Hawaii - James Michener [550]
"The little hut back of the old mission school?"
"Yes."
"We check that regularly. Tony, did we have a man at the mission hut tonight?"
"We didn't bother tonight," the assistant replied.
"These people are out of their minds," Shig protested.
"It's pathetic," the detective agreed. "Poor old bastards, they were so sure Japan couldn't be licked that they believe whatever these agitators tell 'em. But they don't do any harm."
"Aren't you going to arrest them?" Shig asked.
"Hell, no," the detective laughed. "We got six groups in Honolulu we check on regularly, and the Japan Won's give us the least trouble. One group wants to murder Syngman Rhee. One wants to murder Chiang Kai-shek. One dupes old women out of all their money by predicting the end of the world on the first of each month. Last year we had one couple that prepared for the second coming of Christ on the first day of eleven succeeding months. They finally came to us and said that maybe something was wrong. So your crazy Japanese are only part of a pattern."
"But how can they believe . . . All the newspaper stories and newsreels? The men who were there?"
"Shig," the detective said, plopping his hands upright on the desk. "How can you believe for eleven successive months that Jesus Christ is coming down the Nuuanu Pali? You can be fooled once, I grant, but not eleven times."
When the time came for Shigeo to sail to his new job with General MacArthur in Japan, his mother wept and said, "If there is fighting when you get to Tokyo, don't get off the ship, Shigeo." Then, recalling more important matters, she told him, "Don't marry a northern girl, Shigeo. We don't want any zu-zu-ben in our family. And I'd be careful of Tokyo girls, too. They're expensive. Your father and I would be very unhappy if you married a Kyushu girl, because they don't fit in with Hiroshima people. And under no circumstances marry an Okinawan, or anyone who might be an Eta. What would be best would be for you to marry a Hiroshima girl. Such girls you can trust. But don't take one from Hiroshima City."
"I don't think Americans will be welcomed in Hiroshima," Shigeo said quietly.
"Why not?" his mother protested.
"After the bomb?" Shigeo asked.
"Shigeo!" his mother replied in amazement. "Nothing happened to Hiroshima! Mr. Ishii assured me . . ."
When Shig Sakagawa assembled with his Tokyo-bound outfit and marched through the streets of downtown Honolulu on his way to the transport that would take them to Yokohama, he was, without knowing it, a striking young man. He possessed a mind of steel, hardened in battle against both the Germans and the prejudices of his homeland. By personal will power he had triumphed against each adversary and had proved his courage as few men are required to do. No one recognized the fact that day, for then Shig was only twenty-three and had not yet acquired his lawyer's degree from Harvard, but he was the forward cutting edge of a revolution that was about to break over Hawaii. He was stern, incorruptible, physically hard and fearless. More important, so far as revolutions go, he was well organized and alert.
As he marched he passed, without either man's knowing it, Hoxworth Hale, who was walking up Bishop Street on his way to The Fort, and if in that moment Hale had had the foresight to stop the parade and to enlist Shig Sakagawa on his side, The Fort would surely have been able to preserve its prerogatives. Furthermore, if Hale, as an official of the Republican Party, had conscripted Shig and half a hundred other young Japanese like him, Republicanism in Hawaii would have been perpetually insured, for by their traditional and conservative nature the Japanese would have made ideal Republicans, and a combination of haole business acumen and Japanese industry would have constituted a strength that no adversary could have broken. But it was then totally impossible for Hoxworth Hale even to imagine such a union, and as he walked past the parade he had the ungracious thought: "If I hear any more about the brave Japanese boys who