Which was fitting, because Hully's father was Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was also the father of Tarzan, "the best-known literary character of the twentieth century," according to a recent issue of The Saturday Evening Post. That same magazine had dubbed the unpretentious novelist who created the famed apeman "the world's greatest living writer" … an irony Hully's pop bitterly savored, since the Post had rejected every story he had ever sent them, including one after the publication of that laudatory article.

It was a few minutes past noon, and Hully and his father were once again at the dock, seeing off friends who were boarding the fabled Great White Ship of the Matson Line, the S. S. Lurline. Normally, his pop-who disliked crowds-would have disdained Honolulu's famed Boat Day, with its mobbed pier, its barrage of streamers, its confetti snowstorm.

Pop even rejected the delightfully swaying hips of hula girls, and Hully could well understand why his dad loathed the din of the strumming ukuleles of beach-boys serenading women they'd seduced combined with the blare of the Royal Hawaiian Band.

Some of these brown-as-a-berry local boys were diving for coins from the top decks.

"Buster Crabbe used to do that," Hully reminded his father teasingly. Beachboy Buster had been an Olympic star before going to Hollywood.

"Maybe he made a good beachboy," O. B. said. "But he was still a lousy Tarzan."

Due to fear of war with Japan, the dock was more heavily guarded than ever before. The authorities-and the haole citizenry-were well aware that 40 percent of Hawaii's population was Japanese; so the nationalized Hawaii Territorial Guard had been called out. Of course, the Guard was primarily made up of Japanese. …