Hawaii

by James Michener

  That night, as they made their way back through the remnant of Shimbashi girls that had caught no men for the evening, but who still hoped, not knowing what might turn up following a late brawl, Shig said, "I'd marry her, Goro. She's marvelous."

  "I'm going to," his brother replied.

  And in these strange ways the brothers Sakagawa discovered their ancestral homeland and saw how different it was from what their parents remembered, but they also discovered Hawaii, so that one night Goro slammed down his beer at the Dai Ichi Hotel and fumed: "It's insane that we should be here, Shig. We ought to be doing the same jobs at home." And as they worked in Japan, they thought of Hawaii.

  IN 1947 the great Kee hui faced memorable excitements, for Nyuk Tsin was one hundred years old and her family initiated a round of entertainments celebrating that fact, climaxed by a massive fourteen-course dinner at Asia's brassy restaurant. The little old matriarch, who now weighed ninety-one pounds, appeared at each celebration dressed in black, her sparse gray hair pulled severely back from her temples. She chatted with her huge family and felt proud of their accomplishments, being particularly pleased when Hong Kong's youngest daughter, Judy, brought a "pianist from the university, where she was studying, to sing a series of songs in Chinese. Nyuk Tsin, watching Judy's animated face, thought: "She could be a girl from the High Village. I wonder what's happening there now?"

  One hundred and forty-one great-great-grandchildren attended the festivities, and upon them Nyuk Tsin poured her special love. Whenever one was presented she would ask the child in Hakka, "And what is your name, my dear?" The child's mother would poke her offspring and say in English, "Tell Auntie your name." But if the child replied, "Harry Rodriques," Nyuk Tsin would correct him and insist upon his real name, and the child would reply, "Kee Doh Kong," and by decoding this according to the family poem, Nyuk Tsin understood who was standing before her.

  With her own name she also had trouble, for now there was no one alive in the world who knew what it was. Even her remaining sons, now in their agile seventies and eighties, had never known her name, for she had submerged her own personality in this powerful hui of which she was now the head. She was content to rule as Wu Chow's Auntie, the concubine without a name, but when she thought of herself it was invariably as Char Nyuk Tsin, the daughter of a brave peasant who had risen to be a general. She was deeply moved, therefore, when the celebrations were ended and her sons Asia and Europe said to her, "Wu Chow's Auntie, I see no further reason why we should continue to send money to our mother in the Low Village. She must surely be dead by now, and her family has never done anything for us."

  "On the other hand," Nyuk Tsin. reasoned, "she may still be alive, just as I am, and if so she would need the money more than ever. After all, she is your mother and you owe her that respect."

  Only one misfortune clouded her hundredth birthday: her principal grandson Hong Kong was obviously in trouble, for he was ill at ease, nervous and irritable. Nyuk Tsin guessed that he was having difficulty meeting payments on the various ventures into which she had goaded him, and she was sorry that it was he who had to bear the burden of these trying days and not she. Therefore, when the mammoth dinner at Asia's ended, the little old lady told the women about her that she wanted to talk with Hong Kong, and after she was taken home and had examined her body for leprosy, and had inspected her big disgraceful feet, she appeared in a black gown with buttons down the right side and asked in Hakka, "Hong Kong, are things so very bad?"

  "Wu Chow's Auntie, the detectives are back again," he explained.

  "But you don't know whether that means good or bad," she observed.

  "Detectives are never good," he assured her.

  "How do you know they're back?"

  "Kamejiro Sakagawa said they were digging into his land deal again. They were also asking sly questions at Australia's."

  "How are we fixed for taxes and mortgage payments?" she asked.

  This was the one bright spot, and he said with some relief, "Not too bad. With the money we saved last year we're out of trouble."

  "Then we'll be prudent and wait," she advised. "If someone wants to hurt you, Hong Kong, keep him off balance. Make him take the first step toward you, for then you can watch him coming and take precautions."

  Four days later the first step came, in the person of a husky, quiet-spoken Irishman from Boston with huge, bushy-black eyebrows, who said that his name was McLafferty and who appeared in Hong Kong's office asking idle questions about real estate, and from the assured manner in which the visitor behaved, Hong Kong deduced: "This one has the detective reports in his pocket. He knows."

  Not much happened that first day. Hong Kong probed: "You looking for a hotel site? You got something else in mind?"

