HAWAIIAN
TALES, by Allan Beekman. 112 pages. Harlo
Few,
if any, writers who set out to pen short stories about Hawaii fail to
write one placed in Dec. 7, 1941.
Allan
Beekman's offering, “No Place beneath the Rising Sun,” is more
interesting than most. It is set in a Japanese language school, and
has several main characters: the teachers, including an Imperial Army
pilot who had fought in China; and two small children, twins.
It
includes a scene of a mob shaking fists and howling for blood at the
school as the attack on Pearl Harbor continues. That is not an
incident I have seen reported anywhere, but the background of
Beekman's little volume of “Hawaiian Tales” indicates it is
meant to be authentic.
His
AJA wife, Take, was teaching at a Japanese language school on Dec. 7,
after which she lost her job. In his introduction, Allan Beekman
thanks Take Beekman for her help with that story.
“Hawaiian
Tales” was published in 1970, assembling a dozen stories that
Beekman had published in periodicals (some obscure) earlier. The
stories are set in the 1910-1950 period and reflect, except for one
or two, the experience of the Japanese immigrants.
The
writing is sometimes stiff – my favorite line is a description of
the “dark, green oblanceolate leaves” of a mock orange – and
sometimes didactic, and Beekman does not manage to give any real feel
for being in Honolulu.
Yet
the stories themselves are a cut above the usual run of local color
stories, especially ones produced by haole immigrants. Beekman has a
deft touch for a ghost story; there are two.
And
after long residence in the islands, with a local wife, Beekman
avoids the clunkers that usually creep into story collections, even
sometimes those written by the born-and-raiseds.
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