Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  There was much agitation against the Japanese-language schools, as they were called, and there was no doubt that the priests taught an un-American, Shintoistic, nationalistic body of material, but in those years not a single child who attended the schools got into trouble with the police. Among the Japanese there was no delinquency. Parents were obeyed and teachers were respected. In the Japanese schools a severe rectitude was taught and enforced, and much of the civic responsibility that marked the adult Japanese community derived from these austere late-afternoon sessions; and it was a strange thing, but not a single child in later years ever remembered much of the jingoistic nonsense taught by the priests; few ever wanted to go back to Japan; but all learned respect for an established order of life. It was as if the great freedoms enjoyed in the American school in the first part of the day insulated the child against the nationalistic farrago of the afternoon, so that most Japanese children, like the Sakagawas, assimilated the best from both schools and were not marred by the worst of either.

  Actually, their true education in these years took place at home. In their tiny Kakaako shack, which would have been cramped even for a family of three, their mother enforced the rigid rules of cleanliness that she had learned as a child. Nothing was left on the floor. No dish went unwashed. Chopsticks were handled so that no food dropped. Clothes were put away neatly, and the child who did not bathe completely at least once each day was a hopeless barbarian, no better than a Chinese. Their father’s influence was more subtly felt. He saw the world as divided sharply into the good and the bad and he never hesitated long in defining where any given action fell. It was good to honor one’s country, it was good to die heroically, it was good to attend to what one’s superiors said, it was good to have education. He lived a life of the most fierce propriety in which stealing was bad, and gambling, and speaking back, and tearing one’s clothes. He was a harsh disciplinarian, but he rarely struck his children, relying instead upon the force of his character. He loved his children as if they were mysterious angels that had been allowed to live with him for a little while, and if the mean little shack was sometimes barren of food, it was never lacking in love.

  The children engaged in nonsensical jokes which their parents could not understand. Reiko-chan had a series of remarks which her brothers greeted with shouts no matter how often she recited them: “What did the hat say to the hatrack? You stay here and I’ll go on a head.” Six times a week the boys could scream with delight over that one. “What did the carpet say to the floor? Don’t make a move, I got you covered!” And “What did the big toe say to the little toe? Don’t look back, but we’re being followed by a heel.”

  The boys had rougher games, including one in which Goro would grab a brother’s ear and ask sweetly, “Do you want your ear any longer?” If the brother said no, Goro would pretend to twist it off. If the answer was yes, Goro would jerk vigorously on the ear and shout, “Then I’ll make it longer!” This usually led to a fight, which was what Goro had intended.

  But on two basic principles the Sakagawa children would permit no joking. No one was allowed to call them Japs. This was a word so offensive to the Japanese that it simply could not be tolerated, for throughout America it was being used in headlines and cartoons to depict sneaking, evil little men with buckteeth. No haole could appreciate the fervor with which Japanese combated the use of this word.

  Nor were they to be called slant-eyes. They argued: “Our eyes are not slanted! It’s only because we have no fold in our eyelids that they look slanted.” But of course in this they were wrong. Reiko-chan’s little eyes were delightfully slanted, low near the nose and tilting upward in saucy angles. It was she who came home with one of their best games. Putting her two fingers at the corners of her lovely eyes, she pulled them way up and chanted, “My mother’s a Japanese.” Then she pulled them far down and sang, “And my father’s a Chinese.” Then, moving her forefingers to the middle of her eyebrows and her thumbs below, she spread her eyes wide apart and shouted, “But I’m a hundred per cent American.”

  When Kamejiro first saw this trick, he rebuked his daughter and reminded her: “The proudest thing in your life is that you’re a Japanese. Don’t ever laugh about it.” But at the same time he became vaguely aware that with the arrival of children his family had become entangled in values that were contradictory and mutually exclusive: he sent his offspring to American schools so that they would succeed in American life; but at the same time he kept them in Japanese school so that they would be prepared for their eventual return to Japan. The children felt this schizophrenia and one day at the close of the American school Goro went not to the Japanese teacher but directly home, where Kamejiro met him with the question, “Why are you home?”

  “I’m not going to the Japanese school any longer.”

  Kamejiro held his temper and asked patiently, “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to be a Japanese. I want to be an American.”

  For several moments Kamejiro held his hands to his side, in self-discipline, but he could not do so for long. Suddenly he grabbed his oldest son, lifted him in the air, tucked him under one arm and ran with him furiously to the temple, where after bowing ceremoniously to the priest, his son still under his arm, he threw the boy into the midst of the scholars. “He said he didn’t want to be a Japanese!” he stammered in rage, then bowed and left.

  Slowly the tall priest rose and reached for his rod. Moving silently in his bare feet to where Goro lay on the tatami, he began to flail the boy unmercifully. When he had finished he returned solemnly to his rostrum, sat meticulously upon the floor and cried in a quivering voice, “Sakagawa Goro, what are the first laws of life?”

  “Love of country. Love of emperor. Respect for parents.”

  Even in their names, the Japanese children experienced this constant hauling in two directions. At the American school it was Goro Sakagawa; at the Japanese, Sakagawa Goro. And when the beating was over, Goro waited for an opportunity and whispered to his brother Tadao, “I will never go back to Japan.”

