My grandfather came to Honolulu in 1870 from Canton Province in China. He was nine years old. He spoke no English; no one in his family did. But by the time he graduated from McKinley High School, he was fluent. When he would speak, all we heard was a man whose English was impeccable. That’s why it’s so ironic that the character in those stories based on his life speaks with such a heavy Chinese accent.
But he only laughed at that, telling us there was always some kind of divergence between fact and fiction. If stories were pure fact, he said, no one would want to read them. Pure fact, or the attempt to approach that, was the work of historians and the police, not writers of fiction, he told us.
For my nine-year-old grandfather, there was no talk of college in those days. The family’s sole purpose was to get jobs that paid well as soon as they could. The Honolulu Police Department that I work for now didn’t exist, but a constabulary did. It was a collection of men designated to bring some kind of law and order to a growing city that had its natural share of crime.
It was a dangerous job. As the population rises, so does the crime rate. That has never changed. And as Hawai‘i continued to grow, so did the level of danger. As a result, the job paid well, and they were always looking for smart, bilingual men who had the courage to stand up to the criminal element.
And so it began. My father, born in 1900, went on to join the force as well, and in 1937 the constabulary formerly became the Honolulu Police Department. By then, my Grandfather and his partner, Chang Apana, were both Detective Lieutenants, neither one ever opting for promotion to chief, or even captain. They loved what they did, and they did it well. They were the best the force had.
Until my dad came along and eventually became a detective as well. My grandfather was always proud of the fact that his star had been eclipsed by my father. There was no ego involved. He had trained him, and in fine Asian tradition, the children were raised in the hope that they would go on to greater success than their parents. Each generation boosted the next upon its shoulders.
I’d thought it terrific that a father and son could do so well in HPD, but I had no desire to do the same. When my dad disappeared in 1942, I was just wrapping up a dual major in English and Education. I was scheduled to begin teaching high-school English that fall.
But suddenly my father was gone, and from the moment I heard that, my goal in life became joining the force and tracking down whoever was responsible for my father’s disappearance. The day I entered the academy was the day that working for HPD began to look very much like a family business.
And I did not want that. It is a brutal job with brutal hours. You face danger all the time, and you wake up, when you’re lucky enough to get in a decent period of sleep, knowing that you are headed for a job where you are expected to sacrifice your life to serve and protect the people. That burden is a hard one to bear.
I hoped, I mean I prayed hard, that my son would break the chain. And he did. He has never shown an interest in police work, and for that I’m truly thankful. From an early age, he loved science, and by the time he graduated from Roosevelt High School, he knew that he would major in Biology and go on to medical school.
So here he is now, beginning his residency at Queen’s Hospital. And what happens? His very first assignment is to aid me, in other words, HPD, in caring for a wounded MI6 agent.
David Chan the Third may have dodged the family police business bullet, but it’s winged him. How strange that his professional life here should bring him into such close contact with the line of work I never wanted him to pursue.
Lanning Lee 