1 - American Memory

STATEMENT OF THOMAS K. HITCH, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND
CHAIRMAN, RESEARCH DIVISION, FIRST HAWAHAN BANK,
REPRESENTING THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF HAWAH;
ACCOMPAIHED BY HON. SPARK M. MATSUNAGA, A REPRESENT-
ATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF HAWAH
Mr. MATSUNAGA. It is my pleasure, Mr. Chairman and members of
the subcommittee, to present our next witness, who will be speaking
in behalf of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of Hawaii, Dr.
Thomas K. Hitch, who is the senior vice president and chairman of
the Research Division of the First Hawaiian Bank of the State of
Hawaii.
He is a graduate of the London School of Economics and one of
the most highly respected members of our community, both in the busi-
ness world and in the political world. Dr. Hitch.
Mr. JARMAN. Dr. Hitch, we are pleased to have you with us this
morning. The committee w-ill listen attentively to your testimony.
Mr. HITCH. I am pleased to be here, Mr. Chairman, and honorable
members of the committee. Much of what I could say today has been
already said. I would therefore request of the committee two things:
First, would it be possible for me to have introduced into the record
of this hearing this booklet entitled "Hawaii, the Most Vulnerable
State in the Nation," which I prepared last March, which covers the
ground that is the subject matter of this hearing today.
Mr. JARMAN. Doctor, the conmiittee will certainly receive this bro-
chure for the hearing record; the pictures however would not be re-
flected in the hearing record, but I see no problem in its being included,
sir. [See p. 168.]
Mr. HITCH. What we tried to do in the booklet was, in the first
chapter which was brief, to detail Hawaii's extreme dependence on
reliable and adequate transportation, which is a subject already cov-
ered very adequately by the colleagues of mine who have appeared
already this morning.
Let me simply make one statement. I would estimate that this year
as a normal year, commodities moving to Hawaii from the mainland by
ship will amount to about 5 million tons, with another 2 million tons
moving from Hawaii to the mainland. This is well over 8 tons per resi-
dent man, woman, and child of Hawaii. Obviously shipping is our vital
lifeline as has already been brought out.
The second chapter in this brochure, this case study, deals with the
history of transportation interruptions and I would like to point out
that strike or lockout threats which never materialize as strikes or lock-
outs, short strikes or short lockouts, can be just as damaging in many
ways as a long strike.
Primary attention is given to the long strikes which are dramatic
Ijet me quote two sentences in this study: "Short strikes are short
strikes only in retrospect. Tliey could turn into long strikes and they
trigger the response that a long strike would provoke: stockpiling,
lioarding, panic buying, et cetera, and the threat of a .strike that never
comes off is only the tlireat of a strike in retrospect. When tiie threat
looms on the horizon, businessmen and consumers adopt a 'here we