Filed under: Plague
Sorry I have not written so for long, establishing a new life for me and my daughter is my top priority and life has just been a whirlwind of activity.
Where do I begin– for six days now Hawaii has been declared plague free! There has been no new cases for 36 days and the Board of Health officially considers Hawaii to be clear of the sickness! When Emerson, Wood and Day made the announcement, the streets flooded with joyous activity. Stores and schools reopened, public transport resumed and everyone beamed at the people they passed in the street, regardless of their skin colour.
Perhaps the most exciting event before that happy day was the introduction of Haffkine’s preventative serum to the general public. This wonderful medical advancement was put to the ultimate test when Wood and Day inoculated each other to prove to the public that it was a safe and effective preventative measure against the plague. At first the two doctors showed all the tell tale signs of the sickness, but they soon recovered and hailed the serum as a fantastic new lifesaving tool. I was one of the first members of the public to line up and volunteer my arm, indeed, for the most part our entire Japanese community welcomed the serum gladly.
Echoing the symptoms I had come to dread was terrifying at first, but only two days after I received my inoculation I recovered fully from my fever. As soon as Saika-chan is old enough I plan on having her protected too.
I am living with my Aunt Yuuka now, helping out in the cafe she runs with her husband. Upon being released from the Drill Shed camp, I received a small amount of money from Mika Saito to compensate my relatives from the burden of two more mouths. That man should be showered with gold for all the things he has done for us during these past months, he is truly our hero!
I should mention how alarmed I was to hear that Kahului’s Chinatown was burned down in February, news which only just reached me once transportation between islands resumed. Apparently Dr. Charles Gavin and Wood himself traveled to the island, took one look at Kahului’s Asian district and condemned it to all be torched before the sun set!
It is true that their Chinatown was a fraction of the size of ours, but this willingness to raze the entire area is a complete divorce from the policy they assure us was in place for Honolulu (that is, only burning houses with firmly confirmed cases of plague)
This shift in Wood’s attitude goes a long way to confirm the suspicion that the total incineration of our Chinatown was intentional and deliberate…and even though I still cling to the belief that it was indeed an accident…the bitterness felt by many of my friends grows stronger everyday.
They say that we were treated like vermin during the outbreak, our possessions were stolen from us and our houses burned. Some of us spent months locked in detention camps and all of us have yet to receive adequate compensation, despite the best efforts of the Japanese Victims Representation Committee.
I traveled many miles across treacherous seas to make this island my home. I lost my husband and my home both within twenty four hours…and yet, my daughter is alive and we are both healthy. There is nothing more precious to me than that.
If rumors are true, those who have spent their required three weeks in Drill Shed may be released tomorrow!
No new cases of plague have cropped up in any of the camps, and so the Board has finally concluded that it was our houses and not our Asian bodies which hid the sickness.
Saika and I have to wait until February 13th before we are allowed to leave. In the meantime, to keep myself occupied, I have started to found a society of widowed mothers so that once the government opens the claims process, our requests for compensation will be taken more seriously. Without our husbands to speak for us, we must band together if we are to be heard.
Clamorings for reimbursement and reparation fees have been rumbling in the camp since we arrived, and I fear that the Board will be so overwhelmed with requests (a large number of which will be exaggeration or pure fabrication, I assure you there is no way Manami actually owned four silk kimonos!) that they will refuse to pay us anything at all.
More than a week has passed since I last posted here and so much has happened- I feel like a completely different person than I was two weeks ago, how could I not? My world has metamorphosized!
Saika and I have been relocated to the Drill Shed detention camp, along with most of our Japanese compatriots. All things considered, it’s not so bad. Once again, our hero Mika Saito along with his Japanese Aid Society has assured that we are as comfortable as possible and that we have plenty of food to eat.
There have been no new cases of plague in any of the quarantine camps since we were interred here, which is a great relief to everyone, regardless of their skin tone!
My daughter and I live in a separate part of the Drill Shed camp, along with others who were exposed to the plague before The Fire, so we have been largely removed from the politics of the camp. However, I have heard news that the Japanese and the Chinese residents bickered so bitterly that a wall was built between the groups, which pacified the situation.
