China Dolls

by Lisa See

  Persons of Japanese descent living in the city were asked to turn in their flashlights, cameras, and knives from their kitchens—just in case. The Native Sons—and Daughters—of the Golden West launched a campaign: “Get rid of the Japs! They’re all spies!” At the club, Charlie handed out pins that read I AM CHINESE to all his employees to wear. “I want everyone to be safe,” he explained. “If any of you is Japanese, who cares? You’re my glamour girls. You work for me.” He wasn’t the only club owner to take this approach. Most of the proprietors who had Japanese dancers and musicians decided to turn a blind eye for the time being, because there were customers to entertain and money to be made. The audience accepted those pins and that willful blindness. They applauded when Charlie started and ended each show with “Let’s nip the Nips.” As for Ruby, she performed—enticingly lit by her blue spotlight—laughed and joked with the boys, and generally kept up her Princess Tai façade, but she was inconsolable at home. She hadn’t heard from Yori, yet she resisted trying to track what had happened to him or her parents.

  “The Japanese share something with the Chinese,” she announced one night. “My face is my family’s face. Whatever I do is a reflection on them. But whatever they do is a reflection on me too. If I disgrace myself, I also disgrace my family. If my family is disgraced, then I am also disgraced.”

  I hated to see her so frightened and sad, but I didn’t know how to handle the shame and embarrassment she felt about her own family. Confused, I went back to my room and shut the door. After that, when I heard her crying, I stayed put. Perhaps I should have gone to her, but I didn’t want her to lose even more face by seeing me.

  And Helen? She’d kept the secret of her husband a long time, and that story got sucked right back inside to where it had been hiding. “I don’t want to rehash all that,” she’d say if I tried to get her to talk about her husband. “You’re getting so nosy, you’re worse than Ida.” Helen brought Tommy to work, but she’d nearly have a fit every time she had to leave him to perform. In other words, she could shift from cool as a cucumber to jittery wreck in minutes. She wasn’t the only one to run cold and hot.

  Passions were wild and immediate. A sense of we’re-going-to-get-them filled the air. Several Forbidden City busboys, janitors, dishwashers, and second cooks, who’d long harbored bitterness against Japan for invading China, quit their jobs and enlisted. Not long after, more men in the kitchen received their greetings from Uncle Sam and were called up.

  Ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joe brought issues of Time and Life to our apartment. Here, at last, was information we believed we could trust, but, oh, brother. The magazines offered diagrams and photos titled “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese” and “How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs.” Life encouraged its readers to overcome their “distressing ignorance” on this “delicate question.” So … Chinese were tall, averaging five feet five, while Japs topped out at five two and a half. Chinese tended to put on weight to show they were prosperous, while Japs were seldom fat (except for sumo wrestlers). Chinese were not hairy, while Japs could grow mustaches. After decades of being labeled inscrutable, suddenly Chinese could be identified by their placid, kindly, and open expressions, while anyone—armed with the information provided in the magazines’ pages—should be able to spot a Jap by his dogmatic assertions, his insistence on pushing his arrogance in your face, and the way he could be counted on to laugh loudly at the wrong time.

  “It says here that Chinese have parchment yellow complexions,” Ruby relayed to Joe, “while Japs have earthy yellow complexions. Japs also have flat noses, massive cheek and jawbones, and short faces.”

  That stuff was nonsense, but to hear Ruby read those things aloud? It was chilling. I caught her eye. When I saw nothing there, I understood the absolute terror she must have been feeling. It all made me ill—the lie itself, the disquieting apprehension of what would happen if her secret was revealed, and the concern over what Joe—our friend, for heaven’s sake—would do if, and when, he found out.

  As Christmas approached, the phone company ran ads—“Long distance helps unite the nation”—and promised to use every circuit and every operator on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I wanted Mom to know I was safe. I wanted to hear her say, “We’re fine too. We love you, honey.” But a part of me was so terrified my father might answer the phone—what if he didn’t let me speak to her?—that I didn’t even try to put through a call: I hated myself for being such a coward, so some nights I, too, cried alone in my room.

