Hawaii

by James Michener

  Millions of years before, the rocks of which the mountains were constructed had been laid down on a flat shoreline, with alternate layers of impermeable cap rock and easily permeable conglomerate. Later, a general uptilting had occurred, standing these alternate layers upright, with their ends exposed to the ceaseless rains. For millions of years torrential cascades had seeped down through the permeable layers and deep into the recesses of the island, thus feeding the underground reservoirs which Wild Whip and his driller, Mr. Overpeck, had tapped some thirty-five years before. Now, when inquisitive Kamejiro drove his drill into the impermeable cap rock all was well; but when he got to the permeable conglomerate it was as if he had pushed his drill into solid water, and often the drill would be washed from his hands as the impounded torrents gushed out. Eight million gallons of unexpected water a day flooded the tunnel, and Kamejiro, working in the middle of it, was constantly soaked; and since the water was a uniform sixty-six degrees, he was frequently threatened with pneumonia.

  Wild Whip, watching him work, often thought: "He's the kind of man you could wish was an American."

  Of course, the phrase was meaningless, for both the Americans and the Japanese clearly understood that none of the latter could become citizens. The law forbade it, and one of the reasons why the Japanese consulate kept such close check on its nationals was that America had said plainly: "They are your people, not ours." For example, when Japanese working on the tunnel found their food inedible they trudged in to their consulate, as was proper, and made their protest directly to the Japanese government. This accomplished nothing, for the consulate officials came from a class in Japan that exploited workers far worse than anyone in Hawaii would dare to; therefore the officials never presented protests to men like Wild Whip Hoxworth. Indeed, they marveled that he treated his Japanese as well as he did. When the tunnel workers had made their speeches, the consulate men replied abruptly: "Get back to work and don't cause trouble."

  "But the food . . ."

  "Back to work!" the Japanese officials roared, and the men went back. Of course, when in desperation they went to Wild Whip himself, he took one taste of the food and bellowed, "Who in hell calls this suitable for human beings?" And the diet was improved ... just enough to forestall open rebellion.

  But there was one aspect of dynamiting in the Koolau Range that involved real danger, and that was when an apparently normal charge hung fire. For some such failures there were detectable reasons: a fuse might be faulty; or the exploding charger had not delivered a proper spark; or a connection had torn loose. It might seem that these defects should have been easy to correct, but there was always an outside chance that a true hang-fire existed: the fuse had been well lit and had started burning, but for some mysterious reason it had hesitated en route. At any moment it could resume its journey to the massive charge and any who happened to be investigating its momentary suspension would be killed.

  Whenever a hang-fire occurred, anywhere in the tunnel, men shouted, "Eh, Kamejiro! What you think?" And he hurried up to take charge.

  He had a feeling about dynamite. Men claimed he could think like a stick of TNT, and he seemed to know when to wait and when to go forward. So far he had seen four men killed as a result of ignoring his judgment, and in the later stages of drilling his word became final. If he said, "I'll look at the connection," men watched admiringly as he did so; but if he said, "Too much pilikia," everyone waited. Once he had held up operations for two hours, and in the end a thousand tons of basalt had suddenly been torn loose by a true hang-fire. Thanks to Kamejiro, no one was killed and that night one of the shaken workmen called from his hot bath: "Today, Mrs. Sakagawa, all Japan was proud of your husband!"

  When the last remaining fragment of basalt was pierced, blown apart by Kamejiro's final concentration of dynamite, Hawaii began to appreciate what Wild Whip had accomplished. Twenty-seven million gallons of water a day poured down to join the artesian supplies developed earlier, and it became possible to bring into cultivation thousands of acres that, had long lain arid and beyond hope. In the traditional pattern of Hawaii, the intelligence and dedication of one man had transformed a potential good into a realized one.

