Honolulu (40 page)

All in all, the chief of detectives and the men he had entrusted with investigating this crime-most of them haoles-now appeared to be either fabricators of evidence or, at best, bungling Keystone Cops. And their credibility had been undermined by their fellow police officers-the majority of them “local” boys who clearly felt the defendants were being railroaded.

The case went to the jury on December 2. After four days of what was rumored to be rancorous debate, the jury informed Judge Steadman that they could not reach a verdict, and the judge reluctantly declared a mistrial on December 6.

The boys were certain to be tried again, but barring some new evidence, there was little reason to believe a new jury would fare any better. Joe, his family, and the other defendants were relieved over the results, of course. But the mistrial sent shock waves of rage and indignation throughout the haole community-especially in the ranks of the Navy. On Wednesday, a scrawled note was found at the Submarine Base at Pearl Harbor: “We have raped your women and will get some more. ” It was signed “Kalihi Gang. ” Even Navy officials believed this to be a hoax, but word of it spread like a virus, infecting public thought. Tensions between locals and Navy men increased, as did shore patrols, though few residents trusted the MPs to intervene fairly. There were rumors that some Navy men were planning to burn down the city, starting here in Palama, where the defendants lived. Few of us in the area slept soundly the night we heard of this.

Saturday evening, on my way home from work, I stumbled into the middle of a quarrel between Navy sailors and a group of Filipino men on Liliha Street. Shouts and curses quickly escalated as the two sides began throwing punches-and anything else at hand. I ran back the way I came and managed to get home, but rioting between sailors and locals had erupted all across town.

At our rooming house I found the indefatigable jade Moon preparing to stand guard over her property, wielding a hastily purchased shotgun. “My grandfather stared down the Japanese Army with a deer rifle,” she declared, “and I will do no less to the American Navy, if it comes to that.”

“And what happened to your grandfather?”

“What do you think? He was shot deader than a wedding goose, a glorious idiot.” She shrugged as she loaded the gun. “But what else is there to do?”

Jae-sun and I decided to keep the children barricaded inside our tworoom flat, moving what little furniture we owned up against the front door, and settled in for what promised to be a long and frightening night.

For us, the night passed without incident. A detachment of Marines were ordered into the city to provide an armed escort of all naval personnel back to Pearl Harbor, and what could have been even more widespread violence was averted. But the next morning we learned what had forced the Navy to take these steps. I picked up the daily paper from our doorstep and was horrified to see, on its front page, photographs of Horace Ida-his face bruised and battered at the hands of a group of vigilantes the night before.

I hurried to the Ida home, where I was relieved to find him looking no better than his photograph but in surprisingly good spirits, surrounded by family and friends. “Are you all right, Horace?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve had better Saturday nights, that’s for sure.”

He told me how he had been standing outside a “bootleg joint” on Kukui Street, talking story with a friend, when four cars-bristling with sailors sitting in rumble seats and perched on running boards-pulled up to the curb. One of the Navy men leaned out a window, pointed him out and announced, “That’s the guy!”

They shoved him into the front seat of a Chrysler roadster and took off up Kukui Street to Nu’uanu Avenue and then up Nu’uanu.

“You’re gonna give us a full confession,” the man told Horace, “or I’m going to blow your brains out and toss what’s left over the Pali.”

Near the top of the Pali the cars pulled off the road, where they had Horace take off his shirt and whipped him with their belts. The heavy buckles knocked the breath out of him and the leather straps stung like a jellyfish. They kicked and whipped him for fifteen minutes, as Horace insisted he was innocent. Finally one of the sailors hit him on the head with the butt of his gun, and Horace feigned unconsciousness, hoping they would go away, or at least stop beating him. He heard the men talking among themselves, debating what to do; but whatever else they were, apparently they were not murderers, and finally they picked him up and threw him into a cane field. He lay there until he heard engines roaring away, then limped back to the Pali Road, where he flagged down a passing motorist, much as Thalia Massie had two months before.

“You know,” Horace said wryly, “I’m beginning to think I should’ve stayed in L.A.!”

The police offered to take the defendants into protective custody, but the boys declined, feeling they could defend themselves. The next night, a group of belligerent sailors pounded on the door of Benny Ahakuelo’s home, de manding to see him, but police intervened in time-and when no further incidents occurred, we all prayed that the worst had passed.

