Hawaii (119 page)

In order to collect the firewood needed for the hot bath, Kamejiro rose at three-thirty each morning and worked while the others were eating. When the wood was safely stored, he grabbed two rice balls, a bit of pickle and part of a fish, munching them as he ran to the fields. At six, when the day's work ended, he dashed home ahead of the rest to get the fire started, and was not free to eat until the last bath had been taken. Then he accepted what was left and in this way he saved the money for the important step he was to take thirteen years later in 1915.

It was not easy to accumulate money, not even when one worked as hard as Kamejiro did. For example, in 1904 events transpired in Asia which were to eat up his savings, but no man worthy of the name would have done less than he did under the circumstances. For some months Japan had been having trouble with Russia, and the emperor's divine word to his people had reached even remote Kauai, where with trembling voice Ishii-san had read the rescript to all the assembled Japanese: "As it is Our heartfelt desire to maintain the peace of the East, We have caused Our government to negotiate with Russia, but We are now compelled to conclude that the Russian government has no sincere desire to maintain the peace of the East. We have therefore ordered Our government to break off negotiations with Russia and have decided to take free action for the maintenance of Our independence and self-protection."

"What does it mean?" Kamejiro asked.

"War," an older man explained.

Now Ishii-san's voice rose to an awed climax as he delivered the distant emperor's specific message to all loyal Japanese: "We rely upon your loyalty and valor to carry out Our object and thereby keep unsullied the honor of our Empire."

"Banzai!" a former soldier shouted.

"Japan must win!" the workmen began to cry.

Ishii-san waited for the tumult to die down, then announced: "On Friday an officer of the emperor himself will come to Hanakai to collect money for the Imperial army. Let us show the world what loyal Japanese we are!" He hesitated a moment, then announced: "I will give eleven dollars."

A gasp went up from the crowd as men realized how much of his meager salary this represented, and another was inspired to cry, "I will give nineteen dollars." The crowd applauded, and as the ante

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rose, Kamejiro was swept up by the fervor of the moment. Japan was in danger. He could see his parents' fields overrun by Russian barbarians, and he thought how insignificant were his savings from the hot bath. In an ecstasy of emotion, seeing the grave, bearded emperor before him, he rose and cried in a roaring voice, "I will give all my bath moneyl Seventy-seven dollars."

A mighty cheer went up, and a Buddhist priest said, "Let us in our hearts resolve to (protect the honor of Japan as Sakagawa Kamejiro has done this day." Men wept and songs were sung and Ishii-san shouted in his high, weak voice, "Let every man march by and swear allegiance to the emperor." Instinctively the workmen formed in orderly ranks and fell into martial rhythms as they marched past the place where the Buddhist priest stood. Pressing their hands rigidly to their knees, they bowed as if to the august presence itself and said, "Banzai! Banzai!"

When the excitement was over, and the emperor's emissary had left with the money, the camp settled down to the agony of waiting for war news. It was rumored that Russian troops had landed on the island of Kyushu, and Kamejiro whispered to Ishii-san at night, "Should we return to Honolulu and try to find a boat back to Japan?"

"No," Ishii said gravely. "After all, what we have heard is only a rumor."

"But Japan is in danger!" Kamejiro muttered.

"We must wait for more substantial news," Ishii-san insisted, and because he could read and write, people listened to him. And the year 1904 ended in apprehension.

But in January, 1905, his prudence was rewarded when word reached Kauai that the great Russian bastion at Port Arthur had surrendered to a Japanese siege. Kauai�that is, the Japanese living there �went wild with joy and a torchlight procession was held through the plantation town of Kapaa; and the celebrations had hardly ended when word came of an even more astonishing victory at Mukden, followed quickly by the climactic news from the Strait of Tsushima. A Russian fleet of thirty-eight major vessels had engaged the Japanese under Admiral Togo; nineteen were immediately sunk, five were captured, and of the remaining fourteen, only three got back to Russia. More than 10,000 of the enemy were drowned and 6,000 taken prisoner. For their part, the Japanese lost only three minor torpedo boats and less than 700 men. The Honolulu Mail called Tsushima "one of the most complete victories any nation has ever enjoyed at the expense of a major rival."