  “Who spoke?” the priest cried sharply.

  “I did,” Goro replied. For him to lie would have been unthinkable.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that when I grow up I will never go back to Japan.”

  Ominously the priest reached for the rod once more, and this time the beating he delivered was both longer and more severe. At the end he asked, “Now will you go back to Japan?”

  “No,” Goro stubbornly replied.

  That night the priest told Kamejiro, “We can have no boy like this in the Japanese school. He lacks the proper sincerity.”

  “He will be back on Monday,” Kamejiro said dutifully, bowing before his intellectual superior. “Believe me, Sensei, he will be back.”

  That was Wednesday evening, and when bruised Goro started to go to bed his father caught his hand and said quietly, “Oh, no! You will not sleep tonight.”

  “But I must go to school tomorrow,” Goro pleaded.

  “No. For you there is no more school. Tonight you start to work with me.” And Kamejiro made the boy dress in warm clothes and that night he took him on his rounds to clean out privies. Goro was appalled at the work his father did, at the humiliation of it, at the way late strolling drunks ridiculed him, at the stench. But bow-legged little Kamejiro said nothing. Hauling his son with him, he did his work, and at dawn the two night prowlers took their hot bath and breakfasted as the other children went to school.

  On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights young Goro continued to clean out privies, until he felt so sick that he was afraid even to walk beside his resolute father. At dawn on Sunday, as the brilliant tropical sun came over Diamond Head, Kamejiro said to his son, “This is the way men have to work when they do not have an education. Are you ready to apologize to the priest?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re ready to apply yourself … in both schools?”

  “Yes.”

  On Mon
day afternoon Kamejiro took Goro back to the temple and stood in the doorway while his son announced to the entire class: “I apologize to all of Japan for what I said last Wednesday. I apologize to you, Sensei, for my evil behavior. I apologize to you, Father, for having been such an ungrateful son.”

  “Are you now willing to go back to Japan?” the priest asked.

  “Yes, Sensei.”

  “Then sit down and we will resume our studies.” After that experience, there were no more disturbances among the Sakagawa children.

  There was one item of education which Kamejiro could delegate to no one. Whenever he took his family for a stroll through Kakaako he kept on the alert, and from time to time would grasp his left wrist with his right hand, and then his children knew. “Is that one?” the boys whispered.

  “That’s one,” Kamejiro replied in hoarse, awe-struck tones, and in this way the Sakagawas learned to spot the Etas, those untouchables who had filtered into Hawaii. Mrs. Sakagawa lectured Reiko-chan concerning the worst fate that could befall any girl: “There was a girl in Kakaako named Itagaki, and without knowing it she married an Eta. Her family had to go to another island in disgrace.”

  There were ways a self-respecting family could protect itself from Etas, and Kamejiro often told his children, “When the time comes for you to marry, I’ll go to the detective and he will tell me whether the other party is an Eta or an Okinawan.” There were two such detectives in Hawaii, and since they kept dossiers on every Japanese family, few Etas or Okinawans were unknown to them. Their services were costly, but since they enabled prospective brides and grooms to avoid the shame of mismating, the general community was willing to pay their fee.

  Then, as Reiko-chan approached the age when she must move on to a more advanced school, her father’s attention was diverted from Etas and directed to a matter of more immediate importance. The haole citizens of Hawaii, properly disturbed by the abominable English spoken in the schools, united to demand at least one school on each island where all children would speak acceptable English, and out of this agitation the so-called English-standard school developed. To attain entrance a child had to undergo a verbal examination to prove that he was not corrupted by pidgin and would thus not contaminate his classmates, who were usually trying to gain entrance to some mainland college.

  The basic concept of the English-standard school was meritorious, for in other schools there often appeared to be no standards at all and even teachers sometimes taught in pidgin; but the manner in which students were selected for these superior schools was one of the most shameful subterfuges ever permitted in the islands. Plantation managers soon let it be known that they would look with disfavor upon teachers who admitted to the preferred schools too many children of Oriental ancestry; so automatically the schools became costly private schools with superior facilities paid for out of general taxation but largely restricted to haole children. This discrimination was easy to enforce, for teachers who interviewed prospective enrollees were encouraged to disbar any child who evidenced even the slightest accent or the misuse of a single word; and a miserable mockery developed whereby teachers, who knew they were under the surveillance of plantation managers, conducted tests of Japanese and Filipino children, whose failures were ordained before they spoke a word. Of course, a few sons of Oriental doctors and lawyers were admitted, lest the abuse of tax dollars become too odious, but for the most part the English-standard school became another device to keep Orientals on the plantations, where they were supposed to belong. As Hoxworth Hale pointed out, when as a member of the Board of Education he encouraged the establishment of the schools: “We mustn’t educate field hands beyond their capacity.”

