In 1864 another mea mai ka ‘aina ‘e arrived on Niihau. A restless rancher named Eliza Sinclair—Aylmer Robinson’s great-grandmother—had recently sailed with her family from New Zealand to find land to farm in California. Disliking what she saw there, she took her family and backtracked to Hawaii, landing on Oahu near the place where Pearl Harbor would later be built. Here the matriarch put out the word that she was interested in a large tract of land on one of the islands. But because of the Great Mahele of 1848, which split up the royal lands and allowed private ownership for the first time, unbroken property big enough to ranch had become rare.
On Niihau, however, no islander came forward with enough money to take advantage of the Great Mahele. The harsh climate and subsistence living meant that few of the one thousand Niihauans could afford to pay the annual tax to the king, much less buy their own property; ultimately only one indigenous family would manage to do this. Pleas by Niihauans to lower the cost of land went unheard. Kamehameha V began to tire of the island and, with its taxes unpaid and its inhabitants angry, he wished to unload it; he was glad to show this haole—white foreigner—not only available parcels on Oahu and Kauai, but also the whole of Niihau.
It just so happened that 1864 was a wet year for Niihau. The land was green, the springs were abundant. Lake Halalii, usually a huge, dry crater, was brimming with water. Eliza Sinclair’s son-in-law visited Niihau and came back with a report that the island was lush and verdant, perfect for ranching. Eliza Sinclair hadn’t thought much of Ford Island, which was in the middle of a large, quiet bay eventually named Pearl Harbor, or the property that would in 1941 be downtown Honolulu (and well on its way to being the most expensive real estate around). And the tract on Kauai seemed too small. But Niihau sounded like paradise. She promptly offered $6,000 for the whole island. The king countered with a demand for $10,000, pointing to its lush beauty, its fecund soil. Eliza Sinclair agreed. Yoshio Harada had always liked this story; it was, he thought, one of the few times that the white people got their shirts taken by a brown people.
Within a few years Niihau reverted to its familiar dry and desiccated self. Eliza Sinclair and her family quickly realized their mistake and bought a new swath of land on Kauai, but they remained infatuated with their island, and began its monumental makeover. They brought building material over the channel. They imported cattle and merino sheep and bees and, eventually, fine Arabian horses. In came the new flora: mango, pear, star apple. Birds were freed on the scrub: peafowl, ducks, turnstone curlew, meadowlark. Turkeys. California valley quail. Partridge. By the time Aylmer and his brother Lester inherited the land, even the water on it had been carefully controlled: it was diverted by hand-laid pipes and stored in cisterns dug with shovels and pickaxes. Everything came by boat, and as a boy Aylmer had liked to watch the herds of animals snort with trepidation as they docked at Kii.
-Like the ark, his father would say proudly with each boatload.
The ranch was never wildly profitable—the Robinson family had their sugar ranch on Kauai for that—but it flourished nevertheless as proof that whatever a man wanted to do with the land, he could, as long as the Lord was willing. The ranch hands were all Hawaiian and the Robinsons wanted to keep it that way; they were an innocent people, good Christians nearly decimated by the vices and diseases of the outside world, but ripe for salvation: Niihau would be a small garden of Eden where the most vulnerable of the Lord’s children could live in peace, as well as work on the Robinson ranch. The Niihauans spoke only Hawaiian, thumbed through Hawaiian Bibles, were encouraged to marry their Hawaiian neighbors. They tended the land with the reverence of their Hawaiian ancestors. Under orders from the Robinsons, families gathered to pray every day, and the whole village went to church on Sundays; no one seemed to think there was anything odd about this arbitrary fusion of Hawaiiana with Christianity, or if they did, nothing was said. In addition, the outside world was kept at bay. Communication was limited to news of babies born or family members sick on other islands, and done by word of mouth. There was no electricity, no cars, no newspapers. No telephones. No guns or alcohol or (allegedly) cigarettes. There was no post office, no jail, no police. And if you left the island hoping to make a life elsewhere, you were rarely granted permission to return, for fear that you would bring modern life with you, like a virus. If Niihau was to remain pure, the Robinsons reasoned, it had to be beyond the grasp of contemporary temptations.
