UNTIL A REAL AA MAGAZINE APPPEARS

If Amerasia Journal was a real magazine, it would have published my response to Frank Abe’s review of my book BORN IN THE USA: A Story of Japanese America: 1889-1947. The book came out in 2002. It was reviewed in 2004. My response was never published. Since this is my blog, I’ll publish it myself.

BENDETSEN SPEECH MISREAD
BY FRANK ABE TO PROTECT THE JACL’S MIKE MASAOKA

Frank Abe claims to have found confirmation Masaoka’s “contingency plan” in Bendetsen’s speech, cited by Mike Masaoka.

In his review of BORN IN THE USA in Amerasia Journal, Volume 30:2, 2004, he writes:

The author (Frank Chin) wants to catch Masaoka in a lie about an Army “contingency plan” to round up all Nikkei at gunpoint within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, which Masaoka knowingly used to scare Nisei audiences into submission with exclusion. Masaoka overreacted and embroidered the threat with images of “guns, bayonets, and tanks,” and James Omura and Joe Kurihara call him on that. But you can read in Major Karl Bendetsen’s own words confirmation of just such “a plan for immediate evacuation if developments required a complete evacuation, practically overnight, in the event of an emergency” (221), a plan entirely consistent with a military force instructed not to distinguish citizen from alien.

“a plan for immediate evacuation if developments required a complete evacuation,” is not a “contingency plan.” Bendetsen’s “practically overnight,” is not Masaoka’s “Within 24 or 48 hours.” Bendeten’s “in the event of an emergency” doesn’t say whether the “emergency” he envisions comes in the form an invasion or “raid” by the Japanese, or from an American uprising in reaction to the military orders. Nowhere does Bendetsen suggest, much less confirm is his speech one word of what Masaoka said to the JACL convention, on August 10, 1982:

"Col. Bendetsen pointed out, and it was told to us much more in cruel detail, that the Army had two programs for removal of the Japanese. One, if you will cooperate then the Army and the United States will do its best to make that movement as humane as possible. Two, if you don't--and this is the thing to remember--the Army has a contingency plan to move you out within 12 or 24 hours.

"What are you going to say in a situation like that?
"You want people murdered on the streets? You want tanks to come in and destroy the little ghettoes we have enjoyed? I think we had no alternative."

In his "Final Report" to the JACL National Board of 1944, the JACL's Mike Masaoka cited this speech by Colonel Karl R. Bendetsen, G.S.C., United States Army, Assistant Chief of Staff, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, as his "proof" that the WDC had a "contingency plan" to round up all the Nikkei on the West Coast within “forty eight or twenty four hours” using "guns, bayonets, and tanks..."

James Omura seems to be the only Japanese American writer to have actually read the speech and found Masaoka to have put ideas and words into Bendetsen's mouth. To check Omura’s reading and Masaoka’s “proof” I sought out Bendetsen’s speech.

After reading Bendetsen’s speech, and checking the number of troops under arms, and the state of arms available, I determined that Masaoka lied. I found no indication in Bendetsen’s speech that the Army had a “contingency plan” to round up the all Japanese Americans in Washington, Oregon and California “within 24 or 48 hours.” Bendetsen’s speech does not have the words that threaten Japanese Americans that Masaoka says are contained in the speech. No “guns.” No “Tanks.” No “bayonets.”

I asked the Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians if they had any information of Bendetsen’s “contingency plan.” On April 28, 1981 Bendetsen wrote the Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians:

Your question relates to an allegation that the Western Defense Command issued a preemptory order that Japanese and Japanese Americans must cooperate and that if they did not, the Army would come without notice, "with bayonets drawn, backed by tanks and artillery to force them out of their homes or hiding places one by one."

The allegation that such order was ever issued by WDC is totally false. The truth is that to their eternal credit all such persons cooperated from the beginning.

I cannot bring myself to believe that Mike Masaoka would himself fabricate such a falsehood; most certainly not one as base and demeaning as this. If it is true that he has made such an allegation, I would be compelled to conclude that someone has deceived and misled him for mischievous purposes.

Falsehoods about this regrettable episode abound in the books of self-appointed historians, of which there are several.

Bendetsen was courteous even generous to Masaoka, without revealing that he had appointed Masaoka an intelligence agent of Army G-2 on December 17, 1942, in a three page PLAN FOR IMMEDIATE SEGREGATION OF JAPANESE EVACUEES because, thanks to Masaoka “all such persons cooperated from the beginning.”

The three page long PLAN FOR IMMEDIATE SEGREGATION OF JAPANESE EVACUEES was signed Gen. DeWitt the Commanding General of the Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, and initialed by Major Karl Bendetsen, Chief of Aliens Division; to the Chief of Staff, on December 17, 1942. This is the plan that Mike Masaoka inflates into a “contingency plan,” to take all the Japanese Americans out of their homes with “tanks, guns, and bayonets,” within 24 or 48 hours.

Actually the plan consisted of DeWitt’s cover letter (page 1) a page of the Wartime Civilian Control Agency (WCCA) designating individuals “R” for repatriation, “P” for parolee, “G-2” for Army Intelligence, “S” for WCCA Subversive; and “Gr” for WCCA Police” (page 2); and “LIST OF DETAINEES” by number of projected prisoners in each camp(page 3).

