Michener, James

by Hawaii

  In public parks, on the radio and on television Shigeo Sakagawa hammered home his dominant theme, and when citizens asked him if he was a radical, advocating the breaking up of landed estates the way they did in Russia, he kept his temper and replied, "No, I am a conservative English parliamentarian, trying to do in Hawaii what men like me accomplished in England one hundred years ago. Remember this. I am the conservative. It is the people who think that this problem can be endlessly postponed who are the radicals. Because their course leads to tragedy, mine to democracy."

  But at every rally somebody sooner or later heckled: "Aren't you a communist, too, like your brother Goro?"

  Shigeo had worked out a good answer to this question. He dropped his arms, looked off into space, and said quietly, "In any American election that's a fair question, and the voters have a right to an honest answer. I wonder in what form I can best give you my answer?" He seemed to be thinking, and after a moment, in a very relaxed voice he started speaking.

  "Is the man who asked that question old enough to remember the McKinley-Punahou game of 1938? It was in the last fifteen seconds of the game, if you'll remember, and Punahou was trailing by four points, 18-14. Then, from a rather rough scrimmage, Puna-hou's star back broke loose, and I can see him now dashing down the sideline . . . ten yards, twenty, forty. He was going to score a magnificent touchdown and win the game, and I can remember even to this day how thrilled I was to see that run, because that runner was my brother Tadao Sakagawa, the first ordinary Japanese ever to get into Punahou and one of the greatest stars they ever had.

  "But can you recall what happened next? From the McKinley players a tackle got up from one knee and started out like a fire engine after my brother, and although Tad could run fast, this McKinley man ran like the wind, and on the five-yard line, that

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  close mind you, this McKinley man brought my brother down and saved the game. You all know who he was. He was my other brother, Goro, the one who had wanted to get into Jefferson and couldn't.

  "Now the point of my story is this. Goro could have held back and let his brother Tad score the winning touchdown and be the biggest hero of the year, but he never wavered in his duty. He tackled his own brother on the five-yard line and saved the day. That's the way we Sakagawas were brought up by our parents. Duty, duty, duty.

  "But the more important point of my story is this. Do you know where the great halfback Tadao Sakagawa is now? Buried beneath a military cross in the Punchbowl. He gave his life for America. And where is his brother, Minoru Sakagawa? Buried beneath a military cross in the Punchbowl. He also gave his life for his country. That is also the kind of boys we Sakagawas are. Tough, resolute, uncompromising fighters.

  "I will tell you this. If my brother Goro Sakagawa was, as you charge, a communist, I would personally hound him out of the islands. I would never cease fighting him. I would tackle him down the way he tackled down Tadao, for I will make no compromise with communism."

  Then his voice would take on a harder tone as he continued: "But Goro Sakagawa is not a communist. He is a very fine labor leader, and the good he has done for the working people of Hawaii is beyond calculation. I am for such labor leaders, and I want that fact to be widely known. Goro and I are two edges of the same sword, he in labor, I in politics. We are cutting away old and unfair practices. We are slashing at the relics of feudalism."

  In conclusion his voice changed to one of exhortation: "And neither Goro nor I will stop, because we can remember the day our father took us to the old plantation camp on Kauai and showed us the barracks where the lunas used to tramp through with whips and lash the field hands, and we swore that that would stop. Now, sir, you who asked the question about communism, I want to ask you two questions in return: where were you when, my brothers Minoru and Tadao were giving their lives for American democracy? What have you done comparable to what Goro and I have done to clean up the democracy they saved? Won't you please come up to see me after the rally, and if you have done half as much as we have done, I want to embrace you as a damned good American, because, brother, you are certainly not a communist, nor am I."

  The audience always appkuded madly at this point, and when Black Jim McLafferty first heard the reply he cried, "My God, we've got to plant somebody in the audience to ask that question every night. I never heard a better answer. Demagoguery at its best, and of course you know what they call demagoguery at its best? Oratory." But Shig refused to have anybody planted, because he was afraid that that might cut the edge of his conviction, because his answer had this merit: on more than half the occasions at which he used it, the

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  questioner did come up afterwards to talk about old army days or the unhappy plantation experiences of his family, so that Shig's reply actually converted hecklers into supporters, which, as McLafferty pointed out, "is about the best you can expect of any answer."

  But one thing that McLafferty said rankled in Shig's memory: the word demagoguery. "Am I guilty of that?" he asked himself, and as he analyzed each portion of his well-known reply; he could explain everything until he got to the part about the lunas, and then he always stumbled. "What actually happened?" he asked himself. "One day, one 'luna hit my father one time. The first time Pop told about it, he told the truth. 'Here is where the luna hit me that day.' Then our family constructed the legend: 'Here is where the lunas used to beat us.' And finally it comes out: 'Here is where the lunas used to beat all the Japanese.'" And he saw clearly that this conversion of the truth was indeed demagoguery of the worst sort, because it kept alive community hatreds, which, even if they had been legitimately founded were better dead in the graves of memory; but the speech did get votes, and one night after a particularly heated rally he put the problem frankly to Black Jim. "That part about the lunas beating the Japanese? Do you think I ought to keep saying that?"

