Shimura Trouble Read online

  Still the man wouldn’t give his name, so I decided to speak to him in English. “My name is Rei Shimura. May I ask if you are Mr. Yoshitsune Shimura?”

  “Nobody talk that formal out here. You can call me Uncle Yosh,” the man said, looking me over rather critically. “You came for my birthday, yah?”

  “Yes, we did,” Tom answered in English, as if he’d finally realized that was our great-uncle’s preferred language. “I’m Tsutomu, but please call me Tom. Like you, I prefer a nickname!”

  “You all a little late.”

  “Uncle Yosh, I’m sorry. I must not have driven quickly enough.” I glanced at my watch, which read five to six.

  “I mean that I made eighty-eight last year! Why you not come then?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shooting a significant look at my father. “I believe our families found each other a month ago.”

  “Yes, Oji-sama, I regret we have come a year late to supper!” my father valiantly chimed in. “We feel so lucky to finally meet you and to learn about the life of your mother, who must have been a very brave, strong, character.”

  “My kaa-san?” Yoshitsune asked. I almost didn’t understand him, because he was using the word for mother without the honorific ‘o’ in front that was customary in Japan.

  “Your okaasan, Shimura Harue-sama,” my father answered politely, still in Japanese. “She apparently left our family when she was quite young. We are eager to learn about her.”

  “Surprise to hear that. She didn’t choose to leave Japan.” Yoshitsune’s voice was cool, and as he evaluated us, I felt a rush of shame, followed by curiosity that got the better of me.

  “We want to know why,” I said. “My father said he heard whisperings there had been a sister to his grandfather, but nothing more than that.”

  “She didn’t want to get married to some old fool they picked for her husband,” Yosh said, grinning slightly. “So they said you don’t want to marry, you gotta leave the house. She was thinking that meant she’d find a job somewhere in Tokyo, but she had no clue about the real, hard world!”

  “This is fascinating,” my father said. “What happened next?”

  “Your great-grandpa bought her a one-way ticket to Honolulu and also some false papers saying that she had relatives sponsoring her. She told me she thought it was going to be a great adventure. She only got scared once she was on the boat, when the other passengers, all of them rough, poor people from the countryside, insisted she would have to be married for anyone to hire her or give her housing. And that’s how she came to meet and marry my fadduh, a few days after she arrived…”

  “Good, you found us!” Edwin said as he opened the front door and broke into the story. “But, Dad, look at yourself! I told you to get dressed hours ago; this is your birthday party!”

  Yoshitsune waggled the hose at him. “The koi need something to swim in. I gotta fill the pool again, there must be a leak.”

  “Do you keep koi?” I asked, looking around the garden. Then I saw it, a small ornamental fishpond occupying pride of place in the center of a dry-grass yard. I followed Yoshitsune over to the pond and stayed, looking at the fish, as he stuck the hose in the pool, then ambled back over to the side of the house to turn on the water. I’d assumed only specially treated water went into these ponds, but the half-dozen long gold, orange and cream fish looked healthy. Whatever Uncle Yosh was doing, it worked.

  “Come in, come in,” Edwin urged, and obediently, I followed everyone up a cracked cement path and left my sandals at the doorway. The shoes-off tradition was part of Japanese culture that had endured.

  Inside, I was zealously hugged by Edwin, and then by a small, sun-browned woman with short black hair attractively streaked with silver.

  “When we learned about you and your family, we were so excited.” Auntie Margaret spoke with a melodious lilt that so many people in Hawaii had, to some degree—perhaps vestiges of their grandparents’ home languages. “But you came by yourself! Where’s your husband?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not married yet.” I smiled at her, thinking again that Hawaii wasn’t so different from Japan, if a thirty-year-old was automatically expected to be married.

  “Oh, still not yet!” Margaret laughed. “We heard about your big-shot lawyer fiancé. He won a class action suit, yah?”

  Now I flushed red and understand who the ‘son’ was that Edwin had referred to in his letter to my father. “It’s true that Hugh Glendenning did work with many other lawyers on a class action suit representing comfort women and forced laborers who suffered during World War Two. We’re really not in contact with each other anymore, though.”

