South Pacific

This trip was totally different from my stay in Hawaii in 1969, when I was in Peace Corps training and the focus was learning about Tonga.  I learned so much more about Hawaii from this trip.  I’d already read Lost Kingdom:  Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure (by Julia Flynn Siler, an author I’m not familiar with) and Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell, an author I love.  (I think I’ve read everything by her.)  While we were on Kauai, I found a third book Then There Were None, which is also a documentary.  It says that when Captain Cook arrived in 1778, there were about 400,000 Hawaiians.  By 1878 there were only 48,000 pure Hawaiians left alive.  Then it went down to 39,000.  Then 24,000.   How many are there now?  

The owner of the home share where we were staying lent us the DVD of South Pacific, which was the first Broadway cast recording I ever listened to. I just wrote to Jeri Gertz, who's married to an Hawaiian and lives on The Big Island.  I recalled that I'd first listened to my parents' 78 rpm records of the Mary Martin-Ezio Pinza Broadway cast when I was ten--the age I was when I first started baby-sitting for her.  (She was born in 1955.)  I'd hoped to visit her and her husband when we were in Hawaii, but the flights were too expensive, so we stayed put.   As a child, I’d written to movie stars and gotten back only the pre-signed photos the studios provided, so I was thrilled when Mitzi Gaynor (or whoever took care of her mail) wrote a personal response to my letter asking whether she’d been in a movie where she’d thrown coconuts.  I got a letter saying, “Yes, I was in Down among the Sheltering Palms and ‘threw coconuts.’”  Later she wrote saying, “Wish me luck!  I was just signed for the lead in South Pacific.”  So my friends and I enjoyed watching the movie, and of course we commented on the stereotypes in the movie and the strange info Diane Sawyers and James Michener gave in the interview included in the DVD.  Tonkinese?!   When I had first heard the word “Tonkinese,” I thought it meant Tongan.  But Diane Sawyers says it was an old name for Vietnamese—perhaps because the person playing the Polynesian Liat is played by France Nguyen, who is not Polynesian!  Because of South Pacific and the straight-haired women usually used to represent Hawaii (Filipina?), I always thought that Polynesians were Asians or Eurasian--straight hair, etc.  When I first met a Tongan, I was startled because they didn’t look Chinese or Eurasian.  Anyway, after we’d discussed the inauthenticity of the movie, by chance  I met a young woman finishing her dissertation on Asian-Pacific Islander stereotypes, and she told me about the museum on Kauai, where the proprietors John Lydgate and Tammi Andersland could answer my questions.  When we arrived at the museum the day before our departure, I was thrilled to find out that their 1 ½ hr. lecture was about to begin, but Javier, who was less thrilled, returned to Pono Kai to watch the preliminary games for the World Cup.  I was really interested in the lecture and found most of it believable, but I took exception when Lydgate said that the first missionaries had been sought out by the Hawaiians to restore order to the islands.  I wanted to write all about South Pacific, but I see that someone has already done that, so I'll provide the link to her article and just make some comments about her comments, almost all of which I agree with.  The one exception is what she says about the use of the word "colored" in the awful Glenn Close 2002 version of South Pacific.  I think it makes perfect sense that Glenn Close would see the children as "colored."  This was during World War II.  Here's the link:
http://www.frigatezine.com/review/film/rfi03cai.html
And while I'm here, I should explain the stereotypes on the postcard I created above:  The Luau at the Smith Family Garden (they tried to avoid the word plantation, I'll bet!) posed us incoming tourists with the "natives," who look Eurasian, not Polynesian.  I'm not sure that they really used coconut shells for bras either.  But you'll notice how Evelyn and I are leaning towards Walter while Javier is drawn to the not-Polynesian woman in the Wonder coconut-cup bra.  You can see the other touristy things we did.  We had the famous Hula pie/Kauai Pie--three times!  But the very first day, while Javier and Walter were watching the World Cup preliminary games, Evelyn and I took a tour of places on Kauai that have been used as movie locations for Zaire, Australia, New Hebrides, Vietnam, and even Hawaii!  It was fun to see on the bus' screen a scene from the Descendants, showing George Clooney walking into the Tahiti Nui and then get off the bus and walk into the Tahiti Nui ourselves.  You can see South Pacific and the wharf that looks out on Bali Hai.  That reminded me of one more South Pacific connection.   Just days before her 90th birthday, Mom and I were lying on her bed at Aegis and singing songs from musicals we'd planned to sing at her 90th birthday party.  After we sang "Bali Hai," Mom said, "That's such a beautiful song.  If you got that for me for my birthday, I think that would be my favorite gift.  But I wouldn't tell the others."