Hawaii (179 page)

One night Noelani Janders said, as she drove Shigeo home from four outdoor rallies, "For a moment tonight, Shig, I had the fleeting sensation that we were going to win control of both the house and the senate. There's a real chance that a hell of a lot of you Japanese are going to be elected. It's terribly exciting."

Then the campaign, at least so far as Shigeo Sakagawa was concerned, fell completely apart, because one day without any previous announcement, old Kamejiro and his stooped wife climbed down off a Japanese freighter, took a bus out to Kakaako, and announced: "We have decided to live in America."

Goro and Shig embraced them as warmly as their stubborn, rocklike father would allow and tried to uncover the reasons for this sudden change of plans. All they could get from Kamejiro was this: "I'm too old to leam to use those goddamned Japanese toilets. I can't stay bent down that long." He would say no more.

Mrs. Sakagawa allowed several hints to fall. Once she observed: "The old man said he had grown, so soft in America that he was no longer fit to be a real Japanese." At another time she said sorrowfully, "If you have been away from a farm for fifty-two years, when you go back the fields look smaller." As for herself, she said simply, "The Inland Sea is so terribly cold in winter."

Once, in late October when Shigeo was particularly nervous over the election, he snapped at his father: "I've seen a hundred of you people leave Hawaii, saying, 'I'm going back to the greatest land on earth!' But when you get there, you don't like it so much, do you?"

To his surprise old Kamejiro strode up to him, drew back and

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belted him severely across the face. "You're a Japanese!" he said fiercely. "Be proud of it!"

Mrs. Sakagawa had come home with several new photographs of Hiroshima-ken girls, and she arranged them on the kitchen table, admiringly, but when her boys showed no interest she sadly put them away. One night when she could not sleep she saw her youngest son come driving home with a haole girl, and it looked to her as if he had kissed the girl, and she called her husband and they confronted Shigeo, fearfully, and said, "Did you come home with a haole girl?"

"Yes," the young senator replied.

"Oh, no!" his mother groaned. "Kamejiro, speak to him."

The embittered session lasted for some hours, with old Kamejiro shouting, "If you get mixed up with a haole woman, all Japan will be ashamed I"

Mrs. Sakagawa held that it was the gods themselves who had inspired her return to America in time to save her son from such an irrevocable disgrace. She wept, "With all the fine girls I told you about from Hiroshima, why do you ride home with a haole?"

Strong threats were made, in the course of which Shigeo's mother cried, "It's almost as bad as if you married a Korean," at which Goro, who was now awake, pointed out, "Who said anything about getting married?" and Mrs. Sakagawa replied, "It's the same everywhere. Haole girls, Korean girls, Okinawa girls, Eta girls, all trying to trap decent Japanese boys."

This was too much for Goro, who suggested, "Mom, go to bed," but when she saw in Goro visible proof of the wreck her older son had made of his life she wept again and mourned, "You wouldn't listen to me. You went ahead and married a Tokyo girl, and see what happened. Let me warn you, Shigeo, haole girls are even worse than Tokyo girls. Much worse."

Goro pleaded ineffectively, "Shig, tell her that you're not marrying the girl."

"I saw him kissing her!" his mother cried.

"Mom," Goro cried. "I kissed a Filipino girl the other night. But I'm not marrying her."

Mrs. Sakagawa stopped her ranting. Dropping her arms she stared at her son and repeated dully, "A Filipino girl?" The idea was so completely repugnant that she could find no words with which to castigate it, so she turned abruptly on her heel and went to bed. Chinese girls, Okinawans, even Koreans you could fight. But a Filipino!

When the old people were gone, Goro asked quietly, "There's nothing between you and the haole, is there?"

"I don't think so," Shig replied.

"Look, blalah," Goro said, reverting to an old and dear phrase of their pidgin childhood, "she's a Hale, a Janders, a haole, a divorcee, all in one. Don't try it. You're strong, but you're not that strong." ......

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Election Day, 1954, was one that will never be forgotten in Hawaii. Hula teams surrounded voting places. Candidates wearing mountain ous flowered leis passed out sandwiches to haole voters and sushi to Japanese. Bands blared all day long, and trucks with long streamers ploughed through the streets. It was a noisy, gala, wonderful day, and that night when the votes were tallied, Hawaii realized with astonished pain that for the first time since the islands had joined America, Democrats were going to control both houses. The days were forever past when Republicans dominated by The Fort could rule the islands with impunity.

Then, toward midnight, when each specific contest approached final settlement, a second discovery was made, even more sobering than the first. Of the Democratic victors, the majority were going to be young Japanese. In the senate, out of fifteen seats, Japanese won seven. In the house, out of thirty seats, Japanese won fourteen. On the board that ran Honolulu, out of seven vacancies, Japanese won four, and at midnight Hewie Janders, sitting glumly with John Whipple Hoxworth and the Hewlett boys, faced the unpalatable facts: "Gentlemen, we are now to be governed from Tokyo. And may God help us."