  “What do you mean?” Edwin asked. “I can help you find him; I’m good at tracking people down…”

  “No. I mean, I don’t want to find him. We’re not engaged anymore.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear that!” Edwin said, and Margaret looked at me with sympathy.

  “Please take this small, unworthy token. It’s not very good, but all we could find.” Tom blessedly interrupted the situation by offering Edwin a gift bag containing a bottle of California chardonnay we’d chosen at the Safeway.

  “Very kind. Thank you!” Edwin waved us all to follow him into the tidy living room, which looked as if it had been decorated in the early eighties, with floral-chintz sofas, and lots of rattan. A young girl, her face hidden in a thick copy of Modern Bride, was lying on the carpet close to the air-conditioner. I sat down on a floral-patterned sofa with my father. Edwin put the bottle of wine into a cabinet which I saw already held many bottles of wine and hard liquor, some still in the boxes. So it seemed he rarely drank.

  “Courtney!” Edwin called to the girl on the floor. “I told you before, when the guests come in, serve the pupus.”

  Before I could greet her, Courtney had shot up and gone through the kitchen door. Moments later, she returned precariously carrying a tray of deep-fried hors d’oeuvres. While everyone oohed and ahhed over the golden brown minced shrimp balls and oversized potato and eggplant tempura, I looked anxiously at my father. Fried foods were highest on his list of banned foods. Now temptation was staring at him from a blue and white platter, and he was stretching out a hand.

  “Otoosan!” I whispered loudly.

  “I cannot refuse. That would be rude,” my father said in a low voice before popping a shrimp ball in his mouth.

  Tentatively I took a shrimp ball, biting through the crisp, golden brown crust to taste the freshest, sweetest shrimp I’d ever eaten, finely minced and exuberantly seasoned with biting, fresh scallions and cilantro leaves.

  “This is delicious!” I said after I’d swallowed it. “Who made them?”

  “It’s from a little okazu-ya in Waipahu. If you like okazu snack foods, I can tell you all the best places,” Margaret said.

  “Please do,” I said, wondering how, if the food was take-out, it was so very hot and crisp. The answer came when I glanced at the stove and saw a deep pan of oil. The snacks had been refried at home, making them even unhealthier.

  “Eat more!” Margaret urged. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t do much around the house, ever since the kids got big and I started working.”

  “Ah! Do you work nearby?” Uncle Hiroshi asked, smiling.

  “Quite near. I’m director of housekeeping at the hotel.”

  The smile on Uncle Hiroshi’s face froze, and I imagined the calculator in his banker’s brain had made a judgment on the family. And I too was recalling all the Japanese maids in the old novels I was reading about Hawaii, and how in the newspaper article I’d read, activists had rued that the proposed new jobs in the area would be mostly in the service industry.

  “I’m too tired after work to do much cleaning around here—and I have to admit that I’m not much of a cook, especially of complicated Japanese dishes. I’m not full Japanese like you; I’m hapa, mixed with Hawaiian. Edwin calls me mixed plate.”

  “I guess Rei is mixed plate, too. Her mother is American,�
� Tom volunteered.

  “Never would have guessed it! Toshiro, did you marry a haole girl?” Uncle Edwin asked in a tone that I wasn’t entirely sure was friendly teasing.

  My father looked blank, and I quietly said that yes, my mother was Caucasian. Haole was a Hawaiian term that originally referred to anything foreign, one example being a tree, the koa haole, which resembled a native koa, but was widely regarded as an invasive pest.

  Great-Uncle Yoshitsune joined us wearing a short-sleeved blue aloha shirt, his face and hands freshly scrubbed. Even in proper dress, he still resembled a garden gnome.

  “Oto-chan used to do a lot of cooking when he was a young man,” Margaret said, nodding her head at Uncle Yosh. “For a while he lived in Honolulu, so he knew the best butchers and fishmongers. He used to take my mother-in-law until she passed away ten years ago, may she rest in peace. Now the only one likely to do any cooking is Courtney, and that’s just because she so obsessed with planning her own bridal reception.”

