Hawaii (149 page)

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W what Mr. Ishii had read from it was true. Japan was winning the � war and would soon invade Hawaii. la great pain of conscience Saka-I gawa-san looked at the paper which he could not read and asked I Reikonchan, "Is it true?" And his daughter said, "Yes." I It was one of the most exasperating anomalies of the war that whereas the F.B.I. and naval security kept very close watch on the Japanese newspapers in Hawaii, and saw that they printed only the strictest truth, with no stories at all datelined Tokyo, the Japanese-language newspapers in the states of Utah and Wyoming were free to print whatever they wished, it having been decided by the local military that the official Japanese communiques were so ridiculous that they would in time defeat themselves, as indeed they did. So the mainland Japanese press, often edited by die-hard samurai types, kept pouring out an incredible mess of propaganda, rumor, anti-American sentiment and downright subversive lies, and when copies of the papers reached Hawaii, where rumors were apt to be virulent, their effect was shocking.

"I will tell the emperor's general," Sakagawa-san finally explained, "that my sons fought only in Europe. Never against Japan." . "It will do no good!" Mr. Ishii said sadly. "The emperor will never forgive you for what you have done."

Sakagawa-san felt weak. He had always had doubts about sending his sons to war, and now the Wyoming paper had fortified those doubts. Dumbly he looked at his old guide, and' Mr. Ishii, after enjoying the moment of humiliation, finally said, "I wfll put in a good word for you with the general. I will tell him you have always been a good Japanese."

"Thank you, Mr. Ishii!" the dynamiter cried. "You are the only friend I can trust."

The Sakagawas went to bed that night in considerable torment, so the next day at her barber chair Reiko waited until an intelligent-looking young naval officer sat down, and when he had done so, she asked quietly, "Could you help me, please."

"Sure," the officer said. "Name's Jackson, from Seattle."

"A man told me last night that Japan might invade Hawaii at any moment. Is that true?"

The navy man's jaw dropped; he pulled the towel away from his neck and turned to look at Reiko, who was then twenty-six and at her prettiest. He smiled at her and asked, "Good God, woman! What have you been hearing?"

"I was told on good authority that Japanese ships might attack at any time."

"Look, lady!" the officer chided. "If you're a spy trying to get secrets . . ."

"Oh, no!" Reiko blushed. Then she saw her father approaching to enforce the rule against any conversation with customers. She retied the towel, jerking it back to muzzle the navy man, and started clipping. "We're not allowed to talk," she whispered, here do you have lunch?" the officer asked.

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"Senaga's," she whispered.

"I'll see you there, and tell you about the war."

"Oh, I couldn't!" Reiko blushed.

"Look, I'm from Seattle. I used to know lots of Japanese girls. Senaga's."

At the counter of the restaurant, run by the Okinawa pig-grower Senaga, Lieutenant Jackson surprised Reiko by ordering sushi and sashimi, which he attacked with chopsticks. "I served in Japan," he said. "If my skipper caught me eating with chopsticks I'd be court-martialed. Unpatriotic."

"We all try to eat with forks," Reiko said.

"Now about this Jap invasion," Jackson said.

"Would you please not call us Japs?" Reiko asked.

"You're Japanese," Jackson laughed easily. "The enemy are Japs. What's your first name? Reiko, that's nice. Well, Reiko-chan . . ."

"Where did you leam Reiko-chan?"

"In Japan," he replied casually.

"Did you ever know a Reiko-chan?"

"I knew a Kioko-chan."

There was a long silence as they ate sushi, and Reiko wanted to ask many questions and Lieutenant Jackson wanted to make many comments, but neither spoke, until at the same moment Reiko pushed her fork toward the sashimi and the officer shoved his chopsticks at the raw fish. There was a clatter and laughter and Jackson said, "I was deeply in love with Kioko-chan, and she taught me some Japanese, and that's why I have my present job."

"What is it?" Reiko asked solemnly, her face flushed.

"Because I speak a little of your language . . . Well, you understand, I'm not really a navy officer. I'm a Seattle lawyer. I'm with the Adjutant General and my job is to visit Japanese families and tell them that their daughters should not marry American G.I.'s. I see about twenty families a week . . . You know how American men are, they see pretty girls and they want to marry 'em. My job is to see that they don't."

