Sunny waits.
“One day soon, I will explain.”
OCTOBER 15, 1942
Beloved Brother,
Thank Mother God you’re alive! May she have mercy on us all. Your 25-word letter from Woosung (April) took three months to reach us through the Red Cross in Tokyo. The Japs had censored out five words. (Can’t believe I’m calling them Japs. I can’t believe what’s happened to us.) When we got your letter, Papa sobbed. We thought you were dead.
This is my third letter, did you receive the others? We’re only supposed to write 25 words, but I’ve got so much to tell! I’m mailing this to Club Argentina. Maybe your friends will get this to you. Since Pearl Harbor, nothing’s real. Jonah-boy enlisted. He’s in army training somewhere in Minnesota. Then they’ll ship him overseas to Europe. I think Mama’s died a couple times. . . .
DeSoto’s freighter was captured by the Japs somewhere near Java or Sumatra. Australian soldiers rescued him. We got a card. By the time you get this your pal, Krash Kapakahi, will be long gone. He’s combat-training now in Utah.
Can you believe? The night before Pearl Harbor, the band was playing at the Royal, Krash on ‘ukulele. Between sets he stepped out on the beach for a smoke. In the distance he saw what looked like a periscope, then he watched a Jap submarine surface! He said it just sat there on the water. He yelled and folks came running. The thing had disappeared. Folks said he’d been drinking too much rum. Who could believe a Jap sub got through navy minesweepers and was cruising Waikiki? Weeks later it was in the papers—a captured Jap seaman said while they were waiting to attack Pearl Harbor, the sub had surfaced the night before, saw the lights of Waikiki, even heard music from the Royal!
Krash came to Kalihi Lane that night, told us what he’d seen. What he thought he’d seen. He visits now and then. I like his humor, his ambition. Imagine a beachboy going to night school, planning to study law! But we always seem to end up fighting. We hadn’t talked for months, since our last argument. For some reason KGMB was playing music through the night instead of signing off at 12 A.M. We sat in the garage gabbing away. Everything my fault, his fault, and why did we always fight. We stayed up all night, dancing almost every song.
Well, next morning, Sunday, Mama cooked us shoyu eggs, fried rice, her toasted taro bread. Krash peeled a mango, handed me a slice. I was sucking on that sweet, sticky pulp, admiring his hands, when I heard them droning in. I remember Mama turning in slow motion. . . .
We ran out in the lane. Mother God, they flew close enough to see the Rising Sun painted on their sides. Then, oh baby, I never saw such hell. Pearl Harbor turned into fireballs. Mountains of black smoke rising up like giant devils. A million pounds of gunpowder going up on ships. All those boys, those haole boys . . .
Then a second wave of Japs flew in, so low their landing gear ripped down telephone wires. Papa went berserk, shooting at them with his pig-hunting rifle. Mr. Kimuro stood in his undershorts, trying to bring them down with his bow and arrows. Me? I ran inside and changed my clothes. If we were going to die, I guess I wanted to go out in style, best dress, my Lily Daché hat. These things aren’t planned. I’ll never hear the end of it from Mama.
Krash pushed Mama and Papa inside, walked back and forth in front of the house with a carving knife. I don’t know what came over me. I took his hand and walked beside him. A plane dived straight at us. This is it, I thought. I looked at him and said, “I love you.” But it passed. . . .
Afterwards, we hitchhiked to Queen’s Hospital. Blood-donor lines for miles. I still dream of burnt flesh, wake up smelling it. Sailors covered with black oil. Legs missing, eyes destroyed. They brought them in in trucks, poured them out like pineapples. This captain, he didn’t have a stomach anymore, he thought doctors and nurses were his crew. Still giving orders when he died.
I spent fourteen hours putting “M” (for morphine) on sailors’ foreheads so we wouldn’t double-dose. Some begged for a smoke, going while they inhaled. Hardest thing was peeling cigarettes off dead boys’ lips. Soon I was soaking red from head to toe. Blood flowed up and down the halls—folks were sliding in it. My good dress dried stuck to me like plaster. Nurses had to cut it off me, had to cut off my hat. My hair so blood-starched it stood out like wings. I threw my shoes away, walked up the lane that night in half a sheet, followed by red footprints. That’s why I call them Japs. . . .
