Title: PAYING FOR
Database: Academic Search Premier
Section: Special Report: Japan
PAYING FOR
Dateline:
I can close my eyes and see it just like it happened
yesterday. I can see the explosion on the
-- Richard Fiske, a
Along the stretch of white sand, shaded by palms and
bordered by stately
And although Hawaiian officials deny that their Pacific
paradise is becoming an economic colony of America's former enemy, they worry
openly that the half-century anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 will further
strain U.S.-Japanese ties -- and scare away Japanese visitors and investors.
``We're concerned, no question,'' said Mufi Hannemann, director of the state
office of international relations -- an office whose very existence testifies
to the importance of Hawaii's Tokyo connection.
Still, many Hawaiians blame Japanese buyers for helping to
drive up the price of real estate in America's 50th state, a lushly beautiful
island chain that was admitted to the union in 1959. And when Honolulu's
country-music station, KDEO, began playing a song called Workin' for the
Japanese earlier this year (``Sony owns the Rockefeller Center,'' the lyrics
say, ``and the Hawaiian archipelago''), disc jockey Paul Sampson said there
were ``heavy requests for it -- people called constantly.'' Not surprisingly,
the debate over whether an official Japanese delegation should attend next
month's Pearl Harbor commemoration set off a new round of Japan-bashing.
In June, the state department dodged that thorny issue by
announcing that it would not invite any foreign dignitaries. But Honolulu Mayor
Frank Fasi, in a letter to President George Bush, who plans to speak at the
ceremonies, suggested that he urge his Japanese counterpart ``to make a sincere
apology'' for the Pearl Harbor attack, and then attend the commemoration.
Masaji Takahashi, who until last week was Japan's consul general in Hawaii,
told Maclean's that the decision was ``an American affair'' and that
``fundamentally, Japanese-American relations are very solid.'' But many
Hawaiians were plainly offended by the mere consideration of inviting the
Japanese. One recent letter-writer to The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper argued
that Hawaiian officials were trying to ``kiss up to the Japanese to get their
money,'' and added: ``Why should we celebrate with the people who put our loved
ones in their watery grave?''
In his book Pearl Harbor Ghosts, author Thurston Clarke
maintains that ``the Japanese have been a unique enemy in United States
history, hated more than any other'' -- and that the enduring American
animosity is partly anchored in that surprise Pearl Harbor attack. Those
memories are strongest at the sunken USS Arizona, the watery grave for 1,102
men killed when an armor-piercing Japanese bomb ripped through the deck and hit
the forward magazine. The ruined battleship proved too dangerous and too
expensive to raise, and now an arched white memorial, reached by shuttle boat,
spans the rusted hulk. The foundation of its No. 3 gun turret pokes up
prominently, and oil still leaks eerily to the surface, forming small, ragged
slicks in rainbow colors. ``My life changed, the whole world changed, on that
day,'' said Warren Verhoff, 70, a tugboat radioman 50 years ago. Of the Arizona
dead, he added: ``To us military guys, you didn't have to know the men personally,
they're your shipmates. They're all my shipmates.''
Verhoff is one of a handful of Pearl Harbor survivors who
volunteer at the memorial, living reminders of that long-ago Sunday morning.
They are grey-haired now, dressed in green National Park Service shirts, local
celebrities sought out by tourists for autographs and photos. And they all have
stories to tell: of the moment the bombs began to fall and the Rising Sun of
Japan became visible under the planes' wingtips; of seeing the faces of the Japanese
pilots -- many survivors swear they were smiling; of ships exploding, bodies
flying, men burning, others trapped hopelessly in the bowels of doomed vessels
beyond the reach of would-be rescuers. ``I have never been to hell and I hope I
never go,'' said William Speer, 73, a yeoman second class aboard the light
cruiser USS Honolulu at the time of the attack. ``But I think I was very close
to it that day.''
Speer says that he enjoys working at the memorial. But he
admitted: ``Sometimes I just get choked up -- I think it happens to all of
us.'' The Japanese tourists who visit the site, he says, are quiet and
respectful, and he harbors no personal animosity towards those who carried out
the attack. ``They were doing what they were ordered to do,'' he said, ``and
the Good Book teaches you to forgive.'' But Speer added: ``You hate the act.
And I hate it that Japan has never apologized for it, they never said, `I'm
sorry.' ''
Fiske, a marine bugler at the time, watched the devastation
from the bridge of the sinking West Virginia -- watched the Arizona burst into
an enormous ball of fire and, thrown backward himself, remembers thinking: ``By
God, we're going to be next.'' In the years afterward, Fiske said, ``I had
tremendous hate inside. I thought I was going to bust.'' He still says that
some of the Japanese tourists are not reverent enough. ``This is a shrine, this
is a cemetery,'' he said. ``The young ones, I don't think they have the
slightest idea what this place is.'' Now 69, Fiske walks around the visitors
centre carrying his scrapbook of old photos -- of flaming American battleships,
of himself as a young marine in happier days -- his eyes misting as he talks.
He also shows off pictures of his two grandchildren, both Asian in appearance.
His daughter, he explains, is married to a Japanese-American -- ``just the
nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.''