At first many Niihauans left, either angry with the new ownership or because the chronic lack of water couldn’t accommodate both the old inhabitants and the influx of new ones. Those who remained began to respect their new landlords, and eventually to trust and depend on them.
By 1922 Aylmer began to run the island himself, under his father’s watchful eye, and the population of people had stabilized at around 140. Sometimes outsiders were brought in to manage a part of the ranch, as old Shintani was with the beehives, or with hopes of widening the marriage pool, as with Howard Kaleohano. But by the mid-1920s, newspapers had dubbed Niihau “the Forbidden Island” because of its strict rules and increasing isolation. The Robinsons pointed to the dangers of disease and the lack of water for why fewer and fewer outsiders were allowed to come ashore, but haoles and kama‘aina alike whispered that the Niihauans were nothing more than serfs in a bizarre fiefdom. The Robinsons wanted only a pliant workforce, they said. And it was a shame, these ignorant Niihauans happy with the little they got, the situation they were in. They didn’t know enough to see what they were missing. The modern world was surging forward; they were content in their small, backward paradise.
But when Aylmer Robinson had wanted someone to take care of his ranch house, after his white foreman fell ill, he’d hired Mr. and Mrs. Harada on a recommendation from a friend. They weren’t Christian, but they were quiet, dependable, and hardworking. They had a small child. More important, Yoshio was a good beekeeper. And the fastest way to Robinson’s heart was through bees.
-I’m interested in well-run societies, Mr. Harada, Mr. Robinson had said when they’d first met. Bees represent one of the best.
Yoshio had nodded, but he thought that it was an odd interview. His previous employers had never spoken, just squinted at his large shoulders and his callused hands. And if they did speak, it was merely to convey the specifics of the job, or to ask questions about his work background. Certainly Yoshio had never seen such a large house before, never mind been asked inside one to discuss a job. He had expected to meet Mr. Robinson in the paddock or in the doorway of a shed, but he had instead been ushered into the sitting area by the man himself, and offered a mug of cold tea. The room was sparsely furnished, but books were crammed into every nook and cranny. A stack near Yoshio’s elbow threatened to fall, so he tried to stay very still, even as Mr. Robinson, at first glance a quiet man, sat down and, on the subject of bees, became almost animated.
-Man could learn a lot from these tiny creatures, he said to Yoshio. If only we could pull ourselves away from the temptations of the devil for a moment, to sit quietly and learn! Why, the workers do everything for the hive—they care for their younger sisters, feed the drones and the queen, clean the combs, collect nectar—well, you know all this, Mr. Harada, but by gosh, if it wasn’t blasphemous, I would suspect they were Christians, raised by the teachings of His Only Son, don’t you think? I’m never disappointed with bees, not in the way mankind disappoints me. The day I find a man willing to exhaust himself with his arms to cool a room, like bees do for their hive, is the day I see our poor species differently. And my heavens, that dance that they do. The most beautiful thing. It proves there’s a God, I say. They dance to tell their sisters where the flowers are, don’t they, Mr. Harada. A wondrous thing, that dance.
-Like the hula, Yoshio finally spoke up, cautiously. Though he had never seen it, he had heard that this native Hawaiian dance of hand gestures and foot stamping and hip rolling all enacted a story of some ancient god or goddess, of incoming weather, of lost love, or newfound
hope.
Robinson blinked, momentarily perplexed, as Yoshio sat politely waiting for him to answer. Despite the fact that Hawaiians were indigenous to the islands, they were far outnumbered by the haoles and Asians, and those Yoshio did know spoke English and had forgotten many of their customs. But Yoshio had been told that Robinson loved the native Hawaiian language, which he spoke fluently, and that he was obsessed with the history and botany of these islands. He felt it was an intelligent thing to bring up the islanders’ rites, even though he knew little about them, to show he would fit in well on Niihau.
Robinson’s face began to darken and his eyes narrowed.
-Not the hula, Robinson finally said slowly. That’s a lascivious dance. Practiced by folks who didn’t know better. Have you seen the hula?
