Introduction
From the eitheenth century, Australia has solved its chronic labor shortages by importing skilled and unskilled labor from many nations, often under terms of indenture. The northern Australian pearlshelling industry began in the late 1860s with local Indigenous workers.Footnote 2 It became a significant source of income (from taxation and foreign exchange) for the Western Australian and Queensland colonies—and from the early 1880s for the Northern Territory, then administered by the colony of South Australia. Northern Australia's geographical location as a maritime corridor between two great oceans, together with increased shipping activity, facilitated regional labor movement from both east and west. The pearlshelling industry in particular attracted young, unmarried Islanders from the Pacific and Southeast Asia during the second wave of transnational labor flows (1870–1940).Footnote 3 They were “pushed” by unemployment and poverty at home and “pulled” by the prospect of (comparatively) good wages in an industry notorious for its arduous and dangerous working conditions. These flows were crucial to the success of the pre-World War II northern Australian marine industries.
The employment of “colored” (Pacific and Asian) Islander labor in tropical colonial Australia was always contentious. There was a widespread belief in the superiority of “white races” over “colored aliens” and the necessity to preserve “racial purity” allied to a fear of Japanese invasion. Refusing a request from Bowden Brothers & Coy Ltd for permission to import one hundred Japanese seamen in 1899, the Chief Secretary of Queensland stated he was “guided by the fact that the sentiment of the people of Queensland is wholly opposed to the introduction into the Colony of Japanese or other Asiatic alien labour, a feeling in which the Government itself shares.”Footnote 4 One rallying cry at federation was “Australia for the White man” (and his labor) and the first legislation enacted by the new Commonwealth of Australia, supported by the three major parties, was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which ushered in the “White Australia policy.” After the repatriation of most Pacific Islanders by the end of 1908, it was envisaged that indentured Asian workers would be next. A succession of pearling commissions examined whether the pearlshelling industry could survive without their contribution and concluded that it could not. The government, therefore, made the reluctant decision to exempt that industry alone from the racially discriminatory provisions of the legislation.Footnote 5
During the following twenty-five years, the industry came to depend almost entirely on its low-paid indentured Asian, predominantly Japanese workforce for its economic viability. This period ended with the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, after which Asian indenture is generally assumed to have ceased. However, as Julia Martinez pointed out in her seminal 2005 article “The end of indenture?” this was not so.Footnote 6 One of her examples was the 1958 importation of Okinawan pearling indents to Thursday Island in a controversial attempt to restore the industry's declining fortunes. Widely acknowledged as a failure, it was the last large-scale importation of indentured Asian labor into Australia.
This little-known episode has recently been the focus of two government-funded research projects.Footnote 7 Previously, Adrian Cunningham had deftly summarized the political context in which the decision was made and its aftermath; Con Denis George (Georgiades) devotes three pages to the Okinawans; Regina Ganter two pages; Martinez one page; Philip Hayward and Junko Konishi a footnote incorrectly stating that “a small number of Okinawans arrived in the late 1940s”; and popular writers, Coralie and Leslie Rees and George Farwell, allude to it briefly. In 1975, Shuji Kyuhara met some of the Okinawans who remained in Australia, and both Ganter and Pixley interviewed Harold Ormsby (Hal) Hockings, a master pearler and honorary secretary of the Torres Strait Pearlshellers’ Association at the time.Footnote 8
This article draws on unpublished Australian Commonwealth and Queensland official correspondence; indents’ registration certificates; Thursday Island seamen's engagement registers; inquests and court records from the Queensland State Archives in Brisbane (QSA) and National Archives of Australia (NAA); references in the Queensland Department of Native Affairs annual reports; newspaper articles; and interviews with Torres Strait Islanders. It is intended to contribute to the study of transnational labor movements by focusing on the policy processes behind the “Okinawan experiment.”Footnote 9 It contextualizes the diplomatic, economic, and political determinants of the labor policy adopted by the three governments concerned—Australia, Queensland, and the United States administration of Okinawa. It documents Commonwealth-state tensions behind the formulation and adoption of policy and disagreements among Queensland state officials responsible for the state's economic development and Indigenous employment. Also addressed are Torres Strait Islander reactions to the Okinawans, whose socio-economic characteristics are compared with those of pre-war Japanese indents. The economics of labor in the final years of the Queensland pearlshelling industry are examined, as are the consequences of crafting labor policy at a distance. The article thus extends our knowledge of the intersection between early postwar Australian-Asian relations and Queensland Indigenous labor policy, foreshadowing contemporary Indigenous demands for control of local marine resources. It argues that the “Okinawan experiment” was a failure and assigns responsibility to all involved: governments, employers, and indents; and it concludes that, even if the importation of the pre-war Japanese had been permitted, the industry could not have survived the large-scale adoption of plastic alternatives to pearlshell.
Torres Strait Islanders and Japanese in the pre-war Torres Strait pearlshelling industry, 1890s to 1941
From the late 1870s, Queensland's pearlshelling and associated industries were centered on Thursday Island in Torres Strait, Far North Queensland. The Torres Strait archipelago formed part of a wider Melanesian culture area, its inhabitants linked to the northern and southern mainlands of New Guinea and Australia, respectively, by trading networks, the journeys of culture heroes, warfare, settlement, and clan kinship through intermarriage and adoption.Footnote 10 The establishment of commercial trepanging and pearlshelling from the 1860s and the spread of British colonization and Christianity from the 1870s brought the Islanders into the second great age of globalization as low-paid, low-status marine workers, increasingly in competition with foreign-sourced indentured labor.
