Hawaii

by James Michener

  "Broke!" Kamejiro cried in anguish. "Broke!" He did not know the word himself, but he was outraged that his son should have misused it. He began beating him about the shoulders, crying, "How many times have I told you not to say broke? You stupid, stupid boy!” And he continued hammering his son, not realizing that if it had not been the word broke it would have been some other, for the children of Japanese men who dug out privies were not intended to enter Jefferson.

  IN 1936 Kamejiro Sakagawa faced a most difficult decision, for it became apparent that his grand design of educating five children from kindergarten through graduate school could not be attained. The hard-working family simply did not have the money to keep going. It was therefore necessary that some, at least, of the children quit school and go to work, and discussions as to the various courses open to the Sakagawas kept the family awake many nights.

  The fault was not Kamejiro's. He would have been able to maintain the four boys in school and at the same time permit Reiko-chan to begin her university course except that news from China was increasingly bad. Time after time either the priest at the language school or the consular officials reported to the Japanese community that the emperor was facing the gravest crisis in Japanese history. "This sacred man," the priest intoned, "tries to sleep at night with the burden of all Japan on his shoulders. The very least you can do is to support our armies in their victorious march across China." The armies were always on the verge of victory, and certainly the Japanese newsreels showed the capture of one new province each week, but the Japanese forces never seemed to get anywhere, and in August of that year the consular official made a very blunt statement: "I want fifty thousand dollars sent from these islands to help save the Japanese army."

  The Sakagawas contributed seventy of those dollars and that night assembled the family. "Reiko-chan cannot go to college," Kamejiro said bluntly. The brilliant little girl, president of the girls' club at McKinley and an honor student, sat primly with her hands in her lap. As a good Japanese daughter she said nothing, but Goro did. "She knows more than any of us. She's got to go to college. Then she can become a teacher and help pay our way."

  "Girls get married," Kamejiro rationalized quietly. "Pretty girls get married right away, and the education and income are lost."

  "She could promise not to get married," Goro suggested.

  "It is boys who must be educated," Kamejiro pointed out, "though why both you and Tadao failed to get yourselves into Jefferson I cannot understand. Are you stupid? Why don't you learn to speak English right?" he fumed in Japanese.

  "Please," the gentle girl begged, "you've seen that only the sons of people the plantation leaders like get into the good schools."

  Kamejiro turned to look at his daughter. The idea she had suggested was startling to him and repugnant. "Is that right?" he asked.

  "Of course it's right," Reiko-chan replied. "And Minoru and Shigeo won't get in, either."

  "Nothing wrong with McKinley," Goro snapped, defending the wonderful rabbit-warren of a school where Orientals and Portuguese and indigent haoles went. It was a comfortable, congenial school, arrogant in its use of pidgin even in classrooms, and many of the islands' political leaders graduated from it, even if none of the business tycoons did. A boy could get his jaw broken at McKinley for speaking good English, but he could also get a good education, for the school always contained dedicated teachers who loved to see brilliant boys like Goro prosper.

  "Forget McKinley," Kamejiro told his children. "What kind of job can Reiko-chan get that will bring in the most money?"

  "Let her work for three years, then Tadao and I can get jobs," Goro suggested, "and she can go on to the university."

  "No," Kamejiro corrected. "I have noticed that if boys stop, they never go back. Reiko-chan must work from now on."

  It was at this point that the quiet girl almost sobbed, and her brothers saw the involuntary contraction of her shoulders. Goro, a big husky boy, larger than his father, went to his sister's chair and put his hand on her arm. "Pop's right," he said in English. "You'll get married. Pretty girl like you."

  "We speak in Japanese!" Kamejiro rebuked. "Sit down. Now what kind of job?"

  "I could be a typist," Reiko suggested.

  "They pay nothing for Japanese typists," Kamejiro replied.

  "Could she work for a doctor?" Tadao asked. He was a slim, wiry boy, taller than Goro but not nearly so rugged. "That's good pay."

  "She's got to have training, and we have no money," Kamejiro replied. He waited for a moment, almost afraid to discuss openly what was in his mind. Then he swallowed and said, "I was talking with Ishii-san and he said . . ."

