“Why don’t you wear shoes, like decent Americans?” the rowdies cried. They hectored her into a corner, without her understanding at all what was happening, and a big man kept kicking at the offensive zori. “Take ’em off, goddamn it. Take ’em off!”
Swiftly Minoru and Tadao leaped among the crowd to protect their mother, and some sports fan recognized them and shouted, “It’s the Sakagawa boys.” The incident ended without further embarrassment, but Tadao, who was a diplomat, whispered to his terrified mother, “Kick off your zori. That’s what made them mad.” Deftly she kicked away the Japanese shoes, and the crowd cheered. On the way home Tadao warned her, “You’ve got to stop coming out in public wearing your kimono.”
“And buy some shoes!” Minoru snapped, for like all the boys of his age, he could not understand why his parents kept to their old ways.
In the following days Minoru and Tadao were to be repeatedly tested. Having been born in America, they were technically citizens and even eligible to become President; but they were also Japanese and were thus subjected to humiliations worse than those suffered by aliens. Several times they were threatened by drunken soldiers, and prudence told them to keep off the streets.
Nevertheless, animosity against all Japanese increased when Hawaii, staggered by the completeness with which Japan had defeated the local troops, understandably turned to any logical rationalization at hand. “You can’t tell me the Japs could have bombed our ships unless the local slant-eyes were feeding them spy information,” one man shouted in a bar.
“I know for a fact that plantation workers at Malama Sugar cut arrows across the cane fields, showing Nip fliers the way to Pearl Harbor,” a luna reported.
“The F.B.I. has proved that almost every Jap maid working for the military was a paid agent of the Mikado,” an official announced.
And the Secretary of the Navy himself, after inspecting the disaster, told the press frankly, “Hawaii was the victim of the most effective fifth-column work that has come out of this war, except in Norway.”
It was therefore no wonder that many Japanese were arrested and thrown into hastily improvised jails, whereupon those not yet picked up were ready to believe the rumor that all Japanese in Hawaii were to be evacuated to tents on Molokai. But when the jails were jammed and ships actually appeared in the harbor to haul those already arrested to concentration camps in Nevada, an unusual thing happened, one which more than any other served to bind up the wounds caused by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hoxworth Hale and Mrs. Hewlett Janders and Mrs. John Whipple Hoxworth and a maiden librarian named Lucinda Whipple went singly, and not as a result of concerted action, to the jails where the Japanese were being held. Being the leading citizens of the community, they were admitted, and as they walked through the corridors they said to the jailers, “I know that man well. He can’t possibly be a spy. Let him go.”
Mrs. Hewlett Janders even went so far as to bring her husband, big Hewie, to the jail in his naval uniform, and he identified half a dozen excellent citizens whom he had known for years. “It’s ridiculous to keep those men in a concentration camp. They’re as good Americans as I am.”
“Will you vouch for them if we let them go?” the F.B.I. man asked.
“Me vouch for Ichiro Ogawa? I’d be proud to vouch for him. You come on out of there, Ichiro. Go back to work.”
Some three hundred leading Japanese citizens were removed from jail by these voluntary efforts of the missionary descendants. It wasn’t that they liked Japanese, or that they feared Imperial Japan less than their neighbors. It was just that as Christians they could not sit idly by and watch innocent people maltreated. In California, where the imaginary danger of trouble from potential fifth columnists was not a fraction of the real danger that could have existed in Hawaii, cruel and senseless measures were taken that would be forever an embarrassment to America: families of the greatest rectitude and patriotism were uprooted; their personal goods were stolen; their privacy was abused; and their pride as full-fledged American citizens outraged. Such things did not happen in Hawaii. Men like Hoxworth Hale and Hewlett Janders wouldn’t allow them to happen; women like Miss Whipple and Mrs. Hoxworth personally went through the jails to protect the innocent.
