Hawaii by James A. Michener
But when Nyuk Tsin heard Hong Kong’s second list—the Kee holdings that were to be liquidated to cover the new purchases—she perceived with displeasure that the biggest project of all was missing, and she wondered why. Beginning querulously and with a piping voice she said, “This is a good list, Hong Kong.”
Hong Kong smiled and observed expansively: “Well, I thought we might as well get rid of the old projects.”
“But if I heard your list correctly,” Nyuk Tsin continued softly, “there was no suggestion that we sell the land upon which we are now sitting.”
Hong Kong looked with some embarrassment at his son Eddie, but neither spoke, so Nyuk Tsin continued: “Surely, if we need money for new ventures, we ought to sell first of all this old taro patch. And everything on it. Didn’t you think of that?”
In a burst of confidence Hong Kong said, “Of course we thought of it, Wu Chow’s Auntie. But we considered this land too precious to you. We cannot sell it during your lifetime.”
“Thank you, Hong Kong,” the old woman replied, bowing her thin gray head. “But one of the reasons why this idea of selling old businesses to go into new is appealing to me is that we will not only make money but we will also be forced into many new operations. We will have to work and will not be allowed to grow lazy and fat.” She folded her hands, smiled at her clever men and added, “Have you noticed, Hong Kong, how every Chinese family that tries to hold on to old businesses loses everything in the end?”
“But you always preached to us, ‘Hold on to the land!’ ” Hong Kong protested.
“Ah, yes!” Nyuk Tsin agreed. “But not always the same land.” Then she added, “Old land and old ideas must be constantly surrendered.”
A new concept had come into the room, a concept of change and going-forwardness, and for some moments Hong Kong and his son contemplated the old woman’s vision of a great family always in flux and always working hard to profit from it. The silence was broken by Nyuk Tsin, who said, “So we must sell this precious old land, Hong Kong, and in our liquidation, let it be the first to go.”
“The land we will sell,” Hong Kong said quietly, “but we will keep the old house for a little while longer. I could not imagine you living anywhere else.”
“Thank you, my dutiful grandson,” Nyuk Tsin replied. Then, briskly, she added, “So we must start this day teaching Bill how to run a brewery. Sam must study how to make money from bakeries, and I want Tom to begin reading about new ideas in architecture for old buildings.” She proposed ways by which every losing venture they were about to buy could be transformed into a money-maker, and she warned: “Hong Kong, you must study carefully to see that we acquire only the best land. Eddie, organize everything in the best business procedure. I must depend upon you two to keep your eyes on everything.”
As the meeting was about to break up, the old matriarch said, “It’s very exciting to see a family launching out into bold new projects. You’ll be proud of this day, but remember, Hong Kong, as you buy, be very secret, and do it all at once. And when you buy, always allow yourself to be forced into paying a little more than the seller has a right to hope for. When your plan is understood by all, nobody must feel he’s been cheated.” She paused, then added, “But don’t pay too much more.”
Three weeks later, at a meeting of The Fort, bluff Hewlett Janders laughed and said, “If we didn’t follow the old missionary law about no alcohol here, I’d send out and buy drinks all around.”
“Good news?” John Whipple Hoxworth asked.
“The best. Just managed to unload the brewery. What a millstone it’s been. My sainted grandmother told me once, if she told me a hundred times, ‘No good will come of a Hale going into the brewery business.’ And she was so right.”
“Get a good price for it?” Hoxworth Hale asked.
“I got thirty-five thousand more than I ever hoped to,” Janders replied. “I’ve been wanting to stick Hong Kong Kee ever since he pulled that fast one in buying the Gregory’s leases.”
“Did you say Hong Kong?” Hoxworth asked.
“Yes. He slipped this time. Nobody can make money from that brewery.”
“That’s odd,” Hale said. “I just sold Hong Kong the old Bromley Block. It’s been losing money for years.”