Folks say not one antiaircraft gun was ready, not one fighter plane airborne to greet them. Pearl Harbor laid out for them like plate-lunch . . . You wouldn’t know Honolulu. Streets zigzagged with trenches in case of more attacks. Martial law. FBI. Folks arrested in pajamas. We carry ID cards with fingerprints. Everybody vaccinated, gas masks strapped across our backs. Of course, all food is rationed. (What I wouldn’t do for a hunk of pork! A sip of real-kine coffee . . .)
Well, Brother, we’re now an official combat zone. Tanks guarding ‘Iolani Palace. Waikiki Beach a mass of barbed wire, tourists long gone. The Moana and the Royal Hawai‘ian converted to hospitals for the army and navy boys. More shipyard and defense workers brought in from the mainland. There’s such a housing shortage, they’re sleeping in their cars.
Blackout is hated like the plague. Each block has a warden. We get fined for leaving lights on, even headlights. Mama’s calabash cousin out near Haliewa was crushed to death when two buses collided in the dark. He was walking his dog without a flashlight, got slammed in between. Oh, baby, what a mess . . .
Now soldiers walk into our houses. Search and seize. Arrest. Trial without jury. The army tried to shoot Mr. Cruz’s rooster, that crazy Tacky. Said his midnight crowing might be some kind of spy code. He pecked off half a soldier’s ear and chased another down the lane. He got away, but Mr. Cruz was put in jail. Just an excuse to arrest him. He’s got a lot of Jap friends. . . . Hundreds of them arrested in Kalihi, Palama, Chinatown. Buddhist priests, language-school teachers. All now at Sand Island Internment Camp. Like your camp, probably. Do they let you blow your trumpet? Do you have enough to eat?
Just heard from baby brother Jonah. Army’s teaching him to handle bayonets, strangulation ropes. He’s learned how to turn baseball bats into war clubs with barbed wire and spikes. Also had instructions in chemical warfare, machine guns, mortar firing. My heart breaks. I tore the letter up so Mama wouldn’t see it. Whatever happens, even if this war ends tomorrow, Jonah will come back different. I’ll tell you something. We’re all going to come back different.
. . . Real shortage of girls here. One for every hundred or every thousand men, depends on who you talk to. Brothels booming on Hotel Street. The army and navy even had to put their wounded up in brothels, till they expanded hospitals. For a while, Hotel Street looked like a Red Cross camp! You got to give those hookers credit, they helped nurse those boys like babies. We all pitched in. . . .
With the Moana closed, I got on the dawn shift at Dole cannery. That old pineapple drag. But too many workers, shifts too short. I hired on for maintenance crew at the downtown police station. Then they handed me a bucket to clean toilets (again)! So much for that job!
Mama and Papa got to keep the mortgage up, but Papa can’t get work now. Military has him listed as Jap sympathizer, because he won’t bad-mouth his old boss, Shirashi. (Now interned at Sand Island.) Mama’s still mending uniforms for Palama Women’s Prison, paid in nickels practically. I found part-time sewing here in Kalihi. Plus, three nights a week, same old hapa-haole hula at an enlisted men’s nightclub. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s not a nightclub, not even a bar. It’s a lowdown joint on Hotel Street.
. . . Also wrapping bandages for the Red Cross, and volunteering for USO dances. Some military snothead with a row of medals saw me at an army/navy dance. Thought I looked part Jap. He said I couldn’t volunteer if I had more than a quarter Jap blood. I told him my eyes were swollen from crying myself to sleep at night. Why? Because I’ve got a brother in a Japanese prison camp, and a second brother whose ship was captured by the Japs, and a kid brother who’s training to f
ight Germans in Europe. Well, the snothead apologized. . . .
‘Ey! Do they think Hawai‘ians are just sitting back, sucking poi, watching from the sidelines? I see the wounded, and think of you. Nothing matters but that you, Jonah, DeSoto come home safe. And Krash. Mother God, I will stitch, and starve, and dance my feet down to the bone if that will bring you home.
Soldiers coming back from combat see Oriental faces here and go berserk. Plenty street fights, even killings. Locals get confused. I feel real sorry for our Japanese neighbors. They have to surrender all heirloom weapons, even ancient family books where there might be invisible writing. All Japanese language signs are down, no one wears kimonos.
. . . Chinese neighbors put signs in their yards: WE ARE NOT JAPANESE. FBI arrest-teams race through the streets in military cars. Even arresting Germans and Italians. Last night at the enlisted men’s, a soldier back from Guadalcanal pulled out a Jap scalp, waving it around. I went outside to vomit. So, who is right and who is wrong?
