Statehood Countdown #1 (Eisenhower)

Made it through the countdown! In this final posting in the countdown, I wanted to draw your attention to a document that is easily accessible: Proclamation 3309, the official document declaring Hawaii a state. This is one of the documents that was received by the Secretary General of the UN as A/4088/Add.5 and submitted to…

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Statehood Countdown #2 (Wilcox)

With tomorrow being the end of our countdown, This post elaborates the context of correspondence between Asst. Secretary of State Francis O. Wilcox and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. This is further documentation to the assertion I made yesterday, as well as in previous posts, that as much as the push for Statehood was…

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Statehood Countdown #3 (Hill)

Three days to Statehood and it’s time for some self-promotion. Star-Bulletin article came out today, 5 Questions, 50 Answers,” in which Burl Burlingham sat me down on a virtual roundtable with some real luminaries like Gov. Ariyoshi, Federal Judge Sam King, DeSoto Brown, Victoria Kneubuhl, Rocky Jensen, Nanette Napoleon, Dan Boylan, Congresswoman Pat Saiki (no…

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Statehood Countdown #4 (Dulles)

With four days left to this Statehood Countdown, I’ve posted a 1956 letter between the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles to Senator Knowland. Following SC#6 posting, Dulles is responding to correspondence that Knowland sent him on the removal of Hawaii and Alaska from the list of non-self-governing territories. The context for Dulles’ response touches upon the…

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Statehood Countdown #5 (1943 C.R.)

 As part of our Statehood Countdown, I was going to post another document by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, following yesterday’s posting by Senator Knowland, however, as I was going through the Congressional Record (Nov. 12, 1943 p.9469), I stumbled onto a little utterance by Senator Rolph: “The only objection to annexation came from…

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Statehood Countdown #6 (Knowland)

With only 6 days left in the Statehood Countdown, I’m posting one of the seminal letters from which this research stemmed from. This is the initial correspondence between Senator Knowland, who at this time was the House minority leader in the Senate, to Francis O. Wilcox, the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, Department of…

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Statehood Countdown #7 (Morton)

After yesterday’s overwhelming posting which I’ll be working on well beyond the statehood countdown, this post is more of a recap of what we have seen before regarding the State Department’s position on statehood. This time, we are looking at a draft letter– never sent– between Thurston Morton, Assistant Secretary of State, International Organization, Office…

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Statehood Countdown #8 (Fressinet)

Continuing with #8 of our Statehood Countdown, I’ve posted the 1949 correspondence between Andre Fressinet, the General-Secretary of the International Union of Seamen, Fishermen, Rivermen, and Dock Workers and also linked to a lengthy response and analysis by Louis Goldblatt, the Secretery-Treasurer of the ILWU in which he discussed the 1949, 178-day Longshoreman’s strike in…

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Statehood Countdown #9 (Quinn)

Continuing our “Statehood Countdown,” we’re looking at a Memorandum of Conversation between Governor William Quinn of Hawaii, David Bane, Deputy Director, Office of Northeast Asian Affairs, State Department, and Ambassador Munro from New Zealand. Although this memo is fairly short, there are several remarkable things about this correspondence. First, though I should mention that my…

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Statehood Countdown #10 (Midkiff)

This is correspondence from 1950 between Hawaii’s Frank E. Midkiff and Senator Bill Knowland, (R. CA). Frank E. Midkiff was an educator and businessman who was a very prominent and influential community leader in Hawaii. Among many of his titles and community obligations, he was president of Kamehameha School from ( 1923-34), Member of the Territorial…

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