Hoxworth, who agreed that the practice of blowing off arms and legs was ridiculous, told his wife, “If you can outlaw them by legal means, go ahead.”
Consequently, Mrs. Hale enlisted a committee of fifty public-spirited ladies—all of them haole, unfortunately—who descended upon the legislature with a bill to halt the crippling of children. The first legislators approached thought: “Mrs. Hale! Probably got The Fort behind her. Better pass this bill.” So the famous anti-fireworks bill was introduced.
And then all hell broke loose! By comparison, the New Year’s pyrotechnic display was a subdued affair, for Chinese legislators shouted on the floor, “This is discrimination! We have always blown up fireworks on New Year’s.”
To everyone’s surprise, the Chinese quickly gained support from the Hawaiians. “We love fireworks!” they protested.
A bombastic Portuguese legislator gave an impassioned plea for the right of little people to have their fun just one night a year, and a huge lobby of storekeepers, who made more than seventy per cent profit selling firecrackers, began to disrupt all customary legislative procedures.
At this point jovial Kangaroo Kee, speaker of the house and supposed to be a creature of The Fort, displayed leadership of an unexpected sort. Handing the gavel over to a friend, he descended to the floor of the house and delivered one of the most impassioned bits of oratory heard in Hawaii for many years. He shouted: “This evil bill is an attempt to deprive the Chinese of Hawaii of an inalienable right! It is religious persecution of the most abominable sort! Do the haole women who brought in this bill need fireworks for their religious ceremonies? No! But do Chinese need them for their ceremonies?”
He paused, and from the entire Chinese-Portuguese-Hawaiian contingent of the house went up a great, throbbing cry in defense of religious freedom. So Kangaroo Kee continued: “I warn the people who have dared to bring this bill onto the floor of this house that if it is voted into law, I will instantly resign! I can stand political domination. I can stand economic retaliation. But I cannot stand religious persecution!” Men wept and the hall echoed with cheers.
That afternoon Hoxworth Hale summoned The Fort and asked glumly, “What in hell has happened around here? Why do we suddenly wind up as religious persecutors?”
“Your wife started it all by wanting to save children from fireworks,” big Hewie Janders reminded him. “And my wife, damn her bleeding heart, gave your wife support.”
“All I know,” Hoxworth growled, “is that the Chinese are threatening to start a new political party. The Hawaiians are charging religious persecution. The Portuguese have enlisted both of them behind that grade-crossing bill. And Kangaroo Kee submitted his resignation this morning. Says he’ll suffer no more dictation from tyrants. Gentlemen, we better do something.”
Hewie Janders suggested: “Could you make a formal statement. In defense of religious freedom and firecrackers?”
“Get a secretary,” Hoxworth snapped, and when the young man arrived, the head of The Fort dictated his memorable announcement beginning: “The Islands of Hawaii have always known religious freedom, and among those who have defended this basic concern of all men none have excelled the Chinese. To think that unfeeling persons should have seen fit to trample upon one of the most cherished rituals of Chinese religion, namely, the explosion of fireworks at festive seasons, is repugnant.”
At this point Hewie Janders pointed out: “But it was your wife and mine who did it, Hoxworth! If you release such a statement, they’re going to boil.”
To this Hale replied, “When the structure of society is endangered, I don’t care whose feelings get hurt.”
The upshot of his retreat was that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Janders considered their husbands contemptible cowards, and said so; Kangaroo Kee, breaking down into a copious flow of tears, announced to the house that he had reconsidered his resignation because the leaders of Hawaii had magnanimously reaffirmed their belief in religious freedom; the dangerous Chinese-Hawaiian-Portuguese coalition was broken up; and merchants sold more fireworks than ever before. On the next Chinese New Year two children were blinded, a girl had three fingers blown off and there were sixteen cases of disfiguring burns; but the islands were happy. The Honolulu Mail, summarizing the wild night, called it a splendid manifestation of island charm. But Hoxworth Hale, whose wife pointed out that the blindings and maimings were exactly what her bill had been intended to prevent, remarked glumly to The Fort: “We must never again outrage the firecracker vote.”
