Michener, James

by Hawaii

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  isknds won't be ready for statehood in another hundred years." And that took care of Hawaii for the eighty-third session of Congress.

  IN 1952, passage of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act was greeted with joy in Hawaii, for the new law permitted persons born in the Orient to become American citizens. Schools were promptly opened in which elderly Chinese and Japanese were drilled in the facts of American government, and it was not uncommon in those days to see old men who had worked all their lives as field hands reciting stubbornly: "Legislative, executive, judicial."

  By early 195? hundreds of Orientals were applying for the citizen-, ship that had so long been denied them, and as Black Jim McLafferty*5" watched this impressive stream of potential Democratic voters entering political life he made a speech in which he cried: "They built the islands, but they were kept outside."

  It is true that many of the applicants did not really appreciate what citizenship meant, but on the other hand it was impressive to see old weather-stained faces light up when the solemn words were pronounced by the federal judge: "You are now a citizen of the United States of America." And it was not uncommon to see a sedate businessman suddenly grab his old Japanese mother and swing her into the air with a joyous cry of, "I knew you could make it, Mom!"

  The real heroes of these exciting days were the old people who had refused to learn English, but who now had to learn or forgo American citizenship. Their children screamed at them: "Pop, I told you for twenty years, learn to speak English. But no, you were too smartl, Now you can't become a citizen."

  "But why should I become a citizen now?" these old people asked. "Only a few more years."

  Often the children broke into tears and sniffled: "You must learn English, Pop, because I have always wanted you to be an American."

  "For me it is nothing," the old people said, "but if it will make you happy."

  "It will, Pop! It'D remove the last stigma. Please learn English."

  With a fortitude that is difficult to believe, these stubborn old Orientals went to the language schools. All afternoon they practiced: "I see the man," and most of the night they recited: "Legislative, executive, judicial." That so many mastered the two difficult subjects was a credit to their persistence, and when they finally received certificates they understood their value. In succeeding years, at mainland elections only about sixty per cent of the eligible voters bothered to vote; in Hawaii more than ninety per cent voted. They knew what democracy was.

  In two Honolulu families the McCarran-Walter Act struck with contrasting effect. When Goro and Shigeo Sakagawa proposed to their tough old father that he enroll in the English school and get a book which explained the legislative, executive and judicial func-

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  tions he surprised them by saying in unusually formal Japanese, "I do not wish to become a citizen."

  Goro protested: "It's the opportunity of a lifetime!"

  Continuing with his precise Japanese, Kamejiro said, "They should have made this offer fifty years ago, when I arrived."

  "Pop!" Shigeo reasoned. "It's a new world today. Don't hark back to fifty years ago."

  "For fifty years we were told, "You dirty Japs can never become Americans.' For fifty years we were told, 'Go back to Japan.' Now they come to me and say, 'You're a fine old man, Kamejiro, and at last we are willing to let you become an American.' Do you know what I say to them? 'You are fifty years too late.' "

  His sons were astonished to discover the depth of their father's feeling, so they turned to their mother and endeavored to persuade her, but before she could react to their pressures, old Kamejiro said flatly, "Yoriko, you will not take the examination. All our lives we were good citizens and we don't need a piece of paper to prove it now."

  Then Shigeo produced two reasons which threw quite a different light on the matter. First he said, "Pop, last time I almost lost the election because people brought up that nonsense about Mr. Ishii and his crazy Japanese flag when the fleet visited here. They pointed out that he was my brother-in-law and that I probably felt the same way too. Now if you turn down citizenship they're going to shout, 'That proves it! The whole damned family is pro-Japanese!' "

  Old Kamejiro reflected on this, and Shig could see that his father was disturbed, for none of the old Japanese had been more delighted during the last election than Kamejiro. He had stood for hours in his store, staring at the big poster of his son. "There our boy was," he proudly told his wife, "asking people to vote for him." When Shig won, the old man had paraded up and down Kakaako announcing the fact to all Japanese families, assuring them that at last they had a personal protector in lolani Palace.

  While Kamejiro twisted this first bait about in his mouth, Shig dangled another, more tempting than the first: "Pop, if you and Mom become citizens, in 1954 you can march up to the election booth, say, 'Give us our ballots,' and march inside to give me two more votes." Now Shig could see his father imagining election day, with himself striding to the polls, his wife trailing four feet behind. The old man loved nothing more than the panoply and ritual of life, and Shig could remember from his earliest days the pride with which his father dressed in Colonel Ito's uniform to stand beside the reciter. This had been the highlight of Kamejiro's life, matched only by the days in World War II when he saw his four sons march off to their own war. Therefore Shig was not prepared for what happened next.

  "I will not take citizenship," the old man said resolutely. "If this hurts you, Shigeo, I am sorry. If my vote and Mother's cause you to lose the election, I am sorry. But there is a right time to eat a

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  pineapple, and if that time passes, the pineapple is bitter in the mouth. For fifty years I have been one of the best citizens in Hawaii. No boys in trouble. No back taxes. So for America to tell me now that I can have citizenship, at the end of my life, is insulting. America can go to hell."

