Hawaii - James Michener [606]
Janders spoke. "Did he tell you that his brother, Goro, was the leading communist in Hawaii? A proved, card-carrying, subversive, filthy communist. That's the brother of the man who's running for senator from this district. That's a picture of Hawaii under Japanese rule."
"I must admit," Carter said, "that nobody told me about this brother."
"The leader of the communist movement in Hawaii," Janders reiterated.
Carter was somewhat shaken to think how nearly he had been taken in by the plausible young Japanese lawyer, so he decided to check additional items of information. "By the way," he asked casually, "what's the sentiment out here for a return of monarchy?"
Up front Hewie Janders and John Whipple Hoxworth stared at each other in amazement and muttered, "Monarchy?" while in the back Hoxworth Hale gasped. Then he said forcefully, "Congressman . . ." but Hewie was now recovered and blurted out, "Jesus Christ, nobody in his right mind pays any attention to those monarchy crackpots."
"What were you about to say, Hale?" Carter pressed.
"As you may know, I'm descended from the royal alii of Hawaii, and my great-great-great-grandmother was one of the noblest women I've ever heard of. Her daughter was quite a girl, too. Magnificent. But if one of those pathetic, incompetent alii ever tried to get back on the throne of Hawaii, I personally would take down my musket and shoot him through the head."
"I'd do it first," Hewie Janders interrupted. "You know, sir, that Hale's great-grandfather brought Hawaii into the Union?"
"He did?" Carter asked.
"Yes," Hale said simply. "Practically by force of his own character. But I'd like to add this, sir. I'm also descended from the missionaries. And if one of them tried to come back and govern in. the harsh, bigoted old way, I'd shoot him through the head, too."
"Let me get it straight then, what is it you want?"
"We don't want royalty, we don't want missionaries, and we don't want Japanese," Hale summarized. "We want things to go along just as they are."
It was a very somber carload of men that finally pulled up at the airport, and Black Jim McLafferty, as he watched them disembark, thought: "I'll bet they've been pumping that one with a load of poison." He started to join the congressman, but when Carter saw him coming, he retreated to the safety of Hewlett Janders, for he did not want to be photographed with a man, even though he was leader of the Democratic Party, who had as his partner a Japanese whose brother headed the Communist Party in the islands. "In fact," he mused as he checked his tickets, "Hawaii's a lot like most parts of the north. You can travel from state to state and never find a Democrat you really like. They're all either tarred with labor or communism or atheism or Catholicism. I'll be glad to get back to Texas."
And as he climbed aboard the Stratoclipper and sank into his comfortable seat he thought: "Basically, it's the same everywhere. A handful of substantial honest men govern and try to hold back the mobs. If you can get along with those men, you can usually find out what the facts of the case are." He stared out the window glumly as Japanese airport mechanics wheeled away the steps while other Japanese waved wands directing the big airplane on its way. He closed his eyes and thought: "Well, I found out what I wanted. These islands won't be ready for statehood in another hundred years." And that took care of Hawaii for the eighty-third session of Congress.
IN 1952, passage of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act was greeted with joy in Hawaii, for the new law permitted persons born in the Orient to become American citizens. Schools were promptly opened in which elderly Chinese and Japanese were drilled in the facts of American government, and it was not uncommon in those days to see old men who had worked all their lives as field hands reciting stubbornly: "Legislative, executive, judicial."
By early 1953 hundreds of Orientals