Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  The army officer rose and said, “Let us remember Japan!” And all bowed, thinking of that distant, sweet and lovely land.

  The crowd now went outside, where an arena had been set up, and two enormous men visiting from Japan waited, stripped down to the merest loincloths, and after a priest had prayed over them, they went to their respective corners of the arena and grabbed handfuls of salt, which they scattered about the mat upon which they were to wrestle. Kamejiro whispered to his attentive boys, “Haoles who say Japanese are runty should see these men!” The preparations continued with painful deliberateness for forty minutes, then in a flash of speed, the two giants crashed into one another, groaned and hefted until one pushed the other across the boundary. The Japanese cheered, then burst into hilarious laughter as two of their own fatties, men from the plantations, appeared nearly naked to conduct their own wrestling match.

  In the afternoon, officials from the consulate drove up in a black car and told the listeners, “Grave events are shaping up in Asia. The perpetual evil of China once more threatens us, and we cannot say what fearful measures our august emperor may be required to take. On this solemn day, may we rededicate our lives to the land we love.” There was a great deal more about the ominous events that imperiled the homeland, but nobody was very clear as to what they were. However, a collection was taken to aid the emperor in this hour of need, and the Sakagawas contributed money that had been intended for a new dress for Reiko-chan. She was allowed to place the coins in the box, and she quivered with love of Japan as she did so.

  Now the celebrants moved to the public square in Kakaako, where under a banyan tree they performed the ancient, ritualistic bon dances of Japan. The children were an important part of this dance, weaving in slow measures in and out, their colorful kimonos swaying in the soft night breezes, and one group of elderly ladies, who had learned their bon dances in villages thousands of miles from Hawaii, found tears in their eyes as they watched delicate Reiko-chan moving through the graceful figures. One old woman asked, “I wonder if she knows how beautiful she is? Such a flawless skin and her eyes so Japanese!”

  Kamejiro, who overheard these words of praise, blushed and told the women, “We are training Reiko-chan so that when she returns to Japan she will be recognized as a fine Japanese.”

  “She is one now,” the women said approvingly.

  When the emperor’s birthday celebration ended, the old confusions returned, and Kamejiro warned his sons, in one breath, “This sacred day should remind you of how important it is that we get our family back to Japan,” and, “You boys saw that Reiko-chan missed getting into Jefferson. You are not to miss.” So the tiny Sakagawa shack became a drill hall with all the children speaking English.

  Even in its first year Jefferson demonstrated its success. With better teachers and better facilities it promised to turn out graduates who were proficient in English and who were sure to make good records at mainland colleges. Some of the plantation owners began to wonder if perhaps the English-standard schools weren’t too good. Hoxworth Hale observed: “Why you get almost as fine an education at Jefferson as you do at Punahou. No tax-supported school has to be that good.” But there were other protests of a more serious nature, for it had become apparent to laboring groups that their children were not going to be admitted to the superior schools, no matter how proficient their English, and some radical labor men began to argue: “We pay taxes to support these fine schools to educate those who don’t need them. It is our own children who ought to be going to those schools, for then the differences between groups in the community would be diminished.”

  Sometimes at night, as Kamejiro listened to Reiko-chan drilling her brothers in English, he thought: “Everybody in Hawaii has it better than the Japanese. Look at those damned Kees! They have big stores and their sons go to Punahou. When the Chinese came to Hawaii, things were easy.”

  Now it was Goro’s turn to try his luck at Jefferson, and like his sister he reported to the jury of three teachers. Like her he brought with him a rather striking report: “Grades A. Behavior B. Knowledge of American customs A. English A. This boy has unusual capacities in history.” The test began, and he spoke with delightful fluency, explaining the Civil War to the teachers.

  It looked as if they would have to accept him, when one teacher used a device that had been found effective in testing a child’s real knowledge of English. She slowly lifted a piece of paper and tore it in half.

  “What did I do to the paper?” she asked.

  “You broke it,” Goro said promptly.

  Again the teacher tore the paper and asked, “What did I do to it this time?”

