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The phrase “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” is not attributable to Thomas Jefferson, as urban legend has it.

In fact, it’s unclear from a Google search exactly who coined the term.

But the life of Edward H. Nakamura most certainly epitomizes the meaning of the quote — the necessity of principled dissent in a democracy, regardless of the consequences.

The life of Nakamura (1922-1997) is reverently, warmly and revealingly told in a new biography by Tom Coffman, the former Honolulu Star-Bulletin journalist turned author and film producer.

“I Respectfully Dissent” (University of Hawaii Press; 184 pages) manages to capture the down-to-earth qualities of Nakamura, the 442nd veteran of World War II, labor lawyer, University of Hawaii regent and associate justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court.

The man liked to drink — a lot — for example. He collected art. He liked jazz. He didn’t drive a car.

At its best, however, Coffman places Nakamura’s life in the context of Hawaii’s modern history.

Nakamura was there when Hawaii Japanese Americans returned from the war to help wrest control of the territory from the white business oligarchy. He counseled the most important labor group of his day, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and withered suspicion of Communist leanings. He led the UH Regents through a time of Vietnam War protests and the Oliver Lee tenure saga. He was instrumental in enactment of the 1974 Prepaid Health Care Act. He served on the William S. Richardson court that defined Hawaii land and water use laws.

And, he opposed development of Sandy Beach (from whence springs the “dissent” in Coffman’s book title), fought mismanagement in the state’s Employees’ Retirement System, testified against cronyism in the Waihee Administration and had a hand in the “Broken Trust” essay that rattled the Bishop Estate.

As Coffman makes clear, Nakamura felt that Hawaii Democrats had strayed from the principles that catapulted them to power and created a state that may have been the most progressive of all in the nation.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote Lord Acton (according to Google, anyway).

Fresh Telling

The Japanese-American experience in Hawaii — in particular, that of the second-generation nisei — has been chronicled many times by many people, including Coffman.

Some say the story has been told too often, crossing over at times into hagiography and ethnocentrism.

But then, it is a remarkable story, and from time to time we need reminding of it. What Coffman has done is to share Nakamura’s story in a fresh, instructive way that reminds Hawaii of, as Lincoln put it, the better angels of our nature.

In many ways, it’s a simple chronological telling: childhood, school, war, college, marriage, career, peaks, death. The arc of Nakamura’s life, however, shows a man who grew emotionally and intellectually as he moved from station to station, each previous chapter informing the newest one. The actions of his latter years are fully informed by the experiences of his younger days.

All along, Nakamura seems to have remained the man he always was. While it has become a cliché to talk about an AJA leader as quiet, effective, modest and tireless, that does help sum up Nakamura.

But he was also a highly intelligent man who relied on reason and fairness, a man who did not hide from his favoring the worker over the elite. Coffman doesn’t hide less-flattering characteristics, either, like the fact that Nakamura drank a lot (and talked a lot when he drank), or the tragedy and shame in his family history (it included suicide).

Coffman is especially good in the chapters that cover Nakamura’s work for the IWLU in the era of Jack Hall and on the Supreme Court with Richardson. By interviewing people who knew Nakamura at the time — they include A.Q. McElrath during the labor years and Ed Case in the court years (Mazie Hirono was also interviewed) — Coffman makes history seem less distant and gives life to a man who may have been forgotten by many.

Coffman also makes good use of scholar Franklin Odo’s historical research. He is especially good at making real-life connections for today’s reader, like pointing out that a young Nakamura liked to party it up at Sandy Beach, which helps us to understand in part the Save Sandy Beach case that resulted in his lone dissenting court vote.

‘Jagged Teeth’

Which isn’t to say the book doesn’t occasionally suffer.

Coffman has a fondness for analogy that doesn’t always work — as in comparing a point of land at Laupahoehoe, “where ocean waves converge from two directions and crash against jagged teeth.”

The passage continues:

Two great forces were at work: the war veterans were returning to Hawaii and the labor unions were suddenly free to organize workers. These forces converged and crashed into the jagged teeth of the status quo of politics, social relations, racial relations, and a stagnant work place.

One might argue that the dramatic history already has all the teeth it needs.

At another point, Coffman observes how Nakamura studied law at the University of Chicago with other future Hawaii luminaries Patsy Mink and Nadao Yoshinaga.

That the school opened its doors early to women and minorities is indeed noteworthy. But this line seems a bit of a stretch: “By the time of Nakamura’s arrival its faculty included an African American, a predecessor to another University of Chicago lecturer in constitutional law, Barack Obama.”

In his work, Coffman seeks to place Hawaii’s context in that of the nation’s. But is it necessary to draw a line between Nakamura and Obama?

One other quibble: Nakamura donated Isami Doi’s painting, “Cosmic Alchemy,” to the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the first in the foundation’s collection. But using it as the book’s cover image does not invite the reader to pick it up.

Nakamra died on Sept. 11, 1997, after open-heart surgery. Just a month earlier, he had approved the text of the “Broken Trust” essay that helped expose the all-too-close relationship between the Bishop Estate and the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government.

Among the outcomes would be the appointment of estate trustees by the Probate Court and not the Supreme Court. Coffman’s thesis comes in the final chapter that concludes with the Broken Trust essay:

He was the connecting thread among the progression of events that changed the course of Hawaii in the period from 1991 to 1997. The fundamental passion of his life was making democracy in Hawaii work, and in pursuit of that passion he captured the mood of reform that increasingly took hold in 1990s in Hawaii.

Here’s a suggestion for Tom Coffman’s next book: Whatever happened to that reform and the great legacy of Ed Nakamura? We could sure use more of his kind.