{"id":356,"date":"2025-03-10T12:52:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T16:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/?p=356"},"modified":"2025-03-21T11:46:26","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T15:46:26","slug":"four-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"Five Years Later…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Right now I\u2019m in the process of looking for a literary agent to represent my novel Mauka<\/em>. Agents often ask for a \u201clogline,\u201d which is a one-sentence description. Here\u2019s my long one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen an unexpected letter asking forgiveness for a gang rape she\u2019d kept secret for sixty years sends June Nakashima angrily back to Hilo to write about it, she\u2019s not expecting the sudden, late-in-life love affair that blossoms with her high school friend Max Nelson, a contract archaeologist and writer who left Harvard grad school without a PhD and has been living quietly in Hilo, and is then, to his surprise, again enmeshed in a fifty-year-old murder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Mauka<\/em> is fiction, I built the \u201cgang rape\u201d and the \u201cfifty-year-old murder\u201d on incidents from my own life. I wasn\u2019t directly involved in the 1959 Hilo rapes, although the victim who put the boys in jail was a friend. I was caught up in a friend’s 1969 murder both then and in 2017, as I describe in my memoir Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton\u2019s Murder.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But today\u2019s posting is about the real Hilo High rapes (there were many victims, all but one of whom kept silent). I\u2019ve never forgotten how brave the victim who told was (Mauka<\/em> is dedicated to her). The fictional June, knowing how she’d be shamed if she told, was afraid to \u2013 and that\u2019s part of what she wrestles with as a seventy-something adult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of weeks ago I was going through old material I brought from Hilo, and the Hilo Intermediate School literary magazine Ka Hua Olelo<\/em> slid out of the pile. I was a 7th<\/sup> grader when it came out. I leafed through it, and an author\u2019s name caught my eye. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was one of the rapists; in fact, the one who picked up my friend and delivered her to the forest where he and the others raped her (and were eventually tried, convicted, and did time). I\u2019ve redacted his name, even though he\u2019s been dead for years (a suicide at about 40; he didn\u2019t do well as an adult).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But here he is, probably 13, writing a sweet little piece about his parakeet. Then in five years he\u2019s leading a rape gang. What happened in the interim? I have no idea. I could look for everything I have from Hilo Intermediate and Hilo High, to see if I can track him in any way. But I\u2019m not going to, because I\u2019m not writing memoir, and the fictional Mauka<\/em> rapist who contacted the fictional June isn\u2019t based on what I know about any<\/em> of the boys. I do admit to being curious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After finding the rapist on Page 31, I went to the autograph page at the end \u2013 and there was the victim, wishing me \u201cAloha and best wishes always.\u201d Of course I\u2019ve redacted her name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Should I work what I found into Mauka<\/em>? I\u2019d have to make Ka Hua Olelo <\/em>turn up. June lost everything in the 1960 tsunami, so a copy can’t come from her. Max landed back in his family house and I suppose that after reconnecting with June he might have poked around looking for items from their youth. In Mauka<\/em> they write about their Hilo years from memory. The only physical prompt is a bullet hole in Max\u2019s old bedroom wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right now I\u2019m in the process of looking for a literary agent to represent my novel Mauka. Agents often ask for a \u201clogline,\u201d which is a one-sentence description. Here\u2019s my long one: \u201cWhen an unexpected letter asking forgiveness for a gang rape she\u2019d kept secret for sixty years sends June Nakashima angrily back to Hilo… <\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,62,35],"tags":[64,41,61,63,34],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hawaii","category-hilo-hawaii","category-my-novel-mauka","tag-1959-hilo-rapes","tag-hilo-hawaii","tag-hilo-high-school","tag-hilo-intermediate-school","tag-mauka-a-novel-of-hawaii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}