Marine production was Thursday Island's sole export industry and the mainstay of its economy. Shipbuilders, carpenters, sailmakers, boat repairers, shell graders and packers, commission and insurance agents, solicitors, auctioneers and accountants depended on the health of the industry. Personal and professional services, provided by shopkeepers, hotel and boarding-house keepers, tradesmen, market gardeners, domestic servants, hairdressers, billiard markers, tailors, customs, quarantine, court and native affairs officials, doctors, teachers, policemen, and undertakers were equally dependent. Almost all of these occupations were filled by a multi-ethnic sojourner workforce.Footnote 11 Asian immigrants and their descendants constituted the majority population on the island from the 1880s until their wartime evacuation in 1941, and their legacy continues in the heritage—cultural, genetic, social, and economic—of the contemporary local population.Footnote 12
The pre-World War II Japanese contribution to and eventual domination of the Torres Strait pearlshelling industry are well documented.Footnote 13 By the end of the 1890s, the Japanese had supplanted most of the ethnically diverse Pacific Islander and Asian labor force to monopolize the skilled and highly-paid jobs as divers, tenders (men who assisted or “tended to” the divers), engineers, sailmakers, and boat builders, as well as low-paid crew. Banned from joining local unions, their interests were overseen by the Thursday Island Japanese Club (Nihonjin-kai), which negotiated pay and conditions with the master pearlers and, if necessary, instigated protests and strike (refusal to work) action.Footnote 14 This state of affairs ceased abruptly with the outbreak of the Pacific War (1941–1945). In May 1941, the war cabinet adopted a policy of confining all Japanese male residents of Thursday Island (including a handful of Okinawans), together with their Japanese and local born wives and children, in a temporary makeshift camp in early December. They were later removed to mainland internment camps.Footnote 15 Of the 400–450 Japanese employed directly or indirectly in the marine industries immediately before the war, only five Japanese-headed families were permitted to return and, despite periodic calls by the master pearlers for their reintroduction, they never again dominated the Torres Strait industry.Footnote 16
Torres Strait Islanders and Japanese in the postwar Torres Strait pearlshelling industry, 1946–1957
The virtual cessation of pearling operations during the war years “rested” the Torres Strait pearlshell beds.Footnote 17 In January 1946, the industry resumed and, with about seven hundred Torres Strait Islander ex-soldiers, mostly former marine industry workers, discharged from army service between July and November 1946, there was pressure to provide for their employment.Footnote 18 As early as July 1944, thirteen months before the end of the war, the Queensland governor Sir Leslie Wilson wrote that, “as of course, Japanese cannot come back,” it would be necessary to train Islanders in deep-sea diving, adding “it is only right that they should do the work in their own waters.”Footnote 19
In 1947, the Queensland government, advised by the Director of Native Affairs (the department tasked with Indigenous policy and administration), unsuccessfully pressed the Commonwealth to assist in training “these ex-soldier workers” as dress divers. They claimed that tests had shown their adaptability for the work and there was thus no need to import “alien divers,” despite the general belief “that Islanders are incompetent, incapable, or unwilling to undertake dress diving work.” Diver training would be undertaken by the Island Industries Board, a Queensland government instrumentality administered by the sub-Department of Native Affairs.Footnote 20
It was also claimed that importing even a limited number of Japanese divers would cause industrial trouble with the Islanders, who were already threatening to refuse to work “on any vessel in the industry on which a Japanese is employed.” Lock noted that with the removal of the Japanese the Islanders had “come into their own. By fortuitous circumstances, notably high wages earned by them during, and since, wartime, many have purchased their own luggers [small, two-masted sailing vessels] and have taken charge of the potential industry.”Footnote 21 The first postwar Islander councilors’ conference, held September 24–27, 1947, carried a motion asking the state government to prevent the employment of non-British labor and to inform the Commonwealth of their opposition to the return of the Japanese.Footnote 22 One official declared there would be civil war if large numbers of Japanese were allowed to return to Thursday Island.Footnote 23
It is unclear how much of this resistance originated with the Islanders and how much with the department. Controlled emigration to the mainland began in 1947 with permission for two groups of Islanders to work as cane cutters. Others followed, looking south for a materially better future for themselves and their families, whereas the department preferred to retain them in situ as manpower for the “company boats,” its cooperatively-owned and Islander-manned fleet, the main source of Islander employment and Queensland's only profitable Indigenous venture.Footnote 24
In 1948, about six hundred tons of pearl shell, worth approximately £400 a ton, were harvested, indicating “the enormous dollar-earning value of the industry to Australia,” which the master pearlers lamented remained untapped due to the shortage of vessels and men.Footnote 25 However, Queensland government policy in 1949 continued “to emphatically oppose any infiltration of Japanese or other Indents to the Queensland Pearling Industry,” touting the success of its training scheme of “Torres Strait Islanders and half-castes as divers and tenders to supplant the pre-war Asiatic labour employed.”Footnote 26 The close of the 1949 season saw the industry returned to its pre-war level, but by 1957, the industry and its dependent local economy were stagnant. The master pearlers were convinced that, if only they could once more employ their skilled, experienced, pre-war Japanese divers to access the deeper waters, which they claimed the Islanders generally would or could not do, they would improve productivity and survive the recession. John Ian (Jack) Dunwoodie, local manager of Bowden Pearling Coy, mayor of Thursday Island, and president of the Torres Strait Pearlshellers’ Association,Footnote 27 organized a petition to the Queensland premier in December 1957, asking him to request the Australian prime minister to permit the introduction of Japanese divers, tenders, and engineers for a period of two years.Footnote 28 When the Islanders learned of the mooted return of the Japanese, they held protest meetings. Tanu Nona, chairman of Badu and western island group representative, a favorite and mouthpiece of the department, argued that bringing back the Japanese might suddenly increase production, which would lead to flooding of the market and a consequent drop in prices. Nona's boat, Petta Nona, had collected a record 35 tons of shell in 1955 and in 1957 he stated that Islander divers were producing enough shell and, with deep-sea diver training, their production would increase. He added: “The sea is the islander's only way to earn a living. He has a right to work the pearl and trochus beds if he is to keep up his present good standard of living.”Footnote 29
The Australian Commonwealth and Queensland Political and Economic Context
Australia-Japan diplomatic and economic relations were formally re-established in 1952 after the end of the Allied occupation of Japan (but not Okinawa). Japanese war brides were permitted to enter Australia and popular attitudes in the southern Australian states began to change. Seeing an opportunity to import their pre-war indentured labor force, in October 1951 the Broome, Darwin and Thursday Island pearling masters “jointly petitioned the Australian Commonwealth government for permission to resume recruiting Japanese indents”.Footnote 30 In early 1952, swayed by their lobbying and American diplomatic pressure, the government announced it would legislate the re-introduction of Japanese labor during the current session of parliament. The announcement was badly received by returned services’ organizations, labor unions, and Christian mission authorities in the northern pearling ports, which had been bombed by the Japanese during the war. It was not until March 1953 and June 1955 that the first postwar Japanese indents arrived in Broome and Darwin, respectively.Footnote 31 The men fitted in well, there was no real trouble, but the Queensland government remained firmly opposed to any change in policy.
