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ABSTRACT
This paper concerns the ‘education fever’ that marked the early Korean immigrant community’s private schooling initiatives in territorial Hawaiʻi (1898–1959). Drawing on the cases of two Korean private schools – the Korean Central School and the Korean Christian Institute – the paper examines the tensions and conflicts between white American missionary educators and Korean immigrant educators surrounding both the operation of the schools and the pedagogical practices deemed appropriate to the education of ‘Oriental’ students in the US imperial space. These two cases demonstrate that Korean immigrants in territorial Hawaiʻi were persistent and innovative in their efforts to appropriate Americanisation for their own national, communal and individual interests. Moreover, educators and parents challenged colonial educational practices by foregrounding how the Christian pedagogy of their private schools served to differentiate them from other (non-Christian) Asian immigrants, thereby legitimising their presence in white Protestant America.
Acknowledgment
I would like to convey my sincere thanks to Professor Nancy Beadie as well as Professor John Palmer for their thoughtful feedback on this piece. I am also greatly appreciative for the insightful comments offered by the anonymous peer reviewers at History of Education.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 On the ideas and practices of a particular brand of Protestant missionary education first conceived for and imposed upon Native Hawaiians in the early nineteenth century to make them a colonised labour force and ‘civilized’ body, and which later travelled to the continental United States, paving the way for a number of industrial training schools for African Americans and Native Americans such as the Hampton Institute (in Virginia in 1868), the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (in Pennsylvania in 1879), and the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (in Alabama in 1881), see Gary Y. Okihiro, Island World: A History of Hawaiʻi and the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 98–134. This educational programme, which Okihiro called ‘schooling for subservience’, circulated back into Hawai‘i in the late nineteenth century, rebranding itself as a more systematic form of manual training designed to maintain colonised students in subordinate social and economic positions. It was also extended to other US colonial possessions such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines. By drawing ideological, pedagogical and practical connections between the Hilo Boarding School for Boys established in Hawaiʻi in 1836 by missionary David Belden Lyman, and the Hampton Institute founded by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, a Hawaiʻi born son of missionaries, Okihiro illustrates how American Christian missionaries’ educational vision for the 'darker races' germinated in the islands and was later transplanted in the postbellum American South. In this regard, see also James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 33–78. For a more detailed account of the influence of Hawaiʻi’s missionary education on Armstrong’s creation of the Hampton Institute and vice versa, see Carl Kalani Beyer, ‘The Connection of Samuel Chapman Armstrong as Both Borrower and Architect of Education in Hawaiʻi’, History of Education Quarterly 47 (2007): 23–48.
2 Wŏn-young Kim (Warren Y. Kim), Chae-Mi Hanin 50-nyŏnsa [Fifty-Year History of Koreans in America] (Reedley, CA: Charles Ho Kim, 1959); Wayne Patterson, The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaiʻi, 1903–1973 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2000); Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, ‘Syngman Rhee in Hawaiʻi: His Activities in the Early Years, 1913–1915’, in From the Land of Hibiscus, ed. Yŏng-ho Ch’oe (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007); Tŏk-hŭi Yi, Yi Sŭng-man ŭi Hawai Samsipnyŏn [Syngman Rhee’s Thirty Years in Hawaiʻi] (Seoul: Book & People Press, 2015), 53–88; Young Ick Lew, The Making of the First Korean President: Syngman Rhee’s Quest for Independence, 1875–1948 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2014); Hyŏng-ju Ahn, ‘Yi Sŭng-man kwa Hawai Haninch’ŏnyŏn Kyoyuk (1913–1923)’ [Syngman Rhee and Hawaiʻi Korean Youth Education (1913–1923)], in Miju Hanin ŭi Minjŏk Undong [Korean Americans and Their Struggles for National Independence: Commemorating the One Hundredth Anniversary of Korean Americans’ Immigration to the United States], ed. Yŏnse taehakkyo Kukhakyŏnkuwŏn (Seoul: Hye-an Press, 2003), 147–170; Jong-Mun Yoon, ‘Hawai Haninchunganghakwŏnŭi sŏllipkwa unyŏng’ [The Establishment and Administration of the Korean Central School], Sahakyŏnku 88 (2007): 981–1021.
