COLUMN ONE : In Hawaii, a Moment of Irony : Ties to Japan are strong and valued while Japanese-Americans enjoy great influence. Though forever transformed by war, no place in the U.S. remains so apart.

The reasons are as compelling as the paycheck drawn on a Tokyo bank, as obvious as the miso soup breakfast special at the hotel coffee shop, as dramatic as the U.S. senator with the name Inouye: Commemorating Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor is a complicated affair for Hawaii.

Here, 50 years later, in what became the 50th state, oil from the great fight still seeps from the sunken battleship Arizona. Yet bonds with Japan are stronger and more vital here than anywhere else in America.

Here, in the aftermath of Japan’s attack, Japanese-Americans have risen to greater standing and influence than anywhere else in the United States.

Here on the resort beaches, the Japanese began their splashy mega-investments in America, and here they have driven the economy bullishly clear of the mainland’s woes.

Here began a war that spread fear and official repression of Americans by race. Yet here, also, is displayed the war’s curious legacy--a place in America where races and culture really are melting together--not just mixing.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!

Who could guess the vast changes and rich ironies set in motion that fateful day?

Hawaii was transformed by the concussion of the Japanese assault on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. Still, no place in the United States remains so apart as this state, none with such a distinct voice, such novel breeding, such remoteness. And certainly none with such kinship to the old enemy, Japan--culturally, economically and ethnically.

Many historians believe Hawaii would never have become a state except for its significance in the war. Hawaii is that different. And of all the things that are different about it, nothing stands out as the many faces of its people and their cultures, including the increasing number who trace some ancestry to Japan.

Before the war Hawaii was run by American whites while Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Polynesians and Portuguese tilled the fields and manned the shops. Segregation was not as rigid as on the mainland, but separation, nevertheless, was the norm.

Now, 44% of all non-military weddings here are “out” marriages, that is, couples from different ethic groups and races. Of the civilian births, 60% are mixed-race babies, according to the government’s 1990 State of Hawaii Data Book. No one race accounts for more than a third of the population; whites outnumber Americans of Japanese ancestry, but not by many.

The resulting ethnic demography of the islands is becoming impossibly complex. John Waihee, for instance, is foremost Polynesian-Hawaiian but also part English, Chinese and Irish. So it’s easier to call him, simply, Governor. And what can you tell from the names of the state’s other leaders--Inouye, Akaka, Cayetano, Abercombie, Mink, Fasi, Gill? After 1989, the state gave up trying to account for the ethnic backgrounds of its Legislature. Meanwhile, Caucasian business executives now must share their favored position with other powerful ethnic groups.

But the dreamy ideal that racial tensions will disappear with race-blending remains just that, a dream. Hate, resentment and anger have proved resilient to the statistical Cuisinart, and almost everyone on the islands agrees that race and class relations remain stubbornly imperfect, the affronts are many and open.

“I guess that shows majorities and minorities behave in similar fashion, no matter what their race,” said Lt. Gov. Benjamin Cayetano, the highest-ranking Filipino-American politician in the United States.

Patent Prejudice

Some might object to anecdotal simplification. But spend a week in Hawaii and you can hear:

--That Japanese-Americans look down on immigrants, in particular those of Korean, Filipino or Southeast Asian extraction.

--That haoles , or Caucasians, are not actually harmed, but they do know that nonwhite locals have long observed a mean-spirited “kill haole day” in myth, if not in fact, in public schools.

--That except in business, the people of Hawaii, visitors from Japan and mainland tourists almost never show any interest in or friendship toward one another. And Hawaii has done little to try to bring together the people standing around its cash registers.

--That, like other native people displaced by America’s progress, many Polynesian-Hawaiians remain poor, unhealthy, undereducated, estranged and angry at newcomers who are climbing the ladder of success.

And so on, ad nauseam.

“People think they know more about one another here,” said Franklin Odo, chairman of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaii. “My suggestion is that we still know very little.”

But he added: “The tragedy is that what we know about each other is so much more than any other community on the mainland knows.”

Herein lies an important reminder about modern Hawaii: In a place so remote from day-to-day life on the mainland, the views Hawaiians express about themselves and the islands come without the context of the rest of the country.

A Hawaiian will break your heart with a tale of dismay and decline in the islands, but if someone makes a comparison to the mainland, he is apt to object. Oh no, this is not like New York or Miami or Los Angeles, they say. This is Hawaii --it’s not that bad here.

