Hawaii

by James Michener

  The forced closing of Kamejiro Sakagawa's barbershop was actually a considerable blessing to the family, although at the time it was not so recognized, for in the first weeks the stalwart little dynamiter could find no work other than caring for lawns, a job he did not like. Then the Okinawan restaurant keeper Senaga sent a messenger saying that he needed a busboy at a new restaurant he was opening in Waikiki, where a great many soldiers and sailors went, and he would like Sakagawa-san to take the job. Kamejiro's eyes blazed as he stared at the messenger. "If Senaga had been a friend, he would never have allowed a Japanese girl to talk with a haole in his restaurant. Tell him no." But to his wife, Kamejiro swore, "I would rather die of starvation than work for an Okinawan." Then, from a totally unexpected source, the Sakagawas received the financial aid which established them as one of the stronger and more prosperous Japanese families in Hawaii. It all happened because early in 1943 - Hong Kong Kee had made a speech.

  The inflamed oratory which provoked the loan took place before the Japanese boys of the Two-Two-Two had become the popular heroes they were later to be. When Hong Kong spoke, Japanese were still suspect, and a haole committee, seeking to whip up patriotism for war bonds, prevailed upon him to give a short speech explaining why the Chinese could be trusted and the Japanese could not. Since the committee of patriots contained many of the leaders of Honolulu, Hong Kong was naturally flattered by the invitation and spent some time in working out a rather fiery comparison of Chinese virtues as opposed to Japanese duplicity. Then, when he got on the speakers' platform, he became intoxicated by the crowd and deviated from his script, making his remarks rather more inclusive than he had planned. "The Japanese war lords have oppressed China for many years," he cried, "and it is with joy in our hearts that we watch the great American forces driving the evil Japanese from places where they have no right to be." He was astonished at the constant applause which the mass meeting threw back at him, and thus emboldened, he extended his remarks to include the Japanese in Hawaii. It was a very popular speech, sold a lot of war bonds, and got Hong Kong's picture in the papers under the caption "Patriotic Chinese Leader Flays Japs."

  The affair was a big success except in one house. In her small, ugly clapboard shack up the Nuuanu, Hong Kong's grandmother, then ninety-six years old, listened appalled as one of her great-granddaughters read aloud the account of Hong Kong's oratory. "Bring him here at once!" she stormed, and when the powerful banker stood in her room she sent the others away, and when the door was closed she rose, stalked over to her grandson and slapped him four times in the face. "You fool!" she cried. "You fool! You damned, damned fool!"

  Hong Kong fell back from the assault and covered his face to prevent further slappings. When he did this his fiery little grandmother began pushing him in the chest, calling him all the while "You fool!” until he stumbled backward against a chair and fell into it. Then she stopped, waited for him to drop his hands, and stared at him sorrowfully. "Hong Kong," she said, "yesterday you were a great fool."

  "Why?" he asked weakly.

  She showed him the paper, with his picture grinning out from a semicircle of haole faces, and although she could not read, she could remember what her great-granddaughter had reported, and now she repeated the phrases with icy sarcasm: "We cannot trust the Japanese!" She spat onto her own floor. "They are deceitful and criminal men." Again she spat. Then she threw the paper onto the floor and kicked it, for her fury was great, and when this was done she shouted at her grandson, "What glory did you get from standing for a few minutes among the haoles?"

  "I was asked to represent the Chinese community," Hong Kong fumbled.

  "Who appointed you our representative, you stupid man?"

  "I thought that since we are fighting Japan, somebody ought to . . ."

  "You didn't think!" Nyuk Tsin stormed. "You have no brains to think. For a minute's glory, standing among the haoles, you have destroyed every good chance the Chinese have built up for themselves in Honolulu."

  "Wait a minute, Auntie!" Hong Kong protested. "That's exactly what I was thinking about when I agreed to make the speech. It was a chance to make the Chinese look better among the haoles who run the islands."

  Nyuk Tsin looked at her grandson in amazement. "Hong Kong?" she gasped. "Do you think that when the war is over, the haoles will continue to run Hawaii?"

  "They have the banks, the newspapers . . ."