Black Jim McLafferty's team of brilliant young Japanese war veterans had swept into commanding power. Their average age was thirty-one. The average number of major wounds they had received in battle was two. Their average number of medals was four. They were honor graduates, of great mainland universities like Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, and Stanford, and together they would compose the best-educated, most-decorated group of legislators elected that day in any of the forty-eight American states; there would be no finer legislature than that put together by the serious young Japanese lawyers of Hawaii.

Some pages back in this memoir I predicted that when, in 1916, the drunken luna Von Schlemm unfairly thrashed the sick Japanese field hand Kamejiro Sakagawa, the act was bound to have historic consequences which would not appear obvious for nearly forty years. Now, on. Election Day of 1954, this old and almost forgotten event came home to roost. The Japanese, convinced that their laboring parents had been abused by the lunas, voted against the Republicans who had supervised that abuse. Von Schlemm's single blow had been transmuted by oratory into daily thrashings. In the early part of the campaign Senator Sakagawa, who should have known better, used this incident to lure the Japanese vote, but later he had the decency to drop such inflammatory rabble-rousing. In the labor troubles that haunted our islands, Goro Sakagawa originally used this same incident to inflame his workers, but later he also reconsidered and abandoned his irresponsible harangues. Nevertheless, for a few months in 1954 it looked as if a deep schism had been driven down the middle of our community, pitting Japanese against haole, but the Sakagawa boys had the courage to back away from that tempting, perilous course. They reconciled haole and Japanese, and it is to their credit

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that they did so. If there was one man in the history of Hawaii that I should have liked to strangle, it was that accidental, unthinking luna Von Schlemm. By the grace of God, our islands finally exorcised the evil that he so unwittingly initiated.

When the election returns were all in, toward two in the mom-ing, and the Democratic victors were flushed with congratulations, Black Jim McLafferty leaned back in his chair at headquarters and warned Senator Sakagawa: "This victory is going to delay statehood. Last year our enemies rejected us on the grounds that Hawaii wasn't ready because the Japanese weren't Americanized. When they hear these returns, they'll reject us again because you Orientals are too damned well Americanized. But whether we ever become a state or not, we're going to build a great Hawaii."

His reflections were interrupted by the entrance into headquarters of a man whom no one expected to see there, for stern, black-coated Hoxworth Hale appeared bearing a mafle lei whose fragrance was apparent even above the tobacco smoke and the shouting. The commander of The Fort looked gloomily about the unfamiliar terrain, then saw Shigeo Sakagawa among a group of cheering friends and noticed the bright-red lipstick on his yellow cheek, as if strangers had been kissing him. Moving toward the most important victor in the senatorial contests, Hoxworth extended his hand and said, Congratulations." Then he placed the maile chain about the young Japanese boy's shoulders and said, "You'll forgive me if I don t

"I'll do that for you, Dad," Noelani said, adding her lipstick to the collection. Hoxworth studied the victorious senator for a moment and asKed wryly "How is it none of you smart young fellows are Republicans? "You never invited us," Shig replied with a nervous laugh In distinct tones that many could overhear, Hoxworth said, Well, I want it on record this time, Senator Sakagawa. I'm inviting you to join the board of Whipple Oil. I would be proud to work with a man like you."

The CTOwd gasped, and Shigeo replied, "On the morning after I introduce my land-reform bill, I'll join you. That is, supposing you still want me."

"You'd be foolish to accept before," Hoxworth said, and with this the proud, lonely man, descendant of the missionaries and owner of the islands, excused himself from a celebration where he was not wholly at ease. When he was gone, Shig's friends cned, My^God! He asked a Japanese to join his board," but Noelani said Thats not important Look! He gave Shig a maile lei. Coming from my father that's better than a crown."

I can speak with a certain authority about these matters, because I participated in them. I knew these Golden Men: the lyric beachboy Kelly Kanakoa; the crafty Chinese banker Hong Kong Kee; and

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the dedicated Japanese politician Shigeo Sakagawa. I was there when they became vital parts of the new Hawaii.

It was I who engineered the coalition that defeated Senator Sakagawa's radical land reform. It was I who warned Noelani Janders against the needless folly of falling in love with a Japanese boy, and I told Shigeo Sakagawa frankly that he would damage his career if he allowed it; for in an age of Golden Men it is not required that their bloodstreams mingle, but only that their ideas clash on equal footing and remain free to cross-fertilize and bear new fruit.

So at the age of fifty-six I, Hoxworth Hale, have discovered that I, too, am one of those Golden Men who see both the West and the East, who cherish the glowing past and who apprehend the obscure future; and the things I have written of in this memoir are very close to my heart.

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