Lucky Come Hawaii by Jon Shirota
"Lucky Come Hawaii" by Jon Shirota presents the story of Kama Gusada, an aging Okinawan-American pig farmer who reacts to the news of the Pearl Harbor attack with misguided optimism, believing that Japanese forces will liberate Hawaii. This perspective leads him to brew sake and display the Japanese flag, creating tension within his family, who fear a return to strict Japanese traditions. The novel explores the complexities of identity as Kama's children navigate their aspirations and conflicts amid the backdrop of war: Ichiro is in Japan, Niro studies dentistry in Hawaii, Saburo becomes engrossed in gambling, and Kimiko falls in love with a Hawaiian soldier. As Kama's pro-Japanese fervor fades under the strain of family dynamics and personal health crises, the narrative examines the moral ambiguities of war and the challenges faced by Japanese Americans during this tumultuous period. The story ends with Niro grappling with his role as a military translator, questioning the societal hatred that emerged post-Pearl Harbor and hinting at a hopeful return to the Aloha spirit. Shirota's novel is recognized as a significant work in Japanese American literature, shedding light on a unique cultural perspective during a pivotal moment in U.S. history.
Lucky Come Hawaii by Jon Shirota
Published 1965
Author Jon Shirota
A darkly comic rendering of the story of an Okinawan family in Maui caught between a compelling loyalty to Japan and an appreciation for the opportunities offered by the United States.
Key Figures
- Jon Shirota (1928- ), author
The Work
Lucky Come Hawaii is the story of Kama Gusada, a lovable, aging drunkard and pig farmer born in the United States but raised an Okinawan to whom the news of Japanese planes attacking Pearl Harbor is almost too good to be true. Convinced that the Japanese will easily overrun the island and defeat the Americans, Kama brews sake and paints the Rising Sun (the Japanese flag) on the roof of his home to welcome the triumphant arrival of the Japanese army. For his children, however, the incursion of the Buddhaheads (Japanese) into their lives is a disaster, foreboding a return of rigid Japanese customs. To complicate matters, Kama’s first-born son, Ichiro, is in Japan, having only recently graduated with honors never before bestowed on a nisei (second-generation Japanese American), while his second son, Niro, is at the University of Hawaii studying to be a dentist. In the meantime, his third son, Saburo, who spends most of his time fantasizing about his American high school English teacher, slips into compulsive gambling, and his daughter, Kimiko, falls in love with a Hawaiian, who enlists in the U.S. Army, very much against the wishes of Kimiko’s traditional parents. His pro-Japanese patriotic ardor dimming under such strain, Kama dreams of Ichiro and Niro meeting on the field of war, suffers a heart attack, and dies. As the novel concludes, Niro has joined the U.S. military, where he is pressed to serve as translator for the military police who terrorize Japanese Americans who fail to comply with rules of martial law. Complicitous in the racist brutalization of other Japanese immigrants, Niro is left to wonder if the distrust, hatred, and intolerance unleashed on December 7 (Pearl Harbor day) can ever be curbed, a question answered by a propitious Hawaiian rainbow that promises the return of the prewar Aloha spirit that once welcomed everyone to the islands.
Impact
Lucky Come Hawaii was among the first Japanese American novels to experience critical acclaim in the United States. The book captures a tragic and poignant period in U.S. history from an unusual perspective, looking at the nation’s war with Japan through the eyes of immigrants from Okinawa. In this way, Shirota’s work reflects not only a canonical shift in values concerning ethnic literature but also an evolving American view of war and patriotism. Through the Vietnam experience in the 1960’s, Americans, like Kama Gusada, began to recognize the moral ambiguities of modern warfare. War was no longer a matter of right versus wrong, good versus evil, civilization versus barbarianism, or, perhaps, as Shirota reveals, it never had been. It is, instead, cruelly indiscriminate, culturally complex, and darkly absurd.
Related Work
Shirota’s Pineapple White (1972) explores the life of a Japanese American gardener who leaves his Waipahu plantation and journeys to Los Angeles to experience a bewildering medley of adventures.
Additional Information
Okage Sama De: The Japanese in Hawai’i, 1885-1985 (1987), by Dorothy Ochiai Hazanna and Jane Okamoto Komeiji, provides additional information on the subject of Shirota’s book, and Dennis Kawaharada’s The Rhetoric of Identity in Japanese American Writings, 1948-1988 (1988), gives details on Shirota and his works.