3 By the mid-1940s, nearly 12% of the Korean population was residing in overseas countries that, along with Hawaiʻi, included Manchuria, Siberia, China, Japan, the (continental) United States, Mexico and Cuba. This diaspora in number and scope was remarkable, considering Korea’s rigid isolationist policy that had insulated its territory and people over the past two centuries. See Richard S. Kim, The Quest for Statehood: Korean Immigrant Nationalism and US Sovereignty, 1905-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 16–17.
4 About 1000 of those 7400 Koreans moved to the US mainland in the years between 1905 and 1907. See Kim, The Quest for Statehood, 15.
5 Wayne Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaiʻi, 1896–1910 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1988), 124. According to Patterson, by early 1905 Koreans had become the second largest group of immigrant workers on the plantations. The largest group was the Japanese, who comprised 66% of the total labour force.
6 Ibid., 136–48.
7 Patterson, The Ilse, 3.
8 Ibid.
9 The Immigration Act of 1924 banned the entry of Asians except Filipinos, who were American nationals at that time.
10 Kim, The Quest for Statehood, 15.
11 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (a.k.a. Hart-Celler Act), passed by the Johnson administration, opened up US immigration to nearly the entire world.
12 On the overweening dominance of a few but very strong propertied elite haole class over territorial Hawaiʻi, see Gary Y. Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaiʻi, 1865–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 14–15.
13 John N. Hawkins, ‘Politics, Education, and Language Policy: The Case of Japanese Language Schools in Hawai‘i’, Amerasia Journal 5 (1978): 39–56. Regarding the immigrant populations, see Robert C. Schmitt, Demographic Statistics of Hawaiʻi: 1778–1965 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1968).
14 David K. Yoo, Contentious Spirits: Religion in Korean American History, 1903–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 9.
15 Kim, The Quest for Statehood, 7–12.
16 Yoo, Contentious Spirits, 36.
17 Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America, 1–102.
18 The prospect of a better education for themselves and their children, Patterson posits, was arguably one of the enticements for the first wave of Korean immigrants Korean immigrants to Hawai‘i. To illustrate these immigrants’ strong desire for education, Patterson references the following quotations made by two American missionaries in Korea who worked closely with them, Horace Allen and George Heber Jones, respectively: ‘[for some of the immigrants who left Korea for Hawaiʻi] the idea of obtaining an education for their children seems to be an incentive as well’, and ‘Koreans [in Hawaiʻi] are eager to learn. Half of the Koreans are there in hopes of getting some kind of education.’ For the first quotation, see Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America, 106; and for the second, see Patterson, The Ilse, 121.
19 Yoo, Contentious Spirits, 37.
20 Ibid., 36.
21 Michelle Morgan, ‘Americanizing the Teachers: Identity, Citizenship, and the Teaching Corps in Hawai‘i, 1900–1941’, Western Historical Quarterly 45 (2014): 150.
22 Ibid., 167.
23 Ibid.
24 Biennial Report of the Superintendent Public Instruction (Honolulu: Department of Public Instruction, Territory of Hawaii, 1911–1912), 148.
25 Those Korean Christian leaders included Hŏn-ju Song and Yun-sŏp Pak. See Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 61; Yoon, ‘Hawai Haninchunganghakwŏnŭi sŏllipkwa unyŏng’, 987.
26 Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America, 117.
27 Yi, Yi Sŭng-man ŭi Hawai Samsipnyŏn, 42.
28 Douglas Boswell, ed., All about Hawaiʻi: The Recognized Book of Authentic Information on Hawaiʻi, Combined with Thrum’s Hawaiian Annual and Standard Guide (Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1912), 28. Available historical records do not point to any characteristics that distinguish the Korean students who enrolled in the private schools (or their families) from their public-school counterparts. The existing studies of the first wave of Korean immigrants to Hawaiʻi reveal that unlike Chinese and Japanese emigrants, who were mostly farmers and came primarily from one region of their respective countries, the great majority of Korean emigrants were city dwellers scattered among various urban centres – most were common labourers, with the balance serving in jobs such as government clerk, policeman and household servant. In this regard, see Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America, 103–13; Patterson, The Ilse, 1–10. However, there has been little research into the social profiles of the students themselves. The factors that affected school choice by Koreans in territorial Hawai‘i merit rigorous study. The motives of Korean community leaders in building private schools can perhaps provide some insight into the students who ultimately enrolled.
