Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  Suddenly Wild Whip grabbed Kamejiro by the shoulders and stuck his face close to his workman’s. “Little man,” he asked, “are you as tough as they say?”

  “What is tough?” Kamejiro countered suspiciously.

  “That day when we argued about the iron for your hot bath? Would you really have fought with me?”

  Now Kamejiro understood, and since he was about to be fired anyway, he felt no caution. “Yes,” he said, jabbing Whip in the stomach with his finger. “I going to smash you here … with my head.”

  “I figured that was your plan,” Whip laughed evenly. “Do you know what my plan was? When you ducked your head, I was going to …” With a brutal uppercut of his right fist he swung at Kamejiro’s head, stopping his knuckles an inch from the workman’s nose. “I’d have killed you!”

  Kamejiro glared back at his boss and replied, “Maybe I too quick for you. Maybe your fist never hit.” He brought his own around with dreadful force, arresting it just short of Wild Whip’s belly.

  To his surprise, the boss exploded in gales of nervous laughter, embracing his gardener as if he had found a great treasure. “That settles it!” he shouted. “Kamejiro, you’re a man I can respect.” Jamming his strong hands under the little man’s armpits, he danced the astonished Japanese up and down, crying, “Start to pack, you tough little bastard, because you and I have a date with a mountain.”

  Kamejiro broke free and studied Whip suspiciously. He had seen his boss before in these wild, fantastic moods and he assumed that Whip was either drunk or morbid over some pineapple problem. “Bimeby you be mo bettah,” he assured him.

  Whip laughed, grabbed his workman again, and dragged him onto the lawn, where he could point to the sweet, green mountains of Kauai. Gently he explained, “You and I are going over to Oahu, Kamejiro. And we’re going to blast a puka right through the mountains. We’ll get more water …”

  “What you speak, Hoxuwortu?” the little Japanese asked.

  “We’re going to dynamite a tunnel right through the mountains, and you’re going to do the dynamiting.”

  Kamejiro looked at his boss suspiciously. “Boom-boom?” he asked.

  “Takusan boom-boom!” Whip replied.

  “Sometime boom-boom kill,” Sakagawa countered.

  “That’s why I wanted a man with guts,” Whip shouted. “Good pay. One day one dollar.”

  “Mo bettah one dollar half,” Kamejiro proposed.

  Whip studied the tough little workman and laughed. “For you, Kamejiro, one dollar half.”

  He extended his hand to the stocky workman, but Kamejiro held back. “And one piece iron for hot bath?”

  “All the iron you want. I hear you have a baby.”

  “One wahine,” Kamejiro confessed with shame.

  “Bring her along … and your wife,” Whip cried, and the contract was confirmed.

  The camp to which Kamejiro moved his family was high on the rainy side of the Koolau Range on Oahu, and to operate his hot bath for the Japanese workmen Kamejiro required a waterproof shed which he and Yoriko built at night. Yoriko also managed the commissary and by dint of literally endless work the two thrifty Japanese managed to acquire a considerable nest egg, but its size was due not primarily to their hard work but rather to the fact that in these inaccessible mountains the representatives of the consulate could not reach them, and so Kamejiro passed two full years without discovering how badly his homeland needed money.

  He was occupied in the thrilling business of hauling great loads of dynamite deep into the tunnel, boring holes into which it was tamped, and then exploding it with dramatic effect. Technically, the job should have been simple and, if time-proved precautions were observed, free from real danger; but the Koolau Range presented perplexing features which made the job not only unpleasant but downright dangerous.

  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 to 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, g
rabbed 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 tunas 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 tunas 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?”