  At the end of January, the Justice Department announced that all strategic locations, which included San Francisco, needed to be cleared of enemy aliens. On February 2, registration would begin.

  Ruby didn’t seem concerned. “I’m not an enemy alien. I was born here, and I’m an American citizen.”

  I was scared for her.

  GRACE

  Dancing on the Edge

  Our lives changed quickly in those first few months of the war. We still had air-raid sirens and blackouts, but the curfew was abolished and the immediate danger dissipated. San Francisco became a liberty port, and the whole city buzzed with activity. In Chinatown, the world rushed in. Servicemen moseyed up and down the streets, going from bar to bar. They jammed nightclubs. They spent money like there was no tomorrow, and for some maybe there wasn’t. No one wanted to stay home—although business at the Forbidden City went up and down, as it did in nightclubs across the nation, depending on news from the war front, whether in Europe or the Pacific. A writer for Variety called this phenomenon “escapology.” Clubs like the Forbidden City gave people a place to blow off steam, celebrate, share experiences and trade stories, and laugh away their staggering dread of what might come. Charlie had a hard time keeping ponies, because soldier boys—total strangers—married our girls on what seemed a lark. The fear of death is a powerful aphrodisiac.

  Helen and Ruby were tied together by tragedy, yet remained wary of each other. Often I’d find the two of them sitting together in a corner of the club before we opened, conversing in low voices about who knows what. Now that Helen’s secret was out, her deep-seated distrust and hatred of the Japanese could spark on occasion. Ruby responded to Helen’s rare outbursts the same way she did when one of our boys talked about going overseas to kill Japs—by accepting another drink, jitterbugging until she exhausted her partner, and sleeping around. Unlike the rest of us, she was not only dancing on the edge of a volcano, she was looking down into its fiery center. I don’t know if she was afraid, thinking about jumping into it, or daring it to erupt. Maybe all three.

  One evening in early ’42, I sat at a table with some Navy officers stationed on Treasure Island, listening to them talk about how the place had changed since I’d last been there. The band was playing “The Japs Won’t Have a Ghost of a Chance” when Joe entered the main room and spotted me. The sureness of his gait and the way he held his shoulders told me he’d enlisted. I thanked the sailors and walked toward Joe, meeting him in the middle of the dance floor.

  “The United States Army Air Forces,” he said in greeting.

  Of course! What had previously been called the Army Air Corps was now the most active service of the military in recruitment, because Japan had large reserves of pilots, and we did not. The air forces wanted and needed educated men, and Joe was a college graduate, with two years of law school under his belt. The air forces was considered the elite service, and it was meant for him.

  “When do you report?” I asked.

  “Not for another couple of weeks,” he answered.

  Charlie gave Joe dinner and drinks on the house. All the girls came out to congratulate him. Ida sat on his lap like she belonged there. Joe nonchalantly accepted the attention like the glittering flyboy he’d become just by signing his name to a piece of paper. Ruby regarded him with an expression I recognized. Glitter attracts glitter, and no one was more entranced than Ruby. The heat that was always between them—even during these past months, when it
had been reduced to mere embers—once again ignited. In minutes, Ida was out on her ear, and Ruby had Joe completely in her thrall. Even after all this time, it was excruciating for me to see because once again the game had changed. There was something about the way he reacted to her that was elemental, primitive, sexual.

  That very night, Joe proposed to Ruby, and I couldn’t help but wish he’d chosen me instead. None of it made sense, but we were all scared of the future and hanging on to “normal” life in whatever way we could. I think—I believe—Joe mistook Ruby’s seductiveness, and how it made him feel, for love. And, of course, he was caught up in the moment as so many boys were. For Ruby’s part, Joe was a possible bridge to safety. That she would even consider marriage was the first dent in her armor—the rash fearlessness with which she faced the hatred around her. We were now at war, and my heart seemed insignificant compared to what Joe and Ruby were each facing. That didn’t mean they could get married in California, though.

