The Aloha Spirit

by Linda Ulleseit

  A rumpled letter arrived from Paul. Guilt stabbed Dolores. It had never occurred to her to call him. Well, she’d been busy surviving an attack.

  Dear Dolores,

  I hope this letter finds you whole. The attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation, and now we are at war. I hope you are weathering it well.

  He was so impersonal. She marveled at his disconnection. He knew the family. He knew Alberto worked at Pearl Harbor and the family all lived scattered throughout Honolulu. Yet he didn’t ask about any of them.

  You must be scared. I hear many people are leaving the island. If you want to do so, you, Manolo, and the girls are welcome to stay with us until you can get on your feet.

  Aloha,

  Paul

  Stay with him? And Sofia and baby Dolores? Dolores felt relief and trepidation at the same time. It was nice to have somewhere to go, but even more frightening to think of going. The idea remained in her head though. Every time Manolo didn’t come home, she thought about what it might be like in California. When fear overcame her, Dolores thought of California as a refuge, but Ruth wouldn’t be there. Nor would Grandma Jessie. Could she lose her extended family to save her girls? Honolulu no longer felt safe.

  They had reason to be afraid. On December 15, a Japanese submarine shelled Kahului Harbor on Maui. Dolores held her girls tight and prayed. She put rabbit’s feet in their pockets and followed all Grandma Jessie’s other superstitions for luck. She gave them each a birthstone necklace to wear and made them wear their clothes inside out. Carmen balked but decided she didn’t care since the military governor had cancelled school. Dolores prayed their good luck would not run out.

  Alberto tramped back and forth to work in silence. He worked hard and came home exhausted. Dolores told him he couldn’t repair every ship in the harbor by himself, but her words fell on deaf ears. Manolo went out to gather news, but she was not interested in the news he found at the places he frequented. Good thing, since he came home drunk or not at all.

  Christmas arrived just three weeks after the attack. By then, law required all islanders over six years old be fingerprinted for ID cards. Dolores looked at precious Betty, five years old and still with chubby baby cheeks, and wondered how anyone could suspect her of anything. The military declared Christmas Day a workday, and no one complained. Dolores vowed to make this a normal holiday for her girls. Rumors said crates of bikes and wagons and dolls were sitting on the docks in San Francisco, pushed aside by war supplies headed to the islands. That meant nothing to Dolores since she couldn’t afford those things. She altered two of Rosa’s dresses for Carmen and Betty. At Kress, she bought them each a small toy. Remembering her first caramel candy, Dolores stopped in at Benson-Smith to buy candies for the girls. All over Fort Street people fought over food and sundries that were fast disappearing from store shelves. The scarcity of sweets in Benson-Smith’s display case was another blatant reminder war had arrived.

  This year Dolores wanted to keep her small family close. She began cooking dinner after breakfast, and soon she could smell the kālua pork all over the house. They decorated their tree together. Carmen, as the oldest, put the most precious glass ornaments on the top branches. Dolores helped Betty hang wooden ornaments on the lower branches. As they stepped back to admire it, Manolo came home with a crash of the door and thump of boots. His too-loud voice made Dolores wince.

  “Ah, here are my beautiful girls! Stopped for an eggnog with some buddies on the way home. Just one, no need to run to Alberto and complain now.” His voice was jovial, as if he were relating events from his day. “Mele Kalikimaka, my darlings.”

  “Mele Kalikimaka, Papa!” they chorused, and ran to him for a hug.

  Dolores took time to force a smile on her face. He noticed. He focused on the girls, but his brow turned up at her, and his mouth down. He looked around the decorated room and smelled the pork cooking. “Aren’t we going to Mother’s?”

  “I told you I wanted to have a holiday with just us this year. We’re over there every day. Just the four of us tonight.” Dolores smiled and headed to the kitchen to serve the meal. Her heart hammered and her hands shook.

  “You never told me that! The family is always together on Christmas Day!” He didn’t bother to follow her into the kitchen but just raised his voice.

