by Hawaii
"If you marry when I am not at hand, Kamejiro, ask your two closest friends to seek out the girl's history. You know the obvious problems. No disease, no insanity, nobody in jail, all ancestors good, strong Japanese. But then ask your advisers this: 'Are you sure she is not an Okinawan?'" Dramatically she stopped. Putting down her rice bowl she pointed at her son and said, "Don't bring an Okinawa girl to this house. If you marry such a girl, you are dead."
She waited for this ominous statement to wind its way through her son's mind, then added, "The danger is this, Kamejiro. In Hiroshima-ken we can spot an Okinawan instantly. I can tell when a girl comes from Okinawa if I see even two inches of her wrist. But in Hawaii I am told people forget how to do this. There are many Okinawans there, and their women set traps to catch decent Japanese. I wish I could go with you to Hawaii, for I can uncover these sly Okinawans. I am afraid you won't be able to, Kamejiro, and you will bring disgrace upon us."
She started to cry again, but rice stanched the tears, and she came to the climax of her warning: "There is of course one problem that every devoted son looks into before he marries, because he owes it not only to his parents but also to his brothers and sisters. Kamejiro, I said that if you married an Okinawa girl you were dead. But if you marry an Eta, you are worse than dead."
The wave of disgust that swept over Kamejiro's face proved that he despised the Eta as much as his mother did, for they were the untouchables of Japan, the unthinkables. In past ages they had dealt in the bodies of dead animals, serving as butchers and leather tanners. Completely outside the scope of Japanese civilization, they scratched out horrible lives in misery and wherever possible fled to distant refuges like Hawaii. A single trace of Eta blood could contaminate an entire family, even to remote unattached cousins, and Kamejiro shuddered.
His mother continued dolefully: "I said I could spot an Okinawan, and I could protect you there. But with an Eta ... I don't know. They're cleverl Crawling with evil, they try to make you think they're normal people. They hide under different names. They take new occupations. I am sure that some of them must have slipped into Hawaii, and how will you know, Kamejiro? What would you do if word sneaked back to Hiroshima-ken that you had been captured by an Eta?"
Mother and son contemplated this horror for some minutes and she concluded: "So when it comes time to marry, Kamejiro, I think it best if you marry a Hiroshima girl. Now I don't like girls from Hiro-
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shima City, itself, for they are too fancy. They cost a man money and want their photographs taken all the time. I've seen a lot of girls from Hiroshima City, and although I'm ashamed to say so, some of them don't seem much better than an ordinary Yamaguchi-no-anta. And from what I have seen, a lot of the girls from the other end of Hiroshima-ken aren't too reliable, either. So don't be taken in just because a strange girl tells you she's a Hiroshima-gansu. It may mean nothing.
"And be careful not to marry into any family that has ever had an undertaker. Avoid city families if you can. To tell you the truth, Kamejiro, it would be best if you married a girl from right around here. Of course, I don't think much of the families in Atazuki Village, for they are spendthrift, but I can say there are no finer girls in all Japan than those in our village. So when the time comes to marry, go to a letter-writer and have him send me a message and when it is read to me, I'll find you a good local girl, and trust me, Kamejiro, that will be best." She paused dramatically, then added in an offhand manner, "Say, a fine strong girl like Yoko-chan." Kamejiro looked at his mother and said nothing, so she finished her rice.
When it came time for him to bid his parents farewell he assured them that he would never do anything to bring disgrace upon them, or upon Japan. His gruff father warned, "Don't bring home an Oki-nawan or an Eta." His mother summarized a larger body of Hiroshima morality by reminding him, "No matter where you go, Kamejiro, remember that you are Japanese. Put strength in your stomach and be a good Japanese. Never forget that some day you will return to Hiroshima-ken, the proudest and greatest in all Japan. Come home with honor, or don't come home."
Then his father led him to one side and said quietly, "Be proud. Be Japanese. Put power in your stomach."
