Heart Mountain

by Ehrlich, Gretel;

  Took off all my clothes and got in the shower. As soon as that warm water hit me, I began to cry—not out of sadness, but rage. I banged my fists against the shower wall. Who am I angry at? I wondered. At my parents, at society for not accepting us, at myself for all the bitterness that’s in me?

  Something caught my eye and I turned. It was Abe-san. “Why are you wasting water when you have so much in here?” he yelled, pointing to my eyes.

  I turned the water off and stood naked before him. He just smiled and walked away.

  January 23. The weather seems to be mimicking the calendar. It’s the twenty-third of January and it’s twenty-three below zero tonight. Went to bed early because it was the only way to get warm. Mariko woke me. In whispers, she ordered me to get dressed so I put on all the clothes I could find and followed her outside. Then I saw for myself what the excitement was all about. The Northern Lights filled half the sky. It was mesmerizing. Thick rays shot up like church spires, and an intersecting cloud pulsed with color so that the ceiling of the sky slanted low over us—but it was all a mass of gases, nothing solid. Will and Abe-san came out and the four of us huddled together, our necks craning.… Isn’t it odd that such extravagant, otherworldly beauty goes hand in hand with desolation.

  January 28. Today, Secretary of War Henry Stimson announced that a special combat unit would be open to Japanese-Americans. How can this be when, after Pearl Harbor, we were all reclassified 4-C, citizens ineligible for military service because of ancestry, then, for those of us in coastal areas, put behind barbed wire? In the next week it’s said we will first be required to fill out a questionnaire “to determine our loyalty”—this apparently rigged up from a Navy Intelligence form. Many here were already in the service before Pearl Harbor, then jerked out, and I’m sure others would have gladly volunteered when they came of age, had we not been summarily incarcerated. Perhaps it is us who should be questioning them.

  The “leave clearance form” was given out today. A staggering confusion has beset the camp. It’s four pages long and poses thirty questions. The purported purpose is to determine who among us is suitable and eligible to leave the Camps on a permanent basis to return to college or work in any one of the inland states. In other words, Uncle Sam wants us off his back, though we’re still not “allowed” to return to our coastal homes. Furthermore, I don’t think it is a coincidence that the army recruiters are showing up to enlist volunteers into an all-Nisei combat unit.

  Two ways of looking at these events has become painfully clear in the last twelve hours. The Sentinel editorial, called “Vindication,” states that the Nisei unit is “an epic milestone in the long uphill battle to reestablish ourselves as Americans.”

  Will Okubo and the like are calling it the “Jap-Crow Unit” and the loyalty questionnaire “an insidious trick.”

  The two crucial questions are as follows:

  27—“Are you willing to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States on combat duty whenever ordered?”

  28—“Will you swear unqualified allegience to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and foreswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or to any other foreign government, power, or organization?”

  To ask us to answer these questions is adding insult to injury. How can we be prisoners and answer question 27 in the affirmative? And if we answer yes to question 28, it implies we did in fact have an allegiance to Japan which we are now relinquishing.

  On top of it all, recruiting officers appeared this afternoon to enlist volunteers into a segregated, all-Nisei combat unit. The message is implicitly clear: in order to get a leave clearance pass and get out of this Camp—even if it means we can’t go back to our California homes, which are still off limits—we have to offer ourselves up to be slain.

  Got together with Ben and came up with a way to answer the Leave Clearance Form: “Under the present circumstances, I’m unable to answer either question.” This, we wrote out as an example for others to use and we pasted them on the mess hall and latrine doors. I think it will help those who are undecided on the issue and feel as Ben and I do, that the government has done us an injustice. How could anyone feel otherwise?

  When people saw what we had written out, they began coming to us for advice. It’s an outrage to ask young Nisei men to sign up for a war which purports to protect democracy when our own democratic rights have been unconstitutionally withdrawn from us. I told one of them: “If we were let out of these camps and allowed to return home, then I’d be the first one to sign up. I believe in defending my country and I feel it’s my duty to do it. But first, we must take a good look at our own government policies before we start throwing stones.”

