Hawaii - James Michener [464]
But now the question arose as to who had taught the committee how to handle dynamite, and a reporter remembered that Kamejiro Sakagawa, who had not yet been arrested, had learned the trade while working on the tunnel. He was known to be a friend of Mr. Ishii's, and so the police arrested him. He was thrown into jail, even though he had had nothing to do with the dynamiting, whereupon his wife Yoriko proved to the police that he had been at home caring for his sick children. The sugar committee, who were advising the district attorney as to how he should handle the case, refused to accept this alibi, pointing out: "A clever man like Sakagawa didn't have to be actually at the scene of the crime. He could well have prepared the sticks in advance and shown his fellow conspirators how to explode them. He is obviously guilty." And he was kept in jail.
Then the strike ended, with the workmen having gained little, and sugar was once more produced by some of the cheapest labor in America. H & H made millions carrying fresh cargoes to California, and J & W made more millions managing the plantations in the good old way. The conspirators were brought to trial and Mr. Ishii was sentenced to ten years in jail. He sagged when the words were thrown at him, falling backwards as if they had actually struck him, and from that day on he was never much of a man again. He grew to mumble and imagine things, and no one took much account of him.
Surprisingly, Kamejiro, the dynamiter by trade, was not convicted, for one day before the trial began he had a visitor in his cell. It was Wild Whip Hoxworth, lean and tall and handsome, flushed with victory. Eh you, Kamejiro. Boys say you plant dynamite. That true?"
"No, Mr. Hoxuwortu. No."
"Me, I think no too." And Wild Whip told the district attorney, "You better drop charges against Sakagawa. He wasn't involved."
"How do you know?" the young lawyer asked, nervous with excitement over the trial that was going to make his reputation.
"Because he told me so," Whip explained.
"And you're going to take his word?"
"He's the most honest man I know. Besides, his alibi is a good one.
"But I think we've got to convict the actual dynamiter, whether his alibi is good or not."
"Turn him loose!” Whip thundered. He was sixty-six years old and tired of arguing with fools.
So on the morning that the trial convened, Kamejiro was quietly set free. Of course, he was never again able to get a job at Malama Sugar, for the great plantations prudently maintained blacklists in order to keep out troublemakers, and he had now proved himself one who fought with lunas and supported Bolsheviks like Ishii. He found a small, rat-infested shack in the Kakaako area of Honolulu, from which he did odd jobs, principally the cleaning out of privies after midnight. Children whose fathers had better jobs called him "King of the Night Brigade," and indeed the name King was fitting, for whatever he was required to do, he did with the most earnest skill, so that in spite of the fact that he was surreptitiously known as Sakagawa the Dynamiter, the man who had tried to kill Inoguchi, people nevertheless continued to seek him out when their privies needed unloading, for he merited the title, "King of the Night Brigade."
IN 1926 the disreputable old English botanist Dr. Schilling developed another striking idea about the growing of pineapple. Recovering from a four-month drunk, he turned fresh, if bloodshot, eyes upon the great fields of Kauai, and as he studied the swarms of Japanese women hoeing out the weeds from the red soil, he thought: "Why don't we spread paper over the whole damned field, punch holes in it where we plant the baby pineapple, and make it impossible for weeds to grow?"
He got some asphalt paper, rolled it across a trial field, and planted a crop of pineapple in the small holes he had punched in the black covering. To his surprise, the simple trick not only killed off all the weeds, saving hundreds of dollars in labor charges, but also provided two unforeseen advantages which proved to be more profitable than even