national hoard of directors, at its meeting on November 14, 1049. upon recommendation of the committee on branches, voted to revoke the charter of the Honolulu branch for the following reasons: 1. The officers of the Honolulu branch have, by their failure, refusal, or neglect to complete the holding of the election of officers as required by the constitution and bylaws for branches and as ordered by the national office, been guilty of conduct inimical to the best interest of the NAACP. 2. The difference in the problems of racial discrimination in the continental United States and their solution as contrasted with the problems of the Terri- tory makes difficult the applicability of techniques and methods used by branches and the nationtal office to effect the policy of the association in the Territory. "Retained in committee files. 36 Retained in committee fles. K/2. Exhibit 1 ■ OOSFICE WTIAL so. 6. February 17, ll^ r " RleAIT "OW.ARIAT; - •' AhnStr -- filets, ^ l3n . # W3TIPF8 OTSODSBEii, 1. HawflUfln question. - Heport^r: Flake. .»BCI8I07«. 3i#nerf| and the r4ol»!f«™ 3i Ration . Porter Sb;rw» ' 1 "-i ulln .!' ' of H Ea 3 J 3rn -|^| t ^ S «tat 1 ve. "^ Exhibit 2 J \ ; ' 1 ^riflinalnissisck 1457 +wl Coiuiclieniid I CBOPHMK .-n |rTT-r-:..^ Tfi THI CPU^A. ON K ft. '.'All.. Th* ;^rn W lrVdl«Jontenjt of the ^eo of t.h n»>i»Yna».«i >& — -txff il l* inn *~ n ~ -•-■•-- S of the "*«»™ !?}*"!" "- m £\hS d2«l5S«t of Ibe .as. re- rive every: oonsible =•* fl >2 t *"?f. l ° l ,,° a " he foundations «rilV be laid ',oIution*ry movement i«™^ ( S 2, ^' ^,«i of the «j«o.l- , for the formation of * ~o •■ .-i«l ; ' ■ '.JW nlt0 other i^uffioient In- nation B«»«''-«nt ir FSwil • ™- "■ J t .^ibl'S at present t S conducted by the l»rl«an Party. • revolutlotl ar» move- . .. li ..-nt aho.'ilO bs bnaed on tae d" ™*}"* the yoke of. America lmper-. • ■idli™."""* «»• *»"?;?£" *? ; n th"tlo^n8 of the national liberation , frtR,erB'. republic. Uto, b * h * "f*™^ £ ni siu h nvo to gro»t out struT-lr =AO»»et b * "* i «' tl V l""J rt, f 'S national liberation movement ' of the crestlor, «« W' lo f "*2j.i h t B S? "?*• *»»*i«»" i>a ' ,ty •*?'• IMeif, U 5.e the flr.t '^ 3 f "f^ln of »ni 5 ft of self-determln*- M"n»t>i» S»««; „f---P ifl uo to th" Point. of ^oaration", to tior. of the '-o^ol-s ?f . p '?**\', s " a sa foroes, and to expose the F-.i^ r «•»■-, r „ ** the ^-ii^-**^* ;-,■■■ .re the h, 8 lc t»^e of the *g»j£» Suction -hich, according to . r. 8 T-aol.-'Uy thr- solution of ttjc , i't-elf «« the t«»k of destroying . il, mat-rial *.v»il*bl<:, tr enonta *"*""" ; ™ t h* bi'-; plantation* : - isllsts), »r.a the divisirr. oi 8 io?eim of the national Ir . eddltlor. t» thv irHir •• r " '\ c "f-,^"rv \>over>mt .should oon- ., lib,r,vion '^:^lK-* ««"« ^ 8r ?V M ' ir,KU - BlS« rainir,: A? foUo- " lx,.-o i ^ , the c? « a «. s ■ • . for which shcula receive . »ti - ioxi . . —.^a . __ agj.Jnst the • . 1) Full dyocietio rl|htn for ^tbe ^cpi ^ terror; freodom of e?e ? ch, nre«i- t .-'« <»u. , r;.!,!-!,. full eieotofl ri-.bt' ^^e^'r^idiere^d^ilor. at .ht-bour day -for in.o Volition of the. oon' tabllshment of * r » the coloured of ^ Tiployment anrt-» 'OP 0678* * "" C) ^eduotiqn.o.r par , and 3har*-croppo*8 Th« OP U3fc »bouia_ in, a central WWW ,^ on. by v«irlouft yrouos, " * •• <*» Tc v t . irf the ri^nt tio o«i5«- itofranolHeod i.-.&saeB HlsoriMttt^tion ""«lno t etc*) * cultural jbour.' iy for; . * T^J ■ «re and *H« ^Ss '^i ,nt for small lty of- eotttDliah- the br-san* publish & central organ), - Exhibit 3 82d Congress! 