Irish Chain

by Earlene Fowler

  “What kind of project do you have to do?” I asked, an idea forming in my head.

  Ramon scrunched his face in consternation. “It can be anything to do with local history. Some people are tracing their roots. Some are just doing a report on one of the missions. One guy is researching ghost legends of San Celina County.”

  “Radical idea, huh?” Todd said. “I wish we would have thought of it.” He raised his camera to the ceiling and peered through the viewfinder. “Super high-speed film. Pictures of protoplasmic gases.”

  “I have an idea,” I said.

  “What?” Ramon’s face pleaded, Get me out of this, please.

  “I’ve got the Historical Society on my back about getting this section on the Japanese written for their book. My problem isn’t doing the writing, but taking the time to do the interviews. I absolutely have to get back to the museum and work on the new exhibit and I need to start compiling the information I’ve already collected into something readable. If I gave you and Todd a tape recorder, a list of questions and some film, you could do some of the interviews and help me write up the histories. Do you think your teacher would consider that an adequate project?”

  “I don’t know,” Ramon said. “Could you talk to her?”

  “Why don’t you talk to her?” I asked.

  “She and I ... Well, she doesn’t exactly ... It’s like this, I ...”

  “He put a dead mouse in her desk last week,” Todd explained. “Wearing a little Napoleon hat.”

  “I couldn’t make a small enough coonskin,” Ramon said.

  “Ramon!” Elvia cried. “This isn’t high school. When are you going to grow up?”

  Ramon grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Could you talk to her, Benni? Tell her Todd and I are serious about this. It’ll seem more official coming from you, you having such an important job now and everything.”

  “Cut the bull, Ramon.” I ran my fingers through my hair and wondered what I’d let myself in for. I could certainly use the help, but Ramon and Todd weren’t the most mature teenagers I’d ever known. “Okay, I’ll talk to her, but you two have to promise me, no practical jokes or goofing off on this project. These interviews have to get done so I can start writing them up. And this subject is very serious. You’ll need to show respect to these people.”

  Ramon stood up and held up three fingers. “I do solemnly swear to be a good scout and do my best for you and this project.”

  “Since you were thrown out of the Boy Scouts the same month you joined, that doesn’t set my mind at ease,” I said. “But I guess I have to trust you. I know you guys will do a good job.” I said the words with more conviction than I felt. “If your teacher okays it, then I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll set up some interviews for this week. What’s her name?”

  “Mrs. Thompson. Thanks, Benni, you’re a real pal. Peace, love and all that baloney.” Ramon held up two fingers in a V before running up the stairs, Todd close behind him.

  “Are you loco?” Elvia said, walking back up the stairs with me to find the oral history books she’d ordered. “You’re going to get those two jokers to do some real work? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, yes and yes,” I said, though my voice wasn’t convincing even to me.

  I called Mrs. Thompson from Elvia’s office. She agreed to meet with me in half an hour, though she was a bit confused as to why I’d be concerned with the history projects of two of her students when I wasn’t related to either of them. A tense edge crept into her voice when I mentioned Ramon’s name. I wondered how much of a sales job it would take to bail him out.

  You are crazy, I told myself, driving toward the campus. You have enough to do without supervising two teenagers on a history project. But if I could organize them right, and they did what they were told, it would actually save me time. On that optimistic note, I bought a two-hour parking pass from the machine at the tree-lined entrance to Cal Poly and pulled in across from the student store, aptly named the Cougar’s Lair. Besides textbooks, it sold everything from backpacks imprinted with the snarling mascot’s picture to milk and ice cream from the agriculture department’s Guernsey cows. I was ten minutes early for my appointment, so I took a seat on a paint-chipped wooden bench under a budding decorative plum tree. The red brick History and Cultural Arts building, where Mrs. Thompson’s office was located, didn’t look any different than when I attended classes there fifteen years ago.

