Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  Gravely Carter handed back the card, but as he did so, he kept his hand extended, saying, “In all humility, Mr. Sakanawa, I should like to shake your hand.”

  “I should like to shake yours,” Shig said, and the moment could have been extremely fruitful for Hawaii statehood, except that Mr. Ishii chose this instant to break into his father-in-law’s house with momentous news.

  The skinny little man with eyes like bowls of frightened tapioca saw the tall stranger, hesitated and started to back out, but his wife Reiko-chan blocked the doorway, and Carter, always careful to catch the eye of a pretty girl, bowed in a courtly manner and said, “Have you come with your father?”

  “He is my husband,” Reiko-chan said in perfect English.

  “This is a congressman, from Texas!” Shig announced proudly, and at this news Reiko-chan, who knew what her husband was up to, tried to edge him out of the house, but he had heard the word congressman, and now asked with compassion, “You come to arrange the surrender?”

  “What surrender?” Carter asked.

  In desperate embarrassment, Reiko-chan tugged at Mr. Ishii’s sleeve, but she could not silence him. “The surrender of Hawaii to Japan,” Mr. Ishii explained.

  “How’s that?” Carter asked.

  “See what the paper says!” Mr. Ishii cried joyously, flashing the Honolulu Mail, which headlined: “Japanese Fleet to Make Courtesy Visit to Islands.” When the paper had passed from hand to hand the excited little man cackled, “Long time, sir, I tell them, ‘Japan won the war.’ But nobody listen, so I ask you. ‘If Japan lose, how their fleet come to Hawaii?’ ”

  “Is he saying what I think he’s saying?” Carter asked.

  “He is a poor old man,” Reiko-chan said softly. “Don’t listen to him, Congressman.”

  But now Mr. Ishii produced a worn photograph of the Japanese surrendering on board the Missouri. “You can see who won,” he explained. “The Americans had to go to Tokyo. And see how all the American admirals are without neckties, while the Japanese have their swords. Of course Japan won.”

  “And what will happen when your fleet gets here?” Carter asked.

  “Japanese very honorable men, sir. You see tonight when they come ashore. They behave good.” He went to the door, threw it open and pointed down to the blue waters of the Pacific, where a squadron of five warships steamed under the bold red flag of the new Japan. Mr. Ishii’s heart expanded, and he forgave his wife for her years of arguing against him. From his coat he whipped out a Japanese flag, long hidden, and waved encouragement to the conquerors as they came to take control of Pearl Harbor.

  “I guess we’d better be going,” Carter said. “I have to catch the plane.” But he was not fooled by crazy old Mr. Ishii; he knew that in the Sakanawas, as he called them, he had seen a tremendous American family, and he was impressed, so that when he got McLafferty’s message that the Hales would pick him up at the corner of Fort and Hotel on the way to the airport, he said, “I’d just like to stand outside and watch the people for a few minutes.”

  And as he stood there in the late afternoon, in the heart of Honolulu, watching the varied people of the island go past, he had a faint glimmer of the ultimate brotherhood in which the world must one day live: Koreans went by in amity with Japanese whom in their homeland they hated, while Japanese accepted Chinese, and Filipinos accepted both, a thing unheard of in the Philippines. A Negro passed by, and many handsome Hawaiians whose blood was mixed with that of China or Portugal or Puerto Rico. It was a strange, new breed of men Congressman Carter saw, and grudgingly an idea came to him: “Maybe they’ve got something. Maybe I wasted my time here in Hawaii, living in the big houses of the white people. Maybe this is the pattern of the future. That Japanese boy today, he’s as good … Look at that couple. I wonder who they are. I wonder if they would mind …” But before he could speak to them, a long black car driven not by a chauffeur but Hewlett Janders drove up, and Hoxworth Hale jumped out to whisk the congressman back into reality. Icy John Whipple Hoxworth shared the front seat, and as the car slowly crept away from the turmoil of Hotel Street, the three senior citizens of Hawaii provided their guest with the second climax of any official visit to the islands.

