“Are you confident?” his gracious Hawaiian wife inquired.
“If prayer to an understanding God is efficacious, then I am confident.”
The Hales ate in candlelight and sat across from each other so that verbal communication was quick and direct. Malama, in her sixty-fifth year, was stately rather than vivacious. She had not gone to flesh as had so many of her Hawaiian sisters, and her silvery gray hair was complemented by the pale light. She retained her saucy manner of tilting her head quizzically when an idea amused her, and now she said softly, “It will be proper for Hawaii to submerge itself in America. We’re a poor, weak group of islands, and anyone who had really wanted us in the last fifty years could have snatched us. It’s better this way.”
Micah, momentarily relaxed by the good news from Congress, asked, “Do you know, Malama, how sorry I am that it had to be your husband who did the things of the last five years?”
“It had to be somebody,” she said to the erect, austere missionary.
“Of all the Hawaiians, you understood most clearly,” he said. “But I suppose that’s to be expected. Noelani’s daughter and Malama’s granddaughter.” At the mention of these distinguished names he unexpectedly found tears in his eyes, and he wanted to hide his face in his hands, but Malama saw them, and if she had been sitting beside her husband, she would, Hawaiian-fashion, have comforted him, but on this important night they sat apart and only ideas sped between them, not love. Micah said, “It would have been so much better if you had been queen and not Liliuokalani. You would have understood, but she never could.”
“No,” Malama said slowly, “it was better that we had a headstrong, volatile Hawaiian. Let the world see us dying as we actually were.”
“Dying?” Micah repeated in surprise.
“Yes, dying,” Malama said with subtle firmness. “Soon our islands will be Oriental and there will be no place for Hawaiians.”
His wife’s comments were strange, and Micah pointed out: “But in the constitution we were careful to put up safeguards against the Japanese.”
“That’s only a paper, Micah,” she pointed out. “We Hawaiians know that we’re being pushed over in the canoe.”
“You’ll be protected!” Micah cried.
“We had an earlier constitution that was supposed to protect us,” Malama said, “but it didn’t prevent the sugar robbers from stealing our lands … and then our country.”
“Malama!” Micah gasped. “Are you contending that only cupidity directed this revolution? Do you refuse to see the forces of American democracy at work here?”
“All I can see is that when our fields were barren no one wanted us, but when they were rich with sugar, everyone wanted us. What else can I conclude?”
Micah was disturbed by the turn this conversation was taking and he went far back into memory: “Do you recall the first time I ever saw you? In San Francisco? And I said then, before I ever saw a sugar field, ‘Hawaii must become a part of the United States?’ I thought so for moral reasons, and my motivations have never changed.”
“Not yours, Micah. But others’ changed. And in the end you were pitifully used by a gang of robbers.”
“Oh, no, Malama! As it worked out, it was I who used them. Hawaii’s going to be annexed, on my terms.”
“It was stolen by fraud,” Malama said coldly. “We poor, generous Hawaiians were abused, lied about, debased in public and defrauded of our nation.”
“No!” Micah protested, rising and walking around the table to be with his wife.
“I would rather you did not touch me now, Micah,” she said without bitterness. “What do you think I have felt, when I met with my Hawaiian friends, and they asked me, ‘How could Micah Hale write the things he did about us?’ ”
“What things?” Micah cried, returning disconsolately to his chair. “I never wrote anything about you.”
To his surprise, Malama took from her pocket, where in bitterness she had kept it until this moment should arise, a clipping from one of his major articles, and in sorrow she read it: “ ‘The indigenous citizens are for the most part illiterate, steeped in idolatry, committed to vain shows of monarchical display and totally unsuited to govern themselves.’ What abominable words.”
“But I wasn’t writing about you,” he protested. “I was writing to help make these islands a part of America.”
“You were writing about Hawaiians,” Malama said quietly.