-Uh, no, sir. Yoshio dropped his head and stiffened.
-Well, then, you wouldn’t know.
There was a pause, which Yoshio did not dare fill, in case he said the wrong thing again.
-Bees, Mr. Robinson finally said, nodding his head back in Yoshio’s direction. People have all sorts of these nonsense ideas about them. How it’s some sort of slavery, some sort of dictatorship in there for the queen bee. What do you think, Mr. Harada?
-About what? Yoshio shifted to release the pressure of his thighs against the chair. His hands clenched together in his lap. His knuckles striated and the veins jumped and held.
-About bees. About whether it’s a dictatorship. The queen, a brutal overlord, the others just slaves.
Robinson folded his own large hands and sat back. Yoshio saw how piercingly blue his eyes were, as if the afternoon sky was trapped there. He cleared his throat.
-Yes, well, the workers do do everything for the queen. But, but—well, sure, it seems to benefit them all, what they do for her. The hive gets cleaned, new bees are born, more honey is stored. He bobbed his head. A healthy queen means a healthy hive.
-Exactly. Mr. Robinson nodded in approval and the closest thing to a smile Yoshio had yet seen split his craggy face. He was a puzzling man, Yoshio thought later. He had the bearing and locution of a minister but the skin and clothes of a ranch hand. Yet more money than anyone Yoshio had ever known.
Despite Yoshio’s misstep about the hula, Robinson must have seen that he was a good family man, and certainly a fine beekeeper. He was hired. Still it took Yoshio months to convince Irene that the job would be a good opportunity for both of them. She dreaded the isolation of that far-off island (it’s only a half-day’s boat ride, he’d insisted) and the idea that she would be away from her beloved sister. She’s just had another child! Irene exclaimed. She’ll need my help. But Yoshio was unusually persistent.
-Think of Taeko, kachan. It’s a child’s paradise out there. Farm animals, open spaces. A large house to live in.
-But Taeko needs her little cousins, her family. Irene would not give in.
-She won’t be far away. Look, by the time she starts school, we’ll be back on Kauai. With money in our pockets.
-You can make money in the fields.
-The fields aren’t for a man anymore.
-What is for a man?
-A man needs to have his own life, his own work. This island would be perfect.
-Because it’s far from whites?
He shrugged and looked away.
-Perhaps, he’d said.
Yoshio had been born on a Kauai plantation, where his parents worked the fields under arduous conditions. There was a close-knit Japanese community in the Hawaiian Islands that insisted on a solid education and a Japanese acculturation for their American-born children. Asians outnumbered whites ten to one, and people of Japanese descent made up half the population on Kauai, so while life was hard Yoshio grew up feeling, if not American, at least part of his Hawaiian home. He remembered muddy walks to school, with some children wearing geta on their feet; the hai, hai as his father laughed at a neighbor’s joke; the sweet, insistent smell of mango. Still, to be issei—a Japanese national—or nisei—of Japanese descent, born on American soil—meant that even on Kauai you were looked at sideways by haole shopkeepers and housewives. That the luna chose you first for a whipping in the fields because you wouldn’t fight back. That though you were an American citizen, you’d never really, truly be red, white, and blue. With youthful bravura that he would never show again, Yoshio left for California and what he thought would be a better life.
When Yoshio got off the boat there, it looked as if the Japanese men had successfully assimilated into American culture. They smoked cigarettes and said Hey, pal and You betcha when they spoke. They patted their shirt pockets and took off their sweaters by crossing their arms and pulling them from the sides over their heads. They walked in long, loping strides. But soon it became clear that California was a terrible place for a Japanese man. There were laws that banned nisei from marrying whites. None could own land. Schools were segregated, as were public theaters and swimming pools and water fountains. Street preachers and local politicians alike yelled and stamped with their fists in the air, blaming the Yellow Peril for all the evils in California. What happened specifically to Yoshio over there, he would not say, not even to Irene when he married her, but he came back after seven years with a watchful eye and a new slouch in his shoulders. He spent the next ten years on Kauai, but some deep humiliation haunted him so that during the day his knuckles hurt from clenching his fists and at night he sometimes woke in a sweat. It was no surprise, then, that when he was offered the Niihau job as caretaker and assistant beekeeper, he ignored the isolation, the harsh climate, the strange fiefdom he was going to. He thought only that this would be the last chance he had to reclaim himself as a man. Truth was, he wanted this job on Niihau because it offered something more than good pay and good work. He didn’t tell Irene this, but he had lost something of himself a long time ago and he wondered if he could find it on Niihau.