By 1957, Australia-Japan diplomatic and economic relations had warmed to the extent that the year saw reciprocal visits by the Australian and Japanese prime ministers, Robert Menzies and Nobusuke Kishi, in April and December, respectively, and the signing of the Australia-Japan Commerce Agreement in July, ensuring equal most-favored nation status for both countries.
On August 12, 1957, a conservative Country Liberal Coalition government replaced the Queensland Labor government, which had been in power since 1932. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) had consistently opposed the importation of Japanese on both ideological and economic grounds: It was founded to protect the interests of Australian workers; and senior native affairs bureaucrats sought to preserve the Torres Strait marine industries solely for Islander labor. According to Manfred Cross AM, a former ALP Federal member for Brisbane passionate about Indigenous matters, the Queensland Indigenous affairs portfolio “was not of any great interest to the ministers from the Coalition government”Footnote 32 and it continued to be a sub-department of the Department of Health and Home Affairs. It administered Islander welfare and employment under the 1939 Torres Strait Islanders Act, which included oversight of the “company boats” and holding the Islanders’ wages “in trust.” Were the industry to collapse, the government feared being forced to outlay far more financial assistance to the region. Departmental officials had been foresighted enough to sign contracts with overseas buyers, which protected the Islanders from the 1957 downturn, and by mid-1958 the Islanders owned a pearling fleet of twenty-three vessels, “the largest numerically in Australia.”Footnote 33 The master pearlers were not so fortunate: In 1957, Jack Dunwoodie lamented that the master pearling fleet “had declined to only 21 boats, 11 laid up for lack of crews.”Footnote 34
In a dramatic reversal of policy, however, the newly-elected Queensland government in late 1957 bowed to the broader national interest (balance-of-trade and diplomatic concerns) and extensive lobbying from commercial pearlshelling interests. Despite continued opposition from its native affairs officials, trade unions, and the general public, it permitted the indenture of 192 Okinawans for the Torres Strait pearling industry from 1958. This decision brought Queensland policy in line with that of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
As Ganter points out, Okinawa was then an American mandated territory, and thus the legislators could argue that, technically, Okinawans were not Japanese and their entry could therefore “satisfy Australian master pearlers without offending anti-Japanese sentiments.”Footnote 35 At the same time, Okinawan salvage operations were drawing to a close and many Okinawans were facing unemployment.Footnote 36 While unfamiliar with pearlshell diving, their qualifications and experience seemed to fit them ideally for such employment in Australia. This assumption proved incorrect. As salvage divers, they were used to calm and relatively shallow waters, not the swiftly-moving, turbulent, and deep waters of the strait. Only a few had dived for pearlshell before and some had never used a corselet and helmet.Footnote 37 Warnings given to the Darwin and Broome pearlers in 1955 that “No doubt [the Okinawans] make excellent trocus [sic] shell fishers, but for hauling up pearl shell with diving gears, they seem to lack that something which is to be found in most Japanese pearlers” went unheeded.Footnote 38 The major pearl buyer, the New York-based Otto Gerdau Company, was equally dismissive: The Okinawans were “splendid for naked diving, for instance, for trocus [sic]” but “quite unqualified comparatively for deep sea diving and with diving gear.”Footnote 39
The master pearlers would have preferred to re-engage their seasoned prewar indents but they accepted this political compromise as the best possible outcome under the circumstances. Cunningham gives a brief account of the political machinations following the election of the conservative government in Queensland. The new premier, G.F. Nicklin, received a deputation of Torres Strait shellers led by Senator E.B. Maher and, after assurances of support from the Thursday Island branches of both the Returned Solders’ League and the Waterside Workers’ Federation, the Queensland cabinet approved the admission of up to two hundred Japanese operatives subject to certain conditions. The Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department advised that Okinawans, not mainland Japanese, would be engaged and “Federal Cabinet approved the request in October, subject to the same conditions which applied to the employment of Japanese labour in Broome and Darwin and subject to the condition that the men were recruited from Okinawa.”Footnote 40
The Queensland cabinet's decision was taken on November 25, 1957 (Decision No. 96), but the pearlers had already been informed: Jack Dunwoodie and Harold Ormsby (Hal) Hockings, representing the Torres Strait Pearlshellers’ Association, left Thursday Island for Okinawa on November 15 “for the purpose of engaging labour to work in the pearling industry at this port.”Footnote 41
To mitigate public controversy and union disquiet, the decision was hedged around with many other conditions. One minor example, indicative of the potency of labels, was the decision to use the terms “Ryukyuans” or “Okinawans” rather than “Japanese.”Footnote 42 Moreover, the pearlers were warned that neither the Commonwealth nor the Queensland government assumed any financial responsibility. The bond per man was £100, a large sum at the time. On February 4, 1958, in anticipation of the imminent arrival, Bowden Pearling Coy paid a bond of £7,200 for seventy-two “Ryukyuans” to enter the Commonwealth for twenty-four months and agreed to the following strict conditions: Only divers, tenders, and engine drivers, who had not taken part in enemy operations against northern Australia or been assessed as a security risk, could be imported. The indents could not displace any efficient Indigenous worker. They would be domiciled on Thursday Island and not permitted to land on the Australian mainland “except in cases of emergency or solely in connection with the business of pearl shelling.” Other conditions included a ban on transfer to another master pearler without the consent of the Commonwealth and the first employer. The employers must be British subjects by birth or naturalization and they must pay the men no less than the Australian adult male basic wage. They were also responsible for the payment of bonds, costs of repatriation, maintenance, and hospital expenses. The men's exemption was for twelve months, with certificates to expire on January 31 each year (the official end of the pearling season), extended only on authority from the Immigration Department. If the men were not re-engaged by February 14, they were to be repatriated. They were engaged for a maximum period of two years from January 1958, unless a request was made to the Queensland government. Moreover, they could engage only in work associated with the boats owned by their employer, who had to inform the local police of the movements of each vessel manned by the Okinawans. Any extra work ashore had to be authorized by the Immigration Department. Importantly, in the light of future events, the men:
should work only in [no more than] 17 fathoms. A maximum of 30 tons of shell per boat to be taken from boats manned by Ryukuan [sic] crews. This could be averaged, i.e., if three boats, then 90 tons total.Footnote 43 Boats operated by Ryukuan crews to employ also at all times an equal number of Island men. Ryukuan crews to be required to tutor Islander Crews in deep water diving techniques.Footnote 44
Arrival of the Okinawan Indents
One hundred and sixty-two Okinawan indents disembarked at Thursday Island from the specially charted SS Eastern Queen on March 5, 1958, and were immediately processed by local quarantine officials and Commonwealth immigration and customs officials expressly flown to the island.Footnote 45 According to Kemuel Kiwat, the Okinawans were quickly “divided up to work for different associations.”Footnote 46 The arrival of the indents increased by 8 percent the island's population of about two thousand—almost 70 percent of whom were Indigenous Australians (almost entirely Torres Strait Islanders), whose livelihoods depended overwhelmingly on the pearlshelling industry. This equates to the sudden influx of about 180,000 people from a single ethnic group into a single industry in today's greater Brisbane area. According to a visiting journalist, they were “very clean and well behaved, and one feels that they have been warned before they came. When they first arrived they were poorly clad and wore strange oblong wooden shoes.”Footnote 47
Individual records for 131 Okinawans, held in the Brisbane office of the NAA, show that all of them had received a thorough medical examination from the American clinic in Okinawa before being issued with visas by the Australian embassy in Tokyo. They traveled on certificates of identity issued at Okinawa on February 13, 1958, by the United States civil administration for a business visit. They also held Australian entry permits due to expire on January 31, 1960. On their “Application for Registration by Alien entering Australia” forms, their nationality is given as “Japanese” but this was systematically crossed out and “Ryukyuan” substituted. Included in each man's file is his Commonwealth of Australia. Aliens Act 1947–1952 Certificate of Registration card, issued by the Department of Immigration, giving various personal details, the firm which engaged him, his previous occupation, occupation while in Australia, and his date of departure. All were said to have had received training, had worked as salvage divers for the Americans in Okinawa, and were therefore suitable for Torres Strait waters.
Upon arrival, the divers were issued with operating licenses based on the extent of their stated experience as salvage divers. Queensland State Archives (QSA) holds the seamen's engagement register with details of 154 Okinawans.Footnote 48 Thirty men were divers in charge and only one, Yamada Yoshimichi, is recorded as Okinawan, the rest being from “Ryukyuan, Japan.” In inquest evidence, all the men stated that they were “Ryukyuan [i.e., not Japanese] nationals.” When the tender, Katsukichi Kohama, gave evidence at the inquest into the death from the bends (compression sickness or “caisson disease”) of Wasaga Miskin of Banks Island in June 1958, he began by stating “I am an Okinawan national,” but “Okinawan” was later crossed out and “Ryukyuan” substituted.Footnote 49
The terms and conditions of Okinawan indenture and the pearlshelling companies’ responsibilities were almost identical to those applied to the pre-war Japanese labor force after passage of the Immigration Restriction Act. Both groups signed agreements, generally for two years, and upon expiry, or on proving unsatisfactory, indents were to be returned to Japan at their employers’ expense. In both cases, the companies had to deposit to the government the passage money and a bond for each man.Footnote 50 The pre-war Japanese indents, like the Okinawans, had the run of Thursday Island but generally chose to remain with their countrymen in the Japanese quarter, when they returned for provisions or during the annual lay-up season. They were also banned from visiting the outer islands, designated in 1912 as “Aboriginal reserves,” although this rule was routinely flouted on the smaller islands without a European teacher-superintendent. However, the two groups of indents differed in their composition. While the pre-war Japanese were generally young and unmarried, the majority of the Okinawans were older and married. Of the 156 men in the 1958 cohort whose ages were recorded, only 47percent were in their twenties; 28 percent in their thirties; 20 percent in their forties; and 5 percent in their fifties. As to marital status, 71 percent of the 135 whose status was recorded were married, although some widowers may have been included among the unmarried. Given the high rate of Okinawan unemployment, preference may have been given to men with families to support as well as older men with some pre-war pearlshelling experience.
The 1958 Torres Strait pearling season began “with the most enthusiastic anticipation of the coming A£1 000 000 pearl shell bonanza.”Footnote 51 The employers had purchased new diving equipment at great expense and constructed wood and fibro accommodation on the eastern, former “(Little) Yokohama” or “Japtown,” section of the island.Footnote 52 To allay the anxiety that had emerged in some quarters, police gave assurances that the men had to report to them before and after leaving the island,Footnote 53 and the deputy director of the Department of Native Affairs visited the islands early in 1958 partly to “clarify many points with regards the entry of the Okinawans to the Pearling Industry.”Footnote 54 However, unlike in Darwin, there were no special restrictions on their movements while on the island, which “was open to them.”Footnote 55
The Okinawans were expected to begin work within about two weeks in the deeper “rested” grounds. However, they arrived at the beginning of the dry season (sager), with its strong south-east winds, which clouded and discolored the waters, and could not begin work until the weather improved.Footnote 56 Duffields’ fleet, for example, did not leave until April 3, 1958.Footnote 57 Kyozo Hirakawa, one of the original recruits, told Ganter they stayed on Thursday Island for “several months” after their arrival, because “no gear was set when we arrived”Footnote 58 but individual experiences seem to have differed depending on the readiness of each lugger.
