Researching Martial Law

Original research from massive and varied primary sources can be readily accomplished at the University of Hawaii Hamilton Research Library and less directly through the National Archives. Comparatively small but interesting amounts of material are in the Archives of Hawaii and the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii. 

The subject of Martial Law is often not listed as such in archives. If you are disappointed by searching "Martial Law," try Government of Hawaii (during WWII), Territorial Government, Office of Military Governor, Military Government of the Territory of Hawaii, etc. The available information will mushroom. 

If you are struggling on-line with intermediate sourcing (such as the University of Hawaii site), the big search engines such as Google sometimes can jump you into the middle of subjects. (For example, Google University of Hawaii Uncatalogued Subject Files). 

The internet is a starting point. It will usually give you no more than simple content outlines. Hopefully you will go to a real archive. When you do, feel free to ask the archivists on duty for help. They know their stuff and are typically eager to share.

University of Hawaii

Hamilton Research Library 

Hamilton Research Library is a largely untapped mine of material on Martial Law. For an online overview, search the web for University of Hawaii Archives and Manuscripts + Collections + Hawaii War Records Depository (HWRD) 

HWRD. Established by the Hawai'i Territorial Legislature in 1943, HWRD contains a unique record of Hawaii at war. To make an appointment in the HWRD reading room e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 956 6047. If you know from the finding aid what you want to study, the archivist may have your material waiting for you. The archivist also can help you consult the original card file, which unfortunately is not online. Index cards will lead you to rich files on martial law. More can be found under Territorial Government, the Office of Military Governor, etc. 

Online, you can view 1,800 U.S. Signal Corps and newspaper photos. 

You can find a wealth of unexplored topics in either the uncatalogued subject files or the wartime scrapbook series. 

In the HWRD + Collections +  HWRD Uncatalogued Subject Files (Online) Finding Aid, skip through the table of contents to Series Description. There you will find references to files on Blackout, Civil Defense, Defense Preparations, Food Production, the Office of Military Governor, Morale, Price Controls and Rationing, Propaganda and others. 

The HWRD + Collections + Scrapbooks (Online) Finding Aid is a window for looking into what most interested people during wartime. What did people save in their wartime scrapbooks and why?

Within the archives, the Romanzo Adams Social Research Libary (RASRL) can take you into parallel and sometimes deeper material. Online see University Archives Collections + Schools, Colleges and Institutes + Romanzo Adams Social Research Laboratory HWRD Uncatalogued RASRL (Online) Finding Aid. From 1924 to the early 1960s this institute studied race relations in Hawaii. During the 1941-1946 period it broadened its scope to a wide-ranging examination of a society living under the stress of world war. Under RASRL War Records Laboratory, you will find the files of civilian groups dedicated to dealing with wartime conditions, including most famously the Japanese American Emergency Service Committee. Also see Student Papers including particularly Subsection J, primarily the papers and diary entries of students during wartime; also Reactions to the Bombing, which includes hundreds of entries by students.  

U.S. National Archives

The search engine within the vast National Archives site is ARC (Archival Research Catalog). If you want to research the name of one of Hawaii's nearly 1500 internees under martial law, simply enter the name in the ARC search window. You then can e mail the archivist desk with the name and locator information. If the file is less than 20 pages long, the archivist will send you the photocopies free. For each additional page, there is a charge of 75 cents per page.

Thereafter work gets more complicated. Archives are organized by Record Group (RG), which is then broken out by ARC identifier numbers. Home base is RG 494.3, "Records of the Military Government of Hawaii 1941-46." An even broader category is "Records of U.S. Army Forces in the Middle Pacific (World War II), 1940 - 1959, ARC Identifier #559460. It "consists of case files, containing front and profile photographs (mug shots) of the internees, forms, fingerprints, Alien Hearing Board transcripts, reports, lists of items, and index cards.  The records contain personal background information about internees such as date of birth, address, marital status, religion, occupation, medical condition, and history.  Also, the records pertain to loyalty of internees, clothing issued to internees, items confiscated from internees, suspected subversive activity, reasons for internment, and information on relocation to either the United States mainland or the country of Japan." All of this is unrestricted.

ARC Identifier 1079759 consists of "copies of general orders pertaining to a variety of matters including: blackouts, censorship, liquor control, citizen and alien registration, structure of the military government, appointments of unit directors, the judicial system, cargo and passenger control, labor control, food control, land control, travel restrictions, internment of aliens and Japanese-Americans, restricted areas, air raids, internal security, property control, finance and personnel." 

As you follow links, you may jump to closely related record groups. For example, Record Group 389 contains the Provost Marshall General Record. 

Again, once you settle on leads, make use of the archives staff via: 

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (e mail)

(301) 837-1752 (fax) 

Mail:

Archives II

Reference Section

National Archives

8601 Adelphi Road

College Park, MD 20740-6001 

You can get detailed instructions about communication by listening to the message at (301) 837-3510. 

Archives of Hawaii 

A comparatively small but interesting amount of material is available in the Archives of Hawaii, located between Iolani Palace and the State Capitol. Again consult the archivist. Ask for a Finding Aid on Ingram Stainback, the nearly powerless civilian governor during martial law. See files on martial law that include Stainback's  letters to the U.S. Interior Department complaining about the military's hanging on to power. A second file of includes the lists of names of the many workers who were jailed and/or fined for missing work or attempting to change jobs. It is a perspective on the arbitrary power of martial law General Orders. 

Similarly in the Archives of Hawai'i, see the papers of the delegate to Congress during much of World War II, Joseph R. Farrington. Like Stainback, Farrington became an outspoken advocate of ending martial law.  

Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (JCCH) 

JCCH has played a major role in reviving interest in internment in Hawaii. Compared to the western United States, where all people of Japanese ancestry were relocated and most were interned, about 1500 people, or less than one per cent of the Japanese-ancestry population, were interned in Hawaii. Quite obviously internment isolated people physically, psychologically and socially but to what extent did Martial Law also do that?

To what extent was Martial Law a substitute for internment?