Hawaii - James Michener [605]
"And what will happen when your fleet gets here?" Carter asked.
"Japanese very honorable men, sir. You see tonight when they come ashore. They behave good." He went to the door, threw it open and pointed down to the blue waters of the Pacific, where a squadron of five warships steamed under the bold red flag of the new Japan. Mr. Ishii's heart expanded, and he forgave his wife for her years of arguing against him. From his coat he whipped out a Japanese flag, long hidden, and waved encouragement to the conquerors as they came to take control of Pearl Harbor.
"I guess we'd better be going," Carter said. "I have to catch the plane." But as he was not fooled by crazy old Mr. Ishii; he knew that in the Sakagawas, as he called them, he had seen a tremendous American family, and he was impressed, so that when he got Mc-Lafferty's message that the Hales would pick him up at the corner of Fort and Hotel on the way to the airport, he said, "I'd just like to stand outside and watch the people for a few minutes."
And as he stood there in the late afternoon, in the heart of Honolulu, watching the varied people of the island go past, he had a faint glimmer of the ultimate brotherhood in which the world must one day live: Koreans went by in amity with Japanese whom in. their homeland they hated, while Japanese accepted Chinese, and Filipinos accepted both, a thing unheard of in the Philippines. A Negro passed by, and many handsome Hawaiians whose blood was mixed with that of China or Portugal or Puerto Rico. It was a strange, new breed of men Congressmen Carter saw, and grudgingly an idea came to him: "Maybe they've got something. Maybe I wasted my time here in Hawaii, living in the big houses of the white people. Maybe this is the pattern of the future. That Japanese boy today, he's as good . . . Look at that couple. I wonder who they are. I wonder if they would mind . . ." But before he could speak to them, a long black car driven not by a chauffeur but Hewlett Janders drove up, and Hoxworth Hale jumped out to whisk the congressman back into reality. Icy John Whipple Hoxworth shared the front seat, and as the car slowly crept away from the turmoil of Hotel Street, the three senior citizens of Hawaii provided their guest with the second climax of any official visit to the islands.
Coldly, and with no inflection in his voice, Hoxworth Hale laid it on the line. He spoke rapidly and looked the congressman right in the eye. "Carter," he said, "you've seen the islands, and you've heard each man in this car make public speeches in favor of statehood. Now we've got to get down to cases. If you're insane enough to give us statehood, you'll wreck Hawaii and do irreparable damage to the United States. Save us from ourselves, sir."
Carter gasped. "Is that your honest opinion, Hale?"
"It's the opinion of almost every person you met in Hawaii."
"But why don't you . . ."
"We're afraid to. Reprisals ... I don't know."
"Give me the facts straight," Carter said. "What's wrong with statehood?"
"This is in confidence?" Hale asked.
"You understand," Janders threw back over his shoulder, "that if you were to betray us, we'd suffer."
"I understand," Carter said. "That's often the case in governing a democracy."
"Here are the facts," Hale said simply. "The white man in Hawaii is being submerged. He has some financial power left, a good deal, I suppose. He has the courts to defend him, and an appointed governor upon whom he can rely. Sir, if you change any one of those factors, Hawaii will become a toy in the hands of Japanese. They'll control the courts and start bringing in decisions against us. They'll upset our system of land holding. They'll elect their own governor and send Japanese to Congress. Do you want to serve with a Jap?"
There was a long silence in the car, and more in the way of eliciting further information than in disclosing his own conclusions