  "Hong Kong! Who is doing the fighting? What men are in uniform? Who is going to come back to the islands ready to take over the political control? Tell me, Hong Kong."

  "You mean the Japanese?" he asked weakly.

  "Yes!" she shouted, her Hakka anger at its peak. "That's exactly who I mean. They are the ones who will win this war, and believe me, Hong Kong, when they take control they will remember the evil things you said yesterday, and every Kee in Honolulu will find life a little more difficult because of your stupidity."

  "I didn't mean that . . ."

  "Be still, you stupid man. After the war when Sam wants to build a store, who will sign the papers giving him the permit? Some Japanese. If Ruth's husband wants to run a bus line, who will give the permit? Some Japanese. And they will hate you for what you said yesterday. Already your words have been filed in their minds."

  The shadow of a government building where all the permit signers were Japanese fell heavily upon Hong Kong, and he asked, "What ought we to do?" It was symptomatic of the Kees that when one of them took a bold step, he said of himself, "I did this," but when corrective measures had to be taken, he always consulted Wu Chow's Auntie and asked, "What must we do?"

  The old woman said, "You must go through Honolulu and apologize to every Japanese you have ever known. Humble yourself, as you should. Then find at least twenty men who need money, and lend it to them. Help them start new businesses." She stopped, then added prudently, "It would be better if you lent the money to those who have a lot of sons in the war, for they will be the ones who are going to run Hawaii."

  In the course of his apologies to the Japanese community, Hong Kong came in time to Sakai, the storekeeper, and Sakai said in English, "No, I don't need any money, but my good friend Sakagawa the dynamiter has lost his barbershop, and he needs money to start a store of some kind."

  "Where can I find him?" Hong. Kong asked. "He lives in Kakaako."

  "By the way, any of his boys in the Two-Two-Two?" "Four," Sakai replied.

  "I will look him up," Hong Kong replied, and that afternoon he told Kamejiro, "I have come to apologize for what I said at the meeting."

  "Mo bettah you be ashamed," Kamejiro said bluntly. "Yes, with you having four sons in the battles." "And all other Japanese, too." "Kamejiro, I'm sorry."

  "I sorry for you," the stocky little Japanese said, for he did not like Chinese.

  "And I have come to lend you the money to start a store here in Kakaako."

  Kamejiro drew back, for he had learned that anything either a Chinese or an Okinawan did was sure to be tricky. Surveying Hong Kong, he asked, "What for you lend me money?"

  Humbly Hong Kong replied, "Because I've got to prove I am really sorry."

  It was in this way that Kamejiro Sakagawa opened his grocery store, and because he was a frugal man and worked incredibly hard, and because his wife had a knack of waiting on Japanese customers and his barber daughter a skill in keeping accounts, the store flourished. Then, as if good fortune had piled up a warehouse full of beneficences, on New Year's Day, 1944, Sakai-san came running with breathless news.

  "Pssst!" he called to Sakagawa as the latter sprayed his vegetables. "Come here."

  "What?" the grocer shouted.

  "Out here!"

  Sakagawa left the store and allowed Sakai-san to lead him to an alley, where the latter said in awed tones, "I have found a husband for your daughter!"

  "You have?" Sakagawa cried.

  "Yes! A wonderful match!"

  "A Japanese, of course?"

  Sakai looked at his old friend with contempt.
"What kind of baishakunin would I be if I even thought of proposing anyone but a Japanese?"

  "Forgive me!" Sakagawa said. "You can understand, after the narrow escape we had."

  "This man is perfect. A little house. More than a little money. Fine Japanese. And what else do you think!"

  "Is he . . ." Sakagawa would not form the words, for this was too much to hope for.

  "Yes! He's also a Hiroshima man!"

  A thick blanket of positive euphoria settled over the two whispering men, for the go-between Sakai was just as pleased as Sakagawa that a fine Japanese girl had at last found a good husband, and a Hiroshima man at that. Finally Sakagawa got round to a question of lesser importance: "Who is he?"

  "Mr. Ishii!” Sakai cried rapturously.

  "Has he agreed to marry my daughter?" Kamejiro asked incredulously.

