There’s something about begging that diminishes you, once and for all. The other insults that America hurled at him daily for being a nisei were nicks and cuts; this was a large, gaping wound. It wasn’t just that they had made him say, I’m a yellow sissy, over and over, though that had hurt too. It was that he’d had to put his hands together on command and put them up beseechingly, so that they no longer could defend his stomach or his head or anything else. He had to trust that his assailants wouldn’t hit him, and that if they did, he would be partly to blame, because there he was, arms raised in supplication, in utter and total defenselessness. Begging like that, he was as helpless as a child. He really was what they said he was, a yellow sissy. Something in him was lost that day, speeding out with his breath, never to return. Whatever was left in its place was merely the frame and joists of a person, not the essential spirit. All that remained was someone who could not tell a luna that his first child was in danger, who could not be at his wife’s side when she needed him most.
He had never told anybody, and sometimes he thought that he himself would forget it, especially here, on Niihau. It was certainly as close as he ever came to it. All he’d ever wanted was to prove to Irene, and to himself, that he was still a man. And finally, a week ago, he’d had his chance in the unlikely form of a Zero whose gas tank had been hit. It was as if it had appeared bearing everything he had lost. It had brought a man with pride, with a mission, and with a sense of self. The Zero had said, Here, I’ve kept all this for you since that day. The pilot, he is who you were. Now, come. Follow him and you will have it back. That’s all Yoshio had wanted, really. To regain what was once his. And now even that had gone awry, as if everything he touched was cursed. Finally, he must do the only thing left for him.
-Taeko, he murmured. Forgive me.
The first blast threw him to the ground. He lay looking at the sky, which still had its purple glow and the faint wisp of a cloud. It’s going to rain, he thought. That’s good.
He reached for the gun again and staggered to his feet. The shot had only grazed him, and he was determined to do at least this one thing right. He felt the sharp tip of the muzzle under his rib cage and pressed harder so as to lodge it there. The pain felt comforting. In the ensuing explosion, as he pulled the trigger, he saw Irene. Her eyes shone and her arms were wide.
-Come, she said to him, pulling a chair forward. Your hair needs cutting.
-Aren’t I handsome enough for you yet? he whispered.
Her mouth broke open in long rays of light. She stepped forward and embraced him fiercely.
-Of course you are, she said. You always have been.
33
When Aylmer Robinson finally pulled up to Kii, with a boatload of armed men, there was no one waiting at the dock. He shaded his eyes and frowned, and then told Mizuha that they would have to walk the fifteen miles to town.
At first the soldiers walked as squadrons do: alert to every sound, guns at the ready. But soon the island took hold; their weapons sagged in their hands, sweat streamed down their backs, their gazes dropped to the ground in front of them. The land was endlessly dry, and compared with Kauai, flat. The heat was merciless. Their boots went quickly from spit-polished black to a dusty brown, their canteens emptied fast. The Niihauan men finally pushed ahead and waited at each rise impatiently, their chins pushed forward, their hands clenched in fists. Even Mr. Robinson didn’t want to rest, and when Lieutenant Mizuha insisted that they do, he kept his head tilted toward Puuwai, as if listening for any sound that would tell him what was going on there. Finally, the village came into view.
Howard did not look long at the burned remains of his house, though Lieutenant Mizuha sent a few men to size up the ruined plane before they continued deeper into the village. They returned bright eyed with excitement at such a close encounter with an enemy object but reported that there was no one there. Mizuha looked around uneasily. The chickens scratched on the lava walls, the horses grazed peacefully. An imu smoked in a front yard, clothes hung on drying lines. But not a villager was in sight.
-Where is everyone? he said. Something’s wrong.
Robinson held up his hand and cocked his head. The soldiers stopped shuffling and slapping the butts of their guns to listen.
-You hear? he said.
They turned their heads, tried to hold their breath. But all they heard was the wind and the scuffle of their hearts.
-Listen, listen, insisted Robinson. They’re singing.
They heard it now, over the breeze and the pounding of their blood.
-They’re in church, Robinson said. That’s what it is. It’s Sunday, of course, the day of our Lord.
At the church Robinson told the soldiers to wait while he entered and spoke to the Niihauans, but they pushed past him with their guns drawn. The whole congregation stopped singing. They turned with closed faces. They watched the disheveled squadron as they crab-walked down the aisle, each soldier’s head dipped into his rifle sights, each mouth tight and nervous.
-It’s over, Mr. Robinson, Ella Kanahele said from the back pew. She did not bother to rise. We took care of it.
Ka Haku Makua walked toward her.
-But Ben, she added, he needs a doctor.
After many weeks someone remembered about the bees. Howard knew only a little about beekeeping, but he rode to the Main House anyway. It was silent—Mr. Robinson had gone back to Kauai to help in the war effort and there had been no mention of who was to take care of his home now that the Haradas were gone—Yoshio dead, and Mrs. Harada and her child shipped to the mainland and a prison there. Howard stared at the Main House for a while, assessing its size and the maintenance it might need. Then he led his mare to Irene Harada’s store—now closed and boarded up—left her to graze, and walked to the apiary.
