Letters to Memory

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  Takahashi and Takeuchi escaped to Japan, soon to be surrounded by the terror of war, but Obana, educated in the United States and having spent twenty years of his life here, was imprisoned in “an alien detention camp,” perhaps eventually Topaz. Years later, we read FBI files that reveal that Kay’s older brother Sus had been under surveillance for his job with Mitsubishi. One report describes Sus, the subject, as very intelligent . . . the dapper, smooth type. It was Sus’s responsibility to close the offices after his Japanese manager, Takeuchi, returned to Japan. A letter addressed to Special Agent T. C. Gleysteen, dated April 11, 1942, reveals that Sus’s friend and coworker made a detailed report of their conversation. Visiting Sus at home, his coworker writes, that Sus was in his garden, relaxing, he told me. He was glad to see me, and we sat in his living room along with his wife and his baby daughter. And the conversation among us went along as follows: [. . .]

  I: “Isn’t this war disgusting? And what do you think we can do in the future? Do you think we can make a go of ourselves in the United States . . . where citizenship means nothing for us?”

  He: “Futility of war was pictured to us by the last war [. . .] What I am worried about is our second generation or ‘nisei’ future. I can see nothing but dark clouds. Although I feel that the United States may give us our status back, I feel that it may be best for us to go back to Japan or China and start all over again there.”

  I: “No matter what happens I am going to have faith in my government, and I am going to stay here. Where else can you find a land where people of all nationalities, races and creeds live together in apparent harmony? Of course, there are prejudices and injustices against minority, but what can anybody expect for a comparatively short time that our country was existing. Naturally, I hold a great deal of concern about our future welfare, but I think, our faith in our government will be rewarded.”

  He: “You had that conviction ever since I can remember.”

  [. . .]

  I: “Will you work under the similar conditions existed at the time of our last employment? Subordinate to those from Japan, taking orders from them and at a salary way below theirs?”

  He: “I may have to. But I believe the company will make some kind of adjustment. What about you?”

  I: “I certainly will not unless we are given better treatment and more authority. [. . .] You know that I offered to quit many times, and it is only the trust in your words that you will get the management to improve our situation that I plugged on.”

  He: “I know that, and sometimes I regret that I put you into such a misery.”

  I: “Please don’t misunderstand me. [. . .] Although I did not enjoy working under the head accountant, I am grateful for the many friendships that I made [. . .]”

  He: “I am glad that you did.”

  Sus’s coworker closes his letter report with these words: I felt that I have failed in my mission. I was unable to get any information out of him. But, when I reflect upon my past relationship and association with him, I noted that he had a peculiar knack, shall I say, of making others speak without letting himself be known. When I went to ask him to see whether this and that could be done, I would always come back emptying my thoughts to him without getting anything tangible from him.

  The three white Americans in the Ryder et al. case were convicted and imprisoned, it seems, for much of the war years. These men maintained their innocence; they were writing, they said, to advocate peace.

  A page in the court papers reads:

  Defendant Ryder’s Instruction No. 6

  You are instructed as a matter of law that Defendant Ryder had a constitutional right to oppose the entry of the United States in to the war with Japan and to publish writing in an effort to keep the United States out of participating in said war. Hence, even though the evidence shows that Defendant Ryder received money, still if he did nothing more than express his own sincere beliefs, you must find Defendant Ryder not guilty.

  Denied, T.A.G.

  The law is specific. It is not about constitutional rights or belief. It is only about registration to write propaganda, even if you believe your own propaganda. The law was created to catch the bad guys, not to quibble with what kind of bad. These instructions were denied; Ryder could not be judged innocent. In my own reading of Far Eastern Affairs, Ryder’s punditry favored Japan’s imperial incursions into China to stop the tide of what he called Stalinist Bolshevism. Ryder was a zealous anticommunist, and the policies he proposed in 1938 would come to pass anyway as the war came to a close. But Ryder could not be judged as peaceful.

  Homer, your travels and research trace the deep history of families into tribes and tribes into nations. Some folks reach across a fence or an ocean and discover they are holding hands with the enemy. Some discover that they are on the wrong side of the fence and are the enemy themselves. Flags force everyone to flex their loyalty, but some refuse, and they are the enemy too. In this tale of the alleged traitor, all possible enemies pose a threat and must be safely imprisoned: propagandists, collaborators, apologists, aliens, non-alien citizens, renunciants, draft resisters, conscientious objectors, pacifists, expatriates, repatriates, extraordinary renditions. At the war’s end, released to freedom, forgiveness is a radical idea, an impossibility that requires imagination.

  I have asked myself why the family saved these letters. You might say that they were historians, that they knew the value of their stories, this proof of their thoughts and actions in unjust and difficult times. History is proffered to the future. This is what we did. Do not forget us. Please forgive us.

  One question can occupy a lifetime. What is poverty, Homer? However defined, you point out, it depends on notions of the social, moral judgment, and responsibility. What rights do people have to labor and to the fruits of the earth? If poverty is undesirable, what is our duty?