  "Please, Father!" the boys interrupted. "Not Ishii-san! If you listen to what he says . . ."

  "Ishii-san's a fool," Reiko laughed. "Everyone knows that."

  "This family is indebted to Ishii-san," Kamejiro said forcefully. He often used this phrase, but he never explained to the children why they were indebted to the curious little man whose ideas got stranger each year. "And Ishii-san pointed out that the easiest way for a Japanese to make lots of money is ..." He paused dramatically.

  "Stealing!" Goro joked in English. His father knew something irreverent had been said, but not what, so he ignored his son.

  "Ishii-san is going to lend me the money," Kamejiro explained with nervous excitement, "and I am going to open a small barbershop on Hotel Street where the sailors are. And all the chairs will have girl barbers."

  Slowly, as if gripped by a nameless horror, the four boys turned to look at their pretty sister. She sat apart, watching her mother, who was washing rice, but in her silence the color left her cheeks, for she understood that her immediate destiny was not the university or nursing or stenography; she was going to be a lady barber. She knew that there was already one shop of lady barbers on Hotel Street, and men flocked in and whoever owned the shop was making a lot of money, and the girls were getting tips. "But who are the girls?" Reiko thought mutely. "They have hardly been through grammar school."

  "So I have asked Sakai-san if he would allow his daughter Chizuko to work for me," Kamejiro reported, exuding hope, "and he said yes, if I watch her closely and prevent her from becoming familiar with strange men. And Rumiko Hasegawa will work with us too, so that with three chairs and with me to sweep up and shine shoes, we ought to do very well."

  Unexpectedly, Goro threw his arms on the table and began to weep. When his father asked, "Now what's wrong?" the sixteen-year-old boy mumbled, "Reiko-chan is the best one of us all."

  "Then she will be willing to help her brothers get their education," Kamejiro said quietly.

  Now the mother, from her comer where she was preparing food, spoke, and she observed: "It is the duty of a Japanese girl to help her family. I helped mine when I was young, and it made me a better wife. If Reiko-chan works hard and earns her own money, she will appreciate it more when her husband gives her some to spend on her children. It is her duty."

  "But a lady barber!" Goro cried through his sobs.

  "As a barber she will earn more money," his mother replied.

  Goro rushed to his sister and embraced her. "When I become a lawyer and make a million dollars," he said in rapid English, "it will all be yours." The tears coursed down his face. Then Tadao, who was doing exceptionally well in school, but not so well as his sister had done in the same classes, began to weep, and the two younger boys, who knew how their sister had dreamed of becoming a teacher, sobbed. This was too much for Kamejiro, whose cruel duty it had been to make this decision, and he began to find tears splashing down his cheeks.

  Only Mrs. Sakagawa did not cry. "It is her duty," she assured her trembling menfolk, but then she saw the tears in her lovely daughter's eyes, and she could no longer hide the fact that duty is often too terrible to bear. Gathering her child to her bosom, she wept.

  Kamejiro Sakagawa's barbershop was an immense success. It opened just as American military installations in Hawaii were beginning to boom, so that navy
men from Pearl Harbor and army boys from Schofield Barracks crowded into Hotel Street to get tattooed by local artists and shaved by lady barbers. But the principal reason for Kamejiro's prosperity was the crystal-like beauty of the three Japanese girls who staffed his chairs. They were olive-skinned, dark-haired, soft-eyed young ladies who looked especially appealing in crisp white uniforms which they delighted in keeping clean. Men often dropped by just for an extra trim to watch the girls, for there was the double excitement of a lady barber who was also a Japanese. Before long, regular customers were begging the pretty girls for dates.

  That was where Kamejiro came in. Early in the life of his barbershop he had taught his girls how to stab with their scissors fresh customers who were trying to feel their legs. He also showed them that one of the best ways to handle difficult suitors was to push a hot towel in the man's face just as he was making his proposal. He encouraged his girls to discourage persistent Lotharios by nicking them slightly with the razor, especially on the ear lobe where one bled freely, but this gambit sometimes had reverse results, for the girls usually felt repentance for this act and made over the wounded customer so prettily, daubing him with styptic and asking in a sweet voice, "Does it hurt?" that the men came back stronger than before.

