Hiram Fong

Politician

• Pronunciation: HI-rum LYONG FONG
• Born: October 15, 1906
• Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii
• Died: August 18, 2004
• Place of death: Kahaluu, Hawaii

Hiram Fong was one of Hawaii’s first two senators and served with distinction in the Senate for nearly twenty years. The first Asian American to serve as senator, he epitomized a bipartisan, multiracial Hawaii that was to speed the racial integration of the entire US political sphere.

Birth name: Yau Leong Fong

Areas of achievement: Politics

Early Life

Hiram Leong Fong was born into a large family who were Cantonese speakers from Guangdong province, China. Like many of their region, Fong’s parents had emigrated in their late teens to Hawaii, a territory newly annexed by the United States, as indentured servants in search of economic opportunity and a freer way of life. They raised Fong and his ten siblings in a manner that encouraged them to acculturate into the Anglo-American mainstream. From the age of four, Fong showed his industriousness by gathering beans to sell to local merchants to earn extra money. He also worked as a news-paper boy and golf caddy. Fong attended Kalihi-Waena Elementary School in Honolulu.

Because the most academically outstanding high school in Honolulu, Punahou, was at that time restricted to the white Hawaiian population, Fong went to the next best institution, McKinley High School. There, he was part of the class of 1924, which included many future Asian Hawaiian achievers, including the entrepreneur Chinn Ho; Aloha Airlines founder Hung Wai Ching; and the Hawaiian Supreme Court justice Masaji Marumoto.

At the University of Hawaii, Fong continued his dedicated and productive career, not only excelling academically but also editing the student newspaper and participating on several sports teams, while also working for the US Navy installation in Pearl Harbor in his off hours. Fong graduated ahead of schedule in 1930; then, after taking two years off to work for a local water utility, Fong entered Harvard Law School in 1932, becoming one of the first Asian Americans to attend that institution. He graduated in 1935 and returned to Honolulu to work in the district attorney’s office.

In 1938, Fong married Ellyn Lo, and she was to remain his wife until he passed away. He also founded the law firm Fong, Miho, Choy, and Robinson, which quickly became one of the most influential law firms in Honolulu. The firm’s multiethnic name stood for the synthesis of races in Hawaiian culture; Fong was a Chinese name, Miho was Japanese, Choy was Korean, and Robinson was English. Fong also ran for and won a seat in the Territorial House of Representatives (later part of the Hawaiian state legislature).

When the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, provoking the United States’ entry into World War II, Chinese Hawaiians erupted in a burst of patriotism for the United States, especially since China was already at war with Japan, and Chinese Americans were outraged at reports of Japanese atrocities. Chinese Americans did not face the kind of discrimination experienced by their Japanese American counterparts; after all, China was an ally of the United States. Still, Chinese Americans did face setbacks in the United States, just like other Asian Americans. In 1942, to ensure greater success in his public endeavors, Fong changed his first name to Hiram, affirming his loyalty to his country with this more American-sounding name.

Fong served in the US Army Air Force during World War II while maintaining his legislative seat in the Territorial House of Representatives. In the years after World War II, Fong concentrated further on his legislative career. Although he was a Republican, he stood for pro-labor policies that identified him with the Republican Party’s more liberal wing. Fong served as a Republican leader and, when his party was in the majority, he also served as Speaker of the House. In 1954, however, Fong lost his office when Hawaii experienced a Democratic landslide.

Life’s Work

Hawaii had traditionally been a Republican stronghold, going back to 1898 and its annexation to the United States, which the national Republicans had favored and the national Democrats opposed. Hawaii’s Caucasian elite was mostly made up of Republicans, and so for Chinese Americans like Fong, joining the Republican Party was a passport to fraternization with the dominant groups on the islands. In the post–World War II era, though, the Democratic Party gained in popularity due to its support within the Japanese American community, as well as among working-class whites. Not all Japanese Americans were Democratic, though; Japanese Hawaiian territorial legislator Thomas Sakakihara was a key aide to Fong during the tie between the Republican and Democratic Parties, for example.

The same bipartisanship that cost Fong his office ultimately portended greater things for him. With the Cold War in full swing and the United States wanting to secure its holdings in the Pacific, pressure to admit Hawaii as a state became high. Because in Hawaii a large number of Chinese Americans considered themselves Republicans, whereas Japanese Americans were largely Democrats, both political parties on the US mainland saw a potential stake for themselves in admitting Hawaii to the United States. This was corroborated when, upon Hawaii’s becoming a state in 1959, the islands elected Oren Ethelbirt Long as a Democratic senator and Fong as the Republican senator.

