A Girl Like You

by Maureen Lindley

  Tamura has quickly let go the expectations she had of Manzanar, and has settled to making the best of it. Satomi, though, along with half of the camp, is on alert, waiting. Waiting for news that their confinement has been a mistake, waiting to hear that the war has ended, waiting perhaps for something more terrible. Wherever people gather at Manzanar, hope and fear are the text of their chatter.

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “There seem to be more guards, don’t you think?”

  “Did I imagine a shot in the night?”

  The slightest change in routine takes on meaning, unsettles everyone. And the rumors, like the dust storms, appear to arrive out of nowhere.

  “We are all to be shot.”

  “I heard only the men.”

  “A guard told me we are to be shipped to Japan.”

  Being sent to Japan, for the Nisei generation, seems almost as bad as being shot. They are native-born Americans, after all, pumped with the notion of sadistic yellow bastards and murdering Japs. Why would they fare better in Japan? Japanese-Americans are a different breed than their ancestors. They are democrats, modern citizens, proud of the American way.

  But some of the young men have begun to challenge this view. They call themselves the “Kibei” and welcome the idea of returning to Japan. It’s their homeland, they tell each other, the land of their fathers, after all, they would not be imprisoned there. They go around in gangs, not listening to their elders, causing everyone problems. They challenge the guards by hanging around the fencing, and running through the alleys at night, calling out wildly to each other.

  “They are nothing but trouble,” Haru says. “They make things worse for everyone.

  “At least they have spirit,” Satomi argues. “You have to give them that.”

  “Ha, spirit, is that what you call it? Their spirit tars us all with the traitor’s brush.”

  To help counteract their influence and show his loyalty to America, Haru has joined the American Citizens League. League members have asked to join the American forces. Haru, for one, can’t wait to fight for his country, to go to war in its name.

  But even his loyalty is challenged when a hundred and one orphans are rounded up and brought to Manzanar. The all-to-be-shot rumors gain momentum for a while. Why else would they imprison babies, what harm are they capable of?

  Manzanar’s director, Mr. Merrit, has been ordered by the Army’s evacuation architect, Colonel Bendetsen, to confine the children to the camp.

  Bendetsen has ignored the frantic pleas of the adopted families and the Catholic missions who have been caring for them to let the children remain in their care.

  “They are our family.”

  “Only children, after all.”

  “How can it harm, for them to stay with us?”

  Deaf to their pleas, he insists against reason that the children might be a threat to national security.

  Some come to Manzanar from the white families who adopted them, grieving a second time at the loss of yet another set of parents. There are babies as young as six months old, the children, it’s said, of schoolgirl-mothers from the other camps; there are toddlers taking their first precarious steps, and confused six-year-olds.

  The babies, sensing change, cry for attention. The older ones gather together in silence, frightened at the deep pitch of the guards’ voices, the dull metal gleam of their guns.

  Manzanar’s inmates are disturbed by the sight of the children. Seeing such innocence lined up feeds the sense they have that the madness has no limits.

  “Why else would they be taken out of white homes, if not to kill us all?” they say.

  “This must be the big, the final, roundup.”

  Racially the children are a mixed bunch, some with as little as one-eighth Japanese ancestry. The blond ones stand out among their fellows, reminders that even the tiniest trace of Japanese blood, no matter how far back in your family, condemns you. Watching those little souls arrive, it’s hard for Satomi too not to feel so hated that genocide seems unlikely.

  “How can those kids possibly be a threat to anybody?” she fumes, while Haru despairs. He wants to keep faith with his country, but at the sound of the children singing “God Bless America” he has to agree with Satomi that it makes no sense.

  As the children settle into the Children’s Village, the three large tar-papered barracks hastily erected to house them, fears of mass murder recede and other rumors get a look in. Hope floats around the one that says they are to be allowed home. But after a while hope itself makes them feel foolish. The more you hope for home, the farther away it seems to get.