  Meticulously, you research ancient records for historical, ethnographic, archaeological, literary evidence to describe what people ate, wore, cultivated, and under what sun and over what terrain, and with what traditions. You want to find the point in history when poverty becomes both a religious and political issue. Poverty may be interpreted as God’s wrath and the state’s injustice—but, you argue, it still affects real lives of real people. Poverty came to be understood as a lack of justice, and the idea of charity, that we have a duty to help the poor, has a beginning, though an uncertain beginning. Charity, we learn, was not always assumed. It was, along with forgiveness, a radical and shocking idea.

  Kay and Tomi were expected to return to Tanforan on June 2. That day, the family hung around the grandstand, its grandeur overlooking ghostly thoroughbreds among now-aimless inmates, anticipating a kind of homecoming at the finish line. Sister and mother would not arrive for another four days.

  Kay sent a letter to explain. While that is lost, it seems Kay hoped to find work to remain outside. You can surmise the letter’s contents from correspondence and diary notes, showing a network of relationships with religious and educational leaders who individually and collectively protested the internment and advocated on behalf of Japanese Americans. Kay and the family’s connections to these folks may have developed through my father’s role as youth pastor at the Oakland West Tenth Methodist Church as well as their friendships at Cal. Friendships, references, and social occasions associated with the Y and Quakers pepper her correspondence: Rev. and Mrs. Robert Giles of the Plymouth Congressional Church, Mr. & Mrs. Harry Kingman of the YMCA, Gertie Laudauer, Frida & Irwin, Leila & Lillie Margaret, Miss Hoyt & Mrs. Hunter, Syl & Goth, Joe & Betty. And Quakers Josephine and Frank Duveneck hosted, if not mothered, Kay at their spacious Los Altos ranch home, Hidden Villa. In one letter to the family at Tanforan, she wrote, Please give Mrs. Duveneck my sun glasses, my large blue hat, my riding habit and shoes,—she will be coming to see you folks every Wednesday morning. I have the embarrassing sense that Kay, the last Japanese American wandering around San Francisco, became the darling of progressive Christians.

>   And in this interim, given a thirty-five dollar scholarship to participate in a ten-day conference at Mill College’s Institute of International Relations, Kay was the lone Oriental, representing Japanese Americans and, with Howard Thurman, the only other person of color. She wrote, I’m positive because I’ve been here, the majority of the people are waking up to the fact that this undemocratic, un-American, unjust internment of citizens without cause or too solid a reason is proving to be a real stick in their ribs, and they can’t talk DEMOCRACY or a JUST PEACE without this Concentration Camp, aping the Germans, which sticks out like a sore thumb, hitting them in the face. This angry outburst was followed by Kay’s expression of her enchantment at being in the center of important discussions with the educated, dedicated, and influential. She even provided a list with short bios: Irwin Abrams, Arthur Casaday, Leila Anderson, Norman Coleman, Caleb Foote, Joe Conard, Maynard Krueger, Karl Polyani, Hans Simons, Howard Thurman. Yes, they must have all agreed, Kay had important work to do.

  Back at Tanforan, the family would have none of it. They called a meeting in Barrack 20 and delegated sister Chizu to write the family opinion.

  If you want to make this your life purpose and willing to sacrifice all for a noble cause that is one thing—but no-one knows how long this war is to last—and it may be that during this time things may happen to us and you would be helpless to be with us. If you have the conviction—that you are willing to sacrifice family ties for the duration and take whatever consequences with the spirit of one devoted entirely to a single mission—we say, more power to you, my dear.

  But then, in the large body of her letter, Chiz warned that, despite the good will of influential friends, no concrete job offers had been made; that working for the Feds as clerk-typist would not necessarily ameliorate their situation in camp; that life in a city alone would be difficult; that John, Iyo, and Tom were also single and penniless and required the help of the family; that Kay could become ill without support from the family; and most emphatically, that Kay could not in five days of living at Tanforan know the true inward feeling of hearts and minds—of people who have torn themselves from all normal living—sacrificing their life work, their homes, and their rights to live as other free people . . . Chiz was a nurse, highly competent and professional; her skills were now employed to manage and train a hospital staff in the most rudimentary conditions. She was incensed at little sister Kay’s audacious innocence. What Chiz did not write she encoded in her elegant script—Kay’s naiveté.

  For an entire month, Kay bucked the family opinion for idealism and almost returned to Washington, D.C. She wrote back tearfully and earnestly:

  The family and each of you mean more to me than anything in the world—and it really isn’t said tritely either—and that’s why it hurts me so deeply when I see you folks . . . I find myself constantly saying I’ve got to do something . . . And so I’ve decided to go—“this above all, be true to thyself” . . .

