Fate's Redemption: The Saichi and Sarah Saga

By RK LINDSEY

This narrative unfolds as a tale of love entwining the lives of two individuals: Saichi Nishimoto, a young Japanese boy, and Sarah Koon, a girl of Caucasian descent. Unfortunately, Sarah's parents harbor prejudices against Saichi due to his Japanese background, referring to him with a derogatory term. Their efforts to maintain distance between t

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Regency Publishers
• Release date: Oct 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781962313582

Book preview

title.jpg

Copyright © 2023 Rk Lindsey, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author and publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-962313-59-9 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-962313-60-5 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-962313-58-2 (E-book Edition)

Some characters and events in this book are fictitious and products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Book Ordering Information

The Regency Publishers, US

521 5th Ave 17th floor NY, NY10175

Phone Number: [phone] ext 1007

Email: [e-mail]

www.theregencypublishers.com

Printed in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to my two best friends,

both Japanese, Walter Okura and Alvin Wakayama.

Contents

Starts Calling Me A Jap

My Jeep

Repeat Of Times Past

Manager’s Road

My First Investmet

Assisi

The Mailbox

I Meet Sarah

Mom & Daughter Fight

Test Spin

Sarah Hits On Me

Pop’s Advice

Mr. Freitas/Uncle Willy

Back To Sarah

Koon’s Visit

Freitas San

The Meeting At Kubos

Movie Dream

In Blue Hawaii

Sidebar Stuff

Prejudice

Racial Prejudice

Our Love Story

Why Pops Was Special

A Home For Three

He Loved His Fishing

In All Things Be Humble

Sorry For The Redundancy

Ojiisan

The Mailbox

Meeting At Kubos

Hilo Meeting

Algebra & Piano

Flat Tires

Assisi Versus Honomu

The Party

The Flash Flood

Visit With Uncle Willy

Football Season Debrief

Senior Prom

Threatened Strike

Algebra Revisited

Graduation Day

Abe Meeting

Home

Starts Calling Me A Jap

According to Ojiisan (grandpa in Japanese) our families lived across the road from the Koons twenty-five years. In all that time, they never talked, waved or said ‘hello’ to each other. With help from Pops and Willy Freitas, Ojiisan turned a shanti with dirt floors, screens for windows, a roof full of holes and an outhouse, into a beautiful cottage.

The Koons and the Comptons before them, made them feel they were a blight on what they saw was their place and only theirs, though Ojiisan and Pops were there first. First, because Ojiisan said he and Pops (my dad) and about two hundred other Japanese families lived in what was known as Japanese Camp. The camp was really a ghetto. Except for his shanti, the others were burned down in 1931 by the plantation on Christmas Day. All the other families were forced to relocate. The plantation manager at the time wanted to build a three-story mansion atop what came to be known as Manager’s Hill.

Sarah and I were going on seventeen when we first met on a warm Friday afternoon. Exchanged words, smiles, handshakes, and pleasantries. For the first time. The year was 1962. We are part of Tom Brokaw’s, The Greatest Generation. Despite the Viet Nam War. The assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King.

We were just starting a conversation, than our pinata got popped by Sarah’s mom. She began screaming, yelling, and shouting at the top of her lungs at us. Started hurling insults primarily at me from her widow’s walk, like a soldier hurling a grenade into an enemy bunker. The poor lady was bubbling with bigotry. She must have had a quart of Jim Beam to hydrate her vocals. Started calling me a JAP. WWII ended in 1945. This was 1962.

I knew in that instant, there was not only an asphalt one way road dividing us. She confirmed the racial gulf was real in our corner of the State of Hawaii. America’s second newest state. America, the land of life, liberty and justice for all. And we were Hawai’I, The Aloha State, admitted to the union on Alaska’s heels. The ‘melting pot’ with the Aloha Spirit we bragged about. Ua mau ke’ea I ka ‘aina. Where ‘the life of the land is preserved in righteousness.’

In this moment, with this white woman spitting JAP at me. Aloha became simply, at least for me, a beautiful ‘term of art.’ Where the Aloha Spirit we boasted about was hidden beneath sweet smelling plumeria leis, lovely maidens wearing thick red lipstick, green grass skirts and leis dangling from their left arm. Maidens draping leis on ‘tourists’ when they got off a Pan American plane at the airport after a long four-hour flight from LAX, SFO or SEATAC. Girls with skirts, lovely hula hands, shaking and twisting hips. Welcome to Hawai’i. Enjoy your stay. Mrs. Koon’s screeches were beginning to …. me off.

My Jeep

To give you context and the three- dimensional cinema I am alluding to. I’m taking a few steps backwards here. I had, with help from my dad, got a WWII jeep from the army surplus store in Honolulu. The jeep was shipped to Hilo. I fetched it at the dock, turned the key, heard it grunt and proudly drove it home to Kawa’ali’i. Ka’awali’I is one of three miniature tropical gulches on the Hamakua coast, between Hilo and Honoka’a. Laupahoehoe and Maulua are the other two gulches. All carved by snow melt and water runoff from Mauna Kea over millennia.

How I loved the idea of having wheels, my own wheels. My jeep needed a workover. Nothing, I could not fix. I went to tech school for three months to work on cars. Mending engines, replacing windshields, patching holes. Completed a year’s course in three months, got certified, proudly took a photo between Pops and Mama san. Pops told me, Saichi, plan ahead. He was smart. You’re going to have to do some work on that jeep. I am glad I did. Saved money. Went to Hilo Tech. Gained valuable applied learning skills which I knew would follow me forever.

Yes, my jeep needed minor repairs. After I was done, it was going to be brand new. Like when it rolled off the Detroit Assembly line in 1942 and shipped off to Europe to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. The jeep suffered a few wounds like the guys who drove it. It had three fifty caliber bullet holes in its right side. I was going to patch them but then thought, ‘Nah.’ Let them be. It was a victim of an offensive the Germans won. But it was okay to preserve a few bad memories from the past. Those holes were patriotic pukas (holes). Who was I to hide them? The machine gun’s cradle was still in place. It might come in handy someday. So, I left it be. I wanted to do reconstruction work also. Add shock absorbers and comfortable cushions, to give my passengers a smoother ride. Mama said she would take care of the cushions.