by George Takei
* * *
One afternoon after our naps, Henry and I were playing in back of the mess hall kitchen. From behind a pile of empty vegetable crates came a shaggy, black dog with brown paws and brown streaks on his side like peanut butter smears. Over his sad-looking eyes were two dabs of peanut butter eyebrows. We petted his head, and he whined piteously. “He must be hungry,” I said. “Let’s get him something,” Henry suggested. We went in the kitchen back door and asked Mr. Kikutani, one of the mess hall workers, for something to feed the dog. He gave us a half wienie from the wieners teriyaki that were being prepared for dinner. The dog gobbled it up ravenously.
We went back in for another, but this time Mr. Kikutani wouldn’t give us any more. “Hey, I gotta feed people here, you know. Not stray dogs, you know,” he said. But while I was pleading with Mr. Kikutani, Henry reached up behind him and took another half wienie and slipped out quietly. I thanked Mr. Kikutani anyway and left the kitchen.
When I got outside, the dog was already eagerly throwing the small morsel of wienie into the back of his throat. He licked his chops and looked up at me with a big doggy smile and wagging tail. He was too cute to leave hungry. Maybe Mama might have something for this dog to eat. We ran home yelling, “Mama, Mama.” The dog bounded happily behind us with reinvigorated, wienie-fed energy. I opened the door, holding it clear for the dog, and Henry ran in yelling, “Mama, Mama,” with the dog leaping after him.
Then I heard Mama shriek as I’d never heard before. It sounded as if somebody were trying to kill her. Looking inside, I saw the dog skidding and sliding in panicked helplessness. He scrambled vainly to regain his balance on the slippery linoleum floor. His paw nails tapped uselessly on the highly polished surface as he struggled desperately to the edge of the linoleum. With terror flashing in his eyes, the panic-stricken dog finally fled back out the door, and Mama’s screaming stopped. I stepped in to find an equally terrorized Mama suffocating poor Henry in a tight embrace against her breast. “Not hurt?” she asked, her voice quavering with fear. She quickly moved to the door to secure it. “Oh, abunai dog.” She let go of Henry, who was coughing and gasping for air.
“Mama, that’s a hungry dog,” I informed her.
“I know. Chasing Henry, that dog. Oh, abunai.”
“No Mama, that’s a nice dog that’s hungry,” I insisted.
“Yeah, Mama, it’s a nice dog,” gasped Henry, trying to regain his breath. We explained to her about the poor hungry dog we found behind the mess hall kitchen. “Mama, do we have anything to feed it?” we asked.
Reassured and a bit embarrassed, Mama thought. “I have cookies,” she offered. These were the snacks she kept for us. “But dogs not like cookies,” she said skeptically.
“Let’s see,” we both chimed. “Can we have a cookie?”
When we came out, the dog was keeping a wary distance from our door. But when he saw Henry and me, he came up wagging his tail and wiggling his body with happiness. Then, when Mama followed us out, he stopped short in his tracks and cowered with mixed emotions. “He thinks you’re a scary lady,” Henry said to Mama. She smiled and broke the cookie she had in her hand into three pieces, handing a piece to me, a piece to Henry and keeping a piece. I offered my piece first, wondering whether he would eat it. He came up, sniffed, lapped it from me, and crunched it with gusto. He accepted Henry’s piece immediately. Now it was the scary lady’s turn. Mama held out her piece. He wanted to take it, you could see. But he held back. He was afraid of starting up the frightening sound she made. I could see the conflict going on in that dog’s poor, sad eyes. But hunger ultimately won out. He looked up at Mama warily and wagged a tentative tail. She didn’t make that horrific noise. Approaching her carefully, he quickly lapped the piece of cookie from her finger. It was gone in one crunch.
