WHY DON'T YOU WEAR SHOES?
                        DANIEL K. INOUYE

VOCABULARY

JINGOISTIC
SAMURAI
INGENIOUS
DELICACY
PREROGATIVE
CATACLYSM
EXCRUCIATE
CONTEMPORARY
GARROTE
ENCUMBRANCE

     I didn't wear shoes regularly until I was in high school-none
of us nisei kids did-and it was as much a matter of comfort as
money.  After all, this was Hawaii, a truly blessed place for a boy
to grow up in.
     We were a trial to our teachers, I'm sure.  Many of them were
haoles from  the  Mainland, properly reared and educated young
ladies, and they must have been disconcerted, to say the least, to
be suddenly confronted with a ragtag crew of barefooted, sport-
shirted kids whose English was liberally larded with Japanese,
Chinese, Hawaiian and some exotic combinations of each.  But they
were a wonderfully dedicated group and they did their best to make
educated Americans out of us young savages.  And even more
important, they accepted us on our own terms-they didn't despair
over us, or patronize us, or slough us off as inferiors and
hopeless delinquents.  They treated us as exactly what we were, a
bunch of kids from poor homes with hard-working parents, with a
sort of built-in eagerness to become part of the mainstream of
American life, and there is no way in which I can adequately
express my thanks to them.
     I loved school.  Each day brought its own separate reward and
learning became a constantly intriguing challenge.  Of course when
you're a boy there is always a danger of being tagged a bookworm
and, in natural consequence, a sissy.  And so I was careful not to
be caught studying or doing more homework than was absolutely
necessary, and I warily cultivated a manner of dress and classroom
manner that, even by our group's casual standard, was pretty
flamboyant.
     By this time we had returned to Coyne Street, in an area
officially known as Bingham Tract but more readily recognizable by
its popular name: Chinese Hollywood.  Here Chinese families
clustered together, and here came aspiring Americans from China
with every new ship bound east from the Orient.  The Inouyes were
one of only two Japanese families in Bingham and, perhaps
inevitably, we were soon virtually adopted by our sweet-natured
neighbors.  To this day I am known by our old neighbors as Ah-
Danny-Jai, affectionate Chinese for little Danny.
     As for me, I acquired a highly-cultivated taste for Chinese
delicacies, not the least of which was dried water beetles.  When
these were roasted, the tails could be pulled from the body and
made a delicious snack, like peanuts.  One day, hungry as usual, I
took a whole bagful of these morsels to school with me and whiled
away the afternoon cracking them and stuffing the tasty tails into
my mouth.  So long as there was activity in the classroom I was
safe, the teacher couldn't hear me and I took care that she didn't
see me.  But toward the end of the day, with all of us hushed in
assigned study, the sharp crack of a beetle back sounded through
the silent room like a rifle shot.  Miss Dolton, who was blond and
beautiful, looked up and I looked down.  Miss Dolton looked down
and-CRACK!-went another beetle.
     "Dan!"
     "Gmmm?" I mumbled, my mouth stuffed with tails.
     "Are you eating something?"
     I nodded, trying to express an apology with my eyes alone.
     "Well!" said the proper young lady indignantly.  "You know the
rule about eating in class.  Now you may bring whatever it is you
have there up to me and I will take my share and pass it around to
the class."
     Now, as you can see, this was truly punishment to fit the
crime-forcing any of us kids to give up food was like shredding a
tobacco addict's last cigarette.  Crushed and contrite, and still
unable to speak a word in my defense, I carried my precious bag up
front and deposited it on Miss Dolton's desk.  Whereupon she
righteously reached in, produced a beetle and, on the verge of
popping it into her mouth, caught sight of what she was holding and
delivered herself of a shriek that, they say, was heard on the far
side of Diamond Head.
     Into the wastebasket went my bag-punishment enough!-and back
to my seat I marched, directed by Miss Dolton's quivering finger. 
Years later, when I went back to see her, we had many laughs over
my school days.  But when I brought up the matter of the Chinese
water beetles, the same look of dread crossed her face, and she
said, "Oh, Dan, how could you!"