  Resignation is taking over so that even the horror stories of rats in the babies’ cots fail to impress. Rats are no strangers in Manzanar, they have outnumbered the human residents from day one. In the company of cockroaches the ubiquitous creatures scuttle under the barracks, run across the beds at night. They have to be chased from the dripping water spigots, pulled each morning from the glue traps set on the many mess hall floors.

  “Check my bed for me, pleeease,” Satomi begs Haru every evening.

  “They won’t be there now,” he says. “They come when it’s dark, when you are sleeping.” His voice takes on a ghostly moan. He likes to hear her squeal.

  The scraps of good news that come, however small, are welcome and made much of. A post office is to be set up, an occasional movie is to be allowed, and there is an extra sugar ration on its way.

  The bad news, though, is always major, always dramatic. Tamura and Eriko fly into a panic when they hear that a congressman, noting the high birth rate in the camps, has proposed that all Japanese women of child-bearing age should be sterilized.

  “It would ruin our girls’ lives.” Tamura can’t stop the tears.

  “He must be a wicked man,” Eriko wails, her arms tight around the squirming Yumi, who has only just started menstruating.

  “No one’s taking him seriously,” John Harper, the popular camp doctor, says to Ralph and Satomi as they sit on the ground outside his office. “Congress is not completely mad.”

  “They’ll have to shoot me before they try, the bastards,” Satomi says, and Dr. Harper, not for the first time, is shocked at her language, impressed by her passion. Since they first met when she came to him with a splinter in her hand that had festered, he has felt a connection with her.

  “This will hurt,” he had warned. “I’m going to have to dig a bit.”

  He had laughed when she had cursed at the pain.

  “Damn!”

  “Never heard a Japanese female swear before,” he said.

  Since that time, she and Dr. Harper have shared what Haru thinks of as an unsuitable friendship. Along with Ralph, they debate politics, discuss how the war is going, have conversations that sometimes turn argumentative. They agree that America will win the war and wonder together what life will be like when it is over.

  Despite that he represents authority, it is hard, Satomi thinks, not to like Dr. Harper. There’s no doubt that he is a good man. He may be ungainly, always dropping things, losing his papers, searching for his spectacles, but none of that counts for anything. Dr. Harper is a man filled with goodness and grace.

  “There’s a glow in him, don’t you think?” she says to Ralph.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly, Satomi. He’s the hail-fellow-well-met sort.”

  Now and then, breaking the camp’s rules with pleasure in his heart, Dr. Harper gives Satomi his old newspapers. It staves his guilt for a while, and what harm can it do? He never, before Manzanar, thought of himself as a rule breaker, but stupid rules don’t deserve to be followed. Rules that say people must be kept in the dark, no papers, no radio, stay ignorant, beg to be broken.

  “If you won’t go to school, then it’s time you went to work,” Haru insists. You should stop bothering the doctor, Satomi.”

  “We’re friends, Haru. We think alike. He agrees that America has betrayed its Japanese citizens. Unlike Dr. Harper, I d
idn’t hear you complaining when they spoke of sterilizing us.”

  “There are fools in every government,” he says, more to console himself than to placate her. “It was never going to happen.”

  Their neighbor Mr. Sano, with his usual lack of tact, has an unpopular take on the sterilization threat.

  “I can see the sense in it. Just look at the Hamadas,” he declares, referring to the family of nine from the row behind Sewer Alley. “Mrs. Hamada is pregnant again. The children run wild, disturbing everyone. If they can’t control themselves, it should be done for them.”

  Tamura and Eriko look at him with mouths open.

  “He is blind to his own faults,” Tamura says.

  “A disgrace,” says Naomi.

  Along with Eriko, Tamura takes a camp job sewing camouflage for the Army. She is paid six dollars a month, which, added to the prisoners’ clothing allowance of three dollars and sixty cents, allows her to order little things from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue.

  “You shouldn’t be working in that drafty old hangar, Mama. It’s not good for you. The dust from the cotton isn’t giving your cough a chance.”