Once assigned to their boats, they were employed, according to the conditions of their indenture, as “pearling specialists”—divers, tenders, and gauge board operators (engineers). The divers stated they had had several years prior experience, with at least five being the norm, and some had suffered from the bends in Okinawa and been successfully staged (brought to the surface in carefully calibrated stages). The divers-in-charge selected the tenders: an Okinawan almost invariably tended an Okinawan diver and an Islander tended an Islander diver.Footnote 59 Contrary to Hockings’ statement to Ganter that “they didn't know anything about staging,”Footnote 60 all the tenders produced a certificate from Okinawa stating that they had at least two years (or more) experience as a tender, and were experienced in staging their divers as well as applying artificial respiration. Two engineers generally worked together in the engine room, an Okinawan and an Islander, and since one of the ostensible aims of the experiment was to teach the Islanders diving and tending skills, half the skilled positions were filled by Islanders, who also filled less skilled positions as crewmen and cooks. The engineers engaged by Duffields were given a practical examination by Arnold Ernest Duffield, a qualified engineer. No extra training was given, as the US administration had assured the employers that all the indents were experienced divers or tenders and, either through ignorance or haste or cost-saving, the employers failed to appreciate the particular difficulties of diving in the waters of the strait with its strong and unpredictable currents, and precipitous drops into undersea caverns.
The Islanders understood the industry's difficulties and took on trust assurances that the Okinawans would instruct them in the techniques of deep-sea diving. They therefore accepted the presence on their small, cosmopolitan island with little antagonism.Footnote 61 In any event, it was the Islanders who had to instruct the Okinawans how to locate the best shell in the strait's shifting underwater terrain. They even had to teach them “how to manage the sails and boats.”Footnote 62 Francis Sabatino, “[o]ne of the outstanding and experienced divers of Torres Strait,”Footnote 63 made the same point to Catholic priest Father Tom Dixon. He had worked with the Okinawans on the Helene in 1958, and his view was that “the Government wanted Okinawa Japs to come and teach locals how to dive” but he had to teach them.Footnote 64 Islanders explain the choice of Okinawans as the result of Japan's refusal to permit their nationals to come to Australia, a view supported by George, who refers obliquely to “some actions behind the scene” (though he does not specify where or by whom) causing the Japanese government to refuse permission for “the experienced divers of the Kushimoto district of Honshu as was originally planned, instead substituting the inexperienced Okinawans.”Footnote 65 Others put the blame on the Australian government, which forbade the introduction of Japanese for fear of local opposition. Surveying the results from the first year, William James Duffield stated that the pearlers “wanted the Japanese but the Federal Government allowed to us the Ryukyuans.”Footnote 66
Whoever was responsible and whatever the reasons for the various decisions, the initial catch was disappointing. The local member of parliament, who visited Thursday Island at the end of April, told a Cairns newspaper: “They are young and energetic, and only too willing to learn but are completely inexperienced. What shell has been produced this season has come from the islanders. . . . Most of them had been salvage divers in the past and had had no connection with pearl at all. Even when they reached the pearl beds they had no idea of what to look for.”Footnote 67 At the end of their first six weeks, the Okinawans had gathered only about two tons of shell; and within their first five months three divers—Chusei Gushi on Duffields’ Hespia; Zenjiro Chinen on Whyalla's Anniki; and Chosun Yara on Hockings’ Candia—died either from compression sickness or from drowning while being staged, the first fatality occurring only five days after Duffields’ fleet had left Thursday Island.Footnote 68
An additional burden for the pearlers was the newly-introduced change in shell grading.Footnote 69 At the end of the first neap, Allan Gerdau, the principal of the Otto Gerdau Company, came to Thursday Island and held a general meeting of all the master pearlers, departmental officials, and other small pearlers. He “announced that due to difficulties arising in the sale of the second grades of pearl shells and the competition from plastic buttons he was obliged to enforce a new strict grading of the shells, prices per grade remaining as in the past.” Selecting only the best shells as marketable reduced the marketable shells by 80 percent to 90 percent.Footnote 70
Swayed by the master pearlers’ financial difficulties through low production and the expense of importing the Okinawans, and believing the pearling industry to be essential to the region's economy, the Queensland cabinet agreed on May 27, 1958 (Decision No. 606), to the requests by the pearlers and Islanders for a suspension of two of the Commonwealth's original conditions for the remainder of the season ending January 31, 1960: (1) equal numbers of Islanders and Okinawans per boat; and (2) diving no deeper than 17 fathoms.Footnote 71 The responsible minister, Dr. Henry Winston Noble, told Cairns Post that it was “of the utmost importance for the future of Thursday Island and the general welfare of islanders that the master pearlers continue in business.”Footnote 72 The Islanders had by now been brought in to instruct the Okinawans and, hopeful of recouping their losses, the master pearlers claimed that the Okinawans’ previous experience in salvage diving and “the tuition they have received in Torres Strait in diving for, and gathering, pearl shell, now fits them to operate in the deeper waters with a consequent increase in shell production.” Moreover, the Islanders, they stated, had little confidence in deep diving under Okinawan direction. “It is possible,” wrote the Premier, “that, after a session of the Ryukyuans working in deeper waters, the financial position of the pearlers may be sufficiently improved, and the confidence of the Islanders in the Ryukyuans so restored, that it may be possible to re-impose the original conditions next year.” The island councilors, aware of the serious consequences of failure for themselves, had unanimously agreed to the shellers’ request and the changes were rubber-stamped by the Commonwealth, which not been consulted or even informed beforehand.Footnote 73 The decision was criticized by the Queensland Labor opposition as favoring the master pearlers over the Indigenous workforce. They suggested that “the Okinawan divers brought to Thursday Island to train Torres Strait islanders in deep water diving were now being used to edge the islanders out of the pearling industry.” They even accused the government of using the promise of training “simply a pretext to assist master pearlers” and of planning to give Okinawans a permanent place in the state's pearling industry.Footnote 74
The master pearlers’ financial situation was now so serious that by the end of July most were in debt and facing financial ruin. Bowden, Duffields, Hockings, South Seas Pearling Coy, and Burns Philp had “tied up” a total of 10 luggers and discharged 117 Islanders (although with new engagements their overall unemployment in July was 67). They delivered a panicked ultimatum to the Queensland government: If it refused to pay for the repatriation of the Okinawans, they would cease all operations by mid-August 1958, when the luggers were expected to return to port, and place the men in their quarters on August 15 without pay and allotments. They requested police reinforcements and even a naval vessel to stand by in case of trouble from the Okinawans and possibly some Islanders.Footnote 75 The state government, however, refused to assume any responsibility for the repatriation or provide any financial assistance.