  At the final celebration of the first great tunnel through the mountains, a speakers' platform was erected on which the governor sat, and three judges, and military leaders, and Wild Whip Hoxworth. Florid speeches were made congratulating the wise engineers who had laid out the plans, and the brave bankers who had financed it, and the sturdy lunas who had supervised the gangs; but there were no Japanese to be seen. It was as if, when the plans were formulated and the money provided, the puka had dug itself. But late that afternoon Wild Whip, who had a feeling for these things, sought out stocky little Kamejiro Sakagawa as he was tearing down the hot bath on the rainy side, and he said to the dynamiter, "Kamejiro, what you do now?"

  "Maybe get one job dynamiter."

  "They're hard to get." Whip kicked at the muddy earth and asked, "You like to work for me again, Hanakai?"

  "Maybe stop Honolulu, maybe mo bettah."

  "I think so, too," Whip agreed. "Tell you what, Kamejiro. I could never have built this tunnel without you. If I'd thought about it, I'd a had you on the platform today. But I didn't and that's that. Now I have a little plot of land in Honolulu, big enough for a garden. I'm going to give it to you."

  "I don't want land," the little dynamiter said. "Pretty soon go back to Japan."

  "Maybe that's best," Whip agreed. "I'll do this. Instead of the land, I'll give you two hundred dollars. And if you ever want to go back Hanakai, let me know."

  So Kamejiro turned down land, which if he had taken it, would one day have been worth $200,000. In its place he accepted $200, but this transaction was not so silly as it sounds, for this $200 plus what he and his wife had saved gave them at last the full funds they needed for a return to Japan.

  They left the rainy hillside where they had worked so long and so miserably and turned joyously toward Honolulu and the offices of the Kyoto-maru, but when they got to the city they were immediately visited by officials from the consulate who were taking up a collection for the brave Imperial navy that had been fighting the Germans and a collection for the brave settlers who were going to the new colonies of Saipan and Yap. They were pounced on by Buddhist priests who were going to build a fine temple up Nuuanu. And Mr. Ishii had come over from Kauai to try his luck in Honolulu and needed a hundred and fifty dollars.

  "Kamejiro!” his wife pleaded. "Don't give that man any more money. He never pays it back."

  "Whenever I look at poor Ishii-san, I am reminded that I stole his legitimate wife, and all my happiness is founded on his misfortune," Kamejiro said softly. "If he needs the money, he must have it."

  So the return to Japan was momentarily delayed, and then Yoriko announced: "We are going to have another baby," and this time it was a boy, to be named Goro as planned. He was quickly followed by three brothers--Tadao in 1921, Minoru in 1922, and Shigeo in 1923--and the subtle bonds that tied the Sakagawas to Hawaii were more and more firmly tied, for the children, growing up in Hawaii, would speak English and laugh like Americans, and grow to prefer not rice but foods that came out of cans.

  WHEN Kamejiro Sakagawa finished his work in the tunnel, and when the money he had saved dribbled through his hard hands in one way or another, he hoped, vainly as it proved, that he might find a similar job as dynamiter, but none developed. He therefore took his wife and two children to the artesian plantation west of Honolulu, the original Malama Sugar, and there he went to work, twelve hours a day for seventy-seven cents a day.

  He was also given an old clapboard house twenty feet wide and fourteen feet deep, from which six square feet were cut for a porch. There was a sagging lean-to shed in which Yoriko did the cooking over an iron pan. The house stood on poles one foot high, providing an under space into which children could crawl on hot days. It was a dirty, cramped, unlovely living area, but fortunately it contained at the rear just enough
space for Kamejiro to erect a hot bath, so that in spite of the meager income the family was somewhat better off than the neighbors, who had to pay to use the Sakagawa bath.

  Furthermore, the family income was augmented by Mrs. Sakagawa, who worked in the sugar fields for sixty-one cents a day, leaving her children with neighbors. Each dusk there came a moment of pure joy when the family reconvened and the lively youngsters, their jet-black hair bobbed straight across their eyes, rushed out to meet their parents. But these moments of reunion were also apt to have overtones of confusion, for grudgingly the Sakagawas had to confess that they could not always understand what their children were saying. For example, one night when they asked in Japanese where a neighbor was, little Reiko-chan, a brilliant, limpid-eyed beauty, explained: "Him fadder pauhana konai," and her parents had to study the sentence, for him fadder was corrupted English, pauhana was Hawaiian for the end of work, and konai was good Japanese for has not come.