As he set forth from the village he saw by the shrine the flowering girl Yoko-san and he wanted to leave his weeping parents and rush over to her, shouting, "Yoko-chan! ,When I have made money I will send for you!" But his stocky legs were powerless to move him in that direction, and had he gone his voice would have been unable to speak, for officially they did not know each other, and all the exciting things that had transpired behind the darkened shoji had not really happened, for he had never removed his mask.
So he departed, a tough, stalwart little man with arms hanging down like loaded buckets, yet as he passed the shrine, looking straight ahead, he somehow received Yoke's assurance that if he cared to write for her, she would come; and a considerable happiness accompanied him on his journey.
For the first two miles his path lay along the Inland Sea, and he saw before him the shifting panorama of that wonderland of islands. Green and blue and rocky brown they rose from the cool waters, lifting their pine trees to the heavens. On one a bold crimson torii rose like a bird of god, marking some ancient Shinto shrine. On others
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Kamejiro saw the stained stone outlines of Buddhist temples, perched above the sea. How marvelous that footpath was! How the earth sang, while the rice fields swept their ripening grain back and forth in the winds creeping inland from the sea.
With every step Kamejiro encountered some unexpected beauty, for he was traversing one of the most glorious paths in the world, and the singing of that day would never leave his ears. Once he stopped to stare in wonder at the multitude of islands and at the magnificence of their position within the sea, and he swore, "A little time will pass and I will return to the Inland Sea."
When the Kyoto-maru landed him in Honolulu he advised the immigration interpreter: "Stamp my paper for five years." Fortunately, he could not understand the official when the latter muttered to his assistant, ''I wish I believed these little yellow bastards were gonna stay only five years."
There were others in Hawaii, however, who welcomed the Japanese ungrudgingly, for that day the Honolulu MaiJ editorialized: "Janders & Whipple are to be congratulated on having completed plans for the importation of 1,850 strong and healthy Japanese peasant farmers to work our sugar fields, with prospects for as many more at later intervals as may be required. We journeyed to the Kyoto-maru yesterday to inspect the new arrivals and can report that they seemed a sturdy lot. Lunas who have worked earlier crews of Japanese state unanimously that they are much superior to the unfortunate Chinese whom they are replacing. They are obedient, extraordinarily clean, law-abiding, not given to gambling and eager to accomplish at least eighty per cent more honest labor than the lazy Chinese ever did.
"Japanese avoid the Chinaman's tendency to combine into small and vicious groups. Themselves an agrarian people, they love plantation work and will stay in the fields, so that the trickery whereby in recent years crafty Orientals fled from honest work in the cane fields, so as to monopolize our city shops, can be expected to end. Japanese are notoriously averse to running stores, but J & W have taken the added precaution of importing only strong young men from rural areas. There are no wily Tokyo dwellers lurking ominously in their gangs. Plantation owners can expect a rapid improvement in the appearance of their camps, too, for Japanese love to garden and will soon have their buildings looking attractive.
"In two respects we are particularly fortunate in getting these Japanese. First, we have been assured that their men do not contract alliances with women of any other race but their own, and we can look forward confidently to a cessation of the disgraceful scenes of aging Oriental men marrying the best young Hawaiian girls of our islands. Secondly, because of the feudal structure of Japanese society, in which every Japanese is loyal unto the death to his master, firms like J & W are go
ing to find that their new laborers will probably be the most loyal available on earth. Lunas who have worked them
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say they love authority, expect to be told what to do, respond promptly to crisp if not abusive treatment, and are accustomed to smart blows from time to time when their work is not-up to par. Unlike their Chinese cousins, they neither resent honest correction nor combine secretly against those who administer it.
"All in all, we think that future history will show that the true prosperity of Hawaii began with the importation of these sturdy workmen, and when, at the end of their employment, they return to Japan, each with his pocketful of honestly earned gold, they will go with our warm aloha. Today we welcome them as fortunate replacements for the Chinese who have turned out so badly. Aloha nui nuil"
OF THE 1,850 Japanese laborers who debarked that September day in 1902, most were assigned to plantations on Oahu, the island that contained Honolulu, and they were depressed by the barren ugliness of the inland areas. They had not seen cactus before, but as farmers they could guess that it spoke ill of the land upon which it grew, and the dull red dust appalled them. They judged that no water came to these parts, and although they had not themselves grown cattle, they could see that the spavined beasts which roamed these desolate acres suffered from both thirst and hunger. They were disappointed in the parched land which showed so little promise, and one farmer whispered to his friends, "America is much different from what they said."