No “guns” no “tanks” no “bayonets” to drive the prisoners running for the protection of camp. All the Army had to scare the Japanese Americans into obeying Army orders, was agent Mike Masaoka’s mouth that said anything he wanted public, because he was (shhhhh!) Army G-2. Besides being two “Confidential Informants” to the FBI. T-11, to spy on the Japanese Americans, and SLC-167 to spy of on his own JACL.

Below is the whole of Bendetsen’s speech that Masaoka and Frank Abe claim contains the “contingency plan” as published by the Commonwealth Club.

"The Story of PACIFIC COAST JAPANESE EVACUATION: An Address Delivered Before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, on May 20, 1942, by COLONEL KARL R. BENDETSEN, G.S.C. United States Army, Assistant Chief of Staff, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army."

From: "Proclamations, Exclusions, Restrictive Orders and Collateral Documents." Western Defense Command and Fourth Army. Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, Civil Affairs Division, Wartime Civil Control Administration. San Francisco, California. 1942

The problem of evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coastal frontier is one that interests the people of the United States. Especially is it one that interests members of the Commonwealth Club, as well as all persons resident in this coastal area.

First, I should like to tell you something of the reasoning behind the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from this coastal frontier.

There are three principal dangers--hence, the three principal problems bearing upon internal security in time of war. These problems, and the methods used to combat them are described, ordinarily, in these terms: Anti-sabotage, counter-espionage and counter-fifth column. By the latter is meant action in concert by well-organized groups under raid or invasion conditions.

The relationship of the Japanese population to these dangers, following the outbreak of the war, became a problem peculiar to the West Coast. The Japanese community presented a group with a high potential for action against the national interest—

By design, or by accident, substantial numbers of the Japanese coast frontier communities were deployed through very sensitive but very vital areas.

Now, if you and I had settled in Japan, raised our families there and if our children and grandchildren were raised there, it is most improbable that during a period of war between Japan and the United States, if we were not interned, that we would commit any overt acts of sabotage acting individually. Doubtless, in the main and irrespective of our inner emotions, you and I would be law abiding.

But when the final test of loyalty came, if United States forces were engaged in launching an attack on Japan, I believe it is extremely doubtful whether we could withstand the ties of race and the affinity for the land of our forebears, and stand with the Japanese against United States forces.

To withstand such pressure seems too much to expect of any national group, almost wholly unassimilated and which has preserved in large measure to itself, its customs and traditions--group characterized by strong filial piety.

It is doubtless true that many persons of Japanese ancestry are loyal to the United States. It is also true that many are not loyal. We know this. Contrary to other national or racial groups, the behavior of Japanese has been such that in not one single instance has any Japanese reported disloyalty on the part of another specific individual of the same race.

There has been no substantial evidence of manifestation of nationalistic fervor exhibited by any Japanese group in the United States since the outbreak of the war. Even on the Emperor's birthday there was no visible evidence that the day was remembered in evacuee centers.

This attitude--well illustrated, I think, by the fact that there has not been a single instance when any Japanese has reported disloyalty on the part of another of the same race--may be, and can be a most ominous thing. Chasing specters of fear is merely exhausting. It accomplishes nothing. The Army least of all will expend its energies in that direction. But it must be realistic--the nation must be realistic. The real contingencies must be taken into account. The contingency that under raid for invasion conditions there might be widespread action in concert--well-regulated, well-disciplined and controlled--a fifth column, is a real one. As such, it presented a threat to the national security and therefore a problem which required solution.

Here, in brief, is a timetable of how that problem was met.

On February 19th the President of the United States delegated to the Secretary of War the power to exclude any person, alien or citizen, from any area which might be required on the grounds of military necessity. This delegation of power included the authority to carry out an evacuation program.

The following day these powers were delegated by the Secretary of War to Lieutenant General J.L. DeWitt, Commanding the Western Defense Command and Fourth Army. Responsibility for a solution of the problem relation to Japanese along the frontier became his.

The development of a program depended in part on enactment by Congress of the necessary sanctions, upon which enforcement could be predicated. This was done on March 21st with the approval of Public Law 503, 77th Congress, making it a misdemeanor to violate any published regulations made applicable by Commanding General under the Executive Order to the right to enter, remain in, or leave the military areas.

On March 2nd, General DeWitt by Public Proclamation Number One designated the West half (roughly) of Washington, Oregon, California and the South half of Arizona as Military Area No. 1. There were created certain prohibited and restricted zones. In establishing these military areas, General DeWitt announced that Japanese aliens and American born persons of Japanese lineage would be the first required to evacuate certain critical points to be designated. At this time it was also indicated that following the evacuation of critical areas there would be a gradual clearance of all the coastal area and all prohibited zones.

By order of the Commanding General on March `10, the Civil Affairs Division of the General Staff of Western Command and Fourth Army was created. It was charged, under the Assistant Chief of Staff for Civil Affairs, with the responsibility for formulation of plans and directives for "control and exclusion of civilians, including the designation of military areas." On March 11, 1942, the Wartime Civil Control Administration was created by order of General DeWitt. It is the operating agency of Civil Affairs Division under command of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Civil Affairs to carry out such plans and directives.