To this day, Hawaiians often talk about America as something distinct from themselves. As in, “In America, they. . . .”

Even through the smoke and hot shrapnel, the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, has come to mean something different here. Mainlanders tend to view it as the beginning of a terrible event. Hawaiians are apt to view it as a dividing line between two epochs in their history.

The Japanese attack abruptly ended the old and slow era that began with the settling of the Polynesians 1,000 years or more ago, proceeded through the arrival of Capt. James Cook in 1778, the overthrow of the queen by American businessmen and Marines in 1893 and the U.S. annexation of the islands in 1898.

From that morning at Pearl Harbor the pace of life in the islands quickened irreversibly--in growth, commerce, communications. Statehood came on March, 12, 1959. Four months later, on July 29, 1959, the first scheduled jetliner arrived at Honolulu and the age of mass tourism began. The world had shrunk. Hawaii was still afar but no longer away.

Japanese-Americans on the mainland endured internment and social estrangement as a result of Pearl Harbor, but Japanese-Americans from Hawaii, by and large, look back on a different wartime experience. Their men, 3,000 strong, formed the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, went to Europe, fought heroically and returned the most decorated soldiers from a unit that size in all of World War II.

Wartime Memories

Mainland World War II veterans may still recall Hawaii as a way-stop in the fight in the Pacific, but such memories are not Hawaii’s. Martial law, the roundups of Japanese-Americans and the forced purge of their heritage are all secondary today to the islands’ rejoicing over the heroics of the 442nd. The reason is penetrating: In the end, these Japanese-Americans wrote down their loyalty in blood and battle decorations.

“Honestly, I did not suffer from any untoward discrimination. In fact, the first time I got a taste of that was in Oakland, Calif., in December, 1945,” said Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) a Japanese-American who served with distinction as an officer in 442nd and was severely wounded.

On furlough from the hospital and wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army captain with four rows of ribbons, Inouye recalled going for a haircut. “Are you a Jap?” the mainland barber asked. “I said: ‘No, I’m an American.’ ”

In Hawaii, Inouye never had to defend his citizenship. Still, the barber was unimpressed. “You are a Jap. We don’t cut Jap hair.”

Inouye came home and was part of a sea change of politics in Hawaii. In the first 15 years after the war, the old Republican land-owning oligarchy was toppled and a Democratic machine emerged in its place, a machine that clatters along powerfully, if not always smoothly, 30 years later.

And, just as the memories of war are different, Hawaii’s current relationship with Japan is distinct from mainland America’s, economically and culturally.

This was where Japan began its massive, high-profile investments in America. Through the 1980s, it gobbled up hotels and launched new resorts. For the most part, Hawaiians were accustomed to outsiders owning their land and businesses, so the Japanese and their money were welcomed. Boom time was good time.

At the height of the investment frenzy later in the decade, however, Japanese nationals plunged ostentatiously into the upscale housing market. This was not welcomed. Hawaii has long suffered from a housing shortage and chafed at the whim of rich landlords. The backlash was strong and it made world-wide headlines.

In May, 1988, Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi traveled to Tokyo to warn that continued speculative Japanese investment in Hawaiian real estate would spur “a violent reaction, a nationalist reaction . . . that won’t be good for your country.”

Today, the sting is all but gone. Some Japanese speculators are getting 50 cents on the dollar for their residential investments, and all across the islands, businessmen openly worry that the Japanese are overextended in a tourist market that has too many luxury rooms and not enough luxury travelers.

Too Many Hotels

Japanese own 30% of Hawaii’s hotel space--20,525 rooms. On Oahu, including Honolulu, Japanese hotel ownership is 42%. From a peak in 1986, hotel occupancy rates overall have been slipping in Hawaii--from 81.2% in 1986 to 78.8% last year. Projections through 1999 show a further drop in occupancy as more rooms open up.

The economic truth of 1991 Hawaii is on many lips: No longer is there such a fear of Japanese investment. Rather, there is fear that Japanese investment is drying up.

“I predict you will see some of the large, high-priced hotels experience severe financial difficulties in the next few years, even those in strong hands. And then you have to ask, what about those that were purchased at hyper prices and are in shaky hands?” said Richard R. Kelley, who operates the locally controlled Outrigger hotel chain and is the 1991 leader of the Hawaii Visitors Bureau.

