Sun Yat-sen’s Christian Schooling in Hawai`i

Research, Sun Yat-Sen and Hawaii

Sun Yat-sen’s Christian Schooling in Hawai`i**

 Abstract

Irma Tam Soong. “Sun Yat-sen’s Christian Schooling in Hawai’i.” The Hawaiian Journal of History 31 (1997): 151-178.

The schooling that Sun Yat-sen received in Christian schools during his first sojourn in Hawai’i (1879-83) exposed him to Western ideas and Christianity, both of which influenced him thereafter. In September 1879 Sun entered Iolani College, a boarding school for boys established by the Church of England. Boarding school life was carefully regulated and the curriculum and instruction were rigorous, but Sun did well, receiving second prize in English grammar at completion exercises in July 1882. Whether he then attended St. Louis College, a Roman Catholic institution, in fall 1882 is unclear. However, he qualified for entrance into the Preparatory School of Oahu College, later called Punahou School. Sun registered under the name “Tai Chu” and very likely attended both the winter and summer terms of the first-year course from January to June of 1883. The high academic standards and Christian lifestyle he experienced during his school years in Hawai’i must have stimulated his intellectual development and reinforced his appreciation for Western values and Christianity.

  1. EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES IN HAWAI`I

  2. IOLANI, AN ANGLICAN SCHOOL

  3. ST. LOUIS COLLEGE, A CATHOLIC INSTITUTION

  4. THE EXPANSION OF OAHU COLLEGE

  5. A CHRISTIAN FOR LIFE

  6. NOTES

 

IN DR. SUNYAT-SEN’S four years as a sojoumer in Hawai`i (1879-1883), he is said to have attended three Christian educational institutions: Iolani College, St. Louis College, and Oahu College (Punahou School). His three years at Iolani are well authenticated. Whether he ever attended St. Louis cannot be substantiated by school records, but such a possibility exists. As for Oahu College, there is evidence to support the claim, though the time he spent there is not altogether clear. This essay attempts, by delving into the religious backgrounds of the three schools, their beginnings, their locations, and their curricula, to suggest the nature of the imprint a nineteenth-century Christian environment would have made on the mind and heart of a young revolutionist.

Much has been made of the Christian influence of Sun’s years at `Iolani, which led him to seek baptism and thus incur the wrath of his brother-provider, Sun Mei, who cut short Sun’s Hawai`i education and sent him back to their native village of Ts’ui-heng in Hsiangshan, Kwangtung province, for rehabilitation. It is unlikely that there had been any Christian influence in Sun’s life before his departure for Hawai`i. It is doubtful that he ever saw a Christian missionary or evangelist while a youth.

When the Rev. Frank Damon visited Hsiang-shan district in 1884, he found a chapel in Shih-ch’i, the district seat, and “a little company of native Christians, under the charge of the English Church Mission.” As far as he knew, it was “the only Christian Station in all this populous region.”

Sun probably first heard of Christianity through the tales of the Taiping Rebellion (1850 – 1864) recounted to him by a veteran who had returned from the wars. Sun was entranced by his accounts, which stirred his imagination as the old classical rote studies he abhorred could not. This first introduction to Christianity was a powerful stimulus for continued revolution, and when he was propelled into a Christian environment in Hawai`i, his desire to learn about the religion was satisfied in four intensive years of study in Christian schools.

In his account of the Taiping Rebellion, Jen Yu-wen wrote, “It is one of the ironies of history that the very year the Manchus finally extinguished the greatest eruption of revolutionary nationalism during their reign the seed of a new nationalist movement emerged with the birth on November 12, 1866 of its future leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen.” Jen found it “probably more than coincidence” that Hung Hsiu-ch’üan, the Taiping leader, and Sun Yat-sen, a revolutionary leader of modern China, were both Christians. Jen emphasized Hung’s role in Sun’s revolutionary zeal in his assessment of the historical relationship between the two movements:

Our expanding grasp of the aspirations and accomplishments of the Taiping Revolutionary Movement has brought ever more light to its evolutionary relationship with the National Revolution and heightened our perception of direct historical links. Perhaps the most symbolic instance of this continuity occurred at the transfer of power on January 1, 1912 which ended 267 years of Manchu rule. The abdication of Emperor P’u-i (Hsüan-t’ung) was accepted for the new Republic of China by Provisional President Sun Yat-sen, who had as a boy cherished the nickname “Hung Hsiu-ch’üan the Second.”

In Hawai`i’s Christian schools Sun was to learn why Hung mandated “strict observance of the Ten Commandments and attendance at daily worship” of the Taiping Army. “To the end of their lives Hung Hsiu-ch’üan and his fellow leaders held fast to their Christian faith.” Sun too would, despite all odds, cling to his faith to the very end.

In 1879 when Sun boarded the Grannoch in Hong Kong for his voyage to the Sandalwood Mountains, as the Chinese called Hawai`i, he was impressed by the wonder of a mechanically propelled ship of massive proportions and the superiority of the foreigner in that respect, but he was at the same time appalled at the simple burial at sea of one of the English sailors. Instead of the elaborate ceremony due to the dead and necessary to the fortunes of the family, the laws of feng-shui (geomancy) and other practices were disregarded. Only the tolling of a bell and the reading of a book by the ship’s captain preceded the lowering of the flag-draped casket into the waters and the departure of the deceased into the next world. Though he did not know it at the time, that book was the Book of Common Prayer, which he himself would be using in his Sunday services in Honolulu.

Working with his brother Sun Mei in the latter’s plantation and store acquainted him with the goals of most of the Chinese immigrants-to make a living and, if possible, to acquire enough gold pieces to retire to their native villages rich and crowned with respect. Quick to learn conversational Hawaiian, many married or cohabited with native women and adjusted to a unique environment where a Hawaiian king ruled, flanked by American and European advisers. Few of his compatriots were literate in their own language. Those rare ones who could speak and read English were high-ranking interpreters to whom the non-English speakers appealed when communication skills were needed.

Sun Mei could see that if he were to rise in the financial world, he would have to have access to knowledge of the system of law that the Americans had managed to establish in the Hawaiian kingdom. The better educated in the English language his assistant was, the faster he would be able to transact, his business dealings.

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EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES IN HAWAI`I

In 1879 education in the Hawaiian language, but not in English, was almost universal. Missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had arrived in 1820 and by January of 1822 had worked out an alphabet and orthography of the Hawaiian language to use in spreading the gospel through the written word. In less than twenty years the first public schools for the Hawaiians had been established, and by 1840 the government had assumed responsibility for teachers’ wages and the maintenance of buildings. In 1849 Lahainaluna Seminary, a high school on Maui, was founded to train young native Hawaiians for the ministry. The chief reading text in the schools was the Bible, which had been translated from the original Greek or Hebrew.