  It therefore became apparent to Kamejiro that if he intended returning his daughter to Japan, and he did, he was going to have a hard time finding her a decent Japanese husband if she could not speak the language any better than that, so he enrolled her in the Japanese school, where a teacher from Tokyo kept strict order. Over his head loomed a great sign, with characters which Kamejiro could not read but which the teacher, a frail young man, explained: "Loyalty to the emperor." Added the instructor: "Here we teach as in Japan. If your child does not learn, she will suffer the consequences."

  "You will teach her about the emperor and the greatness of Japan?" Kamejiro asked.

  "As if she were back in Hiroshima-ken," the teacher promised, and from the manner in which he banged his knuckles against the heads of misbehaving boys, Kamejiro felt assured that he had put his child into good hands.

  Actually, Reiko-chan required no discipline, for she learned both quickly and with joy. She was then the youngest child in school but also one of the ablest, and when she ran barefooted home at night, babbling in fine Japanese, Kamejiro felt proud, for she was learning to read and he could not.

  There were other aspects of his life at Malama Sugar about which he was not happy, and these centered upon money. It was more expensive to live on Oahu than it had been on Kauai. Yet his wages were lower. Rice, fish, seaweed and pickles had all gone up in price, yet there were now five children) to feed, and the boys ate like pigs. Clothes too were more expensive, and although Yoriko was frugal, she did need a new visiting dress now and then. One morning, as the sun was beginning to rise, Kamejiro watched his hard-working wife setting out with her hoe and it occurred to him: "She's been wearing the same skirt, the same dotted blouse, the same white cloth about her face and the same straw hat for five years. And they're all in rags."

  But when it came time for him to buy her a new outfit, he found that he did not have the money, and he realized that even with two adults working, the Sakagawa family was existing perilously close to the starvation level. He was therefore in a receptive frame of mind when an unusual visitor arrived at Malama Sugar. It was Mr. Ishii, who was now acting as traveling agent for the Japanese Federation of Labor, and his information was that after a series of talks with the big planters like Whipple Hoxworth, his organization was going to win decent wages for the Japanese.

  "Listen to this!” he whispered to a group of workmen with whom he met secretly. "We are asking for one dollar and twenty-five cents a day for men, ninety-five cents for wahines. Can you imagine how that will improve your living? The workday will be cut back to eight hours, and there will be bonuses in December if the year has been a good one. If you have to work on Sundays, overtime. And for the wahines, they'll be allowed to quit work two weeks before the baby is born."

  The men listened in awe as this vision of a new life dawned in the little hut, but before they had a chance to ascertain when all this was going to take place, a sentinel outside whistled, then ran up with frightening news: "Lunas! Lunas!”

  Four big Germans burst into the meeting place, grabbed little Mr. Ishii before he could escape, and hauled him out into the dusty yard. They manhandled him no more than necessary, being content to give him a scare with three or four good knocks, then kicked him onto the road leading back toward Honolulu. "Don't you come onto Malama Sugar with your radical ideas," they warned him. "Next time, plenty pilikia!"

  While two of the lunas made sure that the little agitator left the plantation, the other two returned to the room where the clandestine meeting had been held. "Nishimura, Sakagawa, Ito, Sakai, Suzuki," one of the lunas recited while the other wrote. "A fine way to treat Mr. Janders and Mr. Whipple. Whose house is this? Yours, Inoguchi?" The biggest luna grabbed Inoguchi by the shirt and held him up. "I'll remember who the traitor was," the luna said, staring at the workmen. With a snort of disgust he threw the man back among his fellows, and the two Germans stamped out. But at the gate they stopped and said ominously, "You men go to your homes. No more meetings, understand?"

  As Kamejiro left he whispered to Inoguchi, "Maybe a long time before we get what Ishii-san promised?"

  "I think so, too," Inoguchi agreed.

