Hawaii - James Michener [495]
"Our evil has caught up with us, old friend," he said.
"It was bound to, sooner or later," Mr. Ishii reflected sadly.
"The children are insisting that I write to Hiroshima and take their names off the village registry."
"You aren't going to do it, are you?" Mr. Ishii asked hopefully.
"How can I? And bring disgrace upon us all?"
The two men, now gray in their late fifties, sat moodily and thought of the shame in which they were involved. In their village Kamejiro had been legally married by proxy to the pretty girl Sumiko, by whom he had had five children, all duly reported; and Mr. Ishii had been legally married to Miro Yonko, no children reported. Yet by convenient switching, Kamejiro had married Yoriko, American style, and she was the mother of the children; Mr. Ishii had likewise married Sumiko, and she had turned out to be a prostitute. How could they explain these things to the Japanese consulate on Nuuanu Street? How could they explain this accidental bigamy to the five children? Above all, how could they explain it to the village authorities in Hiroshima? "All Japan would be ashamed," Mr. Ishii said gloomily. "Kamejiro, we better leave things just as they are."
"But the children are fighting with me. Today even Mr. Hale came to the house. He had the papers in his hands."
"Of course he had the papers!” Mr. Ishii agreed. "But you watch his face when you try to explain who your wife is. Kamejiro, friend, let the matter drop."
But on Saturday, December 6, Mr. Hale returned to tie shack and said, "You are the last holdout on my list, Mr. Sakagawa. Please end your sons' dual citizenship. With Goro here in the army, and Tadao and Minoru in the R.O.T.C., it's something you've got to do."
"I can't," Kamejiro said through his interpreter, Goro, who had a weekend pass from Schofield Barracks.
"I don't understand the old man," Goro said, smoothing out his army uniform, of which he was obviously proud. "He's loyal to Japan, but he's no great flag waver. I'll argue with him again when you're gone, Mr. Hale."
"His obstinacy looks very bad," Mr. Hale warned. "Especially with you in the army. I've got to report it, of course."
Goro shrugged his shoulders. "Have you ever tried to argue with a Japanese papa-san? My pop has some crazy fixed idea. But I’ll see what I can do."
That Saturday night the entire Sakagawa family battled out this problem of dual citizenship, in Japanese. "I respect your country, Pop," Goro said. "I remember when I had the fight with the priest about going back to Japan. When I finally surrendered, I really intended to go. But you know what's happened, Pop. Football . . . now the army. Let's face it, Pop. I'm an American."
"Me too," Tadao agreed.
The sons hammered at him, and finally he said, "I want you to be Americans. When I put a newspaper picture like that over the sink, 'Four Sakagawa Stars,' don't you think I'm proud? Long ago I admitted you'd never again be Japanese."
"Then take our names off the citizenship registry in Japan."
"I can't," he repeated for the fiftieth time.
"Damn it, Pop, sometimes you make me mad!” Goro cried.
Kamejiro stood up. He stared at his sons and said, "There will be no shouting. Remember that you are decent Japanese sons." They came to attention, and he added sorrowfully, "There is a good reason why I cannot change the register."
"But why?" the boys insisted.
Through the long night the argument lasted, and stubborn Kamejiro was unable to explain why he was powerless to act; for even though his sons were American, he was forever Japanese, and he expected one day to return to Hiroshima; when he got there he could quietly tell his friends about the mix-up in Hawaii, but he could not do so by letter. He himself could not write, and he could not trust others to write for him. It was two o'clock in the morning when he went to bed, and as he pulled the covers up about his shoulders, on a group of aircraft carriers six hundred miles away, a task force of Japanese airmen, many of them from Hiroshima,