  "Yes!" Sakai the baishakunin cried.

  "Does he know about her . . . the haole?"

  "Of course. I was honor-bound to tell him."

  "And still he is willing to accept her?" Kamejiro asked in disbelief.

  "Yes, he says it is his duty to save her."

  "That good man," Sakagawa cried. He called his wife and told her, "Sakai has done it! He has found a husband for Reiko-chan."

  "Who?" his practical-minded wife asked.

  "Mr. Ishii!"

  "A Hiroshima man!" And before Reiko-chan knew anything of her impending marriage, word that she had found a Hiroshima man flashed through the Japanese community and almost everybody was truly delighted with the girl's good fortune, especially since she had been mixed up with a haole man, but one girl, who had been through high school, reflected: "Mr. Ishii must be thirty-five years older than Reiko."

  "What does it matter?" her mother snapped. "She's getting a Hiroshima man."

  Reiko was in the barbershop on Hotel Street cutting the hair of a sailor when the news reached her. The girl at the next chair whispered in Japanese, "Congratulations, dear Reiko-chan."

  "About what?" Reiko asked.

  "Sakai-san has found you a husband."

  The Japanese phrase fell strangely on Reiko's ears, for although she had long suspected that her parents had employed a baishakunin to find her a husband, she had never supposed that any solid arrangement would come to pass. Steadying herself against her chair, she asked casually, "Who did they say the man was?"

  "Mr. Ishii! I think it's wonderful."

  Reiko-chan kept mechanically moving her fingers, and the man in the chair warned: "Not too much off the sides, ma'am."

  "I'm sorry," Reiko said. She wanted to run out of the barbershop, far from everyone, but she kept to her job. Patiently she trimmed the sailor's head just right, then lathered his neck and sideburns and asked, "You like them straight or on a little slant?"

  "Any way looks best," the young man said. "You speak good English. Better'n me."

  "I went to school," Reiko said quietly.

  "Ma'am, do you feel well?" the sailor asked.

  "Yes."

  "You don't look so good. Look, ma'am . . ."

  Reiko was about to faint, but with a tremendous effort she controlled herself and finished the lathering; but when she tried to grasp the razor she could not command it, and with great dismay she looked at the frightened sailor and asked softly, "Would you mind if I did not shave your neck this time? I feel dizzy."

  "Ma'am, you ought to lie down," the sailor said, wiping the soap from his sideburns.

  When he left, Reiko hung up her apron and announced, "I am going home," and on the long walk to Kakaako she tried not to compare Mr. Ishii with Lieutenant Jackson, but she could not keep her mind from doing so; then as she approached the family store she fortified herself with this consoling thought: "He's a crazy little man, and more like my father than a husband, but he is a proper Japanese and my father will be happy." Thinking no more of her absent Seattle lawyer, who had never even written to her, she went into the Sakagawa store, walked up to her father, and bowed. "I am grateful to you, Father."

  "He is a Hiroshima man!” Sakagawa pointed out.

  At the wedding, which was a highlight of the Japanese community in February of 1944, the baishakunin Sakai commanded everything. He told the family where to stand and the priest what to do and the groom how to behave. Mr. Ishii had spent the first part of the afternoon showing the assembly the latest copy of the Prairie Shinbun, which proved that valiant Imperial troops had finally driven all American marines off Guadalcanal and were about to launch a major invasion of Hawaii. One guest, who had two sons in Italy, whispered to his wife, "I think the old man's crazy!"

  "Ssssh!" his wife said. "He's getting married."

  When the crush was greatest, Reiko-chan, in old-style Japanese dress, happened to look at her bridegroom for the first time since her engagement had been announced, and she could not hide from herself the fact that he was a pathetic, cramped-up old man; and all her American education inspired her to flee from this insane ceremony, and great dizziness came upon her and she said to one of the girls near her, "This obi is too tight, I must get some air," and she was about to run away when the baishakunin Sakai cried, "We begin!" and the intricate, lovely Japanese wedding ceremony proceeded.

