Bayonets in Paradise

Harry N. Scheiber, Jane L. Scheiber

ISBN 13: 9798880702411

Published by University of Hawai'i Press, US, 2025

About this Item

Selected as a 2017 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Bayonets in Paradise recounts the extraordinary story of how the army imposed rigid and absolute control on the total population of Hawaii during World War II. Declared immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, martial law was all-inclusive, bringing under army rule every aspect of the Territory of Hawaii's laws and governmental institutions. Even the judiciary was placed under direct subservience to the military authorities. The result was a protracted crisis in civil liberties, as the army subjected more than 400,000 civilians-citizens and alien residents alike-to sweeping, intrusive social and economic regulations and to enforcement of army orders in provost courts with no semblance of due process. In addition, the army enforced special regulations against Hawaii's large population of Japanese ancestry; thousands of Japanese Americans were investigated, hundreds were arrested, and some 2,000 were incarcerated. In marked contrast to the well-known policy of the mass removals on the West Coast, however, Hawaii's policy was one of "selective," albeit preventive, detention. Army rule in Hawaii lasted until late 1944-making it the longest period in which an American civilian population has ever been governed under martial law. The army brass invoked the imperatives of security and "military necessity" to perpetuate its regime of censorship, curfews, forced work assignments, and arbitrary "justice" in the military courts. Broadly accepted at first, these policies led in time to dramatic clashes over the wisdom and constitutionality of martial law, involving the president, his top Cabinet officials, and the military. The authors also provide a rich analysis of the legal challenges to martial law that culminated in Duncan v. Kahanamoku, a remarkable case in which the U.S. Supreme Court finally heard argument on the martial law regime-and ruled in 1946 that provost court justice and the military's usurpation of the civilian government had been illegal. Based largely on archival sources, this comprehensive, authoritative study places the long-neglected and largely unknown history of martial law in Hawaii in the larger context of America's ongoing struggle between the defense of constitutional liberties and the exercise of emergency powers.

Seller Inventory # LU-9798880702411

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Bayonets in Paradise
• Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press, US
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798880702411
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Selected as a 2017 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Bayonets in Paradise recounts the extraordinary story of how the army imposed rigid and absolute control on the total population of Hawaii during World War II. Declared immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, martial law was all-inclusive, bringing under army rule every aspect of the Territory of Hawaii's laws and governmental institutions. Even the judiciary was placed under direct subservience to the military authorities. The result was a protracted crisis in civil liberties, as the army subjected more than 400,000 civilians—citizens and alien residents alike—to sweeping, intrusive social and economic regulations and to enforcement of army orders in provost courts with no semblance of due process. In addition, the army enforced special regulations against Hawaii's large population of Japanese ancestry; thousands of Japanese Americans were investigated, hundreds were arrested, and some 2,000 were incarcerated. In marked contrast to the well-known policy of the mass removals on the West Coast, however, Hawaii's policy was one of "selective," albeit preventive, detention.

Army rule in Hawaii lasted until late 1944—making it the longest period in which an American civilian population has ever been governed under martial law. The army brass invoked the imperatives of security and "military necessity" to perpetuate its regime of censorship, curfews, forced work assignments, and arbitrary "justice" in the military courts. Broadly accepted at first, these policies led in time to dramatic clashes over the wisdom and constitutionality of martial law, involving the president, his top Cabinet officials, and the military. The authors also provide a rich analysis of the legal challenges to martial law that culminated in Duncan v. Kahanamoku, a remarkable case in which the U.S. Supreme Court finally heard argument on the martial law regime—and ruled in 1946 that provost court justice and the military's usurpation of the civilian government had been illegal.

Based largely on archival sources, this comprehensive, authoritative study places the long-neglected and largely unknown history of martial law in Hawaii in the larger context of America's ongoing struggle between the defense of constitutional liberties and the exercise of emergency powers.

About the Author

Harry N. Scheiber is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and History, Emeritus, in the School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. He also directs the School’s Institute for Legal Research and its Law of the Sea Institute, and is former director of its Sho Sato Program in Japanese and U.S. Law. Previously he was professor of history at Dartmouth College and at the University of California, San Diego. A leading authority on constitutional and legal history, Scheiber is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of the American Society for Legal History. He has been a Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer, the Wallace Fujiyama Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Hawai`i, and twice a Guggenheim Fellow. He is author or editor of fourteen books, including The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 1917-1921, recently republished; Earl Warren and the Warren Court; The State and Freedom of Contract; American Law and the Constitutional Order; Ohio Canal Era: and New Concepts of Rights in Japanese Law. Other books include Federalism and the Judicial Mind, and, most recently, several books on ocean law. He has published more than one hundred articles in journals of history, law, and the social sciences.