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By Root 4507 0

Jefferson demonstrated its success. With better teachers and better facilities it promised to turn out graduates who were proficient in English and who were sure to make good records at mainland colleges. Some of the plantation owners began to wonder if perhaps the English-standard schools weren't too good. Hoxworth Hale observed: "Why you get almost as fine an education at Jefferson as you do at Punahou. No tax-supported school has to be that good." But there were other protests of a more serious nature, for it had become apparent to laboring groups that their children were not going to be admitted to the superior schools, no matter how proficient their English, and some radical labor men began to argue: "We pay taxes to support these fine schools to educate those who don't need them. It is our own children who ought to be going to those schools, for then the differences between groups in the community would be diminished."

Sometimes at night, as Kamejiro listened to Reiko-chan drilling her brothers in English, he thought: "Everybody in Hawaii has it better than the Japanese. Look at those damned Kees! They have big stores and their sons go to Punahou. When the Chinese came to Hawaii, things were easy."

Now it was Goro's turn to try his luck at Jefferson, and like his sister he reported to the jury of three teachers. Like her he brought with him a rather striking report: "Grades A. Behavior B. Knowledge of American customs A. English A. This boy has unusual capacities in history." The test began, and he spoke with delightful fluency, explaining the Civil War to the teachers.

It looked as if they would have to accept him, when one teacher used a device that had been found effective in testing a child's real knowledge of English. She slowly lifted a piece of paper and tore it in half.

"What did I do to the paper?" she asked.

"You broke it," Goro said promptly.

Again the teacher tore the paper and asked, "What did I do to it this time?"

"You broke it again," Goro said.

"We're sorry," the chairman announced. "She tore the paper. The word is tore." And Goro was rejected.

When his father heard the news he asked dumbly, "What was the word again?"

Goro explained, "I said broke when I should have said tore."

"Broke!" Kamejiro cried in anguish. "Broke!" He did not know the word himself, but he was outraged that his son should have misused it. He began beating him about the shoulders, crying, "How many times have I told you not to say broke? You stupid, stupid boy!” And he continued hammering his son, not realizing that if it had not been the word broke it would have been some other, for the children of Japanese men who dug out privies were not intended to enter Jefferson.

IN 1936 Kamejiro Sakagawa faced a most difficult decision, for it became apparent that his grand design of educating five children from kindergarten through graduate school could not be attained. The hard-working family simply did not have the money to keep going. It was therefore necessary that some, at least, of the children quit school and go to work, and discussions as to the various courses open to the Sakagawas kept the family awake many nights.

The fault was not Kamejiro's. He would have been able to maintain the four boys in school and at the same time permit Reiko-chan to begin her university course except that news from China was increasingly bad. Time after time either the priest at the language school or the consular officials reported to the Japanese community that the emperor was facing the gravest crisis in Japanese history. "This sacred man," the priest intoned, "tries to sleep at night with the burden of all Japan on his shoulders. The very least you can do is to support our armies in their victorious march across China." The armies were always on the verge of victory, and certainly the Japanese newsreels showed the capture of one new province each week, but the Japanese forces never seemed to get anywhere, and in August of that year the consular official made a very blunt statement: "I want fifty thousand dollars sent from these islands