It was under Hale’s direction that The Fort insinuated its men onto the public boards that controlled things like the university and the parks, and once when an outside writer took pains to cross-reference the 181 most influential board members in Hawaii, he found that only thirty-one men in all were involved, and that of them twenty-eight were Hales, Whipples, Hoxworths, Hewletts and Janderses … or their sons-in-law. “A very public-spirited group of people,” the writer concluded, “but it is often difficult to tell one board from the other or any from the board of H & H.”
The Honolulu Mail was owned by The Fort, but its function in the community was never blatantly abused. It was a good paper, Republican of course, and it frequently supported positions which The Fort could not have approved but which the general public did; but when an issue involved land, sugar or labor, the Mail wrote forceful editorials explaining how the public good was involved and how government ought to respond. Once when a Mail reporter was sent to fifteen different sugar-growing areas to write a series of articles proving how much better off the people of Hawaii were than laborers in Jamaica, Fiji and Queensland, his returning letters were first studied in The Fort, “to be sure he maintains the proper historical perspective.” The Mail was scrupulously fair in reporting activities of the underground Democratic Party, but the articles were written as if a benevolent old man was chuckling over the actions of imbecile and delinquent children.
The endless chain of appointed office holders sent out from Washington—too often incompetent and gregarious politicians—was quickly absorbed into The Fort’s genial social life: hunting trips to the big island, boating parties, picnics by the sea. Sometimes a newcomer could sit on the bench for six months without ever meeting a Chinese other than a defendant in a court case or a Japanese who was not dressed in white and serving sandwiches. Such officials could be forgiven if they came to think of Hawaii as The Fort and vice versa and to hand down their decisions accordingly.
But Hoxworth Hale’s greatest contribution lay in a general principle which he propounded early in his regime, and it is to his credit that he perceived this problem long before any of his contemporaries, and his adroit handling of it earned The Fort millions upon millions of dollars. He announced his policy flatly: “No military man stationed in Hawaii above the rank of captain in the army or lieutenant in the navy is to leave these islands without having been entertained by at least three families in this room.” Then he added, “And if you can include the lower ranks, so much the better!” As a result of this rule, the constant flow of military people who passed through Hawaii came to think of big Hewlett Janders and gracious Hoxworth Hale as the two commanders of the islands, men who could be trusted, men who were sound; and in the years that were about to explode, making Hawaii a bastion of the Pacific, it was very difficult for Washington to send any senior admiral or general to Honolulu who did not already know The Fort intimately. Therefore, when a contract was to be let, bids weren’t really necessary: “Hewlett Janders, the fellow I went hunting with ten years ago, he can build it for us.” More important, when the procurement and engineering offices in Washington began to assume major importance in America’s rush program of military expansion, the rising young men who crowded those offices almost had to be the ones that Hoxworth Hale and Hewie Janders had entertained so lavishly in the previous decade.
Nothing Hoxworth accomplished was more important than this establishment of a personal pipeline direct to the sources of power in Washington. Again, he never abused his pr
erogatives. He never called generals on the phone, shouting, as did some, “Goddam it, Shelly, they’re talking about eminent domain on three thousand acres of my choicest sugar fields.” Usually this made Washington determined to go ahead with condemnation proceedings. Hoxworth Hale acted differently: “This you, Shelly? How’s Bernice? We’re fine out here. Say, Shelly, what I called about was the proposed air strip out Waipahu way. That’s a good site, Shelly, but have your men studied what the landing pattern would be with those tall mountains at the end … Yes, Shelly, the ones we went hunting on that weekend … Yes, I just want to be sure your men have thought about that, because there’s another strip of land a little farther makai … Yes, that means toward the sea in Hawaiian, and I was wondering … Yes, it’s our land, too, so there’s no advantage to me one way or the other … Be sure to give Bernice our best.”
