Author comes full
circle in ‘Ring of Fire’
Houston weaves an eloquent tale tracing seismic and family lines to Hawaii
By Greg Ambrose
Star-BulletinAs a boy, James Houston would stand on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, gaze toward the West across the Pacific and wonder about the people and places touched by that vast body of water. His father had heard that same silent call to the West as a young man in East Texas, until finally the Navy brought him to Pearl Harbor aboard a submarine in the 1920s. The elder Houston fell so deeply under the exotic spell of the islands that after a brief return to Texas, he followed the lure of Hawaii.
To his disappointment, he never made it closer than San Francisco.
His son finally completed the journey for him. And after James Houston wooed and won a woman of Japanese ancestry, he got to find out all about those people and places that had filled his young imagination.
Jeanne Wakatsuki's grandparents left Japan in the 1890s on a labor contract to Makaweli, Kauai, where her mother was born. The family moved on to California, where Jeanne was born, then were forced into the internment camp at Manzanar during World War II.
Houston spent years retracing their steps in reverse, and completed the circle. The result is the new book, "In The Ring of Fire."
Vaguely known as the Pacific Rim, Houston brings into meaningful focus this shaking, quaking, fiery wheel that touches so many lives and cultures. He traces seismic lines, blood lines, melody lines, cultural lines, battle lines and family lines to Hawaii, the hub of the rim where all the lines seem to intersect.
The book is an eloquent argument for the dismantling of all borders -- racial, cultural, political, mystical and spiritual -- which would then allow us to easily cross and recross the threshold where the spiritual and material worlds touch.
"Within this large realm we call the Pacific Basin, I feel that there are a lot of things that bring us together and link us as years go by," Houston said in an interview. "I think the task is to honor the differences, but recognize those things we all share as human beings."
Throughout the book, Houston makes a poetic plea for people to reconnect with the aina and the moana, to open their heart and establish a respectful dialogue with the spirit of the natural world around them.
"Hawaiians in many ways have been disenfranchised to the extent that they don't own much property, but they are still in touch with their habitat," Houston said. "That is a really ancient dialogue between the island people and their habitat that is alive in the atmosphere."
With a keen eye for detail, and ever sensitive to the people and cultures he visits, Houston becomes a mystical navigator of the heart, reintroducing readers to precious places and deep emotions that, incredibly, many either have forgotten or never knew.
Houston extracts unique perspectives from unfamiliar cultures in Hawaii, Bali, Japan, Okinawa and Micronesia and brings back a clearer vision of his native California by using a Zen technique called "beginner's mind."
"In the mind of the beginner, there are infinite possibilities. In the mind of the expert, there are few.
"I want to be in the beginner's mind, especially when I'm going to be immersed in another culture."
That was Houston's frame of mind when he first visited Hawaii in 1956, fresh out of college, eager to hit the beaches and soak up the surf and sun. But a strange thing happened. He was quickly drawn inland, toward the old heiaus and other sacred sites.
Bishop Museum was just starting to renovate Pu'uhonua o Honaunau on the Big Island, and Houston volunteered to work with anthropologists, clearing sites and going into old burial caves to map the interiors.
He was fascinated by Hawaiian culture, and plugged into a power source he didn't fully comprehend.
"I was extraordinarily lucky to meet the people I met."
He was befriended by Iolani Luahine, one of the premier hula dancers in the islands, director of Iolani Palace in Honolulu, and curator of Hulihee Palace in Kailua-Kona.
"I was captivated by her magnetism and personal power," Houston said. "She was the first woman of deep power I had ever met. I didn't understand then where the power was coming from." Houston said through many of Hawaii's people, he became "intrigued with Hawaiian cultural history on a personal basis."
This fascination has lead to a wealth of writing projects about Hawaii, including an essay for the Bishop Museum Press book "Discovery: The Hawaiian Odyssey," a collaboration with University of Hawaii professor Ben Finney titled "Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport," and the scripts for award-winning cultural documentaries in the "Hawaiian Legacy" series of films, produced and directed by Eddie and Myrna Kamae.
These days Houston casts his gaze across the Pacific from his home in Santa Cruz, Calif., and uses any excuse to make a soul-refreshing visit to Hawaii.
Earlier this year, the University of Oklahoma Press will release Houston's novel "The Last Paradise," a cross-cultural romance and environmental drama set on the Big Island, with a backdrop of a geothermal drilling project.
The conflict is whether to regard the earth as an ancestor to be honored and respected, or as a commodity to be packaged and sold. "The two sides can't escape each other in Hawaii," Houston said.
"Something has stayed alive in Hawaii because even though they have lost a lot, the Hawaiians haven't lost the ancestral connection with the mountains and valleys and ocean.
"A beautiful place is always in danger of being turned into a commodity. Aloha in danger because some people think it can be packaged and turned into a commodity that can be sold as a tourist attraction," Houston said.
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What: "In the Ring of Fire: A Pacific Basin Journey"
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