Honolulu (15 page)

The rest of the soldiers made their way down the street, seeking other willing partners. But with the exception of two or three women who, like May, cared only about the color of money, doors were slammed in the soldiers’ faces; normally bawdy women suddenly became shy and reclusive.

In the few weeks I had been here, I had seen these women take into their houses men of sometimes unsurpassed repulsiveness-ugly, unkempt, and malodorous-and yet these neatly groomed men wearing the colors of their country were turned away solely because of the color of their skin. They left Iwilei feeling frustrated, indignant, and angry.

The rain began to fall more heavily. I went back inside and returned to my sewing, as best I could with the usual noisy distractions from May’s bedroom.

By seven o’clock that evening, the rain was heavier still and the street outside was now a mud flat, and largely deserted. Even men hungry for sex did not venture into the sodden streets of Iwilei when the weather was this bad. I was inside sewing; May was standing on the porch, smoking a cigarette and watching the gray sheets of falling rain, when I heard her mutter, “Uh-oh.”

Something in her tone prodded me to join her. “Is something wrong?”

Silently she nodded down the street.

Through a curtain of rain I could make out a large group of mendozens of them-passing through the stockade gates. As they grew closer I noted two things they all had in common: they were all wearing the uniform of the United States Army, and they were all black.

May discarded her cigarette, grinding it out with her heel. “This sure as hell ain’t good,” she said, rushing inside.

I watched transfixed as the men of the Ninth Cavalry emerged like dark specters out of the storm-side by side, as we would learn later, with soldiers of the Twenty-Ninth Cavalry, an all-Negro regiment stationed at Fort Schafter. And there weren’t merely dozens but hundreds of them, all converging on Iwilei.

I hurried inside, where May gathered up as much of her money and jewelry as she could find, threw it all into a bag, and slung it over her shoulder. She looked around for Little Bastard, but the sound of marching feet must have already alerted him to the coming trouble and he had taken off for parts unknown.

We would read in the paper the following day how the members of the Twenty-Ninth had thrown a luau for the men of the visiting Ninth Cavalry, consuming much liquor, as word rapidly spread of how badly a number of them had been treated by the women of Iwilei. But at seven-fifteen that evening, we did not need anyone to tell us what was happening-we knew.

The mob paused when it reached Lena Stein’s house, but there was no sign of her and the window shade had been drawn down. For a moment the only sound we heard was the tapping of rain on the rooftops around us, like a disembodied drummer’s corps accompanying the soldiers.

Then someone threw a brick through Lena’s front window, shattering the calm as well as the glass, and more than just rain descended upon us.

One of the soldiers who had been rebuffed by Lena now jumped up on her lanai and with his bare hands tore off the top bar of the porch railing, then used it as a club to break down Lena’s door. I heard her scream as he rushed in, dragged her out, and pitched her headfirst into the street. She hit the ground like a stone skipped across a filthy pond, her face quickly buried in inch-deep mud.

Then the floodgates opened wide. Soldiers pounded up her porch steps and into her bungalow, breaking windows, overturning furniture, smashing her gramophone, looting the house of all valuables.

Lena attempted to crawl away unnoticed, but a soldier gave her a glancing kick in the neck for good measure.

The mob might well have let May pass by unmolested, but she was not taking any chances. She grabbed me and we jumped out a side window, as behind us the mob literally tore apart Lena’s house, then stampeded over the rest of the stockade like a herd of wild stallions.

Iwilei, never the quietest of places, now resounded with the terrified wails of a hundred panicked women fleeing for their lives, overflowing the street as well as the narrow alleys between houses. Their pimps provided no protection-they too were driven out, and offered scant resistance to the rioters.

May and I inched our way from house to house in the crawl spaces beneath the bungalows, as above us the floors shuddered with fury. Covered in mud, we scurried along like half-drowned rats as we caught glimpses of half-naked women pulled from their homes. A few were injured by flying bricks or glass, but by and large the drunken, furious soldiers seemed less intent on doing the women physical harm than in laying waste to their houses and possessions.

The police guards who patrolled Iwilei did their best to stop the rioters, but they were a bare handful of men and soon retreated, calling for reinforcements.

