Razor had been his first real friend at the plantation. Their lives before then had been uprooted when his father lost their small rice farm in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan after a series of bad business deals. “Isn’t sugarcane just another type of farming?” his father had reasoned. “A three-year contract offering steady pay and free housing, and we’ll return to Japan standing firmly on our feet again.” All Koji remembered was how weak his legs felt after sailing across the ocean for more than three weeks aboard the City of Tokio, weaker than standing all day bent over in their wet rice paddy field. It was early morning when they’d arrived in Hilo, the town shrouded in mist, reminding him of the Japanese village in a folktale his mother had read to him and his sister. Koji imagined the spirits from those stories had followed them all the way across the ocean. Even the same dark and foreboding mountains stood tall in the distance.

A dockworker unloading the ship followed his gaze. “That’s Mauna Loa, yeah, Hawai‵i’s version of Mount Fuji,” he’d said. “There are four more volcanoes that make up the island,” he added. “No need to worry, eh. Only three of them are active.”

Five volcanoes on one island.

Koji was immediately captivated.

His family’s papers were quickly signed and collected at the harbor by Japanese-speaking immigration officers. After, they were herded into a tent for a quick health clearance, poked and prodded by Japanese doctors hired by the plantations before they were packed onto horse-drawn wagons with the other new arrivals, squeezed so tightly together that Koji could hardly move in the breathless heat. From there they were bumped and jostled for two hours through dense forests of ohi’a trees, shrubs, and thick, overgrown foliage, and then up a winding, treacherous mountain road to their new home at Puli Plantation.

By the time they arrived, Koji was hot and sweaty, his body sore and bruised from the rough plywood wagon. His legs no longer felt anything. He sat up when the wagon jerked to a stop at the front gate of the plantation and the driver yelled out in awkward, practiced Japanese, “Homu, suito homu!” Home, sweet home! Beyond the gate, not more than half a mile down a dirt road, the driver pointed to three separate wind-weary clapboard buildings that housed the plantation office, the school, and a store. Farther down the road stood a larger building, the sugar mill. And past the mill, as far as the eye could see, were acres and acres of tall, billowing sugarcane.