‘Got to have my true name, Chappy Star. Got to have work and be able to look after my family. My family mustn’t be hurt.’ And he said again, ‘In a place where Japan is not loved.

‘I shouldn’t be in Hawai‘i,’ he added. ‘And can’t be in Aotearoa. I should be in Tokyo where my situation can’t affect my adopting family, my wife, my daughters.’ He paused for a while before saying, ‘One day, when the world has changed. One day when there is a new Japan.’

But Oriwia knew that Tokyo was no place for her husband, where he had been sick and alone in the world.

Not long after that, when Oriwia was giving Chappy a more detailed insight into her business ventures, he said, ‘It means you will not come to Hawai‘i to live? Just for a few years? Until things get better, until I get my papers, until I can have my name?’

‘I was stung, Grandson,’ Oriwia said to me. ‘Live in Hawai‘i? I actually couldn’t stand Hawai‘i, wouldn’t have dreamt of living there, even for a few years. The heat made me feel sick and swollen. I felt boiled there. And had this sense of having stepped back in time. I mean, you have to move on in life, don’t you?’

For Aki to give up his family and his land, Oriwia thought he must be living in paradise. She’d imagined an airy, spacious villa on extensive lands amid palms and large red and orange flowers, facing out to sea. In her mind were crystal waterfalls and deep, clear pools.

Well, some of this she found to be true, but not in any romantic way. There was also dust, rough tracks, insects, a choking atmosphere and a beating sun. Though there was one larger house, with rooms, in the place where the family lived, the other living places were no better than the little house she and Chappy had built when they were first married.

Oriwia loved Chappy with all her heart. Should that have been enough to make her uproot herself, give up what she’d built, give up the work that she thrived on, to go and live in a foreign land even for a few years? The answer had to be no. She didn’t know whether love would have survived it.

Should love have been enough for Chappy to leave Hawai‘i, or Tokyo, and come back with her to a piece of land that had been given to both of them, and where they had both been happy? She believed it should.