Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  In the former capacity he was pleased at the forthright manner in which young Japanese in Hawaii volunteered for military duty, and thought that the Army’s arbitrary rejection of the boys was unwarranted, and he wrote to President Roosevelt to tell him so: “I can speak of first-hand knowledge, sir, and these Japanese boys are among the most loyal citizens you will find in the nation. Why can’t you order your people to form a combat team composed of Japanese intended for use in Europe only?”

  On the other hand, he was distressed that so few Chinese stepped forward to bear arms in defense of America. “If they don’t volunteer,” he stormed one day, “I shall direct our draft boards to flush them out with cyanide of potassium. Where are they all?” When he had civil authorities look into the matter, he found that most of them were out at Pearl Harbor, and he asked Admiral Nimitz, “Do you mean to tell me that all those Chinese boys are essential to the war effort?” He was surprised when Nimitz looked into the matter and reported curtly: “Yes. We’ve got to have somebody out there who can use slide rules.”

  In early 1942 the air corps asked Hoxworth to join a group of senior officers who were flying to various South Pacific islands to study the possibilities for new airstrips, and he of course quickly consented, for with his wife in a depressed spell during which she could not converse intelligently, with his daughter in a mainland school, and his son in the air corps, he had no reason to stay at home, and the pleasure he got from climbing into uniform, with the simulated rank of colonel, was great.

  His military contribution to the journey of inspection was not significant, but his sociological observations were of real import, and whenever the PBY started to descend at bases like Johnston Island, or Canton, or Nukufetau, and he saw from the cramped windows the crystal lagoons and the wide sweep of sand upon reef, he recalled all that one of his ancestors, Dr. John Whipple, had written about the tropics, and he was able to instruct the air corps men on many points. When he first stepped upon an atoll reef he had the peculiar sensation that he had come home, and although for years he had forgotten the fact that he was part-Polynesian, that ancient ancestry came flooding back upon him, and often while the officers were inspecting possible landing areas, he would remain upon the reef, looking out to sea, and long-submerged components of his blood came surging before his eyes, and he could see canoes and voyagers.

  But these were not the subtle influences of which I spoke. They began when the PBY landed on Suva Bay, in the Fiji Islands. Hoxworth climbed into a small British boat and went ashore to meet the governor, a proper Englishman with an American wife, and the visit started out like any normal wartime trip to an island that might soon be invaded by the enemy; but as the group started looking into Fiji affairs, Hoxworth Hale began building up impressions that disturbed him deeply.

  “Why are the Indians here kept apart?” he inquired.

  “Oh, you can’t do anything with an Indian!” the British secretary to the governor replied.

  “Why not?” Hoxworth asked.

  “Have you ever tried working with an Oriental?” the Englishman countered. Hale made no reply, but as he studied the sugar fields in Fiji, he found them exactly like the sugar fields in Hawaii, and he had certainly worked with Japanese in precisely such surroundings, and without too much trouble. He reflected: “Indians were imported into Fiji and Japanese were imported into Hawaii, for the same purposes at about the same time. But with what different results! In Hawaii the Japanese are reasonably good Americans. Here the Indians are totally undigested. What went wrong down here?”

  “One good thing about it, though,” the Englishman pointed out. “If you Johnnies want to pre-empt land for your airstrips, you don’t have to worry about the bloody Indians. They’re not allowed to own any.”

  “Why not?” Hoxworth asked.

  “Orientals? Owning land?” the smart young man asked rhetorically, but to himself Hoxworth replied: “Bloody well why not? If I understand correctly, the Kees now own half the homes in Hawaii. Best thing ever happens to a Japanese is when he gets a little piece of land and starts to tidy it up. Makes him less radical and woos him away from labor unions.”

  “So the Indians own none of the land?” Hoxworth asked aloud.

  “No, we restrict that very severely,” the young man assured him. “Nor can they vote, so we won’t have any trouble there, either.”

  “You mean, the ones born in India can’t vote,” Hoxworth queried.