  "What hotel sites have you?" Mr. McLafferty parried, but it was obvious that he wasn't interested. "I'll be back," he said.

  As soon as he was gone, Hong Kong started half a dozen Kees on his trail, but all they turned up was that he really was Mr. McLafferty and he was a lawyer from Boston, stopping at the Lagoon. Hong Kong took this information to his grandmother, and they carefully weighed the various possibilities that might bring a Boston lawyer to Hawaii, and Hong Kong was all for dispatching a cable to a Kee who was studying at Harvard asking for detailed information on McLafferty, but his grandmother told him to wait. "Don't get excited until he makes some specific move," she cautioned him.

  Two days later Mr. McLafferty returned and said casually, "If my syndicate decided on one of the big hotel sites ... at your price? Could you deliver title to the land?"

  Hong Kong realized that considering the intricate Hawaiian system of land ownership, this apparently trivial question was a trap, so he answered slowly and cautiously, "Well, I'd better explain, Mr. McLafferty, that out here we don't sell land fee simple. What I'd be willing to do is guarantee you a fifty-year lease."

  "You can't sell us any land outright?" McLafferty probed cautiously.

  "My hui--are you familiar with the word hui?--well my hui has a little fee simple, but not choice hotel sites. What we do have is control of some of the best leases in Honolulu."

  "Why don't you people sell fee simple?" McLafferty asked directly, but not bluntly. He was a careful operator.

  Hong Kong decided not to waste time. "Mr. McLafferty, I don't think you're paying attention to land problems here. If you're far enough along to talk seriously about a hotel site you're bound to know that our estates never sell land. They lease it."

  Mr. McLafferty liked this blunt answer, liked all he knew about Hong Kong, which was considerable, and felt that the propitious moment had come. "Could we send your secretary out? For maybe an hour?"

  "Certainly," Hong Kong replied, his pulse hammering. He had learned that when this happened he must slow down . . . instantly. So he took some minutes giving his girl exaggerated instructions which Mr. McLafferty recognized as stalling. Then the wiry Chinese banker closed the door carefully, locked it, and returned to his desk, his pulse back to normal. In order to make his visitor think he had been taken in by the hotel talk he said, "Now we have three wonderful hotel sites . . ."

  "I'm not interested in hotels," the visitor said.

  "What are you interested in?" Hong Kong asked evenly.

  "I represent Gregory"

  The name literally exploded in the quiet office, ricocheted around Hong Kong's ears and left him stunned. Finally he asked, "You going to bull your way into the islands?"

  "You have used exactly the right word," McLafferty said coldly. "Six months from now, Mr. Kee, we will have bulled our way into the biggest goddamned store right," and he whipped out a secret map of downtown Honolulu, "here." Forcefully he jabbed his finger at a prime intersection.

  When Hong Kong saw the location he gasped. "The Fort will break you, Mr. McLafferty," he warned.

  "Nope. We're too strong. We're ready to lose five million dollars the first three years. We have resources of nearly half a billion behind that. The Fort is not
going to break us."

  "But it won't let you buy that land, or lease it either. You simply aren't going to get in there."

  "You're going to buy it for us, Mr. Kee."

  "It's not for sale," Hong Kong protested.

  "I mean, you're going to get the leases. You'll use an assumed name ... a dozen assumed names. After today I won't see you again, but we'll arrange some system of keeping in contact. Gregory's is breaking into Honolulu, and don't you ever doubt it."

  "If The Fort doesn't break you, it'll break whoever buys the land for you. It has great power to retaliate."

  "We've thought about that ... a lot, Mr. Kee."

  "Why don't you call me Hong Kong?"

  "And we spent more than a year analyzing your position out here. If you keep in a solvent position, Hong Kong, nobody can hurt you. And if they try, we stand ready to spend a good deal of the five million we know we'll lose, shoring you up."

  Hong Kong liked this daring, cold-blooded Boston Irishman, and after a moment's reflection asked, "You have to have that specific comer."

  "No other," the lawyer said.

  "How long do I have?"

  "Six months."

  "You agree to pay fifty per cent above going rates?"

  "We'll do better. You give us a strict accounting of actual costs, and we'll give you a hundred per cent commission.'

  "You know that if The Fort hears about this . . ."

  "We know. That's why we chose you to negotiate the leases."