  “You broke it again,” Goro said.

  “We’re sorry,” the chairman announced. “She tore the paper. The word is tore.” And Goro was rejected.

  When his father heard the news he asked dumbly, “What was the word again?”

  Goro explained, “I said broke when I should have said tore.”

  “Broke!” Kamejiro cried in anguish. “Broke!” He did not know the word himself, but he was outraged that his son should have misused it. He began beating him about the shoulders, crying, “How many times have I told you not to say broke? You stupid, stupid boy!” And he continued hammering his son, not realizing that if it had not been the word broke it would have been some other, for the children of Japanese men who dug out privies were not intended to enter Jefferson.

  IN 1936 Kamejiro Sakagawa faced a most difficult decision, for it became apparent that his grand design of educating five children from kindergarten through graduate school could not be attained. The hard-working family simply did not have the money to keep going. It was therefore necessary that some, at least, of the children quit school and go to work, and discussions as to the various courses open to the Sakagawas kept the family awake many nights.

  The fault was not Kamejiro’s. He would have been able to maintain the four boys in school and at the same time permit Reiko-chan to begin her university course except that news from China was increasingly bad. Time after time either the priest at the language school or the consular officials reported to the Japanese community that the emperor was facing the gravest crisis in Japanese history. “This sacred man,” the priest intoned, “tries to sleep at night with the burden of all Japan on his shoulders. The very least you can do is to support our armies in their victorious march across China.” The armies were always on the verge of victory, and certainly the Japanese newsreels showed the capture of one new province each week, but the Japanese forces never seemed to get anywhere, and in August of that year the consular official made a very blunt statement: “I want fifty thousand dollars sent from these islands to help save the Japanese army.”

  The Sakagawas contributed seventy of those dollars and that night assembled the family. “Reiko-chan cannot go to college,” Kamejiro said bluntly. The brilliant little girl, president of the girls’ club at McKinley and an honor student, sat primly with her hands in her lap. As a good Japanese daughter she said nothing, but Goro did. “She knows more than any of us. She’s got to go to college. Then she can become a teacher and help pay our way.”

  “Girls get married,” Kamejiro rationalized quietly. “Pretty girls get married right away, and the education and income are lost.”

  “She could promise not to get married,” Goro suggested.

  “It is boys who must be educated,” Kamejiro pointed out, “though why both you and Tadao failed to get yourselves into Jefferson I cannot understand. Are you stupid? Why don’t you learn to speak English right?” he fumed in Japanese.

  “Please,” the gentle girl begged, “you’ve seen that only the sons of people the plantation leaders like get into the good schools.”

  Kamejiro turned to look at his daughter. The idea she had suggested was startling to him and repugnant. “Is that right?” he asked.

  “Of course it’s right,” Reiko-chan replied. “And Minoru and Shigeo won’t get in, either.”

  �
�Nothing wrong with McKinley,” Goro snapped, defending the wonderful rabbit-warren of a school where Orientals and Portuguese and indigent haoles went. It was a comfortable, congenial school, arrogant in its use of pidgin even in classrooms, and many of the islands’ political leaders graduated from it, even if none of the business tycoons did. A boy could get his jaw broken at McKinley for speaking good English, but he could also get a good education, for the school always contained dedicated teachers who loved to see brilliant boys like Goro prosper.

  “Forget McKinley,” Kamejiro told his children. “What kind of job can Reiko-chan get that will bring in the most money?”

  “Let her work for three years, then Tadao and I can get jobs,” Goro suggested, “and she can go on to the university.”

  “No,” Kamejiro corrected. “I have noticed that if boys stop, they never go back. Reiko-chan must work from now on.”

  It was at this point that the quiet girl almost sobbed, and her brothers saw the involuntary contraction of her shoulders. Goro, a big husky boy, larger than his father, went to his sister’s chair and put his hand on her arm. “Pop’s right,” he said in English. “You’ll get married. Pretty girl like you.”

  “We speak in Japanese!” Kamejiro rebuked. “Sit down. Now what kind of job?”

