A Girl Like You

by Maureen Lindley

  Mr. Hamada has turned their present barrack into a little palace with his carvings. Their door has a tree carved in relief on it, and lifelike birds perch on its branches. There is no doubt that he is a true artist.

  The Sanos too have been told to move. They are to have the Hamadas’ barrack so that the bigger family can occupy both theirs and Satomi’s old homes. Mr. Sano is full of complaints. He goes about with his old tortoise face screwed up with anger, his eyes dark and hooded.

  “They have no consideration at all. I will have to move everything myself, my wife is incapable of anything these days. My daughter-in-law might as well not exist, she is so unreliable, always off somewhere.”

  Mrs. Hamada avoids Mr. Sano, but she apologizes to Satomi. “I am so sorry, but what can we do? And the older children are so excited at having some space to themselves. If it hadn’t been us, someone else would have taken it from you.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Hamada, you are welcome. It can’t be helped. It’s only fair, after all.”

  “It is easy to tell that your mother lives in you, Satomi,” Mrs. Hamada says, relieved that there isn’t to be a fuss.

  “You must stay with us or you’ll be housed with strangers,” Eriko insists. “You can have Haru’s bed.”

  She can smell him on the blanket: soap and salt and something in the dry down that she couldn’t have described but would have recognized anywhere. It’s the tormenting essence of him.

  She thinks of Aaron, who said that everything had its own peculiar smell, that he could tell what month it was simply by sniffing the air, it was the same for the time of day. He could smell fog before you could see it, smell the rare frosts that iced his fields before they arrived.

  “What does fog smell like, Father?”

  “It smells like the sea after a storm.”

  She hugs Haru’s blanket to her, runs her fingers down the length of sacking that Eriko has left hanging. His books are piled neatly on the floor, a pencil as a bookmark in his yellowing copy of The Grapes of Wrath. She picks it up and starts to read where Haru has left off. He has underlined in pencil, migratory family, California.

  When the time comes to leave the camp she will abandon Haru, let him go. For now, though, she burrows down with his books, his scent and his family nearby.

  Since the superintendent has refused her permission to have Cora live with her, she spends most of her time at the orphanage.

  “I can’t blame them,” she says to Eriko. “It’s enough to take care of myself, let alone be responsible for a child. And I am a guest in your home, after all. But I so long to keep Cora with me.”

  She worries about what will happen to Cora when the war ends. There is talk that the children will be evacuated to places as far away as Alaska, to any orphanage, any family prepared to take them. They are little nomads who must make their homes over and over.

  Dr. Harper has spirited away a letter he saw on the superintendent’s desk as he was writing a report on a child with diphtheria. It was a request from a farmer in Oregon: “I’ll take any boy strong enough to work on the land.”

  “Shameless!” he exclaimed to Satomi. “Well, at least I can save one boy from the horror of that.”

  The letter will add to his archive, which grows daily. He squirrels away papers, takes his forbidden photographs, lists a daily count of the rats that he sees in broad daylight, in the mess hall kitchens, the latrines, on the roofs of the barracks nibbling away at the peeling tar paper so that the rain gets through. He has a collection of objects that have touched him and will be a better aid to memory than facts and figures, he thinks. There is a necklace made from bark strung with string that an inmate left in the hospital, it’s strangely sophisticated, he thinks. He keeps a discarded wooden geta shoe, a split tin plate. He has made sketches of the new hospital, and one of the library. They look impressive, and after all there must in any archive be balance.

  As time passes in Manzanar the seasons continue in much the same way they have done since Satomi first arrived. The camp’s inmates suffer the same bitter winters, the same heat-logged summers, and the ever-present dust, always the dust. But the weather aside, even Satomi has to agree with Eriko, that over the last couple years conditions in the camp have improved.

  Dr. Harper had been right. New latrines have been built, there are Japanese doctors in the hospital, and the inmates’ health has stepped up a notch, as drug treatments are easier to come by. And now there’s a barber shop, art classes, a camp newspaper; there’s tofu and soy sauce to be had in the mess halls.

