Nevertheless, Mrs. Sakagawa summoned her daughter and Mr. Ishii, and after the wiry little labor leader had carefully inspected all the doors to be sure no haoles were spying, he pulled down the shades and whispered in Japanese, "What I told you last week is true, Kamejiro-san. Under no circumstances should you allow a second son to go to Japan. He will be killed, just like Goro. For everything we have heard is a lie. Japan is winning the war and may invade Hawaii at any moment."
Shigeo thought his brain had become unhinged, and he caught Reiko's hand, asking, "Sister, do you believe your husband's nonsense?"
"Don't call it nonsense!" Mr. Ishii stormed in Japanese. "You have been fed a great collection of lies. Japan is winning the war and is accumulating strength."
“Reiko!" her brother insisted. "Do you believe this nonsense?"
"You'll have to forgive my husband," the dutiful wife explained. "He hears such strange reports at the meetings . . ."
"What meetings?" Shigeo demanded.
That night Mr. Ishii and his sister showed him. They took him to a small building west of Nuuanu where a meeting was in progress, attended by elderly Japanese. A fanatical religious leader, recently out of a concentration camp, was shouting in Japanese, "What they tell you about Hiroshima is all lies. The city was not touched. Tokyo was not burned. Our troops are in Singapore and Australia. Japan is more powerful than ever before!"
The audience listened intently, and Shigeo saw his brother-in-law, Mr. Ishii, nodding profoundly. At this moment Shigeo unfortunately tugged at his sister's sleeve, and the speaker saw him. Ah!" he shouted. "I see we have a spy in our midst. A dirty dog of the enemy. You, Mrs. Ishii? Is he trying to tell you that Japan lost the war? Don't you believe him! He has been bought by the Americans! I tell you, he is a liar and a spy. Japan won the war!"
Against his own intelligence, Shigeo had to admit that many of the audience not only believed this crazy religious maniac, but they wanted to believe. When the meeting ended, many of the old people smiled sadly at Shigeo, who had criminally fought against Japan, and they hoped that when the emperor's troops landed they would deal kindly with him, for he had probably been seduced into his traitorous action. Many boys in Hawaii had been so tricked.
In a daze Shigeo started homeward. He wanted no more to do with Mr. Ishii and the pathetic old fools, but when he had walked some distance, he changed his mind and caught a bus that carried him down into the heart of Honolulu, and after some speculation as to what he should do, he marched into the police station, and asked to see one of the detectives. The haole knew him and congratulated him on his medals, but Shig laughed and said, "What I'm going to tell you, you may take them away."
"What's up?"
"You ever hear of the Katta Gumi Society? The Ever-Victorious Group?"
"You mean the Japan-Won screwballs? Yeah, we keep a fairly close watch on them."
"I just attended a meeting. Captain, I'm shook."
"The little hut back of the old mission school?"
"Yes."
"We check that regularly. Tony, did we have a man at the mission hut tonight?"
"We didn't bother tonight," the assistant replied.
"These people are out of their minds," Shig protested.
"It's pathetic," the detective agreed. "Poor old bastards, they were so sure Japan couldn't be licked that they believe whatever these agitators tell 'em. But they don't do any harm."
"Aren't you going to arrest them?" Shig asked.
"Hell, no," the detective laughed. "We got six groups in Honolulu we check on regularly, and the Japan Won's give us the least trouble. One group wants to murder Syngman Rhee. One wants to murder Chiang Kai-shek. One dupes old women out of all their money by predicting the end of the world on the first of each month. Last year we had one couple that prepared for the second coming of Christ on the first day of eleven succeeding months. They finally came to us and said that maybe something was wrong. So your crazy Japanese are only part of a pattern."
"But how can they believe . . . All the newspaper stories and newsreels? The men who were there?"
"Shig," the detective said, plopping his hands upright on the desk. "How can you believe for eleven successive months that Jesus Christ is coming down the Nuuanu Pali? You can be fooled once, I grant, but not eleven times."