For the next twenty minutes, May and I were trapped underneath a house, unable to move in any direction, while bedlam reigned around us. Finally the mob moved on and we scrambled out from under the house, running in the only direction we could: up toward the workers’ camp behind the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company. Some of the little cottages were closed tight as drums; others were guarded over by their tenants, who stood defiantly on their doorsteps with guns or clubs, determined to fight off the rioters if necessary. One of these was Joseph Kahahawai Sr., who saw me-heaven knows how he recognized me, covered as I was from head to toe with mud-and ran up to us. “Get inside! Hurry!”

In the temporary shelter of the Kahahawais’ home, Esther helped us wash up and gave us a pair of clean dresses-“Mother Hubbards,” May called them-to wear. Neither she nor anyone else in the camp knew what was going on, and when I explained what had happened, Esther just shook her head in disgust. “All these malihini haoles coming here,” she said, “bringing their hate with them.”

I appreciated their help, but it was not they who were the object of the soldiers’ wrath. I whispered to May, “We cannot put these people in danger by staying here,” and grudgingly she agreed. We thanked the Kahahawais, Esther made the sign of the cross on our behalf, and we ran out and up Iwilei Road. Dozens of other women were also fleeing this way, and barely a hundred feet into our flight we encountered the prostrate form of a neighbor, Jennie Barr, lying in the middle of the road. The back of her dress was torn and blood oozed from a gash between her shoulder blades. We pulled her to her feet, and though dazed she ran with us up toward King Street.

But as we neared it we were scarcely prepared for what we saw: a battalion of U.S. Army troops, most of them white, deployed across Iwilei Road between O’ahu Prison and King Street, with another contingent bordering ‘A’ala Park. This was the Second infantry from Fort Schafter, which had been summoned to quell the riot. They stood in battle formation, with rifles at shoulder arms, facing us.

And not just us. Behind us we now heard voices, and turned to see that large parts of the rioting mob, having finished their near-demolition of the stockade, were now retreating the only way they could-up Iwilei Roadwith the three of us caught between them and the haole battalion ahead of us.

“Shit!” May cried, and as one we ran toward the soldiers ahead of us.

We ran as fast and as hard as we could, until Jennie slipped and fell. May and I picked her up, then carried her between us as we rushed toward the battle lines drawn ahead. Fortunately, one of the haole officers signaled two of his troops to come and assist us, and the men soon ushered us safely behind their lines.

Meanwhile, the rioters were headed straight for these same lines.

A soldier sounded a bugle, and the men of the Second infantry obediently attached bayonets to their rifles-but the mob did not slow.

Another blow of the bugle, and the Second began to load their rifles.

We braced ourselves for a battle, but the rioters finally seemed to comprehend the gravity of the situation. They recognized the second bugle call as the order to load and, apparently not prepared to meet the barrels of their comrades’ rifles, they quickly retreated and dispersed into the back alleys and corners of Iwilei.

The riot, it seemed, was suddenly over.

A soldier took us to the Honolulu police station at the corner of Merchant Street and Bethel Avenue, along with most of the other displaced women of Iwilei. Many were barely clothed, railing about the ransacking of their homes and the theft of all their worldly goods. A handful of refugees had, like May, managed to escape with their money and jewelry and now entrusted thousands of dollars in cash with Chief McDuffie (notably not including May, who preferred to keep a closer eye on her funds).

The Second infantry quickly clamped down on Iwilei, closing the sole entry road and issuing permits to enter and leave so the last of the rioters could be ferreted out and damage to the stockade assessed. But May insisted to McDuffie that she be allowed back into Iwilei to look for her cat, and a determined May Thompson was not a force to be trifled with. Finally, another detective standing nearby-a short, wiry Chinese-Hawaiian in a neat suit, with an impressive scar bisecting his right eyebrow-volunteered, “I take ‘em, Boss.”

McDuffie acquiesced with a sigh. “Okay, okay. They’re all yours, Apana. Get a pass from the provost marshal and a uniform to drive you.” Sternly he told May, “In and out in an hour, Maisie, cat or no cat-you got that?”