  A shallow sort of settling has taken over from the restlessness that was, in the first year of their confinement, the more usual mindset. There’s still talk of freedom, but an end to the war seems a distant prospect, and the question of who will win it, not yet to be predicted.

  Satomi and Cora are closer than ever.

  “Like you and Tamura,” Eriko says sentimentally to Satomi.

  Cora has turned out to be a good pupil in her classes, she’s quick to pick up on things, and her skill at math calls Lily to Satomi’s mind. But she is a fragile child, slow to trust, clinging to Satomi, jealous of sharing with her peers.

  Haru has had leave only once, and then only for two days. He came to the camp, handsome in his uniform, bringing little gifts: violet scent for Satomi and Yumi, a sewing box for Eriko, and fleece-lined gloves for Naomi. He didn’t walk out with Satomi, and she was never alone with him.

  “He treats me like he does Yumi,” she said to Eriko. “As though I am his sister.”

  “It’s for the best, Satomi,” Eriko said, not wanting to give Satomi false hope.

  Haru had slept in his old bed while Satomi lay next to Yumi under her Indian blanket, unable to sleep at all. He is somewhere in Europe now, which distresses Eriko.

  “Europe,” she says, all concern. “What is there in Europe but war and the killing of our sons?”

  “Will you take me to the new cinema?” Cora asks Satomi. “It cost ten cents and I don’t even have one.”

  Since Cora first asked, they have never missed a show. They go together hand in hand, Haru’s blanket under Satomi’s arm for them to sit on in the damp sagebrush field where the screen is put up once a month. Cora’s favorite is Flash Gordon. She loves the all-American boy, his unbelievably golden hair, the light that seems to shine out of him. The Emperor Ming is a popular hate figure. Along with the other children, and brave in their company, Cora shouts at him scornfully. At night, though, curled under her bed, she dreams of him in her restless sleep; dreams of his cruel eyes, his long clawlike nails.

  “Is he real?” she asks Satomi.

  “No, he is a person made up to frighten us. Just make-believe.”

  Satomi marvels at how the children lose themselves in make-believe. Their imaginings seem more real to them than their actual lives.

  The boys are American heroes, playing capture the flag, fighting to keep the enemy from the Stars and Stripes. The girls play house, feeding pretend meat loaf and ketchup to the cotton stuffed dolls, knitted for them by fine women like Naomi.

  In the late afternoons Satomi walks from the orphanage with Cora to Eriko’s, where the child spends an hour or so being spoiled. She plays with the girls in Sewer Alley, hopscotch and kick the can. It’s favoring her, and against the rules, but the supervisors look the other way. Cora is a special child, after all, a little angel. Who would deny her Satomi’s attention, some time of her own?

  “You are only making it harder on yourself,” Eriko says, fussing around the child, pinching her cheeks, pulling her socks up. “Your heart will break when the parting comes.”

  “I will write to her, Eriko. And I will visit when I can.”

  “It won’t be as easy as you think, Satomi. They have no idea where the children will end up. And even if they did, I’d bet a dollar that there will be a rule prohibiting you from knowing.”

  Little Boy. Fat Man.

  “Such names,” Eriko says, tears stream
ing down her face as she bites her lips until they bleed. “To give bombs pet names as though they are family members.”

  Satomi shakes her head in disbelief. “Was America ever what we thought it to be?”

  “It is the bully of the world,” Naomi says regretfully.

  They didn’t need to hear the reports of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the guards—the illegal radios in Manzanar spread the news quicker. But those who heard it by word of mouth thought it so exaggerated as to be more rumor than fact.

  How could such a weapon exist? A weapon that could kill a hundred thousand in one go. How could a plane named Enola Gay, in honor of the pilot’s mother, house a bomb so big that it could suck up and digest the earth till nothing remained but cinders? What mother would consider such a namesake an honor?