  When it ended, women clustered about Reiko-chan and told her, "You were beautiful in your kimono. A true bride, with flushed cheeks and downcast eyes." Others said, "It's so wonderful to think that he is also a Hiroshima man." And the crush became so oppressive that she said, "This obi is really too tight. I must get some air," and she left the wedding feast and went alone to the porch, where she began to breathe deeply and where she arrived just in time to greet a messenger boy riding up on a bicycle.

  At the next moment the guests inside heard a series of screams emanating from the porch, as if an animal had been mortally wounded, and they rushed out to find Reiko-chan screaming and screaming, and they could not stop her, for in her hand she held a message from the War Department advising the Sakagawa family of certain events that had recently transpired on a river bank in Italy.

  ON SEPTEMBER 22, 1943, the Triple Two looked forward across the bow of their transport and saw rising in the misty dawn the hills of Italy, and Sergeant Goro Sakagawa thought: "I'll bet there's a German division hiding in there, waiting for us to step ashore."

  He was right, and as the Japanese boys climbed down out of their transport to invade the beaches of Salerno, German planes and heavy artillery tried to harass them, but their aim was wild and all the units made it without casualty except one crop-headed private named Tashimoto, who sprained his ankle. The gang passed the word along with the acid comment, "Wouldn't you know it would be a guy from Molokai?"

  Salerno lay southeast of Naples and had been chosen because it provided a logical stepping-off place for an encircling movement on Rome, some hundred and fifty miles distant, and on the day of landing, the Two-Two-Two started the long march north. The Germans, knowing both of their coming and of their composition, were determined to halt them. A specific order had been issued by Hitler: "To defeat the little yellow men who are traitors to our ally Japan and who are being cruelly used as propaganda by their Jewish masters in America, is obligatory. If these criminal little men should win a victory, it would be strongly used against us. They must be stopped and wiped out."

  The Japanese boys from Hawaii did not know of this order, and after they had met one line of massive German resistance after another, they concluded: "These krauts must be the best fighters in the world. This is a lot tougher than they told us it was going to be." If the Two-Two-Two gained three miles, they did so against the most formidable German resistance: mines killed boys from Maui, tanks overran fighters from Molokai; gigantic shells exploded among troops from Kauai; and dogged, powerful ground forces contested every hill. Casualties were heavy, and the Honolulu Mail began carrying death lists with names like Kubokawa, Higa, and Moriguchi.

  The furious efforts of the Germans to halt and humiliate the Japanese boys had an opposite effect to the one Hit
ler wanted; Allied war correspondents, both European and American, quickly discovered that whereas other fronts might not produce good stories, one could always get something exciting with the Two-Two-Two because they were the ones that were encountering the best the enemy could provide. Ernie Pyle, among others, marched for some days with the Hawaii troops, and wrote: "I have come to expect our American boys to continue fighting in the face of great odds, but these short, black-eyed little fighters are setting a new record. They continue slugging it out when even the bravest men would consolidate or withdraw. They form a terrific addition to our team, and dozens of boys from Texas and Massachusetts have told me, 'I'm glad they're on our side.' " So Hitler's determination to hit the Japanese so hard that they would be forced to collapse in shame, backfired because they fought on in glory.

  Once Ernie Pyle asked Goro Sakagawa, "Sergeant, why did you push on against that cluster of houses? You knew it was crowded with Germans."

  Goro replied in words that became famous both in Italy and America: "We had to. We fight double. Against the Germans and for every Japanese in America." Reported Pyle: "And they're winning both their wars."

  September, October, November, December: the beautiful months, the months of poetry and rhythm, with nights growing colder and the soft mists of Italy turning to frost. How beautiful those months were when the boys from Hawaii first realized that they were as good fighting men as any in the world. "We fight double," they told themselves, and when they came to some Italian town, bathed in cloudless sunlight, standing forth against the hills like an etching, each tower clear in the bright glare, they attacked with fury and calculation, and bit by bit they drove the Germans back toward Rome. Colonel Whipple, delighted by the showing of his troops and pleased with the good reports they were getting in the American press, nevertheless warned his men: "It can't go on being as easy as this. Somewhere, the Germans are going to dig in real solid. Then we'll see if we're as good as they say."