In September of 1928, 19 year old Myles Yutaka Fukunaga abducted Gill Jamieson,
the 10 year old son of Frederick Jamieson, the vice president of the
Hawaiian Trust Company. About an hour later, in a dense kiawe thicket
near the Ala Wai canal in Waikiki, Fukunaga struck the child dead with
a steel chisel. Later that night, he got $4000 in marked ransom money
from Jamieson.
The
abduction of the son of a prominent haole business executive shocked
everyone. Police set up roadblocks, people were deputized at the National
Armory Headquarters and organized into search parties. Many others,
like the Boy Scouts and ROTC cadets joined the search for Gill. Most
screamed for the death penalty to be applied to the kidnapper.
After
falsely arresting and forcing a confession from Henry Kaisan, the former
chauffeur of the Jamieson family, Fukunaga was caught trying to spend
some of the ransom money. During his ride to the police station, the
siren from the Aloha Tower sounded. Crowds jammed the streets of Honolulu
to catch a glimpse of him and to demand the death penalty.
In trying to understand why this nice boy would become a killer,
Professor Lockwood Myrick from the University of Hawaii pointed
to how Fukunaga was a product of the Americanization program
underway in the Hawaii school system. The 1920 Federal Survey
of Education had concluded that the primary responsibility of Hawaiis
public schools was "to make loyal intelligent Americans by imparting
to children of alien and non-English speaking Oriental parents the ideals,
customs, and language of America." Whiteness was glorified while
many elements in the culture of the students' parents were held up to scorn. Elite
social clubs such as the Outrigger Canoe Club and the Pacific Club barred
membership to Asians. |