To the north, what appeared to be rolling green hills were actually the grassy ridges of San Bruno Mountain, with tracts of multihued houses coloring the lower slopes like wildflower fields. To the south, cars streamed past on Bayshore Highway, their drivers mostly oblivious to the eight thousand souls interned at Tanforan. Less oblivious, perhaps, were the pilots of the military aircraft that took off from Moffett Field, the sound of their engines a muted growl from afar. To the east, San Francisco Bay, cupped between mountains and city, dazzled blue in the afternoon sun.
“Gee whiz!” Donnie cried out.
“Oooh, high up!” Peggy agreed.
For a moment it was exhilarating, taking in the sweeping expanse of the world outside. Then Ruth’s gaze fell on the curtain of steel around the camp, the watchtowers with their guns pointed inward, and was reminded that the world outside was just that: out of bounds. The view only confirmed her loss of freedom: freedom that everyone outside took for granted, for their birthright. What should have been her birthright, and her children’s.
When she returned “home,” Ruth was amazed at the improvements her mother and Aunt Nishi had wrought. The once-gray windows matted with grime and horsehair were spotless, admitting welcome shafts of afternoon sunlight into the front room. The walls had been scrubbed to a fare-thee-well, the embalmed insects excavated from the dried whitewash—with the result that the whole room seem lighter, brighter, larger. Both floors and walls had been cleaned with bleach, and the smell of manure was no longer pervasive. The holes and cracks in the walls were now stuffed with wadded paper or tacked over with cardboard.
“Wow,” Ruth said, “you two did the work of seven women!”
“I think eight,” Nishi replied, “but who is counting?” They all laughed.
The children were tired so Ruth put them to bed in the back room. This freed her to help Etsuko and Nishi unpack. Inspired by Shizuko’s apartment, Ruth suggested hanging some colorful scarves on the walls and removing the stable doors and replacing them with something pretty. Resourcefully, Ruth began unscrewing the hinges of the Dutch doors with the flat edge of a coin. There were also several layers of paint covering the hinges that she chipped away with a nail file. Within half an hour she had removed the doors and each woman sacrificed one of her scarves to stitch together a lovely curtain between rooms, one that could be pulled back during the day to admit light and closed for privacy at night.
When Frank, Taizo, Jiro, and Ralph returned, they were greatly impressed with what the women had achieved—and vice versa. Using only scraps of lumber, pieces of iron, and discarded nails from a construction site, the men had built two sturdy chairs and had begun work on a table and a pair of wardrobe closets for each room. Ruth thought that her father looked particularly pleased and proud with their handiwork, and she was glad to see this after last night. As long as Taizo had something to do, as long as he felt useful, his spirit would meet the challenge.
“Uncle?” Ruth showed Jiro the Tanforan Totalizer. “There’s something here that might interest you.” She pointed out the headline MESSAGES VIA RED CROSS and read aloud, “‘Residents wishing to send messages to Japan or other foreign countries may do so through the American Red Cross by applying at First Aid headquarters in Mess Hall 3.’” She suggested, “Maybe you can write your family in Hōfuna, asking whether Akira has contacted them. Or write the Japanese draft board to find out if he was … inducted.”
Jiro took the paper excitedly. “Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I will do. I will do so at once! Thank you, Dai, thank you.” He embraced her in a bear hug. “You have given me hope, my sweet niece!”
That night they went to bed tired but with a sense of accomplishment.
Around midnight it started raining. The rhythm of the rain on the roof, even the rumble of distant thunder, was soothing at first—then Ruth began to hear a steady plop, plop, plop distressingly close at hand. She looked up. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated dozens of holes in the roof, like constellations in the night sky. In minutes all the adults were up, moving beds, using pots and buckets to catch the myriad of leaks.
“Shikata ga nai,” her father said with a shrug: Can’t be helped.
The next day he and Frank were up on the roof, patching the holes with bits of plywood and tar paper collected from the lumberyard (after first trudging through the ankle-deep mud of the wet track). Ruth looked up at her father and marveled—a man of sixty, doing the work of a twenty-five-year-old. She had never felt prouder, never loved him more, than at this moment.
* * *
The only lifeline connecting the closed universe of Tanforan with the outside was the daily mail delivery. Residents had to stand in long lines at the post office to receive their mail, but what else was new? Here they received letters from home—from white neighbors who were looking after their houses or belongings—or from friends and family at other relocation centers. Evacuees were given “letterforms”—lined greenish paper on which no more than twenty-four lines of text could be written, then folded into quarters for mailing, no postage necessary. To the mortification of everyone concerned, the address side of the form announced in large, boldfaced letters that it came from an INTERNEE OF WAR. Letters to correspondents outside the camp were subject to the Office of Censorship, which deleted any derogatory comments about camp conditions, though correspondence between evacuees in different camps was not. Jiro and Nishi received letters from their three daughters, who were interned in Poston, Arizona, and Ruth was happy to see a letter from Stanley, whose family was safe and living in not-dissimilar surroundings. The Portland Assembly Center had been hastily built on the site of the Pacific International Livestock Exhibition, fragrant with the same aromas as at Tanforan:
At first the placement of the camp baffled me, Stanley wrote, until I realized it was probably thought up by some horse’s ass and then it all made sense.
Ruth laughed out loud. She would have to share this with Ralph.
Like all evacuees, Taizo had sent change of address forms to his friends on the outside, and in response he received a letter back from an old friend, Mr. Hioki, who had owned a dry goods store next to the Watanabes on Kukui Street. When he saw the Honolulu postmark, Taizo’s heart sank, wondering how much more terrible life must be for his Japanese friends back in Hawai'i; Taizo had heard that martial law had been declared after Pearl Harbor. But Mr. Hioki’s letter was nothing like what he expected.
His friend told him that, unlike on the West Coast, the vast majority of Japanese living in Hawai'i had not been forced to relocate. Out of the 158,000 Japanese living in the islands—both Issei and Nisei, foreign nationals and American citizens alike—only two thousand individuals deemed “potentially dangerous” had been sent to internment camps at Sand Island and Honouliuli. Because the Japanese made up thirty-seven percent of the islands’ workforce, it was feared that the economy would collapse if they were all removed in a mass evacuation. And so the majority of Hawai'i’s Japanese residents were allowed to stay in their homes and, in most cases, retain their businesses.
Taizo was stunned. How was this possible? The mere possibility of a Japanese attack on the West Coast had been enough to justify evicting 110,000 Japanese from their homes and dumping them into stables reeking of horse manure. Hawai'i had been attacked, but the majority of its Japanese residents had been allowed to remain in their homes and continue their lives as if nothing had happened! How was this fair? How did this make any sense?
Sitting on the edge of his cot as Etsuko gathered laundry to be washed, Taizo revealed none of the shock and anger he felt. Once again his shame at having been duped by Jiro boiled up in him. Had he and his family stayed in Honolulu, they would not have lost their home and business. They would not be imprisoned. Taizo quickly folded the letter and stuffed it into his pants pocket. Etsuko must never see this; his family must never know of the life that might have been theirs had they remained in Hawai'i. It would only make them feel even worse over what they had lost. An
d selfishly, he could not bear the shame of seeing that loss in their eyes.
And so he left the barrack, disposed of the letter in a pile of leaves being burned near the grandstand, and bottled up the secret inside him.
But his anger at Jiro was not so easily contained. Each time he saw his brother he felt a festering rage and resentment. He may not have shown it on his face but, despite himself, his manner toward Jiro became colder; he rebuffed offers to play go, spoke barely a word to him during meals. Jiro read the change in Taizo’s body language; baffled, he finally approached him alone outside and asked, “Taizo, have I done something to offend you?”
Taizo snapped, “Have you done something? We are here because of what you have done, because of your lies! It is because of you that my family is living in a horse stall!”
Jiro hung his head. “I know. You are right. I am so sorry.”
“You are sorry,” Taizo said, “a sorry excuse for a brother!” Jiro looked deeply wounded. “For the moment we share living quarters, and out of respect for family harmony, we will speak no more of this. But know that in my heart, you are no longer worthy of respect, and I no longer consider you my brother!”
Taizo turned and stormed away. Shattered into silence, Jiro made no attempt to disguise the shame and sorrow in his face.
* * *
Gradually life at Tanforan improved: the dirt roads were covered in gravel; the mess halls began serving Japanese foods like rice, tea, and pickled vegetables. Frank worked long hours for all of sixteen dollars a month, leaving in the morning and not returning until after the last dinner shift—which was why Ruth, as she helped Etsuko with the ironing one day in late July, was so surprised to find him back home after having just left a half hour before. “Forget something?” she asked.
“No. I, uh, stopped at the post office before going to work.”
She could see he was holding a letter in his hand, and immediately feared the worst: “Is Stanley all right? Akira?”
“It’s not about either of them. But … it is bad news.” He turned to Ruth’s mother. “Etsuko? Could you give us a minute?”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Ruth demanded.
“It’s from Jim and Helen Russell.”
Ruth’s heart skipped a beat. “Slugger?”
Frank nodded. “After we left, he … spent a lot of time in our old driveway, like he was waiting for us to come home.” His voice caught. “Then he started running away. Looking for us, I guess. The first time they found him at your parents’ old house, and brought him back.”
“Oh God,” Ruth said, tears welling in her eyes.
“Jim and Helen tried to keep him indoors, but he clawed at the doors and draperies, desperate to get out. So they did the only thing they could, they tied him up with a rope in the backyard and brought him in at night. But one day he chewed through the rope and leaped the fence again. They searched everywhere. All over Florin. Elk Grove. All the way to Sacramento.” He added quietly, “They tried, Ruth. They did their best.”
Ruth began to sob. All she could think of was her good boy, lost, lonely, and perhaps starving somewhere, and all because of …
“God damn it!” she shouted in a burst of fury.
“Honey, calm down—”
But Ruth was not to be placated. To Frank’s shock, she pushed over the ironing board, which crashed to the floor, then gave it a violent kick.
“God damn it! Slugger—” It was a howl of grief unlike anything Frank had ever heard from her. She grabbed the water jar they used for the iron, but before she could throw it Frank grabbed her by the wrist.
“Honey! Stop it, before you hurt yourself!” He had never seen her like this. “I loved him too, honey. But—for Chrissake, he’s only a dog.”
Only a dog. Why did those words only fuel her rage?
“Let me go!” Her voice raw, anguished, she threw off his grip, losing her own grasp on the water jar, which struck the wall and shattered.
Ruth sank into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and wept uncontrollably, as if she had tapped some deep well of sorrow and loss. She ached to see her good boy one last time, his brown—no, black—furry face, his loving eyes, or just to know that he was safe. But somehow she knew she never would.
Chapter 9
In August it was announced that Tanforan would shut down in October and its residents would be transported to new relocation camps beginning September 15. These camps—collectively and whimsically dubbed “Shangri-La” by the Tanforan Totalizer—were in Gila River, Arizona; Poston, Arizona; Topaz, Utah; and Manzanar, California. Many Issei, who could not bear hot climates, were convinced they were being sent there to die; rumors spread like measles among the children that they would find rattlesnakes and scorpions curled up in their beds. And some evacuees were simply sad to say goodbye to the little community they had built in the shadow of the grandstand.
The train waiting on the railroad siding that day was an antique that looked as though it had not seen service since World War I. Shades were drawn inside, and in place of electric lights there were gas lamps. Armed soldiers again stood guard at either end of the car. The Watanabes—including Horace and Rose and their sons, Jack and Will—settled in, and though the children were restless at first, the tedium, dim light, and rhythmic motion of the train eventually lulled them to sleep. Ruth found herself dozing too until, after ten hours, the train whistled, slowed, and stopped.
The evacuees stepped into bright sunlight beside a tiny train depot whose sign read, somewhat forlornly, LONE PINE. But it was what loomed behind the depot that commanded their attention: a chain of towering granite mountains, their lower slopes green with the last breath of summer, their jagged summits serrating the blue desert sky. No one getting their first glimpse of the Sierra Nevada could fail to be awed by its beauty and grandeur. But they had little time to appreciate it before guards herded them onto buses.
There were no shades on these windows so Ruth was able to enjoy her first taste of Outside in four months. Lone Pine’s Main Street was populated with storefronts refreshingly familiar in their ordinary, small-town way: Hopkins Hardware, Safeway, Bank of America, Dow Hotel, and Sterling Service Station. A rider on horseback trotted past Buicks and flatbed trucks parked at the curb. A drugstore advertised MALTS and SODAS, and in that moment Ruth would have traded her left kidney for a chocolate milkshake.
And to the east, standing like a Pharos on some inland shore, Mount Whitney rose majestically almost two miles above the desert floor. Ruth pointed it out to Peggy and Donnie, who oohed and aahed at its heights.
But within minutes they had left Lone Pine behind like a mirage of gentler times and were traveling north on U.S. Highway 6.
* * *
The town of Manzanar, Spanish for “apple orchard,” was what much of the surrounding Owens Valley had once been—a thriving community of apple, pear, and peach growers and cattle ranchers—until the city of Los Angeles, rich and thirsty, began guzzling up land and water rights all over the valley. It wasn’t long before the farmers’ irrigation water was being siphoned out of the Owens River via the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Eventually even the groundwater was pumped right out from under those property owners who had not sold out to the rapidly expanding metropolis to the south. By 1935 most of the parched land had reverted to sage-covered desert. Then, after Pearl Harbor, Los Angeles was persuaded to lease six thousand acres of land to the U.S. government, which proceeded to bulldoze the long-abandoned site, stripping away any remaining topsoil and laying the foundation for a new Manzanar.
Manzanar Relocation Center was a sprawling city on the sand that resembled a huge Army base: five hundred wood-and-tar-paper barracks housing some ten thousand displaced Japanese Americans. There were also schools, churches, warehouses, stores, thirty-four mess halls, a fully equipped hospital, libraries, a canteen, fire and police departments, baseball diamonds, and athletic fields. The press liked to say it was “a typical American city,” but this was only true i
f five-strand barbed-wire fences and guard towers armed with .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns could be considered typical.
The Watanabes’ bus came to a stop just inside the stone entry gate, which was crowned by an odd pagodalike roof. The bus door folded open to admit a gust of hot dry air, like an oven door being opened. But it wasn’t until Ruth disembarked and got a good look at her surroundings that she understood, with a queasy feeling, why the camp had been built here.
A few miles west rose the eastern wall of the Sierra Nevada—its lofty summits more than ten thousand feet tall, Mount Williamson a giant among giants at fourteen thousand feet. The mountains extended as far south and as far north as the eye could see: the rocky spine of California, four hundred miles long, its granite peaks at once breathtaking and forbidding.
Opposite the highway were the rugged brown flanks of the Inyo Mountains, their peaks also thrusting ten thousand feet into the sky, forming a second line of ramparts from north to south. The two mountain ranges seemed to merge into vanishing points at each end of Highway 6, as if pinching off any hope of escape. They were bulwarks, Ruth realized, walling off the evacuees from the rest of the state, which had to be shielded from the likes of her and her family.
“It’s like … God’s own prison,” she said under her breath to Frank.
Frank nodded. “Guess there wasn’t room at the bottom of the ocean.”
Taizo had similar thoughts as he gazed up at the summits: Do the hajukin really fear us this much? Or do they hate us this much?
Etsuko sensed his unease and slipped her hand into his.
“We are together, all else can be endured,” she said.
Daughter of Moloka'i Page 14