When the time came for Shigeo to sail to his new job with General MacArthur in Japan, his mother wept and said, "If there is fighting when you get to Tokyo, don't get off the ship, Shigeo." Then, recalling more important matters, she told him, "Don't marry a northern girl, Shigeo. We don't want any zu-zu-ben in our family. And I'd be careful of Tokyo girls, too. They're expensive. Your father and I would be very unhappy if you married a Kyushu girl, because they don't fit in with Hiroshima people. And under no circumstances marry an Okinawan, or anyone who might be an Eta. What would be best would be for you to marry a Hiroshima girl. Such girls you can trust. But don't take one from Hiroshima City."
"I don't think Americans will be welcomed in Hiroshima," Shigeo said quietly.
"Why not?" his mother protested.
"After the bomb?" Shigeo asked.
"Shigeo!" his mother replied in amazement. "Nothing happened to Hiroshima! Mr. Ishii assured me . . ."
When Shig Sakagawa assembled with his Tokyo-bound outfit and marched through the streets of downtown Honolulu on his way to the transport that would take them to Yokohama, he was, without knowing it, a striking young man. He possessed a mind of steel, hardened in battle against both the Germans and the prejudices of his homeland. By personal will power he had triumphed against each adversary and had proved his courage as few men are required to do. No one recognized the fact that day, for then Shig was only twenty-three and had not yet acquired his lawyer's degree from Harvard, but he was the forward cutting edge of a revolution that was about to break over Hawaii. He was stern, incorruptible, physically hard and fearless. More important, so far as revolutions go, he was well organized and alert.
As he marched he passed, without either man's knowing it, Hoxworth Hale, who was walking up Bishop Street on his way to The Fort, and if in that moment Hale had had the foresight to stop the parade and to enlist Shig Sakagawa on his side, The Fort would surely have been able to preserve its prerogatives. Furthermore, if Hale, as an official of the Republican Party, had conscripted Shig and half a hundred other young Japanese like him, Republicanism in Hawaii would have been perpetually insured, for by their traditional and conservative nature the Japanese would have made ideal Republicans, and a combination of haole business acumen and Japanese industry would have constituted a strength that no adversary could have broken. But it was then totally impossible for Hoxworth Hale even to imagine such a union, and as he walked past the parade he had the ungracious thought: "If I hear any more about the brave Japanese boys who won the war for us, I'll vomit. Where's my son Bromley? Where's Harry Janders and Jimmy Whipple? They won the war, too, and they're dead." The crowd along Bishop Street cheered the Japanese boys, and the pregnant moment of history was lost. Hoxworth Hale went to The Fort and Shig Sakagawa went to Japan.
But if Hoxworth Hale failed to grasp the nettles of history, there was another who did, for as Hong Kong Kee walked down Bishop Street in the other direction he met Kamejiro Sakagawa proudly waving to his son, and Hong Kong asked, "Which one is your boy, Kamejiro?"
"Dat one ovah dere wid de medals," Kamejiro beamed. Since most of the Japanese were wearing medals won in Europe, Hong Kong could not determine which one was Kamejiro's son. "Is he the one who has the red patch on his arm?" Hong Kong asked. "Hai!” old Sakagawa agreed,
"I'd like to meet your boy," Hong Kong said, and when the troops broke ranks on the dock Kamejiro said to his son, "Dis Hong Kong Kee, berry good frien'. He give me da money fo' da stoah'."
With obvious gratitude, Captain Sakagawa thrust out his hand and said, "You had a lot of courage, Mr. Kee, to gamble that way on my father. Especially during the war."
Hong Kong was tempted to bask
in glory, but prudence had taught him always to anticipate trouble and to quash it in advance, so he said forthrightly, "Probably you didn't hear, but during the war I was stupid enough to make a very bad speech against the Japanese. Later, I was ashamed of myself and tried to make up."
"I know," Shig said. "My sister wrote me about your speech. But war's war."
"Things are much better now," Hong Kong said. "What I wanted to see you about, Shigeo. When you come home you ought to go to college. Maybe law school. You do well, maybe I'll have a job for you."
"You have a lot of sons of your own, Hong Kong." "None of them is Japanese,' Hong Kong laughed. "You want a Japanese?" Shig asked, astounded. "Of course," Hong Kong grunted. "You boys are going to run the islands."
Shig grew extraordinarily attentive. Standing directly in front of Hong Kong's metallic eyes, he studied the Chinese carefully and asked, "Do you really think there'll be changes?"
