Massie Case

Massie Rape Case Seventy years ago last month, in the pre-dawn hours of a Sunday morning, two Honolulu police officers awakened a young man named Horace Ida at his home in Kalihi-Palama. Ida dressed hurriedly and went with the detectives, thinking he knew what they were after. Two hours earlier, while driving his sister's car, Ida had a near collision with another auto at the corner of King and Liliha streets. An argument broke out and one of the men riding with Ida got in a brief scuffle with a woman in the other car. Ida assumed the woman remembered his license plate number and decided to file charges. But soon after arriving at police headquarters Henry Ida found himself under arrest for a far more serious crime. The 20- year-old wife of a Pearl Harbor Navy officer identified him as one of five local men who allegedly had kidnapped, beaten, and repeatedly raped her earlier that evening after she had left a Waikiki nightclub alone.
The woman's name was Thalia Massie, the daughter of a wealthy and politically powerful Washington, D.C., couple. And for the better part of the next year Honolulu was swept up in an unprecedented frenzy of accusations, threats, and violence.
"The Massie case" remains the most notorious criminal incident in the modern history of Hawai'i. Associated Press editors in 1932 voted it, along with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the biggest criminal case in the country. Books and articles have been written about it, and at least one Hollywood film was based — very loosely — on it. But by now many people have forgotten what actually happened, and many more have never heard of the case.
The story deserves retelling because it remains powerfully relevant today. Not only because of the tragedy and racial injustice associated with the case but also because of its less-heralded lessons in straightforward moral courage. All the men accused of raping Thalia Massie were from impoverished or working class backgrounds. Two were Hawaiian, two