Hawaii - James Michener [532]
In the course of his apologies to the Japanese community, Hong Kong came in time to Sakai, the storekeeper, and Sakai said in English, "No, I don't need any money, but my good friend Sakagawa the dynamiter has lost his barbershop, and he needs money to start a store of some kind."
"Where can I find him?" Hong. Kong asked. "He lives in Kakaako."
"By the way, any of his boys in the Two-Two-Two?" "Four," Sakai replied.
"I will look him up," Hong Kong replied, and that afternoon he told Kamejiro, "I have come to apologize for what I said at the meeting."
"Mo bettah you be ashamed," Kamejiro said bluntly. "Yes, with you having four sons in the battles." "And all other Japanese, too." "Kamejiro, I'm sorry."
"I sorry for you," the stocky little Japanese said, for he did not like Chinese.
"And I have come to lend you the money to start a store here in Kakaako."
Kamejiro drew back, for he had learned that anything either a Chinese or an Okinawan did was sure to be tricky. Surveying Hong Kong, he asked, "What for you lend me money?"
Humbly Hong Kong replied, "Because I've got to prove I am really sorry."
It was in this way that Kamejiro Sakagawa opened his grocery store, and because he was a frugal man and worked incredibly hard, and because his wife had a knack of waiting on Japanese customers and his barber daughter a skill in keeping accounts, the store flourished. Then, as if good fortune had piled up a warehouse full of beneficences, on New Year's Day, 1944, Sakai-san came running with breathless news.
"Pssst!" he called to Sakagawa as the latter sprayed his vegetables. "Come here."
"What?" the grocer shouted.
"Out here!"
Sakagawa left the store and allowed Sakai-san to lead him to an alley, where the latter said in awed tones, "I have found a husband for your daughter!"
"You have?" Sakagawa cried.
"Yes! A wonderful match!"
"A Japanese, of course?"
Sakai looked at his old friend with contempt. "What kind of baishakunin would I be if I even thought of proposing anyone but a Japanese?"
"Forgive me!" Sakagawa said. "You can understand, after the narrow escape we had."
"This man is perfect. A little house. More than a little money. Fine Japanese. And what else do you think!"
"Is he . . ." Sakagawa would not form the words, for this was too much to hope for.
"Yes! He's also a Hiroshima man!"
A thick blanket of positive euphoria settled over the two whispering men, for the go-between Sakai was just as pleased as Sakagawa that a fine Japanese girl had at last found a good husband, and a Hiroshima man at that. Finally Sakagawa got round to a question of lesser importance: "Who is he?"
"Mr. Ishii!” Sakai cried rapturously.
"Has he agreed to marry my daughter?" Kamejiro asked incredulously.
"Yes!" Sakai the baishakunin cried.
"Does he know about her . . . the haole?"
"Of course. I was honor-bound to tell him."
"And still he is willing to accept her?" Kamejiro asked in disbelief.
"Yes, he says it is his duty to save her."
"That good man," Sakagawa cried. He called his wife and told her, "Sakai has done it! He has found a husband for Reiko-chan."
"Who?" his practical-minded wife asked.
"Mr. Ishii!"
"A Hiroshima man!" And before Reiko-chan knew anything of her impending marriage, word that she had found a Hiroshima man flashed through the Japanese community and almost everybody was truly delighted with the girl's good fortune, especially since she had been mixed up with a haole man, but one girl, who had been through high school, reflected: "Mr. Ishii must be thirty-five years older than Reiko."
"What does it matter?" her mother snapped. "She's getting a Hiroshima man."
Reiko was in the barbershop on Hotel Street cutting the hair of a sailor when the news reached her. The