Hawaii in these years of benevolent domination by The Fort was one of the finest areas of the world. The sun shone, the trade winds blew, and when tourists arrived on the luxury H & H liners the police band played hulas and girls in grass skirts danced. Labor relations were reasonably good, and any luna who dared strike a worker would have been instantly whisked out of the islands. The legislature was honest, the judges sent out from the mainland handed down strict but impartial decisions, except in certain unimportant cases involving land, and the economy flourished. It is true that mainland firms like Gregory’s and California Fruit protested: “My God, the place is a feudal barony! We tried to buy land for a store and they said, ‘You can’t buy any land in Hawaii. We don’t want your kind of store in the islands.’ ”
It was also true that Chinese or Japanese who wanted to leave the islands to travel on the mainland had to get written permission to do so, and if The Fort felt that a given Oriental was not the kind of man who should represent the islands in America, because he tended toward communist ideas, speaking of labor unions and such, the authorities would not let him leave, and there was nothing he could do about it. Hewlett Janders in particular objected to the large number of young Chinese and Japanese who wanted to go to the mainland to become doctors and lawyers, and he personally saw to it that a good many of them did not get away, for, as he pointed out: “We’ve got fine doctors right here that we can trust, and if we keep on allowing Orientals to become lawyers, we merely create problems for ourselves. Educating such people above their station has got to stop.”
Once in 1934, after Hoxworth and his team had performed miracles in protecting Hawaii from the fury of the depression—it fell less heavily on the islands than anywhere else on earth—he was embittered when a group of Japanese workers connived to have a labor man from Washington visit the islands, and Hale refused to see the visitor. “You’d think they’d have respect for what I’ve done keeping Hawaii safe from the depression. Every Japanese who got his regular pay check, got it thanks to me, and now they want me to talk with labor-union men!”
He refused three times to permit an interview, but one day the man from Washington caught him on the sidewalk and said hurriedly, “Mr. Hale, I respect your position, but I’ve got to tell you that under the new laws you are required to let labor-union organizers talk to your men on the plantations.”
“What’s that?” Hoxworth asked in astonishment. “Did you say …”
“I said,” the visitor, an unpleasant foreign type, repeated slowly, “that under the law you are required to permit labor-union organizers access to your men on the plantations.”
“I thought that’s what you said,” Hale replied. “Good heavens, man!” Then, taking refuge in a phrase he had often heard Wild Whip declaim, he said, “If I saw a rattlesnake crawling onto one of my plantations and I shot him, I’d be a hero. Yet you want me voluntarily to open my lands to labor organizers. Truly, you must be out of your mind.” He turned abruptly and left.
“Mr. Hale!” the labor man called, catching up with him and grabbing his coat.
“Don’t you ever touch me!” Hale stormed.
“I apologize,” the man said contritely. “I just wanted to warn you that Hawaii’s no different from the rest of America.”
“Apparently you don’t know Hawaii,” Hale said, and left.
In his cold, efficient governance of The Fort he manifested only two peculiarities which could be construed as weaknesses. Whenever he had a major decision to make he spent some time alone in his office, pushing back and forth across his polished desk a reddish rock about the size of a large fist, and in the contemplation of its mysterious form he found intellectual reassurance. “The rock came from his great-great-grandmother on Maui,” his secretary explained. “It’s sort of a good-luck omen,” she said, but what the good luck derived from she did not know and Hale never told her. Also, whenever The Fort started a new building Hale insisted that local kahunas be brought in to orient it. Once a mainland architect asked, “What’s a man with a Yale degree doing with kahunas?” and Hale replied, “You’d be surprised. In our courts it’s illegal to force a Hawaiian to testify if a known kahuna is watching in the courtroom.” The architect asked, “You certainly don’t believe such nonsense, do you?” and Hale replied evasively, “Well, if I were the judge, I would certainly insist that any known kahunas be barred from my courtroom. Their power is peculiar.”