  Hong Kong leaned back. "You're certainly aware, Mr. McLafferty, that the profit to me is not very substantial. But nevertheless you're asking me to risk my business life in a head-on tangle with The Fort. How do you reason?"

  "We say this. O. C. Clemmons wants to come into these islands, but The Fort won't let them. Won't sell them land. Won't provide shipping. Won't do anything. Same with Shea and Horner, same with California Fruit. The Fort has cold-bloodedly decided that no mainland firm will be allowed in Hawaii. They are determined to sat their own prices, keep competition out, garner all profits to The Fort."

  "I know all that," Hong Kong said evenly. "Maybe better than you. But why should I fight your battle?"

  "For two simple reasons," the lawyer said. "You're right that we can't begin to pay you for the risks you'll be taking if The Fort decides to eliminate you, as they may. But remember this, Hong Kong. Here is the real estate you control." And on this map Mr. McLafferty pointed to almost every parcel Hong Kong then held. It was remarkable that the man knew so much. "Now if Gregory's comes in, and O. C. Clemmons, and Shea and Homer, the entire economic life of Hawaii gets a boost. Land is scarce. They have got to buy from you, and every inch you have will double and treble in value. Hong Kong', you've got to believe that an expanding economy is good for everyone, a stagnant economy is bad for us all. Your profits will come indirectly. And the irony of it is, if The Fort had let us in ten years ago when we first tried, for every dollar of profit we made, they would have made six, because we would have stirred up their whole economy for them."

  "The Fort has no intention of allowing things to be stirred up," Hong Kong pointed out.

  "And that's my second reason, Hong Kong. Anything that helps Gregory's or California Fruit helps you people, and by you people I mean the Japanese and the Chinese. Did your spies find out who my old man was? Look, I know you sent cables to Boston to check on me. Well, my old man was Black Jim McLafferty, a bull-necked Irishman from downtown Boston with ferocious eyebrows like mine, and every fight you Chinese have had in Hawaii, we Irishmen had twice as bad in Boston. But my old man . . . Hong Kong, he was a terror. Wound up governor till the local Fort put him in jail. Then he became mayor on a vindication ticket. I'm Black Jim's son, and I don't scare easy. Believe me when I tell you that you've got to do to The Fort what my old man did to the stiff-necked Protestants in Boston."

  Hong Kong did not like the way the conversation was going, so he took it onto a higher level by observing, "Seems to me what you have to do sooner or later is get a bigger piece of land on the edge of the city where you can have lots of parking."

  “We plan to, after we get our first operation working."

  "What you ought to do, if you're smart, is buy the second piece of land right now before prices go up."

  "Exactly what I wanted to discuss next. We've already settled on the location,, and we expect you to buy it for us at the same time you get the downtown leases."

  "Where?" Hong Kong asked.

  "At the other end of town there's a fine piece of land inside a big fence. It's called the Swamp . . ."

  "Oh, no!" Hong Kong laughed. "Can't be touched."

  "We'd give two million for it."

  "You'd give two million ... I'd give two million . . . anybody would, but it can't be sold."

  "It's owned by an elderly Hawaiian lady called . . ." He took out a piece of paper. "Malama Kanakoa, and she has one boy they call Kelly. He's a beachboy."

  "Mr. McLafferty, you have remarkable judgment where land is concerned, but this parcel is tied up in a trust. To get it you've got to buck three trustees, appointed by the court. You know who they are in this case? First comes Hewlett Janders, from The Fort. Second, John Whipple Hoxworth, from The Fort. And third, Harry Helmore, married to Abigail Hewlett, from The Fort. You think they're going to let you pick up that land?"

  "We'll take it to court!" McLafferty stormed, and Hong Kong was pleased to see that the Irishman was in this fight to the finish.

  "Good idea!" the Chinese agreed warmly. "And who do you suppose the judges will be who hear your appeal? Same ones who appointed the trustees. And what are the names of these judges? There's Judge Clements, married to a Whipple. There's Judge Harper, from Texas, came out a widower and married a Hoxworth. And there's Judge McClendin from Tennessee. He's not married to anybody, but his son is, to a Hale. How do you think they will hand down their decision in a case affecting The Fort?"

  "Are they all crooks?" McLafferty asked bluntly.

