Hawaii - James Michener [589]
"Why?" Akemi pleaded.
"I was born in Hawaii myself," Dr. Yamazaki said. "From the very kind of family you married into. Stout Hiroshima peasants-- and remember that even in modern Hiroshima our Hawaii people would seem very old-fashioned. Anyhow, I'm partial to the local people. But the curious fact is this. The Caucasian mothers-in-law and the Chinese realize that they have to make a special effort to understand and love their strange new daughters. So they do so, and find happiness. The stolid Japanese mothers-in-law, and God help the Japanese girl who marries my brother and who has to put up with my mother . . . Well, it's obvious. They all think they're getting the kind of Japanese bride that used to flourish in southern Japan forty years ago. They make no effort to understand, so they haven't the slightest chance of finding happiness with their new daughters."
"Do you know what's killing my marriage?" Akemi asked bluntly. Dr. Yamazaki was not surprised at the forthrightness of the question, for she had watched the dissolution of several such marriages, but now Akemi paused, and it was apparent to Dr. Yamazaki that she was supposed to guess, so she volunteered: "In Japan young men are learning to accept new ways, but in Hawaii they have learned nothing."
"Yes," Akemi confessed. "Is that what the other girls say?"
"They all say the same thing," Dr. Yamazaki assured her. "But many of them outgrow their distaste, or somehow learn, to modify their husbands."
"But do you know what will keep me from doing that?" Akemi asked. "What cuts me to the heart day after day?"
"What?" the sociologist asked professionally.
"The way they laugh at my correct speech. This I will not bear much longer."
Dr. Yamazaki thought of her own family and smiled bitterly. "I have the same problem," she laughed. "I have a Ph.D. degree."
Then, imitating her mother, she asked, 'Do you think you're better than we are, using such language?' So at home, in self-defense, I talk pidgin."
"I will not," Akemi said. "I am an educated Japanese who has fought a long time for certain things."
"If you love your husband," Dr. Yamazaki said, "you will learn to accommodate yourself."
"To certain things, never," Akemi said. Then she asked abruptly, "Have you ever been married, Yamazaki-sensei?"
"I'm engaged," the sociologist replied.
"To a local boy?"
"No, to a haole at the University of Chicago."
"I see. You wouldn't dare marry a local boy, would you?"
"No," Dr. Yamazaki replied carefully.
Akemi tapped the sociologist's notebook and laughed. "Now I'm embalmed in there."
"One of many," Dr. Yamazaki said.
"But can you guess where I'd like to be?"
"In a small coffee shop in the Nishi-Ginza, surrounded by exciting conversation on books and politics and music."
"How could you guess so accurately?" Akemi asked.
"Because I'd like to be there, too," Dr. Yamazaki confessed. "That's where I met my fiance, so I know how lovely Japan can be. But I would say this, too. Hawaii can be just as exciting. To be a young Japanese here is possibly one of the most exhilarating experiences in the world."
"But you said you wouldn't marry one of them," Akemi-san reminded her.
"As a woman, seeking happiness in a relaxed home, I'll stick with my haole from Chicago. But as a pure intellect, if I were not involved as a woman, I would much prefer to remain in Hawaii."
"Tell me truthfully, Yamazaki-sensei, do you think that any society which has as its ideal a long, black automobile can ever be a good place to live?"
Dr. Yamazaki considered the question for some moments and replied: "You must understand that the visible symbols of success which our Japanese here in Hawaii are following are those laid down by the established haole society. A big home, a powerful