  “Nor the ones born here,” the aide explained, and Hoxworth thought: “How differently we’ve done things in Hawaii.” And the more he saw of Fiji, the happier he was with the manner in which Hawaii’s Orientals had been brought into full citizenship, with no real barriers hindering them. Did the Indians go to college? There were no colleges; but in Hawaii there were and God knows the Japanese went. Did the Indians own the land on which their crowded stores perched? No, but in Hawaii the Chinese and Japanese owned whatever they liked. Did the Indians participate in civil government? Heavens no, but in Hawaii their Oriental cousins were beginning to take over some branches. Did Indians serve as government clerks? No, but in Hawaii Chinese were sought after as government employees.

  And so throughout his entire comparison of Fiji and Hawaii, Hoxworth Hale saw that what had been done to build the Orientals into Hawaiian life had been the right thing, and what the British in Fiji had done to keep the Indians a sullen, hateful half of the population was wrong; and it was from Fiji that Hale acquired his first insight into how fundamentally just the missionary descendants had been, for he concluded: “In Hawaii we have a sound base from which our islands can move into a constructive future: Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Caucasians and Hawaiians working together. But in Fiji, with the hatred I see between the races, I don’t see how a logical solution will ever be worked out.” Then he added grimly, but with humor, “By God, the next time I hear a Japanese sugar worker raising hell about a union, I’m going to say, Watanabe-san, maybe you better go down to Fiji for a while and see how the Indians are doing.’ He’d come back to Honolulu and cry at the wharf, ‘Please, Mr. Hale, let me back on shore. I want to work in Hawaii, where things are good.’ ”

  And then, when he was congratulating himself on the superior system evolved by his missionary ancestors, he attended a banquet given by Sir Ratu Salaka, a majestic black Fijian chief with degrees from Cambridge and Munich, and when this scion of a great Fijian family appeared dressed in a native lava-lava, with western shirt and jacket, enormous brown leather shoes, and medals of valor gained in World War I, Hale intuitively felt: “In Hawaii we have no natives like this man.”

  Sir Ratu Salaka was a powerfully oriented man. He spoke English faultlessly, knew of the progress of the war, and stood ready, although now well along in his fifties, to lead a Fijian expeditionary force against the Japanese.

  “Remember, my good friends of the air corps,” he said prophetically, “when you invade such islands as Guadalcanar and Bougainville, where I have been on ethnological expeditions, you will require as scouts men like myself. Our dark skins will be an asset in scouting, our knowledge of the jungle will enable us to go where your men could never penetrate, and our habit of secrecy in movement will allow us to creep up upon our opponents and kill them silently, while their companions sit ten yards away. When you need us, call, for we are ready.”

  “Will you have Indian troops with you?” Hale asked.

  At this question the dark-skinned host exploded with laughter. “Indians?” he snorted contemptuously. “We put out a call for volunteers and out of our population of more than a hundred thousand Indians, do you know how many stepped forward? Two, and they did so with the firm stipulation that they never be required to leave Fiji. In fact, if I remember, they weren’t even willing to go to the other islands of this group. No, Mr. Hale, we wouldn’t use any Indians. They didn’t volunteer, and we didn’t expect them to.”

  Hale thought: “In Hawaii, from the same number of Japanese we could have got fifteen thousan
d volunteers … even to fight Japan. But here the Indians won’t offer to fight an enemy with whom they have no ties of emotion whatever.” And again he felt superior.

  But when Sir Ratu Salaka finished his brandy, like the crusty English squire he was, he observed: “In Fiji, I assure you, we are not proud of the way in which we have failed to assimilate our Indian sugar workers. Some day we shall have to pay a terrible price for our neglect—civil disturbance, perhaps even bloodshed—and I as a Fijian leader am particularly aware of this tragedy. But when I visit Hawaii, and see how dismally the Polynesians have been treated there, how their lands have been stolen from them, how Japanese fill all the good governmental jobs, and how the total culture of a great people has been destroyed, I have got to say that even though our Indians are not so well situated as your Japanese, we Fijians are infinitely better off than your Hawaiians. We own our own land. I suppose that nine-tenths of the farm land you saw today belongs to Fijians. We also control the part of the government not held by Englishmen. Today our old patterns of life are stronger than they were fifty years ago. In all things we prosper, and I can think of no self-respecting Fijian who, aware of the paradise we enjoy here, would consent to trade places with a pitiful Hawaiian who had nothing left of his own. You Americans have treated the Hawaiians horribly.”

