1970 Read online

  I HOTEL

  ALSO BY KAREN TEI YAMASHITA

  Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

  Brazil-Maru

  Tropic of Orange

  Circle K Cycles

  COPYRIGHT © 2010 by Karen Tei Yamashita

  COVER DESIGN by Linda Koutsky

  BOOK DESIGN by Allan Kornblum

  Illustrations by Leland Wong © 2010 Leland Wong

  Illustrations by Sina Grace © 2010 Sina Grace

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH © Mary Uyematsu Kao

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CIP INFORMATION

  Yamashita, Karen Tei, 1951–

  I Hotel / by Karen Tei Yamashita.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56689-369-5

  1. Civil rights movements—United States—Fiction.

  2. Asian Americans—Fiction.

  3. Nineteen seventies—Fiction.

  4. Nineteen sixties—Fiction.

  5. Chinatown (San Francisco, Calif.)—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  II. Series.

  PS3575.A44119 2010

  813'.54—DC22

  2010000382

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  FIRST EDITION | FIRST PRINTING

  This story is based, in part, on true events, but certain liberties have been taken with names, places, and dates, and the characters have been invented. Therefore, the persons and characters portrayed bear absolutely no resemblance whatever to the persons who were actually involved in the true events described in this story.

  For Asako and her grandchildren

  Contents

  1: I Am Hip

  2: I Am a Brother

  3: I Am a Warrior

  4: I Am a Crusader

  5: I Am a Martial Artist

  6: I Am the Third World

  7: I Am a Revolutionary

  8: I Am the Vanguard

  Afterword

  Author’s Acknowledgments

  The Illustrators

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  Funder Acknowledgments

  1: I Am Hip

  Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose

  Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free, now now

  —Janis Joplin

  So I am hip, dig, and it’s Moscow in 1970. Communism is alive and well. Kremlin’s down the street, and you’re in for a treat. The honorable ministers of information of the Black Panther Party and the Red Guard Party are holed up in a hotel room resting their feet and contemplating their next moves.

  “What time is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Shit. Can’t sleep.”

  “Everybody else sleeping.”

  “Sleeping sweet like Lenin over there in Red Square.”

  “Might as well be in Podunski, Nebraska.”

  “Where are all the vodka bars?”

  “This is why colored people got to be part of the revolution. Make sure we get our nightlife.”

  “You were in Havana. How was that?”

  “I had to go after them for their racism, but they do have their nightlife. Grant them that.”

  Conversation goes on like that. Now, the world knows who wrote Soul On Ice, but the other young cat, he’s Chinese. I mean to say, he’s Asian American, representing. Red Guard’s not Chinese per se; it’s a new formation outta Chinatown in San Francisco. Brothers there got together, wanted to be Panthers, maybe Asian Panthers, but Bobby said no, you got to be your own thing. First it was Red Dragons, like they was kung fu Shaolin types, but that was knocked down in favor of the political: Red Guard Party. Got to be a party. That should catch some notice in the next few months.

  Ministers are part of the U.S. People’s Anti-Imperialist Delegation traveling to the Red East: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, People’s Republic of China, and Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Moscow’s their introductory point, but it’s touchy. Sino-Soviet split, know what I mean? So first you ask for an introduction to Korea, then from there you ask for China, then you hop the border to Vietnam. That’s the plan. Delegation’s investigating the international situation; it’s not taking sides. Let’s agree that the principal enemy is U.S. imperialism. Indirect path to the man: Mao.

  Meanwhile, sleepless revolutionaries got to pass the time. Drink that salty mineral water and swap stories.

  “How come you didn’t get caught by the draft? You don’t look like the college type.”

  Red Guard kicks off his boots. He says, “It’s all because of Janis Joplin.”

  “No shit. Take a piece of my heart, baby.”

  “I was saved by the Summer of Love.”