Kamejiro, listening to the stunning news, burst into tears and told his friend Ishii-san, "I feel as if my hot-bath money had personally sunk the Russian ships."

"It did," Ishii-san assured him. "Because it represented the undying spirit of the Japanese. Look at the poor Americans! Their president speaks to them, and nothing happens. No one pays attention. But when the emperor speaks to us, we hear even though we are lost at the end of the world."

Kamejiro contemplated this for a moment, then asked, "Ishii-san, do you feel proud today?"

"I feel as if my heart were a. balloon carrying me above the trees," Ishii-san replied.

"I can feel guns going off in my chest every minute," Kamejiro confided. "They are the guns of Admiral Togo." Again tears came into his eyes and he asked, "Ishii-san, do you think it would be proper for us to say a prayer for that great admiral who saved Japan?"

"It would be better if the priest were here. That's his job.

"But wouldn't it be all right if we ourselves faced Japan and said a prayer?"

"I would like to do so," Ishii-san admitted, and the two laborers knelt in the red dust of Kauai and each thought of Hiroshima, and the rice fields, and the red torii looking out over the Japan Sea, and they prayed that their courageous country might always know victory.

By this time Kamejiro had saved, from his wages and the hot bath, an additional thirty-eight dollars, and the camp suspected this, so when word reached Kauai that a splendid victory celebration was to be held right in the heart of Honolulu, for all Hawaii to see, and that the island of Kauai was invited to send two men to march in Japanese uniforms and play the roles of immortal military leaders like Admiral Togo, everyone agreed that Kamejiro should be one of the men, because he could pay his own way, and a man named Hashimoto was the other, because he also had some savings, and in kte May, 1905, the two stocky laborers set out on the inter-island boat Kilauea for Honolulu. There the committee provided them with handsome uniforms which local Japanese wives had copied from magazine pictures, and Kamejiro found himself a full colonel in memory of a leader who had personally thrown himself upon the Russian guns at the siege of Fort Arthur. This Colonel Ito had been blown to pieces and into national immortality. It was with bursting pride that Colonel Sakagawa lined up on the afternoon of June 2, 1905, to march boldly through the streets of Honolulu and across the Nuuanu to Aala Park, where thousands of Japanese formed a procession that proceeded solemnly to the Japanese consulate, where a dignified man in frock coat and black tie nodded gravely. A workman from one of the Janders & Whipple plantations on Oahu was dressed in Admiral Togo's uniform, and from the steps of the consulate he led the Banzai and the formal marching broke up. Kamejiro and his fellow Kauai man, Hashimoto, walked back to Aala Park, where exhibitions of Japanese wrestling and fencing were offered to an appreciative crowd; but the victory celebration was to have overtones of another kind which Kamejiro would never forget, for at ten o'clock, when the crowd was greatest, a pathway was formed and eight professional geisha girls from one of the tea houses passed through the confusion to take their places on the dancing platform, and as they went one walked in her gently swaying manner quite close to Kamejiro and the powder in her hair brushed into his nostrils

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and he admitted, for the first time in three years, how desperately hungry he was for that girl Yoko back in Hiroshima.

A haze came over his eyes and he imagined that the mask was once more upon his face while he prepared to slip into her sleeping room. He could feel her arms about him and hear her voice in his ear. The crowd pressed in upon him but he was not part of it; he was in Hiroshima in the spring when the rice fields were a soft green, and a horrible thought took possession of him: "I shall never leave Kauai! I shall die here and never see Japan againl I shall live all my life without a woman!"

And he began, in his agony, to walk among the crowd and place himself so that he might touch this Japanese wife or that. He did not grab at them or embarrass them; he wanted merely to see them and to feel their reality; and his glazed eyes stared at them. "I am so hungry," he muttered to himself as he moved so as to intercept a woman at least twenty years older than he. She shuffled along with her feet never leaving the ground, Japanese style, and the soft rustle of her passing seemed to him one of the sweetest sounds he had ever heard. Instinctively he reached out his hand and clutched at her arm, and the shuffling stopped. The housewife looked at him in amazement, pushed his hand down, and muttered, "You are a Japanese! Behave yourself! Especially when you wear such a uniform!"

