Hawaii - James Michener [624]
"But are my personal interests the ones that ought to determine this decision? A man, charged with a crime has a right to a lawyer, and when the community is most strongly against him, his right is morally greatest. Somebody has got to defend Rod Burke, and I suppose it ought to be me.
"But I am not just the average, non-attached lawyer of the case books. I'm the first Japanese to get into the senate from the Nineteenth. I'm the one who has a chance of getting in again. If my brother Goro has come to represent labor, then I represent a cross-section of all the Japanese. That's a major responsibility which I ought not destroy carelessly.
"But there are others in our family than Goro and me. There are Tadao and Minoru, and they gave their lives defending an ideal America. They never found it for themselves . . . certainly not here in Hawaii. But in Italy and France, fighting to defend America, they did find it. So did Goro and I. And what we found is definitely threatened by a communist conspiracy. How then can I go into court and defend identified communists?"
And then came the question of the age. It struck Shigeo as he was walking past a sashimi parlor on Kakaako Street, as it was striking hundreds of similar Americans in garages or at the movies or in church: "But if I turn my back on a supposed communist, how do I know that I am not turning my back on the very concept of liberty that I am seeking to protect? Honest men can always get someone to defend them. But what does justice mean if apparently dishonest men can find no one?"
So through this precise waltz the mind of Shigeo Sakagawa swayed, day after day. Finally he took his confusion to Black Jim McLafferty, asking, "How are you going to feel, Jim, first, as head of the Democratic Party, and second, as head of McLafferty and Sakagawa, if your partner defends the communists?"
Now it was Black Jim's turn to follow the devious paths of logic, emotion, politics, patriotism and self-interest. His two most interesting comments were stolen right from his father's Boston experiences: "It never hurts a Democratic lawyer to defend the underdog," and "As long as my half of our partnership is known to be Catholic, you're fairly free to defend whom you want to." Then, drawing from his Hawaiian experience, he added, "It would be a damned shame for the first Japanese elected from the Nineteenth to be thrown out of office on an irrelevancy." But prudently he refused to give a concrete recommendation.
With McLafferty's concepts adding to his confusion, Shigeo walked more miles, and the consideration which finally made up his mind for him was one that seemed at first wholly irrelevant. He recalled Akemi-san, his former sister-in-law, saying, on the day she left Hawaii, "In the entire Japanese community of Hawaii I have never encountered one idea." And Shig thought: "I have an idea. I have a concept that will move the entire community ahead," and he decided not to imperil his land-reform movement, so he refused his brother's request. "I won't defend the communists," he said, "and may God forgive me if it is cowardice."
"At least I do," Goro said.
This long travail explained why, when the electioneering season finally opened, Senator Shigeo Sakagawa spoke with unusual force and seriousness on the problem of land reform. He drew up charts showing how The Fort, and its members through their directorships on the great trusts, controlled the land of Hawaii. He pointed out how they released this land in niggardly amounts, not for social purposes, but to keep up values, "the way the diamond merchants of South Africa release an agreed-upon number of diamonds each year, to keep up prices. It's legitimate to do that with diamonds, which a man can buy or not, as he pleases, but is it right to do it with land, upon which we all exist or perish?"
His most damning chart was one which showed that certain families contrived to have their land, which they held back for speculation, assessed by a compliant government at two per cent of its real value, whereas