Hawaii (150 page)

Kamejiro Sakagawa first discovered his daughter's love affair with a haole when his good friend Sakai appeared at the barbershop one morning to say, "I am sorry, Kamejiro, but my daughter cannot work here any more."

Sakagawa gasped and asked, "Why not? I pay her well."

"Yes, and we need the money, but I can't risk having her work here another day. It might happen to her too. So many haoles coming in here."

"What might happen?" Sakagawa stammered.

"More better we go outside," Sakai said. There, along a gutter on Hotel Street, he said sorrowfully, "You have been a good friend, Kamejiro, and you have paid our girl well, but we cannot run the risk of her falling in love with a haole man, the way your Reiko has."

Little bulldog Kamejiro, his neck muscles standing out, grabbed his friend by the shoulders, rising on his toes to accomplish the feat. "What are you saying?" he roared.

"Kamejiro," his friend protested, trying vainly to break loose from the frightening grip. "Ask anyone. Your daughter has lunch every day with the American ... at Senaga's."

In a state of shock, little Kamejiro Sakagawa thrust his friend away and stared down Hotel Street at the Okinawa restaurant run by the pig-farmer, Senaga, and as he watched, that crafty Senaga entered the shop, taking with him a haole friend, and in this simple omen Sakagawa saw the truth of what his compatriot Sakai had charged. Reiko-chan, as good a daughter as a man ever had, strong and dutiful, had been visiting with a haole in an Okinawan restaurant. Shattered, the stocky little man, then sixty-one, leaned against a post, oblivious of the flow of sailors and soldiers about him.

It was ironic, he thought, that war should have catapulted two of the groups he hated most into such postures of success. The damned Chinese had all the good jobs at Pearl Harbor, and with the income they got, were buying up most of Honolulu. Their sons were not at war, and their arrogance was high. As allies, followers of the damnable Chiang Kai-shek, who had resisted decent Japanese overtures in China, they appeared in all the parades arid made speeches over the radio. The Chinese, Sakagawa reflected that ugly morning, were doing very well.

But what was particularly galling was that the Okinawans were doing even better. Now, an Okinawan, Sakagawa mused in sullen anger as he studied Senaga's restaurant, is a very poor man to begin with, neither wholly Japanese nor wholly Chinese, but making believe

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to be the former. An Okinawan cannot be trusted, must be watched every minute lest he set his daughters to trick a man's sons, and is a man who lacks the true Japanese spirit. There were few men in the world, Sakagawa felt, lower than an Okinawan, yet look at what happened to them during the war!

Because in the years before 1941 they had not been accepted into Japanese society, they had banded together. Most of the garbage in Honolulu was collected by Okinawans. To get rid of the garbage they kept pigs, hundreds upon hundreds of pigs. So when the war came, and freighters were no longer available to carry fresh beef from California to Hawaii, where did everyone have to go for meat? To the Okinawansr Who opened up one restaurant after another, because they had the meat? The Ofcmawans! Who was going to come out of the war richer than even the white people? The Okinawansl It was a cruel jest, that an Okinawan should wind up rich and powerful and respected, just because he happened to own all the pigs.

It was with these thoughts that the little dynamiter, Kamejiro Sakagawa, hid among the crowd on Hotel Street and waited to spy upon his daughter Reiko, and as he waited he muttered to himself, "With a haole, in an Okinawan restaurant!" It was really more than �he could comprehend.

At five minutes after twelve Lieutenant Jackson entered the restaurant and took a table which smiling Senaga-san had been reserving for him. The officer ordered a little plate of pickled radishes, which he ate deftly with chopsticks, and Sakagawa thought: "What's he doing eating tsukemono? With hashi?"

At ten minutes after twelve Reiko Sakagawa hurried into the restaurant, and even a blind man could have seen from the manner in which she smiled and the way in which her whole eager body bent forward that she was in love. She did not touch the naval officer, but her radiant face and glowing eyes came peacefully to rest a few inches from his. With a fork she began picking up a few pieces of radish, and her father, watching from the street, thought: "It's all very confusing. What is she doing with a fork?"

