Hawaii - James Michener [603]
"What can we do?" Shig asked.
The two tacticians studied the problem for a long time, and finally the Irishman snapped: "Shig, one way or another I'm going to get hold of our congressman. I'm going to bring him down here, and you're going to take him home with you. Show him an average Japanese family. But, Shig, you run over there right now and see that your dad's service flag is hanging on the wall in the front room. The one with two gold stars. And you get your mother's box, the one with the glass cover and all the medals, and you see that every goddamned medal is polished and lying flat so our boy can read them. Now get going, and be back here, waiting, in half an hour. Because I'm coming back with Congressman Carter, dead or alive."
It was in this way that Congressman Clyde V. Carter, of Texas, became one of the few Democrats ever to meet a Democratic family during a visit to Hawaii. Black Jim spotted the tour car returning to Honolulu along Nimitz Highway, and he elbowed it over to the shoulder, explaining, "Congressman, I've just got a damned interesting cable from Democratic Headquarters in Washington. I thought you ought to advise me as to how I should answer it." McLafferty had peeled off the date line, trusting that Carter would fail to notice this, and his luck held, so while Carter was reading the complex message, Black Jim politely eased him out of the taxi and into the old Pontiac. "We'd better answer it at the office," he said.
When Carter entered the door of McLafferty and Sakagawa, there stood Shigeo waiting, and the young man said bluntly, "While Mr. McLafferty's answering the cable, I thought you might like to see a Japanese home. Just an average place." And although this was the last wish in Carter's mind, he could find no graceful escape, and a few minutes later he was being hauled into the Sakagawa cottage. "This whole thing's a transparent trick," he decided.
At the front door he met old and bent Mrs. Sakagawa, who knew little English and who wore funny Japanese sandals with things between the toes. Shig did the interpreting and said, "Mom, this is a famous United States congressman." Mrs. Sakagawa sucked in her breath audibly, and bowed. "And this," Shig said proudly, "is my bow-legged, tough-minded little father, Kamejiro Sakagawa." The old man sucked in his breath and bowed.
"Is he an American citizen?" Carter asked.
"Not allowed become citizen," Kamejiro said belligerently.
"That's right," Shigeo explained. "I am, because I was born here. But people like my father and mother, they were born in Japan."
"And they can't become citizens?" Carter asked in surprise. "Mexicans can."
Little Kamejiro stuck out his jaw and wagged his finger at the congressman: "Mexicans okay. Colored people okay. Anybody okay but not Japanese. How do you like dat?
Congressman Carter, looking away from the argumentative little man, saw the service flag, with two blue stars and two gold. As a professional politician he automatically grew reverent and asked quietly, "Were you in service, Mr. --" He couldn't recall the name.
"I and my three brothers," Shig said.
"And two gave their lives for America?" Carter asked.
In Japanese Shigeo asked, "Mom, where's that picture of the four of us in football uniforms?" His mother, who prized this picture above all others, found it and jabbed it into Carter's hands.
"This one is Tadao," Shigeo said of the fleet young halfback. "He died in Italy. This one is Minoru," he added. "He died in France. This is my brother Goro, a labor-union man . . ." And the spell was broken. That was all Congressman Carter required to hear, and he drew away from the picture of four average American boys. He had voted against the Norris-La Guardia Act and all of its successors, and he felt that to be a labor-union man was worse, in many respects, than being a Russian communist, because the Russians, God forgive them, didn't know any better, whereas a decent, Godfearing American who . . . The speech was running in his mind, and