  “Are you?” I asked, smiling at her with curiosity.

  “Am not! I just like the pictures, the clothes, the…stuff,” Courtney said with a sigh.

  “Between Harry Potter and those bridal magazines, my kid lives in a fantasy world,” Edwin said. “Thank goodness you gotta be twenty-one to get married here—otherwise, she’d be picking out a husband when she start her senior year!”

  “Daddy, please!” Courtney was bright red by now, tears starting in her eyes.

  “Tell me about where to shop for fish, Uncle Yosh,” I said quickly, to change the subject.

  “Tamashiro’s on North King Street, in Palama. I don’t drive no more so Margaret, you should go there,” Uncle Yoshitsune chided. “I hear they sometimes still get opihi.”

  “Too far, too much trouble,” Margaret said, smiling easily.

  “What are opihi?” I asked.

  “A small type of shellfish that clings to rocks. Harvesting it is quite dangerous,” Margaret said. “What they call it in English, Edwin?”

  “Limpet,” Edwin said. “It’s scarce, but it sure makes tasty poke.”

  Poke, pronounced po-kay, was Hawaii’s version of ceviche; I’d had it with tuna or octopus many times. Suddenly I had a yearning for it. This trip still had potential, at least from a gastronomic perspective.

  “We have some things for you.” My father gestured toward the dozen or so gift bags we had brought with us. According to Japanese tradition, I had carefully wrapped each gift, and then put each box in an individual shopping bag.

  “Oh, I don’t need nothing,” Uncle Yosh said.

  “Presents? Thanks!” Courtney seemed to waken up as she reached for a bag containing her gift certificate to Delia’s, and her parents eagerly leafed through the bags, looking for the ones labeled with their names. Aunt Norie had bought Margaret a beautiful silk scarf, and I’d found a book on new uses for green tea for Edwin.

  “Where’s Braden? We have something for him,” I said. Tom had chosen the gift, the very latest Nintendo game from Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district.

  “The boy suppose to be here, but running late. We should go ahead,” Edwin said.

  Everyone seemed pleased with the gifts my father and I had chosen, and Norie had sent over with Tom and Uncle Hiroshi. The reaction I cared about was Uncle Yosh’s to the album I’d made. He himself on the sofa, turning pages slowly as I stayed nearby, ready to answer questions. A strange expression came over his face after a few minutes of studying the album.

  At last he spoke. “I heard a lot about these people. But why don’t you have any pictures of Kaa-chan?”

  I felt bad about Harue having been disowned. “It was the turn of the century, and perhaps any family pictures of her didn’t survive, or if they did, weren’t recognized as such by us. I’m so sorry; I want to go back and look again…”

  “I have an idea,” Tom said brightly. “Perhaps we shall learn the name of her old schools in Japan, and get childhood photographs that way. We were able to find such photographs for the males in the family.”

  “She didn’t go to school.”

  “What?” I exclaimed, shocked. The Shimuras were an intellectual family.

  “She had a governess, she told me. Learned all these fancy ways of talking—guess it was good over there, but hard here. People laughed at her Japanese,” Uncle Yosh said, shaking his head. “Sorry to say, I was embarrassed many times.”

  “Really,” I said. This corroborated everything I knew about the folkways of the Shimura family. I wanted to continue, but Edwin cut in.

  “It’s time for eat. Our dining table isn’t so big, so we serving food in the kitchen, and you can bring it out here. Please, come try.”

  My father had been ushered to the front of the buffet line, so he was well away from my gaze. I couldn’t possibly cut in front of everyone to supervise his food choices. I could only worry.

  An hour later, I realized that my father’s decision to eat barbecued pork, sticky rice and deep-fried vegetable tempura was the least of my problems. As Margaret sliced a coconut cake, Edwin opened his agenda, and pretty much everything I had feared about this trip came to pass.

  “LET’S TALK ABOUT the meaning of family.” Edwin canvassed the table. “Jii-chan, tell everybody how it feels to suddenly realize you have two nephews and their families to celebrate your birthday? Good feeling, yah?”

  There were polite murmurings from everyone.

