A lot of in-laws were there, and other Japanese families, and Papa’s fishing cronies, a big Portuguese named Goosey who used to eat small hot yellow peppers in one big bite, just to make me laugh, and an Italian named Blackie, with long black sideburns and black hair slicked straight back, wearing black and white shoes and a black suit with white pinstripes. These two were his drinking buddies, as flushed now as Papa was from the hot sake that was circulating and the beer and whiskey.
Papa announced that it was time to carve the pig. We all stood back to make a wide half circle around that end of the table. He had supervised the roasting, now he was going to show us how you cut up a pig. When he knew everyone was watching this—we were his audience, this dining room his theater—he lifted a huge butcher’s cleaver, and while Goosey and Blackie, trying not to giggle, held each side of a long cutting board beneath its neck, Papa chopped the head off in two swift, crunching strokes. All the men cheered—the sons, the carousers.
The women sucked in their breath and murmured. Three more strokes and Papa had the animal split—two sides of roast pork steaming from within. With serious face and a high-held, final flick he split each side in half, quartering the pig. Then he set the cleaver down, stepped back, reached behind him without looking for a towel one of my sisters somehow had there waiting, and as he wiped his hands he said imperiously to his sons, “Cut it up. You girls, bring the platters here. Everybody wants to eat.”
That’s how I remember him before he disappeared. He was not a great man. He wasn’t even a very successful man. He was a poser, a braggart, and a tyrant. But he had held onto his self-respect, he dreamed grand dreams, and he could work well at any task he turned his hand to: he could raise vegetables, sail a boat, plead a case in small claims court, sing Japanese poems, make false teeth, carve a pig.
Whatever he did had flourish. Men who knew him at Fort Lincoln remember him well. They were all Issei, and he was one of the few fluent in Japanese and English. Each morning the men would gather in their common room and he would read the news aloud, making a performance of it by holding the American paper in front of him and translating into Japanese on the spot, orating the news, altering his voice to suit the senator, the general, or the movie star.
Papa worked as an interviewer there, helping the Justice Department interview other Isseis. He almost became an alcoholic there on rice wine the men learned to brew in the barracks. And somehow, during the winter of ’42, both of his feet were frostbitten. No one quite knows how. Papa never talked about that to anyone after he got back. But it isn’t difficult to imagine. He arrived from Long Beach, California, at the beginning of January, in a country where cattle often freeze to death, and he was of course a prisoner of war.
seven
Fort Lincoln: An Interview
“What is your full name?”
“Wakatsuki Ko.”
“Your place of birth?”
“Ka-ke, a small town in Hiroshima-ken, on the island of Honshu.”
“What schools did you attend in Japan?”
“Four years in Chuo Gakko, a school for training military officers.”
“Why did you leave?”
“The marching. I got tired of the marching. That was not what I wanted to do.”
“Have you any relatives serving in the military, now or in the past?”
“My uncle was a general, a rather famous general. He led the regiment which defeated the Russians at Port Arthur in nineteen five.”
“Have you ever been in contact with him since coming to the United States?”
“No. I have contacted no one in Japan.”
“Why not?”
“I am what you call the black sheep in the family.”
“So you have never returned to your homeland?”
“No.”
“Because you are the black sheep.”
“And because I have never been able to afford the trip. I have ten children.”
“What are their names?”
“How can I remember that many names?”
“Try.
“William is the oldest. Then Eleanor, Woodrow, Frances, Lillian, Reijiro, Martha, Kiyo, and let’s see, yes, May.”
“That is only nine.”
“Nine?”
“You said there were ten.”
“I told you, it is too many to remember.”
“It says here that you are charged with delivering oil to Japanese submarines off the coast of California.”
“That is not true.”
“Several submarines have been sighted there.”
“If I had seen one, I would have laughed.”
“Why?”
“Only a very foolish commander would take such a vessel that far from his home fleet.”
“How can you explain this photograph?”
“Let me see it.”
“Aren’t those two fifty-gallon drums on the deck of your boat?”
“Yes.”
“What were you carrying in fifty-gallon drums ten miles from shore?”
“Chum.”
“Chum?”
“Bait. Fish guts. Ground-up fish heads. You dump it overboard and it draws the mackerel, and you pull in your nets, and they are full of fresh fish. Who took this photograph anyway? I haven’t gone after mackerel in over a year.”