On March 18, a Presidential Order established the War Relocation Authority. It is charged with responsibility of selecting, preparing and operating permanent centers where evacuees may live and work for the duration of the war, and to supervise all work and employment of evacuees both in and out of such centers.


On March 29th an order was issued by General DeWitt prohibiting voluntary migration by the Japanese. This date marked the beginning of planned, supervised evacuation.

On May 31st the interim evacuation of the Japanese population to temporary Assembly Centers will have been completed, except for 2000 who will be evacuated by June 6th.

This timetable represents the highlights of the undertaking.

The evacuation program itself consisted of three interim steps and a final solution.

The first step was designation of military areas from which the Japanese were to be excluded and the voluntary migration which followed....


The second interim step was a plan for immediate evacuation if developments required. The Army needed time to prepare a permanent program and the situation called for an emergency plan. It was impossible, of course, at this time for the Army to reveal the fact that it was prepared to affect a complete evacuation, practically overnight, in the event of an emergency. Plans were made to move the 113,000 Japanese into already established Army cantonments in a Mass Movement which could have been undertaken immediately. Prepared in this way against the possibility of fifth column activity, or for any outbreaks of anti-Japanese feeling, the Army continued with its plans for a permanent program.

The third interim step was the selection and preparation of eighteen temporary Assembly Centers to which the Japanese could be quickly removed for later transfer to permanent locations. The decision to remove the Japanese to temporary assembly Centers was based upon several important considerations. In the first place, the use of fairgrounds, race tracks and other public properties which provided installations of utilities as well as convenient locations, contributed to greater speed in the evacuation program. The use of these properties also made it easier to protect the evacuees' welfare and property. Moreover, evacuation through these centers could be accomplished with the use of a minimum number of soldiers.

The final step in the program is the settlement of evacuees in the permanent centers operated by the War Relocation Authority. This is the phase of the program that has taken more time than was available considering the necessity for early evacuation. It was primarily to prepare for this concluding phase of the evacuation program that the methods described were employed in the preliminary or interim steps.

The actual operation of the program is under the Civil Affairs Division of the General Staff of the Fourth Army and Western Defense Command. In direct charge of the evacuations operation is the Assistant Chief of Staff who serves as head of the Civil Affairs Division of the Fourth Army Staff and of the Wartime Civil Control Administration.

This brings me to the actual details of how the evacuation is carried on.
There are 64 W.C.C.A. stations on the coast through which the Japanese are given necessary assistance. In each station there are representatives of each Federal agency directly involved. For example, the Federal Security Administration provides a receptionist; a social worker who is prepared to assist in family problems and in preliminary plans for housing. The Federal Reserve Bank provides consultants to advise on property protection, auto and truck transportation, household goods, storage, etc. Representatives of Farm Security Administration advise on crop loans, handling of farm equipment and matters relating to the purchase or management of farm lands.

The exclusion order is the first step in actual evacuation procedure. It has required careful advance planning down to the smallest detail by the Army staff comprising the Wartime Civil Control Administration. The task of each agency, whether civil or military is carefully prescribed to fit the evacuation project involved. Careful synchronizing must be assured by this advance planning. Following this, the order for the evacuation of a given, desirable area is given and the team starts functioning.

Notices are posted advising the Japanese population of the limits of the area to be evacuated and advising them to report to a Civil Control Station and to be prepared to moved by a given date.

Each Civil control station functions about five days in a particular evacuation area. The team which makes up a given "station" then moves on to its next assignment--it spends about 4 days in advance reconnaissance. Such a team comprises civilian agency representatives including a medical examiner from the U.S. Public Health Service and a team captain from the U.S. Employment Service. They have been trained in advance for the job by the Wartime Civil Control Administration.

The next major phase of the evacuation procedure is the transportation of evacuees to the Assembly Centers.

On the date of moving the Army takes full charge of the movement and determines whether the evacuation is accomplished by train, bus or automobile caravan. Evacuees may sell their automobiles to the Government or have them stored temporarily.

Upon arrival at the center the evacuees are registered and assigned living quarters by the civilian personnel. Much of the detail work connected with resettlement in the Assembly Centers is carried on with the assistance of the Japanese themselves. A small army contingent guards the camp but the Army has no other personnel involved in the operation of the Assembly Centers after the evacuees have been brought into the grounds.

The accommodations at each of the Assembly Centers include living quarters for family units, group dining halls, milk stations, show baths, toilets and laundries. A post exchange in operation at each center and a modest program of recreational activities to supplement work projects is being provided. Each center has its own hospital and staff.

The evacuees are supplied with food, housing, hospitalization, medical and dental care and necessary clothing. During their temporary residence in the Assembly Centers, Japanese are given nominal allowances for incidentals. Upon application the evacuees may secure coupon books which may be used for the purchase of merchandize at the center exchanges or stores. These books entitle a single adult to $2.50 merchandise per month, a couple to $4.00, an individual under 16 years $1.00. The maximum allowances for any family is $7.50.

