Hawaii - James Michener [483]
"Then you didn't come to arrest one of us?" Reiko-chan asked.
"Good heavens no!” Hale replied. "Did we give that impression this afternoon?"
"My mother doesn't understand . . ." Reiko began, but the relief she felt was so great that she could not speak. She put her hand to her mouth to stop its quivering, then put her arm about Tadao.
"Good gracious no!” Hale continued. "Quite the contrary, Miss Sakagawa. In fact, we're so impressed by your family that we've come here tonight to offer your brother Tadao a full scholarship at Punahou, because we need a running halfback like him."
No one spoke. The older Sakagawas, not comprehending what was happening, looked at Goro for translation, but before he could begin, Big Hewlett Janders dapped his arm about the boy's shoulder and said, "We wanted you, too, Goro, but we felt that since you're a senior, you probably ought to finish at McKinley. Besides, we have fairly good tackles at school. But you've got to promise one thing. In the Punahou game, don't tackle your brother."
"I'll tear him to shreds if he's Punahou," Goro laughed.
"You wrecked us for the past two years," Janders acknowledged, punching the boy in a friendly manner.
Now Tadao spoke. "How could I pay my way at Punahou?" he asked. "Besides the tuition, that is?"
"You'll be there two years," Hale explained. "No charges at all for tuition or books. You can have a job right now at H & H taking care of forms. And completely off the record, we would like to give you one hundred dollars, twenty now, the rest later, for some clothes and things like that."
John Whipple Hoxworth, a sharp-eyed, quick-minded man added, "Tell your father that we are doing this not only because you have great promise as a football player, but because we know you are a fine boy. If you were otherwise, we wouldn't want you at Punahou."
Hoxworth Hale said, "It won't be too easy for you, son. There aren't many Japanese at Punahou. You'll be alone and lonely."
Reiko-chan answered for her brother: "It’s the best school in the islands. To go there would be worth anything."
"We think so," Hale replied. And the three men shook hands with Tadao, the new boy at Punahou.
When the men were gone, Kamejiro exploded. "What happened?" he shouted at Goro.
"Tadao has been accepted at Punahou," the interpreter replied.
"Punahou!" The name had rarely been mentioned in the Sakagawa household. It was a school that had no reality to the Japanese, a haole heaven, a forbidden land. A Japanese boy could logically aspire to Jefferson, and in recent years some were making it, but Punahou! Kamejiro sat down, bewildered. "Who applied to Punahou?" he mumbled.
"Nobody. The school came to him because he has good grades and can play football."
"How will he pay?"
"They have already paid him," Goro explained, pointing to Tadao's money.
It was at this point, as Kamejiro studied the twenty dollars, that the Sakagawa family as a whole acknowledged for the first time, openly and honestly, that the boys would probably not return to Japan; for they could see Tadao at Punahou, one of America's greatest schools, working with the finest people in the islands, and graduating and going on to college and university. He would become a doctor or a lawyer, and his life would be spent here in America; and the family looked at him in this moment of realization and they saw him as forever lost to Japan; for this was the power of education.
The three blue-suited alumni who visited that night had warned Tadao that life at Punahou would be difficult, but the source of the difficulty they failed to identify. It came not from Punahou, where Tadao's football prowess won respect, but from Kakaako, where the submerged people had