Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  At the beginning of the sixth month Goro Sakagawa, attended by four assistants, marched into the board room of The Fort, waited for the directors of the great plantations to assemble, and then sat in precisely the chair he had promised Hewlett Janders he would one day occupy, and in that symbolic moment some of the intractable fight went out of him. It was curious that seating oneself in a chair that had been insolently forbidden should affect a man, as if there were hidden emotional channels that ran from his bottom to his brain, but that is what happened. Secure in his chair, Goro said in conciliatory manner, “We think the strike has progressed long enough. We are sure you think the same. Is there not some way to end it?”

  “I will not have a Japanese field hand stomp into my office …” Hewlett Janders began, but Hoxworth Hale looked at him in pity, as if the horrors of six months had been useless, in that Janders was using the same words he had used when the strike began.

  Quietly Goro ignored him and addressed Hale, a tough negotiator: “Mr. Hale, my committee is not going to take cognizance of the fact that your negotiator, Mr. Hewlett Janders, has attacked us for being. Japanese, because we know that your cousin, Colonel Mark Whipple, laid down his life that we might be free citizens. We’re acting as free citizens, and I think you appreciate that fact.”

  The gracious tribute to Colonel Whipple softened the meeting, and all remembered what this same Goro Sakagawa, an army captain in those days, had said when it was proposed to bring Mark Whipple’s body home from the Vosges Mountains: “Let them bring my brothers home, but Colonel Whipple should sleep in the heart-land of the world, where he died. No island is big enough to hold his spirit.”

  “What new terms have you in mind, Mr. Sakagawa?” Hale asked.

  “We will never end the strike unless we get full union recognition,” Goro replied, and Hewlett Janders slumped in his chair. He could see it coming: the others were willing to surrender. The communists were about to triumph. But before Hewie could speak, Goro quickly added, “Then, to match your concession, we’ll accept ten cents an hour less.”

  “Gentlemen,” Hoxworth Hale said with fresh hope, “I think Mr. Sakagawa’s proposal gives us something to talk about.” Subtly the spirit of Colonel Mark Whipple, who had died for these Japanese boys, invaded the room, and Hale asked quietly, “Goro, will you bring your men back in about three hours?”

  “I will, Mr. Hale,” the union leader assured him, but as the group started to leave, Hewie Janders asked sharply, “How do we know that communist Rod Burke’ll allow us to open the piers?”

  “That’s what we’ve been negotiating about, Mr. Janders,” Goro replied. “When I reach an agreement with you men, the piers are open. That’s what negotiation means.”

  When the delegation left—three Japanese, a haole and two Filipinos—Hewlett Janders left his seat at the head of the table and said, “I cannot participate in what you men are about to do.”

  “I appreciate your position,” Hale said coldly. “But will you bind yourself to accept what we decide?” At this question everyone turned to stare at Janders. If he refused to accept, in the name of J & W, the principal plantation operators, no one knew what the eventuality might be, and it was just possible that he might be big enough to resist both the unions and his own associates. Desperately he was tempted to fight this out to a Götterdämmerung conclusion, but he was prevented from doing so by cautious words from the man who twenty years before had taken the leadership of The Fort from him. Hoxworth Hale said slowly, “Hewie, your family and mine have always loved these islands. We cannot stand by and see them suffer any further.”

  The big man looked in dismay at his leader and was about to reject the proposals, but Hale reasoned: “If we must live with labor, and that seems to be the spirit of the times, let’s do so with a certain grace. I’m going to call Sakagawa back and make the best …”

  “I do not wish to be present,” Janders said abruptly. He started to leave the room by the back door, but paused to warn his associates: “You’re turning these islands over to the communists. I refuse to watch a Japanese field hand come stomping into my office to lay down …”

  “But you will consider yourself bound by our decision?” Hale interrupted.

  “Yes,” Janders snapped grudgingly, and when Goro returned to ratify the mutual surrender, Hewlett Janders was not there.