Compensation is given to those evacuees who work in the Assembly Centers upon this basis: unskilled workers $8.00 a month; skilled workers $12.00; professional and technical workers $16.00 a month. No wage schedule for evacuees who are assigned to administrative and maintenance work has been determined. The wage schedules in Assembly Centers are based on a 44-hour week. The compensation to which I refer is provided only for work done in connection with the operation of the Assembly Centers.

The eighteen temporary Assembly Centers were selected for the accommodation of all Japanese in the Western States. These centers are located in four states as follows:

Arizona: Mayer,

California: Fresno, Marysville, Merced, Pinedale, Pomona, Sacramento, Salinas, Aracadia, Stockton, Tanforan, Tulare, Turlock, Tule Lake, Manzanar.

Oregon: Portland

Washington: Puyallup.
The largest is at the Santa Anita race track in Aracadia, with a capacity of 17,000. Next come Manzanar and Tule Lake with a capacity of 10,000 each and Puyallup and Tanforan with 8,000.

Fresno, Merced Pinedale, Pomona, Sacramento, Stockton and Tulare have capacities of 6,000 each, Salinas and Turlock 4,000 each, Marysville and Portland 3,000 each, and the more less isolated Mayer center, 250.

The complete job of preparing the Assembly Centers and actual removal of the Japanese to these centers will have been accomplished during a period of about two months. During this time housing for 112, 000 people has been erected, supplied and equipped. The construction, equipping and supplying of the eighteen Assembly Centers and the whole evacuation procedure have been accomplished under the direction of only 35 Army officers.

LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN:

Ruby Chow- Chow Mah Serng Gum died of congestive heart failure the morning of June 4th surrounded by her husband, five children, two brothers, one sister, six grandsons, three granddaughters and three great grandsons.

At her last public appearance last September, at a fund raiser for the new Wing Luke Asian Museum building, her "favorite (and only daughter) daughter" Cheryl read the following for her:

Thank you. Special thanks to my friend Faith Ireland for reasons that take too long to tell, like all long time friendships. But I want say I’m happy be your friend, in public, on the street, anyplace, any time.

Standing up here, among the most prominent citizens of Seattle in the city where the Asians have shone the brightest stars in American politics, entertainment, industry and... restaurants... I only wish my mother were here to see the company I’m in.

Chinese restaurants were --- to be honest --- considered dumps when my mother raised ten children all by herself, in the back room of a Chinatown store.

And sliding down the banister of our building, head first, I realized I wasn’t the brightest of mother’s ten children. But I was the fastest. I crashed into the marble floor with my eyes open, and I saw stars.

I saw Seattle’s Keye Luke become a Hollywood pioneer. Wing Luke become the first Chinese to be elected to office, in America, in 1957. I saw Warren Chan fight newspaper prejudice with dignity and become a distinguished judge of the King County Superior Court. I saw Chinese restaurants rise from slophouses to places of Seattle’s haute cuisine.

I saw Asians rise from copy boys to reporters and anchors on Seattle and the nation’s media. I saw the creation of the Chinese Girl’s drill team, with their own 125 foot long dragon appear in celebrations and parades around the world bearing Seattle’s name. I saw the town erect the beautiful Wing Luke Asian Museum to tell our history. (Your name won’t be forgotten, Mom.) And I saw Seattle’s political stars rise to the highest office in Washington State, with the election of Gary Locke, to Governor. And the end isn’t in sight.

My mother revived me, and I told I had seen stars. Real stars.

And she said something very wise. “You would have seen as many stars if you had come down the banister the other end first.”

I have been up and down many banisters, both ends first, and, you were right Mom. I wish you could see me, now, married to Ping who gave up opera stardom to raise your five grandchildren and cook in my restaurant. The least I could do was take his name…Chow…and take it to the highest banister. We’ll take this one together, Ping.

Thank you, for this evening.

Thank you all for 80 years of Chinatown. Thank you

OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HOLLYWOOD

OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HOLLYWOOD DECREES: As God the Father gave up a son in the image of the perfect white man, to lead whites to walk the path of righteousness toward salvation, and praise God, so the White Man gave up a son in the image of the perfect Chinese American to lead the yellows to build the road to acceptance toward assimilation. Ah, sweet assimilation. Charlie Chan was his name.

NEW LINE OF ORNAMENTAL ORIENTALS ON TCM: HOW TO CRITICIZE WHITES WITHOUT OFFENDING THE STEREOTYPES AND GETTING YOUR SAG CARD PULLED.


Wayne Wang, director, and Amy Tan, the writer, and famous actors George Takei, Rosalind Chao, James Shigeta, Miko Taka gush on the joys of accepting the stereotypes, writing the stereotypes, being the stereotypes, acting the stereotypes on-screen and living white off-screen, over TCM previews their upcoming movies . John Wayne, as Genghis Khan, Katherine Hepburn with slanty eyes and choppy English in a Pearl Buck story of Christians saving Chinese orphans, after the Christians have killed their parents.

Separate your false on-screen persona from your off-screen true self as Mike Masaoka distinguished between his public identity as the leader of the JACL, and champion of Japanese American history and culture against white racism of WWII, from his secret, his real identity his Superman identity as an official Intelligence Agent of Army G-2, an official Confidential Informant of the FBI code named T-11 to spy on the JA’s, and SLC-147 to spy on the JACL.

