Goichi Suehiro of Co. F, 2nd Battalion, 442nd RCT in the Vosges region of France, 1944. A Japanese-American soldier standing in a foxhole, holding an M-1 carbine.
16 May 2022
To go for broke is a verb phrase meaning to risk everything on a venture, to give one’s all. And go for broke is also an adjectival phrase describing such efforts. The underlying metaphor is that of risking bankruptcy. The phrase arose in Hawaiian Pidgin in the early twentieth century and entered into widespread American usage in the 1940s.
Hawaiian Pidgin is creole language, a combination of Hawaiian and English, spoken in Hawai’i by about a million people. According to Ethnologue, it has about 600,000 first-language speakers and another 400,000 second-language speakers, with “vigorous use” by some 100,000–200,000. Its use is not restricted to any specific ethnicity; rather it’s spoken by generally by those raised in Hawai’i. Despite its name, Hawaiian Pidgin is a creole, not technically a pidgin. A pidgin is a contact language with simplified grammar and limited vocabulary, often used to conduct business and trade. A creole, on the other hand, is a full-fledged language, a blending of two or more other languages, with a full grammar and vocabulary and the ability to express an infinite number of ideas. Hawaiian Pidgin is distinct from Hawaiian, which is a Polynesian language spoken in Hawai’i.
The first recorded use of let’s go broke is in a 1935 song title listed in a catalog of copyrighted works. The song is from Hawai’i:
Let’s go for broke; song; with ukulele arr. © July 9 1935; E pub. 49251; Harry Owens, Honolulu. 15930.
A 1937 travelogue of an extended tour of Hawai’i by travel-writer Harry Franck gives a number of snippets of Hawaiian Pidgin, including this one:
A well-known nursery story ends in some circles with, “The gingerbread man he run like hell; he go for broke.”
It appears again the next year in Me Spik English, a 1938 book of examples of Hawaiian Pidgin. In Hawaiian, kane means man and wahine woman:
Kane: “You like go for one walk, huh?”
Wahine: “Too much trobble. I like see one peecture.”
Kane: “We go for broke. We go Hawaii T’eater, see ‘Spoiled Goods.’”
Wahine: “Who de hero?”
Kane: “I tink is no hero. Is maybe educational peecture.”
Wahine: “Educational? Waste time!”
During World War II, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team adopted go for broke as its unit motto, and this is the point at which the phrase starts entering into general American speech. The unit, which served in Europe, was the most highly decorated regiment of the war, including twenty-one Medals of Honor awarded to its soldiers. The 442nd RCT was activated in February 1943 and consisted almost entirely of Japanese-American (Nisei) soldiers. Roughly two-thirds of the soldiers in the unit came from Hawai’i, with the other third coming from the mainland, mainly the west coast. And many of families of those soldiers from the mainland had been interned in relocation camps. (Ironically, Japanese Americans in Hawai’i, those closest to the combat areas, were not interned; because of their numbers, doing so would have been ruinous to the Hawaiian economy.) Go for broke was, therefore, a fitting motto for soldiers who had to go all out to prove their loyalty to their fellow citizens, most of whom viewed them as the enemy.
The adoption of the motto was memorialized in a 14 April 1943 Associated Press article:
As the first trainload unloaded after a 4,000-mile journey via boat and rail, the motto “Go for Broke,” was adopted by those loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry who are taking advantage of an opportunity offered by the War Department for military service against enemies of the United States.
Adjectival use of the phrase appears in print shortly after the war, again in a description of the Nisei valor on the battlefield. From A.W. Lind’s 1946 Hawaii’s Japanese:
The “go for broke” spirit was probably reflected in the bold daring observed among the Islanders on the battle field. Some of the Caucasian officers attributed the apparent unconcern for death among the “Hawaiians” to a Japanese fatalism rather than to an American quality of character. Doubtless there was a certain survival of shikata-ga-nai and of the Japanese sense of obligation (giri). It would be strange if these significant cultural traits of their parents had not retained some influence upon the second generation sons. Preeminent, however, in the gallantry of these sons of Hawaii was the thoroughly American hope that their rights as citizens of the land might be finally established.
So, go for broke is both an etymologically and historically apt term, reflecting both its linguistic and ethnic origins as well as the valor of those who used it.
Sources:
“442nd Regimental Combat Team.” Go For Broke National Education Center.
Associated Press. “Loyal Japs from Hawaii Reach Dixie to Train.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 14 April 1943, 9. (Page number printed on the page is 8 because there are two page 6s.)
Catalog of Copyright Entries, Part 3 Musical Compositions. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1936, no. 15930. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Ethnologue, 2022.
Franck, Harry A. Roaming in Hawaii. New York: Frederick A Stokes, 1937, 146.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. go for broke, v., go-for-broke, adj.
“Hawaiian Pidgin for Beginners.” Languagehat.com, 4 January 2022.
“Hawaii Pidgin.” Ethnologue.com, 2022.
Lind, Andrew W. Hawaii’s Japanese: An Experiment in Democracy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946, 167.
Mobley, Milly Lou. Me Spik English: To Help You Remember—Stories of Pidgins in Paradise Heard in Hawaii. Honolulu: Honolulu Star Bulletin, 1938, 17. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2015, s.v. go-for-broke, adj.; second edition, 1989, s.v. broke, adj.
Photo credit: U.S Army, 1944. Public domain image.