(Okinawa) Family History in Hawaii

My grandfather and his older brother were early immigrants to Hawaii. Although there were 60,000 immigrants from Japan in Hawaii in 1900, the first group of Okinawans came to Hawaii that year.

My grandfather’s older brother Kanmatsu came in 1905, probably with the fourth or fifth group that came over. My grandfather came a few months later in 1906 during the peak of Okinawa immigration to Hawaii.

Passenger manifest listing my grandfather at 19 aboard the SS Manchuria.

Twenty-six men entered Hawaii as the first Okinawan immigrants in 1900. The second labor group from Okinawa was composed of 40 young farmers; they arrived in Honolulu on April 6, 1903.

Women did not arrive until 1905 after men were able to save money to send for them. 206 Okinawa men migrated to Hawaii; in 1905, 1,200 men; 1906, 4,500; and in 1907, 2,500. Thus, during this period the Okinawa immigrants totaled approximately 8,500, constituting about one-fifth of the total Japanese immigrants of 44,000.

My grandfather’s brother Kwansho Kanmatsu Izumigawa took the SS Korea to Honolulu in Dec. of 1905 @ 28.

Tôyama Kyûzô is generally regarded as the “father” of Okinawan immigration to Hawaii. With economic conditions growing increasingly dire in Okinawa prefecture, which had been annexed by Japan in the 1870s, Tôyama, a leader of the Freedom and People’s…