  A silence fell over the group, and finally Hoxworth said, “You may be surprised, Sir Ratu, and I suppose these officers will be too, but I am part-Hawaiian, and I do not feel as you suggest.”

  Sir Ratu was a tough old parliamentarian who rarely retreated, so he studied his guest carefully and said bluntly, “From appearances I should judge that the American half of you had prospered a good deal more than the Hawaiian half.” Then he laughed gallantly and offered another round of brandy, saying to Hale, “We are talking of rather serious things, Mr. Hale, but I do think this question is sometimes worth considering: For whom do invaders hold an island in trust? Here the British have said, ‘We hold these islands in trust for the Fijians,’ and in doing so, they have done a great disservice, if not actual injustice, to the Indians whom they imported to work the sugar fields. But in Hawaii your missionaries apparently said, ‘We hold these islands in trust for whomever we import to work our sugar fields,’ and in saving them for the Chinese, they did a grave injustice to all Hawaiians. I suppose if our ancestors had been all-wise, they would have devised a midway solution that would have pleased everybody. But you gentlemen are heading east to Tahiti. Study the problem there. You’ll find the French did not do one damn bit better than the English here or the Americans in Hawaii.”

  To this Hale added, “At least, in Hawaii, we will never have civil war. We will never have bloodshed.”

  Sir Ratu, a giant of a man in all ways, could not let this pass, so he added, “And in a few years you’ll have no bloody Hawaiians, either.” And the party broke up.

  It was with badly mixed emotions that Hoxworth Hale left Fiji, but when his PBY deposited the inspecting team in American Samoa he was propelled into an even more perplexing speculation. He arrived at Pago Pago the day before the islanders were scheduled to celebrate their annexation to America, which had occurred in 1900, and he was told that since a Japanese submarine had recently bombarded Samoa, the islanders this year wished to demonstrate in special ceremonies their loyalty to America. But when Hale rose next morning he saw that the forbidding peaks which surrounded Pago Pago had trapped a convoy of rain clouds, which were in the process of drenching the islands, and he assumed that the ceremonies would be cancelled.

  But he did not know Samoans! At dawn the native marines stood in the rain and fired salutes. At eight the Fita Fita band, in splendid uniforms, marched to the “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and by ten all citizens who could walk lined the soggy parade ground while Samoan troops executed festive maneuvers. Then a huge, golden-brown chief with a face like a rising sun and enough flesh for two men, moved to the foot of the flag pole and made an impassioned speech in Samoan, proclaiming his devotion to America. Others followed, and as they spoke, Hoxworth Hale began to catch words and finally whole phrases which he understood, and with these Polynesian tones reverberating in his memory he experienced a profound mental confusion, so that when the Fita Fita band played the “Star Spangled Banner” and the cannon roared, he did not hear the wild cheering of the crowd.

  He was comparing what he had seen in Samoa with what he remembered of the way Hawaii celebrated its Annexation Day, and he was struck by the difference. In Samoa guns boomed; in Hawaii decent people maintained silence. In Samoa people cheered; in Hawaii many wept. In Samoa not even storms could daunt the islanders who wanted to watch once more their beloved new flag rising to the symbolic tip of the island; but in Hawaii the new flag was not even raised, for Hawaiians remembered that when their islands were joined to America, the act had been accomplished by trickery and injustice. In the inevitable triumph of progress, a people had been raped, a lesser society had been crushed into oblivion. It was understandable that in Samoa, Polynesians cheered Annexation Day, but in Hawaii they did not.