But Kamejiro Sakagawa was not to be disappointed, for he was among a batch of workers dispatched to another area, and when he reached it he saw immediately that his new land was among the fairest on earth. Even the glorious fields along the Inland Sea of Japan were no finer than the area which he was expected to till. To reach this veritable paradise young Kamejiro was not marched along the dusty roads of Oahu; he was led onto a small inter-island boat which at other times was used for the 'transport of lepers, and after a long, seasick night, he was marched ashore on the island of Kauai. At the pier a tall, scar-faced man waited impatiently on a horse, and when the captain of the boat was inept at docking, he shouted orders of his own, as if he were in command. At his side ran a little Japanese, and as his countrymen finally climbed down out of the boat, this interpreter told them, "The man on the horse is called Wild Whip Hoxworth. If you work good, he is good. If not, he will beat you over the head. So work good."
As he spoke Wild Whip wheeled his horse among the men, reached down with his riding crop and tilted upward the face of Kamejiro Sakagawa. "You understand?" he growled. The little interpreter asked, "Ano hito ga yutta koto wakari mashita ka?" When stocky Kamejiro nodded, Whip lowered the riding crop, reached down and patted the new laborer on the shoulder.
Now he wheeled his horse about and moved into position at the
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head of the line. "We march!" he shouted, leading them off the pier onto a red-baked road where a group of sugar-cane wagons, hitched to horses, waited. "Climb in!" he yelled, and as the Japanese crawled into the low wagons whose sides were formed of high stakes bound together by lengths of rope, he moved to the head of the train and shouted, "On to Hanakai!" And the procession left the port town and moved slowly northward along the eastern coast of the island.
As the men rode they saw for the first time the full grandeur of Hawaii, for they were to work on one of the fairest islands in the Pacific. To the left rose jagged and soaring mountains, clothed in perpetual green. Born millions of years before the other mountains of Hawaii, these had eroded first and now possessed unique forms that pleased the eye. At one point the wind had cut a complete tunnel through the highest mountain; at others the erosion of softer rock had left isolated spires of basalt standing like monitors. To the right unfolded a majestic shore, out by deep bays and highlighted by a rolling surf that broke endlessly upon dark rocks and brilliant white sand. Each mile disclosed to Kamejiro and his companions some striking new scene.
But most memorable of all he saw that day was the red earth. Down millions of years the volcanic eruptions of Kauai had spewed forth layers of iron-rich rocks, and for subsequent millions of years this iron had slowly, imperceptibly disintegrated until it now stood like gigantic piles of scintillating rust, the famous red earth of Kauai. Sometimes a green-clad mountain would show a gaping scar where the side of a cliff had fallen away, disclosing earth as red as new blood. At other times the fields along which the men rode would be an unblemished furnace-red, as if flame had just left it. Again in some deep valley where small amounts of black earth had intruded, _ the resulting red nearly resembled a brick color. But always the soil was red. It shone in a hundred different hues, but it was loveliest when it stood out against the rich green verdure of the island, for then the two colors complemented each other, and Kauai seemed to merit the name by which it was affectionately known: the Garden Island.
For out of its lush red soil, teeming with iron, grew a multitude of trees: palms that clung to the shore; pandanus that twisted itself into dense jungle; banyans with their thousand aerial roots; hau and kou, the excellent trees of the islands; swift-growing wild plum that had been imported from Japan to provide burning fagots for the laborers; and here and there a royal palm, its moss-pocked trunk rising majestically toward the heavens. But there was one tree specially dedicated to Kauai, and it made both life and agriculture on the island possible. Wherever the powerful northeast trades whipped sea and salt air inland, killing everything that grew, men had planted the strange, silky, gray-green casuarina tree, known sometimes as the ironwood. Groves of this curious tree, covered with ten-inch needles and seed cones that resembled round buttons, stood along the shore and protected the island. The foliage of the casu-
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arina was not copious and to the stranger each tree looked so frail that it seemed about to die, but it possessed incredible powers of recuperation, and what it thrived on most was a harsh, salty trade wind that whipped its fragile needles into a frenzy and tore at its cherry-bark trunk; for then the casuarina dug in and saved the island. The sea winds howled through its branches; its frail needles caught the salt; the force of the storm was broken and all who lived in the shadow of the casuarina tree lived securely.
