“This is how we feed our men on this island,” she teased. “Can your girls do as well?” When Hale laughed, she pushed the dripping fish into his mouth and chuckled when the white milk ran down his chin and across his naked chest. “You are so sloppy!” she chided. “But you are such an adorable man, Hale-tane. You can laugh. You are tender. You dance like an angel. And you are strong in bed. You are a man any girl could love. Tell me,” she begged, “do your girls at home love you?”
“Yes,” he said truthfully, “they do.”
“Do they sometimes play games like the slapping game with you, and then chase you around the house just for the fun of being with you?”
“No,” he replied.
“I am sorry, Hale-tane,” she said. “The years go by very fast and soon …” She pointed to an old woman searching for shellfish along the shore: “Then we play no more games.” It was with the sadness of the world turning in space, or of the universe drifting madly through the darkness, that she said these words in island French: “Et bientôt c’est tout fini et nous ne jouons plus.”
“Is that why your father builds you a house of your own when you’re fifteen?” Hale asked. “So you can learn the proper games?”
“Yes,” she explained. “No sensible man would want to marry me unless he knew that I understood how to make love properly. Men are happiest when a girl has proved she can have a baby, and do you know what I hope, Hale-tane? I hope that when you fly away tomorrow you leave in here a baby for me.” She patted her flat brown stomach which looked as if it could never contain a child. “That is my wish.”
And so they lazed the day away, and ate poisson cru, the best dish that any island ever invented, and played the silly games of love that Bora Borans had been teaching their daughters for nearly two thousand years, and in due time shadows crept across the lagoon, and night fell, and after the drums had been beating at the village dancing ground for some hours, Tehani wrapped herself in a sarong and said, “Come, Hale-tane, I should like the people of Bora Bora to see me dancing with you one more time. Then, if I do have your baby, they will remember that among all the Americans, you were the best dancer.”
In the morning, as the inspection team piled into the PBY for takeoff and the return to Hawaii, no one spoke of the long-haired girls of Bora Bora, or of their flashing teeth, or of the games they knew how to play, for if anyone had spoken, all would have wanted to remain on the island for another day, another week; but when the plane had torn its bulk free from the waters of the lagoon and stood perched on what the aviators called “the step,” the small after-portion on which the huge boat rode on the waves until it finally soared into the air, Hale again felt the aesthetic moment when men are half of the ocean and half of the air, and in this attitude the speeding PBY whipped across the lagoon until it finally soared aloft, and all were wholly of the sky.
It was then, as Bora Bora disappeared in the brilliance of morning sunlight, that the major observed bitterly, “To think! We’re going to draft decent young American boys, tear them from their mothers’ arms, slam them into uniform and send them down to Bora Bora. God, it’s inhuman.” And for the rest of the war, and for many years thereafter, there would be a confraternity of men who met casually in bars, or at cocktail parties, or at business luncheons, and one would say to the other, “They write mostly crap about the Pacific, but there’s one island …”
“Are you speaking of Bora Bora?” the other would interrupt.
“Yes. Did you serve there?”
“Yep.” Usually, nothing more was said, because if a man had served his hitch on Bora Bora nothing more was required to be said, but whenever Hoxworth Hale met such men he invariably went one step further: “Did you ever know a slim, long-haired girl of fifteen or sixteen? Lived by the mountain. Named Tehani.”
Once he met a lieutenant-commander from a destroyer-escort who had known Tehani, and the destroyer man said, “Wonderful girl. Danced like an angel. She was the first one on the island to have an American baby.”
“Was it a boy?” Hale asked.
“Yes, but she gave it to a family on Maupiti. Girls there had no chance to produce American babies, and the island wanted one.”
And suddenly, in the smoke-filled bar, Hoxworth Hale saw a young girl dancing beside a lagoon, and he saw on the blue waters an ancient double-hulled canoe and he thought: “I am forever a part of Bora Bora, and my son lives on in the islands.” Then the memory vanished and he heard a girl’s voice lamenting: “The years go by very fast, and soon we play no more games.”