  February 1. The Army recruiters have taken over my office and one other at the Sentinel. Let them have it and we’ll show them how little good it will do. I noticed they closed the blinds for fear that the guys who sign up for combat duty will encounter problems with those of us who don’t.

  The two questions have split the camp. While standing in line to use the latrine, Joe Fukubata said he’d answered no-no, even though he’d tried to enlist before evacuation. But he’s seen how the camps have broken the backs of a lot of guys and now all he wants to do is fight for the rights of those in the Camps. “When I have to give up my life for democracy, I want to see the goddamned thing first,” he said.

  Many families have one son in Camp, and another son in the army. Others have one son here and another son caught in Japan when war broke out. Pondering all this, I’ve come to understand the conscientious objector’s view as well (though we resistors are only saying no on constitutional grounds, not religious ones). Many people here have close relatives in Japan. For them it comes down to shedding blood. And if shedding the blood of a relative is unthinkable, then shedding the blood of someone else’s relative is just as bad. It’s simply a matter of the Golden Rule.

  February 8. The Sentinel’s editor described the registration-volunteer program as “a forward step to what the great majority of Heart Mountain residents have been striving for since evacuation” and as “an indication of the possibilities now opened following officialdom’s change of heart.”

  Will and Ben countered the editorial with the formation of something called the “Heart Mountain Congress.” Their first act was to send a letter to all other relocation camps telling people that the Japanese American Citizen’s League—JACL—whose voice our editor was parroting, did not represent the feelings of the majority. Furthermore, they offered as an option what we’ve now begun calling “conditional registration,” i.e., full restoration of citizenship rights as a precondition to registering and volunteering for the army.

  Already, some people are calling our actions “dissident” and “disloyal.” “Disloyalty” implies treason, but under the Constitution, the crime of treason is defined very narrowly as “offenses of espionage, sabotage, and seditious conspiracy.” Yet, thinking something without acting on it in any way is not a crime. Not a single person of Japanese ancestry has been indicted for a crime of treason since the war began. Even so, the two thousand Issei rounded up immediately after Pearl Harbor and sent to special prison camps—with no evidence on which to make a charge—have since been “paroled” to war relocation camps. Furthermore, we Nisei are constantly referred to as “enemy aliens,” “Japanese,” and “Japanese aliens,” and in the same breath we’re now being tricked into giving our lives for “our country.”

  Saturday. All activities in the Camp have been suspended in order to facilitate registration. The Camp has polarized into little knots of “Yes-Yes” JACLers and “No-No” militants. Bull sessions run all night long every night. In the midst of it all, found myself with Emi. On Iwasaka’s advice, went to an empty room in the hospital—since he works in the X-ray room and lets us in, nobody’s the wiser. We clung to each other out of mutual desperation—and it was fine.

  Feb
ruary 10. Will and some of the other activists have drawn up a petition. Will delivered it as a speech on the eve of registration:

  The minds of many of us are still shrouded in doubt and confusion as to the true motives of our government when they invite our voluntary enlistment at the present time. It has not been explained why some American citizens who patriotically volunteered at the beginning of the war were rejected by the army.

  Furthermore, our government has permitted damaging propaganda to continue against us. Also she has failed to reinstate us in the eyes of the American public. We are placed on the spot, and our course of action is in the balance scale of justice; for our government’s honest interpretation of our stand will mean absolute vindication and admission of the wrong committed. On the other hand, if interpreted otherwise by misrepresentation and misunderstandings, it will amount to renewed condemnation of this group.

  Although we have yellow skins, we too are Americans. We have an American upbringing. Therefore, we believe in fair play. Our firm conviction is that we would be useless Americans if we did not assert our constitutional rights now; for unless our status as citizens is cleared and we are really fighting for the high ideas upon which our nation is based, how can we say to the white American buddies in the armed forces that we are fighting for the perpetuation of democracy, especially when our fathers, mothers, and families are in concentration camps, even though they are not charged with any crime?

  We believe that our nation’s good faith is to be founded on whether it moves to restore full privileges at the earliest opportunity.

