Honolulu (44 page)

That spring Poi Dog helped Harold make his own surfboard-one of the shorter, lighter boards that were becoming popular-and Harry and Woodrow were soon spending even more of their time at the beach. After school, Grace-now fourteen years old-would lend a hand at the tailor shop, cutting out patterns, even doing some simple machine stitches on Mr. Chun’s shirts. She had never expressed any real interest in sewing before, but she told me she liked being part of the business, and she had a good head for figures as well. We had always intended that she go to college, if we could afford it, and now she began to consider a major in business administration. It pleased me to hear her speak with enthusiasm about higher education, as much as it pleased me to have her in the shop with me; it felt like the thimble time I had shared with my own mother, and not for the first time I felt a pang of longing to see her face again.

It was during one of our late afternoons that Grace admitted to me shyly that there was a boy who had asked her to a dance that Friday at Waikiki Park, and would it be all right for her to go?

After the many years of painful diffidence Grace had suffered through, I was pleased to know that she had grown into a lovely, confident girl who had begun attracting suitors. I smiled and asked her who this lucky boy might be.

“You already know him,” she said. “It is Jiro.”

My smile froze on my face. “Tamiko’s boy?”

“Yes, he’s always been sweet on me. When we were eight years old he asked me to marry him. I told him we were a little young and we should wait until we were at least twelve.” She laughed. “So, may I go to the dance with him?”

I hesitated only a moment before replying, “Yes, of course. I would only ask you not to mention this to your father just yet. I confess, I’m not certain what his reaction might be.”

“Oh, Mama, I know what they say about the Japanese in church, but Jiro is American, like me! Father’s known him since he was a little boy.”

“I know, but … humor me? If your father asks, tell him you are going to the dance with some of your friends. And Jiro is a friend, so it’s not untrue, is it?”

“All right, Mother, if you say so.”

We returned, to my relief, to our sewing talk. I told myself this was a harmless adolescent infatuation; it would probably run its course before Jaesun even learned of it. And Grace was right: my husband did know Jiro, was good friends with his father. Jae-sun had learned, as I had, to distinguish between the Japanese Empire that oppressed our native land and the Japanese people we knew here in Hawai’i. But still, I was not certain how he might feel about our daughter becoming romantically involved with a Japanese boyeven Jiro.

And if I am to be honest, I was not certain how I felt about it myself.

By a few weeks after this I was distressed to receive a telephone call at work from Wise Pearl: Her husband, Mr. Kam, had just suffered a heart attack, collapsing while at work with his two eldest sons in the barley fields. A doctor had been summoned, who examined him and had him taken to Queen’s Hospital, from where Wise Pearl was calling. I closed the shop and went immediately to my friend’s side. I found her sitting in the hospital’s waiting room, hunched over like a small tree bent by the wind, with tears in her eyes. I realized I had never seen Wise Pearl cry before; she had always been too calm and self-possessed for that. But here she was, more distressed than I had ever seen her.

I went to her and clasped her hands in mine. “How is he?”

“Sleeping. `Resting comfortably,’ they tell me, though how they can tell he is comfortable if he is asleep I do not know.”

“Where are the children?”

“Edwin and John are looking after the younger ones. I did not wish to bring them here when I was not certain of what the outcome might be.”

Her words sent a shiver through me. “Is his condition that grave?”

“When John came running in to tell me,” she said quietly, “I rushed out to the fields, and at first I thought he was dead. His face was as gray as the ash on one of his cigarettes. Then, as I sat down beside him, he opened his eyes and I saw he was alive. He reached out and took my hand in his. That told me how afraid he was: he had never held my hand before.”

I was surprised to hear this. “Never?”

“Mr. Kam does not show his feelings readily, even to me. He was brought up to believe that self-control is the mark of a virtuous man. I have learned to take tenderness in an unguarded smile, rarely more than that.

“Now he held on to me like a baby holds on to its mother, afraid to be lost, and it was all I could do to hold back my tears for fear of frightening him more.

Those tears came to her now and I held her until she could find her voice again. “The doctors believe he will live, but his heart has suffered extensive damage. It could take many months for him to recover, and even then they say he should not go back to the hard physical work of farm„ ing.