  Meanwhile, here is a story about Tomi. When Kay and Tomi returned to San Francisco from their adventures, Kay checked into a room at the Oakland YWCA. Kay had become a pro at cross-country traveling, and if she could delay returning to Tanforan, why not? Since she was on the outside, she should meet a Professor Wagner at Mills College who provided books to be sent to the camps. And there were plans afoot for Kay’s future. One thing would lead to the next. Through Wagner, who was Quaker, Kay visited the Baker Street Friends Center in San Francisco and met the embrace of Josephine Duveneck. And then there was Joe Conard, soon to be installed in Japantown on Sutter Street, working out the tedious bureaucracy of Student Relocation, that is, the project to relocate and situate Japanese American students in colleges and universities outside of the West Coast.

  As she left the YWCA hotel, Kay might have advised Tomi: Mama, stay here. I will be right back, okay? Perhaps Kay became delayed or so involved in her meeting that she forgot about her mother. In any case, hungry, Tomi left her room and wandered out in search of food. Someone reported seeing a Japanese woman freely walking the streets. Aren’t those people all supposed to be locked up? Of course I know the difference between a Japanese and a Chinese. We Filipinos know. When Kay returned: no Tomi. Following Tomi’s trail, she found her mother sitting in the police station. What might Tomi have protested to the police? My English is very broken. Long time I live here in Oakland. Just wait. My daughter has a paper. Tomi was no pushover; she had had enough of traveling and chaperoning. She had seen Bourbon Street, the Lincoln Memorial, the Japanese collection at the Boston Fine Art Museum, the Statue of Liberty, and the Grand Canyon. She must have had some choice Japanese words for Kay, making it clear that she would return to Tanforan. Tanforan might be horse stalls, but there were no bars. Well, it’s a good story, but I want proof that it happened. I want to see the mug shots. On June 6, Tomi rejoined the family in Barrack 20.

  Chiz had prefaced her letter to Kay: We appreciate the many important contacts of key people you’ve made who are interested in what is happening and what is being actually done in these assembly centers—Tanforan in particular. We also realize the weight of their influence and position and their encouragement to you . . . Whatever the family privately said about those key people under whose influence Kay moved, John might have urged Chiz to tread lightly because people of conscience were called upon in dark times to risk their lives and reputations. It was not an easy matter in a time of war hysteria and intense racial hatred to mobilize brotherhood and charity. Their Japanese American lives were tied to those who would give aid, who would come weekly to the grandstand to offer packages of food and clothing, cleaning supplies, crayons and books, pianos, butter, medical supplies, knitting wool. Tied to outsiders who would not forget.

  Your story, Homer, arises from a small Catholic farming village in Northern Brittany, brought up in a Celtic language distant from Paris. A cultural cocoon of assumed practices, traditions, spiritual lives, woven into the daily and the seasonal, proprieties and conventions in which you participate without question. One day, you leave and you realize that it was theater. Everything you have known shifts. It’s a terrible freedom. Everywhere you roam, you can see it. All the world is a stage. For you, the problem is to separate the fiction from the fact of living, to excavate the origins of our attachments to meaning, the material forensics of human systems, the fork in the road where we could have taken another path. This is the work of history.

  But even if you trace the origins of forgiveness and charity to the self-centered and expanding exchange of goods, what about Chiz’s admonishment to Kay that she might sacrifice family ties for a noble cause? What about the Quakers at the gate? If no one met, insiders with outsiders, at the grandstand, Kay learned to believe, forgiveness would be an impossibility. At the moment she embarked on her journey to Washington, D.C., meeting those along the railway who would give her shelter and a sympathetic ear to her story, her education began. And for a little over a month, Kay wandered outside the gates with a small crew of folks—among them gadflies, independent thinkers, honest or simply well meaning, all who probably unknowingly reached back into deep time for the significance of charity.

  A month later, Kiyo’s diary recorded: July 13: Cloudy . . . Kay came back today. She is going to stay with us permanently now.

  Shortly before her return, Frank Duveneck accompanied Kay to the Whitcomb Hotel, the San Francisco headquarters for the Western Defense Command. He waited patiently for six hours as Kay was interrogated, only to discover that she and Tomi, from the very moment they embarked on their life of O’Reilly to their reentry into Tanforan, had been tailed. The southern colonel who encouraged and created the travel plans that routed them to see his home state of Texas, Bourbon Street, Jim Crow, and southern hospitality, had perhaps another purpose. The letters show Kay to have been oblivious to this purpose, though back at Tanforan, she intimated, the inmates gossiped that she must have been out there for a reason, possibly as a stooge for the Feds.

  Many years ago,
you gathered boxwood from the garden, walked with your family to church for Palm Sunday blessings. On the path, you placed sprigs of boxwood in the mossy embankments and at home in the shed with the cows and horses. This is the memory of your childhood village that later becomes transparent as theater. Still it is a magic world. And Kay, having returned to Tanforan after three weeks, writes to the outsiders, describing the real miniature gardens with wishing wells, ponds (made by lining them with tar paper or the clay that is found here) with goldfish shaped from carrots, rock gardens, flower beds, vegetable gardens and window boxes . . . temporary as these places are, it is amazing how homey . . . I realize that for my family the automatic and habitual of their prewar childhoods had been entirely overturned. A terrible way to be freed to new knowledge and to change. But this is fiction.