Suddenly he broke his chopsticks in half and his knuckles grew white with bitterness. "Each week, Reiko-chan, I see about twenty Japanese girls' and argue with them, and every goddamned one of them reminds me of Kioko-chan, and pretty soon I'm going to go nuts."

He looked straight ahead, a man squeezed in a great vise, and he had no more appetite. Reiko, being a practical girl, finished the sashimi and said, "I must go back to work."

"Will you have lunch with me tomorrow?" the officer said.

"Yes," she said, but when he started to accompany her to the street, she gasped and said, "My father would die."

"Does he believe the Japanese fleet is coming soon?"

"Not he," she lied, "but his friend. What is the truth?"

"In one year or two we will destroy Japan."

That night Reiko-chan advised her father that there must be some—

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thing wrong with the Wyoming newspaper, because Japan was not winning the war, but this infuriated Sakagawa-san, who had brought home a second copy of the Prairie Shinbun, more inflammatory than the first, and as Reiko patiently read it to him she herself began to wonder: "Who is telling the truth?"

Then proof came. President Roosevelt arrived in Honolulu aboard a naval ship, and the Sakagawas saw him with their own eyes and marked the way in which he rode through Honolulu, protected by dozens of secret-service men. To Sakagawa-san, this proved that America was strong, but he had not reckoned with Mr. Ishii's superior intellect, for scarcely had the long black automobiles sped by when the excited little man rushed into the barbershop with staggering news.

"Didn't I tell you?" he whispered. "Oh, tremendous! Come to Sakai's immediately."

Sakagawa turned the barbershop over to his daughter and slipped down a side street to Sakai's store, entering by a back door so as not to attract attention, for groups of Japanese were still prevented from assembling. In the back room Sakai, Mr. Ishii and several agitated older men stood discussing the exciting news. For a moment 'Sakagawa could not comprehend what it was all about, but soon Mr. Ishii explained everything.

"President Roosevelt has come to Hawaii on his way to Tokyo. He's going to surrender peacefully, be executed at the Yasukuni Shrine as a common war criminal, and the Japanese navy will be here in three days."

Mr. Ishii's stories always featured specific details and dates, and one would have thought that after a while his listeners would recall that for three years not one of his predictions had come to pass; but the hope of victory was so strong in the hearts of some of his audience that he was never called to task for his errors. "In three days!" he said. "Ships of the Imperial navy steaming into Pear] Harbor. But I will protect you, Sakagawa-san, and I will ask the emperor to forgive you for sending your sons to war."

When President Roosevelt left Honolulu for his execution in Tokyo, Mr. Ishii waited in a state of near-collapse for the battleships of his homeland to come steaming in from the west. For three nights he slept on his roof, waiting, waiting, and in the little house in Kakaako, his friend Sakagawa also waited, in trepidation.

On the fourth day, when it was apparent that the Imperial navy was going to be temporarily delayed, Mr. Ishii dropped the whole subject and took up instead the rumor printed in the Prairie Shinbun that the Japanese had captured both Australia and New Zealand. He felt, he told the Sakagawas, that it might be a good idea to emigrate to Australia, for under Japanese control there would be good lands for all.

Reiko-chan discussed each of these rumors with Lieutenant Jackson, who listened patiently as the wide-eyed barber disclosed her apprehensions. Always he laughed, and once observed: "This Mr.

Ishii must be quite a jerk," but Reiko apologized for the little man: "He came from Hiroshima long ago and has lived in darkness," whereupon the naval officer said, "He better watch out what he says. He could get into trouble." At this Reiko-chan laughed and said, "Nobody ever takes Mr. Ishii seriously. He's such a sweet, inoffensive little man."

It would be difficult to characterize as a love affair a series of meetings conducted in a barbershop under the hawklike eye of Kamejiro Sakagawa and in a crowded Okinawan retaurant run by the Senaga family, for between Reiko-chan and Lieutenant Jackson there were no crushing kisses or lingering farewells, but it was a love affair nevertheless, and on one bold Tuesday, Reiko extended her lunch hour till four in the afternoon, and that sunny day there were both kisses and enraptured embraces. One Wednesday night she slipped away from home and waited for Lieutenant Jackson's Chevrolet, and they drove out to Diamond Head and parked in a lovers' lane. Local people called this, "The midnight athletes watching the underwater submarine races under a full moon." But a shore patrol, inspecting cars, called it country necking, and when they got to the Chevy they were astounded.