"Fantastic," Hong Kong replied. "I'd like to have a smart boy like you working for me."
"I may not work for anybody," Shig said slowly. "That's good too," Hong Kong said evenly. "But everybody's got to have friends."
When Captain Sakagawa climbed aboard the transport he felt completely American. He had proved his courage, had been accepted by Honolulu, and now he was wanted by someone. In a sense, he was already a Golden Man, knowledgeable both in western and eastern values, for although he reveled in his newly won Americanism, he also took pride in being a pure-blooded Japanese. Of course this latter was ridiculous, for he contained inheritances from all those nameless predecessors who had once inhabited Japan: some of his genes came from the hairy Ainu to the north, from Siberian invaders, from the Chinese, from the Koreans amongst whom his ancestors had lived, and more particularly from that venturesome Indo-Malayan stock, half of whom had journeyed eastward to become Hawaiians while their brothers had moved northward along different islands to merge with the Japanese. Thus, of two ancient Malayan brothers starting from a point near Singapore, the northern traveler had become the ancestor of Shigeo Sakagawa, while the other had served as the progenitor of Kelly Kanakoa, the Hawaiian beachboy who now stood with a pretty girl watching the end of the parade.
Or, if one preferred looking north, of three ancient Siberian brothers, one bravely crossed the sea to Japan, where his genes found ultimate refuge in the body of Shigeo Sakagawa. Another crept along the Aleutian bridge toward Massachusetts, where his descendants wound up as Indian progenitors of Hoxworth Hale; while a third, less venturesome than his brothers, drifted southward along established land routes to central China, where he helped form the Hakka, thus serving as an ancestor to Hong Kong Kee. In truth, all men are brothers, but as generations pass, it is differences that matter and not similarities.
IN THE irrelevant sense of the word, this Kelly Kanakoa of whom I just spoke was already a Golden Man, for at twenty-one he was slightly over six feet tall, weighed a trim 180, and had a powerful body whose muscles rippled in sunlight as if smeared with coconut oil. He was very straight and had unusually handsome features, marked by deep-set dark eyes, a gamin laugh, and a head of jet-black hair in which he liked to wear a flower. His manner was a mixture of relaxation and insolence, and although it was more than two years since he had knocked out two sailors on Hotel Street for calling him a nigger, he seemed always half ready for a brawl, but whenever one seemed about to explode, he tried to evade it: "Why you like beef wid me? I no want trobble. Let's shake and be blalahs again."
Now as Kelly stood watching the departing parade, he held in his right hand the slim, well-manicured fingers of a Tulsa divorcee who had come to Honolulu from Reno, seeking emotional re-orientation after her difficult divorce. At the ranch where she had stayed in Nevada a fellow divorcee had told her, "Rennie! If you go to Hawaii be sure to look up Kelly Kanakoa. He's adorable." So as soon as Rennie had disembarked from the H & H flagship, Mauna Loa, she had called the number her friend had given her, announcing: "Hello, Kelly? Maud Clemmens told me to look you up."
He had come sauntering around to the luxurious H & H hotel, the Lagoon, wearing very tight blue pants, a white busboy's jacket with only one button closed, sandals, a yachting cap, and a flower behind his ear. When she came down into the grandiose lobby, crisp and white in a new bathing suit edged in lace, he appraised her insolently and calculated: "This wahine's gonna screw the first night."
In his job as beachboy, which he had acquired by accident because he liked to surf and had a pleasant joking way with rich women customers, he had become expert in estimating how long it would take him to get into bed with any newcomer. Divorcees, he had found, were easiest because they had undergone great shock to their womanliness and were determined to prove that they, at least, had not been at fault in the breakup of their marriages. It rarely took Kelly more than two nights. Of course when they first met him they certainly had no intention of sleeping with him, but as he explained to the other fellows hanging around the beach, "S'pose da wahine not ride a surfboard yet, how she know what she really wanna do?" It was his job, and he got paid for it, to take divorcees and young widows on surfboards.