And that’s how Blackie came to be a part of our family at Tule Lake. We built him a shed behind our barrack, right under my bedroom window. We always got a little bit more food than we could eat at each meal so that we could bring something home for Blackie. And Blackie became our playmate and constant companion wherever we went—everywhere, that is, except into our living room. He was afraid of that room with the treacherously glistening floor. Blackie absolutely refused to venture in there, even if we pushed him. Daddy said he was a smart dog. “He learns fast. No living thing likes to have his world suddenly turned unstable,” he said. “Let’s give him a good home.” And Blackie didn’t have to worry about his world turning unstable. At least not while we were at Tule Lake.
* * *
For us, though, Tule Lake was a very different world from anything we had ever experienced before. I would be wakened at daybreak by the distant sound of large numbers of young men exercising. “Wah shoi, wah shoi, wah shoi, wah shot” I would lie there listening as the sound came closer and closer and then faded back into the distance. “Wah shoi, wah shoi, wah shoi.” These young men were counting cadence in unison as they jogged in military formation around the blocks in the cold dawn air. They all wore hachi-maki around their heads—white headbands, some with the rising sun, the military insignia of Japan, painted on them. These were the young men who had turned radical in their disillusion and their sense of betrayal by America. If America was going to treat them like enemies, then they resolved to give America adversaries it would have to take seriously. They would become the enemies that America would be forced to reckon with from within. They would harden their muscles and their spirits. They would prepare to rise up when the Japanese military landed on the West Coast, 21s these men fervently believed, and join the battle.
Tule Lake was a camp seething with political tension. Although the camp population was predominantly composed of those generally categorized as “disloyal,” there was within this group the full spectrum of beliefs and political positions, from those who responded no-no to the Loyalty Questionnaire in dignity-sustaining protest all the way to genuine radicals who were newly and fiercely committed to Japan’s victory. Among the latter group was Joe Kurihara, a former pro-America patriot and a World War I veteran. In his bitterness at the betrayal by the America that he had trusted, he openly swore to “become a Jap one hundred percent.”
The Camp Command, however, viewed all internees as adversaries and, in its clumsy attempt to maintain control, exacerbated an already volatile situation. There were midnight raids by guards to pick up those suspected of being radical leaders, and often the wrong individuals were arrested. Whole groups of people suspected of being radicals were dismissed from certain work crews, thus causing disruptions in essential services such as the delivery of foodstuffs and fuel. These acts, in turn, would incite protests and demonstrations.
In this turbulent climate, rumor-mongering within the internee population proliferated. Those that were retained on certain work crews where people were dismissed were suspected by other internees of having curried favor with the Camp Command. These suspects would be accused of being informers or inu, the Japanese word for “dog.” There were violent arguments, even beatings, which then brought on even greater repression from the Command. Curfews were imposed, bringing heavier guard presence. The internees retaliated with hunger strikes and even riots.
* * *
“Keto!” That’s the word I remember hearing over all the yelling and shouting. “Keto, keto!” Over all the chaos. “Goddamn keto!” “Keto go to hell!” It was screamed at the guards roaring around in their Jeeps at the scattering crowd. The people were running in every direction. The Jeeps with guards aiming weapons were chasing them, rumbling around in billowing dust clouds, swerving in threatening curves and circles.
Daddy and I were far from those Jeeps, but he held my hand tightly, and we ran as fast as we could. We ran for many blocks before we got back home. I don’t remember why we were so far from home. In fact, I can’t recall why we were a part of that chaos at all. But the yelling, confusion, and terror were unforgettable.
This isolated childhood memory burned onto my mind like a ran
dom spatter on the skin from a boiling pot of liquid. It seared me, but with time it left only a barely noticeable scar.
I can still remember how frightening the day was. I can still call to mind that chaos and confusion. But I cannot remember what I was a part of. I can’t recall the substance of that unforgettable terror.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I asked Daddy about this vivid but somehow disconnected memory. He told me that we were there to demonstrate in protest against the arbitrary arrest of somebody suspected of being a radical. That’s what he told to an adult many years later. But the essence of the experience had wafted away like the dust kicked up by those wildly circling Jeeps.