The common school system, though somewhat shaky, was by the early 1830s serving fifty thousand students, most of them adults, enrolled in about eleven hundred schools. Four of every ten Hawaiians were learning to read Christian textbooks in the Hawaiian language. In 1840, “the high tide for the Sandwich Islands Mission, 10,ooo newcomers partook of baptism and communion.”

The task of Christianizing the Hawaiian nation and educating its royalty in the intricacies of government organization and administration lay mainly on the shoulders of the American missionaries and other foreigners upon whom the Hawaiian rulers relied. In education, both government and religious affiliations did their part in its amazing progress. In 1840 the kingdom had its first written constitution. In 1841 the Congregationalists (ABCFM missionaries) opened Punahou School to provide a secondary college-preparatory education for their own children. In 1846 the Department of Public Instruction was established with William Richards as its first minister of instruction. In 1855 Punahou was opened to students of Hawaiian blood. In 1859 Sacred Hearts Academy, a Catholic school, was founded for girls. In 1862 Bishop Staley arrived to establish the first Anglican schools. In 1867 St. Andrew’s Priory, an Anglican school for girls, was founded. In 1872 Bishop Willis arrived and founded Iolani College, another Anglican institution.

By 1879 there were not only public and private schools but also English classes for Chinese adults. One near Chinatown was run by the Rev. Samuel C. Damon at his Bethel Mission. But Sun would not want just to go to classes in English when his brother could afford the best Western education that money could provide.

While there were scattered small private schools throughout the Islands, only two of significance existed in Honolulu. The most prestigious was Punahou, by then named Oahu College. It was situated about two miles from Chinatown on a hillside below Manoa Valley. Most of the students were boarders from the Neighbor Islands. The school’s reputation for high standards was so forbidding that no immigrant boy without a good command of English would dare hope to be admitted. Principally because he would not qualify, Sun did not go to Oahu College in 1879.

The only other private school of repute in Honolulu was `Iolani, which was situated less than a mile above Chinatown on Bates Street in Nu`uanu. It was a small boarding school established by Anglicans for Hawaiian boys and was open to Chinese students.

Why was Sun Mei, with his intensely ethnocentric pride, open to sending his brother to a Christian school? Was it not run by “white devils,” who were considered barbarians by the Chinese? The probable answer is that his Chinese respect for scholarship and for its usefulness, no matter what the cost, overcame deep-seated reservations about the wisdom of allowing an impressionable youth to learn under the tutelage of zealous, proselytizing missionaries. Most important of all, it was extremely practical to learn the English language, for skill in its use would open opportunities for rising economically in a society dominated by British and American residents.

Sun Mei no doubt had the Chinese “self-styled cultural superiority” that underlay China’s rigid resistance to change. Still, Christian ideals of reverence toward divinity, of universal brotherhood, of compassion, and of exemplary moral conduct were compatible with the best of his own. A Christian school would keep young Sun under strict discipline. He would learn right from wrong and grow up to be a virtuous adult, not easily tempted by the vices common to mankind. Surely the old Chinese customs and traditions would be observed. If he had the slightest apprehension that his brother would succumb to the appeal of a foreign religion and on graduation seek to be baptized, he dismissed it. Besides, in the Islands Chinese Christians were definitely in the minority. In 1881 only five hundred of the fourteen thousand Chinese were Christians. And most of these were Hakkas, in contrast to the Puntis, who were on the whole non-Christian. Sun Mei was a Punti, one of a multitude of immigrants from Chung-shan district and other areas of Kwangtung who felt themselves superior to the Hakkas.

The cleavage between the Hakkas and Puntis had arisen from conflicts in the old country. The Puntis were the natives of Kwangtung province, a mixed race of the original tribes and people from north China who had migrated to central China. During the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 228) they had migrated south and therefore considered themselves the natives. The Hakkas migrated to Kwangtung from northern and central China between 1250 and 1700.

In general, the immigrants from Sun’s Chung-shan district came to Honolulu unconverted and remained true to the old practices. Later many were converted by ABCFM missionaries and Chinese pastors and evangelists who could speak Cantonese, the prestigious version of the Punti dialect. Most of the Hakka Christians, on the other hand, had come from areas near Hong Kong and towns in the coastal area. Their parents had been converted by Basel and Berlin missionaries, who first came to Kwangtung in 1847.

The Chinese churches in Hawai`i can be said to be the fruits of the early labor of the Lutheran missions, mainly the Basel Mission Society, for many of the pastors in the years that followed were trained in the seminary at Lilong. The first Basel-trained pastor to serve in Hawai`i arrived in 1872. He was sent to Kohala to work for the Congregational Church under the direction of the Rev. Elias Bond. Kong Tet Yin had worked in Australia and was therefore a pastor at one time or another of three Christian denominations-the Lutheran, the Anglican, and the Congregationalist.

In Sun Yat-sen’s Iolani days, the Congregationalist Hawaii Evangelical Association (HEA) was continuing to welcome Chinese Christians of Lutheran backgrounds and to evangelize among the sojourning non-Christians. By 1877 young Christians had formed the Chinese YMCA (later the Chinese Christian Association of Hawai`i) and had been granted a charter by the Hawaiian government. In 1879, the year Sun entered `Iolani, thirty-six members of the Chinese Christian Church received a charter of incorporation. In 1881 the church, with more than one hundred members, dedicated a two-story building of its own on Fort Street near Beretania. In that same year, the Rev. Francis M. Damon, who was to play a supporting role in Sun’s conflict with Sun Mei on his second trip to Hawai`i in 1885, became superintendent of the HEA’S work among the Chinese. Serving on the church’s board were self-made Chinese such as Goo Kim Fui and earnest Caucasians who helped to “manage the property, raise funds for repair and improvement, and provide for an expansion of the work.” Represented among the latter were Charles M. Hyde and members of the Davies, Atherton, Damon, and Waterhouse families. The cordial relations of the Chinese with the “white devils” were evident in the help given them in raising the funds to build the Chinese Christian Church of Honolulu. The Caucasians even lent the church parlors of their older Fort Street Church for the bazaar while the women brightened indoors and outdoors with lanterns, brocades, tapestry, and other glittering attractions. Royalty too graced the affair with their presence. Likelike, sister of Kalakaua, who was away on his world tour, represented the king. Also in attendance were clergymen and government dignitaries and their families.

Surely Sun Yat-sen must have heard about this great event in a vicinity familiar to him. These white people were not like the ones who started the Opium Wars and pointed their guns at China’s ports to open the way to further exploitation. These were Christians, a different breed of white men he had become acquainted with at `Iolani. Furthermore, while prejudice against the Chinese took various forms, both legal and vocal, the HEA persisted in believing that “Christian brotherhood held the best, perhaps the only answer” to the vexing questions of racial conflicts. To have white people cooperate so amicably with his own countrymen and believe in their goodness must have nurtured a faith that was to sustain Sun in the years when no European Christian nation would support his cause.