Being a Hollywood insider is like a white secret agent wearing his yellow skin as a disguise. You’re not completely white, but whites recognize you as knowing more than the yellows know about themselves.

But the actors and agents of white supremacy and the trappings of their white success are only half the story of white racist love and hate so visible in the movies. It’s not how the agents and actors behave that counts. It’s what the white characters say that really counts.

From GUNGA DIN HIGHWAY

"GEE, POP!"

Longman Kwan

It's a long long flight from Hollywood to China on Pan American Airways' China Clipper. I never made it, never went back to China to fight the Japanese before they bombed Pearl Harbor. My publicist's Hollywood myth about me says I was about to catch the Clipper back to China and make my way to the Chinese air force to fight for China against the invading Japanese. No such thing. But people enjoy thinking of me as a hero of my people. Everyone agrees, my people need a hero.

The flight from Hollywood to Honolulu via United Air Lines is long enough for me, though I have another flight to another island to make yet to make exteriors for HAWAII FIVE-O. There's word of a new Charlie Chan movie in the air. NBC Vice President David Tebet is on a much publicized round the world search for a Chinese actor who speaks English well enough to be understood by American audiences to become the first Chinese to play Charlie Chan the Chinese detective. The sons of Charlie Chan, Keye Luke, Benson Fong, Victor Sen Yung and me all feel the magic of the movies we made, setting us aglow. We strike casual poses by the phone, waiting for the thing to ring, just in case God happens to walk from one room to another with a camera.

I've come to meet my movie father, Anlauf Lorane the Charlie Chan to my Number Four Son. We are old men when we are the money stars in the B's of twenty years ago, though I always look, and photograph younger, much younger than my actual age. And we are older old men now. He's too old to play the new Charlie Chan, and probably looks it, and doesn't want to. I don't understand.

I don't look too old, of all the sons of Chan I look the youngest still, and want to be the first Chinese to play Charlie Chan on the screen. Keye looks and acts too old, and the older he gets, the more foreign he seems. Not Chinese foreign. Some kind of European foreign with a pseudo-British accent. Benson is just too rickety. And Victor looks awful and has lost it. Of the four sons who've lived to take over the part of Pop in a Hollywood movie, I'm the only one. My time is near. Big screen or little screen: I want to be the first.

I land in Honolulu in one of those island rains with drops of falling water as big as eggs breaking on everything. The air is so thick with water it seems United Air Lines has landed me under the sea and I'm breathing watery goo, and can't tell if the mud is falling on me or it's splashing up at me. All I hear is water and squawking muck. Through the water washing sweat and hair in my eyes all I see are blobs of grays and blues and vague greens and bluish reds. What is airplane and what is airport, what is slipping rainwater and what is glass and steel, I can't see. Five blobs distinguish themselves from the mass by calling my name and vague aloha shirts come into view.
A very wet toasty brown skinned hula girl in a plastic hula skirt and toothpaste smile drops a wet orchid lei around my neck that immediately makes my nose run, and presses her wet gooey lips against my wet gooey cheek. The hula girl disappears and the five vague aloha shirts pat me on the back and laugh.

There is no difference between air and water, land and sea until I am in the dry quiet insides of the limousine the brothers from the tong hired to meet me. Old time Honolulu brothers of the good time Boom Boom tong are more good time Charlie American than my Boom Boom brothers on the mainland. Not that they don't own and run honkey tonks, bottle clubs, and see girls run through their business and take their share during the war, but there was law in Seattle, and San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Hawaii the war is the law and boys of the Boom Boom tong are happy soldiers, judges, juries and executioners of the law.

The brothers from the good time Boom Boom tong tell me sometimes late at night when they get home from their business and turn on the TV and flip the channels through the old movies, looking for one to watch awhile, not often, but sometimes, around four or five times a year, a movie I die in is broadcast from every station in Hawaii. The brothers think of me as a bigshot star of opera and movies still. Though I am here as a Guest Star on a two part episode of HAWAII FIVE-O and expected McGarrett would send a limo for me, the brothers were only too pleased to meet me at the airport and escort me to my Waikiki hotel, and too happy to let HAWAII FIVE-O publicists take pictures, and write stories about the old tongs of Honolulu looking on Chang Apana, the detective sergeant in the Honolulu police and the fat Charlie Chan the detective as the creators of the happiest memories of childhood and wartime businesses in their Honolulu Hotel Street Chinatown, on the piece of island real estate that suddenly is the bleeding end all be all of American honor. And in the movies of the time, I was, I am Charlie Chan's Number Four and most American born and Americanized son. In real life, whatever that is, I am born in China. The South. Tang People. Cantonese. It all blends into a nice story about me the newspapers and publicists blurbing me want to believe. I love it.

"The part I've come to Honolulu to play is nothing special," I tell the brothers. "But it is paying my way to party with my brothers in Hawaii, and visit the last white man to play Charlie Chan still alive."

"You mean he's on the islands?" the brothers ask. "We had no idea!"