What I do have fixed in my memory is the answer that Daddy gave me to a question I asked him when we were safely back home in our barrack. “What does keto mean, Daddy?” I asked. He told me it was an angry word that people fling at white people. “But why?”
“It’s a bad word meant to hurt people.”
“But the guards didn’t look hurt,” I said.
“That’s because they don’t understand it.”
“But what does it mean, then?”
“It means ‘hairy breed,’ ” my father answered.
“Well, white people do look hairy. Look at the guards’ arms.”
“That may be. But it’s a word meant to be insulting and hurtful. I don’t ever want to hear you using that word.”
“Even at the guards?”
“At anybody. Ever. It’s a bad word,” Daddy said with a tone of finality. I presumed that “keto” must be another one of those mysterious words like “sakana beach.”
* * *
By mid-1944 Tule Lake was a fractured community of anger, suspicion, and confusion. Rumors ran rampant. Neighbors suspected neighbors. The simplest disagreement could erupt into angry exchanges and oftentimes violence. Into this volatile situation, Congress threw another incendiary device. It passed the so-called “denaturalization bill.” This legislation, Public Law 405, provided that an American citizen could renounce his or her citizenship on American soil in time of war. The relentless tide of anti-Japanese hysteria had produced another explosive and constitutionally indefensible piece of law.
With the war’s end becoming more likely by the day, politicians from the West Coast were beginning to agitate against the probable return of Japanese Americans to their former homes. Congressman Clair Engle of California, later to be elected United States Senator, declared, “We don’t want those Japs back in California. The more we can get rid of, the better.”
The scenario envisioned by Washington seemed to entail getting American citizens of Japanese ancestry to renounce their citizenship under the pressure-cooker conditions in the camps, so the legal path would be cleared for their eventual “deportation” to Japan as “aliens.” This would be an especially useful tool to rid the country of those nettlesome radical activists of Tule Lake. The result was another convulsive wave of anguish and turmoil that swept up not just the radicals but all internees in Camp Tule Lake.
The activists wanted to get as many to renounce with them as possible, and they launched a campaign of aggressive proselytizing. They staged wildly stirring “banzai” rallies. The Camp Command responded with more midnight raids, again frequently taking the wrong people. There was fury and discord. Tule Lake was turned into a boiling-hot cauldron of conflicting passions.
Mama was targeted by these fervently pro-Japan militants as a likely prospect for renunciation. She was a no-no respondent to the Loyalty Questionnaire and married to an immigrant from Japan, albeit one educated in America. “America treats you like garbage,” the militants argued. “Why keep taking their racist outrages?” “Take some pride in our own racial heritage.” All compellingly persuasive arguments.
But Mama resented the high-pressure militancy of the radicals. And she was irritated when some of them tried to affect her decision through Daddy. This was her decision that she had to make privately with Daddy for herself and her family. She was not going to be coerced by zealots. “Hito wa hito. Uchi wa uchi,” I remember her always saying. “Other people are other people. Our house is our house.”
Then Washington, in its amazing capacity for unrelenting cruelty combined with consistent clumsiness, did something that played right into the hands of the zealots. In December 1944, without any warning or prior indication, officials abruptly announced the closing of the camps. In six months to a year, maximum-security Camp Tule Lake was to be closed.
This was an astounding new development for the internees. Terror swept through the camp like an electric current. We were to be thrown “outside”—out to the wolves. White boys were still being killed by the Japanese in the Pacific war. The firestorm of anti-Japanese American paranoia raged at full pitch on the West Coast. Radical nativist organizations were intensifying their “exterminate the Japs” campaign. The barbed wire fence that kept us incarcerated was ironically our protection as well. And now, that would be gone.