29 Ahn, ‘Yi Sŭng-man kwa Hawai Haninch’ŏnyŏn Kyoyuk’, 150.
30 Thanks to the society’s ardent plea, about $2000 was collected from Korean immigrants, $1000 from an American benefactor, and $15,000 from the Methodist Episcopal Church through the mediation of Bishop John W. Hamilton. See Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 61; Yi, Yi Sŭng-man ŭi Hawai Samsipnyŏn, 43.
31 Hawaiian Gazette, December 29, 1905, 5. The school’s annual operating expenses were met by student tuition fees, donations from the Korean community and an HMEM appropriation. The annual tuition fee per student was $60 including room and board, which, given the average monthly wage of Korean workers, was not inexpensive for parents. The school provided scholarship aid garnered from the Korean community for financially burdened families and arranged jobs for many students, for example, as household servants after school or on plantations during vacations. See Yoon, ‘Hawai Haninchunganghakwŏnŭi sŏllipkwa unyŏng’, 997–8; Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 61.
32 The Friend, November 11, 1908.
33 Yoon, ‘Hawai Haninchunganghakwŏnŭi sŏllipkwa unyŏng’, 1001–2.
34 John W. Wadman, Official Minutes of the Seventh Session of the Hawaiian Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, March 15, 1912.
35 Biennial Report of the Superintendent Public Instruction (Honolulu: Department of Public Instruction, Territory of Hawaii, 1911–1912), 148.
36 Yoon, ‘Hawai Haninchunganghakwŏnŭi sŏllipkwa unyŏng’, 988.
37 Hyŏng-ju, ‘Yi Sŭng-man kwa Hawai Haninch’ŏnyŏn Kyoyuk’, 150.
38 Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 58–9; William Yoo,American Missionaries, Korean Protestants, and the Changing Shape of World Christianity, 1884–1965 (New York: Routledge, 2017), 111.
39 ‘Doing Well By Korea’, Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 25, 1908.
40 Yoo, American Missionaries, 116.
41 Kim, Chae-Mi Hanin 50-nyŏnsa, 42–3.
42 The Korean National Association acted as a semi-government agency both in Hawaiʻi and in the continental United States. It advocated adult education programmes and published a Korean-language bi-weekly magazine as part of its educational work. See Ahn, ‘Yi Sŭng-man kwa Hawai Haninch’ŏnyŏn Kyoyuk’, 149.
43 ‘Korean Colony is Stirred by Cash: Contribution for Charity from Japanese New Cause for More Trouble’, Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 1, 1913.
44 ‘Angry Koreans Threaten Wadman’, Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 3, 1913.
45 ‘Stubborn Koreans Appeal to Deport Mr. Wadman [Gankonaru chōsenjin: wadomanshi no taikyo o semaru]’ (in Japanese), Nippu Jiji, February 3, 1913.
46 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, February 1, 1913. Many existing studies indicate that the amount given by the Japanese consulate to Revd Wadman was $750. See Kim, Chae-Mi Hanin 50-nyŏnsa; Ahn, ‘Yi Sŭng-man kwa Hawai Haninch’ŏnyŏn Kyoyuk’; Yoon, ‘Hawai Haninchunganghakwŏnŭi sŏllipkwa unyŏng’.
47 John W. Wadman, Official Minutes of the Seventh Session of the Hawaiian Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, March 1912, 14.
48 Yoo, American Missionaries, 111.
49 On the early postbellum Mississippi black community’s private schooling initiatives and efforts to create their own schools independent of the paternalism and chauvinism of Northern missionaries, educators and officials, see Christopher M. Span, ‘Alternative Pedagogy: The Rise of the Private Black Academy in Early Postbellum Mississippi, 1862–1870’, in Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727–1925, ed. Nancy Beadie and Kim Tolley (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2002), 221–7.
50 Span, ‘Alternative Pedagogy’, 223. Similarly, David Yoo notes that some Korean immigrants and Korean Americans saw their efforts to build their own religious as well as educational institutions independent of any exterior control as a manifestation of the kind of freedom and leadership envisioned for their homeland. See Yoo, Contentious Spirits, 12.
51 Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 60.
52 ‘Resolutions Adopted by the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension’, June 12, 1913. This document is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-197).