  When the great strike ended, three of Hale’s plantation managers, men senior to himself, quit with these words: “We been doin’ things our own way too long to be told by a bunch of slant-eyed Japs how to raise sugar.” Younger men stepped forward to take their places—and it was a rueful moment when Hale discovered that he did not even know two of the replacements—and before the year ended, the new overseers were reporting: “We can work with the new system. Looks like we’ll make more sugar than before.” Hewie Janders snorted: “Something is eroding the character of America when young men are so eager to compromise with evil.”

  And then Hewie made his point. At a meeting of The Fort he rushed in with the news that one of the lesser communists had broken with Rod Burke and had signified his willingness to identify both Burke and his wife as card-carrying members of the Communist Party. This caused a flurry of excitement, which a series of substantiating phone calls raised to fever pitch. “I knew the whole lot of them were communists!” Hewie cried triumphantly. “To think that we allowed Goro Sakagawa to come stomping into this office …”

  “I don’t believe he’s charged,” Hale cautioned. “At least when I called Jasper he didn’t …”

  “They’re all communists,” Hewie warned. “I told you a year ago that Rod Burke was a red. And he was. I tell you now that Goro Sakagawa is a red. And he is.”

  John Whipple Hoxworth said icily, “Let’s wait till they’re indicted, then apply all our strength until they’re convicted.”

  “Has anybody called the governor?” Janders asked.

  “Not yet,” John Whipple replied.

  “I’d love to!” Janders gloated. “Last time I saw him about communism he said …”

  “Nobody will call anybody,” Hale interrupted. “A great thing has happened in our favor. Nobody must spoil it.” And The Fort studied carefully how the new developments could be used to its advantage.

  But the day’s triumph was somewhat dampened by an assistant’s report that while everyone’s attention had been focused on the strike, something curious seemed to have been happening, something which he was unable to explain. Producing a map of downtown Honolulu, he pointed to certain areas hatched in red and explained: “This is the Rafer Hoxworth building, and the ground floor has been leased to a Japanese named Fujimoto. Nothing suspicious about that. He has the big dry-goods store in Kaimuki. Now this area is the restaurant whose building is owned by Ed Hewlett’s widow. It’s been leased to a Filipino who runs a restaurant in Wahiawa.”

  “What are you driving at, Charley?” Hoxworth asked impatiently.

  “Look!” the assistant cried. “Within the past six months, every store in this block has been leased, except the big Joe Janders holding. Do you see what that means?”

  Quiet descended over The Fort as the managers studied the map. Finally Hoxworth said, “If somebody has been leasing these sites under an assumed name …”

  This ugly suspicion circulated, but it was soon stopped by robust Hewlett Janders, who said gruffly, “Hell, what are you worrying about? I’ve warned Cousin Joe a hundred times never to lease his building without clearing things with me. As long as he holds fast, there’s not going to be any trouble. What could a person do, with just these little …”

  “Call Joe,” Hoxworth said imperatively.

  An ominous silence surrounded bluff Hewlett as he cried warmly, “Hell-lo, Joe! This is Hewie. Joe, you haven’t leased your big store site, have you?”

  There was a ghastly silence, and Hewlett Janders, completely shaken, put down the phone. There was no cause to ask him what had happened; the news stood out from his sagging round
face. “God damn!” Hoxworth Hale shouted, banging the table. “We’ve been outsmarted. Who did this?” he raged. “Hewlett, who leased that store?”

  Big Hewlett Janders kept his head down, staring at the table. “I’m ashamed to say. Kamejiro Sakagawa.”

  “We’ll break him!” Hoxworth stormed. “We’ll not bring a single cargo of his into Honolulu. That man will starve on …”

  Icy John Whipple Hoxworth was speaking: “The problem is twofold. Who engineered this damnable thing? And for whom?”

  There was long discussion as to who could have accumulated enough capital and wisdom to have effected such a coup, and by a slow process of elimination all came to agree that only Hong Kong Kee could have swung it. “I’ll challenge him right now,” Hoxworth cried, and in a forthright manner he phoned Hong Kong and asked, “Did you buy up all the leases?” When the Chinese banker replied, Hoxworth nodded his head to his associates. “Whom were you representing, Hong Kong?” This time Hoxworth did not move his head, but listened in stunned silence. “Thank you, Hong Kong,” he said, and put down the phone.