“What do you think of the attack on Pearl Harbor?”
“I am sad for both countries. It is the kind of thing that always happens when military men are in control.”
“What do you think of the American military ? Would you object to your sons serving?”
“Yes. I would protest it. The American military is just like the Japanese.”
“What do you mean?”
“They also want to make war when it is not necessary. As long as military men control the country you are always going to have a war.”
“Who do you think will win this one?”
“America, of course. It is richer, has more resources, more weapons, more people. The Japanese are courageous fighters, and they will fight well. But their leaders are stupid. I weep every night for my country.”
“You say Japan is still your country?”
“I was born there. I have relatives living there. In many ways, yes, it is still my country.”
“Do you feel any loyalty to Japan or to its Emperor?”
Silence.
“I said, do you feel any loyalty...”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“When were you born?”
“I am the interrogator here, Mr. Wakatsuki, not you.”
“I am interested to know when you were born.”
“Nineteen thirteen.”
“I have been living in this country nine years longer than you have. Do you realize that? Yet I am prevented by law from becoming a citizen. I am prevented by law from owning land. I am now separated from my family without cause...”
“Those matters are out of my hands, Mr. Wakatsuki.”
“Whose hands are they in?”
“I do not like North Dakota any more than you do. The sooner we finish these questions, the sooner we'll both be out of here.”
“And where will you go when you leave?”
“Who do you want to win this war?”
“I am interested to know where you will be going when you leave.”
“Mr. Wakatsuki, if I have to repeat each one of these questions we will be here forever. Who do you want...?”
“When your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?”
eight
Inu
WITH PAPA BACK OUR CUBICLE WAS FILLED TO overflowing. Woody brought in another army bunk and tick mattress, up next to Mamas. But that was not what crowded the room. It was Papa himself, his dark, bitter, brooding presence. Once moved in, it seemed he didn’t go outside for months. He sat in there, or paced, alone a great deal of the time, and
Mama had to bring his meals from the mess hall.
He made her bring him extra portions of rice, or cans of the syrupy fruit they served. He would save this up and concoct brews in a homemade still he kept behind the door, brews that smelled so bad Mama was ashamed to let in any visitors. Day after day he would sip his rice wine or his apricot brandy, sip till he was blind drunk and passed out. In the morning he would wake up groaning like the demon in a kabuki drama; he would vomit and then start sipping again. He terrified all of us, lurching around the tiny room, cursing in Japanese and swinging his bottles wildly. No one could pacify him. Mama got nothing but threats and abuse for her attempts to comfort him.
I turned eight that fall. I remember telling myself that he never went out and never associated with others because he thought he was better than they were and was angry at being forced to live so close to them for the first time in his life. I told myself they whispered about him because he brewed his own foul-smelling wine in our barracks.
All of this was partly true. But there were deeper, uglier reasons for his isolation. I first sensed it one night when Mama and I went to the latrine together. By this time the stalls were partitioned. Two Terminal Island women about Mama’s age were leaving just as we walked in. They lingered by the doorway, and from inside my stall I could hear them whispering about Papa, deliberately, just loud enough for us to hear. They kept using the word “inu.” I knew it meant “dog,” and I thought at the time they were backbiting him because he never socialized.
Spoken Japanese is full of disrespectful insult words that can be much more cutting than mere vulgarity. They have to do with bad manners, or worse, breaches of faith and loyalty. Years later I learned that inu also meant collaborator or informer. Members of the Japanese American Citizens League were being called inu for having helped the army arrange a peaceful and orderly evacuation. Men who cooperated with camp authorities in any way could be labeled inu, as well as those genuine informers inside the camp who relayed information to the War Department and to the FBI.
For the women in the late-night latrine Papa was an inu because he had been released from Fort Lincoln earlier than most of the Issei men, many of whom had to remain up there separated from their families throughout the war. After investigating his record, the Justice Department found no reason to detain him any longer. But the rumor was that, as an interpreter, he had access to information from fellow Isseis that he later used to buy his release.
This whispered charge, added to the shame of everything that had happened to him, was simply more than he could bear. He did not yet have the strength to resist it. He exiled himself, like a leper, and he drank.