Forgive me, Brother. You’re in prison, and I ramble. I will die if anything happens to you. It’s not a military POW camp. They can’t cut off heads. Or torture you. We hear the worst things in those camps is lack of food, and typhus. Be careful, try not to show your temper with the guards.
We also hear repatriation ships are coming out of Shanghai. Papa called the navy, asking if your name is on a list. Well, that’s classified. They told him go to hell, there’s a war on. We won at Midway. Maybe Mother God is on our side. . . . Hope you get the package. All we could spare from ration-stamps. Spam, cigarettes, powdered milk. Soap. Sugar. Salt. Also a rosary. Snapshots of us all . . .
‘Auw! Each time we hear air-raid sirens, have to run to bombshell bunkers, stand knee-deep in rainwater till we hear all clear. Helmeted guards in every lane, bullhorns yelling, “TURN OUT ALL LIGHTS. STAY INSIDE. DON’T COME OUT TILL SUNUP.” Some nights we take turns sitting in the closet, reading with a flashlight.
Mama got fed up, tarpapered the bathroom window for total blackout. So the bathroom’s now our living room. Newspapers stacked on toilet, portable radio on the hamper for latest news. Sometimes we get that slut, Tokyo Rose, trying to lure our boys from battle. . . . Papa is block warden! When he’s pau at night he drags a futon into the tub and neighbors squeeze in, “talking story,” playing ‘ukulele after supper. Good fun! Some nights we even drag in that dopey rooster, Tacky Cruz. Sure as hell, at midnight, he crows his head off!
Remember Rosie Perez, down the lane? She went “got chubby all a sudden!” One night, sitting in the tub she feels bad cramps, starts screaming. Next thing we know there’s a little head between her legs. She’s pushing, pushing, Mama playing midwife, grabbing its tiny, slippery body. Me holding while Mama cuts the cord. Then everybody crying. Oh, baby, what a night! Papa comes in from warden duty and I shout “Look what popped out of Rosie!” He fell down, and laughed and cried. Up and down the lane, folks took turns visiting, holding the little keiki. Rosie’s husband in training somewhere in S. Carolina. Brother, how can I tell you of the sweetness, a newborn infant’s cry in wartime. Our best night so far.
. . . Swing bands coming here in droves, playing for servicemen. Artie Shaw, Dorsey Brothers, even Louis Armstrong. For me, no one compares with that Duke Ellington. I pushed my way backstage and told him all about you, said you played with Dew Baptiste. Well, we sat in his dressing room, talking for hours. New Orleans, Paris . . .
Goodness, what a flirt. He said I was a “luscious miss,” my “beauty dignified his countenance.” He said if he were staying longer, he would make me his favorite sundae. Did that mean feed me? Or devour me? Brother, I will never be the same. The man is physically exquisite. That pretty smile, those high-heeled shoes. His suit, his shirt, his tie. Well, there’ll be lots of jazz dates when you come home. Folks know you’ve been out in the world. So much aloha being sent you. Everybody missing you . . .
I went to Sunny’s house, her mother wouldn’t let me in. Said there’s been no more word from her. If she’s alive, which she is because she’s too clever to die, she’s off on some adventure. Probably making bombs in basements with those Communist silk-factory women, and that poor crippled sister. That girl always had too much energy and nerve. Forget her. Come home. Where you belong.
O Brother, look! The moon is full. Even as I send you our prayers and alohas, a perfect vivid rainbow—Hawai‘ian omen of victory—arches over Kalihi Lane. . . .
Love from your sister,
Malia
N KLANA P‘INO
The Ill-Fated
WOOSUNG CAMP,FEBRUARY 1943
HOPE NURSED THE FICTION OF NORMALCY. THEN, AS PEOPLE starved, the fiction died. Nothing but bowls of tainted rice, a rotting carrot. He lay on his cot recalling great meals with wrenching clarity, dissolving and synthesizing them infinite times. The flavors, the aromas!
He retreated to the past. Sunny’s face in blue lozenges of morning light. Her insurrections and her calms, her riddles rising up like riffs from his horn. Paris suffocating them with its ashes and embers. Their dream had turned on them, turning them to fugitives. Now they were caught in a new history but an old, old time.
