Haole

When Danny stopped walking and asked me to hold his books, I knew this was it.

Danny Kamiya was the smartest person I’d ever known.  He was the sharpest guy in our class, our valedictorian, in fact, and was headed to Stanford in the fall.

I’d known Danny since we were in elementary school.  I’d always been an okay student, but when I had trouble, Danny always helped me out, explaining math problems to me, helping me with my writing.  Anything I didn’t understand, he’d try to explain to me.

Not much into sports, Danny spent his free time playing music, mostly.  By senior year, he’d been concertmaster in the Hawai‘i Youth Symphony for three years, and I’d always be amazed when he would play along to recordings of famous violinists, his goal to match their speed and figure their technique in this one-on-one competitive way.

Very much into athletics, a three-sport athlete, Robert Kang-Rausch was the bull of the school.  And this was even before we were seniors.

When he was a sophomore, Tui Sagapolo, a junior, and the reigning bull, challenged Robert to a fistfight one day after football practice.  I had a feeling that Sagapolo saw him as a threat. Probably two inches taller and with a pro body type that could take him to a top college football, basketball, or baseball team, would not let Robert walk away that day.

Robert had held back, maybe a little intimidated himself.  The last straw came when Tui call him a little fag and a wimpy little fag.  They had it out right there.

The fight lasted only a few minutes, but in the end, Robert stood over a bloody and moaning Tui.  Before he turned to go, Robert spit on him.

From then on, no one messed with Robert.

When you’re the bull of the school, that role can be played two ways.  You can either walk around knowing you’re The Man and maintaining a cool demeanor, or you can make life miserable for students who could do nothing but take crap from you and eat it.

Robert, much to many students’ misfortune chose the latter.  Bullies like that were, fortunately, few and far between at our school, but Robert made up for the lack of them, by being one of the bullies of all-time.  If you looked up asshole in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of him, that always smug expression on his face a prelude to too many bad encounters.

Unfortunately for Danny, he was one of Robert’s targets.  The kind of person bullies pick on just because.  Although, in terms of specificity, I think Danny’s case, might have been one where Robert was jealous of how smart Danny was.

But there was something else.  Bizarre, really.  I never understood it.  I’m fairly sure Danny didn’t either.

Robert Kang-Rausch.  The name says it all.  In Hawai‘i, people who are half Caucasian and half of another ethnicity or nationality are called Hapa-Haole.  Technically, of course, anyone who is half-half anything is Hapa.  But it’s the Haole half-half that’s primarily the one folks talk about.  In Robert’s case, he was half Korean and Half Caucasian.  Nothing wrong with that.

But the thing is that Danny Kamiya was half Haole and half Japanese, a Hapa-Haole as well.  And if you looked at him, I think you’d have trouble even guessing that he was Hapa because he looked pure Japanese.  Robert had to have known, somehow, that Danny’s mom was White.

And Robert, he was the one who actually looked Hapa, no doubt about it.

Now what was especially weird about all of this was that Robert’s favorite comment to Danny was derisively calling him a Haole.

The term Hapa-Haole, in general, no problem.  And if you’re just talking about Caucasians as White folks in general, with no malice behind the word, then using the term Haole, no problem as well.  But when you say Haole with real venom in the tone, then there’s a problem.  It’s a hatred of Haoles.

So, when Robert and his boys would come across Danny in the hallways, he’d always say things like, “Eh, fuckin’ Haole, you looking at me?”  Or “Fuckin’ Haole, you like me kick your ass?”

Don’t you think that’s weird?  A half Haole guy calling another half Haole guy a fucking Haole?  I never figured that out.

And often, along with this comment, Robert would brush by Danny, pushing him pretty hard, or he’d knock Danny’s books to the floor.  Sometimes he’d make Danny give him his lunch money.  If I were with Danny when that happened, Robert would take mine, too.  Back in those days we called it “highjacking.” It was prevalent around town, no matter what school you went to.

For almost three years then, from sophomore through senior year, Robert had done these kinds of things to Danny every time he saw him, which, thank goodness, wasn’t every day.  Our high school, one of the largest in Hawai‘i at that time, had classes graduating 800 to 900 students.

Danny never talked about these incidents, and I never wanted to talk about them either.  It seemed almost like he didn’t care, maybe.  Me, every time I saw Robert coming, I’d feel like I might piss my pants.  I didn’t know if Danny had the same fear.

Now, we were in the second half of spring term, senior year.  Me, I kept praying that our last encounter with Robert Kang-Rausch might be behind us.  This, however, turned out not to be the case.

One day, I heard that familiar voice coming up behind us saying, “Eh, Kamiya, you frickin’ haole, what’s up, punk?”

Danny stopped and then turned around.  I would have preferred to keep walking.  Faster.  But since Danny turned around, so did I.

“What, fuckah, you looking at me?  You like dirty lickin’s, o’wot?”

Danny just stood there as Robert closed the gap.

“Here,” said, Danny handing me his books.

Oh, shit, I thought, this is not going to end up well.

And sure enough, with Robert headed at him, Danny took a running start and, at the moment before contact, stuck out his arms and, to my surprise, managed to push Robert back.

I was stunned.  I always thought of Robert as an immovable object.  To see him stagger like that amazed me.

And if I was stunned, you can believe Robert was, too.  That look of surprise as he wobbled backward was awesome to see.

But Danny didn’t stop there.  With a new, albeit smaller gap between them, he rushed at Robert again, arms extended.  The result this time, unfortunately, turned out differently.  Robert stepped to the side and using just one of his arm pushed Danny in such a way that he was that he slammed against some lockers hard.

A thermos that had been sitting on top the lockers toppled to the floor beside Danny.  Picking it up, and with Robert coming at him to dish out more punishment, Danny whipped the thermos smack into Robert’s face.

Everyone saw the blood spurt into the air.  This did not deter Robert, though, and he came at Danny swinging.

But just at the moment after a couple of punches, one of the vice-principles – we had four there because there were so many students, came running down the hallway and pushed between the two.

Mr. Chan, the VP and assistant Athletic Director, was no small man himself.  None of the VPs were.  And after he’d stopped Robert, he yelled, “Robert, into my office right now.”

“You frickin’ Haole,” Robert spat out to Danny, “the next time I see you, you fucking dead.”

Danny, wow, all he did was laugh.  It wasn’t a ha-ha laugh.  It was an angry one.  “Check out the blood,” he yelled.  “I made you bleed.”

Whoa.  The thought of attending Danny’s funeral flitted through my mind.

Mr. Chan turned around.  “Eh! Unless you want to go to the office, too, watch your mouth.”

There were cheers as Robert strutted off to the office.  A few folks slapped Danny on the back and congratulated him.

But all Danny did was come over to me and say, “Thanks for watching my books.”

Together, in silence, we walked on to our next class.  At one point I glanced at Danny, and he at me.

“Haoles, huh?” he said, breaking into a huge smile.