1st Session j SENATE /DOCUMBNT t No. 89 COMMUNIST DOMINATION OF CERTAIN UNIONS i REPORT OF THE OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON LABOR AND LABOB-MA* EELATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOE AND PUBLIC W UNITED STATES SENATE EIGHTY-SECOND CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ON COMMUNIST DOMINATION OF CERTAIN UNIONS AGAINST THE IMm&Z? IN VESTIGATE CB AND WAREHOUsSl^AL LONGSHOeI On NovemW s ins will sponsor t SESSIONS AT MIDLAND HOTEL MAY 30th TO JUNE 1st WILL URGE ALL TO "DIG IN FOR PEACE" Meeting at a time the forces for war in this country are straining every effort to involve the American people actively in a war for empire, the 3rd National ; Convention of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade will consider the problem of how best to bring the experiences of the organization in the recent; Spanish War to the people of this country. / In a statement to the press, Major ' f Milton Wolff, National Commander of the veteran's organization said. ". : . The American people look upon the vet- erans as the foremost champions of de- mocracy and anti-fascism. We must utilize this prestige in the boldest fash- ion to explain the fundamental differ- ences between this Imperialist war — which we vigorously oppose — and the Spanish people's defense of democracy which we just as vigorously supported-." Wolff went on to recall how the Brit- ish Non-intervention policy and the Roosevelt Arms Embargo had left the Spanish people at the mercy of Hitler and Mussolini. And how the same poli- cies had inevitably led to the infamous Munich Agreement. "It Is fashionable now," he continued, "In AArlnln ritn1nmaHi> olrrlon In Waoh- showed that when we crossed the Ati lantic to light In Spain. We show it no by our support of China. But the pre ent war is a struggle for empire, the Anglo-German war, democracy is/ slogan, not an issue. I Wolff also warned that "Efforts a being made now to divert the real pei sentiments of the people into organ) tlons like the America First Commll whose leaders are no more conceit with democracy than the German-Ai lean Bund. The American people sH and must express their deep desirt peace but they can only do it thn organizations which are genuinely/ cerned. The American Peace Mot tlon is as yet the only true caann* this expression and Americans - where and In increasing numbei "-""i>ns will sponsor a more and ^•ft-Afen, "■■■»«« Off, decl roed: * ** **«. on H .R. 17?e "" ° 0Un ^ a*. him (/*** ' M «%gro Or- **&•?***>, He, *»0«* *Xc ej . **■ «Z *"** ■Qfctf ^ h Sfetf ,v * Q ^ ) *2 '<*«- 1st Illinois Conference oi the National Negro Congress Saturday and Sunday November 9th - 10th, 1940 WABASH Y.M.C.A- Corner 38th & Wabash Chicago, Illinois "The whole history of the progress oi Liberty shows that all concessions have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing ground. Power concedes nothing without a demand. ' It never did and never will. "—FREDERICK DOUGLAS Exhibit9 November 23, I9I4.9 THE PATTERSON - WILKINS CORRESPONDENCE Note to Editors and Commentators : The following is for your information and for whatever, use you may wish to make of it. You may have already received the complete text of Mr. Patter- son's letter. On November llj., William L. Patterson, national executive 2 eCr «M?i r 7 ° the Civil Rights Congress, wrote a lengthy letter to Roy Wilkins,- acting NAACP secretary, offering the "fupport" and 'cooperation 11 of the CRC in the NAACP-initiated Civil Rights Mobil- ization and asking why the CRC had not been included in the list of organizations invited by the NAACP to participate in the mobiliza- ^^ 1 ^^$- Sp °^°r s : J . Althou 6fc Mr. Patterson did not indicate in his S?^?