Mortified, he fled the crowd and found Hashimoto, who said abruptly, "Those damned geisha girls are driving me loony. Let's find a good whorehouse."

The two Kauai laborers started probing the Aala region, but a stranger told them, "The houses you want are all in Iwilei," so they hurried to that quarter of the city, but the houses were rilled with richer patrons and the two could gain no entrance.

"I'm going to grab any woman I see," Hashimoto said.

"No!" Kamejiro warned, remembering the admonition of the woman he had touched.

"To hell with you!" the other shouted. "Girl! Girls!" he shouted in Japanese. "Here I come to find you!" And he dashed down one of the Iwilei alleys. Kamejiro, now ashamed to be in such a place while dressed as Colonel Ito, who had sacrificed his life at Port Arthur, fled the area and returned to the park, where he sat for hours staring at the dancers. This time he kept away from women, and after a long time an old Japanese man came up to him with a bottle of sake and said, "Oh, Colonel! What a glorious war this was! And did you notice one thing tonight? Not one damned Chinese had the courage to appear on the streets while our army was marching! I tell you, Colonel! In 1895 we defeated the Chinese. And in 1905 we defeated the Russians. Two of the finest nations on earth. Who will we fight ten years from now? England? Germany?"

"All the world can be proud of Japan," Kamejiro agreed.

"What is more important, Colonel," the drunk continued, "is that here in Hawaii people have now got to respect us. The German

lunas who beat us with whips. The Norwegian lunas who treat us with contempt. They have got to respect us Japanese! We are a great people! Therefore, Colonel, promise me one thing, and I will give you more sake. The next time a European luna dares to strike you in the cane fields, kill himl We Japanese will show the world."

It was a tremendous celebration, worthy of the impressive victory gained by the homeland, and even though it used up much of Kamejiro's savings and reminded him of how lonely he was, he felt it had been worth while; but it had one unfortunate repercussion which no one could have foreseen, and long after the celebration itself had faded into memory, this one dreadful result lived on in Kamejiro's mind.

It started in the whorehouses of Iwilei, after Kamejiro had abandoned his lusty friend Hashimoto to the alleys, for that young man had forced his way into one of the houses and had been soundly thrashed by half a dozen Germans who resented his intrusion. Thrown into one of the gutters, he had been found by a Hawaiian boy who did pimping for a group of girls, and this boy, in the custom of the islands, had lugged the bewildered Japanese home, where his sister had washed his bruises. They had been able to converse only in pidgin, but apparently enough 'had been said, for when Hashimoto returned to the Kauai ship, he had the sister in tow. She was a big, amiable, wide-eyed Hawaiian who carried with her only one bundle tied with string, but she seemed to like wiry, tough-minded Hashimoto and apparently intended to stay with him.

"I am going to marry her," Hashimoto stoutly informed Kamejiro, who still wore his colonel's uniform, and something about either the victory celebration or the uniform made Kamejiro especially patriotic that day, for as soon as his friend said the fatal words, "I am going to marry her," he sprang into action as if he were in charge of troops. Grabbing Hashimoto by the arm he warned, "If you do such a thing, all Japan will be ashamed."

"I may not ever go back to Japan," Hashimoto said.

Impulsively, like a true colonel, Kamejiro struck Hashimoto across the face, shouting, "Don't ever speak like that! Japan is your home!"

Hashimoto was astonished at Colonel Sakagawa's unexpected behavior but he recognized that he deserved the rebuke, so he mumbled, "I'm tired of living without a woman."

This introduced a less military note into the discussion, and Kamejiro quit being an Imperial colonel and became once more a friend. "Hashimoto-san, it was bad enough to go to such a house, but to bring home one of the girls, and to marry her! You must put strength in your stomach and be a decent Japanese."

"She isn't from one of the houses," Hashimoto explained. "She's a good girl from a good hard-working family."

"But she's not Japanesel" Kamejiro argued.

He made no progress with Hashimoto, who was determined not to live alone any longer. Since there were no Japanese girls available on Kauai, he would live with his Hawaiian and marry her. But in

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his ardor for feminine companionship he had failed to consider the even greater ardor of the Japanese community, and when it was noised abroad what he had done, he experienced the full, terrible power of the sacred Japanese spirit.