At this point one of the Hewletts arrived with the good news that he had unloaded the taxicab company. “To Hong Kong Kee?” a chorus asked.
“Yes, and at a good price,” young Hewlett replied.
A gray silence fell over the board room while Hale looked at Janders and Janders at Hewlett. “Have we been made fools of?” Hoxworth asked slowly.
Finally dour John Whipple Hoxworth said, glumly, “I guess it’s my turn to confess. I just sold Hong Kong that chain of bakeries we started before the war. Big losers.”
“What’s he up to?” Hewlett Janders cried. “What’s that tricky Chinaman up to?”
“It must be real estate. He’s buying property just to get real estate.”
“No,” one of the young Hewletts interrupted. “Because he just sold the old Kee taro patch. For a million five.”
“My God!” Janders choked. “He’s selling, he’s buying. What’s that wily sonofabitch up to?” The men looked at one another in exasperation, not so much because they were angry at Hong Kong, as because they suspected that he had some clever deal cooking, one which they ought to have anticipated for themselves.
The deal was clever; in truth it was, but only the first half. Anyone, if he had had the advice of a hard-working lawyer like Eddie Kee, could have bought losing firms and sold prosperous ones, making a nice profit on the transaction. That was clever. But what really counted was the fact that Bill Kee, backstopped by his father Hong Kong and his smart brother Eddie, was learning how to brew fairly good beer.
It wasn’t easy, and some of the first batches, introduced by a florid advertising hullabaloo featuring the slogan “Kee Beer, Your Key to Happiness,” was dreadful stuff which the local population christened “Chinese arsenic.” But soon, with the aid of a Swiss-German whom the hui flew in from St. Louis, the beer began to taste reasonably palatable, and since it sold for a nickel a can less than others, workingmen began acquiring a taste for it. So without even considering the $1,800,000 worth of real estate on which the old Janders Brewery had sat, the Kee hui made a very strong profit out of that particular tax purchase.
But the big money-maker, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to be the bakeries. Each store brought with it enough real estate so that of itself the deal was favorable, but Sam Kee, at the age of sixty-four, discovered a real affinity for selling cakes, and he showed substantial profits on each unit in the chain.
Not all the projects turned out so well. For example, the taxicab company resisted every attempt to make it pay, and finally Hong Kong reported to his grandmother: “This one is no good.”
“Give it away,” Nyuk Tsin replied.
“I hate to surrender so easily,” Hong Kong protested. “There ought to be some way to make money out of taxicabs.”
“Somebody else probably can,” Nyuk Tsin agreed. “But not the Kees. Anyway, I don’t like taxis. They seem to aim at me whenever I go out. By the way, I saw what Tom is doing to the old Bromley Block, and he’s making it into quite a handsome building. If we had traded even, giving away the taro patch for the Bromley Block, we’d still have been ahead. I like to see the family working,” she said.
And as the year ended, her hundred and fourth, she sat in her little house at midnight, and with a flickering oil lamp she undressed, until she stood completely naked, a tremendously frail old woman made up mostly of bones, and with the lamp moving cautiously near her body she inspected herself for leprosy. There were no spots on her hands, none on her torso, none on her legs. Now she sat down and lifted in turn each of her ungainly big feet. There were no spots on the toes, none on the heel, none at the ankles. At peace for another night, she slipped into a flannel nightgown, blew out the lamp, and went to sleep.
After one of the meetings of Whipple Oil Imports, Incorporated, Hoxworth asked his fellow board member, jokingly, “Hong Kong, now that the Gregory’s deal is over, and nobody got too badly hurt, are you happy that you sneaked the outfit into Hawaii?”
“What do you mean?” Hong Kong asked.
“Well,” Hoxworth pointed out amiably, for he was growing to like the clever Chinese whose business judgments usually proved sound, “Gregory’s has been here for nearly five years. They’ve taken enormous sums out of the Territory, but what have they done for Hawaii?”
“Like what?” Hong Kong asked.
“Like museums, schools, libraries, medical foundations.”
