Chapter Sixteen

As December 8th dawned, I settled myself behind the wheel of the Ford feeling a grateful reverence for life. The tires painted ghostly streaks across the wet pavement as I drove in darkness. The city tossed and turned in fitful sleep.

Auntie and I had gotten up at five o’clock to eat a bowl of Cheerios in the kitchen that was now heavily blanketed at each window. Together we dragged inside a burlap sack of rice, relieved to know that Henry had succeeded in his overnight run for groceries. I couldn’t get a dial tone on the phone, so we set out without headlights at a snail’s pace toward Queen’s, not knowing what happened overnight in the stillness of a seemingly dead city. Behind shuttered windows, tensions were crackling as rumors of an invasion spread, but for the most part, a deathly silence had settled around us.

A convoy of Army trucks rumbled past us near Punchbowl, and my pulse jumped ten beats at the racket. They were the tall canvas-topped behemoths that hauled men and supplies in grunting processions around the island as days went on. When news of the war began blasting out, military units headed to Waikiki to string great hoops of barbed wire along the sand to fortify Honolulu against invasion by sea. It didn’t cross my mind at the time that I would be restricted from kicking off my shoes and splashing in sea foam for the next four years.

The reception hall and first floor of Queen’s Hospital were a hodgepodge of desks and chairs pushed together to keep the overflow of Emergency Room patients off the floor. Nurses leaned over bandaged and moaning patients using the feeble glow from flashlights taped over with carbon paper to guide them. Because all the non-military casualties were treated at Queens, the staff wasn’t dealing with the flash burns that we had seen at Pearl Harbor. Instead, there was a steady flow of those unlucky enough to have been hit by stray bullets or shrapnel. In one case an exhausted Territorial Guardsman—these were students drawn from the University’s youth corps—propped his rifle against a wall with the safety off, and a jolt sent bullets flying into a crowd. Bloody clothing that had been cut off the wounded lay in piles in the corridor.

I snatched up the front page of a newspaper that had been crumpled underfoot in the open-air stairwell leading upstairs to the surgery and lab.

“We can take a minute, don’t you think?” I smoothed out some creases. “It’s an Extra Edition of the Star-Bulletin from yesterday.”

“Read it out loud, Lei. Your eyes are younger than mine.”

The Eastern sky had brightened to a pink that lighted up the headlines printed in three-inch type, “MARTIAL LAW DECLARED, DEATHS ARE MOUNTING; Japan Announces War.”

“Here’s an article about the martial law,” I started. “Civilians must…” I skipped over to the next paragraph. “‘Governor Poindexter said he would make a full report to President Roosevelt,’ and here he says that no local Japanese have been linked to sabotage.”

Please let this mean Jamison hasn’t been arrested.

Other articles gave news of Japanese raids on Guam and the Philippines, and the blackout ordered for Hawaiʻi. The sky was in full bloom now, opening up its petals around a golden heart. Traffic noises floated up to our stairwell perch.

A Red Cross Motor Corps driver in her gray gabardine uniform plodded down the stairs. “The elevators are going to be working today.” She flashed us a wan smile and turned eyes that were red from lack of sleep out toward the sky. “It’ll make things a lot easier for all the nurses who’ve been running between floors.”

“We’re volunteering at the Blood Bank this morning,” Auntie said.

“Better go up to the surgery on the fourth floor. It’s being operated by the Department of Defense—the government is in charge of the Blood Bank now. I just delivered some surgical dressings.” Her eyes had gone vacant as she looked out at the morning blush. I wondered if she had fallen asleep on her feet. “I need to get back to our headquarters,” she recovered with a pinched smile turned down at one corner. “It’s going to be another busy day.”

Auntie and I headed up to the fourth floor unprepared for what would be waiting. A line had already formed in the hallway outside the surgery. Two soldiers with bayoneted rifles and rolled-up sleeves were at the head followed by several grease-stained men in the kind of bibbed overalls that mechanics wear. Auntie went inside to find the supervisor as a drone of engines overhead sent the line of donors huddling against the wall.

“Don’t worry, Red Cross,” one of the men comforted me. “I work on our flyboy’s engines every day. Those are ours.”