  Everybody knows Janis, white baby girl birthed out the mouth of Big Mama Thornton, but truth be told, Red Guard is saved by his own papa. Chinese dad was a Vaudeville magic act. Did Barnum & Bailey, Las Vegas, and Forbidden City. Used to make a Chinese doll turn into a real China woman; turns out this is RG’s mama. Vaudeville was over, but the old man can’t do anything else. Makes ends meet by opening for Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. That’s how Chinese magic makes it happen. Old man opens for Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Avalon. Janis makes her debut, and RG is there.

  “So you took up with Janis? Son of a bitch.”

  “Not exactly.” Turns out RG is a stagehand for his papa and follows Joplin’s shows around. Avalon Ballroom, Winterland, Matrix, Fillmore Auditorium. He asks, “You heard about the Trips Festival at the Longshoremen’s?”

  “Do I look like some hippy? Either I was doing time at Folsom or in Oakland putting out the Panther paper.”

  “Missed your acid test.” RG shakes his head. Ken Kesey’s Pranksters wired Longshoremen’s with speakers, every kind of gadget, projections and strobes, crazy-assed climb-in sculptures—the total psychodelic experience. “You didn’t need it, but just in case, they were passing around a shopping bag of acid.”

  “I’m hip. You were grateful dead.”

  But there’s more: thanks to RG’s magic papa, Trips Festival brings in the Chinese Drum and Bugle Corps. Corps blasts their way in, parading through the crowd, followed by colorful Chinese New Year lion dancers.

  “Get this.” RG leans over. “I was a lion dancer.”

  “One stoned lion dancer.”

  “You know it.” RG takes his half of the lion into the hippie revelry. Gets lost and found. Discards the giant headdress with that big furry do and those gigantic flapping teeth and goes home with a girl from the Haight. She’s one of those red diaper babies, hanging out with the Russian émigrés.

  Panther nods. “I bet you took that red diaper off.”

  “Rolled around in the good stuff for days.”

  “We surrounded by red diapers and Russians. If only this Moscow were a bigger Haight.”

  RG looks out the hotel window into the dark Moscow night, contemplates those immaculate streets below. These Russians don’t know what they’re missing. “That’s how I got my education.” It was a total deal: social, sexual, and political. Sex and Marx. Acid and Lenin. Ganja and Guns.

  “College of the Haight. But that don’t get you no deferment.”

  “Nope. Signed up with the guerillas.”


  “You jiving.”

  “For real: guerilla theater. Figured I had acting genes.”

  Panther minister kicks off his shoes. It’s gonna be a long story.

  “So I trained for the theater. Took it to the streets. I trained to be crazy.”

  “You already crazy.”

  Guerilla theater frolics down the Haight for festivities on the Panhandle. Does the prankster thing twenty-four hours a day with music, drums, and dancing in the street. It’s political theater at Union Square, from the Embarcadero down Market Street. It’s theater warfare in front of the Federal Building, in the city council meetings, making fools of the politicians on TV. It’s happening at the Fisherman’s Wharf, carrying on on the cable cars, making points with the tourists. If you come to the tripping city, you got to get your money’s worth. A visit with no run-ins with live, love-in be-in antiwar hippies can’t be a true visit. It’s all about spreading the flower power, ending the war, and getting high.

  One day, RG gets off the bus around Masonic and sees this guy who is genuinely crazy. He follows the cat to make a study. Mimes the cat’s moves. Repetitive jerking and twisting. Then sits down on a bench for some chitchat, just to get a sense of the speech patterns.

  He asks, “What’s your secret, man? What keeps you going this way?” Turns out it’s meth. Keeps you awake forever until you die with your eyes open.