In time, Hale’s visit to the South Seas produced other fruit than his memory of Tehani Vahine, for in addition to her lilting song of the coconut-grater, he constantly recalled his conversation with Sir Ratu Salaka in Fiji, and he began to compare all aspects of Hawaii with similar conditions in Fiji and Tahiti, and he came to this unshakable conclusion: “In every respect but one we Americans have done a better job in Hawaii than the English have in Fiji or the French in Tahiti. Health, education, building and the creation of new wealth … we are really far ahead. And in the way we’ve integrated our Orientals into the very heart of our society, we’re so far ahead that no comparisons are even permissible. But in the way we have allowed our Hawaiians to lose their land, their language, and their culture, we have been terribly remiss. We could have accomplished all our good and at the same time protected the Hawaiians.” But whenever he reached this conclusion he would think of Joe Tom Char, who now presided as president of the senate, and he was half-Hawaiian, half-Chinese; or of the year’s beauty queen, Helen Fukuda, half-Hawaiian, half-Japanese; or of the innumerable Kees who seemed to be running Pearl Harbor, many of whom were half-Hawaiian, half-Chinese. “Perhaps we’re building something in Hawaii that will be infinitely better than anything Fiji or Tahiti ever produces.” At any rate, Hale returned from his trip no longer apologetic for what the missionaries had accomplished.
WHEN in the early days of the war Japanese boys in Hawaii were removed from combat units and expelled from R.O.T.C., the islands supposed that this was the end of the matter. “No Jap can be trusted, so we kicked them all out,” a general explained.
But to everyone’s surprise, the Japanese boys stubbornly refused to accept this verdict. Humbly, quietly, but with an almost terrifying moral force, these boys began to press for their full rights as American citizens. “We demand the inalienable privilege of dying for the nation we love,” they argued, and if anyone had asked the Sakagawa boys why they said this, they would have replied, “We were treated decently at McKinley and at Punahou. We were taught what democracy means, and we insist upon our right to defend it.”
Committees of Japanese boys began hammering officials with petitions. One drawn up by Goro Sakagawa read: “We are loyal American citizens and humbly request the right to serve our nation in its time of crisis. If you think you cannot trust us to fight against Japan, at least send us to Europe where this problem does not arise.” The committees went to see generals and admirals, governors and judges: “We will do any national work you assign us. We will ask for no wages. We must be allowed to prove that we are Americans.”
For eleven painful weeks the Japanese boys got nowhere, and then, because the three younger Sakagawas were Punahou boys, they were able to meet one of the most extraordinary men Hawaii was to produce in the twentieth century. His name was Mark Whipple, born in 1900, the son of the medical doctor who had ordered Chinatown burned, great-great-grandson of John Whipple who had helped Christianize Hawaii. This Mark Whipple was a West Point man and a colonel in the United States army. Most of his duty had been spent outside Hawaii, but recently he had been assigned to help the high command deal with the Japanese question; and in Washington it had been assumed that when he got to Hawaii he would quickly order the evacuation of all Japanese—none of whom could be trusted—to some concentration camp either in Nevada or on the island of Molokai: “This will include, of course, all the little yellow bastards who have infiltrated themselve
s into such units as the 298th Infantry and the local R.O.T.C. outfits.”
Colonel Mark Whipple disappointed just about everybody, for when he reached Hawaii bearing very powerful directives specifically handed him by President Roosevelt, who knew his family, he gave no quick orders, paraded no insolence, but went swiftly to work. The first man he called in for a conference was the Honolulu head of the F.B.I., who reported, as Whipple had anticipated: “So far as we have presently ascertained, there was not a single case of espionage by any Japanese other than the registered and duly appointed agents of the Japanese consulate, all of whom were citizens of Japan.”
“Then the Secretary of Navy’s hasty report that Pearl Harbor was betrayed by local Japanese was all hogwash?” Whipple asked.
“Yes. But he can be forgiven. Excited admirals fed him the line. Now they know better.”
