Honolulu (43 page)

In an effort to close the books on the Ala Moana case-and to determine whether Horace Ida, Henry Chang, Ben Ahakuelo, and David Takai ought to be retried-John Kelley suggested to Governor Judd that he commission the Pinkerton Detective Agency in New York to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation surrounding the facts of the alleged attack upon Thalia Massie.

The report was not made public until a year later; even then, it was only quietly reported on in Hawai’i. The Pinkertons concluded that Mrs. Massie “did in some manner suffer numerous bruises about the head and body, but definite proof of actual rape has not in our opinion been found.” It went on to confirm the boys’ alibis: “The movements and whereabouts of the defendants on the night of the alleged assault remain precisely as they were accounted for”-and found no reason to doubt their “probable innocence.”

Accordingly, the Territory of Hawai’i dropped all charges against the remaining defendants, clearing their names as well as that of Joe Kahahawai. It could not bring Joe back, but perhaps his spirit might sleep a little easier.

It was some, but scant, comfort for Esther, who would never quite recover from the loss of her son. Joseph Sr. also continued to mourn, and I wonder how his grief and the stress of the trials might have hastened his death, at the age of fifty, seven years later. But not long after the bitter pill of the commutations, he and his wife Hannah announced some joyful news, at least: They were going to have another child. Their fourth and final son was born to them on December 20-five days before the birthday of the halfbrother he would never know-and his parents named him Joseph.

Joe’s murder and his killers’ deliverance had a profound effect on me, plunging me into a melancholy the like of which I had not felt since the death of my first, unborn child. The injustice of it colored the way I now looked at life in America-or perhaps life here had already been colored by my naivete, and I was viewing it clear-eyed for the first time. Hawai’i was ruled by a privileged elite who felt themselves above the law, and those of us with darker skin or a different cast to our eyes were merely second-class citizens. We had been brought here to do the hard manual labor that haoles would not stoop to perform, and that was what we always would be in their eyes: common laborers, who were simply not to be accorded the same rights as they.

Some people could drink from this bitter cup without it poisoning their lives, and I tried to tell myself that this was simply another kind of han to be borne bravely and silently; no worse, certainly, than what I had lived under in Korea. Had it only affected my own life, it might not have bothered me as much. But to think that my children could be struck down as capriciously as Joe had been, their lives not worth more than an hour of a haole’s life-that I could not bear.

Like a good Korean, I did not betray the extent of my desolation, certainly not to the children. My husband recognized what I was going through and tried to console me with a touch, a smile, a gentle word here and there. And Beauty understood as well, often spending mornings visiting with me in the tailor shop, since her business at the barbershop was largely confined to afternoons and evenings. We would talk about how our keiki were getting along in school, about our fellow picture brides, about everything and nothing; and in the calming drone of each other’s chatter I found a welcome distraction from darker thoughts.

On one such morning Beauty and I were chatting when the door opened to admit two men in their early thirties: one a tourist and the other a beachboy of my acquaintance, Eugene “Poi Dog” Nahuli, a member of the Waikiki Beach Patrol. This was a group founded in the wake of the Massie case to organize services and concessions at Waikiki, and not incidentally to polish the tarnished public image of the beachboys. Poi Dog-the nickname came from a little terrier-mix he took to the beach with him every day-had the quiet good looks of a Duke Kahanamoku and an impish grin not unlike Panama Dave’s. “Got a customer for you, Jin,” he announced. He had brought in a guest staying at the Royal Hawaiian who wished to have a custom shirt made from a colorful cotton print-green Japanese pine trees against a dark blue background.

“Ah, this is very pretty,” I said, starting to examine the fabric, when I felt a reproving kick to my ankle that could only have come from the person sitting beside me. It was then I noted Beauty gazing hungrily at Poi Dog as if he were, well, not poi, but perhaps kimchi.

I did not require a second kick and quickly made introductions. Beauty was wearing her white barber’s smock and Poi Dog looked her over with a smile. “You a barber girl, eh?”

She nodded and smiled. “Yes, my shop is on Merchant Street.”

“Just had a haircut last week,” he said. “Guess it’s ‘bout time for another.”