Duffields and Hockings were in the worst financial position, both threatening to stop the men's pay and allotments, whereas Bowden hoped to keep its indents until 1960. Duffields was the first to advise the government officially that it would “discharge its 23 Ryukyuans on or about 13th August, 1958 with a Nil balance of wages,” since the company had no money to pay them. The men would stay in their quarters and be supplied with water and food, mainly fish and rice, for at least one month. The company, they stated, “does not owe the men any money, in fact each man owes the company approximately £217.” This meant that the men would not receive their monthly wage of £22, comprising a £20 allotment to their families due on August 17 “plus £2 local spending money (tobacco and food being found by the employer)” and led to much anger and disillusionment. Duffields claimed that each Okinawan was “personally indebted to them to the extent of approximately £70, total being £1,600, and expenditure on food, wages etc. has exceeded earnings from shell by £3,400.” The firm had lost £5,000 in addition to its expenses in bringing the indents to Thursday Island and building their onshore accommodation.Footnote 76
Duffields did indeed, as threatened, lay up their luggers but the other companies decided to continue operations for at least one more month. Two additional policemen were flown in from Cairns on August 14, in case of trouble but there was none, the Okinawans stating that “they were unable to cope with the prevailing pearling conditions, and that they were sorry that the venture had failed. They are now anxious to return home, where they can earn more money, and be reunited with their families.”Footnote 77 However, they protested the non-payment of their allotments by Duffields, Hockings, and Whyalla.
During this period of enforced inaction, two of the Duffields’ indents, Keizo Uechi and Seiko Takara, were brought before the local court on August 16, convicted of minor charges but not fined: Uechi of drunkenness; and Takara of willful destruction, while drunk, of a plate glass window belonging to the hotelier Thomas Burgess. He had no recollection of the incident and was ordered to pay £1 restitution. Another incident took place in the Duffields’ barracks when in the early morning of September 2, an intoxicated Hidenobu Arihama, who had been charged with drunkenness in April, stabbed Hidemichi Sakihama in the buttocks and the arm with a butcher's knife. Sakihama was treated at the hospital for minor cuts but refused to press charges. The pearlers seized on this incident as indicating possible future trouble if they were not financially assisted to repatriate the Okinawans. They were, wrote the local sub-collector of customs, “only too willing to exaggerate the smallest incident, in the hope that someone will act, and rid them of their Ryukyuans.”Footnote 78 He reassured the Commonwealth authorities that these actions were not the result of the Okinawans’ situation.Footnote 79
Toward the end of August, the certificates of exemption for all sixty-nine surviving Duffields, Hockings, and Whyalla indents were canceled, with the men, thus, legally obliged to leave Australia within thirty days at the company's expense.Footnote 80 However, it proved difficult to repatriate them, given that those three firms were unable to operate. The Okinawans were still on Thursday Island in early October and “nearly penniless, depending on hand-outs for ‘tobacco money’.”Footnote 81 Some of the men were transferred to other companies, e.g., nine from Duffields to Cape York Pearling Coy and five to Bowden. However, the combination of the new grading system, increased production costs, and a disappointing catch by the Okinawan divers led to “the decline of the pearling industry, the laying up of boats and the inauguration of bankruptcies. Out of the 76 pearling boats at the start of the pearling season only 26 remained by the end.”Footnote 82 A final tally of sixty-seven men left Thursday Island per Changsha on October 22, 1958, before the expiry of their contracts and at the companies’ expense.
Okinawans in Torres Strait 1959–1963
George reports that the new pearling season of 1959 began “in a state of confusion and uncertainty, the number of boats reduced considerably.” By the end of the season, 481 tons of shell were collected as against 503 the previous season. Even more telling was the performance of one the boats manned by Torres Strait Islanders, which harvested 60 tons of shell, whereas the boats crewed by Okinawans averaged only 9.5 tons.Footnote 83 As we have seen, this was due to miscalculation on the part of the shellers. Their unrealistic expectations that the Okinawans would be immediately capable of gathering shell in Torres Strait waters meant that the “take” was “negligible in comparison with what was expected.”Footnote 84 No new Okinawans arrived in 1959, but 92 of the original 162 were still employed to their employers’ satisfaction. In September 1959, Cape York Pearling Coy, which had taken a further three of Duffields’ indents, applied for twelve more from Duffields’ unused allotment. Two of their men were about to be repatriated at their own request on completion of their agreements.Footnote 85 Bowden also applied to re-engage his Okinawans beyond the end of January 1960.Footnote 86 However, Burns Philp was arranging for the repatriation of twelve men, with Cape York Pearling Coy to return three.Footnote 87 On February 2, 1960, thirty-three Okinawan indents were repatriated, leaving fifty-seven.Footnote 88
In January 1960, the Queensland cabinet had approved the request from the Torres Strait Pearlshellers’ Association and the Cape York Pearling Coy to bring a further 105 indents for the following two years.Footnote 89 This again was supported by the Commonwealth government. The local sub-collector of customs wrote in early March 1960, that, although good relations existed between the indents and the two companies, which employed only a small number, this was not the case for the major employer, probably due to financial difficulties. The Okinawans were not formally unionized but a deputation of over thirty Okinawans had called at his office during the last week in February,
requesting to be repatriated as they had no money and could not get a £10 advance each which they requested. After considerable difficulty, they were advised that the matter of money advances etc. were a matter for themselves and their employer. Eventually the matter was settled between both parties with no interference from this office.Footnote 90 (This may be the “strike” referred to by Kyozo Hirakawa below.)
