Hawaii (174 page)

became frightened and phoned Honolulu to discover that plants on scattered fields throughout the islands were beginning to show similar symptoms.

It would be an understatement to say that panic struck the pineapple industry. A raging fear swept the red fields and echoed in the Fort Street offices. Hoxworth Hale bore the brunt of the anxiety, because H & H had a good deal of its wealth in pineapples, while outfits like Hewlett's and J & W, who looked to him for leadership, were even more vulnerable. The loss in one year alone threatened to exceed $150,000,000, and still the botanists had no due as to what was happening to their precious charges.

The famous Englishman, Schilling, who had licked mealy-bugs and nematodes, was now dead, but research scholars went through his papers to see if he had left any clues as to further apprehensions. But that was only a figure of speech, for the drunken expert had left no orderly papers and no suggestions. He had died one night in a fit of delirium tremens in a poverty ward on the island of Kauai, the nurses not recognizing who he was until after his death. Nevertheless, the botanists repeated all of Schilling's work on the pineapple and assured themselves that the fault lay not with iron, nor bugs, nor nematodes. They discovered nothing about the current disease except that hundreds of thousands of plants seemed determined to die.

In desperation, Hoxworth Hale suggested: "We know we're being attacked either by some invisible virus or by some chemical deficiency. It doesn't seem to be the former. Therefore, it's got to be the latter. I am willing to spray-feed every pknt in the islands. But what with?"

A young chemist from Yale suggested: "We know the complete chemical component of the pineapple pknt. Let's mix a spray which contains everything that might possibly be lacking. We'fi shoot blind. At the same time, you fellows compare by analysis a hundred dead plants with a hundred unaffected ones. Maybe you can spot the deficiency."

The young man mixed a fantastic brew, a little of everything, and sprayed one of the dying fields. Almost as if by magic the hungry plants absorbed some tiny, unspecified element in the concoction, and within two days were both upright and back to proper color. It was one of the most dramatic recoveries in the history of pineapple culture, and that night for the first time in several months Hoxworth Hale slept peacefully. In the morning his board asked him, "What was it that saved the crop?"

"Nobody knows. Now we're going to find out."

He encouraged the scientists, who withheld from the magic brew one component after another, but the fields responded dramatically no matter what was sprayed on them; and then one day zinc was omitted, and that day the plants continued to die.

"Zinc!" Hale shouted. "Who the hell ever heard of adding zinc to pineapple soils?"

Nobody had, but over the years the constant leaching of the soil and the introduction of chemical fertilizers had minutely depleted

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the zinc, whose presence to begin with no one was aware of, and when the critical moment was reached, the zinc-starved plants collapsed. "What other chemicals may be approaching the danger line?" Hale asked.

"We don't know," the scientists replied, but prudence warned him that if zinc had imperceptibly fled from the fields, other trace minerals must be doing so too, and he kunched what became perhaps the most sophisticated development in the entire history of agriculture: "We are going to consider our famous red soil of Hawaii as a bank. From it we draw enormous supplies of things like calcium and nitrate and iron, and those are easy to replace. But we also seem to draw constant if minute supplies of things like zinc, and we haven't been putting them back. Starting today, I want the chemical components of every scrap of material harvested from our pineapple fields analyzed and their total weight calculated. If we take out a ton of nitrate, we'll put a ton back. And if we withdraw one-millionth of a gram of zinc, we're going to put the same amount back. This marvelous soil is our bank. Never again will we overdraw our account."

It was strange what depletions the scientists found: zinc, titanium, boron, cobalt, and many others. They were present in the soil only in traces, but if one vanished, the pineapple plants perished; and one night when balance had been restored to the vast pkntations, and the economy of Hawaii saved, Hoxworth Hale, who had refused to surrender either to nematodes or to the depletion of trace minerals, suddenly had a vision of Hawaii as a great pineapple field: no man could say out of hand what contributions the Filipino or the Korean or the Norwegian had made, but if anyone stole from Hawaii those things which the tiniest component added to the society, perhaps the human pineapples would begin to perish, too. For a long time Hale stood at the edge of his fields, contemplating this new concept, and after that he viewed people like Filipinos and Portuguese in an entirely different light. "What vital thing do they add that keeps our society healthy?" he often wondered.