She laughed, but he wasn’t joking. He stopped by that afternoon for a shave, and they soon became inseparable.

That turned out to be an eventful week. Only a few days later I was working on that Japanese print shirt when a dapper young ChineseAmerican man in a business suit entered the shop, greeting me with a smile. “Aloha. I’m your neighbor, Ellery Chun-from King-Smith Clothiers, next door?”

I met this with a blank stare at first. “Ah, you mean Chun Kam Chow’s?”

“Yes, he’s my father. I changed the name a few weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I hadn’t noticed.”

“Are you the owner of this shop?” he asked.

“Yes, my name is Jin. May I assist you with something?”

“I think you may,” he said. “Are you also the seamstress who’s been turning some of the yukata fabric I sell into shirts?”

I conceded that I was.

“How long does it take you to put one together?”

I had never considered this before. “Well, cutting the initial pattern consumes the most time, but once I have that, the actual cutting of fabric and assembly of the pieces takes … oh, perhaps two hours.”

“That’s impressive,” he said. “Are you working on one now?”

“Yes, a friend of mine brought a customer in just the other day.”

“May I see it?”

I brought out the two front pieces and the back of “the pine tree shirt,” as I thought of it. “Yes, this is a lovely pattern,” Mr. Chun said as he looked it over. “And you do impeccable work.”

“You are too generous, I think.”

“Don’t give me that Confucian humility, I get enough of that from my father. You’re very good. I’ve been watching the tourists come in here, placing custom orders, and I got to thinking, maybe they’d buy ready-to-wear shirts like these if someone were to offer them. How would you like to work for me?”

This was certainly the last thing I had expected to hear.

“You mean-make shirts for you to sell in your store?” I said.

“Right. Cut out the middleman.”

“The middle of what man?”

He laughed. “Never mind, just an expression. How much do you usually charge per shirt?”

“Oh, about … thirty cents.”

“I’ll pay you fifty,” he announced.

My eyes must have popped at this. “Fifty cents per shirt?”

“And to start I’ll place an order for thirty-no, make that forty-shirts.”

A bit of quick arithmetic yielded an impressive guarantee of wages.

“How long do you think it will take you to make that many?” he asked.

The largest number of shirts I had ever done before, in addition to my mending and fitting work, was four in one week’s time. If I doubled that output, that would be four or five weeks-no, that was too long to make him wait. “Oh … perhaps … three weeks?” I said hopefully.

“Fine,” Mr. Chun said. “Do we have a deal?”

He held out his hand, and after only a moment’s hesitation I took it.

“It would seem so,” I said with a smile.

Ellery Chun may have been young-only twenty-two years old-but clearly he was already a shrewd businessman. An alumnus of the prestigious Punahou School, he had never imagined he would have anything to do with the garment trade. He graduated from Yale University in 1931 with a degree in economics and a desire to engage in foreign trade, but in the Caucasian business hierarchy of Honolulu at that time there was no place for a young, ambitious Chinese-American. When his father asked him to take over management of the family dry-goods store, its revenues declining as the Depression tightened its grip, he accepted out of filial duty-and not without a measure of frustration and resignation that this was the best he could do.

He promptly gave the store a more American name-after the closest streets, King and Smith-and was searching for something to stimulate new business when he took notice of what was coming out of my shop, as well as others around town like Musa-Shiya the Shirtmaker.

On my first day of work I gazed up at the hundreds of bolts of fabric stacked on the King-Smith shelves and began to wonder if I had been mad to promise so many shirts in so short a time. But all I could do was try, and not let Mr. Chun see how terrified and intimidated I truly was.

He showed me some shirt patterns he had designed and a bolt of Japanese silk called “kabe crepe,” which had a crinkly, pebbled surface. The handscreened print depicted slipper-shaped Japanese boats navigating a sea of blue surf and white foam, the waves looking rather like blue mountains capped with snow.

“This is lovely,” I said, tracing the pebbled surface with my fingertip, “but delicate. I will have to hand-baste the seams-machine-basting is too likely to tear them.”

“You’re the tailor. Do as you see fit.”

“Bamboo buttons would be lovely on this.”

“Sounds swell. I’ll look into getting some.”