The volunteers say they are pleased that a Tokyo delegation
will not attend the Dec. 7 ceremonies. And they express concern about the
massive Japanese investment in Hawaii. But they acknowledge the paradoxes. The
Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, with 15,000 members nationwide, will hold
its closing banquet at the Japanese-owned Sheraton Waikiki. And some of the
survivors drive Japanese cars. Speer, who recently sold his Nissan and bought a
Honda, explained: ``I'll tell you the reason I buy Japanese products -- they're
so damn much better than the American ones.''
In the 1800s, the Japanese referred to Hawaii as Tenjiku, or
``the heavenly place.'' Now, like the glossy brochures, they just call it
paradise. ``The weather, the water, the food -- that is why we come,'' said
Seiichi Izumi, a 26-year-old tourist from Tokyo, lounging on Waikiki beach.
Last year, 1.4 million Japanese vacationed in Hawaii, feeding a tourism
industry that accounts for more than one-third of the gross state product, and
that has helped keep unemployment down to a recession-beating 2.5 per cent. And
that is precisely why Hawaiian officials are nervous: if U.S.-Japanese
relations deteriorate further, the Japanese could simply stay away.
During the Persian Gulf War, there was a 40-per-cent decline
in Japanese visitors, attributed in part to security concerns, but also to
Japanese sensitivity. The Americans were already criticizing Tokyo for not
contributing more heavily to the war effort, a controversy that could only be
heightened by TV images of young Japanese frolicking on Hawaiian beaches while
Americans and their allies prepared for battle in the Saudi Arabian sands.
Similarly, the Japanese want to avoid creating ill will during the Pearl Harbor
anniversary. Issei Watanabe, operations manager of the Japanese-owned Nippon
Travel Agency Pacific, said that ``we didn't have many customers'' that week --
and he implied that it was a deliberate company policy.
Hawaiian concerns are heightened by the free-spending habits
of Japanese visitors. On average last year, each Japanese spent $340 per day in
Hawaii, compared with $158 for each American and $120 for each Canadian (there
were 318,000 of the latter). In Waikiki, along teeming Kalakaua Avenue, stores
display signs in English and Japanese. And amid the procession of vacationers
gone native in bright floral aloha shirts are a marked number of Asians. ``Take
a look, it's almost all young Japanese,'' said William Sayles, who moved from
Toronto nearly two decades ago. He was watching the passers-by from the office
of the Japanese-owned real estate company where he works. ``They're typical
kids,'' added the 80-year-old Sayles. ``They've just got more money than the
average American.''
In fact, along with stores selling the predictable Hawaiian
hats, T-shirts, postcards, flower leis and ``Sun your buns in Hawaii''
ashtrays, Kalakaua Avenue has high-ticket shops that cater to the desires of
young Japanese visitors. They sell $30,000 Cartier watches, $500 Chanel
crocodile-skin belts and, at the Celine shop, leather handbags for as much as
$1,400. There, salesperson Mayumi Kato said that 80 per cent of the customers
are Japanese. ``They like name-brand things,'' she said. ``They're not shopping
for bargains.''
Another reason that Japanese tourists feel so comfortable in
the Aloha State is that about one-quarter of the population is of Japanese
ancestry. Japanese-Americans have prospered in Hawaii, both economically and
politically -- their numbers include Senator Daniel Inouye, among other
prominent figures. But some also warn about the dangers of a new spate of
Japan-bashing, fearing that the backlash will hit them, as well. And many of
them remember what happened after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when
Japanese-Americans were subjected to everything from slurs to internment -- the
dark side of the American dream.
For Edward Ichiyama, who grew up in Hawaii, the Japanese
attack was a personal affront. ``We were incensed,'' recalled Ichiyama, now 68.
``Here our ancestors are attacking us, and this is where the seeds of
patriotism were planted. We said, `Hey, we have to do something about this.' ''
What Ichiyama did was to join a newly formed, mostly Japanese-American army
unit -- and begin a journey through the historical markers of his time. He was
wounded fighting the Germans in France and later arrived at a Nazi
concentration camp near Dachau in time to witness what he calls the ``pitiful,
gut-wrenching sight of these really emaciated inmates in their prison garb.''
Meanwhile, one of his brothers, Katsuji, who had been living
in Japan when war broke out, was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Navy,
serving aboard a destroyer. He survived its sinking by the Allies, and later
married a woman who had been just outside Hiroshima when the United States
dropped an atomic bomb on that unsuspecting city.
Ichiyama, whose second wife is a Japanese-American who was
interned on the U.S. mainland, says that even after his military service, he
experienced anti-Japanese slights from white Americans. A barber refused to cut
his children's hair, and a man brandished a shotgun when Ichiyama went looking
for a house to buy. ``I would imagine,'' he said, ``that in certain people,
this kind of feeling still prevails because they don't distinguish -- in their
mind, a Jap is a Jap.''
Ichiyama, who has retired from his job as a manager at the
Social Security Administration, says that the Tokyo government could help
greatly by apologizing for Pearl Harbor. But he argues that it is unfair to
single out the Japanese because of their investment in the United States.
