For Hawai'i to gain statehood, it first had to agree to be the thread that followed Alaska's needle.

That agreement, in figurative essence, was the crux of what finally and successfully resolved both territories' long-fought, long-frustrated attempts to achieve statehood.

Both Hawai'i and Alaska had pushed hard for decades to secure a voice in Congress and to assure the equal rights and equal opportunities promised by full-fledged membership in the union.

In Hawai'i, those efforts were stymied by myriad historical, political and social factors — from the advent of World War II, to lingering suspicions about the territory's multicultural population and the rising influence of its labor unions, to immediate fears that its entry would disrupt the balance of legislative power.

The two statehood measures were strategically joined in 1954, but continued opposition to admitting Hawai'i or Alaska — or both — resulted in further deadlock.

Alaska was viewed as staunchly Democratic. And while it's natural oil reserves were attractive, some argued that the territory's geological breadth, it's proportionately small population, and it's relatively underdeveloped economy offset its prospective value as a state.

Hawai'i's Legislature had undergone a dramatic shift as a result of the so-called Democratic Revolution of 1954. And while it still had an appointed Republican governor, whose willingness to exercise his veto power then checked the body's more liberal inclinations, many conservative Southern Democrats worried that the potential election of liberal Democrats to Congress would result in an affirmative vote for emerging civil rights legislation.

John Burns, whose experiences as a Honolulu police officer exposed him to the unequal application of justice between Hawai'i's elite class and it's native and immigrant poor, was elected territorial delegate to Congress in 1954 and, like his Alaskan counterpart, E.L. Bartlett, spent innumerable hours over the next four years carefully cultivating friendships and alliances with key senators and representatives, including Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Samuel Rayburn.

Johnson and Rayburn, both from Texas, were crucial allies in Burns' bid to diffuse opposition from the Dixiecrat faction of the party. Though both initially opposed statehood for Hawai'i, both eventually became key figures in the passage of the Hawai'i Admission Act.

Burns' son, retired Hawai'i Intermediate Court of Appeals Chief Judge James Burns, said the relationship among the men was more than just political.

"They (Johnson and Rayburn) were very much like him (John Burns)," James Burns said. "They didn't have their finger up testing the wind. If they believed something was right, they went for it. That's the way they were, and my father was great buddies with them."

Johnson in particular was impressed by the performance of Hawai'i's nisei soldiers in World War II and appreciated Hawai'i's strategic value as a link between East and West.

Johnson and Rayburn would eventually support a strategy in which Alaska would be admitted as the 49th state in 1958, with Hawai'i to follow in 1959. Burns and Bartlett both agreed to the deal.

Non-contiguity

Linkage of the two statehood movements was first proffered in 1954 and it was widely assumed that if either Hawai'i or Alaska was admitted, the other would follow.

Though somewhat forgotten in the history books, the issue of non-contiguity was brought up in several arguments against statehood for both Hawai'i and Alaska.

Yet, as influential Hawai'i statehood lobbyist George Lehleitner said in a 1984 oral history interview with Chris Conybeare and Warren Nishimoto, the argument was "bunk" as other states, including his own native Louisiana, had gained admittance without geographic contiguity.

"Nevertheless," Lehleitner said, "when a congressman opposed, he knew damn well that if Hawai'i were admitted, Alaska would be bound to follow because the whole argument of non-contiguity would collapse.

"Every member of the Congress looked upon it as not a single admission but the admission of two states."

In the interview, Lehleitner cited former U.S. Rep. Leo O'Brien's famous quote: "You push the needle into a piece of cloth and first the needle goes through and then the thread follows. In this case, Alaska is the needle and Hawai'i's the thread."

The 1958 agreement was seen by some as a gambit intended to force the hand of President Eisenhower, who supported statehood for Hawai'i but was ambivalent, at best, about admitting Alaska until issues of federal control over select Alaskan lands could be resolved.

James Burns said it was simply "easier" for Alaska to go first given the many questions still lingering about Hawai'i.

"Hawai'i was still some strange place out there," James Burns said.

James Burns was attending Benedictine College in Kansas when the deal was being negotiated.

"Ninety-nine percent of the people there didn't know where Hawai'i was," he said. "They'd ask me when we learned to speak English, and if we lived in grass shacks. If they had seen a Bing Crosby movie, that was probably all they knew about Hawai'i. More Americans were aware of Alaska."

new legislators

Politically, some were worried what would happen when newly elected Hawai'i and Alaska delegates displaced existing legislators after the next national census.

Whatever the case, the plan moved forward as intended, with Alaska gaining admittance in 1958 and Hawai'i statehood advocates holding their collective breath that the following session would see the realization of their long-deferred dream.

They were justified in their anxiety. It was an election year, and a dramatic shift in Congress could conceivably have led to a reconsideration of the deal.

John Burns was in a particularly vulnerable position. With his own re-election pending, he had to return to Hawai'i and explain why he had agreed to let Alaska go first.

"He wasn't worried," James Burns said. "He knew that people would understand that this was the only way it could get done. It had never passed when Hawai'i was first, or when it was Hawai'i and Alaska together.

"His attitude was 'Trust me and if we don't get in in the next two years, throw me out.' "

The gambit paid off the following year as the Hawai'i Admission Act moved swiftly through the Senate and House.

Burns relayed the decisive House vote to Territorial Speaker of the House Elmer Cravalho, who in turn shared the news with the rest of Hawai'i.

As a Democrat, Burns was excluded from Eisenhower's historic signing of the bill months later, but his contributions, like those of his predecessors, could not be erased from history.

"The House vote was a vindication for John and what he had done by letting Alaska go first," Cravalho said. "We all knew that."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.