With such a history of progress, one would suppose that the HEA would have opened a boarding or day English language school with an academic curriculum for Chinese boys. That was not available, however, and English classes for immigrants in the church did not meet Sun’s yearning for the best Western education possible.

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IOLANI, AN ANGLICAN SCHOOL

`Iolani, then, was the school for Sun. It was Anglican, a mission school under the auspices of the Church of England, from which the Congregationalists (Calvinist Protestants) had fled to settle in New England in America’s early history. Anglicans were far less puritanical in their religious and secular beliefs. Their beginnings in Honolulu were not so much to evangelize as to satisfy King Kamehameha IV’s dislike of the American Mission where he was educated and to establish a church patterned after the English. While in London he had met royalty and found the English hierarchical system and splendor a model for himself. Furthermore, he loved the ritual of the Anglican service with its chanting, its liturgy, and the rich, elegant robes of the clergy, all set in beautiful cathedrals with stained-glass windows.

In 1861 the king offered to donate a site for an Anglican church in Honolulu and $1,000 a year for a clergyman’s services. With the aid of several prominent English churchmen, Manley Hopkins, the Hawai`i consul at London, formed a missionary bishopric with the Rev. Thomas Nettleship Staley as its head. Bishop Staley arrived on I 1 October 1862. Queen Emma was baptized two weeks later, and the royal couple were confirmed as members of the newly chartered Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church. In December the high chief Kalakaua was confirmed. With the addition of key Anglican leaders in the kingdom and Staley’s position in the Privy Council, the political power of the American missionaries was visibly threatened.

Kamehameha IV himself translated the Book of Common Prayer into Hawaiian. Staley, to the disgust and dismay of the puritanical Congregationalists, encouraged the revival of hula dancing and chanting at the funerals of chiefs. The theatricality, the chanted liturgy, the rich vestments of the clergy, as well as pictures on the walls of the church satisfied the native Hawaiians’ inhibited desire for celebration and pageantry.

When Kamehameha IV died on 30 November 1863, at the age of twenty-nine, and Princess Victoria Kamamalu died in 1866, the funerals were elaborate and loud with the laments of natives to please the most traditional Hawaiian. Bishop Staley, however, was not able to please the white members of his congregation in matters of doctrine and practice. In May 1870 he resigned. The clergy in England, his superiors, considered turning the mission over to the American Episcopalians (Anglicans before the American Revolution of 1776). Queen Emma fought the move and won.

It was Bishop Staley who opened church schools for both boys and girls at the request of King Kamehameha ‘ IV and Queen Emma to train young Hawaiians for leadership roles in the government. They wanted the schools to provide their young ones with

the highest English culture and religious training from childhood; otherwise they cannot take their proper share in their own government and uphold the ideals therein as the king desires. At present there are no Hawaiians occupying high office in the government of the country.

Both schools were conducted in English. The king contributed $4,000 for the erection of a building for the Female Industrial Boarding School at Kaalaa at the entrance of Pauoa Valley. Under the patronage of Queen Emma, the school was advertised in the Polynesian on 8 November 1862 as a family boarding and industrial school with emphasis on the domestic arts and with French, German, music, dancing, and embroidery offered at extra cost. The cost was $25 a term for girls under twelve. Mrs. George Mason was its head.

The boys’ school, St. Alban’s College, was opened on 12 January 1863 under the charge of Father George Mason. It began as a day school, possibly at the same site. The king donated $1,100 for its buildings. Its offerings included “Latin, Greek, Euclid, algebra, and the usual branches of an English education, at the tuition rate of twelve dollars a quarter.” In 1863 it had twenty boarding and several day students and was doing so well that a schoolmaster from England was sent for to assist Father Mason.

In that same year Mason was sent to Lahaina, Maui, to build up a school named Luaehu, started in 1863 by the Rev. William R. Scott, who had to return to England because of failing health. lolani School recognizes the establishment of Luaehu School by Scott as its founding. Luaehu School was popularly referred to as the Rev. George Mason’s School. At St. Alban’s in Honolulu, changes were taking place in the meantime. In 1864 Edmund Ibbotson, who had been in charge of the Cathedral Grammar School, a charity school for “poor, outcast Hawaiian boys,” became the head of St. Alban’s. He remained in that capacity until 1866, when Mr. Turner succeeded him. St. Alban’s must have encountered difficulties, for in 1868 it had only sixteen scholars while Luaehu had eighteen. In March of 1868 the stronger Luaehu was merged with St. Alban’s.

In 1872 Bishop Alfred Willis arrived to take charge of the mission, which was renamed the Anglican Church of Hawai`i. (It was not until 1902 that the American Episcopal Church assumed jurisdiction over the Anglican Church in Hawai`i.) He stayed thirty years and was the bishop who established Iolani School.

Upon his arrival, Bishop Willis promptly purchased land on Bates Street in Nu’uanu Valley for a school for Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian boys. He considered it a continuation of the combined schools at Pauoa and named it Iolani College, a name already referred to St. Alban’s by King Kamehameha V. Bishop S. Harrington Littell gives this version of the origin: The name Iolani was applied to Kamehameha II, who, according to Kamehameha IV, in the preface of his translation of the Prayerbook into Hawaiian,

went to England to remind the King of the promise of Vancouver to send teachers of the true God. Iolani was the name sometimes applied to the highest royal person. It may have been connected with the Supreme Being who, Polynesians believed, was above all gods and chiefs. The Maoris called this Supreme Being Io, and lani means heaven or heavenly. Old Hawaiians have told the writer that the meaning the word conveys to them is one soaring above all others, for the meaning of lo in Hawaiian is a specie of hawk.

St. Alban’s was intended for haole (white) boys, while Iolani College was intended for Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians. In 1876 St. Alban’s had thirty-four boys and one girl, while Iolani had thirty-five students. In 1887 St. Alban’s closed. In 1878 Iolani had fifty-eight boys. With Bishop Willis as the headmaster, assisted by several instructors from England, this private school grew more slowly, as it was suffering from dissension within the church and competition with Oahu College. To enlarge its enrollment, it admitted Chinese boys, among them Sun Yat-sen, all of whom had little or no previous schooling in the English language.

When Sun entered `Iolani, then known popularly as Bishop’s School, in September of 1879 he was one of ten Chinese boys. The first two who registered were Tong Phong, son of Tong Ching, one of four partners of the wealthy Sing Chong Company, and Lee Butt, brother-in-law of Chun Afong, the most notable figure in the early history of the Chinese in Hawai`i. Two weeks after school opened, Sun Tai Cheong (Ti-hsiang), as Sun was familiarly known to his schoolmates, was enrolled under the name Tai Chu. Already there was Chung Kun Ai, who had registered by himself. Admitted later were John Akana, Chun Mun Him, Lee Kam Lung, Leong Neng, Leong Bun, and Look Lee.