  But when Emperor Hirohito’s capitulation speech is put out over the Tannoy, they are convinced. They may never have heard his voice before, but there is no room for doubt.

  “It could only be him,” they say.

  “Yes. It is a samurai’s voice. Ancient, from the old world. Like your grandfather’s grandfather might sound.”

  At first, not knowing the difference between atomic and normal destruction, people liken the devastation to that of Pearl Harbor.

  “So the debt is paid,” they say. “The score settled, honor restored.”

  Soon, though, the tales of a burning the like of which has never been seen, and of the annihilation of those sad islands where some of Manzanar’s inmates have relatives, takes hold, and the reports become the stuff of Greek tragedy.

  “They say it has cracked the earth’s crust and will get us all in the end.”

  “There isn’t a soul left, I hear.”

  “Even the children have gone.”

  “Even the ghosts.”

  In the privacy of their barracks some of those who have relatives on the burned up islands quietly sing the Japanese national anthem.

  “Only out of respect,” they assure each other. “In memory of Uncle Toru, of cousin Sakamoto.”

  Pearl Harbor has been revenged at last. The enemy has been crushed and there is talk of Manzanar closing. Two months pass before the official notice comes—the camp will close in November. Soon they will all be free.

  “We need time to work out what it means to us,” Naomi says with a quavering voice. “Just when we are settled, everything must change again.”

  “She is afraid to leave,” Eriko says. “We are all a bit afraid, I guess. We don’t even know if we will get our homes and businesses back. It’s going to be a struggle.”

  “You are going home, then?” Satomi asks.

  “Yes, we are going home.” Eriko pauses, the words seem so strange. “Going home!”

  “Haru will be pleased,” Satomi says.

  “Yes, he wrote as soon as he heard. He says that we mustn’t let them relocate us away from the West Coast. He’s keen on our rights to choose where we settle.”

  “Haru is right,” Naomi says. “Who knows where they will send us this time if we let them? Another Manzanar, perhaps! We have heard the word ‘relocate’ before, I think.”

  “You must come with us,” Eriko offers. “I don’t know if we can get our shop back, we only rented it in the first place, but we must try. We left our furniture, even rice in the cupboard, we left everything. It’s possible it’s all still there, I suppose, but I hardly dare hope for it.”

  “Oh, Eriko, thank you, but I have to go to Angelina. We owned our farm outright and we left money in the bank, crops in our fields. My father would expect me to see that his life’s work has not been stolen away.”

  “Then you’ll come? After, when you have done what you have to, then you will come?”

  “I can’t, you know that. It would be wrong for me to live in the same house as Haru. He wouldn’t want it, and neither do I.”

  “But what will you do, Satomi? Who will look after you?”

  “I am near nineteen, Eriko, a woman. I will look after myself.”

  The words sound false even to her. What will she do? How will she live? A job somewhere, she supposes, a room of her own. She has longed for a room of her own, for privacy. The thought of it now, though, seems too strange to contemplate.

  Tamura had advised her to go east if she had the chance.

  “It will be better in the East,” she had said. “The West will never forgive us for the Harbor.”

  The order has come from the War Department to demolish Manzanar. In its upheaval it begins to look again as dismal as it did when they had first arrived. Those who opt for relocation are already being shipped out to government housing projects, their barracks razed the instant they leave. The rats run for cover, the cockroaches scatter as the empty barracks are reduced to piles of lumber. Before the authorities have a chance to gather it up, the wood is snatched. With such a wealth of fuel, stoves blaze in defense against the bitter November air.

  Outside the director’s office, piles of papers are stacked high, waiting to be loaded onto trucks and sent off to the War Department.

  “So many of them,” Satomi says to Dr. Harper as they walk past on their way to the orphanage. “What are they, do you think?”

  “Records of you all, I guess,” he says, retracing his steps and scooping up a bundle, stuffing them into his bag.

  “What will happen to them?”