“Thank Heaven. It could be worse.”

“Can you believe, he actually protested when the doctors told him he should stop smoking because it was cutting his wind? Stubborn old man!”

“Yes,” I said, “they’re all getting old-aren’t they?”

She nodded. “Mr. Kam will be fifty-nine next year, only one year away from his hwan’gap. ” In Korea, one’s sixtieth birthday is marked by a celebration of a full life-cycle as defined by the Zodiac. If one is born in the Year of the Pig, one’s hwan’gap will also be in the Year of the Pig. Traditionally, it is often the time when a man retires from a life of work, as well.

“Jae-sun is fifty-six,” I said. “Though he’s still strong, I worry over him lifting freight at the docks. But I can’t ask him to stop working and earning what little he is able to contribute to the household; I think that would kill him sooner.”

“The boys and I can shoulder the load in the short term,” Wise Pearl thought aloud, “but their father did so much of the work himself, I don’t know how I’ll keep the farm running without him.”

“Can’t you hire a man to help out?”

She shook her head. “It’s difficult enough paying the mortgage as it is. No, this merely hastens the inevitable. I think I will soon have to start looking for a buyer for the farm.”

“Will you be able to find one, during this Depression?”

“Eventually, perhaps. There is more home development than farming going on in Wilhelmina Rise these days. We may even be able to sell the land at a small profit-enough to set me up in a new business. A shop, perhaps, or a small hotel.” She smiled sadly. “We are all reaching the same crossroads, dear friend-I’ve just arrived there a little sooner than you. Our husbands are growing old, and it is up to us now to fill the breach and provide for our families’ futures.”

It was with both pride and sadness that I realized I was filling that breach already. But I did not wish to think of the day my husband might be taken to a place like this.

As though we needed further proof of mortality, in December 1933, my old friend Chang Apana passed away at the age of sixty-nine-struck down not by a fall from a second-story window, or a stabbing, or a blow from an axe handle, but from injuries sustained in an automobile accident a year before. Even in his last years as a policeman Chang demonstrated he was still the best officer on the force, as when he solved the disappearance in Honolulu of mainland socialite Frances Ashe. The StarBulletin paid tribute to both the real-life detective and his fictional counterpart when they ran a photo of him on their front page with the headline,
BLACK
CAMEL
KNEELS
AT
HOME
OF
CHANG
APANA
.

A happier event occurred a month later, when Beauty and “Poi Dog” Nahuli were wed. Eugene brought his little terrier, Keoni, who served as “best dog”; Mary was her mother’s flower girl. I am happy to say that all of Beauty’s Kyongsang sisters were in attendance. The modest ceremony was a far cry from the extravagant wedding she had once planned to Mr. Ko, but even jade Moon had to admit that Poi Dog was sweet and seemed to genuinely adore Beauty.

Within a few months Mrs. Nahuli-or “Mrs. Poi Dog,” as the other beachboys now called her-found herself pregnant for the first time in sixteen years. She was understandably nervous, since at that time thirty-seven was considered an advanced age to bear a child; but in July 1934, Mary received a healthy young baby brother named Franklin, so christened because he was born the same week that President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived in Honolulu, the first U.S. president to visit Hawai’i while in office. Sixty thousand Honoluluans turned out to greet him, and many more lined the streets during his motorcade to catch a glimpse of this man who was laboring to get the country back to work.

King-Smith Clothiers was already hard at work with the success of its new garments, which were being advertised as “Hawaiian playsuits,” “Waikiki Beachwear,” and most recently, “Aloha shirts.” Other retailers like Musa-Shiya and Linn’s Army-Navy Store had quickly followed us into the ready-to-wear market. Mr. Chun was pleased but not satisfied. As he said to me as we were examining a new yukata fabric, “You know, despite what the sign says, these prints aren’t really very `Hawaiian.’ ” In an effort to make something more “tropical” he began importing fabrics from Tahiti and Samoa-some with bordered floral designs suggested by Tahitian pareus, and others with tapa-cloth motifs. Javanese batik cloth also became popular in Honolulu around this time, and Mr. Chun began importing this as well.

