Cane Fires Research Articles

American History Unbound: Asians and Pacific Islanders

Gary Y. Okihiro's American History Unbound reads like a monograph. Its suggested readings, timelines, and primary sources reveal, however, that it is a textbook. Okihiro originally wanted the title to be, simply, “American History,” but the University of California Press editors insisted on including “unbound” in the title of this U.S. history that centralizes Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Okihiro acquiesced to the press's title change, even though the purpose of his text and, indeed, of his fifty-year scholarly career has been to challenge conventional categorizations and the marginalization of Asian America. In all his books, but particularly in Cane Fires (1991), Margins and Mainstreams (1994), Common Ground (2001), Pineapple Culture (2008), Island World (2009), and Third World Studies (2016), Okihiro urges us to rethink binaries and other divisions naturalized in popular and scholarly discourse. Since he reflexively distrusts authoritative histories, Okihiro had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” into writing something as definitive as a textbook (p. xi). Yet “unbound” is not a bad descriptor for a drama that moves beyond the temporal and spatial boundaries typical in most U.S. history textbooks.

Black Labor, White Sugar: Caribbean Braceros and Their Struggle for Power in the Cuban Sugar Industry

Scholars have long recognized the importance of Haitian and British Caribbean migrants to early twentieth-century Cuba. Although they loomed large in Cuban racial debates and sustained one of the largest sugar industries in the world, the migrants themselves received disproportionately less attention than the analyses of racial ideologies, sugar production, and empire in which they were evidentiary fodder. With Black Labor, White Sugar, Philip Howard joins a growing group of scholars both within and outside Cuba who are analyzing migrants and migration more explicitly, a reflection of increased interest in Caribbean migration, transnational history, and Cuba outside Havana. Howard traces the racial and economic exploitation of the migrants and their varied efforts to assert control over their lives through the first decades of the twentieth century. In so doing, he makes new claims about the extent of migrants' labor organizing in the sugar industry and adds to ongoing historiographic debates about race and mobilization in the Cuban Republic.Howard explains migration to Cuba as a convergence, not just of economic and political conditions but also of racial debates and worker consciousness within Cuba. For students of race in Cuba, the 1913 legalization of Caribbean labor migration is second only to the 1912 violent repression of the all-black Partido Independiente de Color for what it reveals about ideas of race, citizenship, work, and political power in the Cuban Republic. Howard, more than any other previous scholar, posits an explicit connection between the two. He shows that an influential report on labor and migration by the Cuban Agricultural Department was written during the 1912 repression and actually made subtle references to the unfolding events as it recommended allowing Caribbean migration. From this perspective, immigrants were brought in not just according to the arithmetic of population and wage rates but also based on a calculus attuned to an emerging, assertive black Cuban consciousness.Howard's analysis of sugar workers follows the same logic. Planters employed the management tactics from slavery to successive groups of workers until economic crisis and Cuban xenophobic nationalism closed Cuban borders in the 1930s. Initially, Caribbean migrants were recruited amid rising Afro-Cuban mobilization. Soon, Howard argues, immigrant workers, especially Jamaicans, adopted the class consciousness of worker internationalism and anarcho-syndicalism, followed later by the race consciousness of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. By the 1920s, poor economic conditions in Cuba reduced Jamaicans' willingness to migrate; likewise, their reputation for mobilization made them less desirable to sugar planters, who increasingly turned to Haitians, maintaining the pattern of employers hiring the most exploitable labor. Although he treats different immigrant groups separately, Howard suggests that when it came to their participation in formal organizations and efforts to assert autonomy workers of all nationalities participated.Black Labor, White Sugar was published on the heels of Robert Whitney and Graciela Chailloux Laffita's book on the British Caribbean presence in Cuba, but the texts focus on different themes. Howard goes into more depth about workers' experiences and ends with the deportations in the 1930s, whereas Whitney and Chailloux Laffita spend more time on British Caribbean migrants' identities and individual interactions with British imperial and Cuban national state structures, an analysis that focuses more on the process of repatriation and hovers more in the 1930s and subsequent decades.One of the biggest challenges in writing about migrants in the Cuban sugar industry is discerning the extent of their involvement in various labor organizations and their reception of radical ideologies. Organizations throughout Cuba published pamphlets invoking migrant workers in the eastern part of the island, but few sources provide any smoking guns about migrants' actual responses. Did field workers' cane fires represent a “nascent expression of the workers' consciousness” and a gesture of support to ongoing anarcho-syndicalist organizing (p. 141)? While in Cuba, did Marcus Garvey discuss the US occupation of Haiti, as he had in speeches elsewhere? If so, were any Haitian immigrants there to hear him and understand his speech? Did Haitian writer Jacques Roumain's 1944 fictional account of a Haitian cane cutter accurately reflect the class consciousness of workers a decade before? In each of these cases, Howard responds to the ambiguous and circumstantial evidence in the affirmative, albeit cautiously. He thus makes what are perhaps the strongest claims yet for immigrant workers' participation in formal unions and radicalism. Alongside other textured histories of labor and mobilization in eastern Cuba, Black Labor, White Sugar is sure to engender lively debate.