  “If I had to bet, I’d say they were on their way to the furnace.”

  The hospital wards, save for a bed or two left for emergencies, have closed. Tables and chairs are removed from the mess halls, the new school barracks are dismantled as the children are sent home to help their parents prepare for evacuation.

  At the orphanage the children’s things are being packed up too. When Satomi asks where the children are to be sent, one of the wardens shrugs her shoulders.

  “Who knows?” she says. “We will be lucky to find places for them anywhere. Nobody wants Japanese children these days.”

  “I’m willing to take Cora with me. She will be happy with me.”

  “Oh, Satomi, you couldn’t look after her. It will be enough to manage yourself.”

  “If I have my parents’ money we could manage, I’m sure.

  “I don’t think the superintendent will just give Cora to you simply because you ask. It’s a foolish idea and probably against the law.”

  “No harm in asking, though.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, you’re bound to be disappointed.”

  She must have hope, though. It’s too hard to think about letting Cora go without a fight. She conjures up a family who might treat her badly, an orphanage where love has to be shared out so that no child ever gets enough. Just the thought of it sickens her.

  Knocking on the superintendent’s door, she tells herself that she mustn’t lose her temper. If she can just keep calm, smother her desire to insist, things will go better. Nothing much, she knows, works out when she loses her temper.

  “Surely Cora would be better off with me than in an orphanage?” she says reasonably.

  “It can’t be done, Satomi. Simple as that,” the superintendent says. “But you needn’t worry about Cora. She will be the first to find a family. Such a sweet, obedient child.”

  “But she already knows me. We are like sisters.”

  “But not sisters. And there is no guarantee that you will get this money you speak of. How would you manage then?”

  “I’ll get a job, of course. We all have to work.”

  “Look, Satomi, it’s kind of you, but it is a foolish idea. You will have problems enough of your own. We all will.”

  “Cora should be with me, we should be together.” She can’t keep the fury out of her voice.

  “Don’t blame me, Satomi. I’m Japanese. I have no authority in this place.”

  “Then I’ll go to the director, he won’t refuse me.”

  “If you must. Who knows, you may catch him on a good day.”

  The director, t
hough, is too busy overseeing the dismantling of the camp to take time to see her. He smiles at her weakly on his way out of the office and directs her to one of his assistants.

  “You’ll need to write it all down.” The assistant, busy with writing something himself, hardly looks at her. “Here are paper and pencil. Bring them back when you’ve finished.”

  The words are hard to find. The director doesn’t know her, doesn’t know Cora; how can she make him understand? She writes of the love they have for each other, of her hope for her parents’ inheritance. We are like sisters, she assures him. Surely whatever the circumstances it is better that sisters should be together.

  Her letter is put with others on a desk crowded with papers.

  “It’s very important,” she says, noting the piled-high papers, the ones that have carelessly been allowed to slip to the floor. “Make sure that he gets it.”

  “Of course. I hardly need you to tell me how to do my job.” He feels she has ordered rather than asked. “I can’t guarantee that the director will have time to answer you.”

  But an answer comes a day later in the form of a brief note left for her at the orphanage.

  What you request is not possible. It would be against American law for this office to grant you a child that is in the care of the state. You can rest assured that Cora is in good hands. Everything will be done to find all of the children suitable placements.

  John Holmes

  Assistant to Director Merrit

  Eriko says that she shouldn’t blame the director. It takes a special kind of person to break the rules, a hero like Ralph Lazo. Courage is needed, she says, to go against the regulations, to take the human decision.

  “Don’t expect humanity to triumph in Manzanar, Satomi. It never has before.”

  In Satomi’s distress, old dreams of Tamura disappearing return to plague her sleep.

  “You call your mother’s name out in your sleep,” Eriko says. “It is natural, I suppose.”

  “I think that Mama and Cora have become one in my dreams.”

  “It’s cruel, I know, Satomi, but you must not think of Cora so much. You are an orphan yourself, remember.”