  “Let’s drive to Mexico to tie the knot,” Ruby suggested.

  Joe vetoed the idea, saying it would be foolhardy to leave the country now. Instead, he wrote to the State Bar of Nevada, asking if he could marry an Oriental girl there, and received a letter denying the request on the basis that it was a crime for a Caucasian to “intermarry with any person of the Ethiopian or black race, Malay or brown race, or Mongolian or yellow race.” He next wrote to the second nearest state, Utah, and was informed that “marriage between whites and Mongolians, members of the Malay race, mulattos, or quadroons” was prohibited there as well. Each rejection infuriated Joe and further demoralized Ruby.

  “You’ve got to tell him the truth,” Helen insisted one night as the three of us sat together in the apartment on Powell, with our blackout curtains trapping all light within the four walls of our living room, Tommy asleep in a basket on the floor, and the radio playing in the background.

  “That I’m Japanese?” Ruby whispered the last word. “Not possible.”

  “What will happen when he finds out you’ve lied to him?”

  “If anyone told him, he’d be snowed under,” she admitted. “But who’s going to tell him?”

  “Oh, honey, you don’t want to live a lie,” Helen said, but she didn’t sound all that sincere to me. “It’s not worth it. If he loves you, your ancestry won’t matter.”

  If true, this was a stunning leap for Helen, who was always so against mixing. Or maybe she was just trying to comfort our friend. But Ruby’s case was different even from those of other Nisei. Her family had been suspected of signaling to Japanese bombers, her older brother was killed on a fishing boat in the minutes after the attack, her parents were accused of being fifth columnists. She was in a terrible and dangerous spot. That she hadn’t been picked up or reported already seemed miraculous.

  “Joe is so American.” Ruby spoke haltingly, as though she were afraid to reveal her true motives. “He’s the most American person I’ve ever met. If I marry him, won’t that prove I’m American too?”

  But wouldn’t Ruby still have the same black mark against her as her parents? Wouldn’t she seem especially suspect because she’d masqueraded as Chinese, dancing in a nightclub frequented by servicemen? If she were caught, wouldn’t that reflect badly on Joe as well? Maybe even ruin his chances for flight school?

  On February 19, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the secretary of war to designate certain areas as military zones and said that he could exclude any or all persons suspected of being enemies from those places. The next day, 250 enemy aliens, mostly Japanese, were rounded up in San Francisco and sent to Bismarck, North Dakota.

  “Where the hell is Bismarck?” Ruby asked, sassy as could be.

  On March 2, General DeWitt issued instructions that all people of Japanese ancestry living in San Francisco would be wise to voluntarily evacuate inland. Instantly, posters appeared on telephone poles—even in Chinatown—addressed “To All Japanese.” The instructions didn’t distinguish between alien and nonalien. (It hit me then: alien and nonalien. Whether citizens or not, all Japanese were now considered alien.)

  “Why should Princess Tai move?” Ruby asked.

  The next day, we went with Joe to the Port of Embarkation in Oakland. He was going to the newly opened Santa Ana Army Air Base for basic training, which would last for nine weeks. He chucked my chin and said, “Keep your nose clean, kid.” I blubbered like nobody’s business. Then he turned to Ruby. “I’ll get our marriage problem ironed out,” he promised. They kissed right in the open.

  JOE SENT POSTCARDS to Ruby and me every few days:

  This is an overnight city of thousands of men in the middle of bean and tomato fields. Hey, isn’t Hollywood supposed to be around here?

  I want to fly, but we don’t have planes, hangars, or runways. All we do is march, salute, and learn to obey orders.

  We’re taking tests nearly every day to see how book-smart we are, analyze our eye-hand coordination, and evaluate how we react under pressure, so the brass can decide where to assign us. Some guys will be lucky to become bombardiers, navigators, or mechanics. I only want the pilot’s seat. Keeping my fingers crossed for aviation training.

