Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
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Kuboka
| On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawai'i, my maternal grandfather had barricaded himself with his family--my grandmother, my teenage mother, her two sisters and two brothers--inside of his home in La'ie, a sugar plantation village on O'ahu's North Shore. This was my mother's father, a man most villagers called by his last name--Kubota. It could mean either Wayside Field or else Broken Dreams depending on which ideograms he used. Kubota ran La'ie's general store, and the previous night, after a long day of bad news on the radio, some locals had come by, pounded on the front door, and made threats. One was said to have brandished a machete. They were angry and shocked as the whole nation was in the aftermath of the surprise attack. Kubota was one of the few Japanese Americans in the village and president of the local Japanese-language school. He had become a target for their rage and suspicion. A wise man, he locked all his doors and windows and did not open his store the next day, but stayed closed and waited for news from some official... | ||
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