  He would not discuss the question again. Once Shig and Goro approached him with the news that Immigration had a new rule: "People who have lived in the islands for a long time don't have to take their examinations in English. What that means, Pop, is that you and Mom can now become citizens without bothering with the language school."

  "It would be insulting," Kamejiro said, and the boys withdrew.

  Shig talked the problem over with McLafferty, and his partner said, "Hell, your old man's right. It's as if they had told our people in Massachusetts, 'We kicked you Catholics around for two generations. Now you can all become Protestants and run for office.' Like he says, it would have been insulting."

  "I don't think there's any analogy," Shig said coldly.

  "Probably you're right," the Irishman agreed. "But it sounds good if the other guy doesn't listen too dose."

  "This may hurt me in the next election," Shig said carefully.

  McLafferty boomed: "Shig, if your old man hadn't always been the way he is now, you wouldn't be the kind of guy you are. And if you weren't that kind of person, I wouldn't want you for a partner. What he's given you, nobody can take away." .

  "Yes, but he's become so provoked about this he says he's going back to Japan to live."

  "He won't like it," McLafferty predicted.

  "Wouldn't that hurt me in the election?" Shig pressed.

  "My father found," McLafferty said, "that just a little scandal helped rather than hurt. It made the electorate feel that the candidate was human. That's why I warned you about never disclosing in a lawsuit that a witness kept a mistress. For sure, somebody on the jury has either had a mistress�or if she's a woman, has been one� and your evidence is bound to backfire, because the juror says, 'Hell, I had a mistress, and I'm no scoundrel.' So if your old man acts up, Shig, it won't hurt you . . . not with the people whose votes we want . . . because their old folks act up too." And that was the end of Kamejiro Sakagawa's citizenship.

  With Nyuk Tsin the case was quite-different. From the day she had landed in Honolulu
eighty-eight years before, she had forsworn forever the starving villages of China and had determined to become a permanent resident of Hawaii. When the United States annexed the islands, she desperately sought American citizenship, but to no avail. From her frail body had descended some seven hundred American citizens, and not one had so far been in jail. In a lockbox she still kept her tax receipts covering nearly a century, and when she

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  heard that there was a chance that she might become an American citizen, truly and without limitation, she felt that she could know no greater joy.

  She therefore had her Harvard-trained great-grandson, Eddie Kee, study the new law and heckle the Immigration authorities until she understood every nuance. When the first language class convened, she was present, and although she was well over a hundred years old at the time, she drove her eager brain to its extent, and in the evenings sat listening to the English-language radio. But she was so ingrained in Chinese thought that English escaped her, and one night she faced up to her failure. She told Hong Kong, "I can't leam the language now. Why didn't somebody force me to leam it years ago? Now I shall never become a citizen." And she looked disconsolately at her grandson.

  But then Eddie arrived with the exciting news that certain elderly Orientals would be allowed to take the examinations in their own tongue, provided they were literate in it, and at this news Nyuk Tsin covered her old eyes for a moment, then looked up brightly and said, "I shall leam to write."

  Hong Kong therefore hired a learned Chinese to teach the old woman what was undoubtedly the most difficult language in the world, but after a while it became apparent that she was simply too old to leam, so Eddie went to the Immigration authorities and said honestly, "My great-grandmother is a hundred and six, and she wants more than anything else in the world to become an American citizen. But she can't speak English . . ."

  "No troublel" the examiner explained. "Now she can be examined in Chinese."

  "But she can't read and write Chinese," Eddie continued.

  "Well!" The examiner studied this for a while, then went into the back office, and in a moment Mr. Brimstead, an official from Washington, appeared with one question: "You say this old woman is a hundred and six?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "She got a family?"

  "Probably the biggest in Hawaii."

  "Good! We've been looking for something dramatic. Pictures we could use for publicity in Asia. You get the family together. I'll give her the exam myself and we'll waive the literacy. But wait a minute. Is she able to answers questions. I mean, is she competent?"

  "Wu Chow's Auntie is competent," her great-grandson assured him.

  "Because on the questions I can't fudge. You know: legislative, executive, judicial."

  "Can I accompany her, to give her moral support?"

  "Sure, but our interpreters will report her answers, and they have to be right."

  "She will be right," the young lawyer guaranteed.

  He therefore entered upon a long series of cramming sessions with

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  his great-grandmother, teaching her in the Hakka tongue the many intricacies of American government, and this time, with citizenship hanging like a silver lichee nut before her, she summoned her remarkable energies and memorized the entire booklet.

  "The father of our country?" Eddie shouted at her.

  "George Washington."

  "Who freed the slaves?" Hong Kong drilled.

  "Abraham Lincoln," the little old woman replied, and Eddie reflected: "It's difficult to believe, but she came to Hawaii in the year that Lincoln died."

  On the day of her examination, the Immigration Department assembled several newsreel cameras, officials in white coats, and about two hundred members of the Kee hui, who were told to cheer when the old lady arrived in Hong Kong's Buick. When she stepped down, brushing aside Eddie's arm, she was very short, weighed less than ninety pounds, and was dressed in an old-style black Chinese dress above which her nearly bald head rose with its deep-set eyes, legendary wrinkles and anxious smile. She did not speak to her accumulated family, for she was repeating in her mind many litanies alien to ancient China: "The capital of Alabama is Montgomery; Arizona, Phoenix; Arkansas, Little Rock; California, Sacramento."

