Hawaii - James Michener [608]
While Kamejiro twisted this first bait about in his mouth, Shig dangled another, more tempting than the first: "Pop, if you and Mom become citizens, in 1954 you can march up to the election booth, say, 'Give us our ballots,' and march inside to give me two more votes." Now Shig could see his father imagining election day, with himself striding to the polls, his wife trailing four feet behind. The old man loved nothing more than the panoply and ritual of life, and Shig could remember from his earliest days the pride with which his father dressed in Colonel Ito's uniform to stand beside the reciter. This had been the highlight of Kamejiro's life, matched only by the days in World War II when he saw his four sons march off to their own war. Therefore Shig was not prepared for what happened next.
"I will not take citizenship," the old man said resolutely. "If this hurts you, Shigeo, I am sorry. If my vote and Mother's cause you to lose the election, I am sorry. But there is a right time to eat a pineapple, and if that time passes, the pineapple is bitter in the mouth. For fifty years I have been one of the best citizens in Hawaii. No boys in trouble. No back taxes. So for America to tell me now that I can have citizenship, at the end of my life, is insulting. America can go to hell."
He would not discuss the question again. Once Shig and Goro approached him with the news that Immigration had a new rule: "People who have lived in the islands for a long time don't have to take their examinations in English. What that means, Pop, is that you and Mom can now become citizens without bothering with the language school."
"It would be insulting," Kamejiro said, and the boys withdrew.
Shig talked the problem over with McLafferty, and his partner said, "Hell, your old man's right. It's as if they had told our people in Massachusetts, 'We kicked you Catholics around for two generations. Now you can all become Protestants and run for office.' Like he says, it would have been insulting."
"I don't think there's any analogy," Shig said coldly.
"Probably you're right," the Irishman agreed. "But it sounds good if the other guy doesn't listen too dose."
"This may hurt me in the next election," Shig said carefully.
McLafferty boomed: "Shig, if your old man hadn't always been the way he is now, you wouldn't be the kind of guy you are. And if you weren't that kind of person, I wouldn't want you for a partner. What he's given you, nobody can take away." .
"Yes, but he's become so provoked about this he says he's going back to Japan to live."
"He won't like it," McLafferty predicted.
"Wouldn't that hurt me in the election?" Shig pressed.
"My father found," McLafferty said, "that just a little scandal helped rather than hurt. It made the electorate feel that the candidate was human. That's why I warned you about never disclosing in a lawsuit that a witness kept a mistress. For sure, somebody on the jury has either had a mistress--or if she's a woman, has been one-- and your evidence is bound to backfire, because the juror says, 'Hell, I had a mistress, and I'm no scoundrel.' So if your old man acts up, Shig, it won't hurt you . . . not with the people whose votes we want . . . because their old folks act up too." And that was the end of Kamejiro Sakagawa's citizenship.
With Nyuk Tsin the case was quite-different. From the day she had landed in Honolulu eighty-eight years before, she had forsworn forever the starving villages of China and had determined to become a permanent resident of Hawaii. When the United States annexed the islands, she desperately sought American citizenship, but to no avail. From her frail body had descended some seven hundred American citizens, and not one had so far been in jail. In a lockbox she still kept her tax receipts covering nearly a century, and when she heard that there was a chance that she might become an American citizen, truly and without limitation, she felt that