  Mid-February. Life is always a lot of problems. Mom said she thinks that any Nisei who volunteers will be put on the frontlines and killed off. Now the Kibei, Japanese-Americans educated in Japan, have become a solid anti-WRA group. They go around in little gangs at night and threaten JACLers. Last night someone in another block was beaten up. Pop was so scared he hid under the bed.

  We’re not the only Camp having trouble. The army and the WRA are pressuring everyone to complete the questionnaire, making threats of twenty years’ imprisonment if we don’t comply. I abhor this. But I also abhor the news that when an army man showed up at one of the other camps to give a conciliatory talk, the Kibei stood up and sang the Japanese national anthem!

  At Tule Lake we heard that many Kibei, Nisei, and Issei lined up at the Internal Security Office to apply for repatriation to Japan. That same week, a whole block refused to register and when the army sent the trucks around to pick them up, they wouldn’t board. The agitators were arrested and thrown into a stockade. A minister, reportedly pro-registration, was set upon and severely beaten. Same thing at Gila and Manzanar.

  Mom and Pop sat me down tonight to have another talk. I started laughing before they said anything. These “talks” of theirs suddenly struck me as funny. Were they going to tell me I had a sister now? Or were they announcing their intention to repatriate to Japan?

  Mom had to get me a glass of water to settle me down. Felt like a kid again. They said I should answer “Yes-Yes” and finish my doctorate, get on with my life and not worry about them anymore. At first I felt pleasant surprise, then distrust. What did they have up their sleeves now? I didn’t tell them I had applied to the University of Chicago. I don’t feel constrained to tell them my plans—they didn’t ask me if I wanted to be raised by strangers.

  Woke up in the middle of the night. Went to the latrine. Felt like I was entering some kind of black wave just cresting. Couldn’t move my eyes off the ground as I walked. Sitting on the john, realized my feet were numb—stupid me. I had on sandals and there’s a foot of snow on the ground.

  This Camp has come to symbolize everything I’ve hated: exile, deviousness, injustice. I’ve never known bitterness like this. I want to live!

  Went back to the apartment and lit a match over Mom’s and Pop’s heads and just stared at them. They looked like strangers—an old Japanese couple asleep. Nothing they are has anything to do with me. My looks betray who I really am.

  16

  The day an arctic blast sent the thermometer to thirty degrees below zero, McKay grained the saddle horses, doctored a sick bull, and soaked an old gelding’s foot in a bucket of warm water and epsom salts for a wire cut below the pastern. The lake that had thrown up its diamond surface to him every day, summer and fall, was now a solid block of ice, six inches thick. He, Bobby, and Pinkey had loaded hay the day before; now they harnessed the team and fed from the back of the wagon as they bumped over frozen ground. McKay’s breath whitened on his wool scarf and patches of frostbite appeared on his cheeks like medallions. The cough that had begun the week before deepened. That afternoon, when he started back to the ranch after putting the team away, it hurt to breathe. He held the scarf over his mouth as he walked. Once, he stopped to lean on a fence post and wondered whether he could make it to the house. He tried to take shallow breaths. The pain in his lungs felt like heat, a tissue searing. Inside, he didn’t take off his coat or his scarf, rigid with frost, but lay down on the floor by the cook stove, all the heat escaping above him, and when the scarf finally thawed, drops of water fell from it and froze again on the pine floor.

  When McKay woke, he thought Mariko was in the room. Something warm pressed on the small of his back. Was it her hand? Lying on his side, facing a window, he could see the ranch enveloped by snow clouds. Once in a while they broke, like a fever, and pulled apart, and the land sloped up and became Heart Mountain.

  The cough intensified. It made everything in his chest break like the rubble of European cities that had been bombed. The rubble rose to his throat and he choked, his mouth open for breath. The clot passed and he lay back and wiped his eyes.

  “Madeleine …”

  “Oh, McKay … you’re so sick.…” She leaned down to him.

  “I just can’t get warm; that’s all.” His voice was faint and he suppressed another cough. “When did you get here?”

