Without saying anything, Dr. Murayama laid bare the elderly chest and applied his stethoscope. There was no murmur or leaking heart sound. The rhythm was regular, but the heart sounds were somewhat weak. Blood pressure was normal. The symptoms were without question those of acute damage to the heart muscle.
"Arata-san, I am going to give you an injection to make this pain easier" He took out an ampoule of demerol, emptied the contents into a sterile syringe, and injected it slowly into a vein of the old man's forearm. It was done very, very slowly. Meanwhile, the doctor kept his eyes glued on the patient's face. Apparent relief from pain could be discerned by the relaxation of the face muscles, deeper respiration, and limpness of the extremities. The patient seemed to lapse into sleep. After making sure that the patient was easier, the doctor turned to the middle aged son.
"Sadao, I think your father has had a heart attack. This pain will come back tonight and I wish to have him in a hospital where we can give him oxygen continuously to fortify the heart and injections to ease the pain if it should return. There are certain tests that must be carried out to make the diagnosis certain. If you have no objection, I'll call the hospital to send for an ambulance." The tone of the doctor's voice tolerated no argument and only acquiescence was expected.
"Do the best you can for him. We know that he has got something serious. He is 85 and he never was really sick up to now. And you know how he can stand any sort of pain."
"That I know very well indeed."
After seeing to the details of putting this man in an oxygen tent, arranging for a special nurse, and writing orders on the chart, Dr. Murayama returned home at midnight. He drank a glass of milk and ensconced himself in a deep chair. He could not sleep. During the war, Seikichi Arata came out of the Santa Fe Internment Camp and sojourned at the Arkansas Relocation Center until the end of the war. The doctor later discovered that his friend of high school days, Sadao Arata, was this man's son. During the waiting months of ennui, for the majority of elderly relocatees had nothing to do, details of the man's life were retold many times. Dr. Minoru Murayama could close his eyes and review the exploits of this pioneer of Hawaii.
CHAPTER 1
Kauai Is a Beautiful Island
AMONG THE IMMIGRANTS TO HAWAII IN 1891, there was a young man of twenty-two named Seikichi Arata. His forefathers had been professional warriors in Japan for generations and Seikichi had a fierce family pride, for it was only twenty-four years since the abolition of the feudal system in Japan which had flourished for at least seven centuries. Young Seikichi's ambition was to become an officer in the new Westernized army of the Japanese Empire—no longer a mere warrior of the Choshu clan as his forebears had been. He studied hard and in competitive examinations passed every subject, but at the last hurdle he was rejected because of his stature which lacked half an inch of the minimum requirement. Disgruntled and disappointed, it was pathetic to see him and also an ordeal to endure him. He was not the type to lose himself in dissipation to forget his frustrated hopes. He was silent and seemed infinitely unhappy. To console him, friends suggested he enter the police force, but he was not interested. In his mind, bigger dreams were taking shape. Rumors of emigration to Hawaii reached him. It was the talk of the countryside. Used to two and a half centuries of isolation from the outside world, banned under the penalty of death from leaving their homeland, this was extraordinary news to the people. True, several sons of Choshu had been sent abroad to study the arts and sciences of Europe and America, but that privilege was reserved for the selected and the elite. Now the rank and file had a chance to leave the country and seek their fortune in distant climes. To Seikichi, a big horizon of activity seemed to have been pried open. Denied entry into the army, he would be compensated by finding adventure and fortune in a foreign country. However, the entire family was opposed to this proposition. To leave the country of the gods for an unknown world was in itself an unthinkable revolutionary notion; to go as an immigrant laborer was a disgrace to the family name. If go he must, then he had to depart without the blessing of his parents and endure being disowned by the family. Balked by such ignorance and false family pride, he became more resolved in his determination to proceed to Hawaii.
In the Hawaiian Archipelago, the northernmost island is called Kauai, and is the oldest from a geological viewpoint. The topography is therefore less harsh than the other volcanic islands of more recent formation. The mountains are heavily wooded as only tropical lands can be vegetated and the bare and forbidding lava flows, common on other islands, are absent. In the center of this oval island is Mt. Waialeale, the second wettest spot on earth. (First place is conceded to a spot on the Himalaya Range in Assam, India.) Because of this abundant rainfall and the cool trade winds that continuously blow from Northern Canada and Alaska, the climate is moderated to ideal physical comfort in spite of its geographical position of 20° north latitude, which ought to make this a torrid climate. With Waialeale as its highest peak, a range of mountains form a wind-break against the northeasterly trades and so the windward slopes are steep and inaccessible. The moisture-bearing clouds, upon contact with the range of mountains, unload their cargo, producing almost daily rain. The angry waves of the Pacific keep up their incessant battering against the crumbling rocks of aging volcanic formation, and have produced a wild but picturesque coastline. Only wild pigs and goats roam on this inhospitable terrain called the Napali Coast.
On the leeward side, however, a virtual paradise has come into being. Here, protected and aging slowly, the lava had disintegrated to finer particles and the soil has become ideal for lush tropical vegetation. The gentle slopes of the mountains, though made irregular by the original flows of lava from the now extinct craters and subsequently chiseled off by gradual erosion by the elements, have produced a coastline of exquisite beauty with many inlets, coves, and sandy beaches. The contour of hills and mountains are rounded off, crowned with forests and vegetation so that an impression of gentleness is conveyed to onlookers. Not without cause is this island called the "Garden Island."
People have been coming to this and other islands of the archipelago for the past several centuries. First the Tahitians, inspired with adventurous yearnings developed by generations of cruising in the south seas, headed north in their search for habitable lands as population increases made their native habitat too crowded. They accidentally discovered these islands, settled there, and then sent for their kin. Many voyages were made back and forth in the following centuries. In their double canoes, they were guided by stars, wave and wind patterns, birds, and cloud formations. Especially in the voyages that were undertaken later, a pinpoint navigation was imperative in their northern cruise. Without natural enemies, a salubrious climate, rich soil, and abundant fishing in the surrounding sea, the population increased rapidly and it is chronicled that when Captain Cook visited Kealakekua Bay in the late eighteenth century, the native population numbered well over a quarter of a million happy and contented people. There was enough to eat for everybody.
Just a little work sufficed for the simple needs of the people. Nature was in her most beneficent mood and they multiplied accordingly, not plagued with any of the disease so rife among civilized men. Being in an isolated community, there were no epidemic diseases. A famous historical fact in epidemiology is that when Capt. Cook visited Kona, there was a case of measles among the sailors. From this focus, the virus of measles spread rapidly among the natives and thereafter it overran the islands like wildfire, causing thousands of deaths in its wake. A childhood disease, considered dangerous enough in some epidemics but usually innocuous and a relatively mild ordeal for civilized populations, it proved to be a scourge among the Hawaiians who had never been exposed to this malady and therefore had no racial immunity to protect them. Estimates were made later that perhaps one third of the population was carried off as a result of this epidemic, and finally, when every infectable one was affected, the virulence of the disease waned and it died out. The present day Hawaiians are prone to get tuberculosis when huddled together in city tenements, but their forefathers did not know that such a disease existed. Then came the venereal diseases. South Sea islanders have never been known to be prudes. For many decades whaling vessels found haven in the Hawaiian waters during winter months, and their sailors contributed their share to the Hawaiian downfall. Some cynic has coined the caustic phrase, "civilization is syphilization." Blessings of civilization are not always happy and beneficial.
The Hawaiian branch of the