Ai described the difficult adjustment for one who understood neither English nor Hawaiian well. They were hard-pressed to keep up. Mr. Merrill, their spelling teacher, would spank them on the palm three times with his ivory ruler when they missed three words. The punishment was more severe with five mistakes or more. In the study hall at night, no one dared to make a noise. Once in bed, no one spoke. Bishop Willis visited the dormitory at unexpected hours of the night and paternally covered the boys with a blanket if it had been kicked off.

The six boarders had their fun, swimming at Kapena Falls, staving there two or three hours, eating mangos fallen from the property next door, and enjoying food sent by doting parents. They had chores to do too, such as planting vegetables and lugging water for indoor use.

A more detailed description of school life on the Bates Street campus between 1872 and 1902 is given in the September 1912 issue of the Hawaiian Church Chronicle.

A day at Iolani began at 5:30 o’clock A.M. with the ringing of a bell, to this duty a boy was assigned for a week. After an early rising the boys walked up to Alekoki or Kapena for a morning plunge. This was before we got water from the government main. At 6:30 the boys were lined up on the verandah of the dormitory and there each name was called out; after-wards the boys filed into the chapel; then after chapel for half an hour the boys were detailed to clean up the different places, to which a number of boys were assigned. Breakfast followed at 7:30. 8:15 to 9 A.m. drill was held on Mondays and Fridays, from 8:15 to 9 A.M. singing lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays; from 9 to 1 1:45 was taken up with our studies. Lunch at 12; school again from 1 till 2; from 3:45 till 4 P.m. each day was set aside for manual labor consisting of gardening, working in the printing office, carpenter shop and general cleaning up of the premises. At 4:15 the bell rang again to discontinue work and go up to Kapena to bathe.

We sat down to supper at 5:30, chapel again at 6:30. Then study from 7 till 9, when everyone retired and lights were ordered out by 9:20.

Since Iolani was primarily a religious institution, it was natural that the religious education of its students was the church’s main concern.

Daily attendance at morning and evening prayer was a required routine…. The Bishop concerned himself with the instruction of his pupils in Christian doctrine. He inculcated in them a critical attitude toward superstition and idolatry…. Every reasonable persuasion was brought to bear on the boys to present themselves for baptism.

Ai tells about the bishop’s hiring of a young Chinese evangelist, Wong Shek Yen, for six dollars a month plus the chance to study English as a day student, to teach the boarders Bible in the afternoon on the school verandah. However, he evidently bored them to the point that he had to give up evangelizing and keep their attention by telling them Chinese stories instead.

All boarders were required to go to church on Sunday. The services were held in the procathedral, a temporary wooden structure that would not be replaced with the present magnificent St. Andrew’s Cathedral until 1886. The boys marched from Bates Street down Nu’uanu Street to Beretania, turned left to Fort Street, then walked on to Queen Emma Street, where the procathedral was located. An earlier service was held in Hawaiian followed by the 11:00 English service that the boys attended. They sat in assigned pews to the right of the aisle. After the service, they marched back to Bates Street.

Sun was a conscientious student, and upon his graduation on 27 July 1882 he was presented the second prize for excellence in English grammar by King Kalakaua himself. The prize was an English book about China. Queen Emma and Princess Lili’uokalani were also present.

Sun Yat-sen’s three years at Iolani introduced him to Western learning. It also “led him to want more western education – more than that required to assist in his brother’s business,” according to biographer Harold Schiffrin. By this time, he was seeking Sun Mei’s permission to become baptized. Sun Mei, of course, being a traditionalist, refused.

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ST. LOUIS COLLEGE, A CATHOLIC INSTITUTION

To continue his studies Sun had the choice of two other private Christian schools. One was St. Louis and the other, Oahu College. Two questions plague the historian. Did Sun actually attend both or just Oahu College or not even the latter? What evidence is there that he studied in either?

Jen Yu-wen remarked briefly, “Then, he transferred to the St. Louis College (of high standing),” seemingly accepting the fact of Sun’s attendance there. A more credible statement is found in Paul Linebarger’s interviews for his biography of Dr. Sun:

After graduation from the Bishop’s School with first honors, he attended to the business affairs of his brother for a half year, after which he attended a higher school in Honolulu called St. Louis School. Here he studied for a term, finally pursuing his studies in the Hawaii College.

By “Hawaii College” he no doubt meant Oahu College. According to John C. H. Wu, “he was permitted in the winter of 1882, to enter St. Louis College in Honolulu, where he studied for a semester.”

The whole question as to whether Sun actually matriculated at St. Louis is tied to the question of when he attended Oahu College after he left St. Louis, if he did attend St. Louis at all. The beginnings of St. Louis College are obscured by a lack of early records. No mention can be found of Sun’s presence there.

As a religion, Catholicism was the target of a series of religious conflicts that were entangled with political ramifications. The arrival of the first French missionaries to Honolulu in July of 1827 exacerbated an already volatile political situation. They were not welcome as no one had cleared the way for their presence. They landed without permission and were ordered back on board their ship by Governor Boki, but in his absence they were later left ashore.

The Congregationalists were visibly upset by the intrusion of the very establishment from whose authority the Protestant Revolt had freed them. The Catholics were accused of idolatry because of their statuary, but Hawaiians-and Chinese too-found no difference between one ki`i, or idol, and another, be it heathen or Catholic.

Despite opposition, however, the Catholic Church attracted members. Under the 1849 constitution, which guaranteed freedom of religion, all sides managed to coexist, though not without controversy.

The 1840s were good years for both Congregationalists and Catholics. In 1841, the Congregationalists voted funds for the establishment of Oahu College. In 1842 the fifth Kawaiaha`o Church, the present edifice, was completed. In 1843 the Catholics built their beautiful Our Lady of Peace Cathedral, the only church building in central downtown Honolulu, easily accessible to Chinatown residents for both personal and corporate worship. In 1846 the Catholics organized Ahuimanu, a school in Ahuimanu Valley on the windward side of O`ahu. In its best years, 1864- 1865, it had fifty students.

Like other Christian faiths, the Catholics sought to evangelize through formal educational institutions. In 188o, Father W. J. Larkin, an Irish priest, arrived in Hawai`i and was given $10,000 to start St. Louis, taking over Ahuimanu as a boys’ school. The school was named in honor of the patron saint of Bishop Louis Maigret, head of the Catholic Church in the Islands.

St. Louis College began in the Stonehouse at 91 Beretania Street, which was the site in three separate periods of the three schools that Sun was said to have attended. It was a coral house situated next to Washington Place and had been erected in 1846 on land belonging to the king as a residence for the Rev. William Richards, who had been appointed to the newly created office of minister of public instruction. He lived there until he died in November of 1847. The Rev. Richard Armstrong was appointed as his successor on 10 June 1848. He made arrangements to purchase the house, agreeing to pay for it in seven years.