  "Not a one of them," Hong Kong replied. "In fifty years of pretty close watching The Fort I've never caught them in one crooked deal. They're very honest men, upright, trustworthy. They just happen to believe with all their hearts that only they know what is best for Hawaii. No judge ever hands down a dishonest decision. Never. They just study who's involved in the case, and if it's Hong Kong Kee versus Hoxworth Hale, why, on the face of it I've got to be wrong, because Hale is a man known to be honest, and whatever he wants to do is unquestionably for the welfare of Hawaii."

  "They got it real sewed up, don't they?" McLafferty growled.

  "But the best they've got is this trustee racket," Hong Kong continued. "You take this Malama Kanakoa. She has parcels of land worth ten. million ... at least. The judges say, 'Malama, you're a dear Hawaiian woman with no sense at all. We're going to put you on a spendthrift trust. Three fine haoles will look after your interests, protect you. All we're going to charge you for this service is fifty thousand dollars a year. You can have what's left.' And then the trustees, appointed by the courts, reason: 'Best way to keep a Hawaiian in line is keep 'em in debt.' So within a year poor Malama is so deep in debt to stores run by The Fort, and she owes the government so many back taxes she never can get her head above water. But year after year the trustees get their fees, before the stores, before the government, before Malama. They filter down a little money to her, and things go on and on."

  "So by the trick of doing nothing and waiting, they steal the islands blind . . . but in an honest way."

  Hong Kong studied this summary for some time, then cautiously observed: "I suppose so far The Fort has held us back two full generations. If we had paid labor a good wage twenty years ago, I suppose our gross island product would have increased maybe half a billion dollars each year."

  "You don't call that stealing?" McLafferty asked.

  "Technically you can't, if their intentions are honest. They may be dumb but they're not crooks."

  "Then you'll get th
e land for us?" McLafferty asked.

  "I have to consult my hui," Hong Kong countered, taking refuge in that word, for he knew that McLafferty would not understand if he said, "I must talk this over with my hundred-year-old grandmother."

  "I needn't warn you," the Bostonian said, "that if any of your hui breathes a word of this . . ."

  "My hui has been keeping secrets for almost a century," Hong Kong replied cryptically, and next day he reported: "My hui says that now's the time to strike. I have four Japanese, two Chinese and a Filipino starting to get your land. In six months you'll have it. How do I slip messages to you in Boston?"

  McLafferty looked astonished. "Boston?" he repeated. "Didn't I tell you? I'm living here from now on. I'm part of the revolution that's about to hit these islands. Since I got my old man's eyebrows, I suppose that in the elections I’ll be called Black Jim McLafferty. You see, I'm a working Democrat."

  WHEN Hoxworth Hale, back in 1946, succeeded in frustrating the attempt of California Fruit to open a string of supermarkets in Hawaii, he reported to The Fort: "Within the past year we have been faced by formidable challenges from the mainland. This was to have been expected after the dislocations of war, and for a while it looked as if the dangerous radical movements we have detected in the population might lead to California Fruit's success, for these outsiders came very close to snapping up several leases, and at one point I was afraid they might succeed in buying out Kamejiro Sakagawa, but we applied certain pressures on the little Japanese and forestalled that. So for the time being, at least, we have turned back a very dangerous enemy. But in a larger sense it seems to me that our real danger is going to come from Gregory's. They have tried twice now to penetrate our market, and only by the most resolute action have we forestalled them. We must remain extremely alert to keep them out of Hawaii, and I shall consider any member of our group derelict to his duty who does not keep us informed of Gregory's next move.

  "As for O. C. Clemmons and Shea and Horner, I feel certain we have scared them off, so that unless something unforeseen happens, we need expect no more challenges from them." Hoxworth looked steadily at his colleagues, as if to instill into each the courage to keep Hawaii free of alien influences, and the members left that meeting with added resolution, but in 1947 Hale had to summon his confreres again, and this time he reported: "Something is happening around here that I neither like nor understand. I was alerted some time ago by the clerk at the Lagoon to the fact that a Boston lawyer named James McLafferty was in our city and acting rather suspiciously. For example, he was caught talking a long time with the beachboy Kelly Kanakoa--that's Malama's rather worthless son. We put some people on Kelly and found out that this McLafferty had brought up the subject," and here Hoxworth paused for dramatic effect, "the subject of the Swamp."