  At closing time each night there were loungers outside in Hotel Street waiting for the girls, but Kamejiro formed his barbers into a squad, marched them to the Sakai girl's home, and cried proudly, "Sakai-san! Here's your daughter safe and sound." He then marched to the Hasegawas' and cried, "Here's Rumiko, safe and sound." At the doorway to his own home he invariably informed his wife, "Here's our girl, safe at home." The Japanese community marveled at how well Kamejiro was doing, and all agreed that his Reiko-chan was a most excellent barber.

  Then in 1938, during Goro's last year at McKinley High, a real bombshell struck the Sakagawa family, an event so unanticipated that it left the household breathless. One afternoon in late July three men in blue suits came to the house in Kakaako and asked, "Mrs. Sakagawa, where's Tadao?"

  Yoriko could speak little English, so she said, "Tadao, he not here."

  "When he come home?" one of the men in a stiff white collar asked.

  "Me not know."

  "Tonight?"

  "Hontoni, hontoni!” she nodded. "For sure."

  "You tell him to wait here," the men said, and if they had smiled, as they should have done, they would have eased the apprehensions of the Sakagawa household enormously, but they did not, for Mrs. Sakagawa, hunched up from great work and somewhat wrinkled, scared them, and they stared at her as she stared at them.

  When the family convened that night, Mrs. Sakagawa was the center of attraction. Four times she acted her role in the afternoon's ominous encounter, and everyone began pressing seventeen-year-old Tadao for the details of what offense he had committed, for the family assumed that the men were detectives. No other haoles in blue suits and white collars ever visited Japanese homes, and slowly the unincriminated members of the Sakagawa family began to coalesce against the first Sakagawa boy to have gotten into trouble. The awful, terrifying rectitude of the Japanese family asserted itself, and Reiko-chan cried, "You, Tadao. What did you do? All day I work and see no-goods on Hotel Street. Is my brother to be one of these?"

  "Tadao!" Kamejiro cried, banging the table. "What wrong thing have you done?"

  The tall, quiet boy could not answer, so his stockier brother Goro shouted, "You and your damned foolishness! Suppose the police take you, no more teams at McKinley for you. And I'll be ashamed to go on the field. Tell us! What have you done?"

  The guiltless and bewildered boy shivered before the anger of his family. So far as he knew he had done nothing, yet the men had been there. Kamejiro, who had worked desperately hard to keep his family decent Japanese of whom Hiroshima would be proud, saw that his efforts had come to naught, and began mumbling in his hands. "No man can bring children up right," he swore, his chin trembling with shame and sorrow.

  There was a knock at the door, and the Sakagawas looked at each other with last-minute dismay. "You stand there!" Kamejiro whispered to his son, placing him where the men could reach him. There would be no running away in his family. Then, biting his lip to hide his disgrace, he opened the door.

  "Mr. Sakagawa?" the leader asked. "I'm Hewlett Janders, and this is John Whipple Hoxworth, and this gentleman in back," and he laughed easily, "this is Hoxworth Hale. Good evening." The three business leaders of Hawaii entered the small room, stood awkwardly for a moment, then laughed when Reiko called in English, "Boys, get them some chairs!"

  "We could use some," big Hewlett Janders laughed. "Mighty fine house you have here, Mr. Sakagawa. Rarely see such beautiful flowers any more. You must have a green thumb."

  Goro translated rapidly and Kamejiro bowed. "Tell them I love flowers," he said. Goro translated this and apologized: "Father is ashamed of his English."

  "You certainly handle the language well," Hewlett replied. "You're Goro, I take it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The three men looked at him approvingly, and finally Hewlett said, jokingly, "You're the young fellow we hate."

  Goro blushed, and Reiko-chan interrupted, asking, "We thought it was Tadao you wanted to see. This is Tadao."

  "We know, Miss Sakagawa. But this is the young rascal we worry about."

  There was a moment's suspense. No one quite knew what was happening, nor what odd turn this strange meeting was going to take next. It was Hoxworth Hale, oldest and most prim of the visitors who spoke, and as always he tried to speak to the heart of the matter. "We are an informal alumni committee from Punahou School. We're sick and tired of seeing our team ran over by first-class athletes like this Goro over here. Young man, you have a marvelous future. Basketball, baseball and most of all football. If you ever need any help, come see me."

