Hawaii

If

Joyous

"MASSIVE, MAGNIFICENT-AN ASTONISHING ACHIEVEMENT!"

CLEVELAND PRESS

Only James A. Michener could have written this vast, historically important, enormously entertaining novel. This is Hawaii, in all its beauty, splendour and exotic mystery. These are the men and women who loved it, from the first Polynesians to the Japanese who fought in the Nisei battalions in World War II.

In HAWAII, you'll meet characters you'll never forget�Amelia Whipple, the missionary; the sea captain who founded a dynasty of sugar barons; the Chinese concubine who became a great banker; the gigolo beach boy who might have been king, and hundreds�literally hundreds�more!

"Prom Michener's devotion to the islands, he has written a monumental chronicle of Hawaii, an extraordinary and fascinating novel I"

SATURDAY REVIEW

More Rave Reviews! f

"Mammoth epic of the islands, vast panorama, wonderful!"

BALTIMORE SUN

"James A. Michener's most ambitious novel, immense!"

WASHINGTON STAR

"A book with everything, great and fascinating!"

NEW YORK POST

"James Michener's powerful new novel will be read and re-read. It deserves every honor, a major literary prize . . . fascinating saga."

NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT

"Sprawling, stunningly ambitious evocation of a land, a people and a modern state . . . Michener's finest

novel, his greatest achievement."

TRENTON TIMES

"Marvelously gripping . . . weaves a spell of enchantment."

BUFFALO COURIER EXPRESS

"Big book of grand adventure! Drama, comedy, brilliantly etched people and the jewel land that shaped their destinies."

NEW YORK MIRROR

"The book of the year . . . tremendous, enchanting . . . virile realism."

LOS ANGELES HERALD & EXPRESS

"Full of Michener's intoxication

with the Pacific�murder, human sacrifice,

leprosy and war. A memorable novel,

a superb biography of a people."

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

"A powerful novel, mature, brutally realistic and often evil."

CHRISTIAN HERALD

ALSO BY JAMES A. MICHENER

TALES OP THE SOUTH PACIFIC 5| THE FIRES OF SPRING � RETURN TO PARADISE 51 THE VOICE OF ASIA 5| THE BRIDGE AT ANDAU 5| RASCALS IN PARADISE 51 THE BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI 5| SAYONARA 1 CARAVANS

5| Published by Bantam Books

BY JAMES A. MICHENER

!Tf �

5

e� vo�

This low-priced Bantam Book

has been completely reset in a type face

designed lor easy reading, and was printed

from new plates. It contains the complete

text of the original hard-cover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

HAWAII

A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY

Random House edition published November 1959 2nd printing . . . November 1959 5th printing ...... March 1960

3rd printing . . . December 1959 6th printing ........ April 1960

4th printing ..... January 1960 7th printing ......... July 1960

Book of the Month Club edition published December 1959 2nd printing . . . December 1959 5th printing ........ April 1960

3rd printing . . . December 1959 6th printing ........ June 1960

4th printing .... February 1960 7th printing . . . September 1960

8th printing. . . . .September 1960

Appeared under the title THE BIRTH OF HAWAII in LIFE Magazine

October 1959

Sara Bara section appeared under the title FARM OP BITTERNESS in

Readers Digest condensed Book Club edition, Autumn 1959

Missionary section appeared under the title WEST WIND TO

HAWAII in Readers Digest condensed Book Club edition,

Winter 1960

Bantam edition published January 1961 2nd printing .... January 1961 9th printing ........ July 1962

3rd printing .. .. January 1961 10th printing . . September 1962

4th printing .. .... April 1961 llth printing . . November 1962

5th printing . . September 1961 12th printing ........ May 1963

6th printing .... October 1961 13th printing ..... August 1963

7th printing . . . February 1962 14th printing . . November 1963 8th printing ....... April 1962 15th printing ........ July 1964

16th printing..... February 1965

17th printing

To

All the peoples who came to Hawaii

� Copyright, 1959, by James A. Mlchener. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other means,

without permission in writing. For information address:

Random House, Inc., 457 Madison Avenue, New York 22, N. Y.

Published simultaneously In the United States and Canada.

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a subsidiary of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 271 Madison Avenue, New York 16, New York.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

r

This is a novel. It is true to the spirit and history of Hawaii, but the characters, the families, the institutions and most of the events are imaginary�except that the English school-teacher Uliassutai Karakoram Blake is founded upon a historical person who accomplished much in Hawaii.

Contents

From the Boundless Deep, 1

II

From the Sun-Swept Lagoon, /5

III

From the Farm of Bitterness, 114

IV

From the Starving Village, 358

V

From the Inland Sea, 581 .

VI

The Golden Men, 778 Genealogical Charti, goy

From the Boundless Deep

MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others. Jt was a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as pacific.

Over its brooding surface immense winds swept back and forth, whipping the waters into towering waves that crashed down upon the world's seacoasts, tearing away rocks and eroding the land. In its dark bosom, strange life was beginning to form, minute at first, then gradually of a structure now lost even to memory. Upon its farthest reaches birds with enormous wings came to rest, and then flew on.

Agitated by a moon stronger then than now, immense tides ripped across this tremendous ocean, keeping it in a state of torment. Since no great amounts of sand had yet been built, the waters where they reached shore were universally dark, black as night and fearful.