During the entire meal the little Japanese watched the miserable spectacle of his daughter having a date with a haole, and long before she was ready to leave, Kamejiro had hastened back down Hotel Street to his friend Sakai's store, asking, "Sakai, what shall I do?"

"Did you see for yourself?"

"Yes. What you said is true."

"Hasegawa is taking his daughter out of the barbershop, too."

"To hell with the barbershop! What shall I do about Reiko?"

"What you must do, Kamejiro, is find out who this haole is. Then go to the navy and ask that he be transferred."

"Would the navy listen to me?" Kamejiro pleaded.

"On such a matter, yes," Sakai said with finality. Then he added, "But your most important job, Kamejiro, is to find a husband for your daughter."

"For years I have been looking," the little dynamiter said.

"I will act as the go-between," Sakai promised. "But it will not be easy. Now that she has ruined herself with a haole."

"No! Don't say that. Reiko-cham is a good girl."

"But already everyone knows she has been going with a haole. What self-respecting Japanese family will accept her now, Kamejiro?"

"Will you work hard as the go-between, Sakai?"

"I will find a husband for your daughter. A decent Japanese man."

"You are my friend," Sakagawa said tearfully, but before he left he added prudently, "Sakai, could you please try to find a Hiroshima man? That would be better."

Mrs. Sakagawa had spent the morning at home making pickled cabbage and the afternoon at Mrs. Mark Whipple's rolling Red Cross bandages. The latter experience had been a trying one, for every woman in the room had at least one son in the Two-Two-Two except Mrs. Whipple, and her husband commanded it. Therefore, the conversation, which most of the Japanese women could not participate in, had to be about the war in Italy and the heavy casualties which the Japanese boys were suffering, but whenever grief began to stalk the room, Mrs. Whipple, one of the Hale girls, invariably brought up some new and cheering fact. Once she said, "President Roosevelt himself has announced that our boys are among the bravest that have fought under the Stars and Stripes." Later she said, "Time magazine this week reports that when our boys reached Salerno on leave, the other troops at the railway station cheered them as they disembarked." Mrs. Whipple always referred to the Japanese soldiers as "our boys," and other haoles in Hawaii were beginning to do the same.

So the afternoon had been, an emotional one, regardless of whether the talk was of casualties or of triumphs, and Mrs. Sakagawa, whose feet were sore from the American shoes she felt obligated to wear, reached home eager for rest. Instead, she found her husband at home rather than in the barbershop, and she knew that something dire had happened. Before she could ask, Kamejiro shouted, "A fine daughter you raised! She's in love with a haole!"

The words were the harshest that Mrs. Sakagawa could have heard. There were some Japanese girls, she had to admit, who went openly with haoles, but they were not from self-respecting families, and there were a few who under the pressure of war had become prostitutes, but she suspected that these were really either Etas or Okinawans. It was unlikely that any Japanese girl, mindful of the proud blood that flowed in her veins . . .

"And Sakai took his daughter out of the barbershop lest she become contaminated too, and Hasegawa is removing his daughter tomorrow." He was about to cry, "We are ruined," but an even deeper concern overcame him, and he fell into a chair, sinking his head on his forearms and sobbing, "Our family has never known shame before."

Mrs. Sakagawa, who refused to believe that her daughter could

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have brought disgrace upon the family, kicked off her American shoes, wriggled her toes in comfort, and kneeled beside her distraught husband. "Kamejiro," she whispered, "we taught Reiko how to be a good Japanese. I am sure she will not disgrace us. Somebody has told you a great lie."

Violently the little dynamiter thrust his wife aside and strode across the room. "I saw them! She was almost kissing him in public. And I've been thinking. Where was she that afternoon she said she didn't feel well? Out with a haole. And where was she when she said she was going to a cinema? Riding in a dark car with a haole. I heard a car stop that night, but I was too stupid to put two and two together."

At this moment Reiko-chan, flushed with love and the brisk walk home, entered and saw immediately from her parents' faces that her secret had been discovered. Her father said simply, with a heartbreaking gasp, "My own daughter! With a haole!" Her mother was still ready to dismiss the whole scandal and asked, "It isn't true, is it?"

Reiko-chan, her dark eyes warm with the inner conviction that was to sustain her through the impending argument, replied, "I am in love, and I want to get married."