     The trouble I got into at Japanese language school was
something more serious and crystallized for me, once and for all,
the matter of who I was and where in this cultural melting pot I
was headed.  Most of my contemporaries quit at the end of the tenth
year, by which time they had a fair grounding in Japanese history
and tradition.  In deference to my grandparents, I suppose, I was
enrolled for the eleventh grade and sat through excruciatingly long
afternoons listening to lectures on the sacredness of the royal
family and being admonished to preserve the centuries-old customs
of my people.  Then, all in one cataclysmic afternoon, I unburdened
myself of my smoldering resentment and, in consequence, was flung
bodily from the classroom, never to return.
     The year was 1939 and already times had turned tense in the
Far East.  The Japanese government was in the iron grip of fanatic
warlords and the Imperial Army was waging aggressive war in China
and menacing all of Southeast Asia.  Day after day, the priest who
taught us ethics and Japanese history hammered away at the divine
prerogatives of the Emperor, and at the grand destiny that called
on the Japanese people to extend their sway over the yellow race,
and on the madness that was inducing the American government to
oppose them.  He would tilt his menacing crew-cut skull at us and
solemnly proclaim, "You must remember that only a trick of fate has
brought you so far from your homeland, but there must be no
question of your loyalty.
     When Japan calls, You must know that it is Japanese blood that
flows in your veins."
     I had heard his jingoistic little speeches so many times that
I suppose they no longer really registered on me.  He was an old
man, to be respected for his station, but when he began spouting
nonsense I could easily tune him out.  But one day he shifted his
scorn to the Bible and I reacted by instinct and violently.  He had
been discussing the inadequacy of Christianity compared to
Shintoism, the state religion of Japan, and already my hackles were
up.  Then he favored us with an elaborate grin and, mockery
dripping from his every word, be said, "I give you the Bible itself
as the best evidence of this Christian foolishness.  Their God made
the world in seven days, it says.  Ha! Then he made a man and from
a rib of that man's rib, mark you! -he made a woman.  Ha! Anyone
with any part of a brain can see that this is the wildest
nonsense!"
     I never realized that I was on my feet and shouting until I
saw the grin on his face twist, first into astonishment, and then
into fury.
     Then my words echoed in my bead:
     "That's not right! That's not fair! I am a Christian, a lot of
us here are, and you mustn't talk that way! I respect your faith. 
You must respect mine."
     "How dare you!" be roared.
     "I do.  I do dare! You have no right to make fun of my
beliefs."
     "You are a Japanese! You will believe what ....
     "I am an American!"
     He flinched, exactly as though I had struck him.  With a
single compulsive jerk, be threw the book he had been holding
through the open window, and we watched the pages flutter in the
wind for a moment.  Then he started toward me, and the class
watched in silent terror, and his face was black as a thunderhead
and his mouth worked violently as he cried, "You are a Japanese!"
Now his fingers clutched at my open collar and he was shaking me
back and forth.  "Say it!" be screamed into my face.  "You are a
Japanese!"
     And barely able to bring my voice up out of my tortured
throat, I muttered, "I am an American."
     With that, he lifted me from my feet and half-dragged, half-
carried me to the door, and he threw me with full force into the
schoolyard.  "You are a faithless dog!" he screamed, and slammed
the door closed.
     Dazed and trembling, I stumbled to my feet.  My trousers were
torn and one knee was scraped and bleeding.  Crazily, my first
thought was how to hide this from my mother.  But I had only taken
a few steps toward home when I realized that I didn't want to hide
it.  I had had all I could take of that Japanese teacher and if it
took this catastrophe-and the punishment I was sure to get for it-
to free me, well, so be it.
     But, of course, I had underestimated my mother again.  She
took one look at my tattered pants and the mutinous expression I
wore, and she demanded the whole story. And I told it to her, and
all the time I spoke she was washing and bandaging my skinned knee,
so that I could not see her face and could not gauge how she was
reacting to this great crisis in my life.  But when I was all
finished, she got to her feet and said, "Come, we are going back
there."
     This was something more than I had bargained for.  Maybe I had
used up my day's supply of bravery, but the fact is that I had no
desire to face the priest's wrath again.  "Mama," I began
hesitantly. . . .