The Navy, in the person of one Admiral Yates Stirling, made it sound as if Horace’s abduction and assault was the fault not of the sailors who had perpetrated it, but of the people of Hawai’i for forcing his men to take such drastic actions. He began quoting-or misquoting-reports stating that forty “criminal assaults” had occurred in Honolulu in the past year. Stirling cabled Washington that forty “rapes” had occurred. These and other lies about our islands soon made their way to the mainland, spreading a kind of gleeful hysteria that was repeated, without any independent verification, by newspapers across America.

Honolulu enjoyed a brief respite from its troubles over the holidays, and on Christmas Day I attended a birthday party for Joe Kahahawai, who had turned twenty-two. He was hopeful that, once his name was cleared, the National Guard would readmit him. As the Christian New Year approached, the city remained relatively calm, and I held my breath against the hope that the goodwill of the season might last a little longer.

But on Friday, January 8, the late morning calm on King Street was broken by the shout of a newsboy touting an “extra” edition of the Honolulu Advertiser: “Ala Moana boy kidnapped! Read it here, five cents!” I rushed out of the tailor shop, one of a flock of people who quickly surrounded the boy, and handed over a nickel for the paper. My worst fears were realized in its blaring headline-
KAHAHAWAI
KIDNAPPED-and in the accompanying picture of Joe, staring out from the front page as if beseeching me personally.

A crowd was gathering like smoke around the police station, scores of people who had seen the newspaper story and were now roiling about the entrance waiting for some further word. According to the Advertiser, Joe had left his home that morning, accompanied by his cousin Eddie, to meet with his probation officer. But on the very steps of the judiciary building, Joe was “seized by two men and rushed into a waiting automobile. Eddie, jumping on the running board of the car, was shoved off … two white men and a white woman were in the machine.”

“Has anyone heard anything else?” I asked a man in the crowd.

He shook his head. “No mo’ not’ing.”

Someone next to him said, “I hear it was the same bunch of rotten apples what kidnapped the Japanese boy.”

As more and more people converged on the corner of Merchant and Bethel Streets, uniformed officers made them form a single orderly line that soon stretched around the block and up Bethel, all the way to King Street.

Parked at the curb in front of the station was an old Chevrolet, not unlike the model owned by Esther and Pascual Anito. They were almost certainly inside the station, but these policemen were not likely to let me in to join them, unless …

I approached one of the officers and announced, as casually as I could, “Excuse me. I’m here to see Detective Apana.”

He gave me a dubious look.

“He doesn’t work cases anymore, lady. You want an autograph from Charlie Chan, we’re a little busy right now-”

“Please,” I said, trying to keep the growing panic from my voice. “Just tell him that Jin is here. He’s expecting me.”

This was a bold lie, but it gave the officer pause and he promised he would look into it as soon as the crowd was under control.

Five minutes later another officer came out, called my name, and escorted me inside. Standing in the lobby was the frail but straight-backed Chang Apana, chewing on a cigar as he barked at me: “Where you been? You very late!”

I had to stop myself from smiling. “I apologize, Detective, I was delayed.”

To the officer who ushered me inside Chang said, “I take her from here, Kimo, t’anks.” With a still-firm grip he took me by the arm and walked me through the lobby and into the officers’ squad room. As soon as we were alone together, his face became less animated, more sober. He knew why I was here.

`Vahalo, ” I told him. “I appreciate this.”

“S’okay. You his auntie, eh? ‘Ohana. Only right.”

“What about Horace and the others?”

“We got ‘em,” he assured me. “Protective custody.”

“Thank God. Are Esther and Pascual here, too?”

He shook his head. “No-at morgue. Identifying body.”

My heart felt as if someone had just squeezed it like a sponge.

I came to a sudden stop, my legs refusing direction from my mind. My heart was beating faster and harder than it had since the day I learned that Evening Rose had been taken away. “No, “I said, less a word than a moan.

Realizing his mistake, Apana gently guided me to his desk and sat me down. “Sorry. Paper’s coming out with news, I thought you hear.” He brought me a glass of water and I drank it, but my pulse was still sounding a drumbeat in my head. “You okay?” Chang asked, concerned.

I nodded, but I was far from all right. “How-how did it happen?”