  RG puts an order in, kicks off the habit of sleep for a week. Plays Janis over and over like a mantra till her voice permeates his skin and he’s picking at it. One minute he’s sweet as honey; next he’s a monster. Eyes get dilated out to the rims. Practices his mimes and jerky moves to match the crazy cat. Makes his way into the nearest military recruitment office. Time to test out this guerilla’s answer to meth-od acting. Gonna scare the shit outta those military fuckers. You want My Lai? You want a gook infiltrator? I’m hip! Here I come! I’M YOUR MAN! I’M YOUR SOLDIER! I’M YOUR G.I. JOE! I’M YOUR GREEN BERET! I’M YOUR KILLER!

  The Black Panther Party hereby offers to the National Liberation Front and Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam an undetermined number of troops to assist you in your fight against American imperialism.

  —Huey P. Newton

  August 29, 1970

  2: I Am a Brother

  If you see me walking down the street

  And I start to cry each time we meet

  Walk on by, walk on by

  —Dionne Warwick

  “What am I doing in the heart of the Soviet with a mad-assed Chinaman like you?”

  Good question. RG could be the firecracker that kicks off the war, unhinges the split. Causes an international malfunction. But shit, don’t let it happen until they’re on the right side of the line. Didn’t they agree to go with Albania?

  Panther fiddles with the stickers on a pack of Russian cigarettes. Manages to coax one up for himself, then offers up another to RG.

  What does RG know about Russian revisionism? “I don’t know what’s Albania. Where the hell is it? That shit confuses me. We got our own problems to take care of in the belly of the beast: Chinatown, Amerika.”

  But isn’t that the point? It’s the spark thing. RG produces the match, but Panther wants to be the spark. What was he doing two days after MLK was shot? He was trying to trigger the revolution. Now he’s wandering the international scene in exile, aiming for the spark long distance. When he gets to Vietnam, he’ll arrange to free American POWS in exchange for Panther POWS: Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.

  He rubs his pharaoh’s chin. “Supposed to be Akagi here.”

  Now Akagi, he knows his political shit, the correct line through Albania and so forth, but he’s caught up with the bullshit trying to free Huey. Taking care of business. How long Akagi been corresponding with Robert F. Williams? First from Cuba, then from Peking. It was Akagi said it was too bad the ministers were going to miss Brother Robert, who’s gone from China by the time they arrive.

  Panther points at RG. “Akagi recommended you. Said Asians got to go to China. If we don’t bring you, we got no credibility.”

  “How come you let that Japanese Akagi into the Black Panthers? You didn’t let us in.”

  Now that’s a story.

  This story’s got to be told with Dionne’s mellifluous voice wafting through those uneven teeth and walking on by. Get you in the mood for growing up in West Oakland. How many kids like little Mo Akagi walk with their folks out past the barbed wire of American concentration camps like the one at Tule Lake in 1945? Walk into the can at age five and get paroled at age nine. Find themselves on the other side, but it’s still the desert. Got to trek on back to the cities to find out if there’s still a house, still a business, still some possibility for a future in the American landscape. West Oakland’s still the same ghetto. Before the war Akagi family had a noodle shop, but that’s all gone. Old man died a broken heart in Topaz when his son went No-No and left for Tule. Future dried up in the desert. Mo’s the grandson, but what does he know of that? Raised in his early years in dusty wooden barracks, shitting on communal pots and running free between guard towers. What’s West Oakland but another concentration camp? Covenants don’t let you out. Difference is that Mo leaves his house on Twenty-sixth and Poplar, he’s got to fight his way back and forth to school. Gets in a fight with this punk kid.

  What kinda name is Mo?

  How’s he gonna explain? If he’s at the Buddhist Japanese school, he’s Momotaro. If he’s going for jujitsu, maybe it’s Mo-kun or Mochi. If he’s at the West Tenth Methodist for Sunday school, he’s Moses.