Micah, in his white suit, sat staring at the tablecover brought years ago from China. He was astonished at his wife’s position in this matter and he thought of several lines of explanation that might be helpful in describing the choices he had faced, but when he looked up at her grave, accusing face, he realized that none would be of use. Therefore he said, “I am sorry if I have offended you, Malama.” And she replied, “I am sorry, Micah, if I have brought up unpleasant subjects on your night of triumph. But we must not fool ourselves by words. Hawaii was stolen. Its liberties were raped.” In stately manner this daughter of the alii rose, kicked her train behind her, and left the dining room. Micah, disconsolate, watched her depart, then dropped his head on the table for some minutes, after which he rose and walked to his study, where he composed a long and passionate letter of instructions to his representatives in Washington, telling them: “You must see every senator at least once a day. Tell him that the manifest destiny of America consists of an extension of God’s grace to these islands. We cannot delay much longer, for the Japanese and English are beginning to make unpleasant moves and tardiness is suicide. Plead with them. Leave no argument to chance, and if the senators from Louisiana and Colorado fight with dirty weapons, fight back. We have got to make these islands American in this session. To your hands I commit the fate of Hawaii.”
During the days that followed, Micah and Malama Hale avoided each other as much as possible. With each elating letter from Washington, for chances in the Senate looked increasingly good, the distance between the American missionary and the Hawaiian alii grew greater, and it was borne home to Micah a thousand times how sorrowful a thing it is to destroy a sovereignty. It was right that Hawaii become American. It was inevitable, and he was increasingly proud of his role in accomplishing this benediction; but it was also tragic, and in these last days the tragedy was greater than the joy.
On July 6, 1898, the American Senate finally accepted Hawaii by a vote of 42 to 21. In the Senate gallery David Hale, Micah’s personal emissary to Congress, wept, and his assistant Micah Whipple said, “This is the beginning of America’s greatness in world politics.” One week later, on July 13, the news reached Honolulu, and an excited sailor discharged a gun. Nerves were on edge and some thought this might be the beginning of a counter-revolution, but soon the electrifying word swept through the city and men ran out into the streets and embraced one another. It was wild, joyous day, with enough noise to be heard around the globe, but Wild Whip Hoxworth, in the jungles of French Guiana, did not hear the news for almost two months. When he did he said to Ching-ching, “Well, we’re Americans at last. You feel any different?”
“You may be an American,” Ching-thing replied. “I’m still a Chinese. I don’t think your country will ever want me.”
On August 12, 1898, by proclamation of President McKinley, Hawaii joined the United States, but in the islands this happy event seemed more like a funeral than a birth. No Hawaiians appeared that day, for they mourned in secret, but a good many Americans in tight coats, brown plug hats and patent-leather shoes roamed the streets wearing gaudy badges that showed Uncle Sam entering into matrimony with a Negro woman—the mainland manufacturers having been unable to visualize a Hawaiian—accompanied by the rubric: “This is our wedding day.”
Out of deference to the Hawaiians, the day’s ceremonies were kept brief. Soldiers marched and sailors came ashore from an American warship. At eleven forty-five a distinguished group of men responsible for the revolution appeared on the grandstand, led by Micah Hale. As he took his place, he l
ooked out upon the gathering and saw Americans, Chinese, Portuguese and Japanese, but never a Hawaiian. When the once-impressive band began the Hawaiian anthem, the gasps that came from the horns would not have done justice to a group of beginners, for one by one the weeping Hawaiian members of the band had crept away, refusing to play the final dirge of their nation. The anthem ended in a sob and Micah began reading: “With full confidence in the honor, justice and friendship of the American people …” He had first dreamed of this day while crossing the Nebraska prairies in 1849. Now, almost half a century later, he had made it come to pass.
On the platform that day there was one Hawaiian, Malama Kanakoa Hale, for Micah had pleaded with her: “It is your duty,” and as an alii she had understood these words. Dressed in regal black and purple, with a flowery hat and an ivory fan, she was an imposing figure, the final symbol of her defeated race. Even when the warships boomed their salute of twenty-one guns and when the flag she had loved so well came down, she had the fortitude to stare ahead. “I will not let them see me weep,” she muttered to herself.
But when the ceremonies were ended, a most shameful thing occurred, and to Malama it would always epitomize the indecency by which her nation had been destroyed. As the Hawaiian flag fell, an American caught it and, before he could be stopped, whisked it away to the palace cellar where, with a pair of long shears, he cut the emblem into strips and began passing them out as souvenirs of the day.
