James Wood Bush

James Wood Bush (c. 1844 – April 24, 1906) was a citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii who fought in the American Civil War; he was one of a small number of Hawaiians to do so. In later life he converted to Mormonism and became an active member of the Hawaiian Mission.

Early life

James Wood Bush was born in Honolulu. The date of his birth is uncertain; different sources claim it to be October 1844, 1845 or 1848.^[1][2][3][4] He was the son of George Henry Bush (1807–1853), a native of Suffolk, England, who went to Hawaii in 1825, and his Hawaiian wife.^[5][6] Bush was thus of mixed native Hawaiian and Caucasian descent, known as hapa haole in Hawaiian, although in his lifetime he was referred to as a half-caste.^[7][8] His older brother was John Edward Bush, who became a newspaper publisher and politician, serving as a cabinet minister under King Kalākaua and as royal governor of Kauaʻi.^[2][9] Little is known about Bush's life before 1864. Like his brother, he began his career as a sailor working on either merchant or whaling ships in the Pacific. Hawaiian sailors were highly regarded in the 18th- and 19th-century maritime industry.^[10]

American Civil War

Bush served as a sailor on the USS Vandalia during the war.

After the outbreak of the American Civil War, King Kamehameha IV declared the neutrality of the Kingdom of Hawaii.^[11] However, many inhabitants of the islands were sympathetic to the North because of the strong New England ties of the early American Protestant missionaries. Many Native Hawaiians and Hawaii-born Americans—who were mainly descendants of the American missionaries—volunteered to fight in the war.^[12]

Bush was no exception. After arriving in New England, he enlisted at Portsmouth as an "Ordinary Seaman" on September 27, 1864. For the duration of his service, he worked on the USS Vandalia and later the captured Confederate vessel USS Beauregard, chasing blockade runners off West Florida. He developed chronic laryngitis and spinal injuries due to his service in the Union Navy and was discharged in September 1865 at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital. After the war ended, the impoverished Bush had no way of returning to Hawaii. For the next decade, he lived in New Bedford, San Francisco, and Tahiti, finally returning to Hawaii in 1877.^{[1][13][14][15][16]} In 1905, after Hawaii become a US territory, Bush was granted a pension for his service in the Civil War, with back pensions dating from May 8, 1897.^{[17][18][1][13][19][20]}

Later life

After returning to Hawaii, Bush settled on the island of Kauai. In 1880, he was listed as the tax collector of Kawaihau, Kauai.^[21] In 1882, his older brother in his capacity as Minister of Interior appointed him Road Supervisor for the District of Hanalei to replace Christian Bertlemann, who had resigned.^[22] In 1887, Bush converted to Mormonism and was ordained an elder after two years; he took an active part in missionary work in the islands. He became the bishop of the LDS ward in Kealia and hosted LDS historian Andrew Jenson during his 1895 visit to Kauai.^{[7][3][4][23]} In around 1894, Bush married a young girl at Lahaina, traveling to Kona after their marriage.^[24]

Bush died of heart failure at Kealia, Kauai, on April 24, 1906. In the last years of his life, he was a janitor at the Kealia prison. Bush was survived by his wife and son.^[2] Lorenzo Taylor, writing for the Deseret News, said, "[H]e has taken an active part in the missionary work, doing much good among his fellow men. He has also been very kind to the elders, and his doors were always open to them. He was greatly beloved and respected by all who knew him. His life was a noble example of faithful and untiring devotion to the Gospel."^[3][4] Bush was believed to be buried on Kauai, but the location of his grave is uncertain. According to Anita Manning, an Associate in Cultural Studies at Bishop Museum, "even the family can't find him".^[25]

Legacy

Memorial plaque for Hawai‘i Sons of the Civil War in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu

After the war, the military services of Hawaiians including James Wood Bush were largely forgotten; they disappeared from the collective memories of the American Civil War and the history of Hawaii. However, in recent years, Hawaiian residents, historians and descendants of Hawaiian combatants in the conflict have insisted on the need to remember the legacy of the Hawaiians who fought. Renewed interests in the stories of these people and this period of Hawaiian-American history have inspired efforts to preserve their memories.^[26] Saying "our boys from Hawaii" should be remembered, Bush's great-grandniece Edna Bush Ellis was influential in reviving interest and effort to install a memorial recognizing their legacy.^[26][14]

In August 26, 2010, on the anniversary of the signing of the Hawaiian Neutrality Proclamation, a bronze memorial plaque was erected along the memorial pathway at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, recognizing the Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War, the more than 100 documented Hawaiians who served during the American Civil War on both the Union and the Confederacy sides.^{[27][28][29][30][31]} In 2015, the sesquicentennial of the end of the war, the U.S. National Park Service released a publication titled Asians and Pacific Islanders and the Civil War about the services of the combatants of Asian and Pacific Islander descent who served during the American Civil War. The history of Hawaii's involvement and the biographies of Bush and others were co-written by historians Anita Manning and Justin Vance.^[32]

See also

• Hawaii and the American Civil War

References

Bibliography

• Jenson, Andrew (1895). "Jenson's Travel – Letter No XVII". The Deseret Weekly. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Company. pp. 524–525. 
• Kuykendall, Ralph Simpson (1953). The Hawaiian Kingdom 1778–1854, Twenty Critical Years 2. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-87022-432-4. 
• Manning, Anita; Vance, Justin W. (2015). "Pacific Islanders and the Civil War". In Shively, Carol A. Asians and Pacific Islanders and the Civil War. Washington, D. C.: National Park Service. 
• Manning, Anita (2013). Keaupuni: A Hawaiian Sailor's Odyssey. Hawaiian Journal of History 47 (Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society). pp. 87–102. hdl:10524/36267. 
• Taylor, Lorenzo (1906). "Events and Comments: James W. Bush Dead". In Anderson, Edward H. The Improvement Era 9. Salt Lake City: Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association. p. 827. 
• Taylor, Lorenzo (1906). "A Native Elder Dies". Elder's Journal of the Southern States Mission 3. Chattanooga, TN: Ben. E. Rich. p. 359. 

Further reading

• "Hawaiians in the Civil War, March 2015" (PDF). National Park Service. Retrieved August 5, 2015. 
• "Hawaiʻi Sons of The Civil War: A Documentary Film". Hawaiʻi Sons of The Civil War. Retrieved August 5, 2015.