“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.
“Where do you have lunch?” the officer asked.
“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 learn 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 something 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 Pearl 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 restaurant 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 under-water submarine races under a full moon.” But a shore patrol, inspecting the cars, called it country necking, and when they got to the Chevvy 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 anyth
ing,” 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 lieutenant 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 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 her 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, ‘Pop, 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 the 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.”
“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.
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 and 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 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 had 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 Okinawans! Who opened up one restaurant after another, because they had the meat? The Okinawans! Who was going to come out of the war richer than even the white people? The Okinawans! 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 ordere
d 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-chan 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.”