  Punk kid and Mo work their baby fists into battering machines. Go at it like fools. Turns out punk kid’s name is Huey Percival. Huey P. Newton. Like Alfred E. Neuman. Shit. Who you boxing for the worst name on the block? This here’s Mo Bettah. Both live on the wrong side of the tracks. Got to stick together. In time, got to run with gangsters, get their reversible silk jackets, and fight over the ladies. Line up with bats and knives and go at it. Goddamn bloody mess. Turn eighteen and it’s time to use those fighting skills against a real enemy: Communism. Hey Mo, the buddies come around to send him off to the army. Kill a Commie for me, will ya? Akagi was going to set the family story straight; real heroes were the 442nd, not the No-No kind like his dad. Got to do right by the nation. But Korean War is over, and Vietnam hasn’t started. Training for the war that was and could be. Who’da thought it was going to be back in his own backyard? West Oakland.

  “So they go back. So what?” RG shakes off Dionne’s reverie and acts miffed.

  But back up, brother. There’s more. So Akagi gets out of the army and takes his G.I. points to college. It’s 1964. Free Speech at Berkeley. Starts reading. Everybody’s reading Marx. What’s this communism he’s been fighting to protect the homeland? Meets up with another old buddy from the days who’s back from the same stint in the military. He’s making use of the G.I. bill too. It’s Bobby Seale. Then there’s David Hilliard. Lived two blocks down. Huey was around Thirty-fourth.

  “No shit.” Puffs a donut into the air.

  One day, they all check into the Muslim Temple around Third Street and get ready to join up with Elijah Muhammad. But wait, you got to give up smoking, drinking, and women. Can you live on sweet potato pies? Someone says: I could give up women, but not smoking! Brothers reconnoiter. News is, Malcolm’s moving out anyway. Do the Muslim thing minus the religion plus the politics.

  Akagi’s at UC Berkeley, so he’s the minister of education. Builds a curriculum. They all got to study up. It’s Marx, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Robert F. Williams. But what’s this Cultural Revolution People of China thing? If there’s a black thing, what about a yellow thing? That’s a lotta colored people marching to the revolution. Akagi checks out China Books in San Francisco for some research.

  He’s remembering the army with these little easy-to-read books with everything you need to know: your rank, your duties, the Geneva Convention. Keep that baby in your breast pocket. C
ould be it’ll even stop a bullet to your American heart. This little red book: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung looks just like it. Buys out China Books. Then goes looking for a wholesale distributor. Finds out Canada has diplomatic relations with the PRC. Sends a Canadian friend to the Vancouver dock to pick up the shipments and smuggles them into Berkeley.

  You know the rest. Sell those thirty-cent red puppies for a dollar each to the boujwah Berkeley students at Sather Gate. Get your Little Red Book! Pretty soon the whole campus walking on by with their pocket-sized Maos.

  And the brothers? Making their money to finance the Party. First off, it’s a business proposition, but hey, check this out! Page 88: The People’s War. Page 99: The People’s Army. Page 170: Serving the People.

  Armed with Mao’s Thought, Chinese People are Invincible—Down with Soviet Revisionist Social-Imperialism!

  —Eldridge Cleaver

  The Black Panther

  March 23, 1969

  3: I Am a Warrior

  There’s not a man today

  Who could take me away from my guy

  (whatchu say?)

  —Mary Wells

  To make a long story short, that’s why Brother Akagi’s bonafide.

  “How come nobody knows that story?”

  “We keep our network confidential.”

  “That’s not it. It’s because the yellow brother’s invisible.”

  Panther shrugs. Could be good. Kung fu invisible. Could be bad. Fuk fu invisible. “Days I wish I was invisible.”

  Goes into his suitcase, pulls out his tape recorder. Pries open the battery door and pulls out an alternative battery. He’s been saving this, but now’s the time for some relaxation. This shit’s cultivated by farmers with turbans on rocky mountainsides and transported along a Mediterranean trade route, the old spice road, know what I mean? Exile in Algiers has to come with appropriate medication.

  Panther continues the storytelling. “If I recall, you never read Mao before the Panthers turned you on.”

  RG grins. “We were just street gangsters. Yellow kids with no math genes.”