"What you doin' with a Jap, Lieutenant?"

"Talking."

"With a Jap?"

"Yes, with a Japanese."

"Let's see your papers."

"You didn't ask to see their papers."

"They're with white girls."

With a show of irritation Lieutenant Jackson produced his papers and the shore patrol shook their heads. "This beats anything," one of the sailors said. "She a local girl?"

"Of course."

"Can you speak English, lady?"

"Yes."

"Well, I guess it's all right, if a naval officer don't care whether he necks with a Jap or not."

"Look here, buddy . . ."

"You want to start something, sir?"

Lieutenant Jackson looked up at the two towering sailors and said, "No."

"We didn't think so. Good night, Jap-lover."

Lieutenant Jackson sat silent for some minutes, then said, "War is unbelievable. If those two boys live till we get to Tokyo, they'll probably fall in love with Japanese girls and marry them. With what confusion they will remember this night."

"Will our men get to Tokyo soon?" Reiko-chan asked.

The lieutentant was impressed-by the manner in which she said "our men," and he asked, "Why did you say it that way?"

She replied, "I have four brothers fighting in Europe."

"You have . . ." He stopped and on an uncontrollable impulse

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jumped out of the car and shouted, "Hey, shore patrol! Shore patrol!"

The two young policemen hurried back and asked, "What's the matter, Lieutenant? She turn out to be a spy?"

"Fellows, I want you to meet Miss Reiko Sakagawa. She has four brothers fighting in the American army in Italy. While you and I sit on our fat asses here in Hawaii. When you were here before, I didn't know."

"You got four men in the war?"

"Yes," she replied quietly.

"All army?"

"Yes. Japanese aren't allowed in the navy."

"Ma'am," one of the shore patrol said, a boy from Georgia, "I sure hope your brothers get home safe."

"Good night, miss," the other boy said.

"Night, fellows," Jackson muttered, and when the patrol wheeled down the road he stammered, "Reiko-chan, I think we ought to get married."

She sighed, clasped her hands very tightly, and said, "I thought your job was to keep men like you from marrying girls like me."

"It is, but have you ever noticed the way in which people in such . jobs always fall prey to the very thing they are fighting against? It's uncanny. I've intervened in some three hundred cases like this, and almost every time the man has been from the Deep South."

"What has that to do with us?" Reiko-chan asked.

"You see, at home these Southern boys have been taught from birth that anyone with a different color is evil and to be despised. In their hearts they know this can't be true, so as soon as they get a fair chance to investigate a girl with a different color, they find a human being and they suffer a compulsion to fall in love and marry her."

"Are you from the South, Lieutenant? Do you act from such a compulsion?"

"I'm from Seattle, but I have a compulsion greater than any of them. After Pearl Harbor my father, a pretty good man by and large, was the one who spearheaded the drive to throw all Japanese into concentration camps. He knew he was doing an evil thing. He knew he was giving false testimony and acting for his own economic advantage. But nevertheless, he went ahead. On the night he made his inflammatory speech over the radio I told him, Top, you know what you said isn't true,' and he replied, 'This is war, son.' "

"So you want to marry me to get even with him?" Reiko asked. "I couldn't marry you on those terms."

"The compulsion is much deeper, Reiko-chan. Remember that I lived in Japan. No matter how old we both get, Reiko, never forget that at j:he height of the war I told you, 'When peace comes, Japan and America will be compatible friends.' I am positive of it. I am positive that my father, since he is essentially a good man, will welcome you graciously as his daughter. Because people have got to forget past errors. They have got to bind separated units together."

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"You talk as if your father were the problem," Reiko said quietly.

"You mean yours is?"

"We will never get married," Reiko said sorrowfully. "My father would never permit it."

"Tell your father to go to hell. I told mine."

"But I am a Japanese," she said, kissing him on the lips.