Why there wasn’t a separation to begin with I don’t understand, how could they house us with those dirty, backwards people? If it wasn’t for their thick skulled actions, none of us would be here at all- THEY were responsible for the continued festering of the plague in Chinatown and now they cause trouble in our camp too! I gnash my teeth at having my lot thrown in with theirs.
I should mention that there are also natives in Drill Shed. but they are very few in number and make no fuss.
When we first arrived, we were herded into giant disinfection baths rooms where we had to strip (men and women together) and scrub our skin raw before they would give us our new clothes and let us in.
I couldn’t help but think back to the similar bath I had been given when I first landed in Hawaii, three years ago. My stomach was so tied in knots during that shower that I couldn’t spare any thought to the disgrace and shame of being forced to bathe with men. For as soon as I exited those bath houses, I was faced with a sea of expectant faces– men awaiting their new brides, clutching the photographs of us they had been sent by the town matchmaker. Eventually I found the photo of my own face, and rejoiced that the man holding it was not only young, but handsome too!
This memory turns my heart to lead now, more than ever, because a letter arrived ten days ago informing me that Mizuno has died..I have not written about it sooner because there is not much to say, I knew such a letter would come, no one can shake the sickness once it has grabbed you.
It’s been two days now since the Fire, and we are still at Kawaiahao Church. The Board of Health is scrambling to build barracks to house us in places where we can still be contained and kept separate. Heaven forbid the refugees of Chinatown go anywhere near the clean, stiff rows of white men houses!
Now that the insanity of the past few days has somewhat abated, I must link to a very useful blog I have recently started reading. Plague Watch is the work of a young San Fransisco journalist, bent on informing the American public of all news plague related. It is invaluable to me to have an outsider’s perspective, especially now when the doors of Hawaii are locked up so tight!
I would also like to post a photo, clipped today from a white man’s newspaper, to show you our makeshift camp. It is decent and we are provided for, but it is hard to not think back on Thursday, when we were sleeping in our own bed, Mizuno and me…
Filed under: fire
The second unthinkable shock in so many days: Chinatown is ablaze!
I was inside, preparing our bundles for the camp when I heard screaming coming from outside. Up and down the street everyone was pouring out of their houses as clouds of smoke blackened the sky, blocking out the morning sun!
Is this it? Has the system of fair inspection finally broken down? Are we finally now being rounded up and exterminated by the white men, just like the rats they tell us to hunt?!
The streets were flooded with chaos and panic… Any initial attempts to extinguish the fire were quickly abandoned in the name of frantically salvaging what possessions could be carried in the arms of the soot-faced residents. A group of terror stricken Japanese, some from my neighborhood, attempted to storm the Kukui Bridge to escape the flames, but they were viciously held back by the quarantine line guards.
Saito-san, our adored consul, rushed amongst the people like an angel of calm, trying to reassure the panicking masses…he says this is all a tragic accident, not an intentional attempt at our extermination. This is hard to believe when our entire world is burning to the ground around us as children scream and women weep. The heat was unbearable and the smoke strung my eyes and choked my throat.
For me, the most tragic sight of all was the spires of our beloved Kaumakapili Church enveloped by flame…the image of that beautiful steeple burning will forever be seared into my mind.
The timing of Mizuno’s illness has twisted into the cruelest kindness, I was up all night packing our most valuable and necessary possessions and so was not caught in the blind panic which gripped my neighbors. As flames licked away at this town I have grown to know, I calmly gathered up Saika and went to stand on the edge of the quarantine line, awaiting whatever would happen next.
By the evening the fire had burned itself out, and representatives from the Japanese Aid Society informed my huddled group that we were to be evacuated to Kawaiahao Church for the night…. at this point the heavens could split open, the clouds could rain blood and I would not react. I have nothing left inside of me.
Filed under: Plague
To my great horror, Mizuno began to show symptoms of the sickness last night. After returning late from the stables, he complained of a pounding headache and full body chills. This rapid onset of such infamous symptoms is too dreadful for my heart to bear….He was up all night, too nauseous to sleep.