  A wind had sprung up from the south, blowing away any lingering clouds, leaving a bold, brilliant blue sky and air smelling of wild mustard, salty earth and springtime. Around me, the raucous, noontime chatter of students brought back memories as clear and sharp as the air. I’d spent more days than I could remember sitting here with Jack and Elvia and other friends, complaining about teachers and parents and trying to decide what to do that Saturday night. Everything seemed so certain then. We knew exactly how we felt about things, where we were going, how we would get there. Our concrete plans reminded me of the mosaics created by one of our artists at the co-op-bits and pieces of stone and glass laid out just so—the scene becoming clearer as you stood further and further back. Except our lives weren’t really like those mosaics, whose pieces, once the artist placed them, could be cemented permanently into place. Looking back, I realize now we were more like kaleidoscopes—our designs twisting this way and that, unpredictable as clouds, changing sometimes for the better, sometimes not, but always open to that unexpected color combination we’d never think of on our own.

  Mrs. Thompson’s office was the typical tiny cubicle awarded to tenured professors at Cal Poly. I knocked on the tan metal door and a crisp voice commanded me to enter.

  “Ms. Harper?” The fiftyish, Japanese woman in tortoise-shell eyeglasses and a nubby, honey-gold suit, stood up to greet me. Her office was small, but deceptively spacious. Pastel-framed Japanese watercolors depicting slender cherry trees and faceless women in kimonos decorated the wheat-colored walls. A pink-and-white-etched teapot with matching cups sat on a bamboo tray on the scarred credenza behind her. The top of her standard-issue steel desk held only a pale green blotter, a porcelain pencil cup painted with a red-legged crane, and her black telephone. She had achieved the roomy feel by eliminating everything but the necessities.

  “Yes, are you Mrs. Thompson?”

  “Mariko, please.” She shook my hand firmly, then gestured to the inexpensive metal office chair next to her desk. I hung my purse over the back and sat down.

  “I’m Benni Harper,” I said. “A friend of Ramon and Todd’s.”

  “Ah yes, Ramon.” A pained look glided across her face as she sat down in her high-back chair. “He is something, our Ramon.”

  “He’s a good kid,” I said, somewhat defensively. He was like a brother to me and I couldn’t help feeling protective.

  “Yes, he is.” She smiled ruefully. “I just hope you never have to teach a class with him in it. He’s one of those students who drives a teacher insane while at the same time making great conversational fodder for the teachers’ lounge. He’s actually quite bright, just not very focused.”

  “He’s the youngest of seven children,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why I felt compelled to give her that information. “His mother’s favorite.”

  “I’m not surprised.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands across her lap. “So, tell me about this project.”

  She watched me intently with intelligent black eyes while I explained what the Historical Society was doing, why I was involved and how I thought Ramon and Todd could help.

  “I heard through the grapevine here that a section of the book was going to be on how the Japanese-Americans were treated during the war,” she commented. Her eyes continued to study me.

  “What do you think about it?” I wondered if she were upset because I, a Caucasian, was asked to write that section.

  “It’s a wonderful project for Ramon and Todd to be involved with and I say it’s about time someone told that story. As a
matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind being interviewed myself.”

  “That would be great!” Then I hesitated, doing a quick calculation in my head. “No offense, but were you old enough to even remember anything about that time?”

  She gave a laugh as light and airy as one of her Japanese prints. “No offense taken. Thank you for the compliment. Actually, I’m fifty-nine years old. I was seven when they sent us—my mother, my brother and me—to a relocation camp in Arizona. I remember it quite vividly.”

  This was too good to pass up. I reached into my purse and pulled out the hand-held tape recorder the Historical Society had purchased for me. “Do you mind being recorded?”

  “Not at all.” She glanced at her delicate gold watch. “I only have about fifteen minutes, though. Faculty meeting.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “No fun, huh?”

  “Have you ever been to one?”

  “No.”

  “Let me put it this way: I’d rather have root canal.”

