Hawaii

A young Japanese man named Kamejiro Sakagawa is sent to Hawaii by his family to work on a plantation for several years. He has a sweetheart in his home village whom he plans to marry when he has saved enough money to return home. Kamejiro arrives in Honolulu with a few hundred other workers. Luckily, he is sent to a plantation on Kauai owned by Whip. The land is rich, and Kamejiro is a hard worker. Shortly after he arrives, he insists on building a public bath and charges his fellow workers to use it each day. This requires him to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to chop wood to heat the water, but he does so willingly. Kamejiro is passionately nationalistic, as are his other countrymen. None of them want to marry a non-Japanese girl. One man who does so is ostracized from the community. The group is also supportive of Japan’s military exploits, and Kamejiro frequently donates money to the country’s war efforts.

During this time, Whip crosses paths with a botanist who can get him a supply of Cayenne pineapples from Dutch Guiana. When the plants arrive, Kamejiro is put in charge of cultivating them. Whip and his employees watch anxiously as the plants are assailed first by an iron deficiency and later by mealy bugs. However, they turn into a viable cash crop. Whip’s only other difficulty during this time is battling the threat of Democratic politicians on the island. He orders his men to vote straight Republican and fires anyone who won’t. Later, he takes full control of H & H Enterprises and ejects any covert Democrats in its ranks.

Elsewhere, the Kee family is prospering. Nyuk Tsin is now in her 600 with nearly 100 descendants. She is the head of the family and is faced with two major problems. The first is that one of her grandchildren plans to marry a white man. The younger generation doesn’t carry the same prejudices as she does, and they support the marriage. The second is that Nyuk Tsin wants to get one of her grandchildren accepted at the prestigious Punahou School. This prep school will guarantee admission to the best mainland universities. Unfortunately, the school only wants Asians who don’t pose an intellectual threat to the white students. Also, the Kee boy’s mother wears Western clothing and doesn’t appear humble enough. It takes a few more years before one of Nyuk Tsin’s duller grandsons is finally accepted.

After 13 years of toiling on Whip’s plantation, Kamejiro still hasn’t saved the requisite $400 to return to Japan as a rich man. While he earns a good living, he spends too much money donating to political causes or bailing his friends out of debt. Finally, he settles on getting a bride sent to him in America, and the marriage is arranged by his mother. His prospective bride is beautiful, but she doesn’t think Kamejiro measures up to the picture she was shown. At the last minute, she swaps places with another bride. Kamejiro instead marries this plain-looking farm girl named Yoriko.

In 1914, another descendent of the missionaries, Hoxworth Hale, embarks on a brilliant academic career and becomes an unintentional radical. While at Yale, he learns about the historical inaccuracies related to the missionary families in Hawaii and later embarrasses the university by pointing out the underhanded way it acquired some valuable paintings. Ultimately, he comes to the conclusion that the end justifies the means. “What counts, and the only thing that counts is this: What good did the institution accomplish?” (1029).

In 1916, Kamejiro gets a new offer from Whip. The planter proposes to blast through a mountain range on Oahu to bring water to his sugar plantation on the drought-ridden side of the island. Kamejiro is hired to manage the dynamite blasts. For such risky work, he will receive a large increase in pay. By this time, his family is growing, he has a baby daughter and a son on the way. Even though the family fortune is increasing, there is always another good cause back in Japan or another needy friend that Kamejiro must support. After the dynamite work ends, the family goes to the Malama Sugar Plantation, where both Kamejiro and Yoriko work in the fields. Their family continues to increase with the birth of three more boys.

During this time, the plantation workers are excited to hear news of a union. One of their friends has begun writing pamphlets demanding more pay and shorter working hours. Company thugs routinely discourage worker agitation, and a strike leads nowhere. The strikers are fired and remain temporarily homeless. An explosion at the sugar plantation leads the planters to conclude that the disgruntled workers are to blame. Kamejiro is suspected of involvement because of his knowledge of explosives. While he is cleared of the charges, he is also blacklisted by the plantation owners and can only find work as a privy cleaner.

Despite this setback, Kamejiro insists that all his children must receive a first-class education. He also wants them to attend a Japanese school to learn the language and culture. Even as he tries to instill the culture of his homeland into his children, they identify as Americans. His sons have shown athletic talent, and three of them are offered football scholarships at Punahou. His daughter, the brightest of the children, will be denied a good education because she is a girl. Instead, Kamejiro opens a barbershop to be staffed by female barbers where she can work.

