Quid pro quo, and here we go

To Mr. Mario Q. Taisacan:

It is Mister Taisacan, is it not, Mario, or did the Tribune inadvertently misprint the name “Maria?” If I address you improperly, please forgive me. I assume you are a man, not a woman who hides behind a mask of garbled grammar and disjointed gibberish. In any case, let’s discuss who, whom or what is really confused about facts. It is you, Mario. Your writing reveals a man risibly deluded by misapprehension, possibly caused, I speculate, by overindulgence in the alkaloids of the Areca nut or by an apparent under-indulgence in scholarship, or both. So please allow me to unveil myself, disambiguate my identity and disabuse you of some stuporous solecisms.

You ask that I “come back to the CNMI and explain” how I obtained my “nationality,” and so I will, even though I haven’t actually gone anywhere.

a.) I am K.F.H. OHarnett, an occasionally choleric, but generally lucid, vintage Anglo-Saxon American citizen male. And even if growing a bit long in the tooth these days, I have all 32 of my natural teeth. I played some collegiate football (back in the day) and, so am accustomed to hitting hard when necessary. And you might call me, “Sir,” if you feel a wave of civility sweep over you. It’s a good masculine appellation. But whatever the case, I would be a Madame only in your sordid fantasies, I’m afraid. Any questions?

b.) Furthermore, no alien resident am I. I am a native-born U.S. citizen (Chicago, IL) whose maternal family dates its presence in North America to Revolutionary times. My maternal progenitors were English colonists in America. They were of the family Prindle. You do understand “familia,” don’t you? At any rate, they were on hand at the beginning when the concept of U.S. citizenship originated. Therefore I come from an unbroken line of original U.S. citizens. And you?

c.) On my paternal side I come from early 19th century Americans with Germanic roots. I am the only son of Lt. Kenneth Frank Hodson, United States Army Air Corps (SN: 0735869), who was killed in action the night of Nov. 29, 1944, while flying the B-29 aircraft, Z [Square] 44, from Isley Field, Saipan with the 883rd Bomb Squadron, 500th Bomb Group, 73rd Bomb Wing, United States Army Air Corps on a bombing mission to Tokyo. He died in the waters near these shores when his plane either exploded or crashed at sea. My initials, K.F.H., are from my father’s name. I am Kenneth Frank Hodson Jr. but was later adopted and raised by a stepfather, OHarnett. Capiche?

d.) My paternal grandfather, General Fremont Byron Hodson, United States Army, was a protégé of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander of the WWII Pacific Theater. At the end of the war, after the defeat of the Japanese Empire, my grandfather was nominated by Gen. MacArthur and served with U.S. Congressional approval as post-war Governor of Japan, 1945 – 1946. Google it if you’re incredulous. Good enough?

Now let me summarize it for you this way, Mario. My father died flying from Saipan, while participating in the liberation of the Marianas. He and his cohorts freed the people of the Marianas from the despotic Imperial Japanese Empire. Americans, my people as it was then, initiated a chain of events in the Marianas that later allowed you, Greg Cruz and many others to have the historically recent privilege to be U.S. citizens with me. Your lecture about my station on this island betrays your ignorance of history, not mine, as well as your ingratitude to the import of that history, along with an unsophisticated audacity and a cringing xenophobia.

An understanding of local current events would also inform you that the old 48-star coffin flag that was returned to my father’s widow, my mother, Margaret Grant Hodson, after his sacrifice in liberating your putative “homeland,” was raised again recently on this island above an assemblage of students and dignitaries at the Marianas High School Gym. That flag flew over the change of command of the ethnically and nationally diverse, citizen and non-citizen, Marianas High School JROTC battalion.

In a metaphoric, if not a literal, sense, my ancestral blood is in the sands of this island as surely as yours is. So I will ignore your request that I leave these islands that are as much my home as they are yours, my fellow American citizen. I will be going nowhere unless I make the decision for myself, and when I do, it will be on my terms exclusively. And when I return, I won’t ask your permission.

So, who, then, Mario, is more the alien? And who is the less? Is it you, or is it me? Is there a distinction, or are we coequals? Is our national identity legally superior to or subordinate to the parochial island identity? Is ethnicity a higher determiner of status than citizenship? Would ethnic cleansing in the Marianas appease your apprehensions? Who should vacate first? Would you, as a latter day American citizen, be willing to assume the distinction of being an alien in the American nation?

Now what do you say, Mario, that you do your part to make the Marianas a place of inclusiveness, equanimity, dignity, acceptance and reason? Couldn’t we use a few more citizens here who could be your neighbors just as I am? Huh, what do you say? The only thing you’ve got to lose by being inhumane and selfish is your mortal soul, or so some of your other convictions would suggest. In the absence of that, you might want to consider going back to the land of your ethnic origin, be it another island, association, federation, republic, monarchy, nation or other. Tickets are only going to get more expensive. If you’re really as uncomfortable as you seem to be about my being here, you might want to do something unusual. You might want to give it some “thought.” The people who consider themselves good Americans in the Marianas will hold the fort while you’re away. It’s a promise.