In 1843, while the Armstrongs were living in the parsonage, an adobe house on the premises of Kawaiaha`o Church, Admiral Sir Richard Thomas, who came to restore the independence of the kingdom, was a frequent guest. He was fond of their children and sent them “many pleasant tokens of his remembrance.” On Restoration Day, 31 July 1848, the Reverend Armstrong named the coral building “Stonehouse” after the residence of Admiral Thomas in England.

The lot extended from Beretania Street mauka through a portion sold by Mrs. Armstrong in 1867 to the Sisters of Holy Trinity when they founded St. Andrew’s Priory. In 188o Mrs. Armstrong sold the Stonehouse property to the Roman Catholics to be used as a boys’ school, as Ahuimanu was probably too far away to attract students.

In that year Father Larkin opened the school with the announcement in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser that “The College of St. Louis, an Hawaiian Commercial and Business Academy, offering Classical, Scientific and Commercial courses,” also offered in its curriculum courses in Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. An evening session offered adults “theoretical and, practical knowledge of commercial and business transactions.” Sun Yat-sen was still in Iolani at Bates Street when St. Louis opened it the Stonehouse in 1880. Since Iolani had offered no courses in business subjects, Sun Mei might have considered the practicality of his brother’s continuing after graduation by entering St. Louis for studies beneficial to his own expanding interests.

The school opened on 20 January 1881 with twenty-five students enrolled. Larkin was assisted by two professors, Messrs. Nichols and Popovich. His tenure was brief, however, for he was forced to leave because a structure he had built on the premises caught on fire and a young Hawaiian was killed. Besides, the Fathers of the Mission distrusted him, as he seemed to be “aspiring to become Vicar Apostolic of Hawaii through the influence of King Kalakaua, who, on his tour around the world, was to visit the Holy See.”

Father Clement Evard succeeded him. As the need for a fresh start was evident, a move was made to secure the aid of some religious teaching order. Father Leonard Fouresnel, the vice-provincial of the mission, left on 13 March 1882 for the United States and was able to secure the services of the Brothers of Mary, the Marianists.

In June the mission bought a lot on the ewa side of Nu`uanu Stream and laid the cornerstone of the new St. Louis College on 3 July 1882. On 18 September, Father Clement opened the school with its new buildings. He was assisted by Father Hubert Stappers, the last director of Ahuimanu College, and two lay professors, Messrs. Donelly and Richard Stewart.

It is possible that Sun entered St. Louis that September of 1882. It has been said that he spent half a year with his brother in Kula and studied a semester in the winter of 1882 at St. Louis. I doubt that he could live six months in Kula without being bored and in constant conflict with his brother over his Christian leanings. But he may have entered St. Louis after September.

Since the new St. Louis College was situated across the river from the busy heart of Chinatown with prospects for study in both commercial and academic subjects, it must have been attractive to young Chinese who could afford to attend. Very appealing also was the news that eight brothers of the Society of Mary would be arriving in 1883, three of them to take charge of St. Anthony’s School in Wailuku, Maui, and five to teach at St. Louis. Their arrival increased enrollment dramatically. More than 100 enrolled on 19 September 1883. In two weeks 50 were added. By 1885 there were 283 day scholars and 47 boarders. It must be noted, however, that this rapid growth increased only after Sun had returned to China.

If Sun did attend St. Louis for a term or a semester in 1882, therefore, he probably found the many academic offerings mere statements of hope, for the standard of the new students was no doubt very low. Chanting, kneeling, genuflecting, making the sign of the cross reminded him of the Anglican church. At Iolani he had learned at least to read the English liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, while the Latin of the Missal was totally foreign to him. What did he make of the statues of the saints? Weren’t they a form of idols? He probably, with all Chinese, sincerely respected the brothers for their monastic life. In that respect, they were much like the Buddhist and Taoist monks in China. But all in all, he needed more challenge to stimulate that eager mind that sought to learn from the West what freedom, liberty, and justice could mean for his country and its position in the world.

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THE EXPANSION OF OAHU COLLEGE

Fortunately for Sun, he was finally given the opportunity to attend the school of his choice, the prestigious Oahu College (Punahou School). Su Teh-yung cites Sun’s own words of pride that he entered Oahu College after three years at `Iolani: “It was the island’s most advance institution of leaming.” The school was first named Punahou as it was situated on a slope of hill, where Ka Punahou, the New Spring, bubbles forth into a pool. In 1859 the name was officially changed to Oahu College.

By chance, when St. Louis decided to move in 1882, the trustees of Oahu College were looking for a site to expand their preparatory department. They found the Stonehouse property perfectly suited to their purposes. This location suited Sun too. It was near Chinatown and close to the procathedral where he had attended Sunday services for three years.

His schooling at Iolani had served him well. He was adequately prepared for the entrance examination. Fortunately also for him, Punahou, which had been established for the children of missionaries, had been opened to the whole community in 1853. In 1855 the American Board began to withdraw its direct support, and control of the school’s estate was transferred to a local board of trustees. It was no longer a missionary institution but an endowed private school that included a secondary curriculum. The school attracted more and more students from the community with its very high standards for college preparation.

In 1881, at the fortieth anniversary celebration of the school, a public appeal was made to provide for a professorship of natural science and of new buildings. President William L. Jones in his speech expressed the need for Punahou to meet the changing times. He said:

The missionaries when they landed here were all cultivated gentlemen, trained in the colleges of the United States, and they were unwilling that their children would suffer from their self exile into this country…. A change has been coming over the aims of college education lately; people desire less Latin and Greek and more Natural Science, more Astronomy, more Chemistry, more modern languages; this is the drift that things are at the present day taking in the East…. We have to teach Chemistry without laboratory, Astronomy without a telescope, Natural History only from books. More men and machinery is what we want.

The appeal was so successful that the trustees moved to purchase the Armstrong premises at the head of Richards Street from the Roman Catholic mission for the Punahou Preparatory School.

On 1 December 1882, a two-column article in the Friend stated the purpose and plans for the preparatory school and the purchase and cost of the property:

The Trustees have long been prospecting for a suitable site upon which to erect a preparatory school building in the city, which would accommodate valley as well as town. They have finally secured the Armstrong premises, with the design of commencing a department preparatory to the college. Their desire is to raise the grade of the college, and for this purpose to be more strict in regard to the terms of admission. Other objects they also have in view to meet the wants of the increasing foreign population of the islands. In former years our education standard has been higher and better than that of schools in many parts of the world. If our young people go abroad we are determined, the reason shall not be, that they cannot obtain a good and finished education in the islands.

The Trustees at their last meeting voted to erect a central building, and remove the present adobe structure between the two stone edifices. The space is good 100 feet. This building will be two storeys with verandas and cupalo. Plans and specifications have been long under consideration. The cost will be rising of $22,900.

It is also the design of the Trustees to erect a laboratory, to cost from $6,000 to $8,000. A telescope has been ordered from Europe to cost not less than $5oo. These improvements are now contemplated, and others will follow, according as the friends of the institution place funds at the disposal of the Trustees.