  “I could be a typist,” Reiko suggested.

  “They pay nothing for Japanese typists,” Kamejiro replied.

  “Could she work for a doctor?” Tadao asked. He was a slim, wiry boy, taller than Goro but not nearly so rugged. “That’s good pay.”

  “She’s got to have training, and we have no money,” Kamejiro replied. He waited for a moment, almost afraid to discuss openly what was in his mind. Then he swallowed and said, “I was talking with Ishii-san and he said …”

  “Please, Father!” the boys interrupted. “Not Ishii-san! If you listen to what he says …”

  “Ishii-san’s a fool,” Reiko laughed. “Everyone knows that.”

  “This family is indebted to Ishii-san,” Kamejiro said forcefully. He often used this phrase, but he never explained to the children why they were indebted to the curious little man whose ideas got stranger each year. “And Ishii-san pointed out that the easiest way for a Japanese to make lots of money is …” He paused dramatically.

  “Stealing!” Goro joked in English. His father knew something irreverent had been said, but not what, so he ignored his son.

  “Ishii-san is going to lend me the money,” Kamejiro explained with nervous excitement, “and I am going to open a small barbershop on Hotel Street where the sailors are. And all the chairs will have girl barbers.”

  Slowly, as if gripped by a nameless horror, the four boys turned to look at their pretty sister. She sat apart, watching her mother, who was washing rice, but in her silence the color left her cheeks, for she understood that her immediate destiny was not the university or nursing or stenography; she was going to be a lady barber. She knew that there was already one shop of lady barbers on Hotel Street, and men flocked in and whoever owned the shop was making a lot of money, and the girls were getting tips. “But who are the girls?” Reiko thought mutely. “They have hardly been through grammar school.”

  “So I have asked Sakai-san if he would allow his daughter Chizuko to work for me,” Kamejiro reported, exuding hope, “and he said yes, if I watch her closely and prevent her from becoming familiar with strange men. And Rumiko Hasegawa will work with us too, so that with three chairs and with me to sweep up and shine shoes, we ought to do very well.”

  Unexpectedly, Goro threw his arms on the table and began to weep. When his father asked, “Now what’s wrong?” the sixteen-year-old boy mumbled, “Reiko-chan is the best one of us all.”

  “Then she will be willing to help her brothers get their education,” Kamejiro said quietly.

  Now the mother, from her corner where she was preparing food, spoke, and she observed: “It is the duty of a Japanese girl to help her family. I helped mine when I was young, and it made me a better wife. If Reiko-chan works hard and earns her own money, she will appreciate it more when her husband gives her some to spend on her children. It is her duty.”

  “But a lady barber!” Goro cried through his sobs.

  “As a barber she will earn more money,” his mother replied.

  Goro rushed to his sister and embraced her. “When I become a lawyer and make a million dollars,” he said in rapid English, “it will all be yours.” The tears coursed down his face. Then Tadao, who was doing exceptionally well in school, but not so well as his sister had done in the same classes, began to weep, and the two younger boys, who knew how their sister had dreamed of becoming a teacher, sobbed. This was too much for Kamejiro, whose cruel duty it had been to make this decision, and he began to find tears splashing down his cheeks.

  Only Mrs. Sakagawa did not cry. “It is her duty,” she assured her trembling menfolk, but then she saw the tears in her lovely daughter’s eyes, and she could no longer hide the fact that duty is often too terrible to bear. Gathering her child to her bosom, she wept.

  Kamejiro Sakagawa’s barbershop was an immense success. It opened just as American military installations in Hawaii were beginning to boom, so that navy men from Pearl Harbor and army boys from Schofield Barracks crowded into Hotel Street to get tattooed by local artists and shaved by lady barbers. But the principal reason for Kamejiro’s prosperity was the crystal-like beauty of the three Japanese girls who staffed his chairs. They were olive-skinned, dark-haired, soft-eyed young ladies who looked especially appealing in crisp white uniforms which they delighted in keeping clean. Men often dropped by just for an extra trim to watch the girls, for there was the double excitement of a lady barber who was also a Japanese. Before long, regular customers were begging the pretty girls for dates.

