She and Ken watched in silence as the first half of the piece ran. Stock footage of Ohnishi, David Takamora, and the violent street gangs currently preying on white tourists in the city were interspersed with close-up shots of Jill doing commentary in front of city hall. As the scenes began focusing more on the gangs, especially one violent image of four Asian youths beating an elderly white woman, Jill reached for the goose-necked microphone and began laying in a new voice-over, one not from the contrived script she had written, but one from her heart.
“Hawaii is the Aloha State. The word means love as well as good-bye in the native tongue, and in these times it means both simultaneously. Good-bye to love. Good-bye to everything that our island paradise has stood for since Captain Cook first came here two hundred years ago, and good-bye to the traditions that reigned on the islands since the first inhabitants 1,500 years before that.
“Where once we melded and blended into one people, neither all caucasian nor all Polynesian nor all Asian, today we stand divided from our neighbors and friends. Now all it takes is having eyes a little too round or skin a little too light and anyone on the street can become a target. Racial hatred has grown here like some cancer, some dread disease without cause whose cure seems equally elusive. Fostered by men like Takahiro Ohnishi, with his well-publicized views of racial purity, and van-guarded by youth gangs bent on violent expression, the state has been galvanized into two intractable camps: those who want Referendum 324 and those who fear it as many have feared tyranny before.
“Last night, the vice president called Referendum 324 the beginning of a secessionist movement, and perhaps he’s right. The last time America faced a crisis like this, the Southern states withdrew from the Union because they believed in their way of life, one built on the conviction that people of other races are inferior. Today a segment of Hawaii’s population believes they have a mandate to control everyone’s lives because there is a little more Japanese flowing in their veins. They say that their Samurai ways are superior, that they can calm the streets once again if we agree to live under a system that stifles freedom of expression and the belief that every one is created equal. In this reporter’s opinion, that sounds an awful lot like extortion.
“As the
“A self-generating downward spiral has been created by the actions of those who now seem to control our streets. As more tourists are frightened away, more people will lose their jobs and seek the security and fraternity represented by the gangs, thus increasing their ability to terrorize. Only this morning the President placed the troops stationed at Pearl Harbor on full alert in order to protect the federal government’s interests on the islands.
“Who is going to protect our interests?
“Mayor Takamora’s police force does not act to control the gangs. Will he ever ask for the National Guard to step in and take control of a situation he can no longer handle? For surely we face a crisis as dire as any these islands have faced since the first time a Japanese force descended in 1941.”
Jill angrily pushed the microphone aside as she watched a monitor displaying David Takamora’s announcement four weeks earlier that he wanted to run in the gubernatorial elections in the fall.
Ken was too stunned to speak for an instant, and when he caught his voice, he stammered, “Jesus, Jill, you can’t run that.”
“Of course I can’t. It’s the truth, and right now we’re not allowed to report the truth,” she said bitterly.
The in-house phone rang. The unit was built into the console next to where Jill’s feet were propped back up against the complicated machine. She snatched it up, tucking her hair behind her right ear as she swung the receiver to her head.
“I know, I know, forty-five minutes to air.” Only her producer would disturb her in the editing room.
“You’ve got five.”
“What in the hell are you talking about, Hank? We don’t air for an hour.”
“You know the rules, Jill. Every piece that chronicles the violence must be cleared by Hiroshi.” Hiroshi Kyato was the station’s news director.
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You can shove your five-minute deadline. I’m not some second-class citizen.”
“Wait, I didn’t mean anything by it, I mean I don’t mean any disrespect for who you are. It’s just, well, you know…” His voice trailed off.
The producer backpedaled so fast that it truly stunned Jill. Race was polarizing the station, too. Jill was half- Japanese, and Hank was a caucasian from New Jersey, and he was now deadly afraid that he’d offended her.
“Hold on, Hank,” Jill said quickly. “What I mean to say is that I’m not a cub reporter on her first assignment. I know what the boundaries are. I don’t need Hiro and his thought police telling me what to say on the air.”
“I’m sorry, Jill,” Hank said tiredly. “I’ve been on edge ever since Hiro agreed to help Mayor Takamora reduce tensions in the city by running tamer pieces on the situation. So far you are about the only reporter who hasn’t called me a graduate of the Josef Goebbels School of Broadcast Journalism.”
“Haven’t you talked to Hiro about this?”
“Sure did. He told me to hand over every segment about the violence or hand in my resignation.”
“All right, listen, my piece isn’t done yet, or, well, it is, but I’m not going to let that son of a bitch cut it up. I’m going to take it home tonight, tone it some. If anyone is going to censor my work, it’ll be me. I won’t be the person to cost you your job.”
“Jill, you can’t do that. Your story belongs to the station. It’s not your private property.”
“Try and stop me, Hank.”
Jill set the phone back in the cradle and popped the tape from the editing machine, slipping it in her handbag slung across the back of her chair. She stood.
“What are you going to do?” Ken asked from behind his thick glasses.
“I don’t know yet.” She left the darkened room.
The subtle chirping of cicadas was a rhythmic accompaniment to the moon-drenched night. The air was warm, but charged with the humidity of a recently passed thunderstorm. Jill sat on the lanai of her condo, her bare feet propped against a patio table and a glass of zinfandel idly twirling between her long fingers.
She’d been home for a couple of hours, but the long bath and half bottle of wine had done little to calm her frayed nerves. Three months she’d been working on the Ohnishi piece, three fucking months, and it would be chopped up into tiny pieces on the cutting room floor and run as a human interest story, no doubt. If she’d ever questioned the connection between Ohnishi and Takamora, she had her proof now — and the links ran even deeper, to her own news director. Was no one immune to this racial factionalism other than her?
She was really wondering if it was all worth it. All the sacrifices she’d made in her life, all the thought she’d put into her career, and here she was, about to have her accomplishments hacked apart because they cut too close to the truth.
“Son of a bitch.” Despite herself, she was almost in tears.
Everything in her life had been built around journalism. She’d let almost everything else go in order to reach the upper echelons of her profession. Few boyfriends lasted more than a month or so of her eighty-hour work weeks. She’d spent her last vacation working as a temporary secretary at a sewage treatment plant, tracking down allegations of groundwater contamination.
Her infrequent talks with her mother invariably turned to Jill’s lack of a husband and children. Every time Jill bragged about a breaking story, her mother would ask where her grandbabies were. Jill would always end the conversation angrily defending her career, but would always be racked with guilt, knowing that her mother was partly right.
Jill did want a husband and children, but she also wanted to be a journalist. There was a balance between the two that she just couldn’t seem to find. How much of her career should she give up for a family? How much family should she forego for a career?
And now her career might be about over. She could refuse to hand in her story and face probable dismissal, or she could cut the piece herself, destroying every shred of her integrity.
She wondered if she should send the story directly to New York. She had a few friends in the network —