Ten minutes after Rennie met Kelly she was on her first surfing expedition, far out on the reef where the big waves were forming. She was excited by the exhilarating motion of the sea and felt that she would never be able to rise and stand on the board as it swept her toward shore, but when she felt Kelly's strong arms enveloping her from the rear she felt assured, and as the board gathered momentum she allowed herself to be pulled upright, always in Kelly's stout arms, until she stood daringly on the flying board. For a moment the spray blinded her, but she soon learned to tilt her chin high into the wind and break its force, so that soon she was roaring across the reef, with a thundering surf at her feet and the powerful shape of Diamond Head dominating the shore.
"How marvelous!" she cried as the comber maintained its rush toward the shore. Instinctively she drew Kelly's arm closer about her, pressed backward against him and reveled in his manliness. Then, when the crashing surf broke at last, she felt the board collapse into the dying waves, and she with it, until she was underwater with Kelly's arms still about her, and of her own accord she turned her face to his, and they kissed for a long time under the sea, then idly rose to the surface.
Now she climbed back upon the surfboard, and with Kelly instructing, started the long paddle out to catch the next wave, but when their board was well separated from the others, she relaxed backwards until she felt herself against the beachboy once more, and there she rested in his secure arms, paddling idly as his adept hands began their explorations beneath her new bathing suit. Sighing, she whispered, "Is this part of the standard instruction?"
"Not many wahine cute like you," Kelly replied gallantly, whereupon she shivered with joy and brought her body closer to his, where she could feel the muscles of his chest against her neck .
It was a long, exciting trip out to where the waves formed, and as they waited for the right one, Kelly asked, "You scared stand up dis time?"
"I'm game to try anything with you," Rennie said, and she showed remarkable aptitude on the long surge in, and when the surfboard finally subsided into the broken wave, and when they were undersea for a kiss, she found to her surprise that her hands were now inside his swimming suit, clutching passionately, hungrily. When they surfaced, his black hair in his eyes like a satyr's, he laughed and said approvingly, "Bimeby you numbah one surfer, get da trophy, Rennie."
"Do I do things right?" she asked modestly.
"You very right," he assured her.
"Shall we catch another wave?" she suggested.
"Why we not go on up your room?" he asked evenly, keeping his dark eyes directly on her.
"I think we'd better," she agreed, adding cautiously, "Are you allowed upstairs?"
"S'pose you forget your lauhala hat on de beach, somebody surely gotta bring it to you," he explained.
"Is that standard procedure?" Rennie asked coyly.
"
Like mos' stuff," Kelly explained, "surfin's gotta have its own rules."
"We'll play by the rules," she agreed, squeezing his hand. And when he got to her room, holding the sun hat in his powerful hands, he found that she had already climbed into one of the skimpiest playsuits he had ever seen, and in his years on the beach he had seen quite a few.
"Hey, siesta! Wedder you wear muumuu or sundress or nuttin', you look beautiful," he said approvingly, and in her natural confusion over her divorce, this was exactly what she wanted to hear, and she dispensed with the customary formalities of such moments and held out her arms to the handsome beachboy.
"Normally I'd order a Scotch and soda, and we'd talk a while . . . Let's take up where we left off under water."
Kelly studied her for a long, delicious moment and suggested, "Alla time, dese badin' suit get wet too much." And he slipped his off, and when, he stood before her in rugged, dark-skinned power she thought: "If I had married a man like this there'd have been no trouble."
Now, as the parade passed down Bishop Street, she was about to leave Hawaii, and she held his hand tightly in the last minutes before boarding the Mouna Loa. For nine days she had lived with Kelly passionately and in complete surrender to his amazing manliness. Once she told him, "Kelly, you should have seen the pathetic little jerk I was married to. God, what a waste of years." Now she whispered, in the bright sunlight, "If we hurried to the ship, would we have time for one more?"
"Whassamatta why not?" he asked, and they clambered aboard the big ship and sought out her stateroom, but her intended roommate was already unpacking, a tall, rather good-looking girl in her late twenties. There were several embarrassed moments, after which Rennie whispered to Kelly, "What have I got to lose?"
She addressed the girl directly and said, "I'm sorry we haven't met, but would you think me an awful stinker if I borrowed the room for a little while?"
The tall girl slowly studied Rennie and then Kelly. They were an attractive couple, and she laughed, "A vacation's a vacation. How long you need?"
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