As the Japanese rode through this verdant wonderland, a storm flashed in from the sea, throwing tubs of water over the land, but Wild Whip, holding his prancing horse under control, shouted to his interpreter, "Ishii-san, tell the men that on Kauai we don't run from stormsl" The frail little interpreter ran from wagon to wagon, shouting, "On this island it rains a dozen times a day. Soon the sun comes out. We never bother." And as he predicted, after a few minutes the wild storm moved on to sulk in a valley until a rainbow was flung across it, and it was toward this rainbow that Kamejiro and his companions rode.
They had come to the valley of Hanakai, the Valley of the Sea, but they were not yet aware of that fact, for the highway upon which they rode was at this point more than a mile inland; but leading off from it, to the right and toward the sea, appeared a spectacular lane. It was marked by twenty pairs of royal palms, gray-trunked and erect, that Whip had sent home from Madagascar on one of the H & H ships, and these magnificent sentinels guarded the road as stone lions had once stood watch for the Assyrians. Entering the deep shade of the lane, the workmen sensed that they were approaching something special, and after a while they came upon twenty pairs of Norfolk pine, those exalted sculptural trees that had originally grown on only one South Pacific island, from which Whip had some years ago recovered two hundred young trees which he had scattered throughout Hawaii. Beyond them came the beauty of the Hoxworth lane: to the left and north stood an unbroken line of croton bushes imported by Whip from Guadalcanal in the Solomons, and of all that grew on his plantations, these were his favorites, these low sparkling bushes whose iridescent green and red and purple and gold and blue leaves were a constant source of wonder; but to the right ran a long row of
hibiscus trees, low shrublike plants that produced a dozen varieties of fragile, crepelike flowers, each with its own dazzling color; Whip's favorite was the bright yellow hibiscus, bigger than a large plate and golden in the sunlight.
The lane now turned sharply south and entered upon a huge grassy area. As was the custom in Hawaii at that time, no specific roadway led up to the Hoxworth mansion. Over the spacious lawn, guests drove as they wished, for no matter how badly the grass was scarred by such usage, the next day's inevitable rain and sunlight cured it. On the lawn there were only two trees. To the right stood an African tulip tree with dark green leaves and brilliant red flowers scattered prodigally upon it, while to the left rose one of the strangest trees in
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nature, the golden tree which Whip had found in South America. Each year it produced a myriad of brilliant yellow flowers, and since it stood some fifty feet high, it was a spectacular exhibit.
The house was long and low, built originally in China of the best wood, then taken apart and shipped in an H & H cargo ship to Hanakai. It ran from northeast to southwest, and its southern exposure consisted of eight tall Greek pillars supporting a porch upon which the life of the mansion took place. For at Hanakai the view from the lanai�the open porch�commanded attention. A soft green grassy lawn fell away to the edge of a steep cliff some three hundred feet above the surface of the sea, which here cut deeply inland forming the bay of Hanakai. When a storm of major proportions fell upon Kauai, the wild ocean would sweep its penetrating arm into the bay and find itself impounded. Then it would leap like a caged animal high up the sides of the red cliff. Its topmost spray would poise there for a moment, then fall screaming down the sheer sides. To see such a storm at Hanakai was to see the ocean at its best. But to the north and east, from where the storms blew, there was a row of trees, not visible from the mansion, and it was upon these that the life of Hanakai depended, for they were the casuarina trees, and it was their needles that sifted out the salt and broke the back of the wild storm; they were the speechless, sighing workmen, and if the golden tree was the marvel of that part of Kauai, it existed solely because the casua-rinas fought the storms on its behalf.
