Izuka, Ichiro

In the years before the war, Ichiro Izuka was a young labor organizer and vice president of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen Union local on Kauai Island. He made two unsuccessful bids for elected office, running as a progressive liberal. 

In early 1942, Izuka was arrested for distributing union newspapers and held without charges on Kauai for about six months. His incarceration was cited in a 1944 American Federation of Labor memorandum protesting the Hawaiian military government's intimidation of labor unions. The document noted that Izuka's release was obtained through the help of the ILWU. 

After the war, Izuka broke with his earlier union affiliations and, calling himself a "former Communist," in 1948 served as "the key territorial witness" in The Reinecke Case, one of many government-led attempts to "root out" communists in the islands. In four days of testimony that made front-page headlines, Izuka identified individuals as communists, including ILWU leaders Jack Kawano and Jack Hall, and testified that public school teachers John and Aiko Reinecke were members of the Communist Party. The Reineckes were dismissed from their positions and stripped of their teaching credentials. Their convictions were overturned some ten years later. 

Izuka made other attempts at public office, including a run in 1990 as the Republican candidate for governor.