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A Starting Point
Yoshigoro Ichinose
- On the 24th of October, 1899 a young 25 year old man named Yoshigoro Ichinose stepped into the steerage section of the British built cargo ship the S.S. Carlisle City. Yoshigoro and his wife Tome, carrying their one and a half year old daughter Osamu, must have glanced occasionally of the last visions of their homeland with sadness, doubt, trepidation and hope . The ship would leave from the port of Yokohama located in Kanagawa prefecture on the the eastern pacific coast of Japan just off the northeastern edge of Tokyo Bay. Being one of the biggest ports in Japan and surrounded by the cities large business district and was certainly a central hub of industry and commerce and must have been quite overwelming.
- Yoshigoro's home was the small town of Kurogi located in the Fukuoka prefecture in southern Japan. The trip from Kurogi to the port of Yokohama was just over 1,100 kilometers and would take about 13 and a half hours to drive today. One can only imagine what the trip was like in 1899. There is no way to know exactly how they traveled, if was over land or along the sea coast by boat but it must have been a challenging one to say the least.
- What brought them to this we can only speculate but we can make an informed attempt by looking at a few snapshots of Japan and Hawaii during the mid to late 1800s. From 1835 sugar was a vital part of the Hawaiian economy. By the mid 1800s much of Hawaii's native population had been killed off by diseases brought in by outsiders. By 1850 the sugar planters realized they needed foreign laborers. The two most populous countries in the region were China and Japan but Japan discouraged immigration so China was the chief source of immigration labor.
- During the 1880s Japan suffered a major economic downturn. Many people , especially in the crowded south, desperately needed work. Emperor Meiji , Japan's ruler, thought this could lead to mass unrest and even revolution so when the Hawaiian sugar barons promised good wages and free houses to any Japanese willing to make the 4,000 mile trip... Meiji listened. In 1884 he proclaimed that Japanese citizens could seek employment in the island kingdom and the floodgates from Japan were opened.
- In the ten years that followed thousands of peasants and manual laborers signed contracts with Hawaiian recruiters who visited Japan's cities and villages. In 1898 the migrations from Japan grew even more rapidly when Hawaii was annexed by the United States and the Chinese Exclusion Act, which passed in 1882, took effect.
- For Yoshigoro it may have been the horrible economic downturn and related conditions in Japan along with the hope of a better life that set him on his path. It is equally possible that is was not entirely his choice for like many of his Japanese compatriots Yoshigoro probably had a powerful sense of belonging to his ancestral land yet he may have been following his father's bidding to go and work for several years and return if his father was even alive at that time. Respect and obedience towards one's parents were a central element in Japanese culture and to disobey a parent was a most shameful act, even for an adult child, such as Yoshigoro, which one could do.
- Regardless of the reasons Yoshigoro, wife Tome and daughter Osamu left on a two week trip, in which conditions on the cargo ship's steerage section were certainly horrendous, to land in the port of Honolulu and start a new life. In short, Yoshigoro stayed in Hawaii never returning to Japan and his main occupation in life was a pig and vegetable farmer. He fathered ten children with Tome and died on April 20th in the year 1940 in Honolulu. Tome had died 23 years earlier on November 19th 1917 eleven months after the birth of her last child.
- That is a brief and vague guess of how and why Yoshigoro and Tome came to Hawaii from Japan and I will examine this further but more importantly this website will be the story of the ten children who were the first generation of Hawaiian born Ichinose and their families and attached families. I also want to delve into Yoshigoro's past and try to unravel his faded histories (including the possibility that he and his wife did not come alone) which may prove to be a formidable task but with help we may discover the deep roots from which we came and look at where we are going. Welcome to my site.... "The Family Ichinose of Hawaii"
The Journey today by car shown below. Imagine what is was like in 1899
Port of Yokohama
Operated by the Port and Harbor Bureau of the City of Yokohama in Japan. It opens onto Tokyo Bay.
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1858 specified Kanagawa as an open port. The Port of Yokohama formally opened to foreign trade on the 2nd of June 1859. The port grew rapidly through the Meiji and Taisho periods as a center for raw silk export and technology import.
The S.S. Carlisle City was built in April 1894 as a dry cargo vessel owned by the British transport company Furness Withy and/or the Brazilian cargo company LLOYD NACIONAL. It changed ownership 5 times finally being scrapped on Dec 31 1932.
Traveling almost 700 miles across Japan with your young wife and 1-1/2-year-old daughter and knowing you are leaving behind your home… then sailing in the steerage section of a cargo ship to a place you have never been must have been a mixture of emotions. Anxiety, courage, anticipation, fear along with a sense of loss and a wish for a better future.
Images of the Migration
October 24 1899 Immigaration Card
October 11th 1899 Manifest of the SS Carlisle City going from Yokaham Port to Honolulu. Origin was Fukuoka Prefecture.
This was the port of Hawaii in 1900.
They arrived on October 24th 1899 and it should be noted that this time frame was a very challenging one if we look at the following timeline of events Noted in the section below
These events coinsided with Yoshigoro and Tome's arrival