Vulcan's Forge

by Du Brul, Jack

  “You had an uncle who became your legal ward?”

  “Yes, his name was Chuichi Genda.”

  “If I read this correctly,” Jill said looking through her notes, “he was released from an internment camp in January 1943, arrested one week later, released again at the end of the war and spent the remainder of his life in and out of prisons on various charges.”

  “Yes, my uncle had very strong beliefs about America and her treatment of our people both during the war and after. He often led violent campaigns against various policies. He was charged with inciting riots three times and convicted twice. He was, without a doubt, the most influential person in my life.”

  “In what way?”

  “His ideas on race, principally.”

  “And what are those?” Jill asked, uncrossing her long legs. She knew that this was the most important part of her interview.

  “You are a journalist—surely you are aware of my views.”

  “I know you’ve been called a racist by nearly every social group in the United States and that your hiring policies resemble Nazi purity laws.”

  Ohnishi laughed, a high thin note that startled Jill. “For lack of a better word, Miss Tzu, you are very naïve. There is no such thing as racism.” Before Jill could voice a protest, Ohnishi continued. “According to anthropologists, there are only four races on this planet: Asian, negro, caucasian, and aboriginal. Yet there is tension and fighting between hundreds of different groups. Correct?”

  He did not wait for a reply. “If race is a motivating factor as you in the press imply, why is there so much fighting in the nations of Africa, why do the English and Irish bomb each other on a regular basis, why did the Nazis gas six million Jews? The answer is not racism, it’s tribalism.

  “There may be only four races, but there are hundreds of different tribes, maybe thousands. Many groups still maintain a tribal name, such as the Apache or Zulu. But numerous groups no longer have distinct names, the white Anglo-Saxon here in America, the Northern Irish Protestants, or the upper class of Brazil.

  “Each group is fighting to maintain the integrity of their tribe. The French and Germans are two separate tribes of people, culturally and religiously different, yet each falling into the caucasian race. There is only one way to account for the four wars they have fought since the middle of the last century: tribalism. The need to protect and ensure the security in perpetuity of one’s immediate group.

  “Just because interracial strife makes good press does not make it the most common form. I will deny until my death that I am a racist. I care nothing for race. I am a tribalist. And my tribe, the Japanese, is all that I care for.

  “Tribes are basically extended families, so when I give a top position to a fellow Japanese, I am merely helping one of my kin. That is no different than a man turning over his business to his son, a common practice all over the world. I have fought nearly three hundred court cases defending my right to hire and promote who I wish, and to date no one has been able to deny me.”

  “If you have such a pro-Japanese view of the world, why is it you recently took up residence in the United States?” Jill asked, trying to remain calm and professional despite her revulsion.

  “I had this home built six years ago,” Ohnishi pointed out.

  “Yet you only moved here three months ago,” Jill retorted.

  “I feel that I am most needed here. As you know, the Japanese are now the largest ethnic group in Hawaii, and if you’ll pardon my arrogance, I believe that they need my help.”

  “Your help?”

  “I wish to see Japanese prosper wherever their work takes them. While the media focuses on material trade imbalances, they completely ignore the amount of brain power that Japan exports each year. We send only our brightest people to work in foreign countries, strengthening our position overseas year by year. Let America send wide-eyed college students to build huts in Africa. We send CEOs to build corporations. I just want to do my part and ensure the success of this program.”

  “And do you see your help extending to Hawaii’s native population?”

  “They have suffered under the yoke of a white government far longer than we, so of course I wish to see them gain more power here on the islands. After all, tribally speaking, they are closer to us Japanese than to their current white overlords.”

  “Surely you exaggerate when you use a term such as overlord to describe the state government,” Jill said a little nervously.

  “On the contrary. How else would you describe a governing body that does not speak your language, does not understand your culture or religion, and has done nothing to bridge the socioeconomic gap? If the true Hawaiians are so satisfied with the current system, why do you think the island of Niihau, with its strict language and culture laws, is attracting so many natives to their traditional way of life? But primarily, my assistance is to those who are of Japanese descent, Miss Tzu.”

  “Does your help include aiding Mayor Takamora? Some consider his acts treasonous.”

  “I have not hidden my support of Mayor Takamora. I believe in his programs for ensuring the prosperity of Hawaii. It is time that the true owners of this state come forth and claim what is theirs without paying undue taxes to Washington.”

  Ohnishi was referring to the Takamora-sponsored referendum now being discussed in the State House that would make foreign owners of Honolulu real estate exempt from paying most taxes if they agreed to place the money in social programs solely beneficial to Japanese and Japanese-American residents. If passed, the law would put tens of millions of tax dollars into the hands of the Japanese residents of the island. Some political analysts called it vote-buying, while others saw something deeper, state-buying.

  The campaigning for Referendum 324 was at a crucial stage, with the vote only a week away. As with any controversial law, emotions across the state ran high and already had turned violent. The number of attacks against tourists and white residents had skyrocketed in the past few weeks. Roving gangs of Japanese youths prowled the city streets at night like modern-day ninjas, striking fear by their very presence.

  “What about the increase in violence?”

