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.”
“Yes. When she arrived from Bayport, in response to the first cablegram that I’d been injured, she didn’t even know about the…true nature of what had happened to me. She was outraged, indignant, vowed to do whatever it took to help.”
“How did that help manifest itself, dear?”
“Well, at first, she took over the household duties—Tommie had been acting as both housekeeper and my nurse, in addition to his normal naval duties.”
“But that wasn’t all she did, was it?”
“No. Mother was relentless in urging both Admiral Stirling and the local civil authorities to see that my attackers were brought to trial, and punished.”