“You’re from Pearl Harbor?” I asked.

“From Hickham Airfield, next door.”

“We got off after the midnight shift,” another one laughed with restrained humor, “and the day shift, and the shift before that. We wanted to help out our buddies by donating blood before we go back.”

“For another shift,” a third one joked.

Behind them a woman held a little girl who started to whimper. “I can hold her for you ma’am,” the first man offered. “I’ve got a daughter of my own about the same age.”

He must have noticed my worried expression. “Last night my wife and daughter got evacuated to the Red Cross headquarters here in downtown Honolulu. The Army is evacuating all military dependents to the Mainland as soon as they can get a ship with a convoy organized.”

Auntie waved me in from the doorway. “I’m glad they’ll be safe,” I said, excusing myself. “And thank you for coming to donate.”

Inside the surgery, metal beds were lined up, with curtains and enough space between for a nurse and aide. One wall was stacked with cases of bourbon and brandy, seeing as how the liquor stores were closed, so that we could offer anyone feeling faint a speedy shot of “medicine.”

One of the nurses was sharpening needles for drawing blood on a whet-stone before sterilizing. My first job was to wash glass bottles and test tubes before they too, would be sterilized. By seven o’clock the first donors were admitted to the room, and except for emergencies, the surgery was devoted to operating as the Blood Bank. Before noon, the line of donors stretched down the stairs and along the outside of the building. People waited for hours to donate. Whole crews of laborers in dungarees from the dry docks and interisland ships waited in line right along with women in silk dresses and high heels.

During the day I held donors hands and steadied them on their feet. For the few that declined a recovery shot of “spirits,” I made a jot on a tally sheet to keep track of our liquor inventory. Then there were more test tubes and bottles to wash and little snippets of conversation with the donors that brought me up to speed on what was happening around the territory.

Rescue teams were racing against time to free crewmembers trapped in the hull of the sinking USS Oklahoma. Enemy torpedoes had so seriously damaged the ship that it rolled over on its side in twelve minutes, halted only by the mast striking the bottom. The tapping of men from within the hull gave hope that they could be rescued alive, but time was running out as seawater filled the remaining airspace. The Arizona was completely submerged. Every single member of the band that played so joyously on Saturday night had gone down with the ship.

John Rodgers Airfield had been strafed during the Japanese attack so all Hawaiian Airlines planes to the other islands were grounded. Inter-Island sailings were cancelled as well.

It meant that Honolulu was closed to the outside world. A crippled sailing fleet was burning in Pearl Harbor, as President Roosevelt declared war on Japan.

****

Back at the carriage house that evening, news reports streamed in on our old GE radio in the kitchen. Details of mounting casualties at Pearl Harbor, and damage in the city, had some announcers catching themselves in mid-sentence, trying to gather their composure.

I wanted to get news that was closer to my heart concerning the neighborhood around Kaimuki, thinking that Jamison must have been home during the attack, but most of the damage being reported was closer to town. The drugstore on Kapahulu had been leveled in a fiery explosion, and stray gunfire had sliced through a house on King Street, leaving a family homeless.

Auntie was steaming vegetables to go with rice for dinner—turning the blanketed kitchen into a Turkish bath that had me blotting my forehead. Johnny was washing lettuce and tearing it into salad strips. Nonetheless, we were thankful to have a lighted room. The windows at Queen’s had been painted black this afternoon, meaning that the night shift could turn on the lights instead of depending on covered flashlights again.

I reached into the cupboard to get down three plates, setting a little bead of perspiration quivering on my temple at the effort. Over the last two days, I had been too busy to notice how quickly hospital wards turned to hot-boxes when overcrowded conditions grew frantic. The thought that Jamison had kissed away the dampness at my temple when we were in the attic was something from another world. I tucked the memory away and asked Johnny, “Did anyone come by the house today?” I didn’t want to ask him outright about Jamison.

“I was over at the Yamamotos’ most of the time helping out.” He set the salad bowl on the counter. “But yeah, I forgot to tell you. Mr. Gonsalves wanted you to know that his crew has been hired to re-build some airport stuff—hangars, I think—over at Hickham. It’s for the government, so he doesn’t know when he’ll come back to finish your house.”