  “Two days ago. I’ve been sleeping on your floor.”

  McKay saw his mother’s quilt beside the bed. He looked at Madeleine again. “Where have I been?”

  She laughed softly. “Right here, in bed. You just don’t remember.”

  McKay closed his eyes. He thought back through the days since he had unharnessed the team, but they did not separate out and come into his head clearly. Mariko had pressed against his back once. Or had that been Madeleine? The rest was time in a lump, with shadows and chills and light drifting across bedcovers and black skies with points of light and something that made him wonder if he was dead.

  Madeleine unbuttoned his pajama top and rubbed a salve on his chest. Was it eucalyptus? The smell of it reminded him of Mexico, and his father’s ranch there.

  “Who’s been feeding?” he asked.

  “All of us. Don’t worry. The work’s getting done.”

  McKay smiled weakly. He tried to summon up the details of what had to be done each winter day, but couldn’t. He slept again. When he woke, the room was dark and Madeleine was under the quilt on the floor. She was lying on her side, and he could see the curve of her waist and hip—he had been coughing and his pillow was wet from sweat.

  He had dreamed he was at the hospital waiting for Abe-san’s arm to be treated. Mariko’s hair was blue. Her hand, reaching out to him, was the head of a worm. Then McKay was holding a sword. Legs and arms and clothes and faces kept falling as he sliced. Then he tried to cut away the false engagements of fever; his desire for her dropped until nothing was left but her head, rolling. He laughed hard, but was it a laugh anyone could hear? He tried to stop, but the head rolled and rolled.… Sitting up suddenly, he yelled. “Mariko.”

  Bobby shoved two pillows behind McKay’s back and helped him sit. He held a cup to McKay’s lips.

  “What old bush did you cut down to make this stuff?” McKay asked. He had been drinking Bobby’s potions since he was seven and claimed he had never been cured.

  “Just drink,” Bobby commanded. “It’s good for you.”<
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  And he did. Later, McKay realized he had been moved from his screened porch to his parents’ bedroom. He had never slept there before, but it was close to the kitchen and the heat from the wood stove warmed it, as did the sun. He smiled. He had been conceived in this bed, and now perhaps he would die there.

  “Bobby?” McKay spoke with his eyes closed as if he were blind. When he opened them, Bobby was sitting on a chair by the bed. “I’m going to get married.”

  “Oh …” Bobby looked surprised. “Who you marry?”

  McKay’s face dropped. Then he fell back, laughing, but it was a sad laugh, and his head turned from side to side. “I don’t know,” he squeaked. He slept again.

  When the sun slipped from the window, he didn’t know if he was awake or asleep, until he saw himself in a white room or else a dark room, covered with sun. He was swimming. There was a tunnel and water and blue bubbles breaking against his unshaven face. Sometimes he lifted far above the water, and it was a blue string suddenly blackened by the shadow of wings. Then he dropped, and the impact of his body on the sea made it burn.

  Madeleine lay curled on top of the blankets beside him. His hand was under her and his arm had gone to sleep. When he pulled it free, she sat up with a start.

  “I was dreaming about Henry,” she said sleepily. “His eyes looked so green.…”

  McKay’s gaze shifted to the window. He watched the moon rise. The last night he had ridden to Camp to see Mariko something broke as if a vase had been thrown and the water had washed warmly over his feet. Ablution. That was the word he had been waiting for. The holiness of water touching the body of a loved one.…

  Madeleine wrung out a wet towel. She wiped his forehead, then held the warm cloth against his chest and let the steam rise. When the compress grew cold, she dipped it in steaming water and laid it on him again.

  The room was quiet. Sometimes McKay heard the wood stove tick and a log fall into itself. Winter fastened things together. He stretched his arm out and it fell against Madeleine’s leg. She put the towel down and knelt. Her long braid had come undone and the hair lay in three cords down her back. She held his rough hand to her lips and rubbed her cheek against the hard knuckles. In a voice so soft he could barely hear, she said his name over and over. He thought it sounded like a bird calling to another bird.