This morning he could not leave his bed, so crippled was he with pain and delirium and so- despite my trepidation at hearing the words I knew he’d say, I summoned Mitamura Toshiyuki-san.
Just as I had feared, Dr. Toshiuki quickly diagnosed my husband with the plague and immediately arranged for his transportation to the Kakaako medical facility.
He inspected me and little Saika as well, but declared us healthy. I waited untill the doctor left and then fell, crumpled, on the floor. How can this be? How could this have happened? I kept our house so clean, I scoured and scrubbed until my knuckles bled. There had been no new cases on our street for nearly two weeks.
My head is spinning with the difference a day can make. My husband has been wrenched away from me and come tomorrow my daughter and I will have no home and next to nothing to our name.
Because it was nightfall before the Doctor left, our house will not be torched until tomorrow morning. So tonight I must collect such possessions as we absolutely need, everything else will either be added to the piles of belongings orphaned by other residents of Chinatown to await fumigation, or else incinerated with the rest of our housing complex. I was told that we are to be relocated to a quarantine camp until such time as they deem us safe and clear from infection. The doctor had kindness in his eyes when he told me all of this, but his words came as if from underwater, and I could hardly grasp their meaning.
Mizuno is far away, dying in a strange bed, but there is no time for crying now, I must think, I must act, my daughter needs me.
Alas…the quarantine is back in effect, new cases of the plague are springing up all over the city and I think the Chinese are to blame. They drag their dead and dying out of their homes in an attempt to hide them from the inspectors. If they are found to be sheltered an infected, their house will be marked an unclean and torched as soon as the fireman can rush to scene.
My heart is torn, truly to lose one’s home and the bulk of one’s possessions is extremely painful- but we can not allow the disease to run rampant through our streets. The three doctors are attempting to strangle it before it spreads, and they have assured all of Chinatown that we will be compensated once the plague has been eradicated.
Our beloved Mika Saito is working himself to the bone to make sure the rights of the Japanese community are respected as much as it possible under the circumstances….
I suppose all we can do is submit ourselves to the daily inspections deemed necessary and hope that by constant communal vigilance we will scrub out this sickness once and for all.
In the meantime, Chinatown is full of rumors, gossip and outcry.
The Board of Health has lifted quarantine today, which is a great relief to everyone!
It would seem that the editor of the Hawaiian Gazette was right when he said “The bubonic plague, though undeniably with us, it not likely to plague us long….and it is but a matter of a few days before the active and intelligent labors of the Board of Health ought to bring the city out of its trouble and permit the inhabitants, white, yellow and brown, to resume their unruffled course”
My husband continues to rant about how blatantly racist he considers the current administration to be, but I for one am admiring of how efficiently they have stamped out this disease which has ravaged so much of the world. Schools have reopened, which is a relief to the parents who share our complex and soon life will be back to normal!
What a terrible eight days it has been, so full of worry and suspicion. I really believe it was imperative for everyone to cooperate fully with the health precautions put in place…for see what a favorable outcome we have had, the eradication of the sickness before it could even really take hold!
Hiding our sick, like the Chinese do, can only make matters worse. Can’t they see how detrimental their pathetic tricks are? Their backwards attitudes frustrate me. My father always reminded me of the honour we have to call Kitasato Shibasaburo our countrymen, it is shameful to bicker against the methods of disease prevention his discoveries have allowed.
Now that regulations have been lifted, I have heard Mizuno’s business associates grumble that they are at a great disadvantage because they must wait for their goods to be released from quarantine, while their white competitors are free to leap back into commerce. Indeed, some of them insist the entire health scare was nothing but a sham thought up by English business men out of spite for having to compete with our thriving Japanese industries. Although this doesn’t seem at all unlikely to me, I trust that soon all this suspicion will have died down and life will go back to how it was a few weeks ago.
I share with you a picture from today’s newspaper showing some of my Nuuanu Street neighbors lining up along the quarantine line, waiting for free passage throughout the city to be restored.
