“The blond woman in the other hallway portrait is my stepmother, Natalie Talbot Pierce,” JP said, as if following my train of thought. “She was originally from California, and immediately after my father’s death, she relocated to Los Angeles. She’s happier there, and now Will’s there with his children, her life is perfect.”
“Did you grow up in this house?” I asked.
“No. It dates from the 1910s, and my father did build it, but I didn’t move in until ten years after the war ended because I was involved in round-the-clock management of the plantation. Before H-1, a drive from Honolulu to the Leeward Side took half a day.”
“It still does, practically, when it’s rush hour,” Michael said.
“How do you know that? Aren’t you staying in Waikiki?”
“Actually we’re at the Kainani resort,” I said.
“Ah yes, Kainani was built on land we sold to Mitsuo Kikuchi. The fire was quite close to you yesterday, then.”
“Yes.” Michael took up the conversation easily. “We had to drive through it just before the road closed, and there was a stretch of road with fire on both sides of us.”
“We have damage on over ninety thousand acres, and the ranchers using our lands lost almost a hundred head of horses. Still, it could have been worse.” Josiah said.
“I was out jogging through the fire-damaged areas this morning, and I saw Mr. Kikuchi and your land manager, Mr. Rivera. I told them I was sad to see that old plantation village was gone, and the coffee shop as well.”
“Actually, the coffee shop’s not my loss; the half-acre it stands on we sold about thirty years ago. But the old plantation village that’s gone was part of Pierce Holdings.”
“I feel fortunate to have seen it before it burned,” I said. “The village was like a perfect, lost little world.”
“You liked the cottages?” He smiled wistfully. “They’re almost universally deplored by people now, but they were better than most housing in Hawaii at that time. A commission in the thirties established rules for the construction of plantation cottages. Depending on family size, our workers had multiple bedrooms, kitchens, and the crowing glory: indoor plumbing.”
“Well, I suppose that now that the land is cleared of brush, it will be easier for Mr. Kikuchi’s development plans, although I imagine he’ll try and drop the price he’s willing to pay you, citing the unfortunate damage to historic structures.”
JP’s expression seemed to have changed from open to guarded in an instant. “You said you had a question about land, but I didn’t realize you were one of the anti-Kikuchi agitators. Who pays your salary, Honolulu Heritage? Or do you do it as a volunteer?”
“Honey,” Michael said softly.
“We’re not preservationists, I swear, although I really do like old places, and old things.” JP didn’t look any more relaxed, so I added, ‘I work out of the home so I’m afraid I don’t have a business card. Michael, why don’t you give JP your card?”
Michael’s State Department card was impressive-looking, and only slightly fake. Josiah Pierce looked it over carefully then said, “Last fellow I know with a job like this wound up with a bad case of blowfish poisoning.”
“I’m glad we’re not having sushi for lunch, then,” Michael said, smiling rather faintly.
“What are you really here for?” JP’s voice was cold.
“As I said over the phone, I’m trying to put family history in order. Some of my relatives worked at the plantation from the twenties through the forties.”
“Shimura,” said Josiah Pierce, his sharp eyes fixing on me. “You’re not using Hendricks as your last name, but Shimura. Are you one of the family with the failed lawsuit?”
“Sort of,” I began. “I didn’t know about the lawsuit until recently, and the Hawaiian Shimuras are technically my third cousins.”
“The Circuit Court dismissed Edwin Shimura’s case for lack of evidence. How could he have thought he could claim land without a deed?”
“I understand your point. It’s just that, when I hear my great-uncle’s account-I’m talking about Yoshitsune Shimura, who was a child on the plantation-I believe he’s being as honest as he can be.”
“Can be?” Mr. Pierce sounded markedly sarcastic.
“He’s eighty-nine years old. There are things he remembers, and things he has no idea about, because his mother, Harue Shimura, didn’t tell him everything and she died while he was away in a Japanese-American internment camp on the mainland. What my great-uncle told me was that he saw a letter signed by your father in his mother’s chest of drawers. The letter described the gift of a seaside cottage to her. I should probably mention that he found this at the time he was living within the seaside cottage, so he assumed all was well and normal.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Yoshitsune lived there with his widowed mother until he was sent to an internment camp on suspicion of espionage. He wound up leaving the camp to serve as a translator with the OSS, and when the war was over, he returned to Hawaii and found the house had been taken over by a family called Liang. Your father had passed away, so he asked your mother about it, and she said she didn’t know anything about the matter.”
“Natalie Talbot Pierce was my stepmother, remember that, and she really didn’t know anything, because to her, the plantation was a hot, dirty place she didn’t like to visit. It’s a shame he didn’t come to me, because I have an idea what might have happened.”
“You do? Well, why didn’t you say anything at the trial?” I asked.
“Maybe because there was no trial,” Michael suggested.
“That’s right, and I think if things had been handled personally between us, with more aloha, I would have said something. But I’m not sure I should tell you, because my guess is you’ll get the lawyers revved up again, causing me legal and PR trouble at a time when I have my hands full just dealing with my ranchers who are going to want all kinds of compensation and favors because their horses burnt to death in my fields.”
I bit my lip, thinking how I’d misjudged the man, and the situation. Things were deteriorating as fast as I was shredding my bread roll. I put my hands on my lap, to control them.
“Mr. Pierce, I’m very sorry we disturbed you,” Michael said to fill the awkward silence.
“You think I’m just like the Big Five, don’t you? Big, bad landowners, abusers of the masses?”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as that,” I said.
“Drive farther along the coast, and you’ll come to Maile Beach and see hundreds of tents on the grass. It’s an impromptu housing development for the homeless, who come from all over the island because they can’t afford a roof over their head. Hawaii wasn’t like that in sugar plantation days.”
“I have to agree,” Michael said. “When I was here in school, and there were still a few sugar plantations going, there weren’t any homeless, unless you count drunks in Chinatown.”
“We had flophouses then,” JP said, seeming to relax slightly. “Now they’re fancy boutiques and restaurants.”
“I think we’re getting away from the topic,” I said. “Look, I know my relatives in Hawaii will not get that acre and a half they’re dreaming of. All I really hope for is a better idea of why your father might have visited Harue Shimura in her house one evening, when Yoshitsune was a boy.”
Josiah Pierce looked at me for a long moment, and then said, “Do you know what year that was?”
“Uncle Yoshitsune was in his mid-teens. He’d finished high school and had started at the post office.”
“There was a fire on the plantation in 1938, a regular burn that we’d scheduled for a field that needed rest. Unfortunately, the wind changed. A spark jumped to the mill, and it was ablaze before anyone noticed. Not everyone escaped.”
Michael and I sat in silence, waiting for more.
“Some people said it was the luna’s mistake for going ahead with a scheduled burn on a day with wind. Others said it was my father’s fault for wanting to have every field perfect when the demand for Hawaiian sugar was dropping. Who knows? It was a bad fire, an unlucky wind, and nine men died.” He looked from the distance back at us. “All of the men who died had wives and children. These are the women my father visited personally to give condolences, and offered help with housing outside the village, if they chose to leave.”