In this labour history, based on his Ph.D. dissertation, Jung explores Hawaii's transition from governance by a minority white American oligarchy to political control by the working-class majority. One of his principal primary sources is the records of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

Jung's thesis is that the ILWU was instrumental in creating an interracial democracy in Hawaii in the early post-World War II period. The ILWU completed the unionization of Hawaii's sugar and pineapple industries begun by the CIO affiliate United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America, during the second half of the 1930s. Jung focusses on the role played by Japanese American, Filipino American and Portuguese American workers and white American labour union organizers from the continental United States. However, he fails to explicitly identify the significant contribution made by native Hawaiians to the unionization of Hawaii.

It is Jung's contention that an interracial democracy required the deracialization of Hawaii and that this had been successfully achieved by the early 1950s. This is a controversial argument. There is considerable evidence to suggest that Hawaii was not deracialized. The largest ethnic group, the Japanese American community, retained a distinct identity. It created a powerful voting bloc to further its community's interests at the expense of the other ethnic groups in Hawaii. In particular, the indigenous native Hawaiian community, no longer able to rely on the patronage of the former white oligarchy, found itself largely excluded from Jung's “interracial democracy.”

Jung has missed important primary sources. He failed to gain access to the closed central records of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, the modern-day Hawaii Agricultural Research Center. This explains, for example, why he does not mention the employment by the sugar and pineapple industries of the labour relations consultants the Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc. of New York in order to prevent the organization of labour unions in Hawaii before World War II. He also claims that there is very little available evidence for a close examination of the racial dynamics of the pre-World War II Hawaiian pineapple industry and mostly relies on secondary sources. However, he has failed to locate a variety of federal government and pineapple industry primary sources that would allow a closer examination. This is a disappointing monograph that illustrates the danger of overreliance on partisan primary sources.