In the morning, Tuesday, December 9, Irene prepared Yoshio’s tea without a word. It was still dark. Yoshio sat down to drink it, his wife a dark, slight shadow in the graying light.
-You’re sure the Japanese have landed, Yoshio finally said. You heard for certain.
Well, she had heard for certain. Panicked reports of parachutists landing on King Street, those frogmen in Kauai. Warnings of sabotage by local issei, first-generation immigrants, and nisei, their American offspring. The information was unreliable of course, and it had come only briefly every few hours. She had also heard the opposite: intermittent appeals for calm, assurances that the islands were now secure.
Abruptly, she flung herself down on her knees. She held her hands forward in a dramatic gesture of supplication. Her hair fell from behind her ears onto her face and she made no effort to remove it.
-You see for yourself that Robinson does not arrive! We must be practical, Yoshio, my love, or we die! We must help this pilot, don’t you understand, we have no choice. The Japanese have destroyed all the ships in Pearl Harbor. Next they’ll take over the islands, or else why would they do such a thing? It’s time we were on the winning side, Yoshio. The white Americans have no love for us, it’s all over the radio what they’re doing. But when the Japanese come, who will we be? In the eyes of the United States, we’re not American, why would you want the Japanese navy to think so? If we’re not American and we’re not Japanese, who are we? Please, for your child’s sake, if not for mine, we must make a deal with the pilot!
Yoshio reared back momentarily, shocked by his wife’s sudden outburst. Then he leaned forward and touched her forehead, but she pulled away like a wild animal.
-And the Niihauans? Yoshio cried, dropping his arm. We just side with the pilot and forget about them?
-Your family! She rocked forward. With both of her small hands, she squeezed his face with a sudden and surprising force. Do you really think that the Niihauans love us as you say? We’ll always be outsiders, Yoshio. Even old Shintani, as long as he’s been here, is ultimately called Japanese Man by his neighbors. And look at Howard, even though he taught you to ride, you can tell he comes here and steps into the kitchen and the first thing he wonders is why he, the most educated Hawaiian on Niihau, wasn’t picked to run the ranch for Mr. Robinson. You see it too, the way he flicks at those teeth with his tongue. Before he even greets us with the traditional Hele mai ai, he’s thinking to himself, Why aren’t I in charge of the Old Lord’s house? Mr. Robinson loves his Hawaiians, no doubt about that, but it’s the love one has for small children. One day they will know this, and his paradise will be gone!
Yoshio pulled back from his wife, and drummed the table with one thumb. His cheeks were red from Irene’s fingers, his ears rang with her pleas. She was right, he knew. After all, didn’t he understand? He had often been passed over for a job position that was instead given to a white man, and ironically, as bad as things got for the Japanese Americans, things were sometimes worse for the Hawaiians. All over the islands they were treated as a vanquished people would be, with a kind of pity and condescension, while at least the nisei inspired fear and some respect because of their obvious education and their sheer numbers. Somewhere in there was the Negro, but he had met so few he had no idea where to put him. Also, the Portuguese, the Filipino, the Chinese, the Korean—the list would go on, each a rung in a steep and unforgiving ladder the haoles had successfully built, themselves perched smack on the top, looking down with large, fixed smiles and angry, fearful eyes.
Yoshio pushed his tea away, and stood up.
-You don’t think we can trust our neighbors. That’s what you’re saying.
-Who treat Mr. Robinson as a god! You really think we can depend upon a people who deify a haole?
Yoshio ran one hand across his eyes. He felt tired and older than his thirty-seven years. He hated the hollow cast of his wife’s eyes, the disgust at him implicit in her voice. Perhaps she was right. There was no reason to think that the Niihauans would be good allies, that they would rise above the anti-Japanese hysteria of the other islands. They were, after all, willing minions to an eccentric white man. He put a hand on Irene’s shoulder.
-If Mr. Robinson doesn’t come today, I’ll ask that the pilot stay with us tonight. We will talk to him frankly and decide what’s best to do.
They rode by cart again to Kii, and waited in the warehouse. Sometimes Howard walked out onto the sand as if the reason Robinson did not arrive was simply a matter of the right vantage point. He returned each time and wagged a finger in the air to indicate that the boat’s arrival was not imminent, but impending nonetheless. Yoshio said little and studiously avoided Nishikaichi’s gaze.
Howard called his name.
-Do you want a swim? It’s hot enough to roast a pig. I could throw a popola on the sand and we’d eat in ten minutes. How about it, a swim?
He pointed to the ocean and then back at himself and then at Nishikaichi. When Nishikaichi did not respond, he prodded Yoshio.
-Tell our guest what I’m asking. A swim! Do they do that where he comes from? Or does a machine swim for him? He chuckled, not unkindly, at his joke.
Yoshio watched the cigarette jump up and down on Howard’s lips like a dying fish. A swim? It seemed inappropriate, but then Howard did not know all the circumstances surrounding the strange pilot.
-Swim? said Yoshio to Nishikaichi. He jerked his head toward the ocean and then, unsure whether he had chosen the correct Japanese word, raised his arms and grabbed at the air, closing his mouth and squinting his eyes against a cool, imaginary wave.
Nishikaichi jerked his head with a sudden rushing smile.
Yoshio was an excellent swimmer, but today he waded in only to his knees and slapped his hands at the surface, cooling himself. After a while he removed his white shirt and scrubbed its underarms, thinking how Irene would be pleased. When he was done he laid the shirt flat on the water and let it float in front of him, a jellyfish of cloth. He glanced once at Nishikaichi. The boy was clearly enjoying himself; he made large, splashing noises when he surfaced and held his breath with his cheeks puffed out, like a child. He was not a good swimmer and Yoshio was disappointed by this; part of him hoped that the young man would just up and breaststroke away, that he would disappear from their lives like a receding wave.
Today Robinson would again not arrive. Yoshio knew this because the sun was beginning its downward descent into the horizon and there was still no speck on the ocean, and because in his heart of hearts he knew that what had happened was bigger than Robinson. Pearl Harbor, gone. America, at war. Even if he told the Niihauans the truth, they would refuse to believe this; Robinson was the Old Lord, after all, and only God could keep him from Niihau. War? Not something that would get in the way of Ka Haku Makua. Yoshio sighed and folded his arms. He stared out at the small splash of Howard’s kick and, beyond that, to Kauai’s leaning parapets. Perhaps Irene was right. Perhaps Kauai had been invaded and Robinson was at this moment being interrogated by Japanese soldiers. The thought made his throat constrict. It would be only a matter of time before they came to Niihau and did what victorious armies did—loot, pillage, torture, rape, shoot.
Underwater, Nishikaichi watched his flight suit billow like loose skin in the water. Momentarily he let himself forget that he was racing against time, beholden to his chu. Instead, he was relaxed and, finally, cool. He held his stinging eyes open so that the swirling underwater colors blurred together—the green flight suit, his silvery hands, the beige sand, the turquoise sky. He was for a moment indistinct from the world, part of the silt he disturbed as he floated by.
When small, orbiting diamonds rose from his exhaling mouth, he thought of a night flight he had once taken over the China Sea. The sky had been moonless, and the thicket of stars made way for him and his plane as if they were gods. His gauges had risen fast—altimeter, engine, oil temperature—as his stomach had dropped with the beauty of it. Now, underwater, he felt just as glorious. Miraculously cool and heavy on his body, the ocean had the thick but calming embrace he could liken only to his one encounter with a whore when he had been stationed on the outskirts of Shanghai. He had been young, just seventeen, and depressed by the destruction all around him, the dull-eyed women, the dirty, half-dressed children with plundered gazes, the smell of burning rice paper and wood, the endless hiccup of random artillery fired by bored, homesick soldiers. He had gone to the brothel because his flying unit had insisted on it. He was afraid that the woman would be young and recently brutalized, so he chose an old one, her face plastered with bright color, so fat and heavy breasted that, midpleasure, he thought he might suffocate. But there was no doubt that the interaction did what it was supposed to—transported him momentarily away from there. He felt as if he were in the hold of some dark, listing ship that smelled of mold and chalk, bound for somewhere far, far off. Now, for an unguarded moment as he pedaled through the water, he wondered what he’d ever seen in his life as a soldier, the drone of days waiting for a conflict, the mindless destruction. Even flying had its downside. Yes, the sudden thrill of loosing free of the ground and the dizzying spirals and sudden climbs of combat suited him, as did those beautiful views of the whirling, tilting ground. But once in a while, when there was nothing but cavernous sky and a straight compass bearing to the carrier, he felt a pure and weary loneliness. It mingled with the g-force-induced nausea and the hammer of the engine in his ears. He inhaled it with the smell of gasoline and leather so strong it watered his eyes. It pulsed through him like blood. When he landed and whatever hormones and secretions that surged in combat flight (endorphins, adrenaline) had receded, a small part of this loneliness remained, whirring and clacking through his bloodstream like a broken piece of machinery. He had wanted to ask other pilots about this, whether they felt it too, this certainty that each human is ultimately alone. Like islands, he’d wanted to say. But he had never found that kind of bravery.
Finally out of breath he scrabbled his arms and legs to the surface. He swam (if one could have called it swimming) as if through a thunderhead, buffeted and churned by the wash of his own windmilling limbs. He could have just touched the bottom and straightened up—he had not gone out of his depth—but he wanted to remain as long as possible part of this pelagic world. As he broke the surface, one hand swatted the water from his eyes; the bright, shimmering day came harshly into focus. Blue sky, yellow land, red rocks, and pounding heat all jockeyed to copilot his senses. He didn’t want to think about his mission, or try to summon up the energy to talk to Harada-san and convince him of a new allegiance. He wanted to go back underwater.
The pilot shook as if suddenly cold, but already the sun heated the back of his neck, the cloth on his arms. Yoshio thought how he looked more boyish than ever; only two days on Niihau and already he had unknowingly molted. His wet flight suit clung to a thin frame, and his skin, rosied from the sun and now clean, had lost any of the fierceness that dried blood and dirt may have given it. Yoshio wanted to steer as clear of the pilot as possible until Irene was present, but at this moment he looked so harmless, he decided it would not hurt to find out a little more now.
He nodded at the boy, who waded toward him and then stopped and turned wordlessly to face the ocean. For a while they both watched Howard swim. Then Yoshio cleared his throat.
-There’s something that doesn’t make sense with you. If your people are coming, why do you need to destroy your plane and papers? You keep pestering me about that, but it’s not adding up.
Nishikaichi looked at him solemnly.
-Meiyo, Harada-san. Honor.
-You mean if the American army lands here instead of the Japanese Imperial Navy.
-I mean that…
He stopped and frowned. He didn’t really have a good answer for this. He had just convinced Harada-san that his troops were coming, and this meant that his plane would not need to be destroyed. He bit his lip and hoped his insincerity would not show through.
-To tell you the truth, Harada-san, my commander’s a son of a dog. He’d disapprove if he saw my plane intact. Once it’s been crash-landed, it’s my job to destroy it, even though we both know it won’t ever fall into enemy hands. He’s a stickler for things like that. I would be shamed, and so would my unit, even my family.
Shame. Haji. Yoshio shrugged, as if the word meant little to him, but he felt the skin on his face grow hot. His hands flew together and began to clench. He thought he heard a man’s whisper. Yellow sissy, it said, twice. But no, he was here on Niihau, next to a young Japanese pilot, and no one was speaking, especially not English. He looked down at his writhing hands with disgust. Quit it, he admonished himself.
Nishikaichi glanced at Yoshio’s grasping hands, then up at his face.
There was silence for a while. Howard was headed back to shore. Nishikaichi pointed.
-He’s like a fish in the water. He must be someone who stands on the waves too.
Yoshio did not understand at first, but then the young man spread his arms out and bent his knees. Yoshio nodded.
-You mean surfing.
-We saw so many pictures. Men on wood, like flocks of strange birds! When we flew into Pearl Harbor, I thought I’d see hundreds like that. But perhaps I’ll see some here.
Yoshio turned away. The mention of Pearl Harbor made his stomach curl up.
-Do you walk on water, Harada-san?
Yoshio exhaled and then glared.
-We have nothing to talk about any longer, Airman Nishikaichi. You and your compatriots have bombed my country, and I do not forget that.
-Harada-san, perhaps you don’t understand. With all due respect to your age and experience, how can I explain? He frowned. Last year, he said, on leave from my duties, I went to Mount Aso, our beautiful national park. Have you been there?
Yoshio had never been to Japan. Not like Irene, who had gone and always talked about it as if it held something special.
-My squadron and I went for a hike. While on the mountain we saw a fox and he saw us. He watched us for a while but ran when we tried to get close. He was smart. He knew who should run and who should not, that his mountain had changed now that we were on it.
Howard was closer now. They could see the sun flash on his face when he lifted his head to breathe.
-Perhaps you are the small fox here, Yoshio finally said. His voice was quiet, heavy. We are the army. If all of us on Niihau get together against you, you will run.
-Perhaps. But there is a reason you haven’t told your neighbors about Pearl Harbor and that they haven’t lined up against me. Look, Harada-san, you don’t want to be a second-class citizen again.
-Again?
-America is not kind, Harada-san. We know this in Japan. In the newspapers we read of respected citizens who come here to work, to find only slave labor and misery.
-Your newspapers profit from exaggeration, pal.
-Perhaps. But here no one knows their place. In Japan we do.
-Fix your plane and leave, Yoshio responded quietly. I won’t stop you.
-If only it was that simple. Nishikaichi laughed. It’s not as if I can flap the wings like a bird and leave the earth with a worm in my mouth. The plane is dead, and now I must dispose of its body properly. I won’t leave before it is completely destroyed.
Yoshio tried to imagine Nishikaichi lifting a hammer to the ruined plane, its long, already broken body coming off in chunks under his blows. He couldn’t see it, something so powerful giving in so easily. Even in pieces as it was, it was so clearly a plane. What could he do to alter it? He would need to grind it so far down, he supposed, that whoever finally took the island would see only a pile of black dust.
-We know you’re not allowed in the same movie theaters as Americans, Harada-san.
-I keep telling you, I am American. For goodness’ sake. He frowned. Anyway, it’s whites. We’re separated from them. Not the whole theater. Just the sections. We sit in different sections.
-Like the Africans.
Yoshio shrugged.
-Why do you accept that? Do you think that’s your rightful place?
-Who said I accepted it? Yoshio’s voice was suddenly tight. He heard a sound to his right that could have been the shore break, or was it in his head? His fists jammed together. He felt the back of his neck prickle as if with cold, but the day was still blazingly hot. Then it was too late: he was back in a theater in California. A young man, on a date, and he had mistakenly sat in the reserved section. The next thing he knew he was being pulled at by large, exuberant ushers. The girl he was with screamed as the men came at him with open hands and leering grins, enjoying the break in their usual tedious work. Their square hats had tilted with the effort of the extrication, though he had not fought at all. All he could remember was the rhythmic sway of their yellow usher epaulets as they dragged him, stunned and unmoving, from the theater. The silly uniform gave a certain military authority to the situation; even Yoshio felt the hollow thud of shame in his stomach, as if he had truly done something terribly wrong. The girl’s scream (what was her name; he could not remember) had disappeared abruptly when the theater’s doors to the street swung closed behind them. The three men dropped him in the gutter, and one had, after an extra push on Yoshio’s limp shoulder with one shiny black usher shoe, slapped his hands together in a washing motion. That sound, the susurration of what Yoshio could only describe as a kind of contented violence, reverberated in his head for years. Even after the screams of the girl had finally faded from his memory, this did not. That sudden, mocking swish-swish, half applause, half gleeful hand rubbing—even now he sometimes heard it in the hum of the surf, or in the first clickety-clack as Irene pushed denims under the sewing machine. It stopped him dead in his tracks and his heart would begin to thump wildly. Of course, he had worse memories. And there it was, that voice again.
Yellow sissy, it whispered.
-No disrespect meant, Harada-san. But in Japan there is a right place for everyone. Surely a Japanese man like you would never bow so deeply to others.
Yoshio came out of his reverie and saw Nishikaichi staring at him. He forced his hands loose and slapped at the water. Then he put his palms on his hips, as if afraid the fingers would come together again, and glared at Nishikaichi.
-You’re the prisoner here, not me.
Nishikaichi looked at him with squint-eyed concentration.
-You deserve more, Harada-san, that’s all, he finally said, bowing his head.
-We wait for Mr. Robinson, Yoshio said quietly.
-Harada-san, I’ll make sure no one here on Niihau gets hurt. If you help.
Yoshio blinked at the water. For a moment it seemed as if he would nod in agreement.
-Here comes Howard, he said instead.
When the sun was a palm’s width from the horizon, Howard announced that they would stay the night instead of making the long, fifteen-mile journey back to Puuwai. Yoshio felt a surge of relief. Irene would be disappointed and frustrated that the pilot would not be at their house. But he was glad for the short reprieve.
Yoshio motioned that he would be back soon, and made his way to the end of the beach where the cliffs plummeted to the ocean and a stand of kiawe withstood the onshore wind. There he stopped and exhaled. He wanted to scream or cry, he did not know which. Instead, he turned and stared at the horizon.
He was not looking one last time for Robinson, but for the Huna Motu, sacred and mysterious islands that the ranch hands sometimes mentioned. In 1778 Captain Cook reported that he saw them, naming them Moonapapa in his journals, and returning to Niihau twice with high hopes of sailing toward them, but they never appeared again. Irene had laughed and said it was all ignorance. But when the unulau wind blew, some of the villagers, unbeknownst to Robinson, headed to the old volcano Kaiwoha on the eastern tip of Niihau to catch a glimpse of one of the Huna Motu chain, the island Unulani, which burst with fruit, animals, and houses. Right before dawn it appeared for seconds, they said, and disappeared again with the sun. Yoshio had pushed to hear more about it, but the men had shut up then, and turned to peeling their fruit with sudden earnestness. Perhaps the islands would appear for him now, even though it was dusk. Yoshio raised his arms. What was he doing? he wondered. All he knew was that he needed a sign and anything would do, a disappearing island, a shark spirit, Jesus Christ himself.