  From that night on, conditions at Malama Sugar grew increasingly tense. To everyone's surprise, little Mr. Ishii exhibited unforeseen reservoirs of heroism, for against really considerable odds, and in direct opposition to seven lunas, he managed time and again to slip back into the plantation to advise the men of how the negotiations were going. When he was caught, he was beat up, as he expected to be, and he lost one of his front teeth; but after twenty-two years of relative ineffectiveness in everything he attempted, he had at last stumbled upon an activity for which he was pre-eminently suited. He loved intrigue and rumor; he cherished the portrait of himself as a worker for the common good; so he came back again and again, until at last the lunas assembled all the field hands and said, "Anyone caught talking with the Bolshevik Ishii is going to be thrown out of his house and off the plantation. Is that clear?"

  But the Japanese had caught a vision of what Mr. Ishii was trying to do, and at great danger to themselves they continued to meet with him, and one day in January he told them gravely, and with the sadness that comes from seeing fine plans destroyed, "The managers will not listen to our demands. We shall have to strike."

  The next day Honolulu was marked by many pamphlets bearing the unmistakable touch of Mr. Ishii, his florid manner of expression and his hope: "Good men and ladies of Hawaii. We, the laborers who grow the sugar upon which you live, address you with humility and hope. Did you know, as you drive past our waving fields of cane, that the men who grow it receive only seventy-seven cents a day? On this money we raise our children and teach them good manners and teach them to be decent citizens. But on this money we also starve.

  "We love Hawaii and consider it a great privilege and pride to live under the Stars and Stripes, which stands for freedom and justice. We are happy to be part of the great sugar industry and to keep the plantations running profitably.

  "We love work. Thirty-five years ago when we first came to Hawaii the lands where we now work were covered with ohia and guava and wild grass. Day and night have we worked, cutting those parasites and burning the grass. Our work has made the plantations, but of course it is indisputable that we could not have succeeded were it not for the investments made by wealthy capitalists and the untiring efforts of the lunas and administrators. But Hawaii must not magnify the contributions of the capitalists and forget the equal contributions of the laborers who have served faithfully with sweat on their brows.

  "Look at the silent tombstones in every locality. They are the last emblems of Hawaii's pioneers in labor. Why should they die in poverty while others get rich from their labors? Why should hardworking men continue to get seventy-seven cents a day? The other day a plantation manager said, 'I think of field hands as I do jute bags. Buy them, use them, buy others.' We think of ourselves as human beings and as members of the great human family. We want $1.25 a day for an eight-hour day. And in the interes
ts of common humanity we deserve it."

  This extraordinary preamble to the workers' demands was received differently in four different quarters. When Kamejiro Sakagawa and his co-workers heard the flowery words read to them in Japanese, with lunas at hand to take down the names of everyone attending the meeting, Kamejiro listened with amazement that his friend Mr. Ishii should have caught so exactly the emotions that motivated the workers. With tears in his eyes he said, "Inoguchi-san? Have you ever heard a better piece of paper? He says that we are part of the great human family. Did you ever think of yourself that way before?"

  "All I think," Inoguchi-san replied, "is that there's going to be trouble."

  To his wife Yoriko, Kamejiro said, "When I heard Ishii-san's statement, I was glad for every dollar I ever loaned him. It looks as if we will get all we have asked for, because that is a very powerful bit of reasoning."

  His stolid wife was more of Inoguchi's turn of mind. "We had better get ready to go hungry," she warned. And that day the strike began.

  When the manifesto reached Wild Whip Hoxworth, the head of the planters' association gagged before he got to the end of it. "Mad Russian Bolshevism!" he bellowed. "Get the planters together!” When the leaders of the sugar industry were assembled, he went over the statement line by line. " 'We, the laborers,' " he read scornfully. "As if they had convened themselves into some kind of revolutionary tribunal. 'On this money we starve.' What a degrading horrible play to the emotions. 'Good men and ladies of Hawaii!' As if by appealing to them they could by-pass those of us responsible for wages. By God, gentlemen, this document strikes at the very roots of society. It's rampant, red, pillaging Russianism, and if there is any man in this room who breaks ranks to give those little yellow bastards an inch, I'll personally knock him down and kick his weak-livered guts in. Is that understood?"