“Any disloyalty now?” Whipple asked.
“Quite the contrary. The young Japanese seem to be burning to get into uniform. Had two of them in here the other day. Fine boys. Got kicked out of R.O.T.C. and now want us to use them as labor battalions, anything. They offer to serve with no pay.”
“You got their names?”
“Right here.”
Colonel Whipple hesitated before taking the paper. “I promise you that I will not write down what you reply to my next question. But I need guidance. Will you state categorically that the local Japanese have not engaged in sabotage of any kind?”
“I will state categorically that there has not been a single case of sabotage,” the F.B.I. man said.
Whipple drummed his fingers. “I’d like to see those names. Can you get the boys in here?”
As a result of that meeting the Varsity Victory Volunteers were formed, with Tadao and Minoru Sakagawa as first members. The V.V.V. were all Japanese, all boys of the highest intelligence and patriotism. They foresaw that the entire future of their people in America depended upon what they did in this war against Japan, and they decided that if they were prevented by hysteria from bearing arms, they would bear shovels. They would dig out latrines, and pick up after white soldiers, and build bridges. There would be no work too menial for them, and they would do it all for $90 a month while their haole and Chinese schoolmates earned ten times that much working for the government in civilian jobs at Pearl Harbor. As Tadao told Colonel Whipple, “We will do anything to prove that we are Americans.”
Colonel Whipple, when he recommended that the V.V.V. be established, drew a good deal of criticism from his fellow officers, but he pointed out that he carried a special command from Roosevelt to see exactly what could be done with the Japanese, and he was going to explore all possibilities; but when he next proposed that no Japanese be evacuated to prison camps, neither on Molokai nor anywhere else, the roof fell in.
“Do you mean to say …” a South Carolina admiral bellowed.
“I mean to say, sir, that these people are loyal Americans and no purpose would be served by placing them in prison camps.”
“Why, goddamn it, California has shown us the way to handle these traitors.”
“What California has done is its own affair. Here in Hawaii we won’t do it that way.”
“By God, Whipple! You’re subversive!”
But Mark Whipple was not deviated one degree from the true course he had set himself. When a convocation of his own family warned him, “There’s a good deal of apprehension about you, Mark. Military people say you’re imperiling your whole career,” he replied, “In this matter, I have a special burden to bear which only I can bear, and I would prefer to hear no more gossip of any kind. Because what I am about to propose next is going to tear this entire military community apart. Maybe you’d better fortify your tired nerves.”
What he proposed was this: “I think we had better form, right now—this week—a special unit of the United States army composed solely of Japanese boys from Hawaii. Use them in Europe. Throw them against the Germans, and when they perform as I know they will, they’ll not only re-establish their credentials here but in America. They will give all free men a propaganda victory over Naziism that will reverberate around the world. With their courage, they will prove Hitler wrong on every single count of his philosophy.”
A gasp went up, which was duly reported by cable to Washington, where it was augmented: “Japanese troops in the American army? And a special unit at that? Ridiculous.”
But one man did not think it ridiculous, the President of the United States, and when he had studied Colonel Whipple’s report he issued a statement which read: “Patriotism is not a matter of the skin’s color. It is a matter of the heart.”
In Hawaii there was still vigorous opposition to the formation of such a unit, but when the President’s order reached Honolulu in mid-May of 1942 grudging compliance was obligatory, and one gruff general asked, “Who’d want to march into battle with a regiment of Japs behind him?”
“I would,” Colonel Whipple replied.
“You mean … you’re volunteering for the job?”
“I am, sir.”
“You’ve got it, and I hope you don’t get shot in the back.”
Colonel Whipple saluted and took prompt steps to assemble into one unit all the Japanese boys already in the army—men like Goro Sakagawa of the 298th Infantry—and to pave the way for later acceptance of others like those now in the V.V.V. or those like young Shigeo who were about ready for the draft. The Whipple family was distressed that their most brilliant son was imperiling his career by such imprudent action, but as he had told them earlier, in this matter he bore a special burden.