The article reported on the sound financial condition of the college. It had an endowment of $29,000 invested in the United States, another endowment of $21,642 invested in Hawai`i, a building fund of $14,382, and the sum of $21,40o realized from the sale of pastureland. The decision was made to transfer $l0,000 from the $21,400 to the purchase of the Armstrong premises.

On the property was the main structure, the Stonehouse or Stone Hall. It was a pleasant area with a garden in front on which grew a rubber tree among tall shade trees. A traveler’s palm stood near a fern grotto that had been built by the Catholics to enshrine a statue of the Madonna. Maiden hair fern lined it and drooped down the sides of the grotto’s cool fountain. There the girls sat and ate their lunches.

The open backyard was the boys’ playground. At the farther end was a fenced-off paddock for the saddle horses of students who rode to school. For exercise, there were gymnastic bars and rings. Sounds of hula music and drumming emanated from Washington Place, home of Lili`uokalani, next door to the school.

On 15 January 1883, the Preparatory School opened, with Sun, registered as Tai Chu,’as one of the fifty children who were lined up, one at the side and the other in the front of the two-story building, to march upstairs into the two classrooms above. Sun was probably as excited as the other students, most of whom “were entering school for the first time.” The textbooks for the first year students were “Robinson’s Practical Arithmetic, Cornell’s Geography, and English Grammar, and Barnes’s History of the United States.”

Their principal was Miss Lulu Moore. Her assistant was a Miss Storrs, “bonny, rose-cheeked,” who won the heart of F. J. Lowrey, who courted her at noon recess. She taught for only a year. On the faculty were also three other female teachers, Augusta Berger (Mrs. W. M. Graham), May Baldwin (Mrs. D. B. Murdoch), and Mary Alexander. They walked home after school, the first two to Makiki Street and the other to Punahou Street, along Beretania Street with its lovely homes and gardens to enjoy on the way. The children left too, Sun to Chinatown probably, and the others to mansions in Nu`uanu and other residential areas of the well-to-do.

To be in a coeducational school and be taught by cheerful but strict females must have been an eye-opening experience for Sun. In 1914, three years after the success of the Chinese revolution, his decision to divorce his village wife to marry Soong Ching-ling must have been influenced to some degree by this brief encounter with American girls and women. They may have left an indelible impression of the delight in their company that was missing in the Ts’ui-heng village school.

His studies must have kept him on his toes.

For admission to the first-year preparatory course, he had been examined in “Arithmetic, as far as Fractions; in Geography, on North America, and to read with ease in Wilson’s Fourth Reader.” He no doubt passed with ease and so was placed in the course for first-year students with thirty others. Listed as Tai Chu, he was one of three Chinese students, the others being Chung Lee and Hong Tong.

The preparatory course was made up of first- and second-year students. After completing this course, a student would be admitted to academic courses-junior, junior middle, senior middle, and senior -and finally permitted to take the classical courses, which ranged from the first year to the fourth.

To advance, “Candidates for admission to the Academic Course must have finished all the studies in the Preparatory Course.” There was, however, great flexibility and adjustment to individual progress. To continue:

Students in the Classical Course will also pursue studies in the Academic Course as are required in their preparation for Eastern Colleges.

Many of the pupils in the Academic Course take also a partial course in the Classics. It will readily be seen that such pupils will either have to omit some of the studies of the Academic Course. or spend a longer time in the School, which many can do to their great advantage.

The Academic Course, with Latin, French, and advanced Mathematics, should occupy at least five years.

A Diploma of Graduation will be given to such students as satisfactorily complete the prescribed course of Study.

Besides the prescribed courses of study, preparatory students also had “General Exercises,” that is, “Reading, Spelling, Penmanship, Composition, Declamations, Class Instruction in Drawing and Vocal Music throughout the Course.”

As evidence of the high standards of Oahu College, the Punahou School Directory showed that though the institution first opened its doors for instruction on 11 July 1842, there were only six graduates in 1878. From that date on, no class received diplomas until 1881, when six graduated. In 1882, another six graduated. In 1883, the year Sun was there, only three received diplomas.

The school year was divided into three terms: fall from September to December with a vacation of two weeks; winter from January to March with a vacation of two weeks; and summer from April to June, with graduation exercises in July. At the end of the first and second terms, examinations were held. The final examination of the school year filled three days.

If Sun entered in January, he was in Oahu College for the winter and summer terms of the school year 1882-1883. The only other evidence of his presence under the name Tai Chu is found in the treasury ledger under the date 19 June 1883- It was for payment of $55.00 “To Sundries … By Cash.”

Tuition was $1.00 a week, or $12.00 for a twelve-week term. Sun must have paid about $24.00 for his two terms in the college.

It is strange that he is not listed as Tai Chu in any of the directories or catalogues, but as Tai Chock, a name that cannot, so far be substantiated by other sources, although like all Chinese, Sun had several names and took on a variety of pseudonyms after he began his revolutionary activities. Since Tai Chu is not in any official listing and Tai Chock was not listed among the first-year preparatory course students, it is assumed that they are one and the same person. In the catalogue of 1891 and the lists of 1841-1906, he is listed as “Tai Chock China” in the school year of 1882-1883. In the College Directories of 1841-1916 and 1841-1935 and the Punahou Directory of 1841-1961, he was also listed as “Tai Chock 1882-3.”

In three instances, the letter “a” listed after his name meant that he was a student at the academy. This suggests the possibility that he had advanced so quickly that he was promoted to academic courses. Another explanation hinges on the fact that the preparatory department was not open until January of 1883 and all students before the school year of 1883-1884 were still listed as “academy” students. The letter “o” stood for “Oahu College” and applied to all students of all departments until 1934,when it was legally changed to Punahou School. He was so listed in the Directory of 1841-1935.

All in all, Sun Yat-sen must have found his two terms in Oahu College stimulating and enjoyable. He was freer as a day student than as a boarder in a strict Christian environment day and night. He was again in a Christian institution, but the emphasis was not only on Christian beliefs, values, and ideals of conduct but primarily on academic preparation for education in the best universities on the East Coast. He must ‘ have been amazed at the brilliance of the girls who could match the boys in intellectual achievement. The three graduates in 1883 were all girls.

He observed that these Americans were generously sharing with him fine examples of Christian love and democracy at work. His own ideals were strongly reinforced by the discipline required of him. In the “Rules and Regulations of Oahu as amended on September 17, 1867,” Christian character training was not neglected:

The exercises of the Institutipp shall be opened daily bv the reading of the Scriptures and prayer. . . . . There shall be a Biblical recitation once a week throughout the course.

No student habitually guilty of using profane or obscene language, or of lying, stealing or other openly immoral conduct, or of the use of intoxicating liquors, shall continue to be a member of the Institution.

In 1901 the Preparatory School was moved to the Punahou campus, and the Beretania Street property was rented in 1902 to Iolani School, which began negotiations for its purchase in 1903.