  Dolores reflected on how foolish it had been to have dinner here alone. At the time, she’d had no guarantee her husband would join them. She had wanted to try it out, see what life with just herself and the girls would be like. Dolores sliced the pork and piled it on a platter. With the platter in one hand and a bowl of poke in the other, she sailed into the dining room as if hers was the happiest of families on the happiest of days. Dolores never could fool him.

  He greeted her just inside the door and slapped the platter out of her hands. It crashed to the floor. “You can’t cook kālua pig in an oven,” he snarled. “It needs to be done underground in an imu.”

  Dolores set the poke on the table and picked pieces of pork off her dress. The girls examined the wrapped presents left for them by Kanakaloka, the Hawaiian Santa, that he’d brought after his canoe arrived at Waikiki. They hadn’t heard the crash of the platter. Maybe they were used to it. Dolores narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “Dinner will be delayed. I need to heat some leftovers.”

  “I’m going to my mother’s.” Manolo slammed the door behind him and staggered across the street.

  With the world full of horror near and far, it was ever more important to preserve the spirit of Christmas. Dolores returned to the kitchen for leftover Portuguese sausage and pao duce. She even brought the haupia, coconut milk dessert. Dessert for dinner improved anyone’s day. The three of them sang Christmas songs and ate all the dessert. Then it was time to see what Kanakaloka had brought them. Dolores sat on the couch watching her girls laugh and tear open packages.

  “Carmen, your new dress is a pretty blue,” Betty told her. Dolores smiled at the way Betty took Rosa’s job when her cousin wasn’t there.

  “Look what I’ve found!” Carmen called. She held out the caramel candy for her sister.

  The candy stopped their chatter, and they crawled up on the couch. Carmen and Betty flanked their mother. Full of sweets, their cheeks rosy red, they laid their sticky hands on Dolores and fell asleep. She cuddled them protectively. Dolores had no idea what the future held. She couldn’t even see past tomorrow.

  The illumination in the room changed as the sun turned orange and set. She should get up and draw the blackout curtains, douse the candles on the tree, but she couldn’t bear to dislodge the girls. Half dreaming, she thought about the families she had known.

  Her parents and brother she remembered fondly through the fog of time. The pain of their leaving didn’t ache as much as it had when she was seven. Dolores knew her mama had loved her like she loved her own little girls. Papa had always said, “Familia es todo.”

  Kanoa and Noelani’s children were grown and gone. All they had was each other and the endless work. They raised their children strong, all of them, strong enough to fly away and be on their own. Dolores wondered if they always knew that meant they’d be alone. No wonder Noelani had said, “Everyone is ‘ohana.”

  Peter and Maria were like one person, but Dolores had never felt left out. They added her to their love as they added their four boys. Peter planned to retire from the army as soon as he could. It seemed he had a new appreciation for family in the wake of so much loss. Maria kept aloha in her heart.

  Grandma Jessie was fifty-eight years old. Single-handedly, she’d managed a clan of five children, their spouses, and grandchildren. Her capacity for love was endless. More than anyone, she had taught Dolores that family just is. You didn’t choose it or grow it. Most of the time you just dealt with it. The challenge lay in doing it with love, with patience and aloha, learning to love a person without loving everything they did.

  Finally, Dolores’s little circle, here in her arms. Manolo came and went like the trade winds.
She didn’t include him in her thoughts of family. More and more he lived outside family altogether. Alberto didn’t fit in this circle either. He was family, a good friend, but not part of Dolores’s circle. Her responsibility was here in her arms. It was her job to guarantee the safety of these girls, to teach them to find the aloha spirit for themselves.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Honolulu 1942

  When the Japanese captured Manila just after the new year, Dolores thought of the mothers in the Philippines who tried to protect their children, and she held her own girls tight as she prayed the enemy wouldn’t come back to O‘ahu. The law said they had to be home by six in the evening and couldn’t leave before six in the morning. Lights had to be out during that time. Although fear thickened in her throat and curdled her stomach, Dolores locked it inside to avoid scaring the girls. Mothers throughout time had done so, and mothers throughout the world did so now as war spread.