It arose from the fact that when he was a boy in Honolulu no Chinese would speak to him, for he was the son of the man who had burned Chinatown at the instigation of the haole merchants. He could never bring himself to believe that his gentle, courageous father, Dr. Whipple, had done such a thing, but the Chinese were certain that he had. To them the name of Whipple was ugly, and they were not reluctant to demonstrate this fact to young Mark. Finally, when his own haole playmates began to tease him, he accosted his father and had asked him point-blank: “Dad, did you burn Chinatown?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking, I did.”
“In order to put the Chinese merchants out of business?”
His father had stopped and bowed his head. “So now you’ve heard that? What did they say?”
“They say there was a little sickness, and the haole storekeepers talked you into burning Chinatown and putting all the Chinese out of business.”
“Now exactly who said this, son?”
“The haoles. The Chinese didn’t say it because they won’t even speak to me. But I know they think it.”
Dr. Hewlett Whipple was then a man of forty, and about as successful a medical practitioner as one could hope to be in Honolulu, but the weight of his son’s charge was very heavy indeed upon his soul. He led his twelve-year-old son to a grassy spot under a tree on the lawn of his Punchbowl home and said, “Now you ask me all the questions that worry you, Mark. And never forget what I reply.”
“Did you burn Chinatown?”
“Yes.”
“And did the Chinese lose all their stores?”
“Yes.”
Mark had no further questions, so he shrugged his shoulders. His father laughed and said, “You aren’t going to stop there, are you?”
“You’ve told me what I wanted to know,” the boy replied.
“But aren’t you concerned about the real truth? What really happened?”
“Well, like the boys said, you admitted burning the place.”
“Mark, this is what truth is. Going behind what you hear first. Asking a hundred questions until you can make up your own mind on the basis of real evidence. Now let me ask the questions that you should have. All right?”
“Okay.”
“Dr. Whipple, why did you burn Chinatown? Because a dreadful plague threatened the city.
“Did burning Chinatown help save the city? It saved ten
thousand lives.
“Did you intend to burn the Chinese stores? No, the fire got out of hand. It ran away from us.
“Did you do anything to help the Chinese? I ran into the middle of the fire myself and helped them to safety.
“Were you sorry that the fire got out of hand? When I got home and looked back upon the destruction I sat down and wept.
“Would you burn it again under the same circumstances? I would.”
A silence fell over the Whipples and they looked down at their city. Young Mark, in those moments, caught a glimmer of what truth was, but what his father said next exploded truth from a shimmering substance playing upon the edges of the mind into a radiant reality, for he said, “There are two other questions which have to be asked, and these require longer answers. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Whipple, tell me honestly, were there not some haoles who were glad to see Chinatown burned? Of course there were. And some Chinese, too. Any good action in the world will be used by some to their own economic advantage. Any misfortune will be used the same way. Therefore, you would expect some to profit from the burning and to be glad that it happened. When the fire was over, these same men rebuilt Chinatown exactly as it was before, so as to keep on making a little money from the hovels. So if your Chinese friends say there were some who were glad to see the Chinese stores destroyed, they are correct. But I was not one of them.
“Dr. Whipple, can you not, even so, understand why the Chinese hate you? Of course I understand. They believe falsehood, and it’s always easier to accept a lie than to find out the truth. When I move through Honolulu, this is one of the burdens I am forced to bear. The Chinese hate me. But if they knew the truth, they would not.”
As a colonel in the United States army, Mark Whipple often remembered that discussion with his father, and sometimes when he was required to make his men do brutal or unpleasant work, he knew that in ignorance they would hate him, whereas if they knew the truth they would not. So when he returned to Hawaii to deal with the Japanese problem, he was motivated by an acute desire that he, Mark Whipple, should, by dealing with the Japanese honestly, erase the stigma that his father Hewlett Whipple had suffered at the hands of the Chinese. In a sense, therefore, he did not volunteer to lead the Japanese troops; he was impelled by the entire history of his family to do so; for the Whipples of Hawaii were people who tried always to keep history straight.
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