"I seem to be the only one he trusts with his address. He craves anonymity," I say. "He wants his privacy. I have several offers from advertising companies for him to put on the white duck and Panama straw hat of Charlie Chan again and sell a few products for them. I'm going to try to talk him into coming out of hiding and make a little money."

They're impressed at my humility and loyalty and still want to know about my part in HAWAII FIVE-O. Do I live? Do I die? Am I Chinese? Am I Japanese? Am I southern artist? Am I northern bureaucrat? Does it make any difference? Am I squinty? Am I swishy? Am I bald? Do I have big eyebrows? We laugh a lot, stirring up old laughs, old short sleeved Hawaiian shirts, old memories of old movies and happy days in the war. This ceremony over, the brothers grin at me, open mouthed as catfish, their old bottomfeeder's eyes shine as if they'd swallowed strong drink, in the eye of their swirling wait, they're ready to know about my part on HAWAII FIVE-O.

I tell them, "I'm another cultured slimey warlord smuggling drugs into the United States through Hawaii who runs afoul of McGarrett, Chin-ho, Danno, Zulu and the whole Five-O show, and, of course, I die in the shadow of Diamond Head."

They love it. HAWAII FIVE-O has really perfected the Charlie Chan formula, they say. They love the villains from WWII movies finding new life on the show. It's a breath of the old days.

"And it gives me work," I say and we all laugh.

On the way to the hotel I see that Tora! Tora! Tora! is still playing in a big first run Honolulu movie palace. "Ah, yes," I say, "A peace movie."

"A peace movie?" a brother asks.

"A war movie made in peacetime. I remember playing in war movies made during the war, with John Wayne, Van Johnson, Cary Grant."

Yes, the Hawaiian brothers remember the names and the stars who partied here after Pearl Harbor. The brothers ran restaurants or bars, or honky tonks during the war and remember me flying over from Frisco or L.A. to play an ugly Japanese spy or sadistic Japanese officer who screams "Aiiieeeee!" when I die then head down to Chinatown for dinner and rice before painting Honolulu red, with the other sons of Chan and Willy, and Kam chasing the tails of our fame and all the Chinese and Japanese women we can find from club to club from Chinatown to Waikiki. And the soldiers and sailors on the town and off-limits recognized us, grinned and laughed, put their arms around us, and we put our arms around them, they patted us on the head and we patted them on the head and watched them totter away to the whores or back to their bases.

Aiiieeeee! Aloha! Gung ho! Goong hay fot choy! The movies and Chinatown were exciting then. It had a future waiting for it after we won the war. There was an electric light night life. There was a Chinatown class and style. Padded shoulders. Wide lapels. Double breasted suits. Straw hats. They were happy days for me too.

"There are people in Hawaii who object to the Charlie Chan movies and John Wayne war movies, and WWII movies on the late night TV," the brothers tell me. "No sense of history."

"The younger generations don't remember when Americans thought all Chinese were sex perverts, opium smugglers and torturers of women," I say.

"That's right, you and Keye, and Benson, and Victor were a more positive and real life like image of the Chinese," a brother says.

"As was our father, Charlie Chan," I say.

Yes, turn on your TV late at night to any old Charlie Chan the Detective or WWII in China movie and you are reading my life story. Every night from some tower over Honolulu or New York, or Chicago one bit of my life or another unspools like smoke. I still like turning on the TV to get away from it all, in another town and being pleasantly surprised with the best days of my life.

For nearly fifty years, half a century, I am the most famous Chinese in America: an actor. I am Charlie Chan's Number Four Son; the Chinese nicknamed Die Say or Say Die. Yes, I am the rhythmic Christian of Charlie Chan's movie sons; the martyr, the one famous for saying nothing but "Gee,Pop!" and "Gosh, Pop!" I am The Chinaman Who Dies.

Fifty years of acting movies and TV has washed out a better me, a bigger name, a set of brighter memories from the mundane, ordinary facts of my life. I am no longer born in a village in south China and apprenticed to a floating opera company on the Pearl River, I am born and last seen being carried off by Hollywood alleycats into a dark soundstage. I cry bald and naked in a bombed out railroad station in a Shanghai air raid scene. William Bendix stumbles in the rubble of a Chinese village during another Japanese air raid in my next movie, and hears me wail. The baby is a doll. The closeup is me with my cheeks stuffed with cotton and my eyebrows shaved off. Movie magic! I'm at my dead momma's withered tit. I wail high long long wails that end in sputtering lungs. The movie is China. The baby in the wideshots is a doll. The closeup of the wailing baby is me.

I am the symbol of helpless, struggling China in the arms of William Bendix. He says I'm a "cute little fella." He names me "Donald Duck."

Alan Ladd and William Bendix leave me in the arms of a Chinese convert to Christianity played by a white woman who looks me in the face and coos, "Who but monsters would want to kill one such as this?" and from this shot on, I am known forever to people who go to the movies, as the Chinaman Who Dies.

I take a breath. Then another wail from my endless lungs goes from movie to movie, Jap air raid somewhere in China scene to singing America the Beautiful with Kate smith on the radio into the homes of Americans who cherish the memory of me dying when they buy one more War Bond.