  “I got a whole lot of family history to teach you guys.” Edwin seemed to be pointing his chopstick directly at me. “Things that happened here to us—to this family—you need to know!”

  I sat numbly as Edwin narrated the story I’d gleaned from internet news sites: that in the 1930s Harue Shimura owned a small house on one and a half acres of land near Barbers Point, the old naval station. Harue had lived there after she’d retired from work on the plantation, around the time Yosh was starting his first job with the post office in Honolulu. Then, after Pearl Harbor was bombed and Yoshitsune was sent to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Idaho, Harue died of a stroke. When Yoshitsune returned in late 1946, the land and cottage had been taken over.

  I interrupted, because Uncle Edwin had casually dropped in some information I hadn’t heard before. “Uncle Yosh, you were interned in a camp for Japanese-Americans?”

  Yoshitsune only nodded, and I looked expectantly at him, wanting more. This was a stunning bit of family history, because very few Japanese born in Hawaii had been interned. The plantation owners had convinced the US government that their workers were loyal, and that the sugar industry would collapse if Japanese in Hawaii were taken away.

  “I heard some first generation and nisei Japanese from Hawaii were sent to the camps on the mainland, but they were rare cases, weren’t they?” I said, choosing my words carefully. “How unlucky that you were among the few taken away.”

  “Jii-chan worked at the post office.” Courtney spoke up, surprising me. “The boss thought he was trying to look into military mail.”

  “Yes, a complete set-up, if you ask me. They just wanted him to be gone.” Edwin sounded bitter. “And we had the waterfront property, which they thought would allow him or my grandmother to send signals to the enemy.”

  My father, Tom and Uncle Hiroshi had grown as still and quiet as Yoshitsune. I imagined our group was contemplating our own family history: how Harue Shimura’s older brother became a right-wing historian who’d tutored the emperor, and the other brother had been an officer in the Imperial Army. We were the enemy, as far as anyone outside of Japan was concerned.

  “Please, will you tell us about the internment? If it’s not too difficult,” my father said after a pause.

  “It was called Minidoka, in Idaho. A small place, with barbed-wire fence and around that, mountains,” Uncle Yoshitsune answered in a flat voice. “We had no idea how long we’d be there. I felt I had to escape.”

  “Jii-chan was smart. He found the way,” Courtney said. I smiled at my y
oung cousin, thinking that her interest in family history reminded me of my own, when I was her age.

  “One day some army officers came to visit,” Yoshitsune said, interrupting my thoughts. “They were recruiting guys who could speak and read Japanese to work in intelligence. I volunteered. I did interrogations for the American and British military.”

  “It’s a great story, Dad. You some hero!” Edwin’s words were quick; clearly, he wanted to return to his agenda.

  Yoshitsune seemed to shrink into himself then. While I longed to keep the conversation going about intelligence, I knew it was probably better to do it later, when fewer people were around.

  Edwin took over again. “You heard the terrible thing that happened to my Dad? Think of how it was for him, when he came home, a free man who served this country in the war. He find his mama gone forever, and all of a sudden Chinese people living on the land who say the Pierces leased it to them.”

  “Ah, yes, Rei told us about that already,” my father said, nodding.

  “Internet search engines are useful, aren’t they?” I said, in response to Edwin’s injured look.

  “The papers don’t tell the real story. My father tried to ask Mrs. Pierce what happened to our house, because the old man was dead. She said there was never a fee-simple sale to my mother—always just leasehold, and that had expired. That Pierce woman said the land couldn’t remain idle, so she rented it to Winston Liang and his wife.”

  “Well, since you don’t have a deed of sale, do you think it’s possible that your mother might have actually had a lease?” I turned to Yoshitsune, because I wanted to hear the story from him directly.

  “I once saw a letter,” Yoshitsune said in a low voice. “I found it sometime, must have been the mid-thirties, in her bedroom dresser. The letter said that Harue Shimura was granted this land in exchange for faithful service. It was signed by Josiah Pierce.”

  “A paper,” I repeated, thinking that it didn’t sound anything like an official, legal deed at all—but who knew how things operated in prewar Hawaii?