Hawaii - James Michener [419]
Mortified, he fled the crowd and found Hashimoto, who said abruptly, "Those damned geisha girls are driving me loony. Let's find a good whorehouse."
The two Kauai laborers started probing the Aala region, but a stranger told them, "The houses you want are all in Iwilei," so they hurried to that quarter of the city, but the houses were filled with richer patrons and the two could gain no entrance.
"I'm going to grab any woman I see," Hashimoto said.
"No!" Kamejiro warned, remembering the admonition of the woman he had touched.
"To hell with you!" the other shouted. "Girl! Girls!" he shouted in Japanese. "Here I come to find you!" And he dashed down one of the Iwilei alleys. Kamejiro, now ashamed to be in such a place while dressed as Colonel Ito, who had sacrificed his life at Port Arthur, fled the area and returned to the park, where he sat for hours staring at the dancers. This time he kept away from women, and after a long time an old Japanese man came up to him with a bottle of sake and said, "Oh, Colonel! What a glorious war this was! And did you notice one thing tonight? Not one damned Chinese had the courage to appear on the streets while our army was marching! I tell you, Colonel! In 1895 we defeated the Chinese. And in 1905 we defeated the Russians. Two of the finest nations on earth. Who will we fight ten years from now? England? Germany?"
"All the world can be proud of Japan," Kamejiro agreed.
"What is more important, Colonel," the drunk continued, "is that here in Hawaii people have now got to respect us. The German lunas who beat us with whips. The Norwegian lunas who treat us with contempt. They have got to respect us Japanese! We are a great people! Therefore, Colonel, promise me one thing, and I will give you more sake. The next time a European luna dares to strike you in the cane fields, kill him! We Japanese will show the world."
It was a tremendous celebration, worthy of the impressive victory gained by the homeland, and even though it used up much of Kamejiro's savings and reminded him of how lonely he was, he felt it had been worth while; but it had one unfortunate repercussion which no one could have foreseen, and long after the celebration itself had faded into memory, this one dreadful result lived on in Kamejiro's mind.
It started in the whorehouses of Iwilei, after Kamejiro had abandoned his lusty friend Hashimoto to the alleys, for that young man had forced his way into one of the houses and had been soundly thrashed by half a dozen Germans who resented his intrusion. Thrown into one of the gutters, he had been found by a Hawaiian boy who did pimping for a group of girls, and this boy, in the custom of the islands, had lugged the bewildered Japanese home, where his sister had washed his bruises. They had been able to converse only in pidgin, but apparently enough 'had been said, for when Hashimoto returned to the Kauai ship, he had the sister in tow. She was a big, amiable, wide-eyed Hawaiian who carried with her only one bundle tied with string, but she seemed to like wiry, tough-minded Hashimoto and apparently intended to stay with him.
"I am going to marry her," Hashimoto stoutly informed Kamejiro, who still wore his colonel's uniform, and something about either the victory celebration or the uniform made Kamejiro especially patriotic that day, for as soon as his friend said the fatal words, "I am going to marry her," he sprang into action as if he were in charge of troops. Grabbing Hashimoto by the arm he warned, "If you do such a thing, all Japan will be ashamed."
"I may not ever go back to Japan," Hashimoto said.
Impulsively, like a true colonel, Kamejiro struck Hashimoto across the face, shouting, "Don't ever speak like that! Japan is your home!"
Hashimoto was astonished at Colonel Sakagawa's unexpected behavior but he recognized that he deserved the rebuke, so he mumbled, "I'm tired of living without a woman."
This introduced a less military note into the discussion, and Kamejiro quit being an Imperial colonel and became