53 Yoon, ‘Hawai Haninchunganghakwŏnŭi sŏllipkwa unyŏng’, 989.
54 Yoo, American Missionaries, 116.
55 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, December 14, 1913, 10.
56 Kim, Chae-Mi Hanin 50-nyŏnsa, 153; Bong Youn Choy, Koreans in America (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979), 161–2; Lew, The Making of the First Korean President, 68. Rhee’s spirited educational activity impressed many Koreans, who donated $1.25 per household per month to his educational cause. Considering that the average wage of a Korean plantation worker was about $18 per month in 1907, $1.25 dollars was not insignificant. According to Lew, several hundred Koreans, consisting of ‘the ministers, evangelists, and the Korean-language teachers working in twelve local Korean churches and twenty-four mission stations on the islands’ along with, of course, a great many labourer parents of students, became Rhee’s loyal supporters.
57 Yoo, American Missionaries, 124.
58 The quotation is from a copy of a letter written by Syngman Rhee, July 18, 1913. The receiver’s name and address are missing. This document is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-070).
59 Ibid.
60 ‘Korean School to Admit Girls to Its Classes: Institution Broadens its Original Scope Under Representations Made by Dr. Syngman Rhee’, Christian Science Monitor, November 15, 1913, 25.
61 ‘Korean Institute Tries Coeducation Despite Confucius’, Honolulu Advertiser, December 14, 1913, 10.
62 Letter from Bishop Edwin H. Hughes to Syngman Rhee, January 17, 1914. This document is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-147).
63 Letter from Syngman Rhee to Bishop Edwin H. Hughes, February 2, 1914. This document is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-137). Emphasis added.
64 Letter from Freedman D. Bovard, Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to Revd William Henry Fry, November 10, 1914. I would like to thank Tŏk-hŭi Yi for providing me with a copy of this letter.
65 Ibid.
66 Letter from Revd William Henry Fry to Freedman D. Bovard, November 23, 1914. I would like to thank Tŏk-hŭi Yi for providing me with a copy of this letter.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 66.
70 Lew, The Making of the First Korean President, 73.
71 Ahn, ‘Yi Sŭng-man kwa Hawai Haninch’ŏnyŏn Kyoyuk’, 153.
72 Yi, Yi Sŭng-man ŭi Hawai Samsipnyŏn, 85.
73 ‘Korean Girls’ School Formally Opened’, Pacific Commercial Advertiser, October 31, 1915; ‘New Korean School Opened on Saturday’, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, November 1, 1915.
74 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, November 1, 1915. Emphasis added.
75 ‘The Course of Study, Korean Girls Seminary, 1917–1918’, which contains the courses taught from the first to the eighth grade, is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-154).
76 Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 71.
77 Lew, The Making of the First Korean President, 75.
78 ‘Korean Girls School Raising Funds to Build Much Needed Dormitory at Once’, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, April 28, 1917.
79 Ibid. The Korean trustees included Hee Kyeung Rey, Young M. Park, Ahn Hyun Kyung, Chung Won Myeng and Syngman Rhee.
80 Quoted in Yi, Yi Sŭng-man ŭi Hawai Samsipnyŏn, 90.
81 Ibid. Translation by the present author.
82 Letter from the Board of Trustees of the Korean Girls’ Seminary to Robert D. Williams, president of the Kawaiahao Seminary for Girls [and the Mid-Pacific Institute], September 8, 1917, in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-108).
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Revd William Henry Fry, ‘Korean Work’, Official Minutes of the Sixteenth Session of the Hawaiian Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, February 1921, 29.
87 The Hawaiian Evangelical Association and the Hawai‘i Methodist Episcopal Mission (HMEM) were the two main Protestant denominations at work in territorial Hawai‘i that had begot a very powerful propertied haole class. The two had a comity agreement whereby races in Hawai‘i were allotted to one or the other for missionary activity: mission work among the Koreans and Japanese was allocated to the HMEM, and work among the Chinese and Native Hawaiians to the Hawaiian Evangelical Association. See Duk Hee Lee Murabayashi [Tŏk-hŭi Yi], ‘Education of Koreans in Hawaiʻi: 1903–1932’, paper presented at the Conference on Koreans in Hawaiʻi, sponsored by the Centre for Korean Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, during May 24–26, 2011, 7.
