I winced. It was not hard to imagine Joe saying something like this.
"So this woman, Mrs. Peeples, gets out of her car, and"-a faint smile lightened her face-"all sides seem to agree she was quite an imposing lady."
"Joe said she would've made a good linebacker," Pascual added, chuckling.
"She gave Joe a shove; Joe shoved back. Then she grabbed him by the throat and started choking him. Joe slapped her on the side of the head and she fell back onto the running board of the car."
At this point all involved wisely decided not to pursue the matter any further. Joe got back into the car and they drove off-but not before Mrs. Agnes Peeples took down their license-plate number.
I asked, "But what does this have to do with the white woman who was assaulted?"
"The haole woman saw the license plate of her attackers' car," Pascual said. "It was only one number off from Haruyo Ida's car. And the police claim she has also identified Joe and the others as the boys who raped her."
I was stunned. It seemed impossible; absurd. Our Joe? "I don't believe it! Joe would never do such a thing."
"No," Esther agreed, "but I wonder about the other boys. There was that business with Henry and Ben and that girl at the schoolyard-"
When they were each eighteen, Henry and Ben had been arrested on a charge of rape against a seventeen-year-old Chinese-Filipino girl on a school playground. It came out at trial that the relations had been consensual, but though the two boys were acquitted on rape charges they were convicted on a trumped-up charge of sexual assault. They were sentenced to four months in prison, though Ben was released early by Governor Lawrence Judd so that he could represent Hawai'i in the amateur boxing championship in New York City.
"The girl consented," Pascual reminded Esther. "She said so at the trial."
"And what about Lillie Ching?"
"Who?" I asked.
"Ben's girl. She's six months pregnant with his child. Ben wants to marry her, but so far Mrs. Ching's refused to let him."
"Just because he got a girl in pilikia," Pascual said, "doesn't mean he would-"
Esther lost her usual poise in an anxious outburst: "How do you know? How do we know Ben, or one of the others, didn't do something terrible after dropping off Joe at home?"
I had never seen her look so tired and frightened.
Joseph Sr. arrived a few minutes later with what turned out to be the only good news of the day: "Benny's mother called Princess Abigail." Princess Abigail Kawananakoa was one of the last of the Hawaiian ali'i, and one of the most prominent citizens in Honolulu. "The princess called Senator Heen and said, `Bill, somebody's got to represent these Hawaiian boys and see they get a fair trial.' "
This was the same William Heen who, as a judge, had granted me my divorce. He had gone on to become a state senator and was now in private legal practice. "He's a good man," I said. "He'll see to it the boys are treated fairly."
"You'll see," Joseph predicted, gently trying to calm the mother of his child. "This will all blow over in a few days."
ut alas, it did not. The sudden tempest that had swept up Joe and his friends intensified into something resembling a typhoon. There was widespread outrage among the island's haoles over the treatment of this "white woman of refinement and culture," as the city's Englishlanguage newspapers called her, while the mildest description of Joe and his friends was as a "gang" of "local" boys-the latter an apparent euphemism for "nonwhite." It was the first time any of us had seen the word used in this way. And while these papers zealously maintained the anonymity of the victim, they did not hesitate to publish the names and home addresses of the "Ala Moana boys," as the papers had unfairly dubbed them-as if there was no question that they had committed the crime.
A few days later, a Japanese paper, the Hawaii Hochi, revealed the name of the victim: she was Thalia Massie, the wife of a United States naval officer, Thomas Massie, stationed at Pearl Harbor. The Hochi also disclosed that when first questioned by police, Mrs. Massie "could not remember the number of the automobile nor could she recognize the culprits because it had been too dark." But now, somehow, her memory had markedly improved, and she positively identified all but one of the suspects and even recalled their license number. Interestingly, a haole man was seen following Mrs. Massie that night, and soon the town was buzzing with rumors that he was a Navy officer with whom she was having an affair-that it was he who had beaten and raped her, and she had accused the five boys to divert suspicion from her lover.
Meanwhile, the English-language newspapers laid the blame for this supposed crime on the most unlikely of doorsteps. They blamed the beachboys of Waikiki and their "loose relations" with women tourists for encouraging miscegenation between whites and "half-castes." The beachboys wasted no time in condemning the crime, but it was an accusation that would be endlessly and absurdly repeated by the press here and on the mainland.
A more immediate problem for our family presented itself the next day, when the children came home from school and a confused Grace, now thirteen years old, asked me, "Did Joe do something bad to a lady?"
Jae-sun and I looked at each other, sighed, and sat down with the children to try and explain the situation as best we could.
"The police believe he did," I told her, "but that doesn't mean they're right."
"Then why do they think he did?" Charlie, now ten, wanted to know.
"People believe all sorts of things that aren't always true."
"This is what laws are for," Jae-sun told them soberly, "to determine what is true and what is not."
Grace thought a moment, then asked, "Mama, what does `rape' mean?"
Jae-sun went pale, stood up, announced, "I have something I need to do," and quickly left the room.
I weighed my words carefully. "Rape ... is something a man does to a woman without her permission."
"Doris says it happens between your legs."
