This article analyzes the politics of memory of the 1889 lynching of Katsu Goto, from the 1960s to 1994, when a memorial to the Japanese immigrant was erected in Honokaa on the Island of Hawaii. Why was this memorial constructed more than 100 years after the lynching? Some scholarly works have portrayed Goto’s hanging as a physical sanction to maintain white supremacy in the late 19th century; however, little attention has been paid to public attitudes toward this violent incident during the commemoration. This study explores the retrospective interpretations of individuals and communities.

Katsu Goto immigrated to Hawaii in 1885 with other kanyaku imin, government-contract laborers, hired for the growing sugar industry. After fulfilling his labor contract, Goto opened his own general store in Honokaa, a sugar plantation town. Many Japanese plantation workers sought Goto’s advice on fostering better working conditions; his guidance enraged Caucasian plantation managers, who wanted to maintain the status quo. Subsequently, Goto was found dead, hanging from a telephone pole in 1889.

By the mid-20th century, the memory of the incident had faded even in Honokaa, since those who knew it kept silent. In the 1960s, however, the silence was broken under the influence of changing racial relations and an ethnic revival. The Japanese community in Honokaa erected a marble gravestone to honor Goto at a Japanese Buddhist temple. A Japanese-American labor activist in California advocated the creation of a pilgrimage committee to visit the gravestone so as to shed light on Goto as a folk hero for Japanese and Asian Americans in the context of identity politics on the U.S. mainland. Moreover, a memorial service was held for Goto in Honokaa; politicians and labor union leaders participated in the event. The blue roof tile, Japanese-style memorial, which was unveiled in 1994, holds a bronze plaque that honors Goto, referring to him as “a pioneer labor leader” whose vision extended beyond an ethnic framework.

It should be noted that here the ethnic historical memories of Goto, as part of the rediscovered Japanese immigrant heritage of the 1960s, has been intertwined with local collective historical remembrances, based on the nexus of race and class in the sugar plantations. Furthermore, the memorial does not emphasize past protests against racial oppression, although it memorializes the lynching; rather, it inscribes the collective memories of the local people, who had suffered from the closing of the sugar industry and represents Goto as a pioneer regional labor leader.