Critical Massie: Reclaiming the Narrative of Injustice

Scandal in paradise. Sensational trial. Riveting portrait. Exotic setting. And, most annoying of all, controversial case. This is how mainland-based fiction writers have described the Massie-Kahahawai case.

I won’t spend any time examining the facts of the case or its social impact. Such is the stuff of nonfiction. Fiction is really my writing wheelhouse (I leave the pondering of facts for my day job) and the intersection of fiction and crime is the point of this column. If it’s facts you want, you can’t do any better than David E. Stannard’s Honor Killing or John P. Rosa’s Local Story. Both are the gold standard of serious scholarship and thoughtful analysis on the matter.

What I will discuss is how the case has been hijacked by outsider fiction writers and treated as a spicy condiment for their books, and how local creatives have recently produced Massie-Kahahawai-inspired work with a far deeper resonance than its pulp predecessors. 

My personal irritation with mainland writers who have used the Massie-Kahahawai matter in their work is essentially the same as my irritation with mainland mystery writers who have set their work in Hawai‘i: the reference and place is no more than a backdrop for their plot, a playground for their haole protagonists who’ve come here to save the day. This is the reason I took up writing crime fiction in Hawai‘i. With precious few exceptions (those exceptions being almost without exception local authors—see my previous columns referencing Chris McKinney and Alexei Melnick), most crime fiction set in Hawai‘i has only used the people, culture and geography of this place as “color” for their generic yarns of thrill-seeking white people.

Two of the best-known treatments of the Massie-Kahahawai case in fiction have been Max Allan Collins’ Damned in Paradise and the 1986 made-for-television drama Blood and Orchids. While both condemn the racism and injustice of the case, they do so through the lens of star-struck interlopers.

Max Allan Collins, award-winning crime novelist and Mickey Spillane collaborator, produced Damned in Paradise in 1996 as an installment of his popular Nathan Heller series. His protagonist, Nathan Heller, is a fictitious Chicago-based detective who is witness to many of the 20th century’s high-profile events and regularly encounters historic personages from Amelia Earhart to Huey Long to Marilyn Monroe. In Damned in Paradise, Heller is hired by Clarence Darrow to aid him in his defense of the murderers of Joseph Kahahawai. The Massie-Kahahawai case is something that Collins couldn’t resist as it gives Heller the opportunity to visit Hawai‘i of the early 20th century and interact with historic characters Darrow and Chang Apana (whose speech in Damned in Paradise is disturbingly similar to Warner Oland’s Charlie Chan, based on Apana). While Damned in Paradise is entertaining in a retro-thriller, witness-to-history sense for fans of Collins (of which I am one), read from the perspective of someone who calls this place home, I’m left cold by a caricatured Apana playing the buffoon opposite an elevated Darrow. Goofy, ersatz Asian accents are the blackface of the printed page.

Blood and Orchids was the 1986 brainchild of screen writer and novelist Norman Katkov, who envisioned a fictitious version of the case with fictitious characters—a blatant roman-a-clef. The lone truly fictitious character was its ostensible protagonist, HPD Detective Captain Curt Maddox, played by Kris Kristofferson. In Katkov’s treatment of the case narrative, Maddox’s persistence and inherent sense of fairness reveals the true facts of the case, and the Thalia Massie-inspired character hangs herself before being arrested. In this world, everyone gets what they deserve.

Blood and Orchids shares with Damned in Paradise a white savior protagonist, the enlightened crusader who senses the injustice for people of color and uses his privilege to make things right for them. Both treatments are no different from the plethora of crime fiction set in Hawai‘i by writers who neither fully understand this place and its people, nor think that local people deserve to be the protagonists of stories set here in their own home.