  Martial law kept Honolulu safe, but it also brought Manolo home early. She held her breath when the door opened each night and he staggered through.

  “Dolores!” he called.

  She could tell from his tone whether he was staggering from drink or exhaustion.

  “Welcome home.” She always greeted him with a smile. Sometimes, though, she’d shoo the girls off to wash up before dinner.

  Just after her birthday, the announcer said members of the Hawai‘i Territorial Guard were being released.

  “Released?” Dolores asked her husband. “They were just formed after the attack. Why disband now?”

  A short laugh punctuated his sarcasm. “They aren’t disbanding, just letting the nisei guards go.”

  She ignored his tone. “These are educated men, ROTC from the University of Hawai‘i.”

  “I know.” Now he sounded sad. “But their parents were born in Japan. All three of Hiro’s older brothers are in the Guard.”

  “What will they do now?” Yoshiko was already missing Hiro, at the language school in San Francisco. Now her other three sons would be released from a position of honor in the Territorial Guard.

  Manolo shook his head. “Some people want to send all the Japanese to the mainland.”

  “All of them?” One third of the island was Japanese. Her mind struggled to imagine Honolulu without its Japanese residents.

  Later that week, Governor Emmons formed a labor battalion of all nisei soldiers, volunteers who would aid the military effort however they could. It seemed an acceptable compromise, and Manolo reported that Hiro’s brothers all joined.

  “But it’s a volunteer battalion, right?” Dolores asked, frowning.

  “It’s a way they can save face and help with the war effort.”

  Manolo seemed convinced, but she felt sorry for Yoshiko and her family.

  EVEN in late February, the sun was still up at six in the evening. When Manolo barely made it through the door by curfew, she frowned at him. “Where have you been? Ruth took the girls over to Grandma Jessie’s already.” Actually, she’d sent them early, knowing what he was like when he was home late.

  “Aw, Dolores, I just had a few drinks with the guys after work.” He slumped on the couch and turned on the radio. War, war, and more war blared through its speakers.

  “Do we have to listen to that now? Grandma Jessie is expecting us for dinner.”

  Manolo took off his hat and tossed it on the coffee table. He leaned his head back against the couch, looked at the ceiling, and didn’t say anything.

  Dolores went into the kitchen. She could make sandwiches for dinner if she must. She rummaged for bread, cheese, meat, and mayonnaise.

  “I thought you said my mother was expecting us.”

  She jumped, not having heard him approach. “She is. Are you ready to go?”

  “Not with you in that apron.” His tone and gesture held a great deal of anger.

  “I can take it off.” She hurried to do so and grabbed her purse. “See? I’m ready.”

  He picked up his hat and opened the door. He waved her ahead with a curt nod. She forced herself to smile. Then, when he was behind her and she couldn’t see his face, he suggested a picnic at Kapi‘olani Park.

  “Let’s make it special for the girls,” he said.

  She turned to him in consternation and searched his face for a trap. His eyes were clear, and they sparkled like they had when they first married. Dolores’s heart fluttered free of its anxious cage. She needed to believe the simplicity of his words instead of looking for underlying emotion. “Wonderful idea. I’ll make a chocolate cake.”

  The next day she used some of their sugar to make a tiny cake. Dolores had no idea when sugar would be available again in the store, but this was an important occasion. She put it on a tin plate and covered it with waxed paper. After wrapping it all in white butcher paper, Dolores was confident it would arrive intact at the park. Manolo made a mountain of sandwiches from sliced ham in the refrigerator. Dolores made bread and butter sandwiches for the girls. She filled a thermos with coffee for herself and Manolo and another one of lemonade for the girls. A basket of mangoes completed their lunch.

  She slipped into the car next to her husband, and her daughters scrambled into the back seat. Before they said anything, Manolo told them, “Guess what? We’re going to the park for a picnic!”

  They bounced on the seat. “Picnic!”

