Hara Kei feared for their lives, having been caught completely unaware by the killing spree No policies or actions by the Trujillo regime prior to the massacre had foreshadowed such an event Some Dominicans risked their own lives to help their Haitian neighbors, while others aided the army in identifying Haitians The fluidity of culture and language in this borderlands region made it difficult to distinguish Haitian from Dominican Soldiers employed crude methods based on racially constructed stereotypes about Haitians to determine who lived and died, such as determining a person’s ethnicity based on their pronunciation of the Spanish “r.” The soldiers avoided the use of firearms, preferring machetes, clubs, and bayonets, suggesting to many scholars that Trujillo hoped to characterize the killings as a popular uprising, not government-sponsored genocide The massacre forever changed the borderlands region by imposing a strict dichotomy between Haitian and Dominican Word of the government-sponsored massacre spread quickly as journalists and foreigners reported the atrocities Trujillo set about creating an atmosphere of anti-Haitian sentiment to justify his military actions President Sténio Vincent of Haiti feared a Dominican military invasion and called on the United States, Mexico, and Cuba to act as mediators between the two countries Trujillo refused to submit to an inquiry, claiming that the incident was not a matter of international concern The dictator subsequently offered Haiti $750,000 to settle the matter, and President Vincent readily accepted the money Further reading: Roorda, Eric Paul The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930–1945 Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998; Turits, Richard Lee “A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic.” Hispanic American Historical Review (v.82, 2002) Kathleen Legg Hara Kei (1856–1921) Japanese politician Hara Kei (Hara Takashi) was a leading member of the Seiyukai political party in Japan in the early 20th century and the prime minister of Japan from 1918 to 1921 Hara was born into a family of samurai background in northern Japan in 1856 After working in fields as diverse as diplomacy and journalism, Hara joined the 139 Seiyukai, a political party founded by Ito Hirobumi in 1900, and quickly became one of its leading members Although political parties were the leading force in the lower house of Japan’s parliamentary body, the Diet, the key posts in the Japanese cabinet, including the position of prime minister, remained dominated at the turn of the century not by party officials but rather by elder statesmen Hara became one of the foremost champions of allying the Seiyukai with the cabinet In 1904, Prime Minister Katsura Taro needed Seiyukai support in the Diet for budget increases in order to fight the Russo-Japanese War Hara and Katsura made a bargain whereby Hara delivered the necessary assistance in exchange for the future appointment of Seiyukai’s president, Saionji Kinmochi, as prime minister Saionji eventually served twice as prime minister, from 1906 to 1908 and then from 1911 to 1912 As home minister in Saionji’s first cabinet, Hara worked to strengthen the party by recruiting members of the civil bureaucracy into the organization In addition, he built support for the party beyond the ranks of officialdom by providing funds for local economic development By increasing spending on local schools, roads, harbors, and transportation, he gained a following for the Seiyukai among the electorate Hara became president of the Seiyukai in 1914 and was selected to serve as prime minister of Japan in the aftermath of the well-known 1918 rice riots, marking the first time that a career party politician held that leading office in the Japanese government Although Japan had undergone an economic boom as a result of World War I, those on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy struggled with inflation and falling wages Hara was in many ways the only leader with significant support in both the Diet’s party-dominated lower house and its upper house, the House of Peers, still largely the preserve of nonparty elites, despite the fact that some upper-house delegates had joined political parties His connections with nonparty elites proved vital to his accession to prime minister Upon becoming prime minister, Hara did not embark on a program of sweeping, wholesale changes The tax qualification for voting was lowered in a move that doubled the size of the electorate, but most of the newly enfranchised were small landholders largely favorable to the Seiyukai In a more overtly partisan manner, Hara’s government remapped electoral boundaries to benefit the Seiyukai, and his appointments within the bureaucracy were often made with blatantly partisan motives His government likewise supported defense spending, and Hara made significant efforts to improve relations with the military leadership