``People are saying the Japanese are buying Hawaii, they're buying California,
they're buying New York,'' Ichiyama said. ``But hey, someone is selling, you
know. And in Hawaii, most of the sellers are non-Japanese.''
Florence Matsuura steers her Honda Accord through the quiet
streets of Kahala, a rich oceanside neighborhood in east Honolulu. A real
estate agent, Matsuura is a 58-year-old Japanese-American who has several
clients from Japan. The low-slung houses of Kahala, graced by palm trees and
flowering bougainvillea, range in price from under $1 million to more than $20
million, she says, and most of the sales are to Japanese. Many visit Hawaii
only once or twice a year. As Matsuura talks, a white stretch limousine turns
off Kahala Avenue and comes to a stop. ``You see that a lot,'' she says.
``They'll come into town and bring a few friends and say, `Let's go out and
play golf.' And then they have a limousine pick them up to play.'' Matsuura
shakes her head. ``The unfortunate thing is that the properties aren't being
used much,'' she says. ``It's such a waste.''
The Japanese are far from the first foreign investors in
modern-day Hawaii. In the late 1970s, Canadians touched off a mini-boom by
buying resort condominiums, many in Waikiki; but when the condo market dropped
in 1981, Canadian investors fell away. Then, in the mid-1980s, the Japanese
began their major move into Hawaii, snapping up hotels, office buildings,
shopping centres, golf courses and residential properties. In one now-notorious
case in 1987, billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto, riding around in a stretch limo,
bought 75 houses and condos on the island of Oahu in four months. The following
year, he paid $45 million for a single estate.
Hawaiians complained that the Japanese were driving up
property taxes and housing prices. But although the median price for a
single-family house is now $388,000, up from $191,000 in 1986, analysts say
that the Japanese are not solely to blame -- Hawaii has a limited amount of
available land and a lack of affordable housing.
In any case, with Tokyo banks now imposing tighter lending
policies, the Japanese buying frenzy has subsided. And according to Michael
Sklarz, research director for Locations Inc., the Hawaiian government can
always rein in the Japanese investors. ``If you push too far, you're going to
stimulate a backlash against you,'' Sklarz said. ``The problem when you buy
real estate, as opposed to other investments, is that you can't take it with
you. So you have to blend in with the local economy or you'll get punished.''
In Kahala, Jitsuo Nakano, a real estate agent who grew up in
the area when it was mostly pig and chicken farms, rejects the conventional
wisdom that what the Japanese could not do by bombing they are doing by buying.
``That's all bull,'' he said. ``It's all on an individual basis. My clients
from Japan are here because they want to come here, because this is paradise.
They have the money, so they do it.'' Nakano, a 65-year-old Japanese-American
who was interned for three years during the war, says that people should stop
demanding a Japanese apology. ``America has started wars, too,'' he said. ``So
why keep remembering? We had a fight, we make up and forget about it. Why hold
that animosity in your heart?''
But animosity remains, memories resurface. In Hawaii, a
sense of unfinished business lingers. Joseph McCabe recalls that, with the
Japanese attack in progress, he huddled with his brothers and sisters as his
father, answering a radio call for civilian workers to return to Pearl Harbor,
drove off in a green Packard. ``We were saying, `How, with all this bombing
going on, can they say for the civilians to go back, and without any arms? This
is crazy.' ''
He remembers, too, that a couple of hours later, a family
friend arrived at his house with the tragic message: his father, along with an
uncle and two cousins, had been killed in the car. Official reports blamed the
so-called friendly fire of American anti-aircraft guns. McCabe, now 66, who
lives on the windward side of Oahu across the mountains from Honolulu, argues
that the families of civilian victims should receive government compensation,
just as Japanese-American internees did.
Fiske, the former marine bugler, recalls a moment of
reconciliation, of hope. It was at the Arizona memorial just a couple of months
ago. A grey-haired man walked up to him, a man of his generation. He kept
pounding his chest and saying, ``I'm Japanese, I'm Japanese.'' Fiske recalls:
``I didn't know what to make of it -- I didn't know whether he was going to
start World War III here or what.'' But the man put his hands on Fiske's
shoulders and said, ``I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry,'' and pulled him into an
embrace. ``He was holding me so tight,'' Fiske remembers. ``We must have been
that way for a minute or two and then when we broke away, the tears were
streaming down both our faces.'' In the confusion, or maybe in embarrassment,
the man disappeared. Fiske tried to find him but could not. He had so many
unanswered questions.
Photo: Ichiyama (BOB LEVIN/MACLEAN'S)
Photo: Waikiki and Diamond Head crater (SCHECHTER-TONY STONE
WORLDWIDE/FOCUS STOCK PHOTO)
Photo: Verhoff before the Arizona memorial and the rusted
foundation of a gun turret: `shipmates' (BOB LEVIN/MACLEAN'S)
Photo: Fiske: explosions and fire (BOB LEVIN/MACLEAN'S)
Photo: Izumi and friend Akiko Inoue: `the weather, the
water' (BOB LEVIN/MACLEAN'S)
~~~~~~~~
By Bob Levin