  “But I enjoy it, Satomi. I like the company, and it’s fun. And anyway, what would I do all day otherwise? Besides, we need the money. You must have cotton for your dresses, thread and needles for me to sew them with.”

  At quiet times they go together to the mess hall and pore over the wonderful things the catalogue has to offer. Flower-printed head scarves, the prettiest shoes, silky nylons with straight dark seams, and pink suspender belts with rubber clasps that look like the teats from babies’ bottles. The most popular items are the short white socks that are fashionable among the older girls, who think they look neat with their black oxfords. Satomi, though, prefers in summer to wear her oxfords without socks, and she likes simple skirts, the plain white T-shirts from the boys’ section.

  “No wonder the girls think you’re odd,” Tamura despairs.

  Yumi, sparing no one her sulks, refuses to speak to Eriko until she agrees that she can give up the gray socks of the younger children and buy two pairs of the white ones.

  “What can I do?” Eriko says. “She won’t even listen to Haru.”

  “It’s just a phase,” Tamura says.

  “Did Satomi go through it?”

  “Sometimes, Eriko, it seems like she was born going through it. I can’t say that she has ever been an easy child.”

  “She’s not a child anymore, Tamura. I’d give up hoping, if I were you.”

  Eriko is used to hard work and enjoys the company too. She could have taken more pleasure in it if it hadn’t been for having to kneel on the cement floor all day, which makes her knees ache.

  “You are the only one not working,” Tamura complains to Satomi. “All you do is read Haru’s books and talk to Dr. Harper. No wonder you are bored. Work would console you.”

  “I won’t do anything here that helps them, Mama. Nobody should. In any case, I am not bored, I love reading.”

  “You could help Haru with his volunteer work,” Tamura persists. “Anyone can see how much pride he takes in it.”

  Haru has found his vocation and is teaching reading to the third-grade children. He coaches the softball team and helps distribute the care packages that come from the Quakers. Tin toys for the children, comics and pencils, and sometimes soft blanket-stitched scarves and hats.

  Yumi was hoping for bobby pins, a watch, perhaps; instead she receives a fan made from cedar wood, which she hangs on the wall by her bed. She pretends that it is a silly thing of no use to anyone, but she keeps it free from dust so that it won’t lose its scent, and no one but her is allowed to touch it.

  Haru, a little embarrassed at the Quakers’ charity, takes pleasure at least in the children’s joy at receiving the toys. He could have earned eight dollars a month if he had wanted, laying drainage pipes around the camp, but he has his pride.

  “It’s insulting. Eight dollars! What other Americans would work for that kind of money? They would be paid ten times more.” He may be loyal to America, but like Aaron he is not to be predicted.

  “I’d have thought you would be happy to help, since you love America so much,” Satomi teases.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sati. Loving America and working for less than a citizen is not the same thing at all.”

  Yumi is at the camp school, and old Naomi Okihiro knits when she can get the wool, or sleeps her days away, dreaming of sunlit rooms and the plum tree she sat under as a child in Japan. Her English is not good, her nature suspicious, and, apart from Tamura and Satomi, she rarely speaks to anyone outside of her family.

  Satomi won’t admit it, but Tamura is right, the days are long and she is bored. They would be longer, though, if it hadn’t been for Haru’s books, for Dr. Harper’s company.

  Dr. Harper is taking up more and more of her time. He encourages her to call at his office, is debating with himself whether to take her on his rounds. The thing about Satomi is that she’s not hampered by the cultural manners that keep his other patients from challenging him, from having the intimacy with them that he would like. And she must have somewhere useful to place her outrage, after all, some outlet for the kindness she smothers.

  He questions her about the minutia of things that go on in the camp that he would otherwise have no way of finding out, listing them in his journal meticulously. Liver served for five days on the trot, he writes. On the whole the Japanese don’t eat liver.