In spite of hunger and fatigue, Keo was afraid to sleep. Then he became prey. Of foul, fat flies whose bites were often fatal, of mosquitoes bringing malaria. Lice left him scratching like a madman. Centipedes wriggled remorselessly across his scalp, setting his head ablaze.
Camp population had swollen to almost two thousand. Beaten down to a perpetual nightmare existence, people retreated to a privileged time, disbelieving rumors that Chinese chauffeurs had sabotaged their cars, stealing carburetors, draining gas tanks. That Japanese soldiers had ransacked their palatial homes, defecating in their beds. Refusing to accept that camp life was now the reality, they considered it only a momentary horror. Soon they would wake to luxury again.
When Malia’s letter arrived, Keo lay on his cot trembling. It had taken four months to reach him through Club Argentina. Her package of food never arrived. But just reading the words—salt, Spam—made him light-headed. He closed his eyes, held the letter to his nose, smelling ginger and mildew in his father’s garage. The scent of Malia’s heavy perfume, his mother’s wrists fragrant with spices. He could smell starch on his father’s collar, Jonah’s leather baseball mitt, even the rough maritime smell of brother DeSoto.
He lay quiet, thinking of Krash and Jonah en route to war in Europe, DeSoto detained somewhere in Malaysia. He thought of Sunny and their child, glimpsed once in her mother’s arms. He turned on his side and, with openhearted and despairing passion, he mourned. For all of them, for a life that was over.
Mostly, he was shocked by Malia’s views on Sunny.
“. . . she’s too clever to die, she’s off on some adventure.”
He read those words over and over, feeling such rage, he staggered across the campgrounds, screaming into the latrines. Screaming that Sunny loved him, that that love was now sustaining him.
Each day his rice bowl seemed heavier with rat shit. His teeth broke from biting down on lime. Yet each time Japan lost another battle, Tokugawa called him to his quarters, offering cigarettes, stolen jazz records.
“I’d rather have rice for our children,” Keo said. “They’re dying like flies.”
Tokugawa shook his head. “Not enough rice even for my men.” His voice grew softer. “Even for my family in Osaka.”
Typhoon weather, and one day Keo stood up to his ankles in mud, emptying latrine buckets. In the guard tower, drunken soldiers fought over a woman. He heard her laugh. Some women volunteered to clean guardhouses, offering themselves to soldiers for an extra scoop of rice, a strip of cloth to bind crumbling shoes, avoiding hookworm.
Who can blame them? he thought. If it keeps them from the Death Hut. The place for terminals, those in the last stage of starvation and disease.
In pouring rain he gazed outside beyond the camp fence. Mobs of Chinese refugees struggled to their feet, as if his image raised th
e dead. Near-skeletons, many would die trying to unravel the puzzle: If Japan was fighting to save Asia for Asians, why was the enemy locked inside the fence, with food? Why were the Chinese locked out? They screamed at Keo, begging for garbage, a rotting potato. An infant.
“Yes,” Tokugawa said, “they would eat human flesh. You ever know real hunger, kind make you insane? Anything keep you alive, fair game.”
They sat in his office, Tokugawa explaining that Keo had finally been pardoned for hitting the Nazi homosexual, who had died of “smotheration.” He was being “guaranteed out” of Woosung by the owner of Club Argentina. The man had signed documents promising Keo would not work against the Japanese, that his expenses would be met in Shanghai, that his music was indispensable for the entertainment of Japanese officers.
Tokugawa’s smile was mischievous and sly. “When you return Shanghai, I send you to special shop where human parts for sale. Liver, finger, cheek. When fought in China, starve for months. I myself ate someone’s smile.”
Keo studied him. “And now you may have to die because you don’t believe in surrender.”
The man reared back. “Not my fault. We not taught how to be prisoner.” He slapped his scabbard at his side. “Listen me. We no hate Yanks. We attack you because you interfere.”
“How interfere?”
“Embargo. U.S. stop deliveries of oil, iron to Japan. Should mind own business. Our fight not with you.”
Keo was stunned by his arrogance, by the fact that he was blind to it. “Listen, this whole war started because of your aggression toward China.”
Tokugawa’s voice turned soft, almost apologetic. “Japan too many people. Need to expand.”
Through the window, Keo watched a small, thin boy struggling to carry three large rotting potatoes. He thought how much there was to covet in this world, yet how little each man could really handle.
Song of the Exile Page 17