Kate Smith smelled as sugary as she looked, and a little spicy, like a hot pan of huge friendly cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven.

I sing "My Old Kentucky Home," in Cantonese and am adopted by Gary Cooper and his girlfriend, the Red Cross nurse, in a missionary movie, a Japanese officer with slime on his teeth, slicks the long straight blade of his samurai sword into me, jolting me to scream, "Maaaaaaamaaaaaaaaa!" and slick on through my body into my mother's body heaving screech and out of her back, as the camera turns to see my face just behind the blinding gleam of the pulling of the long sword slurping out of us. It sucks against lips of our long wound. I scream the one word the poet from the Office of War Information says crosses all languages, all ages, all time, "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" until the sword is all the way out of my little body, and unpinned from my mother China, I thump to the ground at the officer's feet like a large broach. And there we are, the triplet, the poetic form of the war movie as emotional weapon: A bloody dead Chinese mother. A bloody dead Chinese son. A leering Jap wiping his blade clean of blood.

The Japs torture me into giving up John Wayne's secret position, throw me into a truck and bounce the little life of me left in my little battered body over bumpy roads. Out to get the jump on John Wayne, leading my missionary teacher from Indiana and all of my Filipino guerrilla friends through the jungle. I grab the wheel of the truck. The Jap soldiers scream. I wail in the key of tears and pull the truck off the edge of the world and down we go into the darkness.

My body rolls out of the burning truck to the feet of John Wayne and all my surprised friends working their stealthy way through the jungle with Anthony Quinn. America sees my face by the flamelight of the burning truck full of burning Japs. They see me trying hard not to cry out in pain. Tears stream down my cheeks.

"Don't try to talk," John Wayne says softly. Anthony Quinn turns away, sniffles, and loads his Tommy gun. And John Wayne and the missionary teacher who failed to teach me how to properly spell "America" A-M-E-R-I-C-A instead of A-M-E-L-L-I-C-A exchange looks and shake their heads. All the soldiers and all my friends are getting down on their knees around me. The music also rises.

"I failed," I gasp. "I guess I'll never be promoted to sergeant now," and my eyes roll back into my skull and my breath, shrieks like tearing sheets in a windstorm. My lungs sound like a man filing a steel girder on a steel bridge with a long file. I cough. A half pint of blood rosebuds out of my mouth. By the light of burning Jap bodies sizzling, sputtering and bursting like sausages in the background, women in the shoppers matinees with their papersacks and red meat tokens, see tears in John Wayne's eyes. He removes the bird colonel bird insignia off his collar and pins it on me.

"You didn't fail," John Wayne says, and has to lower his eyes and gulps down a sob before he can say, " He-yeck! You get that promotion!" He adjusts the little bird on my bloody shirt and says, very low, very soft, "I got orders from the President himself to promote you all the way to colonel!"

My eyes open. I struggle for breath. The music rises just so.

"Teacher?" a tiny voice climbs up out of me. "I can't see!" And I can't see.

And the missionary teacher from Indiana has to put her ear to my mouth to hear me agonize my last words out.

"Ayee!" I say, "Emmm!" My eyes come open and shine gleaming silver like something crazy. The missionary teacher wipes blood from my lips, from my eyes and arranges my hair, a bit at a time, avoiding the patches of matted blood and open wounds, as I continue. "Eee!"

"Easy, champ," John Wayne soothes. He shrugs violently and looks back into the flames of the burning trucks.

"Ell! Ell!" I scream from out of my croak. My chest heaves like the back of a mating dog. "Eye! See! Ayyyy!" I cry triumphantly and struggle up to my elbows. "AMELLICA!"
The missionary teacher screams.

John Wayne says, "At ease, colonel," and I fall back into a shot of John Wayne sighing and furrowing his brow and am dead dead dead in his arms.

John Wayne turns to the missionary teacher from Iowa and says, "I oughta shootya for not teaching him how to spell America with an 'R'."

"Cut!" the director shouts and directs me to spell "America" properly with an "R" and no "L" I think of wishing him a joyeux Noel too, but contain myself.

The brothers of the Hawaiian branch of the tong like my stories of making the movies they see me in.

They want to know if I ever played the part of a pilot. Did I ever fly in the movies.

I tell the brothers I always played children much younger than my real age, in the movies. I had to fight to play young men, except when they think it will be funny to play me against my type, and I am a fanatic treacherous babyfaced Jap pilot.

The old men want to hear about that. Stories of Chinese who fly in Hollywood movies are rare.

One day flying my Zero low across the water in a fog, I see Cary Grant's American submarine the USS Copperfin sailing toward Destination Tokyo. I drop a bomb on the sub but it doesn't go off. I turn around and rake the sub with my machine guns, sew a line of bullets across the conning tower and knock down Alan Hale, Jr.

John Garfield shoots me down with the deck gun. I trail smoke and sing a nasal swan song into an out of sight crash, only the yanks in closeup see as something wonderful. They blink in the light of an explosion that washes me over to the side of Cary Grant's submarine. A sailor jumps off the deck into the water to pull me in. I flash my eyes, show my teeth and knife the American sailor in the back.

