Hawaii - James Michener [463]
"Close that goddamned brewery!" Hoxworth bellowed, and it was closed.
The temperature in Hawaii never indulges in extremes, except on the tops of the volcanic mountains, where snows persist through much of the year, but February nights can be miserably chilling, and for two influenza-ridden nights the Sakagawas slept on the ground near Iwilei. Kamejiro held the sick girl Reiko in his arms and his wife cradled Shigeo, the baby, and the nights were bad, but on the third day Mr. Ishii found them and said, "I have found a hut where an old woman died," and they wolfed down the food that she would have eaten had she lived.
For three weeks the epidemic raged and the deaths of exposed workmen reached toward the hundred mark. At the end of this time, Mr. Ishii, Kamejiro and Inoguchi-san organized a committee of sixteen who marched lawfully up Nuuanu to the Japanese consulate, seeking help in that quarter. They were met by an official in black-rimmed glasses, cutaway coat and nervous grin. Allowing Mr. Ishii to do their speaking, the men said, "We are being very poorly treated by the Americans, and we must come to the Imperial government for help."
"The Imperial government is protecting Japanese interests with studious care," the official assured the deputation. "Only yesterday His Excellency protested to the Chief of Police against keeping the Japanese from holding legal meetings."
"But they are throwing us out of our homes, and our men are dying in the fields," Mr. Ishii said quietly.
With equal calmness the spokesman explained, "His Excellency only last week looked into the law and found that the plantations have the right to expel you ... if you strike."
"But there is a great sickness in these islands," Mr. Ishii protested.
"Then perhaps the strike ought to terminate," the spokesman suggested.
"But we can't live on seventy-seven cents a day."
"In Japan your brothers surely live on much less," the official assured the strikers, and the fruitless interview was concluded.
Another accident which worked against the strikers was the discovery, in early May, of a schoolbook used in the Japanese schools which had a long passage explaining what was meant by the phrase used by Japan's first emperor, "All the world under a roof of eight poles." Quite obviously, the book explained to the children of Japan --and it was never intended for use in Hawaii but had somehow got into the islands by mistake--it was the Emperor Jimmu Tenno's idea that all the world must some day be united into one great family paying homage to the sun goddess and obedience to the emperor, her lineal descendant. Cried the Honolulu Mail: "If anyone has wanted proof of the contentions of this newspaper that Japan intends one day to conquer the world, with Hawaii as the first step in the conquest, this evil little book proves the fact beyond contention. All the world under one roof! The local Japanese Bolsheviks have already taken the first step in that domination, and unless we remain steadfast and defeat their foul aspirations, we shall be the first foreign territory to be submerged beneath tie Japanese roof." If sugar men were growing faint-hearted as the long strike headed for its sixth harrowing month, this timely discovery of what was being taught in Japan fortified them.
Finally, there was the disgraceful affair of dynamiting the home in which Inoguchi-san of Malama Sugar was living. No one was killed, fortunately, but when the Honolulu Mail disclosed that Inoguchi had been dynamited because he had been in secret negotiations with the sugar planters, telling them nightly what Mr. Ishii and the committee were planning next, the community had to acknowledge that the Japanese labor leaders really were a group of determined Bolsheviks. Swift police raids swept up nineteen or the leaders, including Mr. Ishii, and threw them into jail on charges of criminal conspiracy. Wild Whip Hoxworth visited the judges involved and pointed out that the charges might better be criminal syndicalism, and they thanked him for his interest in the case.