"Representations of the Massie/KahahawaiCase: Recognizing Racial andGendered Conflicts in Honolulu"

The Massie/Kahahawai linked trials of rape and murder that began in 1931 in Honolulu are a pivotal moment in the national imaginary construction of racial dynamics in Hawai‘i. The case illustrates the interrelationship between the discourse of the “racial melting pot” (Okamura)—the well-known metaphor that represents Hawai‘i as an example of democracy and an idyllic paradise where there is no racial conflict—and the fear of anti-haole violence (Chang). The Massie/Kahahawai case shows that the two discourses mirror each other and reinforce haole hegemony. Possessing “all the elements of myth” (Stannard), its story has been told many times, becoming a paradigm of real and imagined racial relations in Hawai‘i and consolidating the imperialistic idea of the savage threat to white women (Fujikane). My essay intends to explore different narratives that draw inspiration from the case, showing a recognition of Honolulu’s racial dynamics and inter-ethnic relations. Stories, such as Max Allan Collins’s crime novel Damned in Paradise and Blood and Orchids, the 1986 made-for-television drama written by Norman Katkov, share a white savior protagonist who fights the injustice against people of color and finally sets things right for them, thus gaining central attention for his moral righteousness. In recent years, the Massie/Kahahawai case has been represented through stories from local people that approach the narrative in different forms and mediums. In 2017, local Hawai‘i poets Ann Inoshita, Juliet S. Kono, Christy Passion, and Jean Yamasaki Toyama published What We Must Remember, a collection of renshi, or linked poems with commentaries, that collaboratively imagine the various perspectives of the players (people and objects) involved in the case, intimately inviting to Ho‘omana‘o [remember]. 2022’s short film Ala Moana Boys, written by Alexander Deedy and directed by Keli‘i Grace, for the first time tells the story from the viewpoint of the five young local men accused of raping Thalia Massie. In analyzing the transcodifications of the Massie narrative and its iconic elements, I argue that in most rewritings, whereas racism figures prominently, the idea of the white feminine victim and that of the racist loose woman are part of the same patriarchal ideology that controls women and ethnic communities. The common theory is, in fact, that Thalia Massie fabricated the entire story of her rape, an assumption that relies on her portrayal as a promiscuous party girl and a lying drunkard, lacking the support of her family and unhappy with Hawaiian life. Moreover, by shifting the attention to her personality and conduct, the murder of Joe Kahahawai is made an individual, albeit exemplary case rather than one of the many effects of a racist and sexist system. Kristiana Kahakawila’s “This is Paradise” complicates this narrative. The short story that gives the title to her 2013 collection is not an explicit rewriting of the Massie case. However, the story shows many parallels with the notorious case, beginning with the setting in the same streets, the characterization of the protagonist, and the tragic finale. Narrated as a series of impressions and comments by three different groups of Hawaiian women who run into the haole protagonist at different times of the night, the story foregrounds an internal racial conflict, yet it does not stop there. I argue that this collective first-person point of view, with rotating “we” voices, observes, collects evidence, and judges the case as a jury of peer women.