What would have happened if Sun had not pressed to be baptized and if Sun Mei had been willing to support his brother through Oahu College and then on to Harvard or Yale? Would Sun Mei have been willing to forego his brother’s assistance in building up his wealth to allow him to pursue higher and higher education?

Speculation aside, Sun Yat-sen forced his brother’s hand by insisting on baptism until his brother had no recourse but to give up his responsibility and concern for the young rebel and send him back to his father to control.

Thus his school days in Honolulu ended. Sun told Linebarger that “among the treasured books Sun carried back with him from Honolulu to China was the Bible.”

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A CHRISTIAN FOR LIFE

When he returned to his village, Sun and his friend Lu Hao-tung desecrated the temple idols. Later in 1884, while a student in Hong Kong, he and his Iolani classmate, Tong Phong, were baptized by an American Congregationalist missionary, Dr. Charles Hager. Besides Hager, two Chinese Christian ministers, Ch’?(Ou) Feng-ch’ih and Wang Yu-ch’u, were instrumental in bringing about Sun’s bold commitment to Jesus Christ. Sun was baptized with the name Jih-hsin, which in Cantonese is pronounced Yat-sun, meaning “new day.” This name was later changed by Hager to the homophonic characters that were pronounced Yat-sen in Cantonese and I-hsien in Mandarin.

These new characters combined the meanings of “free, extraordinary” with “immortal, spirit,” which aptly described the character and aspirations of the young convert. This romanized version of his new name, Sun Yat-sen, became the accepted one by which he was and is known internationally.

In 1894 he returned to Hawai`i to establish the Hsing Chung Hui, his first revolutionary society. Among its founders were many Christians, one of them being C. K. Ai, his fellow student at `Iolani. His marriage to Soong Ching-ling, a Christian, in 1914, was a scandalous break from the old marriage customs he had been brought up with. His first wife, however, graciously sanctioned the divorce and marriage, being present at the wedding ceremony. She herself became a devout Christian.

At Sun’s death in 1925, a Christian memorial service was held. Dr. H. H. Kung, his brother-in-law, was informed in a letter from the Rev. Logan R. Roots, bishop of Hankow’s American Episcopal Church, that Sun had requested in a low voice, “I want it to be known that I die a Christian.”

His widow, Soong Ching-ling, and son, Dr. Sun Fo, decided on a Christian funeral service, but their wishes were questioned by some of Sun’s influential anti-Christian followers, who “linked the Christian religion in China with imperialism.” The first service was thus a private one, held in the great hall of the Peking Union Medical College. It was conducted by the Rev. Timothy Lew of Yenching University, one of the Protestant colleges established in Asia by the United Board of Christian Colleges of the United States of America.

Professor L. Carrington Goodrich, who was one of the double male quartet singers at the service, described the service in his diary as follows:

As the choir filed down the chapel corridor to the bower of flowers by the altar the place was hushed save for the tones of the preacher reading in Chinese from the Scriptures. The casket draped in a Kuo Min Tang flag was placed below the dais beneath the flowers and under a large picture of Dr. Sun, showing him clad in the simple garb of a commoner. Then followed prayer by Dr. Tsu, a simple testimony by Dr. Lew, songs by the congregation, by a contralto soloist, and by a double male quartet. All these were effective enough, but the remarkable features of the service were the addresses of the Hon. George Hsu, former minister of justice, and Mr. K¡¯ung Hsiang-hsi, whose wife is the sister of Madame Sun, and who has long been connected with Christian institutions in China….

Hsu, in limpid Mandarin, outlined the beliefs of his friend, and in one quotation after another showed how deeply Sun had been actuated by the spirit and teachings of Christ. “He was a revolutionist; so am I.” “He came to save the poor, and the unfortunate, and those in bondage. So have I also tried to do.” “He decried the traditions maintained by the lawmakers of Judea, and plead for universal brotherhood. It is because of similar shackles that bind China that I have made my crusade. It is because the organized Church has been so divided and divisive that I have long given up my membership in the church, but I believe in Christ and his teachings and have endeavored to make them my own.” K¡¯ung was briefer but equally outspoken:

just a day or so before his death Dr. Sun called me to his bedside, and taking both my hands in his, said, “You’re a Christian and so am I. I wish to tell you something I have always felt which you will understand. just as Christ was sent by God to the world, so also did God send me.”

It had not been easy to be a Christian, to compromise with compatriots who had ties to many old practices that he himself deplored, or to join one denomination in preference to another. Nevertheless, he was guided by ideals of brotherhood quoted on both sides of the ocean and expressed by the Confucian saying, often quoted by the Congregationalists of Hawaii: ssu hai chih nei chieh hsiung ti yeh (“Within the four seas all men are brothers’). His calligraphy too expressed the same hopes for mankind: Po ai, “Universal love,” and tien hsia wei kung, “The world belongs to the people.”

In analyzing the forces at work in shaping the history of modern China, Immanuel C. Y. Hs?made a statement about the Chinese that summarizes Dr. Sun’s own search for direction: “They were faced with the agonizing problem of deciding how much of Old China must be discarded and how much of the modern West must be accepted in order for China to exist and win a respectable place in the community of nations.” Sun knew what he wanted for China. He died without realizing his goal of a strong, democratic, peaceful China with equal opportunities for all his countrymen. But he remains the invisible leader of both Taiwan and the mainland Chinese because he never gave up the struggle and had the resources to nourish his faith despite obstacles too impregnable to overcome in his lifetime. His charisma was inborn and sustained by spiritual depths he himself had discovered in his four years as a student in Christian schools in Hawai`i. The adolescent Sun came to the Islands in a period of missionary zeal. One might ponder, what if he had not come then or at all?