Hearing these words from my young daughter chilled me in a way few things ever have.
"Yes," I told her. "That is so."
I explained the rest of it as best I could, telling her that if any boy tried to do the same thing to her she should scream, fight, kick, and run, if she could.
"Is that what they think Joe did to somebody?" she asked.
"Yes. But I do not believe Joe Kahahawai did this thing."
"Neither do I," Grace said.
There was silence for a moment, then Harold spoke up. "Mama? Can I ask you something?"
"Of course, Harry."
In the same sober tone Harry asked, "Do we have to eat stinky old garlic at every meal?"
Grace looked like she wanted to drop a plate on his head, but I just laughed.
"Well . . ." I said thoughtfully, "I believe I know what your father's answer to that will be. But I might be able to convince him to make his kimchi with less garlic, and to serve it only at lunch and supper, not breakfast. What do you say to that?"
"It's a deal," Harold said quickly.
I went downstairs and informed Jae-sun that henceforth we would be making our kimchi with half the usual amount of garlic.
"What! We'll barely be able to taste it!" he objected. "I'll do no such thing!"
"And we will not be serving it at breakfast, at least not to them."
"But a meal without kimchi is not a meal!"
"Would you rather the other children call them names?"
Jae-sun frowned. "No, but ..."
"They are not Korean, yobo," I said gently, "they are Korean-American. They can be Korean at supper; let them be American at breakfast."
He sighed and muttered darkly to himself, his usual signal of acquiescence.
ven when I tried to banish the "Ala Moana case" from my thoughts, I found I had to confront it-as on Thursday, when I went to work at Mrs. Quigley's. She and her daughter were as overwrought over the case as most haoles, and it distressed me to hear them refer to Joe and the others, whom they did not even know, as "gangsters," "hoodlums," and "degenerate
s," parroting words they had read in the newspapers.
I put on my best Korean mask of dispassion and focused on my sewing. But toward the end of the day Mrs. Quigley came up to me and suggested, "Jin, dear, why don't you go home a little early? I'll pay you for the entire day, of course, but it worries me to think of you out after dark-now that we know how dangerous these streets really are."
"I have never encountered any trouble," I replied mildly.
"Well, let's keep it that way. Humor an old worrywart, would you?"
It was hard to be annoyed at someone who seemed so genuinely concerned for my welfare. I thanked her and left, but later, as I walked home from the streetcar stop, I had to ask myself: If Joe and his friends didn't do this thing, who did? And were the beasts who did it still out there? For the first time I understood how much better it must be for people like Mrs. Quigley to believe that the men responsible had been apprehended and were not still at large, threatening their daughters' safety. Had it been anyone but Joe who was charged with this crime, I might well have wanted to believe it myself.
The next day I received a visit from Esther, who had just come from a bail hearing at which a bond of thirty-five hundred dollars-an impossible sumhad been set for each defendant. Even though a bail bondsman required only a ten percent deposit, three hundred and fifty dollars was no small amount either, and at first only Horace Ida's family was able to come up with enough cash to secure his release. Eventually the bail was reduced to two thousand-but even two hundred dollars proved difficult for Esther to raise. She asked for help from her friends-not an easy thing for such a proud woman to do-and in addition to giving as much as our household could afford, I approached my own friends, as well as sympathetic customers of the tailor shop. Jade Moon donated five dollars, more than anyone else I knew. Wise Pearl's farm was barely eking out a living for her family, but she still managed to scrape up a dollar for the bail fund, as did Beauty and Shizu. Many of my customers could only contribute fifty, sixty, or seventy cents to the cause ... but they did so out of a growing conviction on the part of many in Palama that this case was looking, as one man put it, "like a goddamned haole frame-up."
In the seventeen years I had lived in Hawai'i, I had heard neighborhood boys occasionally taunt white boys with cries of "Pilau haole!"-"You stink, white boy!" But I had never seen this long-simmering resentment of haoles laid quite so bare, like a raw nerve suddenly exposed by a knife cut.
It took nearly a month for Esther to raise bail and Joe was the last of the five to be released. That night a quiet celebration was held at the Anitos' home, which our family attended. When Joe saw me, he immediately came over and hugged me, and the first words out of his mouth were, "I didn't do it, Aunt Jin."
"I believe you, Joe."
"I don't know why this lady says I did-why we did. We never went down Ala Moana that night." He shook his head. "After Shorty and Mack and the others got released, Captain McIntosh tells me, `They're gonna leave you here to rot, Joe. What do you owe them? Tell me what really happened and things'll go easier for you.' I looked at him and said, `We didn't do it. I had a roughhouse with that Hawaiian lady, but we didn't do anything to any haole woman."'
"McIntosh is a horse's ass," someone said behind me. I turned and Joe introduced me to Eddie Ross, a one-time Honolulu police officer, whose sympathies were clearly not with the department. "Joe, if you hadn't cuffed Agnes Peeples, McIntosh would've had to find some other poor saps to railroad," he told us. "Minute he heard about you boys, he decided, `That's it, we got our men,' and to hell with anything that suggested otherwise. Just like the Fukunaga case. If those marked bills hadn't turned up, McIntosh would've had poor Henry Kaisan swinging from a gallows, and if the facts didn't fit, he'd have made 'em fit. The Navy wants someone caught, tried, and convicted-pretty much anybody'll do. You boys just came along and happened to fit the bill."
