Hawaii - James Michener [506]
"Why are the Indians here kept apart?" he inquired.
"Oh, you can't do anything with an Indian!” the British secretary to the governor replied.
"Why not?" Hoxworth asked.
"Have you ever tried working with an Oriental?" the Englishman countered. Hale made no reply, but as he studied the sugar fields in Fiji, he found them exactly like the sugar fields in Hawaii, and he had certainly worked with Japanese in precisely such surroundings, and without too much trouble. He reflected: "Indians were imported into Fiji, and Japanese were imported into Hawaii, for the same purposes at about the same time. But with what different results! In Hawaii the Japanese are reasonably good Americans. Here the Indians are totally undigested. What went wrong down here?"
"One good thing about it, though," the Englishman pointed out. "If you Johnnies want to pre-empt land for your airstrips, you don't have to worry about the bloody Indians. They're not allowed to own any."
"Why not?" Hoxworth asked.
"Orientals? Owning land?" the smart young man asked rhetorically, but to himself Hoxworth replied: "Bloody well why not? If I understand correctly, the Kees now own half the homes in Hawaii. Best thing ever happens to a Japanese is when he gets a little piece of land and starts to tidy it up. Makes him less radical and woos him away from labor unions."
"So the Indians own none of the land?" Hoxworth asked aloud.
"No, we restrict that very severely," the young man assured him. "Nor can they vote, so we won't have any trouble there, either."
"You mean, the ones born in India can't vote," Hoxworth queried.
"Nor the ones born here," the aide explained, and Hoxworth thought: "How differently we've done things in Hawaii." And the more he saw of Fiji, the happier he was with the manner in which Hawaii's Orientals had been brought into full citizenship, with no real barriers hindering them. Did the Indians go to college? There were no colleges; but in Hawaii there were and God knows the Japanese went. Did the Indians own the land on which their crowded stores perched? No, but in Hawaii the Chinese and Japanese owned whatever they liked. Did the Indians participate in civil government? Heavens no, but in Hawaii their Oriental cousins were beginning to take over some branches. Did Indians serve as government clerks? No, but in Hawaii Chinese were sought after as government employees.
And so throughout his entire comparison of Fiji and Hawaii, Hoxworth Hale saw that what had been done to build the Orientals into Hawaiian life had been the right thing, and what the British in Fiji had done to keep the Indians a sullen, hateful half of the population was wrong; and it was from Fiji that Hale acquired his first insight into how fundamentally just the missionary descendants had been, for he concluded: "In Hawaii we have a sound base from which our islands can move into a constructive future: Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Caucasians and Hawaiians working together. But in Fiji, with the hatred I see between the races, I don't see how a logical solution will ever be worked out." Then he added grimly, but with humor, "By God, the next time I hear a Japanese sugar worker raising hell about a union, I'm going to say, 'Watanabe-san, maybe you better go down to Fiji for a while and see how the Indians are doing.' He'd come back to Honolulu and cry at the wharf, 'Please, Mr. Hale, let me back on shore. I want to work in Hawaii, where things are good.' "
And then, when he was congratulating himself on the superior system evolved by his missionary ancestors, he attended a banquet given by Sir Ratu Salaka, a majestic black Fijian chief with degrees from Cambridge and Munich, and when this scion of a great Fijian family appeared dressed in a native lava-lava, with western shirt and jacket, enormous brown leather shoes, and medals of valor gained in World War I, Hale intuitively felt: "In Hawaii we have no natives like this