  "Then you didn't come to arrest one of us?" Reiko-chan asked.

  "Good heavens no!” Hale replied. "Did we give that impression this afternoon?"

  "My mother doesn't understand . . ." Reiko began, but the relief she felt was so great that she could not speak. She put her hand to her mouth to stop its quivering, then put her arm about Tadao.

  "Good gracious no!” Hale continued. "Quite the contrary, Miss Sakagawa. In fact, we're so impressed by your family that we've come here tonight to offer your brother Tadao a full scholarship at Punahou, because we need a running halfback like him."

  No one spoke. The older Sakagawas, not comprehending what was happening, looked at Goro for translation, but before he could begin, Big Hewlett Janders dapped his arm about the boy's shoulder and said, "We wanted you, too, Goro, but we felt that since you're a senior, you probably ought to finish at McKinley. Besides, we have fairly good tackles at school. But you've got to promise one thing. In the Punahou game, don't tackle your brother."

  "I'll tear him to shreds if he's Punahou," Goro laughed.

  "You wrecked us for the past two years," Janders acknowledged, punching the boy in a friendly manner.

  Now Tadao spoke. "How could I pay my way at Punahou?" he asked. "Besides the tuition, that is?"

  "You'll be there two years," Hale explained. "No charges at all for tuition or books. You can have a job right now at H & H taking care of forms. And completely off the record, we would like to give you one hundred dollars, twenty now, the rest later, for some clothes and things like that."

  John Whipple Hoxworth, a sharp-eyed, quick-minded man added, "Tell your father that we are doing this not only because you have great promise as a football player, but because we know you are a fine boy. If you were otherwise, we wouldn't want you at Punahou."

  Hoxworth Hale said, "It won't be too easy for you, son. There aren't many Japanese at Punahou. You'll be alone and lonely."

  Reiko-chan answered for her brother: "It’s the best school in the islands. To go there would be worth anything."

  "We think so," Hale replied. And the three men shook hands with Tadao, the new boy at Punahou.


  When the men were gone, Kamejiro exploded. "What happened?" he shouted at Goro.

  "Tadao has been accepted at Punahou," the interpreter replied.

  "Punahou!" The name had rarely been mentioned in the Sakagawa household. It was a school that had no reality to the Japanese, a haole heaven, a forbidden land. A Japanese boy could logically aspire to Jefferson, and in recent years some were making it, but Punahou! Kamejiro sat down, bewildered. "Who applied to Punahou?" he mumbled.

  "Nobody. The school came to him because he has good grades and can play football."

  "How will he pay?"

  "They have already paid him," Goro explained, pointing to Tadao's money.

  It was at this point, as Kamejiro studied the twenty dollars, that the Sakagawa family as a whole acknowledged for the first time, openly and honestly, that the boys would probably not return to Japan; for they could see Tadao at Punahou, one of America's greatest schools, working with the finest people in the islands, and graduating and going on to college and university. He would become a doctor or a lawyer, and his life would be spent here in America; and the family looked at him in this moment of realization and they saw him as forever lost to Japan; for this was the power of education.

  The three blue-suited alumni who visited that night had warned Tadao that life at Punahou would be difficult, but the source of the difficulty they failed to identify. It came not from Punahou, where Tadao's football prowess won respect, but from Kakaako, where the submerged people had long ago suspected Tadao because of his mastery of English. Now he was openly stigmatized as a haole-lover, and six times in September, Kakaako gangs waylaid him as he came home from football practice and beat him thoroughly. "We'll teach you to be better than we are!" they warned him. When he made three touchdowns against a team mainly of Japanese and other pidgin-speakers, they hammered him desperately, shouting, "You goddamned traitor! Who do you think you are, playing for Punahou?" Tadao never tried to enlist Goro's aid. This punishment from Kakaako was something he had to absorb. He learned to keep his hands over his face so that his teeth would not be broken, and he quickly mastered the art of using his feet and knees as lethal weapons. By mid-October the assaults ended, especially since McKinley was having a good year with Goro as one of its brightest stars.