  “My little archive,” he says. “A gateway to memory for me, when Manzanar is over and you are all allowed to go home.”

  He is attached to his collection, to the grim photos he has taken of the sparsely furnished, poorly lit barracks, the portraits of the inmates, who smile for the camera and manage to look hopeful. He has blurry pictures of rats on the run in the latrines, bugs in the children’s beds. He has drawings that the children at school have drawn in the dust; strange shapes, and trees without leaves, and guards with guns, stick men smaller than their weapons. He treasures the little carvings people give him in gratitude for his skills, naïve ironwood netsuke, hares and rabbits, rats with serpent tails, infants tumbling together with stones for eyes. It’s a strange archive, but so potent that sometimes when he goes through it he imagines he can smell the camp, sweat and disease, dust and blood, and the burning reek of carbolic.

  In his determination to let nothing of Manzanar be lost, he sees purpose in his job, and is able to keep faith with his country. There will be others like him, he thinks, Americans who witness the unfairness, the damage done. Others who, when the time is right, will work for recompense, for justice. He believes that Satomi will be one of them.

  “You never stop writing in that thing,” his wife complains. “I think you find that place more interesting than real life.”

  He doesn’t challenge her on the “real life” thing, prefers to keep Manzanar, the revulsion it holds for him, from her. “Someone has to keep a record,” he says. “I don’t want to forget the truth of it.”

  Medical Rounds

  “I suspected that she wouldn’t go full term,” Dr. Harper says to Satomi on their way to Mrs. Takei’s barrack. “The lining of her womb might as well be paper, it’s so thin with child-bearing. If it’s what I suspect, it won’t be a pretty sight, Satomi. You don’t have to come in.”

  “I’ll come in,” she says nervously.

  He’s burdening her, he knows, putting her to the test, but then we are all put to the test and he doesn’t want to allow her the getout clause of ignorance. It’s right that she should see things for what they are, right that she should be good and mad about it, and she’s strong enough for the truth.

  He’s strong enough too, yet still he would like himself to be saved from the horrors that he sees, the ones that rob him of the free will to live a conventional, untroubled life.

  Satomi hasn’t visited this part of the camp before. It’s the outer circle of the site, the
periphery line of barracks that are the border between civilization and the rude acres of sagebrush. The barracks here take the full force of the winds, of all the extreme forms of weather their desert-floor home throws at them

  “The badlands,” Dr. Harper calls them. “Home to the stragglers, latecomers too shocked at the sight of Manzanar to push their way to the front of the lines.”

  Mrs. Takei’s barrack is fourth from the end. Her husband is sitting on the steps with their children, seven boys who look to Satomi to be about the same age, although that can’t be so. Their mother must have popped them out with hardly a space in between.

  Mr. Takei stands when he sees them, stepping aside to allow them to climb the steps, bowing to them as though they are royalty. Dr. Harper puts his hand on the man’s shoulder and sighs. The men look at each other with what Satomi takes to be resignation.

  Inside, it takes a second or two for their eyes to adjust in the stygian light. Mrs. Takei is perched on the edge of the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin. Her face, Satomi thinks, as green as Palmolive soap. A dark stain pumps its way up the thin brown fabric of her dress, there’s a puddle of blood on the floor, streaks of it across her face where she has pushed her hair back with bloodied hands.

  Satomi shuts her mouth and holds her nose, a brief protection against the offal smell that comes hot to her nostrils. An acid sharpness of vomit clots at the back of her throat and she swallows hard and prays not to be sick. The stench and the blood are shocking.

  Even though Dr. Harper had been expecting it, he shakes his head at the sight of Mrs. Takei in such a poor state. It has always seemed a little miracle to him that the body’s odors are contained inside something as thin, as porous, as skin.

  “When did the bleeding start?” he asks, easing Mrs. Takei gently down on the bed, straightening her legs.

  “Last night.” She lowers her eyes from his.

  “Tshh, and you’ve waited this long to send for me,” he says, not unkindly.