  To Hoxworth Hale these reflections were particularly gloomy, for it had been his great-grandfather Micah who had engineered the annexation of Hawaii, and Hoxworth was always reminded by his family that the event had coincided with his own birth, so that friends said, “Hawaii is the same age as Hoxworth,” thus making a family joke of what many considered a crime. But he could also remember his great-grandmother, the Hawaiian lady Malama, as she told him before she died: “My husband made me attend the ceremonies when the Hawaiian flag was torn down, and do you know what the haoles did with that flag, Hoxy? They cut it into little pieces and passed them around the crowd.”

  “What for?” he had asked.

  “So they could remember the day,” the old lady had replied. “But why they would want to remember it I never understood.”

  There were many Hawaiians, even in 1942, who preferred not to speak with a Hale and who refused to eat at the same table with one. But others remembered not stern Micah who had stolen their islands but his mother Jerusha who had loved the Hawaiians, and those who remembered her would eat with the Hales while the others would not. Now, in Samoa where the rains fell, Hoxworth Hale, the descendant of both Micah and Jerusha, felt their two natures warring in his sympathies, and he wished that something could be done to rectify the injustices of Hawaiian annexation so that his Polynesians would take as much pride in their new flag as the Samoans did in theirs; but he knew that this was not possible, and the old sorrow that had attacked him at Yale when he contemplated the stolen Jarves paintings returned and he thought: “Who can assess the results of an action?” And he found no joy in Samoa.

  But when he reached Tahiti, that Mecca of the South Seas, and his seaplane landed in the small bay that lies off Papeete, between the island of Moorea and the Diademe of Tahiti, making it surely the loveliest seaplane base in the world, his spirits were again excited, for these were the islands from which his people had come. This was the storied capital of the seas, and it was more beautiful than he had imagined. He felt proud to be of a blood that had started from Tahiti.

  He was disappointed in the legendary girls of the island, however, for few of them had teeth. Australian canned foods and a departure from the traditional fish diet had conspired to rob girls in their teens of their teeth, but, as one of the air corps majors said, “If a man goes for beautiful gums, he can have a hell of a time in Tahiti.”

  What interested Hoxworth most, however, was not the girls but the Chinese. The French governor pointed out that the Americans would find a secure base in Tahiti, because the Chinese were well in hand. They were allowed to own no land, were forbidden to enter many kinds of business, were severely spied on by currency control, and were in general so held down that the Americans could rest assured there would be no problems. Hoxworth started to say, “In Hawaii our island wealth is multiplied several times each year by the Chinese, who do own land and who do go into business. The only
currency control we have is that all our banks would like to get hold of what the Chinese keep in their own banks.” But as a visitor he kept his mouth shut and looked.

  It seemed to him that Tahiti would be approximately ten times better off in all respects if the Chinese were not only allowed but encouraged to prosper. “You hear so much about Tahiti,” he said in some disappointment to the general leading his party, “but compare their roads to Hawaii’s.”

  “Shocking,” the general agreed.

  “Or their health services, or their stores, or their churches.”

  “Pretty grubby in comparison with what you fellows have done in Hawaii,” the general agreed.

  “Where are the Tahiti schools? Where is the university? Or the airport or the clean hospitals? You know, General, the more I see of the rest of Polynesia, the more impressed I am with Hawaii.”

  The general was concerned with other matters, and on the third day he announced to his team: “It’s incredible, but there simply isn’t any place here in Tahiti to put an airstrip. But there seems to be an island farther north where we could probably flatten out one of the reefs and find ourselves with a pretty fine landing strip.”

  “What island?” Hale asked.

  “It’s called Bora Bora,” the general said, and early next morning he flew the PBY up there, and Hoxworth Hale thus became the first part-Hawaiian ever to see his ancestral island of Bora Bora from the air. He saw it on a bright sunny day, when a running sea was breaking on the outer reef, while the lagoon was a placid blue surrounding the dark island from which rose the tall mountains and the solid, brutal block of basalt in the middle. He gasped at the sheer physical delight of this fabled island, its deep-cut bays, its thundering surf, its outrigger canoes converging near the landing area, and he thought: “No wonder we still remember poems about this island,” and he began to chant fragments of a passage his great-great-grandfather Abner Hale had transcribed about Bora Bora: