“Nope.” He stepped forward, handed the document to Taizo. “And you don’t have time to waste either.”
Taizo glanced, unsurprised, at the eviction notice. “We have not breached our contract. We have made a profit for you every year since 1930.”
“Technically. But you won’t this year, because you won’t be here to harvest the crop when the government ships you to hell and gone in six days.”
“Surely you will not let it rot in the fields!” Jiro said, horrified.
“It’s my land,” Dreesen said. “I’ll do with it as I like.”
Jiro did not bother to conceal his fury. But Taizo remained calm, if not quiescent. “So, you have what you have always wanted. We Japanese will be gone from Florin. What shall you and your fellow hajukin do with it, Sheriff?”
“We’ll farm it like you did.”
Taizo smiled. “If you were able to do that,” he said, “you would have done it before the first Japanese farmer tilled this unforgiving soil.” He turned his back on Dreesen. “May you find the fortune you deserve, Sheriff.”
* * *
Over the next two days the 2,500 Japanese residents of Florin presented themselves at the Elk Grove Masonic Hall to be registered. Ruth, Frank, and their children were each issued a manila identification card bearing a “family number”—2355—and each person was designated a letter: Frank was 2355-A, Ruth 2355-B, Donnie 2355-C, and Peggy 2355-D. Taizo, Etsuko, Jiro, and Nishi were assigned cards as well, but the ones for Issei—Japanese nationals—were colored red as a rising sun.
Ruth stared at the ID card in her hand and suddenly knew what it must feel like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.
“All evacuees must bring the following items upon departure for the Assembly Centers,” they were told. “Bedding and linens—no mattress—toilet articles, extra clothing, and essential personal effects for each family member, the total limited to forty-two pounds per person.”
Everyone received inoculations against diphtheria, smallpox, and, most painfully, typhoid, which made the children howl. Then, after they had settled down, Ruth told them that they would be going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days.
“Why?” Donnie wanted to know. “An’ what’s this for?” he asked, holding up the card with his number on it.
“You’re staying on the farm because we’re going on a big adventure and we’ve got to get everything ready! And that card is so you don’t get lost. So you be good and do whatever Grandma and Grandpa tell you to do, all right?”
“They will be just fine,” Etsuko said, lifting Peggy.
The Federal Reserve Bank had been charged with assisting evacuees in the sale or storage of their personal property—in Florin the Community Hall and the gymnasium at the Buddhist Church served as warehouses for the Reserve. All property had to be crated and marked with the family’s name and address. What couldn’t be warehoused was usually sold for a fraction of its value to predatory “used furniture dealers” who knew their victims had no alternative but to sell, and quickly.
The Haradas needed to dispose of the diner’s entire stock—grill, refrigerator, tableware, counter, booths. Anticipating this, the previous week they had placed an ad in the Sacramento Bee: “Diner, Florin, all appliances, sacrifice, evacuees.” Grifters descended on them like carrion birds, offering one or two hundred dollars for ten thousand dollars’ worth of inventory.
“Go to hell!” Frank snapped at them, but for days the opportunists flocked in, offering ten dollars for a new refrigerator or five bucks for a vinyl booth. Frank insisted on selling the diner as a whole, hoping that the buyer would keep it running and continue to employ Vince and the busboys.
Finally, a Sacramento businessman, Carl Clasen, offered a thousand dollars for the entire contents of the diner—and Frank and Ruth reluctantly agreed to take a dime on every dollar they had spent. Clasen promised to keep on Vince and the busboys—then reneged and fired them all the next day.
Frank felt sick inside. With Ruth’s approval he gave Vince a hundred dollars and the busboys fifty apiece to get keep them afloat until they could find jobs, possibly in the suddenly booming defense industry.
Vince looked at the C-note in his hand, then up at Frank. “This—this is bullshit what they’re doing to you,” he said vehemently. “You and the missus—you’re the best goddamn Americans I ever met.” His voice broke, and all he could do was shake their hands. Ruth wanted to cry.