“Eh, these bastards, they drive up, tell Joe sheriff wants see him, take off. Got caught Koko Head Road, Joe’s body in back. On their way to blowhole.”

The Halona Blowhole, on the windward coast, is a popular tourist spot and one of the most dramatic sights on O’ahu. As crashing surf pounds the shoreline, water is funneled through a lava tube that forms a kind of chimney in the rock, spitting out geysers as high as fifty feet into the air. Then as the sea recedes the water is sucked back through the hole and out to sea-but not before anything unlucky enough to be in the water is pulverized against the walls of the lava tube.

The horrifying image of Joe’s body, shattered and swept out to sea, brought angry tears to my eyes. “Was it the same men who attacked Horace?”

Chang shook his head, an itchy finger on his old blacksnake whip. “In car they find Navy man driving-also Mrs. Massie’s husband and mother.”

My astonishment briefly eclipsed my anger. “Mrs. Fortescue?”

He nodded. “They find her with Joe’s body wrapped in sheet-like dirty laundry. Real cool cookie too.”

“And these people dared to call Joe a beast,” I said hotly.

Before he could say more a sobbing Esther, along with Pascual and Joseph Sr., appeared in the squad room. They had just returned from the morgue, and their faces all reflected the same horror and heartsickness. I embraced Esther and felt the grief that was wracking her body pass into mine. “They took my sweet keiki-my baby,” she said, her words half-swallowed by her sobs. We stood there weeping and holding one another up.

“This is all they left me.” Esther lifted her right hand, still clutching two pieces of jewelry she had been given in the morgue. One was Joe’s wristwatch, its shattered face like crystallized ice, its hands frozen at 9:45-the moment, she was told, of Joe’s death. The other was an engraved ring identifying Joe as an alumnus of the St. Louis College class of 1928. Its gold band encircled only empty air, like the hole that had opened up inside us all.

“They just killed him in cold blood?” I said.

“They were trying to force a confession from him,” Pascual said, “and the gun went off. Least that’s what they claim.”

Esther appeared on the verge of collapse, and they still had to break the terrible news to Joe’s sister, Lillian, before she heard it at school. We left together. Outside, the police’s orderly line was beginning to crumble under the weight of hundreds more people pouring into the streets. The crowd would only grow larger upon news of Joe’s death, as wild rumors flew around Honolulu about vengeful mutilations exacted upon him by his killers, all unfounded. By afternoon, thousands were mobbing the station, and officers had to fire tear-gas capsules to disperse the crowd, leaving the air as bitter as the feelings of many locals.

Jae-sun and I met our children at school and told them the news before they could hear it on the streets; then we all stumbled home together to cry. At nine P.M. we had just put them to bed when we heard the shriek of the siren atop the Aloha Tower, normally used to mobilize the National Guard in an emergency-five long shrill blasts that lasted a nerve-rattling seven and a half minutes. The children’s calm dissolved after the second scream of the alarm.

“Did somebody else die?” Charlie asked, terrified. I’m not even sure he understood what death was, though he would soon learn.

“No, no, it’s all right,” I said as I held him, not knowing whether my words were even true.

“What if something’s happened to Mack or Shorty?” Grace asked.

“What if the Navy’s coming to burn us down?” Harold said anxiously.

“You are all safe,” Jae-sun assured them. “We will let nothing happen to you, we promise you that.”

We stayed with them for the next hour, until they finally drifted into an uneasy sleep. We learned the next day that the siren’s sounding was only the result of a prank telephone call, but it sent people spilling into the streets again and briefly threw all of Honolulu into a panic. Joe’s death had done more than just grieve those of us who loved him: it had set the entire city on edge, balanced on a precipice between anger and fear.

The next day, Thomas Massie, Grace Fortescue, and their two accomplices, seamen Edward Lord and Deacon Jones, were arraigned and a grand jury was impaneled to formally indict them. But rather than being taken to O’ahu Prison, they were remanded to the custody of the United States Navy and given luxurious accommodations aboard the
USS
Alton, a decommissioned naval cruiser dry-docked at Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Fortescue was given a penthouse suite overlooking the harbor, with room service provided by the officers’ mess. Horace, Mack, Henry, and Ben, held by the police in protective custody, were not even provided meals by the Territory of Hawai’i: their family and friends had to prepare food for them, as Jae-sun would do more than once during their stay.