“ Perfect, huh?”
“ It's only one hundred ten miles from Pearl, the U.S. headquarters for operations in the Pacific.”
“ And you think that makes it okay?”
“ In the best tradition of might makes right and given the context of the times, I don't know. Since the fifties the natives have been given visitation rights several months of each year to the island and limited fishing rights year round. It was never contested until the PKO came into prominence.”
She thought Jim Parry was sounding political now, perhaps even racist, but then who could live day in and day out here without taking sides? she wondered.
“ In '76 the PKO occupied the island against the orders of the Navy. It got ugly.”
“ There were riots?”
“ More like there were arrests. It was the first of many battles fought in the name of their sacred island, and since then the PKO has scored some impressive victories. They backed their own man for Congress and he's won every year since. In 1990, Congress passed a two-year moratorium on the bombing while a federal and state commission studied the cost of clearing the island of shells and debris, its future use, and who would eventually have jurisdiction over the place.”
“ So what was the outcome?”
“ You're looking at it,” he said, pointing ahead to the dense growth in the fast approaching bay along this stretch of the island. “A return to the past.”
She thought for a moment of all that Jim's phrase implied, the multifaceted levels of connotation in his words. Was going back to the past a personal affront to the white race? Did it imply that Christianity was dealt a blow, that the American way of life, Western civilization, was a poor substitute for a simple agrarian lifestyle? That democracy and the Puritan work ethic of the whites were all a fraud perpetrated on humanity by a rigid mind-set, no less treacherous in its way than that of a conqueror of another kind?
“ A sacred island, they call it?” she asked. “Is it sacred, or is it like the Seven Sacred Pools, a slogan written by an ad man?”
He raised his shoulders. “I guess Kahoolawe is sacred in the native mind.” But Jim wanted to talk of things associated with the island other than its sacredness to the Hawaiians. “The Ohana, with some big guns in Congress now, won their argument to have the island set aside for cultural and educational purposes. Had the island declared a national freaking historic monument. Can you believe that?” He held his voice down, obviously not wishing Awai or the crewmen to hear him on this.
“ Why do they regard the island as sacred? And if it was sacred, how did they ever lose control of it in the first place?”
“ They were herded off the island when the military declared it theirs. They hadn't any choice in the matter, and they weren't exactly prepared to take on the U.S., either through force or through the courts, believe me.”
She repeated her question. “What makes it sacred to them?”
“ Usual crap.”
“ Jim, why're you sounding so… so unlike yourself over this? Why're you sounding like a racist?”
He took a deep breath and blew it out toward the island, which was taking on more formidable size before them. “Because now this sacred place, this native Hawaiian jurisdiction, is a sanctuary, a natural haven for fugitives like Lopaka Kowona. That's why. And it frustrates and infuriates me that they hide behind a wall of sacred cows when in fact this place is no better policed than Indian Territory in the American West of the 1800s. Just pisses me off, and it hasn't got squat to do with race or sacredness.”
“ You still haven't answered my question.”
'They think it sacred because in ancient times it was known as Kanaloa, after one of the four major Hawaiian gods. It's mentioned all the time in their chants and the legends passed down through the generations. At one time all travelers to Tahiti stopped on the island to perform rituals before journeying on, and in 1874, King David Kalakaua was personally brought here by his kahuna — “
“ His kahuna? His priest?”
“ Yeah, his priest… to purge himself before ascending to the throne. There are ancient shrines and fishing temples all over the island, and since the Navy imposed isolation, these shrines are in excellent condition, so the Ohana, naturally-”
“ I see; understood. Then maybe the Ohana were right, their intentions good.”
“ The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he countered. “I don't know. I'm just a cop when it comes down to it, way out of navigable waters here. The PKO did force the Navy to make a comprehensive study of the environmental impact of the shelling and bombing, and a thorough survey of the archaeological sites and conditions of each. Amazingly, the shrines survived all the hits. The Ohana also managed in '81 to gain the historic site status which made the Navy's continued policy of obliterating the place appear downright un-American.”
“ Not to mention stupid.” She laughed lightly at this. “Cunning move for the kanakas, heh, Joe? Chalk one up.”
“ Right, the beginning of the checkmate, if you ask me, because next the Ohana won the right for natives to visit the island four days a month for ten months each year. While at the same time the U.S. military stubbornly held onto its bombing schedule, at least in the abstract, since they seldom fired again on the island after this.”
“ Damned fools had to know that if some fool scheduled a bomb run on a day when natives were visiting shrines, well, all hell would've broken loose,” she said, laughing. He smiled at the image before continuing. “The northeast shore, where we're landing, a place called Ule Point, is where most of the visitors over the years have made pilgrimages to shrines. It's the area that gets most rainfall and has best survived the U.S. Navy assaults. Nowadays, Polynesians the islands over gather here to 'go native,' to dress in ancient clothing, celebrate ancient ritual and legends, to talk story, their phrase for oral histories. Some of the celebrations have been filmed and can be seen at the Bishop Museum by haoles, but none are invited here.”
“ So the Ohana won in the end.”
“ I don't believe that even the Ohana could've foreseen the actual return of a permanent population to the island.”
“ I see.”
“ It just happened. Pockets of pilgrims who came for the celebrations started slowly to trickle back to stay, most of them booking passage on boats like this one, refugees out of time, you might say, living anachronisms, like this Chief Kowona.”
She sensed a confusion in Parry, a sense of profound sadness for these people he spoke of in such analytical terms. She asked, “Before the Navy controlled the island, it held a permanent population?”
“ Yes, the diehards who from the first contact with the white man resisted becoming assimilated, and before World War II there were some flourishing ranches on the island, owned by whites who'd come in the 1870s. For a time before the cattle ranchers, King Kamehameha III had turned the island into a penal colony, which failed miserably. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kahoolawe fell into the control of the military, the ranchers on the island suddenly finding themselves as disenfranchised as the natives.”
“ Can the island support a permanent population now?”
“ Doubtful, really…”
“ Oh? Why?” The breeze lifted her auburn hair, tying it in knots.
“ The island's been used traditionally as a fishing base.”
“ The soil no good for agriculture?” she asked.
'The soil has been determined to be excellent for modem agriculture, but for hoe and rake subsistence farming, who knows.” Jim stretched, yawning, obviously tired. “Most Hawaiians are, or have been, unable to cope with Kahoolawe's changing weather, you know, cold nights and treacherous summers, so they've naturally opted for the larger, more fertile islands.”
“ The other native islanders still use Kahoolawe as a fishing base, then,” she remarked.
Frowning now, he added, “It's going to be hell reclaiming the fragile ground cover destroyed by the wild goats and the scraff- ings. Soil erosion's on an enormous scale here. And without the U.S. military's help and proper management of water resources, the island's just going to continue to be parched. Much of it is a no-man's-land, like I said.”
“ Sounds to me like it took some courage to return here,” she told him.
“ No doubt of it,” he nearly shouted, his voice traveling over the waters of the channel. Toning himself down,