But when Hoxworth Hale came to the cell in which Kamejiro Sakagawa sat, a more intricate moral problem presented itself, for at first Hale was not ready to swear to the F.B.I. men, “This fellow I know to be innocent.” What Hale did know was this: Kamejiro was a known dynamiter who had been in trouble during the strike at Malama Sugar; he had obstinately refused to terminate the Japanese nationality of his children; he had been prowling about all of Honolulu at night some years before Pearl Harbor; and now he was running a barbershop with his own daughter as a lure to bring in sailors and soldiers. That was the debit side. But Hale also knew one other fact: of all the young Japanese boys in Honolulu, none were finer Americans than Kamejiro’s sons. Therefore, instead of passing by the cell, Hale stopped and asked to be allowed to talk with this man Sakagawa. When the cell door was opened and he sat inside with Kamejiro he told the interpreter to ask: “Mr. Sakagawa, why did you refuse to allow me to end your sons’ dual citizenship?”
The old stubborn light came into Kamejiro’s eyes, but when he realized that if he did not speak the truth he might never again see his sons, he softened and said, “Will you promise never to tell my boys?”
“Yes,” Hale said, for he had family problems of his own. He directed the interpreter to promise likewise.
“My wife and I are not married,” Kamejiro began.
“But I saw the marriage certificate!” Hale interrupted.
“American yes, but it doesn’t count,” Kamejiro explained. “When I sent for a picture bride to Hiroshima-ken, a girl was picked out and she was married to me there, in proper Japanese style, and her name was put in the village book as my wife.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Hale asked.
Kamejiro blushed at his ancient indiscretion and explained, “So when she got here I didn’t like her, and there was another man who didn’t like his wife, either.”
“So you swapped?” Hale asked. A smile came across his lips. It seemed rather simple.
“Yes. In each country I am married to a different woman.”
“But of course this is your real country and this is what counts,” Hale said.
“No,” Kamejiro patiently corrected. “Japan is my real home, and I would be ashamed for my village to know the wrong thing I have done.”
Hale was impressed by the man’s forthright defense of Japan, even in such trying circumstances, and he said condescendingly, “I don’t think it would really matter, at this distance of time.”
“Ah, but it would!” Kamejiro warned. And what he said struck a vibrant chord in Hale’s own memories. “Because the wife I got in the exchange turned out to be the best wife a man ever found. But the wife I gave my friend turned out to be a very bad woman indeed, and his life has been ruined and I have had to sit and watch it happen. My happiness came at his expense, and I will do nothing now to hurt him any further.
At least in our village they think he is an honorable man, and I will leave it that way.”
Hale clenched his hands and thought of his own reactions to just such problems and of his insistence, against the pressure of friends, that his wife Malama stay with him, even though her mind had wandered past the limits usually required for commitment to an asylum, and in that moment of loving a woman, and knowing apprehension about the fate of one’s son in a time of war, Hale felt a close kinship to the little bow-legged Japanese sitting before him. To the F.B.I. man he said, “This one can surely go free.” And Kamejiro returned to his family.
Of course, when the gardener Ichiro Ogawa, who had been saved from internment by Hewlett Janders, later insisted that he ought to get a raise from the $1.40 a day that Janders was paying him, big Hewie hit the roof and accused the little Japanese of being unpatriotic by demanding a raise at such a critical
time in America’s history. “I think of your welfare all the time, Ichiro,” Hewie explained. “You must leave these things to me.”
“But I can’t live on $1.40 a day any more. War expense.”
“Are you threatening me?” Janders boomed.
“I got to have more money,” Ichiro insisted.
As soon as the Japanese had left, Janders called security at Pearl Harbor. “Lemuel,” he spluttered, “I’ve got a workman out here whose loyalty I’m damned suspicious of. I think he ought to be carted off right now.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ichiro Ogawa, a real troublemaker.”
And that night Ogawa was spirited away and committed to a concentration camp on the mainland, after which there was less agitation for increased wages.
NO ONE living in Hawaii escaped the effect of Pearl Harbor, and on the morning of December 8 practically no one could have even dimly foreseen the changes he would undergo. For example, gruff Hewlett Janders became to his surprise a full captain in the navy with control over harbor facilities. He wore an expensive khaki, some of the finest braid in the Pacific and ultimately a presidential citation for having kept the port cleared for war materiel.