  Black Jim was tooling his old Pontiac down Kapiolani Boulevard and for some time said nothing. Then grudgingly he admitted, "It gets votes."

  "What I asked was, What do you think of it?'" Shig pressed.

  "Well, when I hear it coming, I usually go out in the alley," Black Jim confessed. "Just in case I have to vomit." So Shig dropped that part of his demagoguery, but he noticed that when Goro unveiled the murals at his new labor headquarters, there was the plantation camp with lunas slashing their way through the laborers with bull whips, and Shigeo thought: "This is the greatest evil that grows out of a wrong act. Somebody always remembers it ... in an evil way."

  When the campaign reached its height, complicated by the trial of the communists, Shigeo received in his office a visitor he had never heard of and whose existence surprised him. It was a young haole woman, twenty-six years old and marked by^a pallid beauty. She said nervously, "My name is Noelani Hale Janders. I'm divorced but I haven't taken back my maiden name. I like what you've been saying on the radio, and I wish to work in your campaign."

  "What was the name again?" Shig asked.

  "Noelani Hale is my real name," she explained.

  "What Hale is that?" Shig asked.

  "Hoxworth Hale is my father."

  "Sit down," Shig said weakly. Wheni he had caught control of himself he pointed out, "Are you sure you've heard what I've been saying, Mrs. Hale?"

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  "It's Mrs. Janders," Noekni said. "Didn't you read about my divorce? It was rather messy."

  "I didn't," Shig apologized.

  "I understand very well what you're saying, Senator Sakagawa, and your views coincide with my own."

  "But have you heard what I said about land reform?" he pressed.

  "That's what we're talking about," Noelani said in her precise Bostonian accent.

  "You would hurt your father very much if you were active in my campaign," Shigeo warned. "As a matter of fact, you would probably hurt me, too."

  "I studied politics at Wellesley," she replied firmly.

  "Were you at Wellesley?" he a
sked.

  "While you were at Harvard," she said. "Amy Fukugawa pointed you out one day, at the symphony."

  "What's Amy doing?" he asked.

  "She married a Chinese boy. Both their parents disowned them, so they're very happy in New York. He's a lawyer."

  "Do you understand what I'm saying about land reform, Mrs. Janders? How what I say will affect your father, and his friends?"

  "I want to know just one thing," Noelani said. "When you speak of breaking up the big estates . . ."

  "I'm not sure I've ever used that phraseology," he corrected. "I say that the big estates must not be allowed to hold out of productive use the land they are not using for constructive agriculture."

  Noekni sighed with relief and said, "But under your system would you permit lands that are being used legitimately for sugar

  and pineapple some kind of preferential treatment?" "Look, Mrs. Janders," Shig cried. "Apparently I haven't made my-

  self clear on this point."

  "You haven't," she said, "and thafs why I wanted to help, because I knew you were too smart not to have thought about the fundamental problem of knd in Hawaii."

  "What problem do you mean?" the expert asked.

  She picked up two books and placed them on the desk. "Let's call this book Hawaii," she said, "and this one California. Now our problem is to get all the things we need, like food and building materials and luxuries, from California out here to Hawaii, and also to pay for them after we get them here. Let's call this inkwell our ship. We can fill it up in California every day of the year and haul to Hawaii the things we need. But how are we going to pay for them? And what is the ship going to carry back from Hawaii to California, so that it won't have to go back empty, which would double the freight costs on everything?"

  She paused, and Shigeo plopped the inkwell down on the Hawaii book, saying, "I know very well that the ship has got to take back some bulk crop like sugar or pineapple. The sale of agricultural products provides the money on which we live. And the freight that

  sugar and pineapple pay going to the mainland helps pay the freight of food and lumber coming this way. I know that."

  "You certainly haven't expkined it to the people," Noelani said critically. "Because the important point is this. You fighting young Japanese have got to reassure Hawaii that legitimate farm lands will be protected for the welfare of everybody. As to the lands that have been hiding along the edges of the legitimate farms, held there for tax-free speculation, I think even, my father knows they must be sold off to the people."

  "You spoke of helping," Shig said. "What did you have in mind?"

  "I'd like to help you put into words, for the radio and television, just what we've been talking about. It will insure your election."

  "But why should Hoxworth Hale's daughter want to help a Japanese get elected?" Shig asked suspiciously.

  "Because I love these islands, Senator. My people were here long before yours arrived, so I am naturally concerned about what happens to Hawaii."

  "You ought to be a Republican," Shig said.

  "For the time being, they're worn out," Noelani replied. "I've been living a long time with worn-out people, so I'm ready to accept new ideas."

  Shig felt certain that when. Hoxworth Hale saw his daughter's car with its bright-red bumper-banner, "Please Re-elect Senator Shigeo Sakagawa" the commander of The Fort would explode, but instead a most unexpected event transpired, for one afternoon Hong Kong Kee strolled into the McLafferty and Sakagawa offices and sat down with Shig. "I am in lots of trouble if my Republican friends see me down here," the Chinese said.