Razing Cane: Making Sense of Arson in the Sugar Fields of Republican Cuba

This article explores the nature and meaning of sugarcane arson in Cuba during the first four decades of the twentieth century. In the scholarly literature as well as popular memory, the illegal burning of sugarcane has been seen as an important means by which marginalized groups, such as slaves, rebels, bandits, and striking workers, challenged the established order during times of political and social upheaval. Sugarcane arson, however, was not just a tactical measure utilized during extraordinary moments, but was intrinsic to the island’s sugar economy. Despite varied efforts by government officials and plantation managers to prevent cane fires, a number of groups— including colonos (cane farmers) as well as cane cutters—regularly ignited sugar fields for their own purposes. Using sugarcane arson as an analytical lens thus provides a more nuanced picture of agrarian relations in prerevolutionary Cuba.

Trace gas emissions from combustion of peat, crop residue, domestic biofuels, grasses, and other fuels: configuration and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) component of the fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4)

Abstract. During the fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4, October–November 2012) a large variety of regionally and globally significant biomass fuels was burned at the US Forest Service Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. The particle emissions were characterized by an extensive suite of instrumentation that measured aerosol chemistry, size distribution, optical properties, and cloud-nucleating properties. The trace gas measurements included high-resolution mass spectrometry, one- and two-dimensional gas chromatography, and open-path Fourier transform infrared (OP-FTIR) spectroscopy. This paper summarizes the overall experimental design for FLAME-4 – including the fuel properties, the nature of the burn simulations, and the instrumentation employed – and then focuses on the OP-FTIR results. The OP-FTIR was used to measure the initial emissions of 20 trace gases: CO2, CO, CH4, C2H2, C2H4, C3H6, HCHO, HCOOH, CH3OH, CH3COOH, glycolaldehyde, furan, H2O, NO, NO2, HONO, NH3, HCN, HCl, and SO2. These species include most of the major trace gases emitted by biomass burning, and for several of these compounds, this is the first time their emissions are reported for important fuel types. The main fire types included African grasses, Asian rice straw, cooking fires (open (three-stone), rocket, and gasifier stoves), Indonesian and extratropical peat, temperate and boreal coniferous canopy fuels, US crop residue, shredded tires, and trash. Comparisons of the OP-FTIR emission factors (EFs) and emission ratios (ERs) to field measurements of biomass burning verify that the large body of FLAME-4 results can be used to enhance the understanding of global biomass burning and its representation in atmospheric chemistry models. Crop residue fires are widespread globally and account for the most burned area in the US, but their emissions were previously poorly characterized. Extensive results are presented for burning rice and wheat straw: two major global crop residues. Burning alfalfa produced the highest average NH3 EF observed in the study (6.63 ± 2.47 g kg−1), while sugar cane fires produced the highest EF for glycolaldehyde (6.92 g kg−1) and other reactive oxygenated organic gases such as HCHO, HCOOH, and CH3COOH. Due to the high sulfur and nitrogen content of tires, they produced the highest average SO2 emissions (26.2 ± 2.2 g kg−1) and high NOx and HONO emissions. High variability was observed for peat fire emissions, but they were consistently characterized by large EFs for NH3 (1.82 ± 0.60 g kg−1) and CH4 (10.8 ± 5.6 g kg−1). The variability observed in peat fire emissions, the fact that only one peat fire had previously been subject to detailed emissions characterization, and the abundant emissions from tropical peatlands all impart high value to our detailed measurements of the emissions from burning three Indonesian peat samples. This study also provides the first EFs for HONO and NO2 for Indonesian peat fires. Open cooking fire emissions of HONO and HCN are reported for the first time, and the first emissions data for HCN, NO, NO2, HONO, glycolaldehyde, furan, and SO2 are reported for "rocket" stoves: a common type of improved cookstove. The HCN / CO emission ratios for cooking fires (1.72 × 10−3 ± 4.08 × 10−4) and peat fires (1.45 × 10−2 ± 5.47 × 10−3) are well below and above the typical values for other types of biomass burning, respectively. This would affect the use of HCN / CO observations for source apportionment in some regions. Biomass burning EFs for HCl are rare and are reported for the first time for burning African savanna grasses. High emissions of HCl were also produced by burning many crop residues and two grasses from coastal ecosystems. HCl could be the main chlorine-containing gas in very fresh smoke, but rapid partitioning to aerosol followed by slower outgassing probably occurs.