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NOTES

  1. Tin Yuke Char, comp., The Sandalwood Mountains (Honolulu: UP of Hawaii, 1975) 30.
  2. Jen Yu-wen, The Taiping Revolutionary Movement (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1973) 544.
  3. Jen, Taiping revolutionary Movement 4.
  4. Jen, Taiping Revolutionary Movement 545.
  5. Jen. Taiping Revolutionary Movement 5.
  6. Jen, Taiping Revolutionary Movement 5.
  7. Paul Linebarger, Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic (1923; New York: AMS Press, 1969) 190.
  8. Albertine Loomis, To All People (Hawaii Conference of the United Church of Christ, 1970) 8-9.
  9. Boston Evening Transcript, 26 Dec. 1900.
  10. Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time (New York: Macmillan, 1969) 90.
  11. Loomis, To All People 19.
  12. See the chronology in Sister Monica Mary Heyes, “The History of St. Andrew’s Priory 1867-1918” (M.A. thesis, U of Hawaii, August 1970).
  13. Loomis, To All People 183-84.
  14. Mary Charlotte Alexander and Charlotte Peabody Dodge, Punahou. 184I-I94I (Berkeley: U of California P, 1941) 309.
  15. Char, The Sandalwood Mountains 1.
  16. Loomis, To All People 188.
  17. Char, The Sandalwood Mountains 22.
  18. Margaret C. Young, And They Also Came (Honolulu: United Church of Christ, 1976) 12. For the founding of the second Chinese church in 1915 expressly for predominantly Punti speakers, see Loomis, To All People 210-11.
  19. Dennis A. Kastens, ‘Nineteenth Century Christian Missions in China” (unpublished anuscript, June 1, 1977) 1. Hereafter cited as ms.
  20. Dennis Kastens, “Nineteenth Century Christian Missions in China,” HJH 12 (1978): 63-64; Kastens, Ms., 4-5.
  21. PCA 24 July 1900.
  22. Loomis, To All People 193.
  23. Chung Kun Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii (Hong Kong: Cosmorana Pictorial, 1960) 107.
  24. Loomis, To All People 195-96.
  25. Loomis, To All People 194.
  26. Loomis, To All People 211.
  27. Daws, Shoal of Time 157-58.
  28. Daws, Shoal of Time 158.
  29. Daws, Shoal of Time 159.
  30. Daws, Shoal of Time 159-60.
  31. Daws, Shoal of Time 160.
  32. Heyes, “History of St. Andrew’s Priory” 12-14.
  33. Ernest Gilbert Villers, “A Histor-v of Iolani School” (MA. thesis, U of Hawaii, June 1040) 30-31; Andrew Forest Muir, “Edmund lbbotson (1831-1914),” Historical Magazine 18 (1948): 224.
  34. Iolani School Catalogue 1987-1988 10.
  35. Villers, “History of Iolani School” 38.
  36. The Bulletin of Iolani School Catalogue Issue 1962-63 8; Iolani School Catalogue 1987-1988 10; Villers, “History of Iolani School” 43.
  37. Heves, “History of St. Andrew’s Priory” 25; Henry B. Restarick, Hawaii, 1778–1920, from the Viewpoint of a Bishop (Honolulu: Paradise of the Pacific, 1924) 193.
  38. Villers, “History of Iolani School” 42.
  39. Villers, “History of Iolani School” 47.
  40. Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii 53-56.
  41. Honolulu Diocesan Almanac, 1877, 25, cited in Lyon Sharman, Sun Yat-sen: His Life and Its Meaning (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1968) 12; Restarick, Hawaii 197.
  42. Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii 55.
  43. May Tamura. “Preserving `Iolani’s Past,” insert in Iolani School Bulletin-Winter 1980-Fall, 1981, p.C.
  44. Sharman, Sun Yat-sen 13.
  45. Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii 56.
  46. Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii 60.
  47. Henry B. Restarick, Sun Yat Sen: Liberator of China (New Haven. CT: Yale University Press, 1931) 17.
  48. Harold Z. Schiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: U of California P, 1968) 14.
  49. Jen Yu-wen, “The Youth of Dr. Sun Yat Sen,” in Two Commemorative Essays by Jen Yu-wen and Lindsay Ride (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, U of Hong Kong, 1970) 9.
  50. Linebarger, Sun Yat Sen 87.
  51. John C. H. Wu, Sun Yat-Sen: The Man and His Ideas (Taipei: Sun Yat Sen Cultural Foundation, 1971) 82.
  52. Daws, Shoal of Time 80.
  53. Daws, Shoal of Time 89.
  54. Benjamin O. Wist, A century of public Education in Hawaii October 15, 1840 -October I5, 1940 (Honolulu: Hawaii Educational Review, 1940) 108.
  55. St. Louis Catalogue 1987-1988.
  56. “Story of a Coral House Where History was Made for Generations,” HSB 22 Sept. 1928.
  57. Wist, A Century of Public Education 108.
  58. Reginald Yzendoorn, History of the Catholic Mission in the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1927) 196.
  59. Yzendoorn, History of the Catholic Mission 225.
  60. Yzendoorn, Histmy of the Catholic Mission 225.
  61. Su Teh-yung, “Kuo Fu Ke Ming Yun Tung Tsai T’an Tao” [China’s Founding Father’s Revolutionary Movement in Hawaii], in Kuo Fu Chiu Shih Tan Shen Chi Nien Lun Wen Chi (Collection of Articles on China’s Founding Father’s 90th Birthday Anniversary] (Taipei: Chung hua wen hua ch’u pan shih yeh wei yuan hui [The Business Committee for Chinese Cultural Publications], 1956), 63.
  62. Alexander and Dodge, Punahou 36; Punahou School Honolulu Hawaii, a handbook, 1988.
  63. Wist, A Century of Public Education 105- 106.
  64. Alexander and Dodge, Punahou 356.
  65. Alexander and Dodge, Punahou 356.
  66. The Friend: 1878-1883, 121.
  67. Alexander and Dodge, Punahou 359.
  68. Catalogue of Trustees. Teachers and Pupils of Oahu College, June 1883, 10.
  69. Alexander and Dodge, Punahou 359.
  70. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Oahu College for 1880-81.
  71. Catalogue, Oahu College June 1883, 9-10.
  72. Catalogue, 1880-81.
  73. Catalogue June 1883, 13.
  74. Punahou School Directory 1841-1950, 459.
  75. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Oahu College from 1869-70; Catalogue of Punahou Preparatory School, 73 Beretania Street Under the Supervision of the President of Oahu College, Fourth Year, 1886.
  76. See Catalogues for June 1883, 1886, 1869-70; Directories for 1841-1950 and 1841-1961.
  77. Alexander and Dodge, Punahou 469.
  78. Catalogue, 1869-70, 26.
  79. Alexander and Dodge, Punahou 409; HSB 22 Sept. 1928.
  80. Linebarger, Sun Yat Sen 152.
  81. Restarick, Sun Yat Sen 32.
  82. Schiffrin, Sun Yat Sen 16.
  83. Schiffrin, Sun Yat Sen 16. See copy of baptismal register in Hong Kong in Su Hsi-wen, ed., A Pictorial Biography of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (Hong Kong: Cosmorama Pictorial, 1966) 22.
  84. Some others were Congregationalists Ho Fon, Lee Toma, Lee Cheung and Episcopalians Chang Chau, Chang Kim, and Soong Kee Yun. For a listing of the founders, see Lo Hsiang-lin, “The Story of the Founding of the Hsing Chung Hui,” China Forum 1.2.(July 1974): 135.
  85. Interview with Professor Shao Chang Lee, November 1970, Honolulu. He had visited Madame Sun in Macau.
  86. Restarick, Sun Yat Sen 153.
  87. C. Martin Wilbur, Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia UP, 1976) 280.
  88. Wilbur, Sun Yat Sen 281.
  89. Immanuel C. Y. Hs? The Rise of Modem China (New York: Oxford UP, 1970) 10.
* Irma Tam Soong is executive director emerita of the Hawaii Chinese History Center in Honolulu
** This article was published on The Hawaiian Journal of History, Vol. 31 (1997): 151-178