The day before evacuation, Florin’s business district was a ghost town, the windows of Japanese-owned stores boarded up with wooden planks, the street empty but for those rushing to divest themselves of their possessions.
Ruth and Frank were required to sell their car to the Army for the war effort, but members of the Japanese American Citizens League—a.k.a. the JACL—helped them crate up their furniture and move it into the Community Hall. Florin was now divided into four districts, and residents of each would be sent to different temporary “assembly” centers, with no respect to the familial ties so important to the Japanese. “We have to move in with my parents,” Ruth had said upon learning this. “We have to keep the family together.”
Frank had agreed. That left only one problem, and he was waiting for them in their backyard when a cab dropped them off at their empty house. They heard the barks of pleasure at their arrival coming from behind the gate.
“Oh God,” Ruth said under her breath.
“Bastards won’t even let us take our dog.”
“Should we bring him over to the farm, so the kids can say goodbye?”
“I think that will only make things worse,” Frank said. “He’ll be here when we get back—whenever that is.”
They brought Slugger next door to Jim and Helen Russell’s house. The couple was already standing in the doorway, waiting for them.
“You’re going to stay here while we’re gone,” Ruth told the dog, hoping somehow he understood. She hugged him, kissed him on his snout. “You be a good boy for Jim and Helen, okay?” Her voice broke. “We love you, Slugger.”
“He’ll be fine,” Helen said. “He’s crazy about Cathy and Jeff.”
“Thank you so much for doing this.”
“Happy to help,” Jim said. “If Bob Fletcher can look after the Okamoto, Nitta, and Tsukamoto farms, the least we can do is look after a dog.”
“If you ask me,” Helen said, voice quavering, “someday this country is going to regret what it’s doing today. That’s my opinion.”
Jim said lightly, “Don’t look at me, I voted for Wendell Willkie.” They all laughed. “Come on, I’ll drive you over to your parents’ place.”
Helen and Ruth hugged goodbye, then Ruth and Frank got into Jim’s truck. As he backed it out of his driveway onto the street, Ruth looked back and saw Slugger standing there, his head cocked to one side as if puzzled.
Tears in her eyes, she had to force herself to turn away.
When they reached the farm, Jim promised to pick them up the next morning.
Etsuko was waiting for them on the doorstep. “Welcome home, butterfly,” she said with a sadness in her voice that alarmed Ruth.
“What’s wrong, Okāsan?”
Etsuko, sounding shaken, told her, “Jiro received word today. Akira is being deported back to Japan.”
“What!” Ruth cried. “That’s crazy! He’s never even been to Japan.”
“Jiro fears he will be drafted into the Imperial Army. There is no consoling him.”
Still reeling, Ruth and Frank entered the house, as bare as the Haradas’ home. All that was left were a few mattresses to sleep on that night.
Donnie and Peggy rushed in to greet them, confused by all that was going on. “Where’s Slugger?” Donnie asked.
“He’s staying at Jim and Helen’s house until we get back.”
“When do we get back?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Ruth admitted.
“Where are we going?”
Frank said with false cheer, “To a camp, sport. Camps are
fun, right?”
“And we’ll all be together,” Ruth assured them, even if it was a lie. “All” of them, she knew, might never be together again.
* * *
On Friday, May 29, Taizo woke before sunrise, washed, put on his business suit, then slipped outside to watch for the last time as the sun rose on what would always be, in his heart, his land—his and Jiro’s. The fields were beautiful at dawn, the sun pulling back night’s blanket on a bed of endless green and ripe red, the morning dew glistening like teardrops on the leaves. Taizo ached to stay here, in this moment, forever, one with the land he had loved and nurtured for almost two decades. But he forced himself to recall what was said, so long ago, after beloved Buddha had died:
Impermanent are all component things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature:
They come into being and pass away,
Release from them is bliss supreme.
Taizo’s mind sought bliss but his heart found only loss.
