Author James Michener told the Associated Press today that he will not return to Hawaii "during the working period of my life."
Michener, 54, who once had talked of settling here and going into politics here, was reached in Seville, Spain, on behalf of the Star-Bulletin and asked about a New York Post interview in which he voiced disillusionment with the state he wrote about in his best-selling book, "Hawaii."
Michener blamed his disillusionment on racial restrictions "in the upper levels of society."
He said there is restriction against Orientals in housing and otherwise.
He said he and his wife, Mari, a Mainland-born Nisei, wanted to buy a home in Hawaii a year and a half ago, but found it was in a racially restricted area.
"That does not mean I don’t have many friends there and I may go back there to retire," Michener said. "But I don’t feel I would be true to myself if I were to go back there during the working period of my life after all I have written."
He said his wife is on her way to join him and he plans to stay four or five weeks more in Spain.
The New York newspaper interview stirred criticism of Michener in Hawaii, whose pattern of trouble-free racial mixing the author previously has praised.
A number of the 54-year-old author’s Island friends have backed up Michener’s claim that Mrs. Michener suffered in upper-echelon society here, but most feel his renunciation of Hawaii was not justified.
In the Post story, Michener said he and his wife had met with less discrimination in Doyles-town, Pennsylvania, than in Hawaii. That is why they now call Doylestown home, he said.
"There’s a lot of guff I just won’t put up with any more," the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist said in the Post interview. "My wife is very softspoken and very quiet. But if she hears any guff, she lowers the boom." …
Some of the Micheners’ friends interviewed indicated snubs by society elements began to be directed at the couple after appearance of the novel "Hawaii," in which Michener depicted growth of the economic ruling class in the Islands from missionary beginnings.
The book now is being made into a movie, rights for which brought Michener $600,000.