£ S i°5 ?u fc lfc J? as an open letter, mimeographed copies were distributed to the public and press. " On November 22, Mr. Wilkins answered Mr. Patterson's letter. The complete text of that answer follows: ±9*™*. Dear Mr. Patterson: • . 1 have your seven page letter of November lk which obviously tion"°of m ?£! L^p eqUe f fo ^^°^tion on the Civil Rights Mobiliza- tion of tee NAACP, and an offer of cooperation. It is plainly a declamation on the current philosophy of the Civil Rights Congress on what it chooses to classify as civil rights. 6 Although your letter was not labelled as an open letter, we have since learned that it was mimeographed and strategically, if not widely, distributed. This tactic is not either surprising or alarming, and merely tends to confirm our estimate of the real pur- pose of the communication. p waar-P wi J? 1 ? 1011 * US *?§ up seven P a S e s we can. say at once that the Ittll J* annin S committee, which carried out the mandate of our annual convention, agreed not to include the Civil Rights Congress on the list of organizations to be invited to participate. l1th ^ ?S^™ e ?* er n th T e Scottsboro case and our experience there 7h£ /«?£?■. J p ? e £? at i onal Labor Defense, one of the predecessors of tne Civil Rights Congress. We remember that the present Civil Rights Congress is composed of the remnants of the ILD and other groups S iLZTf 6r ****.*? the Scottsboro case the NAAcHas subjfc?ed to the most unprincipled vilification. We remember the campion of slander in the Daily Worker. We remember the leaflets and the speakers and the whole unspeakable machinery that was turned loose ST^SM! did not embrace the ,w? r" ^^ « Collin We want none of that unity today. We of the NAACP remember that during the war when Nesro Americans were fighting for jobs on the home front and f ightifg f or decent treatment in the armed services we could get no help frL Exhibit 10 JOINT COMMITTEE TO SECURE A FAIR TRIAL OF THE TRENTON SIX Dr. Edward S. Corwin Professor Emeritus of Jurisprudence PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Bishop Francis J. McConnell THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH Co-Chatrmen Dr. Allan Knicht Chalmers Professor, School of Theology BOSTON UNIVERSITY Canon Robert D. Smith President New Jersey Welfare Council DIOCESAN HOUSE, TRENTON, N. J. Co-Treasurers Arthur Garfield Hays — hays r st. john, abramson andschulman Thurgoqh Marshall Special Counsel, N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Of Counsel April 5, 1951 Fifth Floor 20 WEST 40th STREET New York 18, N. Y. Dear Friend: Six Uegroes 1 are on trial for their lives for the third time. They are the now famous Trenton Six, whose case has attracted international attention. The facts appear in the enclosed statement. This joint appeal is undertaken by two cooperating groups who have engaged extraordinarily able counsel to defend these men in the third trial. This counsel is unanimous in the belief that all the defendants are innocent . We have taken over the defense from a Communist- controlled organization. We believe it is time for patriotic Americans to undertake the defense of innocent men instead of leaving these cases to those who too often exploit them for propaganda purposes. Every man, whether Negro or white, is entitled to a fair trial, and the Supreme Court of Hew Jersey held that the first trial of the Trenton Six was "tainted with error." We shall carry this case, if need be, to the United States Supremo Court. To us equal justice is not a shibboleth. It is a large part of the whole which makes America great. We ask for your financial help in our struggle -to save the lives of innocent men. Sinoerely yours, Dr. Edward S. Corwin Bishop Francis J. McConnell Co-Chairmen *®.i«