  In Honolulu the English-standard school was Jefferson, a superb institution with superior playing fields, laboratories and teachers. With real anxiety Japanese fathers like Kamejiro Sakagawa watched the results of the first entrance tests at Jefferson. Almost no Japanese children gained admittance, and Kamejiro warned: “See! You lazy children who will not study. None of your friends got into the fine school! But you will get in, because from now on you will study twice as much as before.” He launched an ingenious program whereby his five children attended two different Christian churches each Sunday, listening to the preacher use good English. At any free public lecture, there would be Kamejiro and his five children. He could not understand what was being said, but when he got the young students home he would seat them in a circle and make them repeat again and again what the speaker had said, and in the speaker’s intonation. Before long, Reiko-chan and Goro were adept in English.

  The Sakagawa children had now reached the apex of their educational schizophrenia. In their American school they learned that all people were created equal, but their father kept teaching them who the Etas were, and the Okinawans. In their Japanese school they learned formal Japanese and were beaten if they made mistakes, but at night they drilled one another in proper English. Their parents spoke little of the language, but they insisted that their children converse with each other in English. It was a crazy, conflicting world, but there was this refuge of assurance: when they were with other children like themselves they spoke only a wild, free pidgin whose syllables sang on the ear like the breaking of waves along the beach.

  When Reiko-chan was a long-legged, flashing-eyed girl of twelve she was ready to take her all-important verbal examination for admission into the privileges of Jefferson. Her parents washed her with unusual care, dressed her in a white smock with ruffles, and polished her shoes. Kamejiro wanted to accompany her, but she begged him not to do so, only to find when she got to Jefferson that he was required to be with her. She ran back to get him, and when her mother saw how heated up she had become in doing so, she was given another bath, and with her father’s apprehensive hand in hers she returned to Jefferson, where a teacher picked up the report from Reiko’s elementary school and read silently: “Reiko Sakagawa. Grades A. Behavior A. Knowledge of American customs A. English A.” The investigating teacher smiled and passed the report approvingly along to the other two members of the board, but one of these had at her elbow an additional report on the Sakagawa girl, and this said simply, “Father, privy cleaner.”

  “How do you spend your days this summer?” the first teacher asked.

  In a sweet, clear voice Reiko-chan replied, with careful attention to each syllable, “I help my mother with the washing. And on Sundays I go to church. And when we have a picnic I help my brothers get dressed.”

  The three teachers were impressed with the precision of the little girl’s speech. Obviously she was a girl who belonged in whatever excellent schools a community could provide, and the first teacher was about to mark the official ballot “Passed,” when the third teacher whispered, “Did you see this? Her father?”

  The damning paper was passed from hand to hand and the teachers nodded. “Failed,” wrote the first. Then, smiling sweetly at Reiko-chan, she explained: “We are not going to accept you at Jefferson, my dear. We feel that you speak a little too deliberately … as if you had memorized.”

  There was no appeal. Kamejiro and his brilliant daughter were led away and in the summer sunlight the father asked in Japanese, “Did you get in?”

  “No,” she said, trying desperately not to cry.

  “Why not?” her father asked in dumb pain.

  “They said I spoke too slowly,” she explained.

  It was Kamejiro, and not Reiko-chan, who began to weep. He looked at the fine school, at the lovely grounds, and realized what a great boon his family had lost. “Why, why?” he pleaded. “At home you talk like a fire machine! Why do you talk slow today?”

  “I wanted to be so careful,” Reiko-chan explained.

  Kamejiro felt that his daughter had failed the family through some conscious error, and his rage overcame him. Raising his arm, he was about to punish her when he saw that tears were hanging in her eyes, so instead of thrashing her as he intended, he dropped on one knee and embraced her. “Don’t
worry,” he said. “Goro will get in. Maybe it’s even better that way, because he’s a boy.”

  Then he grabbed his daughter lovingly by the hand and said, “We must hurry,” and the event toward which he hurried proved how deeply confused he was, for after having tried with all his prayers to get Reiko-chan into Jefferson so that she could be even more American, he now rushed her back home and into a kimono so that she could join her brothers in demonstrating that she was perpetually a Japanese. For this was the emperor’s birthday, and the community was assembling at the Japanese school. As each family entered, the parents bowed almost to the floor before the portrait of the august emperor, then led their children to an allotted place on the tatami, where they sat on their ankles. At eleven the teacher appeared, ashen-faced, so grave was his responsibility that day. A former army officer rose and explained, “In Japan today, if the teacher who reads the Imperial Rescript mispronounces even one word or stumbles once, he is required to commit hara-kiri. Let us pay attention as we hear the immortal words of the Emperor Meiji as to what makes a good Japanese.”

  Slowly, painfully, the teacher began reading. In Japanese life the Imperial Rescript was unlike anything that western nations knew. It had started out in 1890 as a simple announcement of what Japan’s educational policy should be, but the nation had found its clear statement of citizenship so appealing that the Rescript had been made immortal. Children and soldiers had to memorize it and lead their lives according to its precepts. It taught love of country, complete subjugation to the divine will of the emperor, and obedience to all authority. In beautiful language it taught a staggering theory of life, and in humble attention to it, Japan had grown strong. When the teacher ended his reading of the terrifying words, huge drops of perspiration stood out on his forehead, and each member of his audience was freshly dedicated to Japan and willing to sacrifice his life at the command of the emperor.