  Coldly, and with no inflection in his voice, Hoxworth Hale laid it on the line. He spoke rapidly and looked the congressman right in the eye. “Carter,” he said, “you’ve seen the islands, and you’ve heard each man in this car make public speeches in favor of statehood. Now we’ve got to get down to cases. If you’re insane enough to give us statehood, you’ll wreck Hawaii and do irreparable damage to the United States. Save us from ourselves, sir.”

  Carter gasped. “Is that your honest opinion, Hale?”

  “It’s the opinion of almost every person you met in Hawaii.”

  “But why don’t you …”

  “We’re afraid to. Reprisals … I don’t know.”

  “Give me the facts straight,” Carter said. “What’s wrong with statehood?”

  “This is in confidence?” Hale asked.

  “You understand,” Janders threw back over his shoulder, “that if you were to betray us, we’d suffer.”

  “I understand,” Carter said. “That’s often the case in governing a democracy.”

  “Here are the facts,” Hale said simply. “The white man in Hawaii is being submerged. He has some financial power left, a good deal, I suppose. He has the courts to defend him, and an appointed governor upon whom he can rely. Sir, if you change any one of those factors, Hawaii will become a toy in the hands of Japanese. They’ll control the courts and start bringing in decisions against us. They’ll upset our system of land holding. They’ll elect their own governor and send Japanese to Congress. Do you want to serve with a Jap?”

  There was a long silence in the car, and more in the way of eliciting further information than in disclosing his own conclusions Carter replied, “This afternoon I met a Japanese, a young man named Shig Sakanawa, and for a while I thought that maybe …”

  Janders spoke. “Did he tell you that his brother, Goro, was the leading communist in Hawaii? A proved, card-carrying, subversive, filthy communist. That’s the brother of the man who’s running for senator from this district. That’s a picture of Hawaii under Japanese rule.”

  “I must admit,” Carter said, “that nobody told me about this brother.”

  “The leader of the communist movement in Hawaii,” Janders reiterated.

  Carter was somewhat shaken to think how nearly he had been taken in by the plausible young Japanese lawyer, so he decided to check additional items of information. “By the way,” he asked casually, “what’s the sentiment out here for a return of monarchy?”

  Up front Hewie Janders and John Whipple Hoxworth stared at each other in amazement and muttered, “Monarchy?” while in the back Hoxworth Hale gasped. Then he said forcefully, “Congressman …” but Hewie was now recovered and blurted out, “Jesus Christ, nobody in his right mind pays any attention to those monarchy crackpots.”

  “What were you about to say, Hale?” Carter pressed.

  “As you may know, I’m descended from the royal alii of Hawaii, and my great-great-great-grandmother was one of the noblest women I’ve ever heard of. Her daughter was quite a girl, too. Magnificent. But if one of those pathetic, incompetent alii ever tried to get back on the throne of Hawaii, I personally would take down my musket and shoot him through the head.”

  “I’d do it first,” Hewie Janders interrupted. “You know, sir, that Hale’s great-grandfather brought Hawaii into the Union?”

  “He did?” Carter asked.

  “Yes,” Hale said simply. “Practically by force of his own character. But I’d like to add this, sir. I’m also descended from the missionaries. And if one of them tried to come back and govern in the harsh, bigoted old way, I’d shoot him through the head, too.”

  “Let me get it straight then, what is it you want?”

  “We don’t want royalty, we don’t want missionaries, and w
e don’t want Japanese,” Hale summarized. “We want things to go along just as they are.”

  It was a very somber carload of men that finally pulled up at the airport, and Black Jim McLafferty, as he watched them disembark, thought: “I’ll bet they’ve been pumping that one with a load of poison.” He started to join the congressman, but when Carter saw him coming, he retreated to the safety of Hewlett Janders, for he did not want to be photographed with a man, even though he was leader of the Democratic Party, who had as his partner a Japanese whose brother headed the Communist Party in the islands. “In fact,” he mused as he checked his tickets, “Hawaii’s a lot like most parts of the north. You can travel from state to state and never find a Democrat you really like. They’re all either tarred with labor or communism or atheism or Catholicism. I’ll be glad to get back to Texas.”

