“You broke out of Kalaupapa?”
“Yes, but only for the night,” Rachel said with a grin. “We went to a party in Kaunakakai. We were young and rebellious, Hina’s friend was having a party, and we were damned if we weren’t going to go to it!” She laughed as she recalled, “It took us hours to climb the pali and another hour by wagon to get to Kaunakakai. At the party Cecelia—oh God, I haven’t thought of this for years—Cecelia got absolutely stink-eyed and we had to practically pour her into the wagon to take us back to the pali.” Ruth laughed at the image. “Mother Marianne caught us coming back, but she was so astonished that we had come back that she let us go without even a punishment.”
“Why did you go back?” Ruth asked.
“There was some debate about that at the time. But in the end it was worth it for the look on Mother’s face.”
Rachel gazed at these faces from her youth and thought of the other friends who hadn’t lived long enough to be in the photo: Josephina, Hazel, Noelani, Bertha …
“All of them gone now. They passed away and I lived to see a cure. Why? I was no different from them, no better. Why was I spared?” Her voice was soft, but even after all these years she still grieved for them. “Why did the ma'i pākē take my brother Kimo after a year, and here I am, still standing at sixty-three? Why did I live when they all died?”
Ruth winced at the sudden anguish in her voice and gently put a hand on hers.
“I don’t know why, Rachel,” Ruth admitted. “I’ve asked those kind of questions too. I was raised Buddhist, but as I grew older I found it too … fatalistic. Whenever someone died I was told, ‘Everything is impermanent.’ When Frank asked if I’d consider becoming Methodist, I did it partly for his family and partly to see if Christianity held any better answers for me. But whenever I asked those question of my minister, he would just say, ‘God has His reasons,’ and that didn’t seem like a very good answer either.”
Her fingers closed gently around Rachel’s deformed hand.
“Why did you live? Maybe so your grandchildren could know their tūtū. So I could know my mother, and you could know your daughter. I don’t know why some people die and others don’t. I’m just happy you didn’t.
“And you know what? I think your friends at Bishop Home would be happy too—happy that one of them finally made it out, like you did when you all went to that party.”
Rachel thought of her friends—saw them again in that rickety old wagon going to Kaunakakai, their faces bright with the exhilaration and delight of being free—and she smiled, knowing that Ruth was right. She heard Emily and Hina and Cecelia, cheering for Francine as she won a horse race—and cheering for Rachel even now. They had been with her all along.
Chapter 17
1954
The Pan Am Strato Clipper Golden Gate was a double-decker colossus of the air that flew higher than any commercial plane before it—25,000 feet—and faster too, San Francisco to Honolulu in just nine and a half hours. The amenities were grand, even the “thrifty” Rainbow Service where Ruth and her family enjoyed comfortable reclining seats and a sumptuous breakfast, lunch, and seven-course dinner. There was even a cocktail lounge on the lower level for those who wanted some conversation or tropical drinks.
The price was steep—$255 per passenger, or $1,275 for the whole family—but that included hotel accommodations and was comparable in cost to a windowless cabin, no bath, on a lower deck aboard a Matson ocean liner. Two years ago Frank had been promoted to superintendent of Sunsweet’s Plant #1, and with Ruth’s income and a lot of scrimping and saving, they were able to splurge on airfare. The trip was being made as much for Etsuko, who longed to see Hawai'i for what could be the last time, as it was for Rachel, who happily flew from Maui to spend nine days with them all.
As they approached Honolulu, Etsuko peered out the window excitedly. “Oh, from the air O'ahu is even lovelier than I ever knew!”
All the islands Ruth was able to see were beautiful, covered in lush greenery, ringed by exquisitely clear turquoise waters, huddled together in a vast, forbidding ocean. Ruth had never realized before how truly remote they were: half a million Americans living in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
On landing, Ruth stepped into the moist, hot tropical air, her hair tossed back into her face by a cooling trade wind, and was startled to find it—familiar. There was a sweet floral scent carried on the wind that was like the forgotten perfume of an aunt only dimly recalled. She had not expected to remember anything. Among her handful of memories of Hawai'i was one of Ralph walking her protectively to her new school; previously that memory had always been flat, one-dimensional, like a movie playing in her mind. Now it turned tangible as she recalled the balmy touch of the wind, the humidity in the air, the quality of light itself. Now the memory felt whole.
“Look! There she is!” cried Peggy, waving.
Rachel was part of a small crowd waiting for arriving passengers behind a chain-link fence. She wore an aloha-print dress and stood beside a Hawaiian woman with garlands of pink-and-white flower leis draped over her arm. As the Haradas passed through the gate, the woman proceeded to drape a plumeria lei around each of their necks.
“Aloha!” Rachel said as she hugged Ruth. “E komo mai—welcome!”
The heady fragrance of the lei jogged something else in Ruth’s memory. “Didn’t we have flowers like these once?” she asked Etsuko.
“Yes, in back of the store on Kukui Street we had a yellow plumeria plant. I tried growing one in Florin but it was too cold.” Etsuko looked around her with a smile of wondrous delight. “So many more houses on the mountains! And this airport was not even here when we left in 1923!”
“Hiya, tūtū,” Donnie said warmly as he embraced Rachel.
“My God, look at these keiki,” Rachel said wonderingly. Sixteen-year-old Donnie was as lanky and handsome as his father, and fourteen-year-old Peggy, as tall and beautiful as Ruth. “You’re almost too big to be called keiki!”
Peggy hugged her too. “Grandma, I’m so happy to finally be here.”
Following Rachel’s directions, Frank drove their rental car onto Nimitz Highway, the most direct, if hardly picturesque, route to Waikīkī—but the kids didn’t care, they were thrilled to be anywhere this new and different. They drove through a screen of wind-blown palm trees on both sides of Kalākaua Avenue to their destination: the Moana Hotel.
Waikīkī’s first luxury hotel, opened in 1901, the Moana—Hawaiian for “open sea”—was also second to none in Old World charm and hospitality. From the moment the Haradas drove up to its portico entrance they were made to feel special by the staff (as all guests were). Their comfortable, tropically decorated rooms had an ocean view, motivating Donnie and Peggy to unpack, change into bathing suits, and half ask, half declare, “Time for the beach?”
The adults were happy to change into their swimwear—all but Rachel, who wore a sundress and closed-toe sandals—but on the way to the beach, they stopped by the Kama'āina Bar for some mai-tais after the long trip. Prodded by impatient offspring, they were finally herded toward the Moana’s choice oceanfront location. Beachgoers had flagged their pieces of paradise with gaudy umbrellas; in the distance the green caldera of Diamond Head crouched like a stone lion at the far end of Waikīkī.
Donnie and Peggy dove enthusiastically into the surf.
“Wow, this water is warm!” Peggy called out. “You sure this is the same ocean we have back in California?”
“A few degrees south makes a big difference,” Rachel called back.