The Elk Grove train station was busier than anyone had ever seen it at eight-thirty in the morning. Florin’s Japanese had been leaving in daily shifts of five hundred per train; this group was the last to go. A ragged line of people—men in Sunday suits, women in dresses and hats, many openly weeping—was wrapped like a wilted garland around the tiny depot. A wooden ramp was piled high with rolls of bedding, suitcases, boxes, crates, duffel bags—so many lives and livelihoods, now reduced to a mountain of luggage and bundles of linen.
Jim Russell helped Ruth and Frank unload their luggage, and, sticking close to Taizo, Etsuko, and the rest of the family, they got in line for the nine o’clock departure. Jim’s was not the only white face there—Jerry and Vivian Kara, who were taking care of the Yamada, Tanaka, and Tamohara farms, had ferried each family in turn to the train station—but they and a few others represented only a fraction of the Caucasian population.
“Helen made sandwiches for you to eat on the train.” Jim handed Frank a big paper bag stuffed with food. “Ham and cheese for the adults, peanut butter and jelly for the kids. Write us as soon as you get an address.”
“Are you sure?” Frank asked. “The FBI might consider you … suspect.”
“Screw the FBI. You’re not the enemy. You’re our friends.”
Frank and Jim shook hands; both men looked as if they wanted to cry. The line inched toward the Southern Pacific locomotive sitting on the other side of the depot. There was no platform at the station—passengers had to walk through knee-high weeds and sage scrub before they could board the train. Ruth asked herself, How can this be happening? This is America. Covenants of trust had been broken, faith in law betrayed.
Frank lifted first Peggy, then Donnie, into the railroad car. Ruth followed, her parents, brothers, uncle, and their families right behind.
They walked to the back of the car and found seats. They would not be separated, at least. When the last passengers had boarded, the train whistle blew with the shrillness of a scream and the train slowly moved down the tracks, picking up speed as they left the station. The landscape rolling by attracted the children’s attention, curiosity getting the better of their tears.
And then suddenly two soldiers with rifles and bayonets were moving through the car, rolling down the blinds on the windows, shutting out the world. The car darkened, lights snapped on, but too late; Donnie and Peggy began wailing again, along with other children in the car.
“It’s okay, sweetie, it’s going to be all right,” Ruth lied as she rocked Peggy, then, as one of the soldiers passed, she snapped at him, “Why did you have to lower the shades? Can’t we even see where we’re going?”
The soldier—barely out of his teens—looked at her and said, not without some chagrin, “It’s not for you, ma’am. It’s for the people outside. So they … can’t see you.”
Then each soldier took up position at opposite ends of the car and shouldered their rifles.
Ruth was thunderstruck. My God, she thought. We’ve had everything taken away from us—we’re homeless; powerless—and yet we’re so fearsome and repugnant that the whites have to be protected from the very sight of us?
Too angry to cry, Ruth held tight onto her children as the train hurtled blindly into an unknown future.
PART TWO
Gaman
Chapter 8
1942
The grandstand at Tanforan Assembly Center towered over the former racetrack like a half-completed ziggurat—once a temple of fortune, now a prison for those with the misfortune to have been born with a Japanese face. Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, California—twelve miles south of San Francisco—was coiled in a perimeter of steel, a high barbed-wire fence fortified by armed guard towers. Two soldiers opened the entry gates to admit busloads of hapless men, women, and children; they spilled out of buses, staggering under the weight of what was left of their lives. They gazed up at the two-story clubhouse beside the grandstand—where high rollers once followed the races from swanky box seats—with a mix of bewilderment and disbelief. They saw rifles pointed at them from watchtowers as well as dozens of tar-papered, military-style barracks squatting incongruously in the infield—like some absurd, unholy amalgam of sport and war.
Ruth shouldered Peggy and kept a tight grip on Donnie’s hand. Her children’s wide eyes took in the strangeness of their surroundings. Life had long since stopped making sense for them; by the time the family transferred from railroad car to Greyhound bus, the kids had gone silent and numb.
Beside her, Frank carried two heavy suitcases and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Behind them were Taizo and Etsuko, Ralph, Horace and Rose and their two sons, Jack and Will, with Jiro and Nishi taking up the rear.
“Everyone stay together,” Ruth called out, seeing the way guards were herding evacuees into a long line snaking toward the side of the grandstand.