  And as he climbed aboard the Stratoclipper and sank into his comfortable seat he thought: “Basically, it’s the same everywhere. A handful of substantial, honest men govern and try to hold back the mobs. If you can get along with those men, you can usually find out what the facts of the case are.” He stared out the window glumly as Japanese airport mechanics wheeled away the steps while other Japanese waved wands directing the big airplane on its way. He closed his eyes and thought: “Well, I found out what I wanted. These islands won’t be ready for statehood in another hundred years.” And that took care of Hawaii for the eighty-third session of Congress.

  IN 1952, passage of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act was greeted with joy in Hawaii, for the new law permitted persons born in the Orient to become American citizens. Schools were promptly opened in which elderly Chinese and Japanese were drilled in the facts of American government, and it was not uncommon in those days to see old men who had worked all their lives as field hands reciting stubbornly: “Legislative, executive, judicial.”

  By early 1953 hundreds of Orientals were applying for the citizenship that had so long been denied them, and as Black Jim McLafferty watched this impressive stream of potential Democratic voters entering political life he made a speech in which he cried: “They built the islands, but they were kept outside.”

  It is true that many of the applicants did not really appreciate what citizenship meant, but on the other hand it was impressive to see old, weather-stained faces light up when the solemn words were pronounced by the federal judge: “You are now a citizen of the United States of America.” And it was not uncommon to see a sedate businessman suddenly grab his old Japanese mother and swing her into the air with a joyous cry of, “I knew you could make it, Mom!”

  The real heroes of these exciting days were the old people who had refused to learn English, but who now had to learn or forgo American citizenship. Their children screamed at them: “Pop, I told you for twenty years, learn to speak English. But no, you were too smart! Now you can’t become a citizen.”

  “But why should I become a citizen now?” these old people asked. “Only a few more years.”

  Often the children broke into tears and sniffled: “You must learn English, Pop, because I have always wanted you to be an American.”

  “For me it is nothing,” the old people said, “but if it will make you happy.”

  “It will, Pop! It’ll remove the last stigma. Please learn English.”

  With a fortitude that is difficult to believe, these stubborn old Orientals went to the language schools. All afternoon they practiced: “I see the man,” and most of the night they recited: “Legislative, executive, judicial.” That so many mastered the two difficult subjects was a credit to their persistence, and when they finally received certificates they understood their value. In succeeding years, at mainland elections only about sixty per cent of the eligible voters bothered to vote; in Hawaii more than ninety per cent voted. They knew what democracy was.

  In two Honolulu families the McCarran-Walter Act struck with contrasting effect. When Goro and Shigeo Sakagawa proposed to their tough old father that he enroll in the English school and get a book which explained the legislative, executive and judicial functions he surprised them by saying in unusually formal Japanese, “I do not wish to become a citizen.”

  Goro protested: “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime!”

  Continuing with his precise Japanese, Kamejiro said, “They should have made this offer fifty years ago, when I arrived.”

  “Pop!” Shigeo reasoned. “It’s a new world today. Don’t hark back to fifty years ago.”

  “For fifty years we were told, ‘You dirty Japs can never become Americans.’ For fifty years we were told, ‘Go back to Japan.’ Now they come to me and say, ‘You’re a fine old man, Kamejiro, and at last we are willing to let you become an American.’ Do you know what I say to them? ‘You are fifty years too late.’ ”

  His sons were astonished to discover the depth of their father’s feeling, so they turned to their mother and endeavored to persuade her, but before she could react to their pressures, old Kamejiro said flatly, “Yoriko, you will not take the examination. All our lives we were good citizens and we don’t need a piece of paper to prove it now.”