Perhaps more disturbing than the white savior is the Cult of Clarence Darrow. Clarence Darrow! Evolution’s champion in the Scopes Monkey Trial! Inherit the Wind! Arguably the most famous lawyer in American history who wasn’t also President of the United States. His admirers tend to forget that he was the losing attorney in the Massie-Kahahawai case—and, quite frankly, on the wrong side. Mainland-based writers who have used the case as inspiration, while condemning the heinous racism and travesty of an outcome tied to it, ironically can’t help themselves from idolizing Darrow, kissing his historic jurist ass whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Clarence Darrow’s own words from his memoirs sound eerily like present-day apologists for Derek Chauvin or Kyle Rittenhouse, coming to their defense by demonizing their victims of color:

The slain man was a Hawaiian, and, though none too popular in life, a host of his friends rallied to his funeral, the largest ever assembled in Honolulu, excepting that of a prince or princess once upon a time. That Kahahawai had been in prison and was generally known as a hoodlum seemed to be forgotten by his followers, and their feelings were strengthened by the circumstances of the strange tragedy surrounding his death. 

Such are the true colors of the man who retained Nathan Heller in Damned in Paradise and was portrayed by José Ferrer (José Ferrer! Multitalented Puerto Rican actor and director! Gravitas incarnate!) in Blood and Orchids.

Thankfully, in recent years, there have been creative works inspired by the Massie-Kahahawai case by local writers who have made the injustice the central subject matter, not merely a shiny object for readers to marvel at and exclaim, “How interesting!”

In 2004, Dennis Carroll, UH Mānoa drama professor, debuted his play, Massie/Kahahawai, at Kumu Kahua Theatre with Harry Wong III directing. The play had been shelved for thirty years over concerns that a still-living Thomas Massie would bring a lawsuit. Massie/Kahahawai was based on court records, newspaper articles and other published sources. The approach was unique in that it did not endeavor to imagine the words or thoughts of the players involved, garnering its dialogue only from publications. While the facts from such sources were perhaps flawed, a work drawn from them would certainly demonstrate an observational perspective not meant to be embellished with sensation. 

In 2017, local poets Ann Inoshita, Juliet S. Kono, Christy Passion and Jean Yamasaki Toyama’s collection of linked renshi poems What We Must Remember imagines the viewpoints of the players in the case at a most intimate and human level. Inoshita’s “Viewpoints” and Toyama’s “Burned in Effigy” illustrate a commonplace racism with a graphicness most mainland-based writers wouldn’t have the stomach to do. Passion’s “Reading Assignment: Stannard’s Honor Killing” expresses a reluctance to take on the subject matter and a collective local shame the case engenders. Kono’s “They Raped Her” is a powerful envisioning of Thalia Massie’s green dress as a silent witness to the so-called “act.”

Former Federal Agent John Madinger’s 2020 Pipe Dreams envisions Thalia Massie as dissolute, an ennui-soaked party girl of a young bride barely out of her teens. This Thalia is a petulant opium addict. Madinger, a Hawai‘i-based writer from Mānoa, based his version of Thalia on information from interviews of Billy Wells, a friend of his and a Treasury Agent who lived through the events. Thalia has almost always been portrayed as young, beautiful and competent, though dishonest. Madinger’s Thalia would be an improbable fit for most mainland writers who have referenced the case, as it lowers the sensation quotient. It is, however, a credible portrait of a troubled and deficient young woman.

Ala Moana Boys, a short film written by Alexander Deedy and directed by Keli‘i Grace, debuted at this year’s Hawai‘i International Film Festival. It tells the story from the viewpoint of the five young local men accused of raping Thalia Massie. This is the first time that Joseph Kahahawai, Ben Akahuelo, Horace Ida, David Takai and Henry Chang have been the protagonists in any creative work inspired by the case.

To be fair, there may be a growing number of mainland-based creatives who are taking a less exoticized perspective on the Massie-Kahahawai case and producing work worthy of attention. But nobody will tell it with more stark authenticity or genuine outrage than someone from here. Massie/Kahahawai, What We Must Remember, Pipe Dreams and Ala Moana Boys were not only made in Hawai‘i, they were made by Hawai‘i. People here should pay more attention to that distinction.

There is a school of thought among local folks that says it might not be accurate, or even good, but it’s better than not being mentioned at all. It’s the thrill of seeing a familiar location on the screen and feeling a sense of pride that the whole world is seeing it, too, despite the fact that it’s just set-dressing for entertainment pap.

We can do—and have done—better.

---

Image by Tingey I.L.F.