Hawaii - James Michener [412]
"All in all, we think that future history will show that the true prosperity of Hawaii began with the importation of these sturdy workmen, and when, at the end of their employment, they return to Japan, each with his pocketful of honestly earned gold, they will go with our warm aloha. Today we welcome them as fortunate replacements for the Chinese who have turned out so badly. Aloha nui nui!”
OF THE 1,850 Japanese laborers who debarked that September day in 1902, most were assigned to plantations on Oahu, the island that contained Honolulu, and they were depressed by the barren ugliness of the inland areas. They had not seen cactus before, but as farmers they could guess that it spoke ill of the land upon which it grew, and the dull red dust appalled them. They judged that no water came to these parts, and although they had not themselves grown cattle, they could see that the spavined beasts which roamed these desolate acres suffered from both thirst and hunger. They were disappointed in the parched land which showed so little promise, and one farmer whispered to his friends, "America is much different from what they said."
But Kamejiro Sakagawa was not to be disappointed, for he was among a batch of workers dispatched to another area, and when he reached it he saw immediately that his new land was among the fairest on earth. Even the glorious fields along the Inland Sea of Japan were no finer than the area which he was expected to till. To reach this veritable paradise young Kamejiro was not marched along the dusty roads of Oahu; he was led onto a small inter-island boat which at other times was used for the 'transport of lepers, and after a long, seasick night, he was marched ashore on the island of Kauai. At the pier a tall, scar-faced man waited impatiently on a horse, and when the captain of the boat was inept at docking, he shouted orders of his own, as if he were in command. At his side ran a little Japanese, and as his countrymen finally climbed down out of the boat, this interpreter told them, "The man on the horse is called Wild Whip Hoxworth. If you work good, he is good. If not, he will beat you over the head. So work good."
As he spoke Wild Whip wheeled his horse among the men, reached down with his riding crop and tilted upward the face of Kamejiro Sakagawa. "You understand?" he growled. The little interpreter asked, "Ano hito ga yutta koto wakari mashita ka?" When stocky Kamejiro nodded, Whip lowered the riding crop, reached down and patted the new laborer on the shoulder.
Now he wheeled his horse about and moved into position at the head of the line. "We march!" he shouted, leading them off the pier onto a red-baked road where a group of sugar-cane wagons, hitched to horses, waited. "Climb in!" he yelled, and as the Japanese crawled into the low wagons whose sides were formed of high stakes bound together by lengths of rope, he moved to the head of the train and shouted, "On to Hanakai!" And the procession left the port town and moved slowly northward along the eastern coast of the island.
As the men rode they saw for the first time the full grandeur of Hawaii, for they were to work on one of the fairest islands in the Pacific. To the left rose jagged and soaring mountains, clothed in perpetual green. Born millions of years before the other mountains of Hawaii, these had eroded