Hong Kong thought a while and said in apparent seriousness, “Every year the manager of Gregory’s has his picture in the paper handing the community drive a check for three hundred dollars.” Hale looked at his new friend in astonishment, and saw that Hong Kong was laughing. “They don’t do very much for Hawaii,” the Chinese admitted.
“And as the years go by, Hong Kong, you’ll see that they do even less. You have a lot of Kees in Hawaii, Hong Kong. How many?”
“We figure that the old grandmother has over two hundred great-great-grandchildren, but not all of them are in Hawaii.”
“Have you ever thought that each one of them will be cheated just a little bit if there are no new museums or orchestras? Put it the other way, doesn’t everyone of your family who grows up here go to college on the mainland a little bit stronger because of what the old families did for the islands?”
“You’re right!” Hong Kong agreed hastily. “And nobody expects Gregory’s to copy you. But it looks to me, Hoxworth, as if we’re entering a new age. We don’t have to have handouts from above any longer. We pay good wages. We tax. We get the economy moving real fast. Everybody is better off. Even you.”
“Have you ever heard of an art museum financed by taxation? Do you think the smart young Japanese who are coming up so fast will put aside one penny for a good university or an orchestra? Will a dozen Gregory’s ever make a decent society?”
“Hoxworth, you’re going to be surprised,” Hong Kong assured him. “When we get a functioning democracy here, our boys are going to vote for museums, universities, medical clinics. And they’ll tax their own people like hell to pay for them. Hawaii will be the paradise people used to talk about.”
“I can’t believe it,” Hoxworth argued. “The good society is always the reflection of a few men who had the courage to do the right thing. It is never voted into being. It is never accomplished if it’s left to the Gregory’s of the world.” But when they parted he said something that would have been totally unthinkable two years earlier: “By the way, Hong Kong, if you spot any smart young Japanese who are as intelligent as you are, let me know.”
“What do you have in mind?” Hong Kong asked.
“You’re doing so well on our boards we thought it might be a good idea …”
“It would be,” Hong Kong said quickly. “If you pick up young Shigeo Sakagawa, you’ll be getting a winner.”
“Isn’t he running for senator … on the Democratic ticket?”
“Yes.”
“How could I take such a man onto our boards?” Hoxworth asked.
“You won’t find any good young Japanese running on the Republican ticket,” Hong Kong said flatly.
“What are you, Hong Kong?” Hale asked.
“When I was poor, I was a Democrat. Now that I have responsibilities, I’m a Republican. But I make my campaign contributions only to smart young men like Shigeo … and they always seem to be Democrats.”
“Let’s talk about this again, after the election,” Hoxworth said, and for the first time he started listening to Shigeo Sakagawa’s campaign speeches. But as the campaign grew hotter, he heard Shig saying one night: “All over the world nations have had to fight for land reform. In England they accomplished it by the vote, and things went well. In France they had to have a bloody revolution, and all went badly. I have worked in Japan for General MacArthur, giving great landed estates to the peasants, and all the time I worked there I said to myself, ‘I ought to be home in Hawaii, doing the same thing.’ Because I knew what you know. Hawaii is generations behind the times. Our land is held by a few big families, and they lease it out to us in niggardly amounts as they see fit …”
“The young fool’s a communist,” Hale snorted as he turned off the radio, and there was no more talk about inviting Shigeo Sakagawa to join The Fort.
AFTER the presidential elections in 1952, Congressman Clyde V. Carter of the Thirty-ninth District in Texas appointed himself a committee of one to investigate—for the fourteenth time—Hawaii’s fitness for statehood. He reached Honolulu in mid-December bearing with him only three minor prejudices: he hated to the point of nausea anyone who wasn’t a white man; he knew from experience that rich men were the saviors of the republic; and he loathed Republicans. Thus he was not completely happy in Hawaii, where rich men were invariably Republicans, and where sixty per cent of the people he met were obviously not Caucasian. In the first five minutes he decided: “This place must never be a state.”