One was jammed into Micah’s hand and he looked down to see what it was, but his eyes were so strained from writing letters on behalf of Hawaii that he could not easily discern what he held, and imprudently he raised it aloft. Then he saw that it contained fragments of the eight stripes symbolizing the islands of Hawaii and a corner of the field, and he realized what a disgraceful thing had been done to this proud flag. Hastily he crumpled it lest his wife see and be further offended, but as he pushed the torn cloth into his pocket he heard from behind a cry of pain, and he turned to see that his wife had at last been forced to cover her face in shame.
AS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY drew to a close, and as Hawaii accustomed itself to being a part of the United States, it gradually became apparent to the residents of Honolulu that in the Kee family Hawaii had another of those great, intricate Chinese units which were destined, by force of numbers alone, to play an important role in the community. There was old Mrs. Kee—known to the family simply as Wu Chow’s Auntie—now fifty-two years of age and bent from arduous work. There were her five clever sons, Asia, Europe, Africa, America and Australia, and their five wives, a prolific brood with a total of thirty-eight children and a promise of more to come. Thus, as the century ended, there were already forty-nine Kees in the family, many of them approaching marriageable age. In two more decades the Kees would probably number more than two hundred.
To Nyuk Tsin, who still sold pineapples and taro-stem pickles through the town barefooted, her two baskets hanging down from her bamboo carrying-stick and her conical woven hat darting along the alleys of Chinatown, the multiplication of her offspring was gratifying indeed, and whenever on her daily huckstering trips she reached the point where Hotel Street crossed Maunakea, in the heart of Chinatown, she felt a glow of satisfaction. Years ago she had made a cold calculation that of her five sons—who shared the world among them—it would be Africa who would grow into the ablest. He had been given the education, and now at the age of thirty-one he was a leader in the Chinese community: Africa Kee, Lawyer. The sign in gold letters said so, but what it did not say was that the building in which his office stood was also his and that several of the stores in Chinatown belonged either to him or to his brothers.
Actually, the specific title to these buildings was of little consequence, for although to outward appearances it was Asia Kee who owned the profitable restaurant on Hotel Street, it was really owned by the Kees as a family. Under Nyuk Tsin’s guidance, the five brothers had formed a combination known in Hawaii by the expressive term hui, pronounced hooey—“Them Kees got a hui workin’ ”—and it was this informal corporation, the great Kee hui, that effectively controlled the family income. If Australia’s lovely wife, the Ching girl, acquired from her family a small inheritance, it did not go to Australia or to his children. It went into the hui, for no member of the Kee family could begin to identify the benefits he himself had already drawn from the hui. His clothes, his education, the education of his sons, his home, his start in business: all these things had been paid for by the hui; and if he were willing to hand over everything he was to earn for the rest of his life, he still could never discharge his debt to the hui.
No one felt this obligation more than Africa. It was through the energies of his four brothers that he had received his legal education at Michigan. To maintain him in law school they had deprived themselves; yet they never complained, for they agreed with Nyuk Tsin that the ablest of their group must be educated, to help protect the rest. And Africa Kee did just that. At present the Kee hui controlled seven businesses, and Africa guided each along the narrow path between conservative prudence and radical recklessness. He financed every new venture and advised when earlier ones should be liquidated. He selected which real estate to buy, what corner to lease for a store, and which mainland college the Kee grandsons should be sent to. For the present he was the central brain power of a trivial Chinese empire of dirty little shops, grubby efforts to make money and small landholdings. But it was not his intention that the Kee empire should remain small, and whenever he met with his brothers—they in pigtails and Chinese dress; he shorn and in the clothes he had learned to wear at Michigan—he preached one doctrine: “This hui has got to grow.” To make it do so, Africa gambled in a manner that would have pleased his father, and the Kees rarely held property for even a week before borrowing heavily on it to buy more property, on which they also borrowed as soon as possible. All the Kee stores bought on credit, but obligations were carefully met as such came due. The hui never had any cash; it always owed debts that would have staggered a haole; and under Africa’s calculating guidance it was beginning to prosper.
