[4] Goto was contracted to a ʻŌʻōkala plantation that had been organized and managed by John Harris Soper prior to his 1884 appointment as marshal of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
[2] After working for three years in the sugarcane fields, Goto took over a general merchandise store on the Big Island that had belonged to Bunichiro Onome.
[5] Because of his English language fluency and his intolerance at seeing field workers being exploited, he often went to court in defense of the Japanese immigrant laborers.
[6] Unpopular with the plantation managers, Goto was caught and hanged by a group of six men: Joseph R. (JR) Mills, a local hotel and mercantile store owner; Walter Blabon a drayman; Thomas Steele a luna or overseer on Robert Overend's plantation; William Watson a drayman who worked for J. R. Mills; and John Richmond, Overend's stableman.
[2] After Deputy Sheriff Rufus Anderson Lyman informed Edward Griffin Hitchcock of Goto's murder in Honokaʻa, the suspects were caught.