Hawaii - James Michener [475]
Slowly the tall priest rose and reached for his rod. Moving silently in his bare feet to where Goro lay on the tatami, he began to flail the boy unmercifully. When he had finished he returned solemnly to his rostrum, sat meticulously upon the floor and cried in a quivering voice, "Sakagawa Goro, what are the first laws of life?"
"Love of country. Love of emperor. Respect for parents."
Even in their names, the Japanese children experienced this constant hauling in two directions. At the American school it was Goro Sakagawa; at the Japanese, Sakagawa Goro. And when the beating was over, Goro waited for an opportunity and whispered to his brother Tadao, "I will never go back to Japan."
"Who spoke?" the priest cried sharply.
"I did," Goro replied. For him to lie would have been unthinkable.
"What did you say?"
"I said that when I grow up I will never go back to Japan."
Ominously the priest reached for the rod once more, and this time the beating he delivered was both longer and more severe. At the end he asked, "Now will you go back to Japan?"
"No," Goro stubbornly replied.
That night the priest told Kamejiro, "We can have no boy like this in the Japanese school. He lacks the proper sincerity."
"He will be back on Monday," Kamejiro said dutifully, bowing before his intellectual superior. "Believe me, Sensei, he will be back.”
That was Wednesday evening, and when bruised Goro started to go to bed his father caught his hand and said quietly, "Oh, No! You will not sleep tonight."
"But I must go to school tomorrow," Goro pleaded.
"No. For you there is no more school. Tonight you start to work with me." And Kamejiro made the boy dress in warm clothes and that night he took him on his rounds to clean out privies. Goro was appalled at the work his father did, at the humiliation of it, at the way late strolling drunks ridiculed him, at the stench. But bow-legged little Kamejiro said nothing. Hauling his son with him, he did his work, and at dawn the two night prowlers took their hot bath and breakfasted as the other children went to school.
On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights young Goro continued to clean out privies, until he felt so sick that he was afraid even to walk beside his resolute father. At dawn on Sunday, as the brilliant tropical sun came over Diamond Head, Kamejiro said to his son, "This is the way men have to work when they do not have an education. Are you ready to apologize to the priest?"
"Yes."
"And you're ready to apply yourself ... in both schools?"
“Yes."
On Monday afternoon Kamejiro took Goro back to the temple and stood in the doorway while his son announced to the entire class: "I apologize to all of Japan for what I said last Wednesday. I apologize to you, Sensei, for my evil behavior. I apologize to you, Father, for having been such an ungrateful son."
"Are you now willing to go back to Japan?" the priest asked.
"Yes, Sensei."
"Then sit down and we will resume our studies." After that experience, there were no more disturbances among the Sakagawa children.
There was one item of education which Kamejiro could delegate to no one. Whenever he took his family for a stroll through Kakaako he kept on the alert, and from time to time would grasp his left wrist with his right hand, and then his children knew. "Is that one?" the boys whispered.
"That’s one," Kamejiro replied in hoarse, awe-struck tones, and in this way the Sakagawas learned to spot the Etas, those untouchables who had filtered into Hawaii. Mrs. Sakagawa lectured Reiko-chan concerning the worst fate that could befall any girl: "There was a girl in Kakaako named Itagaki, and without knowing it she married an Eta. Her family had to go to another island in disgrace."