  That was where Kamejiro came in. Early in the life of his barbershop he had taught his girls how to stab with their scissors fresh customers who were trying to feel their legs. He also showed them that one of the best ways to handle difficult suitors was to push a hot towel in the man’s face just as he was making his proposal. He encouraged his girls to discourage persistent Lotharios by nicking them slightly with the razor, especially on the ear lobe where one bled freely, but this gambit sometimes had reverse results, for the girls usually felt repentance for this act and made over the wounded customer so prettily, daubing him with styptic and asking in a sweet voice, “Does it hurt?” that the men came back stronger than before.

  At closing time each night there were loungers outside in Hotel Street waiting for the girls, but Kamejiro formed his barbers into a squad, marched them to the Sakai girl’s home, and cried proudly, “Sakai-san! Here’s your daughter safe and sound.” He then marched to the Hasegawas’ and cried, “Here’s Rumiko, safe and sound.” At the doorway to his own home he invariably informed his wife, “Here’s our girl, safe at home.” The Japanese community marveled at how well Kamejiro was doing, and all agreed that his Reiko-chan was a most excellent barber.

  Then in 1938, during Goro’s last year at McKinley High, a real bombshell struck the Sakagawa family, an event so unanticipated that it left the household breathless. One afternoon in late July three men in blue suits came to the house in Kakaako and asked, “Mrs. Sakagawa, where’s Tadao?”

  Yoriko could speak little English, so she said, “Tadao, he not here.”

  “When he come home?” one of the men in a stiff white collar asked.

  “Me not know.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Hontoni, hontoni!” she nodded. “For sure.”

  “You tell him to wait here,” the men said, and if they had smiled, as they should have done, they would have eased the apprehensions of the Sakagawa household enormously, but they did not, for Mrs. Sakagawa, hunched up from great work and somewhat wrinkled, scared them, and they stared at her as she stared at them.

  When the family convened that night, Mrs. Sakagawa was the center of attraction. Four times she acted her role in the afternoon’s
ominous encounter, and everyone began pressing seventeen-year-old Tadao for the details of what offense he had committed, for the family assumed that the men were detectives. No other haoles in blue suits and white collars ever visited Japanese homes, and slowly the un-incriminated members of the Sakagawa family began to coalesce against the first Sakagawa boy to have gotten into trouble. The awful, terrifying rectitude of the Japanese family asserted itself, and Reiko-chan cried, “You, Tadao. What did you do? All day I work and see no-goods on Hotel Street. Is my brother to be one of these?”

  “Tadao!” Kamejiro cried, banging the table. “What wrong thing have you done?”

  The tall, quiet boy could not answer, so his stockier brother Goro shouted, “You and your damned foolishness! Suppose the police take you, no more teams at McKinley for you. And I’ll be ashamed to go on the field. Tell us! What have you done?”

  The guiltless and bewildered boy shivered before the anger of his family. So far as he knew he had done nothing, yet the men had been there. Kamejiro, who had worked desperately hard to keep his family decent Japanese of whom Hiroshima would be proud, saw that his efforts had come to naught, and began mumbling in his hands. “No man can bring children up right,” he swore, his chin trembling with shame and sorrow.

  There was a knock at the door, and the Sakagawas looked at each other with last-minute dismay. “You stand there!” Kamejiro whispered to his son, placing him where the men could reach him. There would be no running away in his family. Then, biting his lip to hide his disgrace, he opened the door.

  “Mr. Sakagawa?” the leader asked. “I’m Hewlett Janders, and this is John Whipple Hoxworth, and this gentlemen in back,” and he laughed easily, “this is Hoxworth Hale. Good evening.” The three business leaders of Hawaii entered the small room, stood awkwardly for a moment, then laughed when Reiko called in English, “Boys, get them some chairs!”

  “We could use some,” big Hewlett Janders laughed. “Mighty fine house you have here, Mr. Sakagawa. Rarely see such beautiful flowers any more. You must have a green thumb.”