In 1927, Whip dies and leaves control of H & H to Hoxworth Hale, then 29. Hoxworth leaves behind his rebel school days at Yale and proves to be an able administrator. Under his watchful eye, the founding families in Honolulu quietly run the local economy and government under the name "The Fort.” He carefully cultivates the friendship of the American military whenever a ship is in port, thus making useful friends in Washington.

The powerful clique that ran Hawaii came to be known simply as The Fort. It included, of course, H & H and also J & W. The Hewletts were members, as were some of the lesser planters from the big island. Banks, railways, trust companies and large estate owners were represented (1071).

In the fall of 1941, Hoxworth is incensed when he reads a satirical essay written by his son Bromley that analyzes the sex habits of the original missionaries who sailed on the Thetis. In cramped conditions, nine women managed to conceive babies while onboard. The story becomes an embarrassment for the missionary families, but one of Bromley’s teachers comes to the boy’s defense and points out to Hoxworth that no gifted writers have ever produced any books about Hawaii. He says, “The biggest fact is that nobody writes about Hawaii because the great families, like yours, don’t encourage their sons and daughters to think…to feel…and certainly not to report” (1120).

In late 1941, Kamejiro is pressured to have his children’s names removed from his home village records in Japan. As Hoxworth explains, Japan may soon be involved in a war with America, and anyone of Japanese ancestry should demonstrate their loyalty to America, but Kamejiro stubbornly refuses. Just days afterward, Pearl Harbor is bombed. Everyone in Honolulu is shocked by the surprise attack. One of Kamejiro’s sons is already in the army, and two younger ones are in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. However, when the war breaks out, the army’s suspicions are aroused against them, and they are forbidden to carry weapons.

Unlike the detention camps set up to house the Japanese in California, no such extreme measures are used in Hawaii. An FBI investigation reveals no espionage on the part of the locals to aid the Japanese war effort. Despite much prejudice in military circles, the government establishes a unit of Japanese American soldiers called the Two-Two-Two that will be sent to fight the Germans in Europe. All four of Kamejiro’s sons are deployed.

Meanwhile, Kamejiro’s old friend, Mr. Ishii, is spreading disinformation about the imminent victory of Japanese Emperor Hirohito. He has been getting his news from unreliable papers published in the Midwest. At the barbershop, Kamejiro’s daughter Reiko starts to question some of her military customers to find out if the rumors are true. She then strikes up a romance with a white officer from Seattle who has spent some time in Japan. Kamejiro finds out about his daughter’s relationship and her intention to marry the officer. He complains to the army, and the officer is immediately transferred. Then, Kamejiro arranges a marriage between Reiko and Mr. Ishii, who is decades older than she is. Reiko goes along with the plan rather than disappoint her father. Kamejiro is forced to close down his barbershop because the other lady barbers are prohibited by their families from working for him since his own daughter got involved with a white man.

In the Chinese community, Nyuk Tsin advises her sons to buy up as many businesses as they can that cultivate a military clientele. She accurately predicts that Hawaii will be flooded with servicemen and wants to be in a position to cater to their needs and make a profit. Even though the Kee family must overextend itself financially to acquire the properties, they persist. Late in the war, Hong Kong Kee gives an inflammatory speech in front of a group of white businessmen denouncing the Japanese. Afterward, he is berated by his grandmother. Nyuk Tsin points out that Japanese Americans will be very likely to control the local economy after the war, and she wants the family to stay on their good side.

Hong Kong is instructed to apologize to all his contacts among the Japanese, and he is ordered to offer them loans, especially if they have sons fighting for America in the war. Kamejiro fits the bill for the Kee family’s generosity. They lend him enough money to open a grocery store. In Europe, Kamejiro’s sons find themselves in a pitched battle with German forces at Monte Cassino, attempting to open up an Allied entrance to Rome. They lose the battle but are lauded in the press for their superhuman effort: “It was in their bruising defeat at Monte Cassino that the Two-Two-Two became one of the most famous units of the war. ‘The Purple Heart Battalion’ it was called, for it had suffered more casualties than any other similar-sized unit in the war” (1232).

The Triple-Twos prove their valor once more when rescuing a stranded unit of Texans known as the Lost Battalion. In the fight to rescue them, two of Kamejiro’s sons die. Afterward, no one doubts the courage or loyalty of the Japanese Americans in Hawaii.