The militants seized this gift from Washington with relish. “Go back out there and get shot up? Hell no, not me!” They argued that if enough people renounced their citizenship, then the government would be forced to keep Camp Tule Lake open. The psychological pressure was unbearable.
Mama’s sole concern now became to keep her family safe and together. It wasn’t the radicals’ pressure. It wasn’t any notion of doctrine anymore. For Mama, her greatest anxiety was for the safety and well-being of her family. She decided to force Washington to keep Tule Lake a safe haven for us. She renounced her American citizenship. Mama became a “denaturalized citizen.”
* * *
While all these things that a seven-year-old boy could hardly understand were swirling around me, half a world away events that would have been even more incomprehensible were taking place. These distant developments, unknown to me at the time, were to be of profound and historic importance to my future.
In far-off Europe, brothers and cousins of the young men wearing the rising sun hachi maki were wearing the very same uniforms as the guards in the gun towers watching over us. In fact, they were fighting on the same side as those guards manning the machine guns aimed toward us. These young men with faces that America saw as that of the enemy were spilling their blood carrying the Stars and Stripes. They were Japanese American men who had signed on to serve in the United States Armed Forces despite the most surreal of circumstances.
GIs, it is said, were fighting to get back to the proverbial “Mom’s apple pie.” But the young Japanese American GIs were fighting literally to get their moms out from behind American barbed wire fences. They were in combat to assert, under the most incredible of circumstances, their faith in the fundamental ideals of a country that had itself betrayed those ideals. In their determination, some called it crazy trust, they jolted America into a reappraisal of their citizenship and the very notion of patriotism. And with the boldness and extraordinary courage that they demonstrated on the battlefields of Italy, France, and Germany, they firmly established not only their reputation as fighting men but, beyond any doubt, their Americanism. Through their heroism, these Japanese American GIs revitalized the ideals of this country and brought added dimension to the definition of American citizenship. But it came at high cost.
The all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, in its first action in Italy in the Rome-Arno campaign, lost roughly one fourth of its total troop strength. To gain 40 miles, the outfit suffered 1,272 casualties. In the Rhineland campaign in France, its heroic rescue of the 1st Battalion of the 141st Regiment caught behind enemy lines—“the lost Texas battalion”—resulted in 800 casualties to save 211 men. At the end of the war, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team had compiled an outstanding battle record and emerged as the most decorated unit of World War II. It also suffered the highest casualty rate of any unit its size. In July 1946, President Harry Truman received the Japanese American soldiers on the White House lawn and stated, “You fought not only the enemy
, but you fought prejudice—and you have won.”
* * *
There were other events from far-off places that affected us in Tule Lake.
I was near the laundry building when I heard about one. A solemn-faced group of men were standing around talking. I wandered over and heard the man with the bald head saying, “He’s not really dead. It’s a trick. Just leave it to them to try a thing like that.”
But Mr. Takeda, our neighbor, insisted, “No, it’s got to be true. I was by the Camp Command office this morning and they got the flag at half-mast.”
A slim young man then said, “No kidding? Really? Then Roosevelt really must be dead. Well, whadda ya know.”
But the bald-headed man kept insisting, “It’s a trick. I tell you, it’s a trick.”
I ran home to tell Mama a man named Roosevelt died, but they’re worried it might be a trick, so they put the flag at Camp Command at half-mast. At dinner that night in the mess hall, Daddy officially announced that President Roosevelt had passed on.
* * *
The far more devastating news to internees came about a year later on a summer day in August. A new bomb, more destructive than anything previously invented by man, had been dropped on Japan. The news came crackling over contraband short-wave radio reports. No one knew who first heard the news, but everyone was talking about it. This fearsome weapon, an atomic bomb they called it, had been dropped on the southern Japanese city of Hiroshima. The devastation from this bomb was gruesome, but the firestorm that followed was catastrophic. Tens of thousands of people had been killed in the conflagration. Then, three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped—this time on the city of Nagasaki.