The shellers were now enthusiastic about their future prospects, since the price of shell had risen considerably and the Okinawans were diving in the Darnley Deeps (known as the “Divers’ Graveyard”). Burns Philp asked for another five men, previously employed by Cape York Pearling but repatriated in February 1960, to arrive from Kobe in April 1960.Footnote 91 Bowden and Burns Philp continued to transfer a small number of indents from one to the other. In March, there were requests from both companies to transfer a total of seven indents, leaving fifty-six men altogether,Footnote 92 and more were being recruited. There were no Okinawan fatalities in 1959, but two Okinawans died of the bends while diving in the Darnley Deeps in April and June 1960: Hiroshi Arakawa on Bowdon's Sedney; and Teigi Miyagi on Burns Philp's Grafton.Footnote 93
Kyozo Hirakawa put the Okinawans’ viewpoint to Ganter.Footnote 94 Much of their unhappiness resulted from unmet expectations: They believed that their contracts would be honored to the letter, whereas pre-war Japanese were far better informed as to local conditions and ways of circumventing inconveniences. Hirakawa's explanation for why the men felt cheated enough to go on strike was that the equipment was outdated and insufficient —only one compressor per boat was provided, whereas two were needed in case of one engine failing—and the food was “all rubbish, sometimes just two tins of meat for the whole crew, and rice.” According to Yuriko Nagata, Hirakawa was interviewed by an Okinawan newspaper on his return and, in addition to contractual disagreements, mentioned that the companies did not send the remittances back to Okinawa as promised and this was the reason for the strike. He did not mention the Okinawans’ disappointing performance.Footnote 95 Nor did the Okinawans appear to understand the new shell grading system, which had just been introduced, and its relationship to their bonuses. Their wages were £20 a month but, unlike the Darwin divers, their bonuses depended on the grade of shell and, under the stricter guidelines, much of what they harvested was discarded. However, not speaking English and under American not Japanese political control, they did not trust the local court system to set things right.
On February 6, 1961, twenty-three indents left Thursday Island for home, leaving forty altogether.Footnote 96 However, by the end of March 1961, just before the beginning of the new pearling season, Bowden's men were receiving only their rations and the company was making no effort to equip and prepare its luggers, although the other companies “were preparing their vessels, paying cash advances and the normal monthly allotments to Okinawa.” As was feared, Bowden Pearling Coy, the largest commercial pearling company in Australia in 1953, became insolvent in April 1961 and repatriated nineteen indents on May 1. Its premises and seventeen luggers were offered for sale, leaving fewer than thirty luggers operating from Thursday Island. Manager Jack Dunwoodie blamed the government's credit squeeze for the firm's insolvency but this was explicitly rejected by the Commonwealth minister for primary industry.Footnote 97
Local officials put the best face possible on the situation, reporting that more than half of the indents were still employed in the industry and their presence had not adversely affected Islander employment.Footnote 98 In June 1960, the best pearlshell from the Darnley Deeps was receiving more than £900 a ton and ordinary shell £550 a ton, there had been no more fatalities and the pearlers professed great confidence in the Okinawans, who “have learnt their trade just as well as an islander.”Footnote 99 But the recovery was brief and Bowden's repatriation of nineteen indents on May 1, 1961, left only eleven with Cape York Pearling Coy and nine with Burns Philp.Footnote 100
By August 1962, Cape York Pearling Coy had rehired one diver and Burns Philp seven, three of whom returned to Okinawa at the end of 1963.Footnote 101 The last Okinawan recorded in the Thursday Island seamen's engagement register was the diver/tender, Saburo Kanna, who was issued with his license on November 22, 1963.
Was the “Okinawan experiment” a Failure?