When Hong Kong Kee had served on various boards of The Fort for a testing period the unbelievable happened. He was summoned to the chambers of Judge Harper, who had married one of the Hoxworth girls, and was advised by that careful Texan: "Hong Kong, the judges have decided to appoint you one of the trustees of the Malama Kanakoa Estate."

Hong Kong stepped back as if the good judge had belted him across the face with a raw whip. "You mean that without applying, I've been appointed?"

"Yes. We felt that with Hawaii's commerce and politics falling more and more into the hands of our Oriental brothers, certain steps ought to be taken to recognize that fact."

In spite of his cynical knowledge of how The Fort and its ramifications operated, Hong Kong was visibly moved by the appointment,

for he knew that when the evening papers revealed this story the extent of the Hawaii revolution could no longer be ignored. With bright young Japanese politicians taking over the legislature, the only remaining bulwark of the old order was the great trusteeships, and for The Fort voluntarily to relinquish one was an event of magnitude. Hong Kong was therefore inspired to complete frankness, for he wanted to be sure that Judge Harper knew what he was doing.

"I am deeply touched by this gesture, Judge Harper," he said with real humility. "I guess you know what it means to be the first Chinese on such a board. You judges are giving me an accolade I'll never forget. But do you know how I stand on land tenure? Leasehold? Breaking up the big estates that don't use their land creatively? You understand all those things, Judge?"

Big Judge Harper laughed and pointed to a paper on his desk. "Hong Kong, you apparently forget who your brother trustees will be. Hewlett Janders and John Whipple Hoxworth. You think they're going to let you run wild with any crazy idea?"

"But even with such men, Judge, ideas repeated often enough sometimes catch on ... where you least expect them."

"We judges think you're the kind of man who will bring good new ideas, but we certainly aren't going to back you against your two fellow trustees."

"I'm not looking for a fight, Judge."

"We know. That's why we've appointed you. But before you take the job, Hong Kong�and I appreciate even better than you how signal an honor this is, because we have been petitioned for years to appoint some Oriental�I want you to understand with crystal clarity the nature of the task you're undertaking." The big man adjusted his considerable bulk in his judge's chair and told his secretary he didn't want to be interrupted.

"The very existence of Hawaii, Hong Kong, depends not upon what cynical outsiders like to term The Fort. The outsiders are wrong. It's not The Fort that controls Hawaii. It's the sanctity of the great trusts. They form the solid backbone of our society. The Fort is only the ribs and the people are the flesh. But the backbone has to be kept strong, and it is up to us judges to be its guardians.

"The trusts control the land and establish the systems of tenure. They control the sugar and the pineapple fields. They continue, where companies rise and fall. They remain productive while the families who profit from them subside into decay. Look at the one you're entering. It controls millions of dollars in the vital heart of Hawaii, for whom? For a dear old Hawaiian lady and her no-good beachboy son. We judges don't spend our time worrying about that trust because we're interested in those two poor Hawaiians. They aren't worth it. But the idea that Malama Kanakoa and her son Kelly are assured of a square deal from the courts is terribly important.

"What I have to say next, Hong Kong, I don't want to say sitting down." The big man rose, adjusted his dark brown suit, and pointed

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directly at his Chinese visitor. "In the history of our great trusts, there has never been a scandal because some trustee stole money. There have been no defalcations, no illegal conversions, no overtrading for personal commissions, no theft. The trustees have often been accused of being too conservative, but in a trustee that's not a weakness. It's a virtue. Hong Kong, so long as we were satisfied to choose our trustees from the missionary families we enjoyed a spotlessly clean record. We're now branching out, and in a sense we're taking a risk. If you make one error, I personally will hound you out of the islands. The courts will never rest till you're behind bars. If you want to do one thing which will set the Orientals in Hawaii back three generations, abuse the Malama Kanakoa Trust." He sat down, smiled at Hong Kong, and added, "Of course, if you want to prove to our entire society that Orientals are as responsible as the missionaries ever were, you have that opportunity, too."