Nyuk Tsin, pleased with the manner in which he was taking hold of business problems, did not dominate her family, except in three particulars. Every Kee child had to be educated, and during the year 1900 this apparently impecunious Chinese family was preparing to send three grandsons to college in America—doctor, dentist, lawyer—and within the next decade fourteen more Kees would be ready to go. Nyuk Tsin herself went barefooted in order to save money to pay mainland tuitions, and it did not matter to her if her sons’ wives were forced to do the same. The sprawling family lived with terrifying frugality in order to pinch off each fugitive penny that might be saved to provide some sparkling grandson with an education.
In this profound resolve Nyuk Tsin was constantly abetted by the wild-eyed Englishman, Uliassutai Karakoram Blake, who enjoyed walking down from the Church of England school to visit with her in Chinese. He said, “I used to curse the Yankee threat to Hawaii, and at one time I wanted to take arms against America, but when annexation took place I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘America’s no worse than England. They’re both bloody robbers, and if I can stand one I suppose I can stand the other.’ ”
He encouraged Nyuk Tsin to educate her grandchildren to their maximum capacity. “Have you ever stopped to figure, Wu Chow’s Auntie, what it cost you to make Africa a lawyer? And how much you’ve already got back in return? Well, be assured that in the future the rate of return will be even greater.” He was a flamboyant man and his ferocious mustaches flourished in the little Nuuanu room as he spoke of the future: “Science, mathematics, speculation! Who knows where they will lead? But wherever they take us, Wu Chow’s Auntie, only the educated man will be able to follow.” She always felt better after a talk with Uliassutai Blake; she wished she had gone to school to such a teacher. For his part, the eccentric Englishman found real joy in talking with one of the two people who understood his dynamic interpretation of the world.
The other was a thin, hawk-eyed young revolutionary then seeking refuge in Hawaii: Sun Yat Sen. Even better than Nyuk Tsin, he comprehended what his teacher Blake was talking about.
The second particular in which Nyuk Tsin dictated to her family was the matter of houses; she considered it a waste of money to build pretentious homes, especially since reliable people spent their time working outside. Therefore she kept as many of her sons jammed into the bleak clapboard house and its sprawling sheds as possible. Obviously, not all forty-nine Kees could crowd into even that commodious shack, but an astonishing number did. Asia and his family were excused to live in back of the restaurant; Europe and his brood were permitted to live over the vegetable store, but all the others crowded somehow into the Nuuanu residence. There the Hawaiian wives cooked fairly regular meals and the grandchildren learned to talk pidgin and eat poi. By 1899 Africa could well have afforded a home of his own, but even though Nyuk Tsin allowed him to juggle every cent the hui commanded, she did not consider him capable of deciding where he wanted to live, so at thirty-one with a wife and five children, he stayed on at the old house. “It saves money,” she said. The bulging house now owned four ukuleles, and fat Apikela, white-haired and benevolent, taught all her grandchildren how to strum the little instrument. It was a noisy house, with a Hawaiian mother and a hard-working, silent Chinese auntie.
The third particular in which Nyuk Tsin dominated her family was in the purchase of land. Her Hakka hunger for this greatest of the world’s commodities would never be satiated, and she was haunted by a recurring nightmare: she saw her constantly increasing brood and there was never enough land for each Kee to stand upon and to raise his arms and move about. So whenever the Kee hui had a few dollars left over after paying education bills, she insisted that they acquire more land. To do so in Honolulu was not easy, for generally speaking, land, Hawaii’s most precious resource, was not sold; it was leased. Nor was it parceled into acres or lots; it was leased by the square foot. The Hoxworths owned tremendous areas of land, inherited from the Alii Nui Noelani, and so did the Hewletts, inherited through the old missionary’s second wife. The Kanakoa family had huge estates; and the Janderses and the Whipples, although they owned little, controlled enormous areas through leases. Whoever owned land grew wealthy, and it was the ironclad law of the great haole families never to sell. Hawaiians were willing to sell, but their land was usually in the country. Therefore, when the bent little Chinese woman Nyuk Tsin decided to get enough Honolulu land for her multiplying family her interests threw her directly athwart the established wealth of the island.