If “failure” can be defined as lack of success in achieving the goals of an enterprise, the deaths of people involved and the bankruptcies of participating entities, then the “Okinawan experiment” must be deemed a failure. Indeed, “failure” is the word most often used at the time, even by the Okinawans, to characterize this attempt to boost pearling industry profits and return Asian indents to their pre-war dominance of the Australian pearlshelling industry.Footnote 102 Moreover, formulating public policy without paying sufficient heed to local conditions contributed in this instance to tragic outcomes. As early as July 1958, after the first fatalities and a disappointing catch, William James Duffield stated that the venture would cost employers £80,000, and blamed the Commonwealth government for sending Okinawans rather than Japanese.Footnote 103 Reviewing the lower than average production and seven deaths of 1958, the Chief Inspector of Fisheries commented that “disastrous results for some pearler masters followed the introduction of labour from Okinawa into the Thursday Island pearling fleet.”Footnote 104
There is a tragic thematic connection between the “Okinawan experiment” and two previous experiments in transnational pearlshelling labor movements: the so-called “White Experiment,” which brought English salvage divers to Broome in 1912; and the importation of Greek sponge divers from Kalymnos to Broome and Darwin in the 1950s. All three aimed to end Asian labor dominance of the industry. All three ended in failure.Footnote 105 Like the English and Greek divers, the Okinawans were unfamiliar with northern Australian conditions. Undoubtedly driven to succeed, they worked hard but, at least initially, lacked the necessary skills required for taking shell from the cold, murky, and unpredictable northern waters. Once they had gained local experience, many became valued employees. In August 1964, the Australian Pearl Coy Ltd sought advice from the Commonwealth Fisheries Division regarding the introduction to Australia of “diving personnel recruited from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore or Okinawa,” but nothing came of the request.Footnote 106
Bruised by its expensive experiment in importing Greek divers, the Commonwealth government made it clear from the outset that it would not be responsible for any losses, and the Queensland government likewise absolved itself of any responsibility. The Queensland Minister for Health and Home Affairs stated in Parliament on August 27, 1958, that “The responsibility for the selection of Ryukyuan divers was rightly that of Torres Strait master pearlers.”Footnote 107 Dunwoodie and Hockings, who had traveled to Okinawa ostensibly to choose the men and were probably being blamed, stated that the selection had been made by the Okinawan Divers’ Association and their task was merely to finalize details of employment and transport to Australia. Nonetheless, they had “failed to establish whether or not [the Okinawans] were skilled in the art of pearl shell diving.”Footnote 108 They seem to have been gulled by the US administration's misrepresentation of the men as “pearling specialists,” whereas, according to George, they were generally inexperienced, with only some having worked for the Americans as salvage divers and only four or five able to use the standard diving equipment.Footnote 109
In retrospect, the “Okinawan experiment” can be seen as an ill-fated continuation of pre-war Asian indenture under very different structural conditions, a cautionary tale for those involved in an industry, which, like most Australian primary production, is volatile and commercially precarious. Financial returns are vulnerable to changing climatic conditions, market requirements, legal restrictions, and the availability of investment capital. Capitalism is predicated on private property and private profit but enterprise owners are often able to exploit a perceived identity of interests between themselves and their governments to influence public policy for commercial advantage. The master pearlers, their judgment clouded by the lure of vast—though illusory—profits, viewed the 1957 industry downturn as simply part of the normal boom and bust cycle, which they could manage, as they had always done, by importing Japanese labor to work the pearl beds of the Darnley Deeps. Their gamble, “a huge mistake,”Footnote 110 was destined to end in failure, since in retrospect the year marked the beginning of the industry's terminal decline. Despite Hockings’ lament that the Okinawan experiment “was the downfall of the pearling,”Footnote 111 this was only in small part due to the energetic Okinawans, whose skills and experience proved to be better suited to Broome and Darwin conditions.Footnote 112 Their arrival coincided with the beginning of a slump in the world market from which the industry never recovered. Even if the pre-war Japanese divers had returned, the industry could not have competed with the large-scale production of plastic buttons. By the end of 1962 it had collapsed, and by the late 1960s had virtually disappeared.Footnote 113
Conclusion
This article has examined the interplay of political and economic processes driving the “Okinawan experiment,” a little-known example of the intersection between transnational labor movements, Australian primary industry policy and Australian Indigenous administration in one region, Torres Strait, during the final years of the Northern Australian pearlshelling industry. Although the venture belongs chronologically to the third phase of transnational labor movements (1945–present), in almost all respects it resembles the second phase (1870–1940) and is probably best viewed as its tail-end—a coda or continuation of past practices rather than a response to the post-war structural changes then underway. A comparison of conditions of indenture for the pre-war Japanese and postwar Okinawans shows that the various participants expected to continue “business as usual,” despite the volatility of overseas demand and the altered historical conditions.
The article has also discussed the disconnection between policy decisions made without local knowledge and their local ramifications; and how Commonwealth-state tensions and electoral changes affected the formulation of primary industry and Indigenous policy in the early postwar years. World War II is recognized as a watershed in Torres Strait Islander history. In return for their army service, the Islanders made a number of demands of the state government, including a greater say in the management of their local marine resources. Although initially supported by the Queensland state officials tasked with Islander administration and employment, new political imperatives arose after a change of government.
In retrospect, we see that none of the participants in the “Okinawan experiment” were entirely innocent of blame for its failure. They could not imagine a different future for the industry or new ways of obtaining a skilled workforce. In their haste to prevent the collapse of a potential revenue source, the two Australian governments concerned were swayed by free-market spokesmen for the industry and failed to understand international and Indigenous Australian postwar trends. They assumed that the pre-war practices of Asian labor indenture could continue indefinitely. The American administration of Okinawa appears to have deliberately misled the Australian government and the master pearlers as to the capabilities of the indents. The master pearlers overestimated future profits and failed to innovate, heed authoritative warnings that the Okinawans were unsuited to deep-water diving, and therefore train them adequately or improve equipment. Nor are the indents exempt from responsibility, although their precarious position in the context of high postwar unemployment makes their decision to engage more understandable. Facing poverty at home, they were as keen to come to Australia as the pearlers were to employ them. All parties concerned pursued their own interests without proper regard for the particularities of local conditions and “the greater rigours of pearl diving” compared with salvage diving.Footnote 114
The result was an ill-conceived policy with unintended consequences, most tragically the deaths of five Okinawans and four Islanders. Everyone concerned made naive assumptions about the future of a volatile industry and miscalculated the difficulties and risks involved in locating and harvesting shell in the deep tidal waters of Torres Strait—skills and local knowledge, which take years to master and whose transfer was interrupted by the war. Bowden Pearling Coy, founded in 1887, went into voluntary liquidation in 1961Footnote 115 and Hal Hockings told Ganter “it just about broke us.”Footnote 116 Ultimately, none of the those involved gained their objectives, with the divers’ deaths, the outcome of a confluence of foreseeable factors, the scheme's most tragic aspect. Only the Islanders profited from the failure of the “Okinawan experiment.” They received a boost to their self-confidence, were acknowledged as skilled marine workers, and, without foreign indentured competition, began at last to profit from the resources of their own waters.