One unspoken rule regarding The Fort was observed by all: The Fort did not exist; it was a phrase never mentioned in public; Hale himself never spoke it; and it was banned from both newspaper and radio. The building in which the men met remained as it was during Wild Whip’s tenancy: a rugged red-stone commercial headquarters built like a fort and bearing a simple brass plate that read: Hoxworth & Hale, Shipmasters and Factors.
BACK IN THE 1880’s, when the Chinese vegetable peddler Nyuk Tsin decided to educate her five sons and to send one of them all the way to Michigan for a law degree, Honolulu had been amazed at her tenacity and instructed by the manner in which she forced four of her sons to support the fifth on the mainland. But what Hawaii was now about to witness in the case of Japanese families and their dedication to learning made anything that the Chinese had accomplished look both dilatory and lacking in conviction. Specifically, the penniless night-soil collector Kamejiro Sakagawa was determined that each of his five children must have nothing less than a full education: twelve years of public school, four years at the local university, followed by three at graduate school on the mainland. In any other nation in the world, such an ambition would have been insane; it was to the glory of America, and especially that part known as Hawaii, that such a dream on the part of a privy-cleaner was entirely practical, if only the family had the courage to pursue it.
From the Kakaako home each morning the five Sakagawa children set forth to school. They were clean. Their black hair was bobbed straight across their eyes and their teeth had no cavities. They walked with an eager bounce, their bright scrubbed faces shining in sunlight, for to them school was the world’s great adventure. Their education did not come easily, for it was conducted in a foreign language: English. At home their mother spoke almost none and their father knew only pidgin.
But in spite of language difficulties, the five Sakagawas performed brilliantly and even teachers who might have begun with an animus against Japanese grew to love these particular children. Reiko-chan set the pattern for her brothers. In her first six grades she usually led her class, and when teachers had to leave the room to see the principal, they felt no compunction about turning their classes over to this adorable little girl with the delicately slanted eyes and the flawless skin. Reiko-chan was destined to be a teacher’s pet, and early in life she decided that when she graduated from the university, she would be a teacher too.
The boys were a more rowdy lot, and no teacher in her right mind would have turned her class over to them. They specialized in the rougher games, for in accordance with the ancient rule that all who came to Hawaii were modified, the four Sakagawa boys were obviously going to be taller than their father, with better teeth, wider shoulders and
straighter legs. It was noticeable that they threw like Americans and could knock bottles off fences with surprising accuracy, but their mastery of English fell markedly below their sister’s, a fact of which they were proud, for in the Honolulu public schools anyone who spoke too well was censured and even tormented by his classmates. To be accepted, one had to speak pidgin like a moron, and above everything else, the Sakagawa boys wanted to be accepted.
The success of this family in the American school was the more noteworthy because when classes were over, and when haole children ran home to play, the five Sakagawas lined up and marched over to the Shinto temple, where the man who was a priest on Sundays appeared in a schoolteacher’s black kimono to conduct a Japanese school. He was a severe man, much given to beating children, and since he was proud of the fact that he spoke no corrupting English and had only recently come from Tokyo, he tyrannized the children growing up in an alien land. “How can you ever become decent, self-respecting Japanese,” he stormed, “if you do not learn to sit properly upon your ankles. Sakagawa Goro!” and the heavy rod fell harshly across the boy’s back. “Do not fidget. Will you feel no shame when you return home and visit friends and fidget?” Bang, went the rod. Bang and bang again.
The priest was contemptuous of everything American and impressed upon his charges that they were in this alien land for only a few years until they took up their proper life, and when he described Japan, his eyes grew misty and a poetry came into his voice. “A land created by the immortal gods themselves!” he assured them. “In Japan there is no rowdyism like here. In Japan children are respectful to their parents. In Japan every man knows his place and all do reverence to the emperor. No man can predict what impossible things Japan will some day accomplish.” He taught from the same books that were used in Tokyo, using the same inflections and the same stern discipline. For three hours each day, when other children were rollicking in the sun, the Sakagawas sat painfully on their ankles before the priest and received what he called their true education.
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