Koji kept moving between the rows of waving cane, known to grow as tall as twenty feet high before flowering. Most of the cane workers had already come in from the fields for dinner, walking back to their separate villages scattered around the plantation. Those who still had the energy after a day in the fields might tend to their own small gardens, or go down to the river to bathe, talk stories among their own, and drink moonshine made from ti root. By four the next morning, they would be up and starting the day all over again. Koji had lived the same routine for so many years he could do it in his sleep. Hadn’t he survived a lifetime at the Puli Plantation through hard work, keeping to himself, and staying out of trouble? He’d spent his life surviving, and in the end, the lingering guilt still pulled at him, still laid blame. Koji looked out toward the overworked cane fields, knowing the earth needed to be turned over every so often to be renewed. He felt the same. This plantation and these fields had been his life, punctuated by trips down to Hilo town as a boy, and later, to see Mariko and Daniel. After Franklin left, he vowed to take care of them. They were all that ever mattered to him.

The day was turning to dusk—gray and grainy—neither day nor night. What did he see? Koji always felt it was the most revealing moment of each day—the flickering candle just before it fluttered out, leaving everything in darkness. “Last chance daylight,” his father used to call it, “just before the spirits come out.” He only hoped the spirits would come out to guide him now, just as they always had. Koji walked deeper into the field, the trade winds blowing wildly, the swishing, rustling cane frantic all around him. It didn’t take long before he heard their singing again, their ghost voices rising softly at first, and then louder. The songs sung by the Japanese women workers rose upward and were carried above the tall stalks, while the singers themselves remained hidden among the cane. They sang the holehole bushi work songs filled with all the small joys and great sorrows they’d suffered, deceived into leaving their homeland for a better life, fueled by empty promises as they stripped the dried cane leaves from the stalks ten hours a day. It was during the days before the fields were burned, and all the clearing was done by hand. It was what Koji loved most—what drew him back to the cane—the beauty and the sadness of those singing voices and the stories they told.

Where do I belong? Where is my home?

Is it in America, or should I return to Japan?—

I thought Hawai‵i would be my home.

Hawai‵i, Hawai‵i the place of my dreams—

But what a nightmare—