Scores of millions of years before man had risen from the shores of the ocean to perceive its grandeur and to venture forth upon its turbulent waves, this eternal sea existed, larger than any other of the earth's features, vaster than the sister oceans combined, wild, terrifying in its immensity and imperative in its universal role.

1

How utterly vast it was/ How its surges modified the very balance of the earth/ How completely fonely it was, hidden in the darlcness of night or burning in the dazzling power of a younger sun than ours.

At recurring intervals the ocean grew cold. Ice piled up along its extremities, and so pulled vast amounts of water from the sea, so that the wandering shoreline of the continents sometimes jutted miles farther out than before. Then, for a hundred thousand years, the ceaseless ocean would tear at the exposed shelf of the continents, grinding rocks into sand and incubating new life.

Later, the fantastic accumulations of ice would melt, setting cold waters free to join the heaving ocean, and the coasts of the continents would lie submerged. Now the restless energy of the sea deposited upon the ocean bed layers of silt and skeletons and salt. For a million years the ocean would build soil, and then the ice would return; the waters would draw away; and the land would lie exposed. Winds from the north and south would howl across the empty seas and lash stupendous waves upon the shattering shore. Thus the ocean continued its alternate building and tearing down.

Master of life, guardian of the shorelines, regulator of temperatures and heaving sculptor of mountains, the great ocean existed.

Millions upon millions of years before man had risen upon earth, the central areas of this tremendous ocean were empty, and where famous islands now exist nothing rose above the rolling waves. Of course, crude forms of fife sometimes moved through the deep, but for the most part the central ocean was marked only by enormous waves that arose at the command of moon and wind. Dark, dark, they swept the surface of the empty sea, falling only upon themselves terrible and puissant and lonely.

Then one day, at the bottom of the deep ocean, along a line running two thousand miles from northwest to southeast, a rupture appeared in the basalt rock that formed the ocean's bed. Some great fracture of the earth's basic structure had occurred, and from it began to ooze a white-hot, liquid rock. As it escaped from its internal prison, it came into contact with the ocean's wet and heavy body. Instantly, the rock exploded, sending aloft through the 19,000 feet of ocean that pressed clown upon it columns of released steam.

Upward, upward, for nearly four miles they climbed, those agitated bubbles of air, until at last upon the surface of the sea they broke loose and formed a cloud. In that instant, the ocean signaled that a new island was building. In time it might grow to become an infinitesimal speck of land that would mark the great central void. No human beings then existed to celebrate the event. Perhaps some weird and vanished flying thing spied the escaping steam and swooped down to inspect it; more likely the roots of this future island were born in darkness and great waves and brooding nothingness.

For nearly forty million years, an extent of time so vast that it is meaningless, only the ocean knew that an island was building in its bosom, for no land had yet appeared above the surface of the sea. For

FROM THE BOUNDLESS DEEP 5

nearly forty million years, from that extensive rupture in the ocean floor, small amounts of liquid rock seeped out, each forcing its way up through what had escaped before, each contributing some small portion to the accumulation that was building on the floor of the sea. Sometimes a thousand years, or ten thousand, would silently pass before any new eruption of material would take place. At other times gigantic pressures would accumulate beneath the rupture and with unimaginable violence rush through the existing apertures, throwing clouds of steam miles above the surface of the ocean. Waves would be generated which would circle the globe and crash upon themselves as they collided twelve thousand miles away. Such an explosion, indescribable in its fury, might in the end raise the height of the subocean island a foot.

But for the most part, the slow constant seepage of molten rock was not violently dramatic. Layer upon layer of the earth's vital core would creep out, hiss horribly at the cold sea water, and then slide down the sides of the little mountains that were forming. Building was most sure when the liquid rock did not explode into minute ashy fragments, but cascaded viscously down the sides of the mountains, for this bound together what had gone before, and established a base for what was to come.

How long ago this building took place, how infinitely long agol For nearly forty million years the first island struggled in the bosom of the sea, endeavoring to be born as observable land. For nearly forty million submerged years its subterranean volcano hissed and coughed and belched and spewed forth rock, but it remained nevertheless hidden beneath the dark waters of the restless sea, to whom it was an insignificant irritation, a small climbing pretentious thing of no consequence.

And then one day, at the northwest end of the subocean rupture, an eruption of liquid rock occurred that was different from any others that had preceded. It threw forth the same kind of rock, with the same violence, and through the same vents in the earth's core. But this time what was thrown forth reached the surface of the sea. There was a tremendous explosion as the liquid rock struck water and air together. Clouds of steam rose miles into the air. Ash fell hissing upon the heaving waves. Detonations shattered the air for a moment and then echoed away in the immensity of the empty wastes.

But rock had at last been deposited above the surface of the sea. An island�visible were there but eyes to see, tangible were there fingers to feel�had risen from the deep.

The human mind, looking back upon this event�particularly if the owner of the mind has once stepped upon that island�is likely to accord it more significance than it merits. Land was finally born, yes. The forty million years of effort were finally crowned by the emergence of a pile of rocks no larger than a man's body, that is true. But the event was actually of no lasting significance, for in the long history of the ocean many such piles had momentarily broken the surface and then subsided, forbidden and forgotten. The only thing