Things had changed on Niihau. Every afternoon a low echo would rumble through the scrub. The villagers would turn their heads toward the only road out of town, once little more than a footpath for a sturdy cart, now widened and tamped down into what could pass for a street. A jeep would appear, dark green against the red soil, puffing smoke and dust. Soldiers hung on to the seats as if for dear life. When the jeep pulled to a stop on the bluff, their helmets would rocket sideways on their sweaty heads, their guns would tilt askew from their shoulders. For a while the soldiers would scan the horizon. Then the machine would rev up, sending clouds of red dust into the air. Slowly the jeep would turn, then speed back to Kii, and to the new makeshift army base there.
The jeeps had fascinated the Niihauans at first, as had the electricity poles, the large refrigerators, the gun installations, and everything else that had suddenly been foisted on Niihau within weeks of the Japanese pilot’s death. Fraternization between the outsiders and the Niihauans had been strictly forbidden by Mr. Robinson, but something had changed now and even the children visited the small army base on the sly. Lily went, and saw that light could be turned on as if by magic, cool air blown by whirring fans, drinks pulled completely cold from large white containers. What else is out there? she wondered. What other mysteries of the world? Already, Niihau seemed smaller than it had just a season ago. When she was older, in just a few more years, she would go and see things for herself. She told her parents and they scoffed, but worry glinted in their eyes. She was not the only child speaking this way, and even the adults looked up from the beaches now, their hands shading their brows, and stared out to the horizon.
The men also visited the base, bringing back tales of cheap beer smuggled in under the mailbag. Of soldiers who smoked and took the Lord’s name in vain. Who complained of the dust and flies so aggressive that they called them “dirty Japs” while slapping them angrily. Who didn’t go to church and some who didn’t even believe in God, not anymore at least, not since Pearl Harbor. The men came back smelling of cigarette smoke themselves, and sometimes of beer.
For a while the downed Japanese plane had been a distraction for the bored recruits, but it turned out to be of little in
terest. A Zero in far better shape had already been examined by government experts; this one yielded no new information. The Niihauans found this hard to believe. How could something that had changed their lives so much be considered unimportant? Even the papers that Howard had handed over to their officer—the ones that helped cause so much trouble—had been of no military interest. Just a bunch of drawings of Pearl Harbor, which now lay in ruins anyway.
All that, the Niihauans thought, for nothing.
They got news of the war from the soldiers, and this was passed from house to house. Not good, they were sometimes told. Good, other times. Places that were hard to pronounce were named and then mangled by each Niihauan family in turn, so that in the end the cities and towns where bloody battles were being fought on far-off islands they would never visit all sounded the same. The Niihauans didn’t like hearing about the war, but they considered it their war now. After all, a bloody battle had been fought here, on this red, rocky soil. It was only right that they be kept informed.
Howard hesitated at the apiary’s periphery, as anyone unused to bees was apt to do. The workers would be in a cluster now, keeping the queen and their hive warm until the spring, so that there would be little activity outside, and no chance of being stung. Part of him didn’t care what happened to these bees because they were Mr. Harada’s pride and joy. Still, he could brush away windblown leaves and scrub, which he did, and walk between the hives looking for signs of unrest or hapless invaders—ants, beetles, rodents. Everything seemed calm until he reached the last hive.
These bees had broken from their winter huddle. Some clung to the slats at the entrance, some were listless on the floor of the apiary, as if they’d walked from the edge of the hive and had no energy left to beat their wings. Alarmed, Howard squatted and peered as close as he dared. There was no other explanation: the queen had died. Every bee in that hive knew it, had known it, within hours of it happening, the information passed by scent from one bee leg to another in a kind of mournful waltz. He imagined their desperate sighs, their slowing wings, their gathering confusion, and perhaps even grief.
At any other time, Howard would’ve asked beekeeper Shintani for advice, but the old man had been taken away with Mrs. Harada and her child, and the islanders had been puzzled, because his part in the whole tragedy seemed small, insignificant. He’s Japanese, Mr. Robinson had said simply. Now Howard frowned, and backed away. They would need another queen immediately. Usually Mr. Robinson sent one in by boat; she was de-boxed and unwrapped and placed carefully in the faltering hive. But Howard also knew that bees could make their own queen. It took time and it wasn’t reliable—but then, what was? He stared at the white wooden box, the sad, slow bees. A leader could emerge from deep inside that hive, he thought, one of their own. He walked back to his horse and mounted. He glanced once more at the Main House, and even as one part of him was wondering whether he should use the radio at the army base to get word to the Old Lord about the unproductive hive and its dead queen, the other part knew that in the end he would not say anything at all.
