She began twisting her fingers in her lap, as if she were trying to pull them off; her gaze drew inward, and glazed over.
“A car drove up behind me and stopped, a Ford touring car. Two men got out and grabbed me and dragged me toward it. I was struggling, and the one called Joe Kahahawai hit me in the face, in the jaw. Hard.”
Next to her, Isabel gasped, drew a hand to her mouth.
But Thalia remained emotionless. “The other one, Henry Chang, placed his hand over my mouth and pulled me into the backseat. I begged them to let me go, but every time I spoke, Kahahawai hit me. Chang hit me, too.”
“Was the car still parked,” I asked, “or was it moving?”
“Moving,” she said. “As soon as they dragged me in there, they pulled away; there were two or three other boys in the front seat.”
“What nationality?” I asked.
“Hawaiians, I thought at the time. Later, I learned they were a mixed-race group.”
According to the materials I’d read, the motley crew of young island gangsters included Joe Kahahawai and Ben Ahakuelo, pure-blooded Hawaiians; Horace Ida and David Takai, Japanese; and Henry Chang, Chinese-Hawaiian.
“Go on, dear,” Darrow said.
“I offered them money, I told them my husband would give them money if they would let me go. I said I had some money with me they could have. I had my purse, and I said, ‘Take my pocketbook!’ One of them in the front seat, Ahakuelo, turned around and said, ‘Take the pocketbook,’ and Chang took it from me. I got a good look at this Ben Ahakuelo—he turned around several times and grinned at me. He had a gold tooth, a big filling about here.” She opened her mouth and pointed.
“How far did they take you?” I asked.
“I don’t really know. I know they were driving along Ala Moana Road, heading towards town. Maybe two or three blocks. They drove the car into the underbrush on the righthand side of the road, and Kahahawai and Chang dragged me out and away from the car and into the bushes and then Chang assaulted me….”
Thalia said all this as calmly, and detachedly, as if she were reading off a laundry list; but Isabel, next to her, was biting her fist and tears were streaming down her face, streaking her makeup.
“I tried to get away, but I couldn’t. They hit me so many times, so hard, I was dazed. I couldn’t imagine that this was happening to me! I didn’t know people were capable of such things…. Chang hit me, and the others were hovering around, holding my arms.”
Isabel gasped.
Thalia didn’t seem to notice. “Then the others…did it to me. I was assaulted five or six times—Kahahawai went last. I started to pray, and that made him angry and he hit me very hard. I cried out, ‘You’ll knock my teeth out,’ and he said, ‘What do I care? Shut up!’ I asked him please not to hit me anymore.”
Isabel, covering her mouth, got up and ran from the room.
“There were five men,” I said. “You think you may have been assaulted as many as six times?”
“I lost count, but I think Chang assaulted me twice. I remember he was standing near me, and he said, ‘I want to go again.’ That was all right with the others, but one of them said, ‘Hurry up, we have to go back out Kalihi way.’”
“They spoke in English?” I asked.
“To me, they did; sometimes they talked to each other in some foreign language. They said a lot of filthy things to me, in English, which I don’t care to repeat.”
“Certainly, dear,” Darrow said. “But you heard them call each other by name?”
“Yes, well, I heard the name Bull used, and I heard the name Joe. I heard another name—it might have been Billy or Benny, and I heard the name Shorty.”
“You must have got a good look at them,” I said.
She nodded. “Kahahawai had on a short-sleeved polo shirt, blue trousers. Ahakuelo, blue trousers, blue shirt. Horace Ida, dark trousers, leather coat. And Chang—I think Chang had on dark trousers.”
This was the kind of witness a cop dreams of.
“Now, dear, after they’d had their vicious way with you,” Darrow said, “what happened next?”
“One helped me to sit up, Chang I think. He said, ‘The road’s over there,’ then they bolted for their car, got into it, and drove away. That’s when I turned around and saw the car.”
I asked, “Which way was it facing?”
“The back of the car was toward me. The car’s headlights, taillights, were switched on.”
“And that’s when you saw the license plate?”
“Yes. I noticed the number. I thought it was 58-805, but I guess I was off a digit.”
The actual license, belonging to Horace Ida’s sister’s Ford touring car, was 58-895. Easy mistake, considering what she’d been through, confusing a 9 with a 0.
Darrow said, “Dear, what did you do after the attack?”
“I was very much dazed. I wandered around in the bushes and finally came to the Ala Moana. I saw a car coming from Waikiki and ran toward the car, waving my arms. The car stopped. I ran to it, half blind from their headlights, and asked the people in it if they were white. They said yes, and I told them what had happened to me and asked them to take me home. They wanted to take me to the police station, but I asked them to bring me here, which they did.”
Darrow asked, “What did you do when you got home?”
“I took off my clothes and douched.”
No one said anything for several long moments.
Then, gently, Darrow asked, “Did this procedure prove…successful?”
“No. A couple of weeks later I found I was pregnant.”
“I’m very sorry, dear. I understand your physician performed a curettage, and eliminated the, uh, problem?”
“Yes, he did.”
Isabel, on shaky legs, reentered the room; she smiled embarrassedly and sat on the couch, giving Thalia plenty of room.
Darrow said, “Returning to that terrible night…when did you next see your husband?”
“About one o’clock in the morning,” Thalia said. “He called me from a friend’s, looking for me, and I told him, ‘Please come home right away, something awful has happened.’”
“When your husband returned home, did you tell him what these men had done to you?”
“Not at first. I couldn’t. It was too awful, too horrible. But he sat with me on this couch and kept asking. He knew something was terribly wrong. Even though I’d cleaned myself up, my face was all bruised and puffy; my nose was bleeding. He begged me to tell him.”
“And you did?”
She nodded. “I told him everything—how they’d raped me. How Kahahawai broke my jaw when I tried to pray. How all of them attacked me….”
“I understand your husband called the police, took you to the hospital…”
“Yes. Eventually I identified four of the five boys, who’d been picked up on another assault that same night.”
Darrow gently inquired about the ordeal that had followed, the weeks of medical treatment (teeth pulled, jaw wired shut), the “travesty” of the trial of the five rapists that had resulted in a hung jury, the flurry of press interest, the racial unrest manifested by several incidents between Navy personnel and local island youth.
“The worst part was the rumors,” she said hollowly. “I heard Tommie hadn’t believed me and was getting a divorce. That I was assaulted by a naval officer and that Tommie found him in my room and beat him and then beat me up…all kinds of vile, nasty rumors.”
“How did your husband withstand these pressures, dear?”
“I told him not to worry about these rumors, but he couldn’t sleep and he got so very thin. Then I would wake up at night, screaming, and he would be right there, soothing me. He was so wonderful. But I was worried.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t sleep, he had rings around his eyes, he’d get up at night and walk up and down the living room, smoking cigarettes.”
“And your mother—all of this was very difficult for her, obviously.”