John Whipple Hewlett’s wife was caught on the mainland and had to stay there for three years. Nineteen descendants of the old New Bedford sea captain, Rafer Hoxworth, saw service in uniform, including two girls who went into the WAVES. On the other hand, a total of nine female descendants of old Dr. John Whipple married military officers whom they happened to meet in Honolulu.
Of course, the most dramatic impact fell upon the Sakagawas, but I will save discussion of that till later, for it is important that everyone understand how this large family of Japanese aliens became, by virtue of the war, full-fledged Americans. It was ironic that years of pleading for citizenship had got the Japanese nowhere—good behavior availed them nothing—but as soon as the Japanese government destroyed Pearl Harbor and killed more than 4,000 men, everything the local Japanese had wanted was promptly given them; but as I said, I should like to postpone that ironic story for a while.
Apart from the Sakagawas, the impact of that dreadful day of bombing and defeat fell heaviest upon the sprawling Kee hui. Two days after the bombing had ended, Nyuk Tsin, then ninety-four, was taken on a tour of the city by her grandson, Hong Kong, and as she saw the confusion into which the white citizens of Honolulu had fallen, she perceived that the next half year was going to provide the Kee hui with a vital opportunity for material growth, and that if it failed this rare chance, the hui would have no further claim to consideration.
That night Nyuk Tsin summoned her sons and abler grandsons, and when her little house in Nuuanu was jammed, and the blackout curtains were in place, she said, “All over Honolulu the haoles are preparing to run away. Asia, do you think the Japanese are going to invade Hawaii?”
“No.”
“Then why are the haoles running away?”
“They may have better information than I do,” careful Asia replied. “Will the Japanese airplanes come back?” Nyuk Tsin pressed.
“I hear our airfields at Wheeler and Hickam were destroyed,” Asia reported, “but a navy officer at the restaurant said that even so, next time we would drive the enemy planes away.”
Nyuk Tsin thought about this for some time and pressed her wrinkled old hands against her sunken cheeks, then passed them back along her almost vanished hair. “Hong Kong, do you think the Japanese will be back?”
“They may try, but I don’t think they’ll succeed.”
“Do you think Honolulu is a safe place for us to gamble in?” Nyuk Tsin asked. “I mean, will the Japanese be kept out?”
“Yes,” Asia said.
“Does it matter?” Hong Kong asked. He was forty-eight, a hard, honest man who had been taught by his father, Africa Kee the lawyer, all the tricks of survival. Having been refused a standard education at Punahou, which would have softened his attitudes, he had acquired from his father a sure instinct for the jugular. As yet he was not well known in Hawaii, having been content to allow his popular uncles to stand before the community as ostensible leaders of the great Kee hui, but Nyuk Tsin, who ran the hui, knew that in Hong Kong she had a successor just as smart and diligent as herself. Therefore, when he asked, “Does it matter?” she listened.
“If Japan conquers Hawaii,” Hong Kong pointed out, “we will all be executed as leading Chinese. So we don’t have to worry about that. The F.B.I. won’t allow us to escape to the mainland, so we don’t have to worry about that, either. We’ve got to stay where we are, pray that the Japanese don’t win, and work harder than ever before.”
Nyuk Tsin listened, then dropped her thin hands into her lap. “Our adversity is our fortune,” she whispered. “We can’t run away, but the haoles can. Like frightened rabbits they will be leaving on every ship. And when they go, soldiers and sailors with lots of money will come in. When they arrive, we’ll be here. This war will last a long time, and if we work hard, our hui can become stronger than ever before.”
“What should we work at?” Asia asked.
“Land,” Nyuk Tsin replied with the terrible tenacity of a Hakka peasant who had never known enough land. “As the frightened haoles run away, we must buy all the land they leave behind.”
“We don’t have enough money to do that,” Hong Kong protested.
