The Arguments over the Japanese Fishing Industries in the Territory of Hawai'i from the 1930s to the 1940s.

Abstract

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the territorial government of Hawai'i demanded that the federal government fund extensive fisheries researches of Hawaiian waters. The Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior collaborated with the territorial government. These sectors aimed to increase the local food supply and stocks in case of a national emergency. The U. S. military and President F. D. Roosevelt, however, turned down these requests, and banned Japanese fishing operations during the Pacific War. After the war, the territorial government successfully lobbied for the bill to facilitate the study of Pacific fisheries in order to establish its hegemony over fishing grounds and markets of the central Pacific, which had been dominated by Japan.