     She shushed me.  "You have nothing to fear or to be ashamed
of," she said crisply.  "But there is a matter of honor to be
settled."
     Nor did she waste any time with the teacher.  Instead, she
went directly to the office of the principal, a gentle and
distinguished Japanese.
     And Mother stood before his desk, a tiny figure whose massive
indignation strengthened her words, and she told him exactly what
happened.  "I do not send him here to become a Shintoist or a
samurai.  I want him to learn the language and traditions of his
ancestors, but we are Americans and shall always remain so."
     Amazingly, he nodded his agreement.  He would speak to the
priest, he assured my mother.  There would be no more such author-
itarian teaching, and I could return to my class without fear of
retribution.
     "That is up to Ken," my mother said looking straight at me and
using, as she almost always did, my Japanese name.  "He is old
enough now to decide this for himself."
     And I said, "I don't want to go back.  I've learned enough
about the old ways." My mother thanked the principal for hearing
her out, and we left, and for the first time, I suppose, I knew
what it was to feel like an American. . . .
     It was in my sophomore year in high school that I first came
under the warm and rewarding spell of Mrs. Ruth King, a teacher
whose influence in my young life ranked just behind that of my
mother and father.  She certainly didn't look inspiring, a short,
plump lady in her middle forties with graying hair and eyes that
seemed to look vaguely out from behind a pair of rimless glasses
and to see practically everything.  But the truth was that she saw
practically everything, surely nothing of any real importance that
happened in her classroom escaped her notice.
     Hers was the top tenth-grade class at McKinley High.  I don't
know how I got into it and, from the very first day, I wanted out.
In place of all my old live-and-let-live buddies from Moiliili and
McCully, I found myself rubbing shoulders with a breed of kids who
kept trying to pretend that their skin was white and their eyes
were blue.  And there in the midst of this pretense, surrounded by
all those starched white shirts and shined shoes, was rough-and-
tumble Dan Inouye, to whom a necktie was a garrote on the spirit,
and shoes an encumbrance to be suffered through at funerals and in
church.
     In those days, McKinley High School was jokingly referred to
as Tokyo High.  Thanks to an ingenious system of segregation,
nearly all of us there were of Japanese ancestry, and from the
least affluent nisei families, at that.  It worked through a device
known as the English Standard School and neatly sidestepped the law
that, theoretically, opened all the public schools to everyone
regardless of race, color or creed.  To be admitted to an English
Standard School-which by invariable coincidence had better
facilities and better faculties -one had to pass an examination. 
The written part was fair enough since everyone had an equal
chance.  But the oral test served as an automatic weeding-out
factor, for rare indeed was the student of Asian parentage who
could properly pronounce the "th" sound, the "r" and the "l." The
obvious result was that the English Standard Schools became almost
the exclusive province of Caucasian youngsters, and that handful of
Japanese and Chinese whose parents could afford to give them
private tutoring.  Not until 1955 was the last of this subtle
segregation eliminated from Hawaii's public school system.
     I was too young and unknowing then to be troubled by the
concept of "Tokyo High." Only my stiff-necked classmates bothered
me and sometimes it seemed that the only person who ever talked to
me in that grade was Mrs. King.  "Your grammar leaves something to
be desired, Dan," she would say to me privately.  "Why don't you
stay after school today and we'll work on it?" And I would,
happily, because to be in her presence was suddenly to glimpse
something beyond the narrow horizons of the life I'd known, to
sense that being a clerk, or even a beach boy, was not the ultimate
and only hope for a kid like me.  She took me seriously, which is
something that no one, not even I myself, had ever done.
     All at once literature was exciting and history was real. 
Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln suddenly stepped out of some
mythical haze and became men of flesh and blood, men with great
problems and the great courage to face them.  I felt the bitter
cold and despair of that winter at Valley Forge.  I felt a sharp
sense of personal loss at the death of Lincoln, the lost
opportunity to bind up the nation's wounds.  Whereas Japanese
history had always sounded like some great impersonal pageant, the
story of America had the ring of an adventure in human progress,
troubles and setbacks and the inexorable march down to the present.