“I’m sorry,” Nyuk Tsin apologized. “I didn’t explain myself correctly. Of course we can’t afford to buy. But we can put down small deposits and promise to pay later. Then we can work the land and earn the money to pay off the debts.”
“But how can we get hold of enough money to start?” Hong Kong asked.
“We must spend every cent of cash we have,” Nyuk Tsin replied. “Asia, you take charge of that. Turn everything into cash. Let us run the stores on Hotel Street, because that’s where the soldiers will come. Put all our girls to work. Australia, could your granddaughters start a hot-dog stand in Waikiki?”
The hui laid plans to lure every stray nickel from passing military men, but the most important tactic was still to be discussed. “Tomorrow morning, every man who is able must report to Pearl Harbor,” Nyuk Tsin directed. “If the shipyard was as badly damaged as they say, lots of men will be needed. They’ll be afraid to employ Japanese, and our men will get good jobs. But every penny earned must be given to Asia.”
The family agreed that this was the right procedure, so Nyuk Tsin turned next to Hong Kong: “Your job will be the most difficult. You are to take the money that Asia provides, and you are to buy land. That is, pay just enough to get control. And remember, when people are running away in fear, they’ll accept almost any cash offer and trust in faith to get the balance.”
Hong Kong listened, then asked, “Should I buy business land or private homes?”
There was some discussion of this, but Nyuk Tsin finally directed: “Later, when the war is over, the big money will be in industrial land. But right now, when the island fills with people, everybody’ll want homes.”
“So what should I do?” Hong Kong asked.
“Buy homes now, and as their rents come in, apply the money to business property,” Nyuk Tsin advised. Then she looked at the senior members of the hui and said, “The next years will require courage. When the war ends, people will hurry back to Hawaii and say, ‘Those damned Chinese stole our land from us.’ They’ll forget that they ran away in fear, and we didn’t. But then what they say won’t matter.” She laughed tremulously and chided her men: “I’ve never seen grown men so afraid as you are tonight. If you could run away, too, you’d do so, everyone of you. But fortunately the F.B.I. won’t let you. So we must all stay here and work.”
From this night meeting behind bomb-proofed windows, three changes occurred in Honolulu. First, a good many of the small stores that catered to servicemen, selling them greasy food, soft drinks and candy bars, came to be operated by members of the Kee hui. Prices were kept reasonable, the stores were kept cle
an, and every establishment made money. Second, at Pearl Harbor, when the accelerated rebuilding of that damaged base began, a surprising number of the auditors, senior bookkeepers, expediters and managerial assistants were named Kee. Their wages were good, their work impeccable, and their behavior inconspicuous. When draft boards asked the navy, “Are you fellows out at Pearl hoarding manpower?” the navy apologetically released Mendoncas and Guerreros, but never a Kee, for the latter were essential to the war. Third, when the military began to fly in hundreds of civilian advisers, and in the case of senior officials, their families too, these men found that if they wanted to rent quarters they had to see Hong Kong Kee; even generals and admirals were told, “Better check with Hong Kong.” As the war progressed and Hawaii became horribly overcrowded, with every house renting at triple premium and every store jammed with customers, only Nyuk Tsin and Hong Kong realized how inconspicuously the Kees were converting their rent money into commercial land sites.
THE MOST subtle effect of the war fell upon Hoxworth Hale, who was only forty-three when it began. Of course he volunteered immediately, reminding the local generals of his World War I experience, but they replied that he was essential to H & H, many of whose activities tied in with military requirements. He was therefore not allowed to rejoin the army. Later, when he heard that a group of Yale men were organizing a submarine outfit, he fought to get into that, feeling that he was well fitted for submarine duty, but the navy rather stiffly pointed out that the Yale men involved were more nearly his son’s age than his. He therefore had to stay in Honolulu, where he worked closely with Admiral Nimitz and General Richardson, making a substantial contribution to the war effort. Along with his other duties he served as head of the draft board and chairman of the Office of Civilian Defense.
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