Milton Murayama Papers

Milton Atsushi Murayama was born on April 10, 1923 on Pu‘ukoli‘i Plantation near Lahaina, Maui. As a young man, Murayama served as a Japanese translator in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II, and after the war attended the University of Hawai‘i and Columbia University. From a very young age, Murayama dreamed of becoming a writer. However, he received little commercial success until 1975 when he self-published his debut novel All I Asking For Is My Body. This book became an overnight success in Hawai‘i, selling over 13,000 copies. Murayama later expanded the narrative of All I Asking For Is My Body into three subsequent novels: Five Years On A Rock (1994), Plantation Boy (1998), and Dying In A Strange Land (2008). In addition to novels, Murayama wrote plays, two of which were produced for the stage: an adaptation of All I Asking For Is My Body in 1989 and 1999, and his kabuki play Yoshitsune in 1982. Additionally, he wrote an unproduced play titled Althea about the Massie Case in Honolulu in 1932 and an unproduced screenplay adaptation of All I Asking For Is My Body called The Debt. Murayama passed away on July 27, 2016.

The Milton Murayama Papers contain documents and artifacts from Murayama’s life and career. There is a significant volume of drafts and manuscripts of his novels and plays in this collection, and it contains a copy of Murayama’s screenplay The Debt as well. There are also portions of the collection dedicated to largely unpublished articles, essays, and short stories he wrote throughout his life, some of which are compiled into Murayama’s final unpublished work titled Odds and Ends. Beyond Murayama’s literary works, the remainder of the collection contains documents that are biographical in nature. These documents include correspondence, photographs, and certificates, and shed light on Murayama’s daily life, his military service, and his family genealogy.

On eVols, the Milton Murayama Papers collection is divided into two sub-collections: one that contains publicly accessible materials and one that contains restricted materials. All materials provided in the public collection are available to view online. Those in the restricted collection are password-protected and require the permission of the donor in order to view. It is important to note that the documents on eVols, both public and restricted, do not equal the sum of all collection materials. Instead there are documents in this collection that have been restricted to in-person access only in the Moir Reading Room at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Hamilton Library. These “Reading Room Only” documents are primarily literary works—including complete drafts and manuscripts of novels, plays, a screenplay, and any works affiliated with Murayama’s Legacy Project Odds and Ends—but also include other published materials and a few documents with sensitive or protected information. The arrangement of the collection materials on eVols differs from how these documents are arranged in the ArchivesSpace catalog. Please refer to the Milton Murayama Papers’ ArchivesSpace record for the primary navigational aid for this collection.