  We taped these to the mirror in the dressing room.

  We had our own concerns, minor though they were. The government ordered a 15 percent reduction in the allotment of yardage to be used for women’s and girls’ apparel. Dolman and leg-of-mutton sleeves became no-nos, as did tucks, pleats, plackets, hoods, and belts wider than two inches. We went along with the rules because we wanted to help our boys, but we suffered less than other women across the country, because theatrical costumes—along with bridal wear and religious and judiciary robes—were exempt from the new restrictions. In other words, we looked crummy by day and fabulous by night.

  Helen took her patriotism seriously. The next time she ordered a costume, she asked the seamstress to leave out the midsection to save a little fabric. Although she’d regained her shape, she’d still had a baby. To hide the imperfections, Eddie had her oil her midriff so it would shine. Now her midriff caught the light, but it could be slick. Eddie’s vanity wouldn’t allow him to admit he was wrong. Backstage we could hear the audience utter a collective “whoops” whenever she slipped a little through Eddie’s hands on a lift.

  Joe had been gone three weeks when, on March 27, General DeWitt made internment and relocation mandatory for all people of Japanese ancestry, beginning in April.

  “I’m not worried about that,” Ruby declared.

  Four days later, The San Francisco News reported that Joe DiMaggio’s parents might be evacuated from the city as enemy aliens of Italian descent. If Joe DiMaggio’s parents could be rounded up, then what would happen to my friend?

  “I’m Princess Tai,” she said, unabashed. “No one knows I’m Japanese.”

  But I did. Helen did. Charlie did. And some of the ponies did too.

  On April 1, Doolittle’s raiders sailed west under the Golden Gate Bridge, “bound for Tokyo.” Evacuation of the Japanese in San Francisco began five days later. Ruby’s Aunt Haru and Uncle Junji closed their store in Alameda and boarded a bus to the horse stables at the Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno to be housed with several thousand other Japanese. Their bank account had been frozen, and they’d been forced to sell their business, car, and most of their possessions for next to nothing, but they were allowed to take bedding and linens for each family member, toiletries, clothes, cutlery, dishes, and personal items as long as they could carry everything. Ruby made no attempt to contact them. On April 21, Japanese were ordered out of more Bay Area neighborhoods, with the result that several dancers from the Sky Room disappeared and had to be replaced.

  In May, Joe finished basic training and had a few days off before he started flight school. He came up to visit Ruby. He didn’t mention marriage, because he was completely focused on flying and the next stage of his training. “I’m going to Minter Field,” he announced to a group of us.
“It’s in Shafter, near Bakersfield. Even though I already have my pilot’s license, they have guys like me start right back at square one with an open-cockpit Stearman. If I don’t wash out—and I won’t—then I’ll move on to a four-hundred-fifty-horsepower canopied BT-13.”

  Ruby didn’t seem to mind that her wedding had been put on the back burner. “Maybe I don’t need to get married after all,” she said.

  SERVICEMEN MIGHT TAUNT—AND sometimes rough up—the Juggling Jins, our waiters, bartenders, and busboys, mistakenly accusing them of being “yellow-bellied Japs,” but they had a different attitude toward the girls in the club. Ruby, the other gals, and I spent God’s own time trying to appeal to our boys, doing what we could to manifest glamour in our suddenly unpredictable world. We developed a new hairstyle: teasing, piling, pinning, and spraying our hair until it looked like a cross between the Empire State Building and how the Mexican girls down in Los Angeles built their tresses into mile-high pompadours for Saturday night dances. We bought extra-long false eyelashes. We painted our lips to look bee-kissed. We attended to all our boys—whether soldiers, sailors, or airmen. A bunch of the show kids—like Helen and Eddie, Irene and Jack—were married, but there was a lot of fooling around. I mean a lot.