I examined another print, this one showing a flock of cranes in flight, and I thought of my mother’s similar, elegant design for one of her wrapping cloths. I felt a pleasurable stirring inside me at this connection to a cherished part of my past-the first pleasure I think I had taken in anything since the commutations.

I smiled and said, “I will start on this one.”

I spent an eight-hour day laying out and cutting the pattern pieces; fronts, facings, back, sleeves, collar, pockets, and for one design, a double yoke. Mr. Chun had purchased for me a fabric cutter with which I was now able to cut pieces for as many as five different shirts at one time, saving me considerable time. Once these were cut, I joined the pieces together and fashioned the buttonholes. My estimate of assembling one shirt in about two hours held true, and in not quite three workdays I was able to produce eleven finished shirts. Pressing and ironing took several more hours. I picked up a little speed with practice, producing thirteen shirts the second week and fifteen the next.

In addition to my work for Mr. Chun, of course, I had other customers to serve, and found myself working even later into the night than I was accustomed. Sometimes I would not get home until midnight, and all I saw of my keiki was their sleeping faces, which I would kiss before collapsing into my own bed. But at the end of three weeks’ time I had, as promised, forty finished shirts to present to Mr. Chun-for which he paid me the generous sum of twenty dollars.

They were very attractive shirts, if I do say as much. I was especially fond of the cranes in flight-I had laid out the pattern so that the birds seemed to fly on a slight upward diagonal, providing a sense of lift and freedom. Mr. Chun was very complimentary of my efforts and put twenty of the shirts out for sale the following Monday on a table up front, with a sign in the window reading,
HAWAIIAN
SHIRTS-$1.00
EACH
.

To our mutual surprise, by the end of the week they had all been soldmostly to tourists, but a few to local haole boys. I had already begun work on the next batch, which I now rushed to complete before the remaining twenty shirts sold out. I soon found myself working a fifty-hour week for Mr. Chun alone, and producing between twenty to twenty-four shirts in that time.

These, too, sold as quickly as we could keep them in stock.

Eventually the demand would increase to the point that Mr. Chun had to contract out even more production to one of the few local clothing manufacturers, Wong’s Products. But I could hardly complain about this: I was earning between ten and twelve dollars a week in wages at a time when many people in the United States could find no jobs at all. I now could afford the occasional treat for the children and meat for the stewing pot. For the first time since we had lost the restaurant, we could breathe a little easier. I was grateful to have such steady and lucrative work, which I also found rewarding, challenging, and-I hardly dared admit it to myself-fun.

The first time I brought home such large wages I showed it proudly to Jae-sun, expecting him to be as jubilant as I, but though he smiled and congratulated me, his reaction was muted. “I am lucky,” he said graciously, “to have such a talented wife.” Then he added, “Excuse me. I have some chap chae cooking on the stove,” and he headed into the kitchen.

That night, as we lay in bed together, I said to him, “Someday you will have your own restaurant again.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it matters little who feeds a hungry family. The important thing is, we are fed.”

“Your job at the docks feeds us too. I know we were brought up to expect that the husband is the sole support of the household, but …”

“That doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I have been in America long enough to know that the old Confucian ways do not apply here. It is just …” He paused. “It is a hard thing for a man to watch his wife working twelve-hour days, and not be able to contribute more. A hard thing to accept that his useful life is over.”

“That’s not true.”

“It feels true,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I placed a hand on his, but did not know what to say; so I said nothing.

That Christmas of 1932 was a happier one for our family than any since the loss of the restaurant, and seeing the looks of joy on the children’s faces as they opened their (still modest) presents seemed to buoy my husband’s spirits. Each year at this time we would also take photographs of the keiki to be sent back to my family in Pojogae in time for the Korean New Year. We borrowed jade Moon’s Brownie camera, dressed the children in their Sunday best, and took a roll of photos of them, singly or together. This was always a bit of an ordeal as we tried to get them to pose with polite Korean solemnity, but at the last minute they inevitably broke into giggles, laughter, and smiles-something my mother and brothers surely found shocking when they saw them. (I doubted my father even looked at them.) This year was no exception, but this time when I gazed at the developed photographs I found myself thinking: They look so American. My dismay at my own children’s foreignness surprised and shamed me.