He was therefore surprised when the welcoming committee, consisting of Hoxworth Hale, Whipple Janders and Black Jim McLafferty, head of the Democratic Party in the islands, gave florid but hard-hitting defenses of statehood. He was particularly impressed by what Hoxworth Hale cried over the loud-speaker: “We are an American community here, with American ideals, American standards of public behavior and a truly American system of education. Congressman Carter, we citizens of Hawaii want you to move among us as a brother. Stop anyone you see. Ask us any questions you please. We are here to be inspected. We have no secrets.” The crowd applauded.
Black Jim McLafferty was also impressive. He said in a flowing brogue, “Today we citizens of God’s fairest group of islands welcome a distinguished congressman from the great State of Texas. We know, Congressman Carter, that our terrain, magnificent though it is, would be lost in the confines of your vast kingdom of Texas. I am reminded, sir, of a story I heard while serving with the air corps in England, when a loyal son of Texas, somewhat under the influence of Scotch, that wonderful beverage, shouted in a local pub, ‘Why, Texas is so big, you can get on a train at El Paso and travel all day and all night and all the next day and all the next night, and when you wake up the next morning, where are you? You’re still in Texas!’ And the Englishman replied, ‘I know how it is, Jack. We got trains like that in England, too.’ ”
When the crowd chuckled, the congressman bowed graciously and raised his hand to Black Jim, whereupon the Democrat continued: “But what may surprise you about Hawaii, sir, is that although you have always heard that these islands are rock-ribbed Republican, which is probably why you voted against statehood at the last two sessions, I want to tell you here and now that the islands are going to be Democratic, and even though my good friend Hoxworth Hale is doing his very damnedest to keep them Republican, I’m doing just the opposite to make them Democratic, so that when you finally admit us to the Union, sir, you will be able to boast to your constituents, ‘I’m responsible for bringin’ Hawaii into the Union, yassuh. Best Democratic state in America, after Texas.’ ”
This prospect so intrigued the congressman that he asked if he could meet with McLafferty, so the Irishman, never one to miss the pregnant moment, volunteered: “Ride into town with me, and we can talk.” To the dismay of the welcoming committee, who had planned things rather differently, big, comfortable Congressman Carter settled down beside Black Jim as the latter steered his 1949 Pontiac—“Never drive a better car than fifty per cent of the people
“Do the islands really want statehood?” Carter asked, glad to be in private with a practicing politician.
“Sir, you can believe this one fact. The islands want to be a state.”
“Why?” Carter asked. “We treat them real well in Congress.”
“I’m sure that’s what George the Third said about the colonies. ‘Parliament treats them decently. Why do they want self-government?’ That’s why we fought the Revolution.”
This marvelous bit of sophistry was quite lost on Carter, for as a boy he had lived along the Mexican border and the word revolution had no appeal to him whatever; were he able to repeal American history he would have done so, and the Thirteen Colonies would have gained their independence by the efforts of gentlemen in powdered wigs who made polite speeches. “What would you have under statehood that you now don’t have?” he asked coldly.
“People usually answer that with some statement about taxation without representation, or the fact that under statehood we’d elect our own governor. But I have only one explanation, sir. If we were a state, we’d either elect or appoint our own judges.”
“Don’t you do so now?” Carter asked, for like most visitors to the islands, he knew nothing about them.
“Indeed we don’t,” Black Jim said with feeling. “They’re appointed from Washington, and even when we have Democratic presidents, they usually appoint worn-out mainland Republicans.”
“How does that hurt you?” asked Carter, who had once been a judge himself.
“We’re a feudal society here …” McLafferty began, but again he used the wrong word, for the South Texas which Carter represented was also feudal, and as he recalled his happy youth, he rather felt that this was one of the better patterns of life. As McLafferty droned on, the congressman reflected: “By God, under a benevolent feudalism you didn’t have Mexicans trying to tell decent men …”