Hawaii - James Michener [520]
Colonel Whipple laid down the most rigid rules and enforced them brutally: "Not a word of Japanese will be spoken in this outfit. You're Americans. Under no circumstances are you to ask a white girl for a date. It makes local people mad. You are absolutely forbidden to date a colored girl. That makes them even madder. And they have four long trains that haul beer into this state every week. You can't possibly drink it all."
Remorselessly Colonel Whipple drove his men according to West Point traditions of military behavior and his own family traditions of civil decency. In all America no unit in training suffered more disciplinary action than the Two-Two-Two, for their colonel held them responsible both on the post and off, and at the slightest infraction, he punished them. There was only one flare-up. After a great deal of heart-probing consultation the good people of Mississippi decided that so far as public toilets and buses were concerned, the Japanese soldiers were to be considered white men and were thus obligated to use white facilities; but where socializing with the community was concerned, it was better if they considered themselves halfway between the white and the Negro and off-limits to each.
This was too much, and Goro went to see Colonel Whipple. "I appreciate what you said, Colonel, and we've been abiding by your rules. But this directive on toilets is just too much. I can urinate like a white man but I've got to socialize like a Negro. The basic thing we're fighting for is human decency. Our men don't want the kind of concessions Mississippi is willing to make. We want to be treated like Negroes."
Colonel Whipple did not rant. He said quietly, "I agree with you, Sakagawa. Decency is one unbroken fabric without beginning or end. No man can logically fight for Japanese rights and at the same time ignore Negro rights. Logically he can't do it, but sometimes he's got to. And right now is one of those times."
"You mean we're to accept what Mississippi says, even though we know that given a chance they'd treat us worse than they do the Negroes?"
"That's the tactical situation you find yourself in."
"It's so illogical our men may not be able to take it."
Again Colonel Whipple failed to bellow. Instead he picked up an order and waved it at Goro, saying, "And the reason you'll take it is this paper. The army has agreed to accept all Japanese boys who want to volunteer. Your two brothers in the V.V.V. will be transferred to the outfit tonight. Now if trouble were to start in Mississippi, all that I've managed to acquire for you fellows would be lost. So, Goro, you urinate where the haoles tell you to."
In accordance with the new directive, the army announced that it would beef up the Two-Two-Two by adding 1,500 volunteers from Hawaii and 1,500 from the mainland, but the plan didn't work because in Honolulu 11,800 rushed forward to serve, stampeding the registration booths. Seven out of eight had to be turned down, including Shigeo Sakagawa, who wept. But on the mainland only 500 volunteered, leaving a thousand empty spaces. Quickly the army returned to Hawaii and filled the gaps left by the poor response of the mainland Japanese, and in this second draft, young Shig was accepted.
When President Roosevelt compared the contrasting reactions of the two groups, he ordered Colonel Whipple to submit an explanation of what had happened, and Whipple wrote: "Far from being a cause for concern, the differential should encourage us in our devotion to the perpetual effectiveness of democracy. If the result had been any different, I should have been worried. That the Hawaii Japanese behaved well and that the mainland boys did not is to me, and I think to America, reassuring.
"In Hawaii, Japanese were free to own land. In California they were not. In Hawaii they could become schoolteachers and government employees. In California they could not. In Hawaii they were accepted into our best schools,