The skinny full lipped pharmacist's mate who will disarm the bomb I dropped then perform an appendectomy on a very nervous Elisha Cook, Jr. on a mess table with a boning knife and a potato peeler during a depth charge attack, is fresh from the bacon and eggs, sunrise to sunset three squares a day Iowa where he has obviously never come across anything so rude, impolite and ungrateful as someone like me stabbing my rescuer in the back. "Welcome to World War Two, kid," I say at the kid's stupid look, and scream "Aiiieeeee!" as the kid's first bullets crash into my body. The same William Bendix who found me as a baby in the rubble of my village watches the skinny kid machine gun me into goo floating on the sea. My ad lib becomes gutteral nasal gibberish in the release print, and the kid's good Christian Thou shalt not kill upbringing is sick with Freudian shadows from having tasted real hate and enjoyed killing a man.

Captain Cary Grant pats the kid on the back, lights his pipe, and says "You killed a Jap, not a man."

The kid's too young to shave, never been kissed, never been laid. He doesn't quite know the difference between boys and girls. He has Lana Turner's voluptuous lower lip. He doesn't understand. The machinery hums inside the tight little submarine. The steel walls sweat. Cary Grant gleams and shines, but does not sweat.

Cary Grant puffs his pipe and thinks, then takes his pipe from his mouth and says, "This is not just a war of one nation against another nation. We are in a war that will decide whether or not decency will survive in the world. This is a war of good against evil." The captain muses and puffs his pipe.

The kid's Adam's apple bobs as he swallows hard, and blinks. Alan Hale leans in to listen, wiping his hands on his apron.

"I identify with that kid," Benson says in the office of one of his Polynesian fantasy restaurants around L.A, watching Destination Tokyo, a black and white on TV "I wish I were that kid when I was a kid," he says hesitantly but without his usual stutter that slows his emotion and makes him seem less than spontaneous.. "I could have joined a fraternity. Gone to frat parties, danced with sorority girls."

An officer puts his hands on the table and bends closer to Cary Grant. It looks a little like Da Vinci's The Last Supper humming underwater toward Tokyo. Cary Grant lets out a deep breath, and says, "It makes one wonder about these Japanese who sell their daughters off at thirteen to be married -- or worse." He shakes his head and hardens his voice, "The Japs know nothing of the love we hold for our women."

The smart pert bright eyed Hyacinth teaches me that even before there is Pearl Harbor to make the difference between Japs and Chinks there is Pearl Buck sorting out the good Christian "Chinese-Americans" from the evil Chinese "Chinamen."

I was young. I converted, and the other opera men stranded here by the tide of war did not. I was too young, a mere apprentice. I shouldn't have come over. I wasn't a real star of the Cantonese opera. My sister born of a mother in America is an American citizen and helps me. The real opera stars Wong the Handsome, the Great Kwan, Lee, the voice, wait out the war going from Chinatown to Chinatown performing Cantonese opera, getting cheated and robbed, and shooting Chinese movies in the Sacramento Delta. Now, it's as if no one had ever heard of them and I was the greatest and the only star of Cantonese opera star to land in America before the war.

Unlike the other sons of Chan I have lived the part of Charlie Chan. I have crossed from Cantonese opera and Chinese movies to Hollywood. I have converted to Christianity. I have become Americanized. I have used the ear and voice trained by Cantonese opera to sound looser and more at home with jivetalk than stiff stuffy old Keye Luke trying to make his voice sound deep. I could play anything, any age, from a one year old baby in diapers to a hundred year old leper, unlike the pouting, stuttering, choking Benson Fong. For that shot of me wailing in the bombed out rubble of a Shanghai railway station they padded me in a flesh colored suit and built an oversize set, so I would look like a barebellied baby. I am more American than the very American-born Victor Sen Yung. Keye, Benson, and Victor.

Being married to the Chinaman Who Dies is not good enough for my wife, Hyacinth. She's an American born girl, fourth generation American born, and more old country Cantonese and serious about opera than I ever was. Her American born mother speaks nothing but Chinese all her life. A Kwangtung dialect so old I've never before heard it spoken. The old woman agrees with Hyacinth. She is not happy with the idea of her grandsons growing up watching me die in the movies. "What kind of example is that to set for your sons?" she asks.

"That's just what I ask him, ma," Hyacinth says.

"For our sons," I tell her, "I promise to be the first Chinese to play Charlie Chan in the movies."
"Charlie Chan?" Hyacinth and her mother ask.

"You are not Christian, but as you see, I do love you anyway. As Charlie Chan I shall lead you to your great salvation. For, it is written: As God the Father gave up a son in the image of the perfect white man, to lead whites to walk the path of righteousness toward salvation, and praise God, so the White Man gave up a son in the image of the perfect Chinese American to lead the yellows to build the road to acceptance toward assimilation. Ah, sweet assimilation. Charlie Chan was his name. "

"Of course Charlie Chan. Where would any of us be without Charlie Chan?" the brothers say and we laugh like the dreams and hallucinations of a star alone in his limousine. The privacy, the intimacy me and the five brothers feel inside the unreal quiet and cushiness of the limo turns us into laughing fools. And it's nice to feel like a movie star again.

Hello, Portland (part 1 of 2)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.