  “Miss Tzu, of course I don’t condone those people who use violence to achieve their aims, but I do understand their commitment. Hawaii has special needs and considerations that only we understand and it is paramount that we gain more control over our lives.”

  “Some people see this as an attempt at secession,” Jill said, referring to the vice president’s speech of the night before.

  “Some people would.” Ohnishi smiled, but his dark eyes remained impassive. “The interview is over, Miss Tzu. You must leave.”

  Jill was startled at her abrupt dismissal, but she knew better than to protest. She tossed her pen and pad into her bag and stood.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Ohnishi,” Jill said formally.

  “I wonder, Miss Tzu,” Ohnishi remarked absently, “which part of your racial heritage makes you the most uncomfortable with yourself, your Chinese half, or your Japanese which allows the Chinese to have any influence?”

  Later, Jill was amazed how easily her reply had rolled off her tongue. “The Chinese, it’s given me the patience to put up with all the freaks I meet on the job.”

  Her only memory of leaving the house was the echo of her heels against the marble foyer as she strode to the front door.

  “Apart from her physical charms, what do you think of Miss Tzu?” Ohnishi asked after the elevator doors had closed behind her.

  A dark shape split from the shadows of the loggia as if by mitosis. It padded across the terrace silently and eased into the recently vacated chair with the ease of a predatory cat.

  “I believe that she is dangerous,” the shadow replied.

  “Kenji, you are a worrier. She is nothing more than a voice in the wind. She will report what every other journalist writes, some diatribe full of half-truths and hyperbole that will be lost among the juicy murder stori
es and baseball scores.”

  “Yet.”

  “Yet nothing. The people, I mean the real people of this state, the ones who matter, won’t care what she says. The mayor and I have been whipping them into such a frenzy that her little report won’t make a bit of difference.”

  “You and David Takamora may be creating a situation that you cannot control and one I am sure has no bearing on our true objective.”

  “You sound like Ivan Kerikov’s lackey,” Ohnishi accused.

  Kenji’s black eyes went flat. “That is not what I meant. But we have a responsibility to him that you may be jeopardizing by financing the youth gangs and talking to reporters like Jill Tzu.”

  “You have been in my employ since you were a boy, Kenji. You have only known the simplicity of one master. I, on the other hand, have known many, my conscience first and foremost and now that pig Kerikov. I know how to serve both. Kerikov will get his precious concession, but only at the price I dictate.”

  “This uprising is proceeding too quickly. That is not part of your bargain with him.”

  “But it is part of my plan, Kenji, and that is all you need to know and believe.” Ohnishi’s tone of finality subdued his aide. “I am wondering about your loyalty, Kenji. You no longer act like my Hachiko.”

  Ohnishi was referring to a much-beloved Japanese dog from the 1920s who waited each afternoon at a train station for his master to return from work. One day, the master did not return, for he had died at his desk at Tokyo University. The faithful dog returned every day to the very train platform for ten years, waiting for a master who would never come. The name Hachiko is still synonymous with loyalty in Japan.

  “Two days ago you disappeared for the night without telling me,” Ohnishi continued, “and now you are questioning my orders. Forget about Jill Tzu and concentrate on your other duties. Tonight we shall begin the bombings. Nothing serious, just a small show of force directed at those who oppose the referendum.”

  Kenji stood, his body flowing from the chair as if made of quicksilver, yet tensed as only a martial arts expert can be. “I will see to it personally.”

  He glided off the terrace, his tabi-shod feet merely brushing the tile. Once out of sight of Ohnishi, any trace of subservience evaporated and his handsome face took on an even keener edge. He mumbled, “You feeble-minded old fool; you have no idea who or what you’re dealing with.”

  He went back to his private office to ensure that Jill Tzu never filed her interview with Takahiro Ohnishi.

  Jill raked her fingers through her thick hair in utter frustration. She pursed her full lips, forming a seductive kiss, then blew a loud raspberry. Her feet were up on the control console of the studio’s editing room, her long legs stretched almost to the bank of monitors. She swung them down, ignoring the fact that her culotte shorts had just given her technician a view he’d brag about for a week.

  “This isn’t working, Ken,” she muttered darkly.

  “Give me a break will ya, Jill? We’ve been at this for six hours. It’s not like you’re going to get a Pulitzer for this,” the scraggly-bearded techie said in his defense.

  “Yeah, but just maybe it’ll be my ticket to the network. Just think about it, Ken. If I leave, you won’t have anyone bitching at you at all hours of the day or night.”

  “Keep wearing those shorts and you can piss and moan all you want,” Ken teased.

  “Watch it, I know a good sexual harassment lawyer.” Jill smiled for the first time in an hour. “All right, let’s go through this one more time.”

  This day in the editing room was the culmination of three months’ work on Takahiro Ohnishi. Jill had begun hunting down her story shortly after the reclusive billionaire had moved to Hawaii and Referendum 324 had first been proposed. At thirty-two, she was already too cynical to believe in coincidences and she’d begun looking for a connection between Ohnishi and Honolulu’s controversial mayor, David Takamora, and his even more polemic actions.