Review: Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945, by Gary Y. Okihiro

Review: <i>Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945</i>, by Gary Y. Okihiro

Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945

Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945

&lt;sc&gt;Gary Y. Okihiro&lt;/sc&gt;. &lt;italic&gt;Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945&lt;/italic&gt;. (Asian American History and Culture Series.) Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1991. Pp. xvii, 330. $39.95

Gary Y. Okihiro. Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945. (Asian American History and Culture Series.) Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1991. Pp. xvii, 330. $39.95 Get access Okihiro Gary Y.. Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945. (Asian American History and Culture Series.) Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1992. Pp. xvii, 330. $39.95. Robert J. Gowen Robert J. Gowen East Carolina University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 97, Issue 3, June 1992, Pages 942–943, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/97.3.942 Published: 01 June 1992

Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945.

Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945.

Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945.

Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945.

Cane fires: the anti-Japanese movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945

Cane fires: the anti-Japanese movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945

Power line insulator pollution and power dips in natal, South Africa

Air pollution is a recognized factor in power transmission line failures in South Africa, causing insulator flashovers which lead to power dips. A number of management strategies are in operation to try to overcome the problem. A severe faulting episode which occurrence of three major contributing factors. paper. It is concluded that the episode resulted from the concurrence of three major contributing factors. These were the presence of an atmospheric circulation with high air pollution potential, the occurrence of runaway forest, veld and cane fires and a long period of below average rainfall prior to the event. The slow buildup of salt and industrial pollution during winter, the likelihood of dew formation which wetted the insulator surface making it conductive, and the rapid buildup of carbonaceous material all contributed to the faulting episode.

Diffusion and emission of smoke from agricultural burning in Hawaii

Agricultural burning has been common practice for many years in Hawaii. Cane fields are burnt before harvesting and the crowns of pineapple are cut-off during harvest, left in the field to dry and subsequently burned. While this practice has many advantages, it produces air pollution levels which at least one study finds affect public health. In 1974 open burns of cane and pineapple were simulated in a burn tower where samples were burned while monitoring weight loss and smoke density. From these measurements emission values were calculated. However, because questions were raised as to whether the vigorous field fires can be simulated. in a burn tower, a field survey was undertaken and a diffusion model, basically a limited Gaussian line source model, was developed and run using the data collected during the burns. The calculated emission rate for particulates is orders of magnitudes larger than the burn tower rate. This is attributed to dust drawn into the fire. When emission values from a survey of the open burn literature and from the present study were plotted against wind speed, low intensity fires such as grass, straw and pineapple residue fires showed decreased emissions with increasing wind speed while cane fires showed increased emission. This suggests that emission characteristics are different for low and high intensity fires. For low intensity fires increased air flow acts mainly to increase the combustion efficiency producing less particulates. For high intensity fires, such as cane fires, increased air flow results in hotter fires lofting more dust, which is the major pollutant from such fires. Revised emission values are recommended.

Carbon Dioxide Variability and Atmospheric Circulation

Abstract Hourly values of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) formed the basis for an investigation of concentration fluctuations on daily to monthly time scales. In agreement with earlier studies we found no evidence linking the fluctuations with large-scale variations in the atmospheric circulation. Neither did local cane fires produce any measurable effects. A diurnal variation that comprises daytime forest depletion and nighttime enhancement by outgassing from the summit caldera need not affect overall data quality. We conclude that MLO is an excellent site for monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Spatial distribution of particulates from sugar cane fires in Hawaii: measurements and calculations.

Spatial distribution of particulates from sugar cane fires in Hawaii: measurements and calculations.

A Reduction in Rainfall Associated with Smoke from Sugar-Cane Fires—An Inadvertent Weather Modification?

Abstract An examination of 60 years of rainfall during three months of the cane-harvesting season has shown a reduction of rainfall at inland stations coinciding with increasing cane production; no such reduction occurred at a “control” station upwind of smoke from the cane fires. The reduction is consistent with the hypothesis that through their activity as condensation nuclei the smoke particles result in great increases in concentration and consequent reduction in the size of cloud droplets, thereby hindering the coalescence process of rain formation. However, the possibility that other factors caused the particular climatic changes observed cannot be eliminated, and it is suggested that other areas of the world should be examined to see if similar effects can be found.

The Production of Cloud Nuclei by Cane Fires and the Effect on Cloud Droplet Concentration

Abstract The smoke from sugar cane fires was found to be a prolific source of cloud nuclei and to increase very greatly the number concentration of droplets in clouds formed well downwind from the fires.