After seven months of fruitless persuasion—during which Robinson either waited patiently or forgot about the job offer entirely, Yoshio wasn’t sure—Irene finally agreed and, clutching her sister tearfully, as if they were traveling 1,600 miles instead of 16, begged her family to write often. Unfortunately, mail was prohibited on the island (so few of the islanders read anyway), but Irene did not learn of this until later. They left by boat for Niihau, and it was with shock that Irene set foot on that hot, peeling landscape with its wind so dense with red dust she thought she might choke. Since then Yoshio continued to promise her that things would change, and that she would begin to like it, as he had, but so far that had not happened. Though the Niihauans were friendly people, they tended to regard anybody not born on the island with the mild caution they gave small but sharp-toothed animals. Irene immediately felt this and put it down to her Japanese heritage; Yoshio insisted that the Niihauans did not compartmentalize their world in this way, that the family simply lived too far from the village for her to segue seamlessly into Niihauan life. In the past year, he liked to point out, the men had included him as one of their own; they showed him lawaia, using crude nets or a cowry-shell lure so that he proudly brought home hee, popolo, and moi for dinner; they listened as he told them about bees. He, for one, began to relax; California would recede in his memory, he thought, and he would no longer clench his fists and stare at his lap at inexplicable moments, paralyzed with fear and shame for no immediate reason he could think of. But Irene became withdrawn and quiet, and even the most open-hearted of Niihauans were puzzled by her. Yoshio hoped that the store that Irene ran would eventually make her feel more at home. The Hawaiian women came by often to pick up what they needed—canned milk, thread, flour—and surely their chatter would lift her spirits. But Irene would not let go of the certainty that the Hawaiians saw them as mea mai ka ‘aina ‘e, and that they would never be fully integrated into the island.
And, now, on the afternoon of December 7, as the pilot calmly explained that Pearl Harbor had been destroyed by the Japanese military, Yoshio knew that his own attempt at a new li
fe had been attacked as surely as the Pacific Fleet.
7
By dusk the Niihauans had drifted away to look at the plane and then drifted back, then drifted away for evening prayer and drifted back again, tidelike, still drawn to the excitement of a forbidden mea mai ka ‘aina ‘e. More sweet potatoes and poi were pushed in front of the pilot. Someone started a game of kini kini, others sang quietly.
Only when they were up the hill did Yoshio stop the cart and look at his wife, who had pushed one thin arm over her face and turned it from him. He glanced furtively from side to side and leaned forward to touch her, then leaned back before he did. For a while they sat canted away from each other—he fiddling with his large, square hands, she jerking with strange wet gulps, like the desperate suckling of a newborn—until Taeko began to squirm. Yoshio finally reached forward to stroke his child’s head with his fingertips. He clucked at her soothingly. He felt his wife stiffen at his proximity.
-Why didn’t you tell them? she said through her tears. About what the pilot said.
-That news, coming from me? Pearl Harbor bombed? It’s too horrible for our neighbors to understand. Mr. Robinson will let them know soon enough.
She straightened and stared at him, and despite the smallness of her bones, her birdlike fragility, her face had hardened into something fearful.
-You think Mr. Robinson will solve everything! she cried. Yoshio squeezed her shoulders to calm her. He tsked his tongue against his teeth.
-The Niihauans trust him. You know how it is here, he said softly.
-We should have said something.
-Kachan, let the Old Lord handle this. It’ll be fine.
-You say that, but you don’t believe it.
-I do. We’ve done nothing wrong.
East Wind, Rain Page 4