Fong had been an ardent and enthusiastic advocate of statehood, arguing repeatedly for the economic benefits Hawaii could bring to the United States and testifying to the fact that Hawaiians could be good American citizens, notwithstanding the multiracial texture of their culture, which was so different from the American mainstream at that time. Fong was already familiar to many in the Senate Republican caucus through his attendance as a delegate at the 1952 and 1956 Republican National Conventions, and he was given key committee assignments by the party leadership.

When he arrived in the Senate in August 1959, Fong was a trailblazer. He was not only the first Chinese American to reach such political heights, but also the first Asian American to serve in the upper house of Congress. In the Senate, Fong charted a politically moderate course, supporting an active US military posture—as seen in his endorsement of the war in Vietnam—while favoring most social and civil rights legislation.

In 1964, Fong stood as a “favorite son” candidate for the Republican presidential nomination—that is, he was a candidate who pursued votes in his own state but did not seek to wage a nationwide campaign. He did this both to gain visibility for Hawaii and to oppose the more avowedly conservative positions of the eventual Republican Party nominee, Barry Goldwater. Fong’s similar candidacy in 1968 was still more locally focused, but it nevertheless made his name visible beyond Hawaii and acclimatized Americans to the idea of nonwhite presidential candidates.

In the 1970s, Hawaii became increasingly dominated by the Democratic Party, eventually becoming one of the US states in which Republican politicians were least popular. Despite his personal status and importance to Hawaiian politics, Fong could not withstand this statewide turn toward the Democrats, especially since he faced the electorate in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon’s resignation amid the Watergate scandal.

After his retirement and the election of Spark Matsunaga, Fong had a notable final stage of his public career as a Honolulu-based businessman, lawyer, and philanthropist. In 1988, Fong and his wife donated a public garden to the people of Honolulu, calling it Senator Fong’s Plantation and Gardens. Located in Kahaluu, near Honolulu, the garden featured plants native to the Hawaiian Islands. It became one of the most visited sites in Hawaii, providing an alternative to the sometimes frenzied and tourist-saturated beaches of Waikiki. Fong was often to be found at his garden, greeting visitors and telling stories.

In business and community contexts, Fong remained sought out for his experience and opinion, also acting as a fixture on the local investment and real-estate scene into his mid-nineties. Fong continued to pursue business interests during his active and long retirement, playing a key role in a number of interrelated firms He was as hardworking as an elderly man as he had been as a very young child, exemplifying the dignity and accomplishment he had asked Americans to see in the elderly in his years of service on the Senate Subcommittee on Aging.

Though an able businessman and a champion of free enterprise, Fong was not overtly antigovernment in the way the generation of Republicans that followed him were; he believed government and business could work together for the benefit of the people. An unashamed promoter of Hawaii both in its quest for statehood and as a recipient of federal dollars during his years in the Senate, Fong was neither an ideologue nor a reformist; he represented what could be achieved within existing channels.

Significance

Even though the traditional alignment of Chinese Americans with the Republican Party lessened, Fong’s encapsulation of these ties helped make Hawaii a state and gave it important national visibility during his time in the Senate. Fong’s career was an excellent example of the way in which Chinese immigrants, and indeed, any immigrants to the United States, could become prominent Americans over the course of a single generation. Beyond Fong’s personal accomplishments, his ascension to the Senate was significant because it further strengthened the case for African American and Latino enfranchisement on the American mainland, in contrast with the racial segregation flourishing in the southern United States. Fong’s national prominence, along with his representation of the multiracial promise of Hawaii, have been seen as precedents for the 2008 election of Hawaiian-born US president Barack Obama (who, unlike Fong, graduated from Punahou rather than McKinley High). More dedicated to accomplishment than histrionics, Fong seldom courted controversy, but his quiet effectiveness made him a considerable political force.

Bibliography

Cumings, Bruce. Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009. Print. Treats Fong’s historical role in the geopolitical context of the American and Asian sides of the Pacific Ocean.

Faust, Darrell. Hiram Fong: Hawaii’s First Senator. New York: Houghton, 2005. Print. Presents an introductory survey of Fong’s life and work, largely intended for a younger audience.

Lum, Arlene, ed. Sailing for the Sun: The Chinese in Hawaii, 1789–1989. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1990. Print. Offers a documentary overview of the Chinese community on Hawaii, also showing Fong’s pivotal role in the social and political history of Hawaii.

Smith, Zachary Alden, and Richard Pratt, eds. Politics and Public Policy in Hawaii. Albany: State U of New York P, 1992. Print. Includes a discussion of Fong’s role in the evolution of Hawaii’s participation in federal politics.

Whitehead, John. Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawaii, and the Battle for Statehood. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2004. Print. Describes Fong’s role in Hawaii’s historical process of achieving US statehood.

---. “Hawaii: The First and Last Far West?” Western Historical Quarterly 23.2 (May, 1992): 153–77. Print. Scholarly article that examines Hawaii’s place in the history of westward US expansion, including references to Fong’s role in Hawaiian political history.