  “California Fruit?” Janders asked.

  “Gregory’s,” Hale replied.

  There was an aching, dumb silence as an era came to an end. Finally one of the Hoxworths asked, “Can’t we fight this in the courts?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hale answered.

  “Surely we could get Judge Harper to issue an injunction on one of these leases. He’s married to my cousin and I could explain …”

  “If Hong Kong Kee arranged those leases …” Hale could not go on. He dropped his head into his hands, thought for a long time and then asked his associates, “How could these people do this to us? Your family, Whipple, why they looked after the Kees. Damn it, the whole Kee hui got its start with that land Old Doc gave them. And those damned Sakagawas. Imagine Kamejiro showing such ingratitude! Buying leases behind our backs. How do you explain it? You’d think they’d feel some kind of loyalty to us. We brought them here, gave them land, looked after them when they were so damned poor they couldn’t read or write. What’s happening in the world when such people turn against you?”

  “That’s what McLafferty’s been doing!” Janders shouted. “He threw us off the track, talking about that hotel.”

  Hale now had control of himself and said, “Gentlemen, this is the beginning of an endless fight. I personally am going to obstruct Gregory’s and McLafferty at every turn. Not to keep them out of the islands, because if Hong Kong arranged the leases, they’ll stand up in court …”

  One of the Hoxworths interrupted: “You’d think that in view of all we’ve done for Judge Harper, we could at least rely on him to void one of the leases.”

  Hale ignored this stupid and unworthy observation, continuing: “We must fight for time. We’ll establish branches of our own stores in Waikiki, in Waialae and across the Pali. Every one of you who controls a going concern, move a branch out into the suburbs. Multiply and tie everything up. By the time Gregory’s get here, we’ll have our stores so prosperous they’ll die on the vine.”

  So, in the curious way by which a deadly catfish, when thrown into a pool of trout, eats a few of the lazy fish but inspires the others to greater exertion, so that in the end there are more trout, and better, and all because of the evil catfish, the arrival of Gregory’s into Hawaii, followed by California Fruit and Shea and Horner, drove the Hawaiian economy ahead by such spurts that soon The Fort was much better off than it had been before. In the same obtuse way, the increased wages that Goro Sakagawa’s union had chiseled out of The Fort really made that establishment richer than ever, because much of the money filtered back into its enterprises, and the general prosperity of the islands multiplied.

  Hale’s determination to fight the mainland intruders with increased economic energy of his own had one unforeseen effect upon Hawaii, and in subsequent years this was often cited as the real revolution of that trying age: if The Fort was going to compete on an equal footing with outfits like Gregory’s, it could no longer afford to promote into top positions inadequate nephews and cousins and gutless second sons. So under Hoxworth Hale’s sharp eye, a good many Hales and Hoxworths and Janderses and Hewletts were weeded out. His policy was forthright: “Either give them minor jobs where they can’t wreck the system, or give them substantial shares of stock on which they can live while real men run the companies.” As a result, what crude Hewlett Janders called “the chinless wonders” found themselves with a lot of stock, a good yearly income and freedom to live either in France or Havana; while in their places appeared a flood of smart young graduates of the Wharton School, Stanford and Harvard Business. Some, out of sheer prudence, married Whipple girls or Hales or Hewletts, but most brought their own wives in from the mainland. And all Hawaii prospered.

  But of the men who dominated The Fort, only shrewd, confused Hoxworth Hale, alternately fighting and surrendering, saw what the real menace of those days was. It was not the arrival of Gregory’s, nauseating though that was, nor the triumph of the unions, seditious as that was: it lay in the fact that Black Jim McLafferty was a Democrat. His legal residence was now Hawaii. He no longer worked for Gregory’s but had a small law practice of his own, which he combined with politicking, and whenever Hoxworth Hale passed McLafferty’s office he studied the door with foreboding, for he knew that in the long run Democrats were worse than Gregory’s or unions or communists.