     But most important of all, I came to believe that the giants
who made American history were my forefathers.  Always before, I
had been a little embarrassed singing about the "land where my
fathers died," and I always spoke of the fathers of the country. 
It was Mrs. King who, in some wonderfully subtle way, convinced me
of the essential relationship between America's founding fathers
and all of America's people.
     In midyear, Mrs. King recommended me for leadership in
McKinley's two junior honor societies, the Torch Society and the
McKinley Citizenship Club.  My mother and father glowed with pride
and although I tried to pretend that it didn't matter to me one way
or the other, the truth is that I was really excited by the
prospect.  On the appointed afternoon, beaming with good
fellowship, I strode up before the Student Council for my
interview.  They sat behind a long table, four seniors trying to
look as stern as bankers.  They didn't ask me to sit down.
     "Why do you think you belong in an honor society?" one of them
asked.
     I shrugged.  "It was Mrs. King's idea.  I......
     "Why don't you wear shoes?" another suddenly shot at me, a
Japanese kid I'd known for at least five years.
     "Because I only have one pair," I said to him.  "They have to
last." It was a silly question, he knew I only had one pair.  He
probably even knew that they'd been bought two years ago, and
bought two sizes too large so I wouldn't grow out of them, and that
until only recently I'd had to stuff the toes with paper to keep
the darned things on.
     But the silly questions were only beginning.  "Why don't you
wear a white shirt?" they asked.  "Why don't you wear a tie?"
     I didn't know what to say.  I looked from one to the other, a
gathering fear inside me, like dirty fingers squeezing my stomach. 
What was this all about? I thought they were going to interview me
about my interests and ideas, about my schoolwork maybe.  Why did
they care what I wore?
     "Are you going to answer the question?"
     "I don't know," I said.  "My shirt is for church.
     "Don't you care how you look in school?"
     Not wanting to, I looked down at my sports shirt and my denim
pants and bare feet.  "My clothes are clean," I mumbled.  "I don't
know what's wrong."
     "What about your friends?" one of them barked, and rattled off
a list of kids from my neighborhood.  "Are they your friends?"
     "Yes," I said, and all at once I knew that they were going to
turn me down.  "What's the matter with them?"
     "Delinquents!"
     "Because they don't wear shoes?" I said, and it was not a
question.  "Because they're poor? They're no more delinquents than
I am.  Or you are." All the disappointment, all the fear had
suddenly boiled up in anger, and when they tried to interrupt me I
shouted them down: "Hey, listen, I thought this was an honor
society-honor, scholarship.  But if all you're looking for is guys
who wear white shirts and shoes, you don't want me and I for sure
don't want you.  I wouldn't trade one of my friends for ... for
both your honor societies and all four of you, so just forget the
whole thing!"
     For a long, long time afterward I would stiffen with an inner
fury every time I remembered those moments of humiliation, and I
remembered them often.  Nor was that the end of it.  Somehow I had
to explain to my parents that I had not been accepted into the
honor societies without telling them the real reasons, for they
would then have blamed themselves.  So I stammered and stuttered
through some lame explanation that fooled them not a bit, and their
eyes grew sad and there was no more for any of us to say.  As for
Mrs. King, who seemed to know everything there was to know about my
unhappy encounter with the Council without my saying a word, she
was so deeply hurt by their behavior that not once in my next year
at McKinley High did she recommend another candidate for the Torch
Society or the McKinley Citizenship Club.
     But the most important effect of the entire episode was to
convince me of the essential truth of that old saw about it being
an ill wind that blows no good.  It left me enraged and a little
confused, but most of all it left me with a fiery resolve to "show
those guys!" Never before had I felt so challenged, nor so deter-
mined to make something of myself.  As a matter of fact, I don't
think it's unfair to say that those four snobbish seniors are at
least partly responsible for whatever successes I subsequently
enjoyed.  Their faces stuck in my mind, and do to this day, and for
years afterward I charged at every obstacle in my path as though
those four had personally put it there and it was absolutely
essential for me to overcome it to prove that shoes and neckties
were no measure of a man.
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THE END