  “Well, hopefully my questions won’t be that painful.” I turned the tape recorder on, then pushed it across the desk toward her. “First, what do you remember about the day Pearl Harbor was bombed?”

  She sat forward in the chair, her eyes focused on the machine. “It was Sunday morning. I was getting ready to go to the movies. I had been very good all week and my mother promised to take me. I can’t remember what we were going to see, but I remember being very excited.” She touched her silver-streaked pageboy and stared at the top of her desk as if she were seeing the words there. “My hair. I remember I couldn’t get my hair to go how I wanted. I was very upset about that.”

  “How did you hear what happened? Did your mother tell you?”

  “El Toro told us.”

  “Who?”

  She gave a crooked half-smile. “That was what everyone called the siren on top of the firehouse because it sounded like a cranky old bull. The minute it bellowed, my mother turned on the radio to see where the fire was and we heard the report about Pearl Harbor.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Well, we didn’t get to go to the movies. I was angry and acted quite bratty about it if I remember correctly. But I was only seven and the word ‘war’ had no real meaning for me. I only remember my mother sitting in her maple rocking chair, silently rocking back and forth, tears running down her face. When my father and brother came home from the grocery store my family owned, they sat up until late that night talking in Japanese about what would happen to us. A few times they sent me out of the room, when my mother got very upset and started crying out for her mother and father.” Mariko’s mouth sagged at the comers and her face seemed to age as she talked. I reached over and started to turn off the tape recorder.

  “We can do this another time, if you like,” I said.

  She waved my hand away. “No, I’d like to finish. The meeting can start without me.” She was silent for a moment, as if she’d lost her place in her memories.

  “What happened the day after Pearl Harbor?” I prompted.

  “My parents were Issei. Do you know what that means?”

  “They were born in Japan.”

  “Right. But my older brother, Kazuo, and I were Nisei—American-bom—so therefore citizens. We were lucky. My father was a very shrewd businessman. He’d put all his bank accounts in our names. Two days after Pearl Harbor, they froze all the bank accounts of the Issei. Many farmers couldn’t pay their workers and so their crops went unharvested. They couldn’t even draw out money to buy food.”

  “Your father must have been a very smart man.”

  She tilted her head; her dark eyes held a hint of anger. “Too smart, maybe.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He was very active in the Japanese community. Many times when I was a girl we had delegations from Japan stay with us to learn from my father how he ran his store, Yamaoka’s Groceries. My father, Yoshimi Yamaoka was very important in San Celina County. He knew all the big farmers in the area and he would take these men from Japan out to the farms to see how they worked. The men used to bring me beautiful dolls in glass cases dressed in hand-stitched kimonos made of real silk in the most amazing yellows and reds and blues.”

  “He must have been very respected in the community.”

  “He was,” she said softly. “They arrested him the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed.”

  “Who did?”

  She stood up and straightened her nubby skirt, signaling that the interview was coming to a close. “An old friend of my father’s, the county sheriff, came with three deputies. They all had guns. By order of the FBI, my father was arrested by men he’d eaten breakfast with.” She looked at her hands. “Because of his involvement in the community and because of his contacts in Japan, he was considered a so-called risk to national security. They took him to North Dakota to a camp. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. We didn’t know where they’d taken him until the end of the war. A couple of months later, in February, my mother and I were sent to an assembly camp at a racetrack in Southern California. Then later to a camp in Poston, Arizona. When we boarded the bus, there were soldiers standing guard with rifles. In Japanese, I kept asking my mother what did we do, why were we being sent to jail. She just cried, jerked my shoulder and told me to speak English.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “Some people were good to the Japanese and we were especially fortunate. My mother sold our store to a Caucasian friend. After the war, he sold it back to us for the same price he paid. Not everyone was that lucky, though. Many, especially those who leased their land or their stores, lost everything.” She smiled at me. “Now, I really must go before I am drawn and quartered by my department head.”