  They found a perfect spot in the shade of a banyan tree that must have been there when King Kalakaua created the park over seventy years earlier. The Hawaiian sun shone high in the sky, but a refreshing, almost-March breeze blew off the sea. Betty grabbed Carmen’s hand, and they ran across the grass toward the sandy beach. Clear blue ocean waves crashed, and Carmen screamed with delight. Dolores spread an old blanket on the ground and laid out the lunch. Manolo started with the cake. She playfully chastised him, but the day was too beautiful to be angry. Or fearful. Diamond Head watched over them as it always had. Nowhere could she see bombs or Japanese planes. As long as they sat facing the ocean, they couldn’t see the barbed wire installed on the beach by the US military after the Pearl Harbor attack. The tension inside her eased.

  “We should make a habit of doing this more,” Manolo said as he watched Dolores with a smile.

  “It’s good for the girls,” she said, and turned to the ocean. “Look at Carmen splashing her sister.”

  “They’re good girls.”

  It was the best compliment in a long time.

  They returned home happy, sandy, and tired. Dolores helped the girls into bed and returned to the living room. Manolo sat beside the radio with an open bottle of Primo beer.

  “Where did you get that?”

  He looked at her and took a long sip. “Governor repealed the law against liquor sales yesterday. We have to ration it though, we can only buy a case a week.”

  She shook her head. “A case a week.” The law hadn’t slowed Manolo down. He always found plenty to drink, as did his friends. She turned away and picked up her mending to do in the bedroom. She’d pour out his beer tomorrow morning before he got up.

  Danger didn’t only exist in the skies over Pearl Harbor. It lived much closer to home, in her own house. Manolo would sit on the couch and drink beer until he fell asleep or until something on the radio sent him into a rage. She was a fool to believe he would keep the family safe, and she was even more a fool to believe she could do it alone.

  ON another day, they drove up to Pali Lookout, atop the Koolau Range. Dolores stood at the edge and looked out over the windward coast of O‘ahu as if she were a chieftain of old, watching for approaching enemies. The wind pushed against her as if trying to keep her from falling.

  “In the old days enemies would come by canoe,” Manolo said, echoing her thoughts.

  Carmen stood well back, holding her sister’s hand. “Mama?”

  “She’s right at the edge, Carmen,” Betty said.

  “Mama, please come away,” Carmen begged.

  Neither of them liked the winds that howled
and pushed against them. Manolo laughed at the wind, and the sound echoed over the canyon. Dolores remembered that laugh from the days of surfing at Hanauma Bay before they married. It brought back memories of a reckless young couple without a care in the world. Before marriage and children. Before the war. Before drinking.

  “This would have been a good place to see the Japanese coming,” Manolo said, looking out over Kaneohe Bay past Coconut Island.

  “Wouldn’t seeing them on their way be as frightening as seeing the actual attack?”

  “No, the attack was worse. Our view from Punch Bowl was the best on island,” he said, tone dry. He looked away from the view to his wife, he said, “You were worried for Alberto that day.”

  “We all were.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully and started to say something, but Carmen’s scream whipped their heads around and flung unsaid words out over the cliff. Betty had worked her hand out of Carmen’s grip and was walking toward the cliff edge. “Mama!” Carmen screamed again, her face tortured as her sightless eyes searched for her sister.

  Manolo leaped for his youngest, and Dolores hastened to hold their eldest. “Hush, darling, Betty’s fine. Papa has her.”

  Sobs wracked the girl. “I’m a bad big sister. I should have had her.”

  “You did have hold of her, Carmen. She was determined to pull free. You did nothing wrong.”

  Dolores looked up at Manolo, still holding Betty in his arms, for verification. He disappointed her.

  “I told you she’s too young for that responsibility.” A scowl marred his face.

  “She’s very responsible,” Dolores protested.

  “Get in the car.” He wouldn’t hear it. He didn’t hear anything he didn’t want to.

  On the way home, Dolores played the incident over and over in her head. She would have been able to get to Betty if Manolo hadn’t been there. And she wouldn’t have humiliated Carmen in the process.