This book analyzes the larger racial significance of the quick conviction and death sentence given to a likely insane Japanese American, Myles Fukunaga, for murdering a White boy, Gill Jamieson, in 1928. The Fukunaga case demonstrates how race operated in Hawai‘i to enforce the hierarchical relations between Whites and non-Whites. In arguing that Fukunaga was raced to death, two different meanings of race are employed. First, he was hanged because he was of the “Japanese race” and committed his crime during the 1920s, when Japanese Americans were perceived as the most politically and economica ... More

This book analyzes the larger racial significance of the quick conviction and death sentence given to a likely insane Japanese American, Myles Fukunaga, for murdering a White boy, Gill Jamieson, in 1928. The Fukunaga case demonstrates how race operated in Hawai‘i to enforce the hierarchical relations between Whites and non-Whites. In arguing that Fukunaga was raced to death, two different meanings of race are employed. First, he was hanged because he was of the “Japanese race” and committed his crime during the 1920s, when Japanese Americans were perceived as the most politically and economically threatening group to continued White supremacy in Hawai‘i. Second, Fukunaga was raced or rushed to his death sentence less than three weeks after his crime because Whites wanted immediate revenge. The book argues that the Fukunaga case was a major component in a trajectory of racial injustice against non-Whites, including Japanese and Filipino labor leaders who, after organizing multiplantation strikes in 1920 and 1924, were imprisoned based on likely perjured testimony. Fukunaga’s hanging is also connected to the lynching in 1932 of Joe Kahahawai, a Native Hawaiian, who was falsely accused of raping a White woman and was also raced to death. The book also discusses how incipient forms of colorblindness and multiculturalism were strategically deployed by Whites to deny the significance of race in the accelerated conviction of Fukunaga.