Excerpt from Revolt in Paradise: The Social Revolution in Hawaii After Pearl Harbor

In all the world there's no lovelier place to live than the islands of Hawaii.

It may seem strange to have read this, when you have begun the pages which follow, for the story they tell is an ugly one. But it is not the story of the physical charms of Hawaii. That - Aloha Oe! - has been written by more gracious writers, many hundreds of them. This is an attempt to tell about the men of Hawaii and to describe the incredible conflict which, under a cloak of tropic calm, has been taking place among them. It is told now because their struggle has reached a turning point. The suddenness of the impact of war was enough to set long-smoldering elements of conflict into violent motion. And now a new order is being established in Hawaii, replacing the old system of polite tyranny which ruled the Islands for more that a century.

The handful of men whose word hitherto had been almighty in Hawaii may seem to emerge out of the following pages as ogres full-blown, evil men without scruple. That is not their nature. Almost without exception, the autocrats who ruled Hawaii are men with a highly inbred sense of righteousness. They are men with too deeply inherent a conscience to depart one iota from their code. But that, precisely, was the key to their wickedness.

It was this code and the ruthless manner in which they enforced it that made of Hawaii a community in chains.

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