Centennial Celebration Of Japanese Immigration To Hawaii 1868-1968

Very interesting medal.
I hope there is someone here that has information about it.

As for what it is made of .. my guess would be pewter

Thanks for the interest and helpful comments. There's an interesting back story behind the event this medal commemorates that might help explain why it's so relatively rare. As best I can ascertain from bits and mentions of the event in a couple of places, it seems in 1868 sugar cane producers in Hawaii were desperate for cane field laborers, and turned to Japan in an attempt to obtain a cheap "contract" work force. They eventually succeeded in getting 148 (I don't know where the "153" came from) Japanese to sign up, and this medal commemorates their arrival in Hawaii in June of 1868. However, recruiting in the streets of Yokohama was apparently far more difficult than initially anticipated, resulting in contracting "gamblers and idlers" many of whom had no experience or desire for manual labor, and who had problems adjusting to the hard work in the cane fields, resulting in major problems and resulting in the end of official Japanese immigration to Hawaii for quite some time after that. (See http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpress...rand=ucpress for a bit of background on this). It appears to me that in 1985, with the emergence of more numerous and politically powerful Hawaiian citizens of Japanese descent, some major ethnic image makeover took place with a NEW "1885-1985 Centennial of Japanese Immigration", officially celebrating the arrival of a later, much less controversial group of workers in 1885. Thus, the commonly available (and completely different) 1985 minting. The 1868 event and the medal I have commemorating it appear to have been pretty much swept under the rug by state politicians, in an interesting rewrite of state history.

Other than the images I uploaded with this post, I have yet to see an image or visual reference to this 1868-1968 medal anywhere on the web, after days of searching, although the 1885-1985 version is literally everywhere. Quite an interesting story so far!

Many, many thanks, DrDarryl. The link contains a ton of interesting info. The only disconnect I see is the medal diameter, which I just very carefully measured again at very very close to exactly 35mm. 4mm seems to be quite a significant difference, but I suppose not all data catalogs and books can be all that precise in their listings. Thanks again.

Below is the first newspaper article in the Kingdom of Hawaii that mentions the specific date and ship that matches the medal.

Good gosh, you are certainly a fountain of information. Thanks!