A pang of disappointment stabbed at my chest. There was no word from Jamison, and now Makani Kai had been abandoned.

“Aw, don’t worry,” Johnny consoled me, misreading my expression. “They’ll be back as soon as this is all over.”

“I heard today that the government is going to stop people from job hopping,” Auntie put in.

“That’ll be too late to help me.” I sighed. “No one will be coming to Honolulu for vacation, anyway.” I didn’t have the same kind of confidence as Johnny. Nothing in the newspapers hinted of an early end to the conflict. Hitler had declared war on America, and the daring and skill of the Japanese put everyone on edge, but I pulled up the corners of my mouth and tried again, “So Mr. Gonsalves is the only one who came around.”

“No one’s even seen Mr. Yamamoto,” Johnny remembered with a start. “Mr. Suzuki drove past Fort Shafter, but the Yamamoto vegetable truck wasn’t where it’s usually parked.”

“He might have been injured and brought to Queen’s. I’ll ask Edward to check the patient roster.” Auntie stopped pushing her vegetables around on the plate and set down her fork.

We hadn’t seen much of Edward at the hospital. When he was able spend a minute or two on the fourth floor, it was to pick up a lab report that an orderly could have easily retrieved for him. He had painfully dark circles under his eyes and a gaunt slackness across his cheeks that aged him ten years. I kept the rumor from Auntie that most of the doctors hadn’t slept since the attack, but there was no ignoring the way her mouth drooped when she first saw him this morning.

Johnny talked about the lettuce patch at the Yamamoto farm. Rose and her sister were figuring out a way to plant extra rows to make up for what must have spoiled in the missing truck. Auntie asked some questions, and so time passed until we finished dinner and Johnny stacked our plates in the sink for washing. Everyone was pitching-in all over the island in ways they had never thought of before.

The rest of our evening took on a life of activity stranded behind blackened windows. Without moonlight, or even starlight, the blanketed rooms were darker than the night around us. I thought back to when my mother taught me about the difference between the paint color black—which was the combination of many pigments—and absolute black that absorbs all light and is the absence of color. I thought I knew the difference.

Now I was learning that blackout wasn’t about pigment or pulling the blinds or wearing a blindfold. Blackout was spending the end of an exhausting day with Johnny and Auntie May and caring for them more than ever, even when all of us were too tired to talk and had nothing new to say. Auntie and I had driven back from the hospital that evening without talking much at all, yet we’d been looking forward to getting home as fast as possible.

With the threat of a Japanese invasion never far from our minds, all three of us had started sleeping with what we called an evacuation bag under our beds. Even though the military wasn’t giving civilians any direction on what to do or where to go in case of the dreaded Japanese assault on Honolulu. There wasn’t really anywhere to go.

I packed my old, but practical tennis shoes, plus a couple sets of slacks and blouses. This wasn’t the time to think about glamour, so I added a heavy sweater in the event we had to hide in a pineapple field, or worse. It was funny; I questioned myself as I packed, what was important in an emergency when you can only take as much as you can easily carry?

I left the pink ball dress hanging in my closet, though it held sweet memories of dancing with Jamison. There wouldn’t be any time for painting, so brushes and tubes of paint stayed behind too. I tossed in a comb and brush, then, on second thought, took out the brush in order to use the space for the packet of poems Jamison’s father had written. Finally, I removed the rose Jamison had given me, still pressed between the pages of Pride and Prejudice. It slipped neatly it into the middle of the rice paper squares. Then I tied the packet with a ribbon and bow.

****

The next day Auntie and I joined the nurse named Bonnie who we’d seen at Queen’s on the morning of the attack. She was driving to the Naval Base hospital for a couple of hours to give the wounded men moral support. “It’s okay to wear what you’ve got on,” she told me after one look at my skirt and blouse, with only the armband to identify as a Red Cross volunteer. “We’re just going to talk to the men and make them comfortable.”

Bonnie had been dating a Navy Lt. “Gabby” Gabinsky, who owned an old Model A Ford that he drove around when his ship was in town. Because that only happened a couple times each month, young officers like Gabby tended to have cars that were a little run-down and on the small side, but Bonnie told us she didn’t mind a little rust or raggedy seats. “I never expected to accept a nursing position half-way around the world from Minneapolis, then wind up with a guy from my hometown,” she reminisced. “We met at a party. There were so many of them...” her voice cracked before she continued, “in those days, and I wasn’t really homesick. He asked me to dance and reminded me of all the big Polish guys I’d grown up with, and, you know, we just took it from there.”

The previous evening a courier had shown up at the hospital with an envelope for her from the Pearl Harbor Navy yard that had keys and a note from Gabby asking her to take care of the car until he got back. The note said he was off to somewhere that he couldn’t tell her about and warned that any letters he wrote would be censored. “His last words were ‘don’t worry’ and ‘I’ll be thinking of you’,” she said with a sigh.

We slowed to an idle behind a taxi and a line of cars, as though the city might return to normal one day. The wail of a siren and blinking lights flashed across the intersection ahead, dragging me back to reality. Then, as we approached the hospital, the wing of the downed Japanese plane with its rising sun symbol raised to the sky was still visible on the front lawn. The twisted metal was a constant and painful reminder to the survivors of the attack, since it could be seen from the ward windows.

Fumes of tannic acid and sulfur spray nearly bowled me over as soon as I entered the front door. Many of the injured men had broken bones, and as Auntie and I walked down the first-floor hallway, we could see men in plaster of paris casts immobilized in their beds. X-rays had been made to locate the position of each fracture, then the outline was sketched with an indelible pencil on the outside of the cast to provide useful information for treatment after the men were evacuated. The effect was some kind of bizarre collection of modern sculpture, a lifetime apart from art classes that I could barely relate to anymore.

The most serious victims in the burn unit were not expected to live. Numerous improvised bed cradles supported blackened limbs, while overhead, heat cradles beamed down on the unconscious bodies. I wondered how I had been able to stay calm and focused during the rush of scalded patients that came in after the attack. But what we must do, we will do, I realized. Just as these men had manned guns and rescued wounded, despite their injuries. There is something in the human spirit that triumphs in an emergency, and I was momentarily shaken and proud to have been a part of it firsthand.

“I’m going back to the injured ward to see how I can help,” I told Auntie.

She decided to stay in the burn unit in case any of the men regained consciousness. She was checking a man’s burns for infection as I left the room which was agonizing quiet, but for a moan coming from somewhere deep in the man’s unconscious where terror still threatened.

In the front ward, I’d noticed a wounded soldier lying in his bed, almost lifeless except for shallow breathing and eyes that stared without seeing at the ceiling. He wasn’t much older than Johnny, with a regulation crew cut and a bandage wrapped around his chest. There was a letter on his nightstand that must have come sometime between the Sunday of the attack and today. Hearing news from home is always uplifting, I figured, so I pulled up a chair next to his bed. Then I opened the envelope and read the first line aloud, thinking it would cheer him up,

By the second paragraph, I couldn’t control the tears streaming down my face. His mother was thanking him for all the photographs he’d sent and asked for some of him in his uniform on the ship. There was the mention of early snow, and how much everyone would miss him over the holidays. All the strain of the last two days bubbled up through those words, as I thought of all the boys who would not return home to their families.

The young serviceman—Tom, was his name—wasn’t responding, so I wiped my face on my sleeve and tried again. “Now listen.” I put on a brave face and took one of his hands. “This is from your mother, and I know you’ll enjoy hearing from her. You’ll want to write her back when you feel better, so I’m going to read the letter again.” There was only the slightest movement as he squeezed my hand, but I knew he could hear me. With a catch in my voice, I read the letter again, and at the end put it back in the envelope and set it on the nightstand. Everything would be sent back to his mother if he didn’t make it home himself. I knew she would be able to tell that the letter had been opened, and I hoped it would give her some comfort to know he’d heard it.

I was still thinking of the soldiers when we got back to Queen’s, my throat twisting into an aching lump as my fears for Jamison resurfaced. Was he lying unresponsive in a bed somewhere in the hospital? In a hallway or a corner? As long as I kept busy I could tamp down my worries, but on the quiet ride back from the Naval base, each of us were subdued, I think, by the injuries we’d seen. Images of raw wounds and fractured bones circled in mind.

“I’m going to check the wards again for Mr. Yamamoto,” I told Auntie. It wouldn’t be untrue if I also kept a lookout for the farmer. Trucks-converted-to-ambulances continued to screech down city streets carrying the injured. The Motor Corps, too, were running errands of mercy, delivering dressings and morphine, with some of the tiniest women drivers seated beside hefty civilian men who were carrying pistols, or even shotguns and rifles in case of the feared Japanese invasion.

I first tried the main floor hallway where emergency patients were lying on chairs and tables pushed together, then went up to the second floor. Newly arrived patients were being carried on stretchers through the crowded hallways, and I craned my neck to get a look at each one’s face. Some were people who had been injured during the confusion of the Pearl Harbor attack, and delayed getting medical attention. But many were the unfortunate casualties of what was called friendly fire—these were improperly fused rounds being launched by our own troops. With their nerves jangled near to breaking by rumors of invasion, soldiers were shooting at anything that moved.

A man with a bandaged head seeping a reddish stain through the dressing grabbed at my skirt as I squeezed by his gurney, and he pulled the fabric toward him. “Please nurse. Red Cross. Help me find my daughter.” He shook himself free when I began tucking the end of his dressing under the bandage. “I’m not important,” he gasped, “but my daughter is only sixteen.”

He gave me her name and I promised to do my best. Other patients wanted news, or asked for something to kill the pain. There were so many people needing help, and even with doctors and nurses working double shifts, there wasn’t enough staff to go around. After I searched open-air breezeways and rooms that had once been used for storage, now filled with cots and antiseptic fumes, I sat on a stepstool to buck-up my shaking legs. Worry and stress were taking a greater toll on my nerves than fatigue. I must pull myself together. Right now.

When I got back to the Blood Bank, I went to work washing beakers with an energetic clatter that caused a couple heads to turn.

****

Coming up the valley road after our third day at Queen’s. we were wrenched from our exhausted silence by the thin figure of a man striding in the direction of the carriage house with a purposeful, if unsteady, gait.

“It’s Mr. Yamamoto.” I skidded to a stop.

Auntie motioned him to her window and asked him to get inside. “We’ll take you the rest of the way. Your family’s been very worried about you.”

There’s a kind of freshness about dirt-farming that smells of mulch and green-growing plants. Mr. Yamamoto filled the backseat with an altogether different aroma that comes from stale sweat and unwashed clothes. He clutched a manila envelope with his name scribbled on it.

“What happened to your truck?”

“Army men took it after the Japan planes began dropping bombs. I saw the Rising Sun painted on the wings.” His head bobbled back and forth as he spoke. “They arrested me for a spy. Me! I am a farmer I told them. Over and over I told them I grow lettuce. I don’t know anything about Japan planes. I recognized Rising Sun from the Japan flag.” He massaged the back of his head with his hand as if he was rubbing away the memory.

“Don’t try to talk about it now,” Auntie advised. “We’ll get you home to your wife and daughters.”

I drove past the turn-off to the carriage house while Auntie distracted him with light conversation. “We’ve gotten to know Rose a little better over the past few days,” she commented. “She’s a good student, I’ve heard.”

“Rose is going to the University of Hawaii next year,” he said, with pride overcoming his distress. “She will be the first in my family to go to college and become a teacher.”

The crunch of our tires on the gravel in front of the Yamamotos’ house brought someone to the front door. A blanket had been pulled to the side to let in some fresh air until sunset officially required the blackout. Mrs. Yamamoto stepped out on the porch wearing an apron over a western-style dress; the girls stood behind her.

Mr. Yamamoto climbed out of the car and raised his face into the last rays of sunlight. “Please come in,” he requested.

We left our shoes at the door and crowded into the small living room. Rose brought chairs from the kitchen for Auntie and I, and when we were all sitting Mrs. Yamamoto spoke to her husband in Japanese. Rose whispered a few words to her and she began again. “My apologies to our guests,” she said. “In the great enjoyment of seeing my husband I turned to my native language. We thank you for bringing him safely home to us.”

“I only drove him a short way.” I didn’t want to take more credit than was due. “Had you been walking long?” I asked him.

“From Sand Island. It’s where the Army is setting up a camp for Japanese prisoners.

“You mean over at the piers by the Immigration Office?” I couldn’t picture much there except coral rubble and an abandoned lighthouse.

“We spent the first night upstairs in the immigration building. I was brought in a car with three others who were handcuffed like criminals. Like criminals! Reverend Miyamoto, Dr. Takahashi, and Yugoro Kusao had their hands fastened behind their back!” Mrs. Yamamoto asked him gently if he would like tea, and his agitation subsided. “The guards must have run out of handcuffs before they got to me,” he muttered after she had gone to the kitchen.

“Father, this has been a difficult time for you. Perhaps you’d like to rest.” Rose pulled her sister’s head close and patted her hair. The younger girl looked ready to burst into tears.

Mr. Yamamoto turned to me. “Miss Wentworth, you are my landlord. I want to tell you my story so you will know I am loyal to this country. Then we won’t speak of these things again.”

I didn’t want to be disrespectful of his wishes, so I bowed and said nothing.

“I was brought to a desk for questioning, but it was shibai. The man knew all about me already. Not just my name but where I was born and who my relatives are in Japan. They knew that Dr. Takahashi has a brother in the Japanese navy, and that he owns a sailboat.” He shook his head in awe at the information that had been collected.

“After questioning, a military policeman told me to take off my clothes so I could be searched. Everyone was looking at me.” He winced. “My wallet and lighter were put in this envelope.” He shook it sadly. “I don’t have any use for keys without my truck.

“When I was dressed again, I was taken upstairs by a guard and locked inside.”

“All four of you were locked in together?” I asked.

“There were about two hundred of us in a small room. The windows were black, and there were no lights, so I stumbled over people lying all together on mattress on the floor until someone called ‘There’s space over here.’ Another voice called into the darkness, ‘Soga, is that you?’ I slept next to Yasu Soga, the editor of the Nippu Jiji newspaper for the next two nights until we were loaded onto a barge. It smelled like pineapples. Yes, pineapples! We were loaded like crates of fruit. Oh! We thought we were being sent away to Moloka‘i like lepers.”

Mrs. Yamamoto came in carrying an enameled tray with a teakettle and tiny cups without handles. Before she poured our individual servings, she performed hand gestures over the cups and bowed.

We sipped the thin green tea without talking until Mr. Yamamoto began again. It gave me some time to look around the room. Japanese statues had been removed from the altar and a decorative fan taken from the wall. An effort had been made to transform the room into one that looked less Japanese. That would explain the dress Mrs. Yamamoto was wearing.

“The barge reached land after a few minutes,” Mr. Yamamoto explained. “We were still on Sand Island! We were told, ‘Four of you will sleep together, so pick up a tent and set it up.’ Reverend Miyamoto was standing by a folded canvas, looking around at others to see what to do first. He is not used to this kind of work. I am a farmer, so I went to help him. When Soga and Dr. Takahashi saw how fine our poles had been set they came over to make our group of four.

“It started raining and one old man passed out. How could he be a danger to anyone? We were given blankets, a pillow, and sandwiches. Some of the tents were collapsing, but everyone got inside anyway. I fell right to sleep, and in the morning I was told it had all been a mistake. I was free to go.” He stared at the altar wide-eyed and shook his head.

A spring inside my heart had tightened to the breaking point. I had been phoning the number that was printed on Jamison’s card since our service was restored, without getting an answer. Jamison might have been arrested. I had to know.

“Was there anyone you recognized among the other men?”

Mr. Yamamoto thought for a moment. “Dr. Miyamoto from the Japanese Hospital. He was giving first aid to the soldiers at Fort Shafter before he was arrested.”

“I was thinking of a friend of mine who’s an architect.” I didn’t dare look at Auntie May.

“There was someone like that.” He took a sip of tea. “In the morning we could see that many of the tents were falling down. An architect was setting them up right and getting the rows straight. His name was Sunada? Sumiki?”

“Sumida? Jamison Sumida.”

“Yes, that’s the name. He gave his nice jacket to a man in his tent and rolled up his shirtsleeves and got to work.”