  She’d found, just through her own television station’s financial and scheduling records, that Takamora had purchased more advertising space during his campaign than his public files showed he’d had the money for. At just her station, there was a discrepancy of nearly one hundred thousand dollars, and she knew he’d campaigned just as heavily on the other channels. Where had the secret funds come from?

  Jill lacked any concrete evidence that Ohnishi had privately funded the majority of Takamora’s campaign, but she was damned sure that was what had happened. Ohnishi, with his billions, had bought himself a city.

  A journalism professor had once told her that only prosecutors in courtrooms needed proof. A reporter never needed to prove anything, all she had to do was implicate and wait for the self-incriminating defense. A few years later an aging editor said at his drunken retirement party that news never happened, it was created.

  Jill’s piece on Ohnishi was nearly ready. In fact this morning’s interview had really been unnecessary; she’d just wanted to meet the man, to get a better sense of what made him tick.

  She and Ken watched in silence as the first half of the piece ran. Stock footage of Ohnishi, David Takamora, and the violent street gangs currently preying on white tourists in the city were interspersed with close-up shots of Jill doing commentary in front of city hall. As the scenes began focusing more on the gangs, especially one violent image of four Asian youths beating an elderly white woman, Jill reached for the goose-necked microphone and began laying in a new voice-over, one not from the contrived script she had written, but one from her heart.

  “Hawaii is the Aloha State. The word means love as well as good-bye in the native tongue, and in these times it means both simultaneously. Good-bye to love. Good-bye to everything that our island paradise has stood for since Captain Cook first came here two hundred years ago, and good-bye to the traditions that reigned on the islands since the first inhabitants 1,500 years before that.

  “Where once we melded and blended into one people, neither all caucasian nor all Polynesian nor all Asian, today we stand divided from our neighbors and friends. Now all it takes is having eyes a little too round or skin a little too light and anyone on the street can become a target. Racial hatred has grown here like some cancer, some dread disease without cause whose cure seems equally elusive. Fostered by men like Takahiro Ohnishi, with his well-publicized views of racial purity, and van-guarded by youth gangs bent on violent expression, the state has been galvanized into two intractable camps: those who want Referendum 324 and those who fear it as many have feared tyranny before.

  “Last night, the vice president called Referendum 324 the beginning of a secessionist movement, and perhaps he’s right. The last time America faced a crisis like this, the Southern states withdrew from the Union because they believed in their way of life, one built on the conviction that people of other races are inferior. Today a segment of Hawaii’s population believes they have a mandate to control everyone’s lives because there is a little more Japanese flowing in their veins. They say that their Samurai ways are superior, that they can calm the streets once again if we agree to live under a system that stifles freedom of expression and the belief that every one is created equal. In this reporter’s opinion, that sounds an awful lot like extortion.

  “As the ronin scour the streets for white faces to victimize, their emperor sits inside his glass and steel home, safe behind a wall of hatred and bigotry. Since his arrival a darkness has descended, a black veil that no one seems able or willing to lift. Today, the hotels along the beaches, the condos near Diamond Head, and the cruise liners are all empty. People are afraid to come to Hawaii. I spoke with one hotel manager yesterday who told me that tourists are already canceling reservations for next year.

  “A self-generating downward spiral has been created by the actions of those who now seem to control our streets. As more tourists are frightened away, more people will lose their jobs and seek the security and fraternity represented by the gangs, thus increasing their abi
lity to terrorize. Only this morning the President placed the troops stationed at Pearl Harbor on full alert in order to protect the federal government’s interests on the islands.

  “Who is going to protect our interests?

  “Mayor Takamora’s police force does not act to control the gangs. Will he ever ask for the National Guard to step in and take control of a situation he can no longer handle? For surely we face a crisis as dire as any these islands have faced since the first time a Japanese force descended in 1941.”

  Jill angrily pushed the microphone aside as she watched a monitor displaying David Takamora’s announcement four weeks earlier that he wanted to run in the gubernatorial elections in the fall.

  Ken was too stunned to speak for an instant, and when he caught his voice, he stammered, “Jesus, Jill, you can’t run that.”

  “Of course I can’t. It’s the truth, and right now we’re not allowed to report the truth,” she said bitterly.

  The in-house phone rang. The unit was built into the console next to where Jill’s feet were propped back up against the complicated machine. She snatched it up, tucking her hair behind her right ear as she swung the receiver to her head.

  “I know, I know, forty-five minutes to air.” Only her producer would disturb her in the editing room.

  “You’ve got five.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about, Hank? We don’t air for an hour.”

  “You know the rules, Jill. Every piece that chronicles the violence must be cleared by Hiroshi.” Hiroshi Kyato was the station’s news director.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it. You can shove your five-minute deadline. I’m not some second-class citizen.”

  “Wait, I didn’t mean anything by it, I mean I don’t mean any disrespect for who you are. It’s just, well, you know . . .” His voice trailed off.

  The producer backpedaled so fast that it truly stunned Jill. Race was polarizing the station, too. Jill was half-Japanese, and Hank was a caucasian from New Jersey, and he was now deadly afraid that he’d offended her.