  The cameras were moved into the examination room, and an announcer said in a hushed voice, "We are now going to listen in upon a scene that is taking place daily throughout the United States. A distinguished elderly Chinese woman, Mrs. Kee, after nearly ninety years of life in America, is going to try to pass her examination for citizenship. Mrs. Kee, good luck!"

  At the mention of her name, which in that form she did not recognize, Nyuk Tsin looked at the cameras, but her great-grandson said hurriedly, "Look over here. This is the examiner, Mr. Brim-stead," and the announcer explained who the distinguished visitor from Washington was. The lights were adjusted; Nyuk Tsin began to sweat in nervous apprehension; and Mr. Brimstead, who was proving to be quite a ham on his first appearance before a camera, asked in a sweetly condescending voice, "Now tell us, Mrs. Kee, who was the father of our country?"

  The official interpreter shot the question at the old lady in Hakka, and both Hong Kong and Eddie smiled superiorly, because they knew that Wu Chow's Auntie knew that one.

  But there was silence. The cameras ground. Mr. Brimstead looked foolish and the Hakka interpreter shrugged his shoulders. "Wu Chow's Auntie!" Eddie whispered hoarsely. "You know. The father of our country!"

  "Now, no coaching!" Mr. Brimstead rebuked. "This has got to be an honest examination."

  "I wasn't coaching," Eddie pleaded.

  "He didn't say nothing," the interpreter said in English.

  "All right!" Mr. Brimstead snapped. "No coaching. Now, Mrs. Kee," and his voice was all honey again, "who was the father of our

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  country?" And again the interpreter droned in Hakka and again there was silence. In agony Hong Kong stared at his grandmother and opened and shut his fingers by his mouth, signifying, "For God's sake, say something."

  But the scene was too vital for old Nyuk Tsin to absorb. All her life she had wanted to belong: first to her brave and gallant father, whose head had perched in the village square; then to her Punti husband, who had scorned her big feet; then to her children, who were afraid of her possible leprosy; then to America, which had repulsed her as it did all Orientals. Now, when all that she hoped for was attainable, she fell mute. She heard no questions, saw no men, felt nothing. But she sensed inwardly that some golden moment, some crystal opportunity that would never come again was slipping by, and she looked up with mute anguish at the people about her.

  She saw kindly Mr. Brimstead, almost wetting his pants in his eagerness for her to say something so that he could appear in the moving pictures. She saw bright young Eddie, who had coached her. She saw resolute Hong Kong, who must be praying for her to save the family reputation. And then over Hong Kong's shoulder she saw an official government etching of a long-dead hero with a determined chin and a three-cornered hat, and she heard as from a great distance the Hakka interpreter begging for the last time, "Mrs. Kee, tell the man, who was the founder of our country?" And with the floodgates of passion breaking over her, she rose, pointed at the etching of George Washington, and screamed, "That onel"

  Then she started: "The capital of Alabama is Montgomery; Arizona, Phoenix; Arkansas, Little Rock; California, Sacramento . . ."

  "Tell her that's enoughl" Mr. Brimstead shouted. "I didn't ask that question yet."

  "Keep those cameras grinding," the director shouted.

  "You!" Hong Kong shouted at the interpreter. "Keep interpreting."

  "The legislative passes the laws," Nyuk Tsin cried, "and the executive administers them and the judicial judges them against the Constitution."

  "It's enough!" Mr. Brimstead shouted. "Tell her it's all right."

  "And the Bill of Rights says that there shall be freedom of worship,
and freedom of speech," Nyuk Tsin continued. "And no troops may search my house. And I may not be punished in cruel ways." She was determined to omit nothing that might swing the decision in her favor. "There are two houses in Congress," she insisted, "the Senate and the House . . ."

  When she left the Immigration building, with her citizenship proved and in her hand, the Kees who had been waiting outside cheered, and she passed happily among them, speaking to each and asking, "What is your name?" and when they told her, she was able to place each one. And as she ticked off her great family she realized for the first time that they were neither Hakka nor Punti, for in Hawaii those old enmities had dissipated and all who had

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  arrived in the Carthaginian had been transmuted into something new. In truth, the Kees were not even Chinese; they were Americans, and now Nyuk Tsin was an American too. Standing by Hong Kong's car she whispered, "When you are a citizen, the earth feels different."

  But these fine words did not erase from Hong Kong's memory the anxiety he had suffered when in the examination room his auntie had sat in stolid silence like a Chinese peasant and now when he looked down at her citizenship paper, his former irritation returned and he protested with some petulance: "Oh, Wu Chow's Auntie! You didn't even pick up the right paper." He took the document from her and showed her where the strange name was written: Char Nyuk Tsin. But when he had read this name aloud to her, she said quietly and yet with great stubbornness, "I told the helpful man, 'Now that I am an American you must write on this paper my real name.'" And she climbed purposefully into the car, a small old woman who had made a great journey.