Ella stopped to watch the jeep disappear over the bluff that afternoon. She was on her way to sort shells at Hannah’s house, where the Kaleohanos were temporarily staying until their own house was rebuilt. She did not start walking again until all the red dust the machine had kicked up had disappeared into the hard blue sky behind it. She liked that quiet moment of watching it rise and blend into the sunlight. She liked everything quiet these days. Ben had returned from the hospital on Kauai, but it would be a while before he walked without crutches or rode a horse. Ella would not admit it, but she liked him there, something solid and sure, parked near the window and peering disconsolately at the dry fields beyond Puuwai, where his beloved cattle wandered without him. When they talked they didn’t fight, now that the plane had been picked over by the soldiers and what remained seemed little more than a huge trash pile, not really a plane anymore, and certainly not a powerful spirit. She thought about other things instead: about Ben, for one, and about whether she would go to heaven, now that she had killed a man. The official account was that Ben had done in the Japanese pilot, because it wasn’t seemly that a Christian woman could bash in a human head, even that of an enemy. Mr. Robinson insisted on this version of the story; he had always fretted openly about the sensationalist press and said that he did not want to read more of their indictments of his “mystery island.” These journalists will write the same old hoo-ha they always do, Mr. Robinson complained. He was tired of hearing that the Niihauans were brainwashed, subjects in a feudal kingdom, not free to make their own decisions. Now he’d be reading that there were Jap sympathizers in every small wooden house, and that Niihauan women killed men as handily as they gutted fish. So the official version held Ben as the man who had dealt the fatal blow, and there were rumors of a medal for both him and Howard, for their valiant efforts in what was now called the Battle of Niihau.
Ella did not stop at Hannah’s house but continued walking. She knew she would turn around soon, but for the moment she liked the bedrock feel of the land under her feet, the way its red-dust surface rose and wrapped around her, then misted away into the air. Inuwai began to blow, bringing the smell of the sea to her nose. Soon, it would be spring. The bees would start feeding their queen, the papipi would briefly flower. She stopped at the bluff that overlooked the beach and gazed westward, where no other island was in sight. She was suddenly sure that no matter what humans tried to do, Niihau would always float here, cradled by water, rooted somehow to the earth. Changes had come to Niihau, yes, but even these would not last. They would transform into something else again. Only the island itself was constant, immovable.
Perhaps it would rain soon, she thought, and turned back toward the village.
Author’s Note
Though many of the events in this book really happened, this remains a work of fiction. This means, among other things, that while all of the major characters are named after real people who experienced this strange, tragic week on Niihau, I have added dialogue, attributes, and motivations of my own imaginings. The island of Niihau does exist, and it is owned by a family named Robinson. A Japanese Zero did crash on Niihau after the attack on Pearl Harbor; the pilot did survive; the island was isolated and largely uninterested in the machinations of the outside world; the island’s Hawaiian residents were unsure why a foreign military plane was so close to their island, while the three Japanese-speaking inhabitants immediately knew full well what had happened. Those are the bare-bones facts I used as a springboard for the story I wove. To fill in the gaps I did extensive research, but often historical documents contradicted one another.
My most baffling challenge was trying to uncover when the Niihauans knew that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Specifically, how did they find out? There was no consensus in any of the materials I looked at. In this and other instances I chose the scenario I thought most likely, and also the one that best exemplified both the isolation of Niihau and the heartrending identity issues that Japanese Americans, and indigenous Hawaiians, faced at that time. Also, in places, I added small scenes to bridge the larger, historically verified ones.
I did get confirmation on the events that ended the so-called Battle of Niihau during a wonderful, synchronicitous event in Reno, Nevada. I had never been there, nor had I often played blackjack with real money. But there I was at one in the morning, in a brightly lit casino, getting help from a table of amiable strangers. The man next to me told me he was from Hawaii, and I, who had spent a lot of time on Oahu and Kauai, asked him, “Which island?” Well, he said, I grew up in California, but my father was from a place you’ve probably never heard of, called Niihau. I almost dropped my chips. The odds at blackjack might be fairly good, but what are the odds that I would meet someone with connections to an island of 130 people? He told me that Ella and Ben Kanahele were direct relations. I caught my breath and asked him if the way I have portrayed the ending here is the way it actually happened. Oh, ye
s, he said with a smile. No doubt about it.
There were other surprises. Documents state that the events on Niihau were a major influence on the decision to intern Japanese-Americans in February 1942. So this small, alomost forgotten historical footnote has had large historical reverberations.
I asked for permission to visit Niihau and talk directly to the people there about any remembrances they had of those seven days back in 1941, and to hear any stories that might have been passed down from relatives and friends. Unfortunately, my request to the Robinson family, who still own the island, was never answered. Perhaps this is fitting, because the book is a work of fiction; in addition, their continuing reserve ensures that the “mystery island” remains a mystery, even today.
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