Hong Kong wished that his grandmother were alive to guide him at this moment, but he felt that she would have counseled courage, so he said bluntly, "What will you judges say when I recommend that Malama Kanakoa go mostly into some pretty radical investments?"

Judge Harper thought this one over a long time and finally said, "One of the reasons why we judges decided to appoint you to Malama's trust is that Hoxworth Hale told us about your investing ideas. He said they ought to be looked into, that maybe they were the answer to some of these trusts with vast back-tax structures."

"Then Hoxworth Hale got me this job?" Hong Kong asked.

"You misunderstand, Hong Kong, I appointed you."

The Chinese bowed slightly, but could not keep from smiling, and soon Judge Harper joined him. Rising from his desk and putting his arm about Hong Kong's shoulders, he said, "Let's put it this way. If you turn out badly, Hoxworth doesn't suffer the opprobrium. I do. Hong Kong, you are really going to be watched. By me."

"What do they call these Negroes who are the first to move into a white neighborhood?" Hong Kong laughed. "The blockbusters? Looks as if I'm the trustbuster."

"The word has an entirely different meaning," Judge Harper pointed out amiably, but when the able Chinese had gone he had a moment of nostalgic reflection, saying to himself, "He's probably right. Appointing him was probably the beginning of the end ... at least of the safe, comfortable, honest old system we knew."

Hong Kong drove immediately home and asked the cook, "Where is Judy?" and when he found that she was teaching at the conservatory, he drove there and went ini to fetch her. Since the death of Nyuk Tsin, the oldest woman of his family, he had found himself drawing markedly closer to Judy, his youngest girl. He liked women's habits of thought, and he particularly appreciated Judy's cool, clean reasoning.

After a few minutes she joined him, a sparkling, winsome Chinese

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girl of twenty-six, with two braids down her back, a starched pink dress and wide, clever eyes. She bounced into the Buick and asked, "What's up, Dad?"

"I want you to accompany me to a very important meeting. I've just been appointed a trustee for the Malama Kanakoa Trust." "Are the judges out of their minds?" Judy chortled. "The Fort has the ability to see the inevitable," her father said. "Where are we going?" Judy asked.

"I want to see Malama. I'd like to find out what her ambitions are, her hopes for the land she owns, and at the same time doesn't own." "Dadl You know Malama won't have any ideas." "That's what everybody has said for years. But I suppose she's as bright as you or I, and I'd like to find out."

He drove toward Diamond Head until he crossed the Ala Wai canal, then turned into the gate at the board fence that surrounded the Swamp. When he drew up to the shingled house, with its spacious porch, Malama thrust open the screen door and appeared with a gigantic smile, her silver hair dishevled and her dress askew. "Hong Kong, the defender of my interests, come in! The judges told me last night!" With widespread arms she welcomed him, and Judy saw with some surprise that her father had had foresight enough to purchase a flower lei for his first visit. Graciously he bestowed it upon the woman who towered over him, then leaned up to give her two kisses while she beamed.

"Come in, my good friends!" she said expansively, adding, with the instinct that marked Hawaiians, "I never thought I should see the day when a distinguished Chinese banker was appointed one of my guardians. It is a happy day for me, Hong Kong. Your people and mine have blended well in the past, and I hope this is a good augury for the future."

"It's a new day in Hawaii, Malama," he replied. "And is this your lovely daughter?" Malama asked, and when Hong Kong said that it was, she laughed and said, "In the old days I could never tell, when I saw a rich Chinese with a young girl, whether she was his daughter or his number four wife."

"I feel the same way when I go to a night club in New York," Hong Kong replied happily, "and see the haole bankers and their companions. We poor Chinese aren't allowed to get away with plural marriages any longer . . . only the haoles."

"I want you to meet my friends," Malama chuckled. "We gather now and then for some Hawaiian music. This is Mrs. Choy, Mrs. Fukuda, Mrs. Mendonca and Mrs. Rodriques."

Hong Kong bowed to each of the huge ladies and then returned to Mrs. Choy. "You the pretty girl named after the race horse?"