I nodded. "'Carve the peg by looking at the hole.' " Eddie looked at me blankly and I explained, "An old Korean saying. It means, Do things to fit the circumstances."
Joe looked more sad than angry. "You know the worst part, Aunt Jin?"
"What, Joe?"
"They kicked me out of the National Guard," he said softly. "I was prouder of being a guardsman than anything else in my life."
The hurt in his eyes was the hurt of the young boy I had met on the beach at Iwilei, taunted by his friends for being a kua'aina.
he first day of the trial saw Honolulu oppressed by a spell of hot, windless Kona weather. Argument over the case in Honolulu was just as heated, with most haoles believing the prosecution's case, and most nonwhites, the defendants'. Hundreds of otherwise sane people stood in line for long, sweltering hours at the Territorial Courts Building for the chance to watch the first day of testimony in the First Circuit Court of Hawai'i. I admit, I was one of them.
Esther, Pascual, and Joseph Sr. were shown to seats up front, and I was lucky to get a seat in the back of the courtroom along with a handful of other "locals." The largest portion of spectator seats was occupied by what appeared to be every starched, blue-nosed society lady in the city of Honolulu: the front of the courtroom was a field of wide-brimmed white hats bobbing like lilies on the water. Dressed in their Sunday finest, these women exuded a gaiety and excitement that seemed quite out of place in such grim circumstances.
I was startled and dismayed to see that one of them, sitting in the third row, was Mrs. Quigley.
The atmosphere in the courtroom was suffocating. Some women had the foresight to bring fans, while men fanned themselves with their hats, as District Attorney Griffith Wight made his opening statement. I was quickly infuriated by his characterization of Joe and the other defendants as little more than hoodlums.
Then Wight called his first witness: Thalia Massie, the victim of the alleged assault. She entered the courtroom supported by one of the prosecution attorneys and by a tall, slender, steely-eyed woman in her forties-her mother, Mrs. Grace Fortescue. This was my first glimpse of the woman around whom so much accusation and gossip had swirled these past two months. She was of average height, in her late twenties, with an oval face, dimpled chin, and a short bob of light brown hair. She was sedately dressed in a dark suit with a white collar.
After a few introductory questions, District Attorney Wight asked, "Mrs. Massie, where were you shortly after eleven-thirty P.m. the evening of September twelfth?"
"I was at the dance at the Ala Wai inn," she replied in something of a monotone, "and I left shortly after eleven-thirty."
She went on to tell of how she had walked down Kalakaua Avenue and turned on John Ena Road-at which point an automobile drove up beside her and two men jumped out of it. One of them punched her in the jaw; the other dragged her into the backseat of the automobile.
"Would you be able to identify these two men?" Wight asked.
She pointed without hesitation to Joe and Henry.
"I tried to talk with them, but every time I did Kahahawai hit me. I offered them money if they would let me go." In a soft but steady voice she told how she was taken someplace off Ala Moana Boulevard, to a clearing between trees where she was dragged out of the car by Chang and Kahahawai. Chang then proceeded to violate her, though "I struggled as hard as I could."
"After that, Kahahawai assaulted me," she continued, her voice trembling slightly. "He knocked me in the jaw. I started to pray and that made him angry and he hit me very hard. I cried out, `You've knocked my teeth out,' and he told me to shut up. I asked him please not to hit me anymore."
As riveting as her story was, I knew for certain now that Mrs. Massie was either lying or terribly, horribly mistaken. Joe, like his parents, was a devout Catholic-he would no sooner hit a woman for praying than he would rape her.
She went on to describe her further violations-"from four to six times"-by Chang, Kahahawai, Ahakuelo, and Horace Ida. Eventually, she said, one of her attackers "helped me to sit up. He pointed to something and said, `The road's over there,' then they all ran of
f and got away, and I turned around and saw the car"-the license-plate number of which she claimed to partially memorize.
She then stumbled up to Ala Moana Boulevard, where she flagged down a passing car and begged them to take her home.
The courtroom was silent as she related all this; everyone in it appeared transfixed by her tragic and seemingly heartfelt story. As the prosecutor finished his questioning, I sat wondering: Had Mrs. Massie been assaulted by an illicit lover, as was rumored? Perhaps by Lieutenant Massie himself, when he learned of the affair? Or had she truly been attacked by a gang of local youths, and somehow convinced herself that these five boys were they?
After a lunch recess, Mrs. Massie returned to the stand for crossexamination by defense attorney Bill Heen, as impressive a lawyer as he had been a judge. He showed tact and respect as he began questioning Mrs. Massie, then cut to the heart of the matter: "Do you remember saying to the police officers on this night when you returned to your home that you thought these boys who assaulted you were Hawaiian?"
"I remember telling the people who brought me home that," she replied evenly. "I don't remember what I said to the police."
"Do you remember making a statement to the effect that you were unable to identify any of these boys because it was too dark?"