  Then Shigeo produced two reasons which threw quite a different light on the matter. First he said, “Pop, last time I almost lost the election because people brought up that nonsense about Mr. Ishii and his crazy Japanese flag when the fleet visited here. They pointed out that he was my brother-in-law and that I probably felt the same way too. Now if you turn down citizenship they’re going to shout, ‘That proves it! The whole damned family is pro-Japanese!’ ”

  Old Kamejiro reflected on this, and Shig could see that his father was disturbed, for none of the old Japanese had been more delighted during the last election than Kamejiro. He had stood for hours in his store, staring at the big poster of his son. “There our boy was,” he proudly told his wife, “asking people to vote for him.” When Shig won, the old man had paraded up and down Kakaako announcing the fact to all Japanese families, assuring them that at last they had a personal protector in Iolani Palace.

  While Kamejiro twisted this first bait about in his mouth, Shig dangled another, more tempting than the first: “Pop, if you and Mom become citizens, in 1954 you can march up to the election booth, say, ‘Give us our ballots,’ and march inside to give me two more votes.” Now Shig could see his father imagining election day, with himself striding to the polls, his wife trailing four feet behind. The old man loved nothing more than the panoply and ritual of life, and Shig could remember from his earliest days the pride with which his father dressed in Colonel Ito’s uniform to stand beside the reciter. This had been the highlight of Kamejiro’s life, matched only by the days in World War II when he saw his four sons march off to their own war. Therefore Shig was not prepared for what happened next.

  “I will not take citizenship,” the old man said resolutely. “If this hurts you, Shigeo, I am sorry. If my vote and Mother’s cause you to lose the election, I am sorry. But there is a right time to eat a pineapple, and if that time passes, the pineapple is bitter in the mouth. For fifty years I have been one of the best citizens in Hawaii. No boys in trouble. No back taxes. So for America to tell me now that I can have citizenship, at the end of my life, is insulting. America can go to hell.”

  He would not discuss the question again. Once Shig and Goro approached him with the news that Immigration had a new rule: “People who have lived in the islands for a long time don’t have to take their examinations in English. What that means, Pop, is that you and Mom can now become citizens without bothering with the language school.”

  “It would be insulting,” Kamejiro said, and the boys withdrew.

  Shig talked the problem over with McLafferty, and his partner said, “Hell, your old man’s right. It’s as if they had told our people in Massachusetts, ‘We kicked you Catholics around for two generations. Now you can all become Protestants and run for office.’ Like he says, it would have been insulting.”

  “I don’t think there’s any analogy,” Shig said col
dly.

  “Probably you’re right,” the Irishman agreed. “But it sounds good if the other guy doesn’t listen too close.”

  “This may hurt me in the next election,” Shig said carefully.

  McLafferty boomed: “Shig, if your old man hadn’t always been the way he is now, you wouldn’t be the kind of guy you are. And if you weren’t that kind of person, I wouldn’t want you for a partner. What he’s given you, nobody can take away.”

  “Yes, but he’s become so provoked about this he says he’s going back to Japan to live.”

  “He won’t like it,” McLafferty predicted.

  “Wouldn’t that hurt me in the election?” Shig pressed.

  “My father found,” McLafferty said, “that just a little scandal helped rather than hurt. It made the electorate feel that the candidate was human. That’s why I warned you about never disclosing in a lawsuit that a witness kept a mistress. For sure, somebody on the jury has either had a mistress—or if she’s a woman, has been one—and your evidence is bound to backfire, because the juror says, ‘Hell, I had a mistress, and I’m no scoundrel.’ So if your old man acts up, Shig, it won’t hurt you … not with the people whose votes we want … because their old folks act up too.” And that was the end of Kamejiro Sakagawa’s citizenship.

  With Nyuk Tsin the case was quite different. From the day she had landed in Honolulu eighty-eight years before, she had forsworn forever the starving villages of China and had determined to become a permanent resident of Hawaii. When the United States annexed the islands, she desperately sought American citizenship, but to no avail. From her frail body had descended some seven hundred American citizens, and not one had so far been in jail. In a lockbox she still kept her tax receipts covering nearly a century, and when she heard that there was a chance that she might become an American citizen, truly and without limitation, she felt that she could know no greater joy.