  "What's up?" Shig inquired.

  "I have a big surprise for you, Shigeo," Hong Kong confided.

  "Trouble?" Shig asked, for in an election period every visitor brings anxiety.

  "In a way," Hong Kong confessed. "Hoxworth Hale and his boys commissioned me to ask you how about coming on the board of Whipple Oil Imports, Incorporated. They figure a smart young Japanese on the board will help them sell more to Japanese customers."

  Shig was quite unprepared for such a suggestion and studied Hong Kong carefully. He liked the shrewd Chinese, and appreciated what he had done for the Sakagawas, never mind the motives. But he was appalled that Hong Kong had consented to be used so crudely by The Fort in an attempt at political blackmail, and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself when he replied, coldly, "The Fort cannot buy me off on this land-reform business, and you can tell them so."

  Hong Kong instantly realized the unfavorable position he appeared to be in, but instead of showing his embarrassment he said quietly, "Nobody at The Fort wants you, Shigeo, if your price is no higher

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  than that. They know you're going to fight this land deal through to a conclusion. But what you don't know is, they're not too worried. They know it's inevitable."

  "So they offer me a trivial directorship at such a time! It's contemptible."

  "No, Shigeo, it's sensible. Two years ago they asked me to nominate some promising young Japanese. I said Shigeo. Last year they asked again. I said Shigeo. This is not a hasty idea. The Fort has had you in mind for a long time."

  "I'd be false to my people if I joined up with their principal enemy," Shig said stubbornly.

  "Maybe when you get elected one more time, Shigeo, you will stop talking about 'my people.' All the people in Hawaii are your people, and you better start thinking that way."

  "If I took a job from The Fort, every Japanese in Hawaii would say I had turned traitor," Shig replied truthfully.

  'Til tell you this, Shigeo," the quick-minded Chinese corrected. "Until the time comes when you accept a job with The Fort, on your own terms, you are a traitor to your people. The whole purpose of you young Japanese getting elected to office, and you know how strong I work for you, is to bring you into the full society of Hawaii. You've got to get on the boards. You've got to get appointed trustees for the big estates."

  "Trustees?" Shig laughed. "After what I've been shouting about the estates?"

  "Exactly," Hong Kong replied. "Because if you show yourself interested, before the year ends you'll be suggested as a trustee."

  "By whom?" the young senator asked contemptuously.

  "By Hoxworth Hale and me," Hong Kong snapped. And as the young Japanese fell silent, the Chinese banker explained his view of Hawaii. He said: "The haoles are smarter than I used to think, Shigeo. First they worked the Hawaiians, and threw them out. Then they brought in my grandmother, and threw her out. Then they got your father, and dropped him when the Filipinos looked better. They always pick the winner, these haoles, and I respect them for it.

  "So I work hard and show them I can run real estate better than they can, and they make me a partner. Other educated Chinese are breaking in, too. If you smart young Japanese don't pretty soon start joining up in the real running of Hawaii, it only means you aren't clever enough for anybody to want you. Getting elected is the easy part, Shigeo, because you can rely upon stupid people to do that for you, but getting onto the boards, and running the schools, and directing the trusts is the real test. Because there you have to be selected by the smartest people in Hawaii. Shigeo, I want you to join this board."

  The young Japanese thought for a long time. If he were to join, he would be a spiritual traitor to his family and to his class. He could no longer say to his Japanese friends, "It was in the fields of Kauai that the lunas used to horsewhip our fathers. Well, those

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  days are past." He would lose the sweet solidarity that he felt when he and GOTO and the other young Japanese swore: "We are as good as the haoles." He would lose so much that had kept him fighting.

  He temporized: "Hong Kong, you must know that no matter what The Fort offers me, I'm still going to fight for this land reform."

  "Damn it!" Hong Kong cried. "It's because you're going to fight for it that they want you. They know you're right, Shigeo."

 
"All right!" the young senator snapped. "Tell them that after the election I'll join."

  "After the election it will have no moral force," Hong Kong pleaded.

  "After the election," Shigeo repeated, and he applied himself with greater dedication to the campaign that was to alter life in Hawaii, for he and Black Jim McLafferty had whipped together a sterling slate of young Japanese veterans. All the boys were mainland-educated. Some appeared on the hustings lacking arms that had been lost in Italy or legs shot off in France, and if they had so desired, they could have appeared with their chests covered with medals. In contrast to former elections, the serious young men spoke on issues, and pressed home Senator Shigeo Sakagawa's figures on land reform. There was great excitement in the air, as if this October were an intellectual April with ideas germinating.

  One night Noelani Janders said, as she drove Shigeo home from four outdoor rallies, "For a moment tonight, Shig, I had the fleeting sensation that we were going to win control of both the house and the senate. There's a real chance that a hell of a lot of you Japanese are going to be elected. It's terribly exciting."

  Then the campaign, at least so far as Shigeo Sakagawa was concerned, fell completely apart, because one day without any previous announcement, old Kamejiro and his stooped wife climbed down off a Japanese freighter, took a bus out to Kakaako, and announced: "We have decided to live in America."