No one spoke. Kamejiro fell back into a chair and buried his face. Mrs. Sakagawa stared at her daughter in disbelief and then began, to treat her with exaggerated solicitude, as if she were already illegally pregnant. Reiko smiled in quiet amusement, but then her stricken father gave an appalling gasp, and she knelt beside him, saying quickly, "Lieutenant Jackson is a wonderful man, Father. He's understanding, and he's lived in Japan. He has a good job in Seattle, but he thinks he may settle here after the war." She hesitated, for her words were not being heard, and then added, "Wherever he goes, I want to go with him."

Slowly her father pushed himself back from the table, withdrew from his daughter, and looked at her in shocked disbelief. "But you are a Japanese!" he cried in his misery.

"I am going to marry him, Father," his daughter repeated forcefully.

"But you're a Japanese," he reiterated. Taking her hand he said, "You have the blood of Japan, the strength of a great nation, everything . . ." He tried to explain how unthinkable her suggestion was, but could come back to only one paramount fact. "You're a Japanese!"

Reiko expkined patiently, "Lieutenant Jackson is a respectable man. He has a much better job than any man here that I might possibly marry. He's a college graduate and has a good deal of money in the bank. His family is well known in, Seattle. These things aren't of major importance, but I tell you so that you will realize what an unusual man he is."

Kamejiro listened in disgust at the rigamarole, and when it seemed likely that Reiko was going to add more, he slapped her sharply

across the cheek. "It would be humiliating," he cried. "A permanent disgrace. Already even the rumor of your behavior has ruined the barbershop. The Sakai girl has quit. So has the Hasegawa. No self-respecting Japanese family will want to associate with us after what you have done."

Reiko pressed her hand to her burning cheek and said quietly, "Father, hundreds of decent Japanese girls have fallen in love with Americans."

"Whores, all of them!" Kamejiro stormed.

Ignoring him Reiko said, "I know, because that's Lieutenant Jackson's job. To talk with parents like you. And the girls are not . . ."

"Aha!" Kamejiro cried. "So that's what he does! Tomorrow I go see Admiral Nimitz."

"Father, I warn you that if you . . ."

"Admiral Nimitz will hear of this!"

The little dynamiter did not actually get to Nimitz. He was stopped first by an ensign, who was so enthralled by the stalwart, bow-armed Japanese that he passed him along to a full lieutenant who sent him on to a commodore who burst into the office of a rear admiral, with the cry: "Jesus, Jack! There's a little Japanese out here with the goddamnedest story you ever heard. You gotta listen."

So a circle of captains, commodores and admirals interrupted their work to listen to Kamejiro's hilarious pidgin as he protested to the navy that one of their officers had wrecked his barbershop and had ruined his daughter.

"Is she pregnant?" one of the rear admirals asked.

"You watch out!" Kamejiro cried. "Mo bettah you know Reiko a good wahine!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Sakanawa. In our language ruined means, well, ruined."

When the officers heard who it was that ruined, or whatever, the girl Reiko, they almost exploded. "That goddamned Jackson!" one of them sputtered. "His job is to break up this sort of thing."

"I've told you a dozen times," another said. "Putting a civilian into uniform doesn't make him an officer."

"That's beside the point," the senior admiral said. "What I'd like to know, Mr. Sakanawa, is this. If the boy has a good reputation, a good job, a good income, and a good family back in Seattle . . . Well, what I'm driving at is this. Your daughter is a lady barber. It would seem to me that you would jump at the chance for such a marriage."

Little Kamejiro, who was shorter by nine inches than any man in the room, stared at them in amazement. "She's a Japanese!" he said to the interpreter. "It would be disgraceful if she married a haole."

"How's that?" the commodore asked.

"It would bring such shame on our family . . ."

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"What the hell do you mean?" the commodore bellowed. "Since when is a Jap marrying a decent American a matter of shame . . . to the Jap?"

"Her brothers in Italy would be humiliated before all their companions," Kamejiro doggedly explained.

"What's that again?" the senior officer asked. "She got brothers in Italy?"

"My four boys are fighting in Italy," Kamejiro said humbly.

One of the rear admirals rose and came over to the little dynamiter. "You have four sons in the Two-Two-Two?"