“Say, is it too late to put ten bucks on War Admiral in the fifth?” Ralph piped up, drawing at best rueful chuckles from his family.
A soldier approached the group. “Folks, if you’ll just get into the intake line over there, we’ll get you all registered and assigned quarters.”
“Thank you,” Frank said. Ruth rankled at his courtesy.
They got in line, but it took an hour before they even reached the entrance. Indeed, waiting in line would turn out to be the number one recreational activity at Tanforan: residents waited in line at the mess hall, at the post office, waited to use the latrine, the showers, the laundry. Now they inched their way toward one of the many cubbyholes under the grandstand and, once inside the cavernous interior, waited another half hour until reaching the front of the queue. Here men were separated from women and children from adults as everyone was searched from head to toe, frisked for contraband or concealed weapons. Straight-edge razors, pocket knives, and flasks of liquor were confiscated. Ruth’s family carried none of these, so they were directed individually into small curtained compartments and ordered to undress. Ruth unbuttoned her blouse and a Nisei woman whose nametag identified her as NURSE MORI shined a flashlight into Ruth’s mouth, listened to her heartbeat, made sure her vaccinations were up to date, then discreetly inquired whether Ruth had any “skin or venereal diseases.” Mortified, Ruth said she did not, even as she heard a burst of laughter from outside; when she left the compartment, she found Ralph still chuckling.
“When they asked, I told ’em I had hoof and mouth disease and so they had to send me back to Florin. Got a rise out of ’em.”
“I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself, Ralph,” Ruth said sharply.
“Sis, this is all so nuts, you gotta laugh.”
The family reunited at the registration tables, where Nisei clerks handed them forms to fill out and gave them yet another family identification number, 14793. But when they attempted to assign Ruth and her family to a different barracks from her parents, Ruth protested, “We are one family, we will not be separated!”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we are limited by th
e availability of required spaces. We’ll do the best we can to keep your family together.”
Ruth, Frank, their children, Taizo, Etsuko, Ralph, Jiro, and Nishi were assigned to Barrack 9, Apartments 1 and 2. But Horace and his family were assigned to a different barrack on the opposite side of the track.
“Ruth, it’s okay,” Horace said. “We’re in the same camp, it’s not like we’ll never see each other again. You take care of Mom and Pop, all right?” She nodded. “Unfortunately,” he added dryly, “you also get custody of Ralph.”
Ralph gave him a Bronx cheer, easing the tension.
One of the volunteer guides—a Nisei boy of fifteen named Ben—offered to show them to their quarters, escorting them out onto the racetrack. This was clearly Tanforan’s Main Street; even in late afternoon there were hundreds of evacuees taking a stroll around the track, chatting with friends or just getting some exercise. All seemed to be smiling. Ruth couldn’t tell if they were genuinely in good spirits or merely had on their “outside faces.” Certainly Ben was chipper enough as he pointed out the sights.
“The main mess hall is back there in the grandstand, by the by. There are three dinner shifts, the first starts at four-thirty. Expect a wait.” More barracks were being assembled in the infield. Ben led the Watanabes to the far end of the track. “Over there, that’s one of our nursery schools—I see you’ve got little ones, ma’am, if you need some time alone to do housework, the preschool’s open every morning from nine to eleven. Oh, and if you’re partial to washing in hot water, I’d get to the showers early, by six A.M.”
They veered off the dirt road, through a grove of eucalyptus trees that ringed the track, toward one of many long, green-roofed buildings, noticeably older than the other barracks. “There it is,” Ben said cheerily. “Barrack 9.”
Barrack 9 was only partly occupied, but the barrack opposite it held a full complement of evacuees. All of its doors were propped open and the residents were outside their apartments, sitting in handmade chairs or working in victory gardens. The carefully tended flowers, pretty window boxes, and leafy vegetable patches lent it color and a homey touch, and many doors bore whimsical names like “The Bel-Air Arms” and “Ritz Apartments.” But there was no mistaking—at least not to a farm family—what the original purpose of the buildings were.
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