  He was therefore appalled one morning when he saw that McLafferty’s door carried a new sign: McLafferty and Sakagawa. Shigeo was back from Harvard, an expert on land reform, a brilliant legalist, and thanks to Black Jim McLafferty’s foresight, an official Democrat.

  FOLLOWING THE STRIKE, two of the main protagonists were taken out of circulation by family problems, and for some time not much was heard of either Goro Sakagawa or Hoxworth Hale. At first it looked as if the former’s troubles were the greater, for from that day in late 1945 when Goro had first met the slim and intense young Tokyo modenne, Akemi-san, their lives had been continuously complicated. First had come harassment by M.P.’s who had tried to enforce the no-fraternization edict of the occupation, and it had been unpleasant to be dating a girl you loved when the M.P.’s had the right to intrude at any moment. Next had been the ridiculous difficulty faced by any American soldier who wanted to marry a Japanese girl, so that once Goro had remarked bitterly, “When good things are being passed out they never consider me an American, but when they’re dishing out the misery I’m one of the finest Americans on record.” The young lovers had evaded the anti-marriage edict by engineering a Shinto wedding at a shrine near the edge of Tokyo, and had later discovered that Goro couldn’t bring a Shinto bride back to America, so there had been renewed humiliation at the consul’s office, but in those trying periods Akemi-san had proved herself a stalwart girl with a saving sense of humor, and largely because she was so sweet to officialdom, her paper work was ultimately completed and by special connivance she found herself free to enter Hawaii.

  In 1946, when the troop transport neared Honolulu, Akemi-san had been one of the most practical-minded brides aboard, suffering from few of the illusions whose shattering would mar the first days in America for many of the other girls. She had not been bedazzled by her young American, Goro Sakagawa. She had recognized that he was what modennes called a peasant type, stubborn, imperfectly educated and boorish; and even in the starving days when he had had access to the mammoth P.X.’s that blossomed across Japan, where his military pay had made him a millionaire compared to the Japanese, she had known that he was not a rich man. Furthermore, she had been specifically warned by friends who knew others who had lived in Hawaii that the islands were populated mostly by Hiroshima-ken people, who were clannish to a fault and not altogether contemporary. One lively Tokyo girl had whispered to her: “I’ve been to Hawaii. In the entire area, not one modenne.” Akemi had no illusions about her new home, but even so she was not prepared for what faced her.

  At the dock sh
e was met by Mr. Sakagawa and his son-in-law Mr. Ishii, with their wives standing stolidly behind the stocky little men, and she thought: “This is the way families used to look in Japan thirty years ago.” However, she took an instant liking to bulldog little Sakagawa-san, with his arms hanging out from knees, and thought, as she looked down at him: “He is like my father.” But then she saw grim-faced Mrs. Sakagawa, iron-willed and conservative, and she shivered, thinking to herself: “She’s the one to fear. She’s the kind we had to fight against in Tokyo.”

  She was right. Mrs. Sakagawa never eased up. Gentle with her husband, she was a terror to her daughter-in-law. Long ago in Hiroshima, when a son brought home a wife to work the rice fields, it was his mother’s responsibility to see that the girl was soon and ably whipped into the habits of a good farm wife, and Mrs. Sakagawa proposed to perform this task for Goro. In fact, as soon as she saw Akemi at the railing of the ship she realized that Goro had made a sad choice, for she whispered contemptuously to her daughter Reiko, “She looks like a city girl, and you know what expensive habits they have.”

  If Goro had had a well-paying job which permitted him to live away from home, things might have settled down to a mutual and smoldering disapproval in which the two women saw each other as little as possible and were then studiously polite for the sake of Goro, but this could not be, for Goro’s salary at the union did not permit him to have his own home, so he stayed with his parents. Early in her battle to subdue Akemi, Mrs. Sakagawa established her theme: “When I came to Hawaii life was very difficult, and there is no reason why you should be pampered.”