May assured him that she did and we obediently followed the Chinese detective. “We go bumbye, one stop,” he told us, leading us to his desk where he retrieved not a gun or a billy club but a coiled black bullwhip made of braided rawhide, hanging from a hook on the wall.

I glanced uneasily at May and whispered, “Do all policemen here carry whips?”

“Naw, only this one,” she said, apparently recognizing him. “Apana, huh? Ain’t you the guy who shut down that the fa lottery in Chinatown last week? ”

He nodded matter-of-factly and led us out of the station house.

May told me, “We got us a four-star escort, kiddo. This is Chang Apana, who holds the department record for most arrests.” She turned and asked, “You rounded up, how many, seventy guys at one time, single-handed?”

“Oh, no, no,” the detective objected modestly. “Only forty.”

I looked at this little fellow, even shorter than I-no more than five feet tall, perhaps a hundred and thirty pounds-and could hardly imagine him subduing so many men. “How many guns did you need?” I asked.

“No gun. Just this.” He hefted his bullwhip, then smiled slyly and added, “Cool head, main t’ing.”

Apana said something in fluent Hawaiian to a uniformed officer, who left to get a patrol car. Then the detective spoke with the Army provost marshal, who reluctantly signed a pass and handed it to him. In minutes we were in the patrol car, on our way to Iwilei. The uniformed officer drove; Detective Apana did not have a license to operate an automobile, apparently liking cars only slightly better than he liked guns.

As we turned a corner, Apana noticed a group of young men loitering under a street lamp. He yelled out the window, “‘Ey! You no savvy curfew? Go home!” For emphasis he swung his arm out the window and snapped his whip, which uncoiled like a snake and cracked the air like a gunshot, scattering the young men.

Amid the wreckage of Iwilei we drove to May’s cottage, which had fared a little better than its neighbors. May and I got out of the car and I began calling sweetly, “Little Bastard? Poor Little Bastard, where are you, Little Bastard?”

Detective Apana laughed uproariously and kindly shared with me the meaning of the cat’s name. I blushed, I think, down to my toes.

It was Apana-who told us he had begun his law enforcement career as an officer for the Hawai’i Humane Society-who finally found the miserable little feline dozing contentedly under a neighboring house. May scooped him up and stuffed him into a canvas bag. I half expected him to claw her to pieces for this indignity, but with May he was remarkably compliant.

She also took the opportunity to rescue her gramophone, which had survived the riot unscathed, as had the sewing machine. She asked me to carry the cat, but I offered instead to transport the gramophone, which was heavier but far less hazardous.

The damage to the stockade was evident all around us: broken windows, smashed porches, shredded wire screens, gutted furniture upended in the street. All told, it would total some five thousand dollars in damage-not counting the money, jewelry, and clothing also lost in the riot.

Back at the station house, May and I took note of a dazed Lena Stein sit ting on a bench in the lobby, a blanket wrapped around her, nursing a cup of hot coffee. May tossed her a sarcastic smile as we passed.

“Thank God we preserved your white maidenhood,” May said acidly.

Lena muttered an obscenity; we left the station to check into a hotel.

For the next two days we rented a room at the strangely named Silent Hotel in downtown Honolulu-at least until the managers got wind that May was entertaining men in her room and summarily ejected us. We then hastily checked into the Railroad Hotel on King Street, where I persuaded May to behave herself until we were allowed back into Iwilei.

I found the entire experience frankly terrifying, and seriously considered finding other quarters in a less colorful-and less volatile-neighborhood. But the grim reality was that I still barely had enough pocket money to rent a room for a single night, and so I instead brought up the matter of salary with May as we sat at a table in our room, playing a card game called “gin rummy.

I began by telling her that I very much appreciated her hospitality and kindness to me, but that I needed to begin earning money of my own so that I might eventually be able to bring a family member here to Hawai’i. I started to tell her about Blossom, but halfway through my explanation she interrupted: “Wait a minute. This kid’s parents … sold her to your family?”

“There is a Korean word for the custom, but-yes.”

“And she was only five years old?”

I nodded.

May stared at me, and for the first time since I had known her, she seemed genuinely at a loss for words. In lieu of them she stood up, went over to her tin of money, and took out a thick wad of currency. She came back to the table and laid out in front of me approximately fifteen dollars in cash.