Soon both Gump’s Department Store and Watumull’s East India Store were commissioning local artists like Elsie Das to create textiles using Hawaiian floral patterns, to be used in drapery and upholstery. Miss Das’s were colorful, striking designs of native hibiscus, ginger, breadfruit, nightblooming cereus, even hula girls-beautifully hand-blocked in Japan onto raw silk. Mr. Chun, never one to be left behind a breaking wave, immediately saw the future of aloha wear and commissioned his younger sister Ethel-a graduate of the Chouinard Art School in California-to create uniquely Hawaiian tropical prints for King-Smith shirts.

Ethel Chun Lum was no stranger to the garment business-she had started out at the old C. K. Chow’s, hand-painting pictures of Diamond Head onto the back of sweatshirts. She was a talented artist who produced many beautiful designs in such typically Hawaiian motifs as palm trees, pineapples, hula girls, and grass houses. Among the ones I remember best were her depictions of malolo, or flying fish; a Hawaiian man fishing by the light of a torch; and a beautifully striped yellow, white, and black fish known locally as a “Moorish Idol.” Ethel hand-painted these images, choosing colors in consultation with her brother, and then the color “croquis” would be sent to Japan to be roller-printed onto silk or cotton.

The shirts had not yet caught on with all of Hawai’i’s residents-at a dollar or more apiece they were far too expensive for most locals-but tourists snapped them up to wear while they were in the islands and as gifts to friends and relatives back home. As a result, department stores on the mainland also began to purchase them, and suddenly there was an explosion of clothing manufacturers into the new market: familiar names like Watumull’s as well as new ones like Branfleet, Kamehameha, Surfriders Sportswear, and Royal Hawaiian. Mr. Chun was soon laying plans to manufacture swimsuits, robes, and men’s slacks.

But in fulfilling the growing demand for “Aloha wear”-a term which Mr. Chun had the prescience to trademark-we had completely outgrown my little shop. Mr. Chun phased out his contract with Wong’s Products, deciding that King-Smith was a large enough concern that it needed its own factory, and he offered me the position of “head seamstress” and a generous weekly salary of fifteen dollars a week. This was a veritable fortune by the standards of the day, and though I was sad to give up the lease on my shop, where I spent many happy afternoons with Grace, I could hardly turn down Mr. Chun’s offer.

And besides, Grace was now eighteen years old and, in the fall of 1936, would enter the University of Hawai’i as a business major. She would soon have little time to spend sewing with her mother. She had bloomed socially, and to my relief had had two or three other suitors besides Jiro in her last years of high school, including a very nice Korean boy named Albert. Jae sun had eventually learned of her dates with Jiro, but chose to pin his hopes on Albert.

So it came as a surprise to both of us when Grace arrived home with Jiro one day near the end of her senior year and announced, “Mama … Papa … Jiro and I have decided that after graduation, we wish to be married.”

Jae-sun looked suddenly like a man who had placed a month’s earnings on the wrong race horse.

“Indeed?” he said, trying to cover his fluster, unsuccessfully, with a smile.

“I was thinking, maybe, of a July wedding,” Grace said shyly, “like you and Mama had.”

I could not help but be touched by this, but Jae-sun asked, somewhat nervously, “There is nothing that … requires … such an imminent ceremony, is there?”

“Oh, no, Papa,” Grace assured him.

“No, no, not at all,” Jiro agreed quickly.

Jae-sun’s relief was palpable.

As for me, my first thought was, “But what about college?”

“Oh, I’ll still go to school,” Grace insisted.

Jae-sun cleared his throat. “Indeed? And how,” he asked Jiro, “do you intend to support a wife attending college?”

“I’ve been offered a job at First Hawaiian Bank, Mr. Choi-as a teller. But I’m very good with numbers, and I hope it will lead to a better position in time.”

“But can you afford a home of your own in the meantime?”

“I found the sweetest little apartment on Kewalo Lane,” Grace said, “for only twelve dollars a month.”

I looked at Jae-sun; he looked at me. We seemed to have exhausted all of our logical objections.

“Are you both very sure about this?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, Mama,” Grace said. “I couldn’t be more sure.”

“I’ve loved Grace since I was eight years old,” Jiro said, beaming. “I want to make her as happy as she makes me.”

“Do your parents know of your plans?” I asked him.