For now, though, the relationship between Hawaii and Japan is best described as one of dependence and gratitude. While mainland America suffers through a recession and what is, at best, a bumpy recovery, unemployment in Hawaii is under 3%, the state has a $400-million surplus and the Hawaiian economy will expand 2% or so. Thank the Japanese.

As the yen gained in value against the dollar, Hawaii exploded as a destination for Japanese travelers. In 1989, the state calculated that a tourist from the mainland spent an average of $126 a day in Hawaii, and a Japanese tourist spent $323.

Japanese per-capita spending appears to be on the decline as middle-class workers displace the wealthy in eastbound tourism. But merchants still look over the shoulder of the Cleveland tourist at the sight of one from Osaka.

Culturally, there remains distance between Hawaiians and Japanese nationals, but again, not so much as between Japanese and mainland Americans.

Japanese food, holidays, religion, names and customs are all familiar to the Asia-wise islanders here. Hawaiians participate and do well in the ancient Japanese sport of Sumo. Honolulu newspapers cover Sumo matches on Page 1 of the sports section and relegate the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers to inside pages.

Japanese tourists these days crowd the Pearl Harbor memorial alongside graying U.S. veterans of the conflict. To most Hawaiians, it hardly seems strange any more that Japanese sightseers want to stop and view the long and lonely rows of graves at the U.S. National Cemetery of the Pacific in the solemn Punchbowl Crater.

Cultural prejudice is apparent here, too. Japanese-Americans here are the descendants of Japanese peasants and believe they are looked down upon by the upper-class Japanese nationals who visit here. The conspicuous wealth of the Japanese tourist grates on islanders, too--except, perhaps, for those who cater to them. And cater they do. Reflecting Japanese tastes, British tobacconist Dunhill does not even bother with its traditional cigar business here, preferring to use its boutique shelf space for clothing and monogrammed leather goods.

For all this vast landscape of change, however, some of Hawaii remains as it was at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The same festering thorn in the spirit of Paradise is land ownership. Hawaii is a small place, the fourth smallest state, and throughout the century wealthy, often faceless interests from over the horizons East and West have held title to huge tracts of land and controlled the economy.

Work-a-day Hawaiians feel lesser and more vulnerable for it. Their destiny today, as it has been for generations, is maddeningly out of their control.

Today, state and federal governments control 36% of Hawaii and six other landowners hold claim to another 25%.

Virtually the entire agricultural island of Lanai, east of Maui, has been acquired by billionaire mainland developer David H. Murdock. He is establishing luxury resorts and plans to build exclusive housing for the wealthy. The literature calls lush, green Lanai “The Private Island”--causing Hawaiians to bite their lips and see red.

For all the wealth and growth, however, the menial underclass persists. Before the war, laborers toiled on the plantations of the old rich. Today they toil in the hotels and restaurants of the new rich. They smile and call it the “aloha spirit.” Then they go home and change clothes and go to a second job so they can meet the rent.

Two generations ago, young Hawaiians had to go to the mainland to find work. Today, the astronomical price of housing and the cost of living forces them to leave.

Post-war tourism is the master to which so many here are addicted. The military is still an economic force, but its growth potential is uncertain. Mostly, it’s a company state, and tourism stocks the larder. Hawaii’s population is just over 1 million. Nearly seven times that many people will visit here in a year.

Most places in the world covet the tourist dollar as the cleanest, easiest and most desirable money to be made. But here there are so many tourists that their numbers threaten the ecology, strain the daily lives of islanders, overdraw the water, clog the roads and distort the local culture beyond recognition and beyond enjoyment.

Still, they have a saying here. The tourists can be arrogant and gauche, perhaps, and the traffic congested, the cost of living frightful, the ethnic melting pot whistling with steam.

But they can still turn their faces to the timeless trade winds and plant their feet in warm sand and say to themselves in island pidgin: “Lucky you live Hawaii.”

Many of them still believe it.

Staff writer Sonni Efron in Los Angeles and researcher Doug Conner in Seattle contributed to this story.

Hawaii Melting Pot

The 50th state is the most ethnically diverse in the United States. Here is a breakdown of the population by race and ethnic background: White: 33% Japanese: 25% Hawaiian-Polynesian: 12% Chinese: 6% Korean: 2% Black: 2% Samoan: 1% Other: 5% Source: State of Health Data Book, 1990