Hawaii - James Michener [630]
Mrs. Sakagawa held that it was the gods themselves who had inspired her return to America in time to save her son from such an irrevocable disgrace. She wept, "With all the fine girls I told you about from Hiroshima, why do you ride home with a haole?"
Strong threats were made, in the course of which Shigeo's mother cried, "It's almost as bad as if you married a Korean," at which Goro, who was now awake, pointed out, "Who said anything about getting married?" and Mrs. Sakagawa replied, "It's the same everywhere. Haole girls, Korean girls, Okinawa girls, Eta girls, all trying to trap decent Japanese boys."
This was too much for Goro, who suggested, "Mom, go to bed," but when she saw in Goro visible proof of the wreck her older son had made of his life she wept again and mourned, "You wouldn't listen to me. You went ahead and married a Tokyo girl, and see what happened. Let me warn you, Shigeo, haole girls are even worse than Tokyo girls. Much worse."
Goro pleaded ineffectively, "Shig, tell her that you're not marrying the girl."
"I saw him kissing her!" his mother cried.
"Mom," Goro cried. "I kissed a Filipino girl the other night. But I'm not marrying her."
Mrs. Sakagawa stopped her ranting. Dropping her arms she stared at her son and repeated dully, "A Filipino girl?" The idea was so completely repugnant that she could find no words with which to castigate it, so she turned abruptly on her heel and went to bed. Chinese girls, Okinawans, even Koreans you could fight. But a Filipino!
When the old people were gone, Goro asked quietly, "There's nothing between you and the haole, is there?"
"I don't think so," Shig replied.
"Look, blalah," Goro said, reverting to an old and dear phrase of their pidgin childhood, "she's a Hale, a Janders, a haole, a divorcee, all in one. Don't try it. You're strong, but you're not that strong."
Election Day, 1954, was one that will never be forgotten in Hawaii. Hula teams surrounded voting places. Candidates wearing mountainous flowered leis passed out sandwiches to haole voters and sushi to Japanese. Bands blared all day long, and trucks with long streamers ploughed through the streets. It was a noisy, gala, wonderful day, and that night when the votes were tallied, Hawaii realized with astonished pain that for the first time since the islands had joined America, Democrats were going to control both houses. The days were forever past when Republicans dominated by The Fort could rule the islands with impunity.
Then, toward midnight, when each specific contest approached final settlement, a second discovery was made, even more sobering than the first. Of the Democratic victors, the majority were going to be young Japanese. In the senate, out of fifteen seats, Japanese won seven. In the house, out of thirty seats, Japanese won fourteen. On the board that ran Honolulu, out of seven vacancies, Japanese won four, and at midnight Hewie Janders, sitting glumly with John Whipple Hoxworth and the Hewlett boys, faced the unpalatable facts: "Gentlemen, we are now to be governed from Tokyo. And may God help us."
Black Jim McLafferty's team of brilliant young Japanese war veterans had swept into commanding power. Their average age was thirty-one. The average number of major wounds they had received in battle was two. Their average number of medals was four. They were honor graduates, of great mainland universities like Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, and Stanford, and together they would compose the best-educated, most-decorated group of legislators elected that day in any of the forty-eight American states; there would be no finer legislature than that put together by the serious young Japanese lawyers of Hawaii.
Some pages back in this memoir I predicted that when, in 1916, the drunken luna Von Schlemm unfairly thrashed the sick Japanese field hand Kamejiro Sakagawa, the act was bound to have historic consequences which would not appear obvious for nearly forty years. Now, on Election Day of 1954, this old and almost forgotten event came home to roost. The Japanese, convinced