  I turned off the tape recorder and put it back into my purse. “Thank you for your time. When I write this up, I’ll drop it by for your approval. If there’s anything else you’d like to add, we can do it then. Also, if you wouldn’t mind, are there any pictures of your family that you’d consider letting us use in the book?”

  “I’ll look through my mother’s albums,” she said, locking the door behind us.

  As she started to walk away, I thought of something. “Do you think any of the other members of your family would talk to me? I mean, if any of them are still living around here.”

  “My mother might. She’s lived with me since my father died ten years ago. And my brother ...” She paused and swallowed hard. “My brother was ten years older than me. He came with us to the camp and later that year the Army came and asked for volunteers. He became a part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Most people don’t know this, but they were the most honored combat unit in the war. He was killed in Italy in 1944.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “My father was never the same,” she said quietly. “When the war was over and we reclaimed our store, he worked just as hard, but it wasn’t the same. For a Japanese man to lose his only son ...” Her face drew in with sadness. “My father loved me very much, but I wasn’t a son. You understand?”

  I nodded, thinking maybe I did, a little. Though the Ramsey name was carried on through my father’s nephews, his line stopped with me. Even if Jack and I would have had a son, he wouldn’t have been a Ramsey. I often wondered if that bothered my father. “Can I ask you one last thing?”

  “Certainly.”

  “The person who bought your store and then sold it back to you. I’d like to interview him or his relatives. It would make a nice sidebar to your story. Would you mind telling me his name?”

  She shook her head slightly, a quizzical look on her face. “I guess there’s no reason why you would know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Mr. O’Hara. Brady O’Hara, poor old soul. He was the man who saved my family’s store.”

  9

  ON THE WAY back to my truck, Mariko Thompson’s words rang through my mind in a ju
mbled cacophony. I’d done some reading on what had happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II, but this was the first time I’d heard a personal story. I tried to imagine the confusion Mariko must have felt as a little girl, the fear of her parents, the unspoken anger at a country so willing to use the youth and patriotism of their son while at the same time tearing their family apart: And all simply because of the color of their skin, the shape of their eyes. Why weren’t we taught this in school? Even my American History classes in college seemed to have skipped over the story of the Japanese-Americans. Then there was the revelation about Mr. O’Hara. To say I was surprised at his kindness and generosity would be an understatement. It certainly didn’t fit the cranky old man I’d encountered at Oak Terrace. But then again, people weren’t always what they seemed. I’d lived long enough to know that.

  As I walked past the Snak Shak, the toasty scent of corn dogs and fried tacos ruffled my taste buds. According to Daffy’s brazen little fingers, it was a little past one o’clock. Guilt about the way I didn’t answer the phone when Gabe tried to call back last night started to prick at my conscience. Mahi’s Fish Taco, one of his favorite restaurants, was on the way back to town, so I decided a conciliatory lunch was the mature, grownup thing to do. Someone had to be adult in this relationship, I told myself, deliberately ignoring the memory of my juvenile refusal to answer the phone last night.

  Old Woody station wagons, topless Jeeps and rust-eaten Toyota Land Cruisers equipped with an imaginative array of homemade surfboard carriers crowded the parking lot of the bright aqua and white wood-frame building. Mahi’s was a popular eatery with most of the Central Coast’s surfers, body builders and health food fanatics. As always, I looked a bit out of place in my jeans and boots among the baggy jams, salt-crusted topsiders and Pirate Surf tee shirts of the regular customers, but this was Gabe’s favorite food, and I knew he wouldn’t turn it down no matter how mad he was at me.

  A blond guy wearing a crew cut and a lime-green “Surf the World” tee shirt packed two orders of char-broiled fish tacos, Peruvian rice and spicy black beans to go while I talked with the owner, Joe Miyamoto. Part Hispanic and part Japanese, he was a short, thick-chested man with a laugh you felt down to your heels. Every time we ate here, he had another half-breed joke for Gabe, each one more outrageous than the last.