88 The Kamehameha School for Boys was founded by Hawaiian princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop under the direct guidance of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, founder of the Hampton Institute. Theodore Richards was one of the white educators whom Armstrong recruited from the mainland for the project of establishing a manual training system in territorial Hawaiʻi modelled on that of the Hampton Institute. As mentioned in footnote 1, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the haole elites and second-generation missionary educators in Hawaiʻi who had taken control of the school system after the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom wanted to expand the use of manual training in public schools and took their cue from Armstrong’s ‘harsh, military-style schooling based upon elementary subjects, manual labour, and manual training’ that had been instituted for former slaves and Native Americans in the South after the Civil War – a curriculum inspired by educational methods developed by first-generation Hawaiʻi-resident American missionaries in their work with Native Hawaiians. In this regard, see Kalani Beyer, ‘The Connection of Samuel Chapman Armstrong as Both Borrower and Architect of Education in Hawaiʻi’, 47–8. Beyer argues that missionary educators in Hawaiʻi who shared Armstrong’s affinity for manual training viewed service to the growing plantation industry – through skilled work or teaching manual training – as the ideal path for children of Native Hawaiians and of other ‘coloured’ immigrants. In hampering Native Hawaiian students’ academic and leadership prospects, Beyer underlines, this version of manual and industrial education served to maintain haole dominance. He points out that the Kamehameha School’s Board of Trustees and other stakeholders were associated with second-generation American missionaries in Hawaiʻi, and that the school’s curriculum was not designed to prepare students for roles as ministers, lawyers, judges or legislators. Beyer posits that Hawai‘i’s adoption of Armstrong’s educational experiments led to (1) the atrophy of the leadership training education that had been provided to Native Hawaiian elites at some academies and to (2) the entrenchment of an education system intended to prepare Native Hawaiians and other non-white school-aged children for ‘subordinate roles and industrial skills’ and ultimately to socialize them for ‘secondary member[ship]’ of American society. See, Murabayashi, ‘Education of Koreans in Hawai‘i’, 26, 35.
89 This circular letter is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-069). It is addressed ‘to those whom it may concern’, and only a copy of the original letter is left, with no envelope. It is clear, based on a letter by Revd John P. Erdman to Syngman Rhee of July 29, 1917, however, that Richards’ letter had been sent out to the following prominent leaders in Hawaiʻi: Frank C. Atherton, George P. Castle, Richard A. Cooke, Mrs. Mary E. Frear, Robert D. Williams and William D. Westervelt. The letter from Revd Erdman to Syngman Rhee, July 29, 1917, is also held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-149).
90 Circular letter written by Theodore Richards, July 19, 1917. Emphasis added.
91 The circular letter written by Syngman Rhee on July 29, 1917 is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-073).
92 I found some other documents that mentioned the presence of four to six Filipino boys at the Korean Central School, but they do not provide much detail as to who the children were, when and how long they attended the school or why and how they had come to attend the school. The attendance of non-Korean students should be investigated more thoroughly.
93 Circular letter by Syngman Rhee, July 29, 1917.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid. Emphasis added.
97 Ibid. Emphasis added.
98 Ibid.
99 Letter from Syngman Rhee to Dr Robert D. Williams, president of the Kawaiahao Seminary for Girls [and the Mid-Pacific Institute] in Honolulu, September 8, 1917. This letter is held in the Independence Hall of Korea (no. 1-013238-108).
100 Ibid.
101 Tŏk-hŭi Yi, Yi Sŭng-man ŭi Hawai Samsipnyŏn, 102. Translation by the present author.
102 Ibid., 103.
103 Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 70.
104 Quoted in Yi, Yi Sŭng-man ŭi Hawai Samsipnyŏn, 103. Translation by the present author.
105 Ch’oe, From the Land of Hibiscus, 74; Lew, The Making of the First Korean President, 76; Ahn, ‘Yi Sŭng-man kwa Hawai Haninch’ŏnyŏn Kyoyuk’, 170.
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Ji Soo Hyun
Ji Soo Hyun is currently a PhD candidate in Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Policy Studies from the College of Education at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the educational experiences of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans of the early twentieth century in the context of trans-Pacific imperial connections and missionary networks .