The night Mama and I came back from the latrine with this newest bit of gossip, he had been drinking all day. At the first mention of what we’d overheard, he flew into a rage. He began to curse her for listening to such lies, then he cursed her for leaving him alone and wanted to know where she had really gone. He cursed her for coming back and disturbing him, for not bringing him his food on time, for bringing too much cabbage and not enough rice. He yelled and shook his fists and with his very threats forced her across the cluttered room until she collided with one of the steel bed frames and fell back onto a mattress.
I had crawled under another bunk and huddled, too frightened to cry. In a house I would have run to another room, but in the tight little world of our cubicle there was no escaping this scene. I knew his wrath could turn on any one of us. Kiyo was already in bed, scrunched down under the covers, hoping not to be seen. Mama began to weep, great silent tears, and Papa was now limping back and forth beside the bunk, like a caged animal, brandishing his long, polished North Dakota cane.
“I’m going to kill you this time!”
“Go ahead, if that will make you happy.”
“You lie to me. You imprison me here with your lies!”
“Kill me then. I don’t care. I just don’t care.”
“I can never go outside, because of you!”
“Here. Here is my head. My chest. Get it over with. Who wants to go on living like this?”
She was lying very still, gazing up at him. The tears had stopped.
Papa stood over her, gripping his cane in both hands, right above her head, holding it so tightly the cane and both his arms quivered. “All right!” he yelled. “All right, I will! I will! I will!”
We had watched many scenes like this since his return, with Papa acting so crazy sometimes you could almost laugh at the samurai in him, trying to cow her with sheer noise and fierce display. But these were still unfamiliar visits from a demon we had never seen when we lived in Ocean Park. There had always been doors to keep some moments private. Here there were no doors. Nothing was private. And tonight he was far too serious—he seemed to have reached some final limit.
Inside my own helplessness I cowered, sure he was going to kill her or hurt her very badly, and the way Mama lay there I believed she was actually ready to be beaten to death. Kiyo must have felt something similar, because at the height of Papas tirade he threw his covers back, and in his underwear he jumped out of bed yelling, “Stop it, Papa! Stop it!”
With his cane in both hands high above his head, Papa turned from the waist. Kiyo sprang across the room, one arm cocked, and punched Papa square in the face.
No one had ever seen such a thing before. Papas arms went limp. The cane fell clattering to the floor. He reached up and touched his nose. Blood was pouring onto his shirt, dripping down onto Mamas dress. Kiyo stepped back, crouching, staring at the blood. This was like bloodying the nose of God. His face, contorted, looked ready to cry, but even his tears were stopped by the knowledge of what he had done. He waited paralyzed for whatever punishment might strike him down. Papa couldn’t move either. He stared at Kiyo, his eyes wide with both outrage and admiration that his son had the courage to do this. They stood like that until Papas gaze went bleary from the drink in his veins and dropped to the damp shirt, to the blood still spattering onto Mamas dress.
Kiyo turned and bolted out the door. I ran over to Mama, whimpering with relief that this ghastly scene was over and she had been saved, yet aching with a great sadness I could not at the time find words for. I was proud of Kiyo and afraid for what would happen to him; but deeper than that, I felt the miserable sense of loss that comes when the center has collapsed and everything seems to be flying apart around you.
Kiyo had fled to one of my married sisters’ barracks. For two weeks he hid there. When he finally returned it was to admit that he had been in the wrong and to ask Papas forgiveness. He too wanted some order preserved in the world and in the family. Papa accepted his apology, and this settled the waters some. But that aching sadness did not go away. It was something undefinable I’d already been living with for months, now enflamed by Papa’s downfall. He kept pursuing oblivion through drink, he kept abusing Mama, and there seemed to be no way out of it for anyone. You couldn’t even run.
nine
The Mess Hall Bells
PAPA NEVER SAID MORE THAN THREE OR FOUR sentences about his nine months at Fort Lincoln. Few men who spent time there will talk about it more than that. Not because of the physical hardships: he had been through worse times on fishing trips down the coast of Mexico. It was the charge of disloyalty. For a man raised in Japan, there was no greater disgrace. And it was the humiliation. It brought him face to face with his own vulnerability, his own powerlessness. He had no rights, no home, no control over his own life. This kind of emasculation was suffered, in one form or another, by all the men interned at Manzanar. Papa’s was an extreme case. Some coped with it better than he, some worse. Some retreated. Some struck back.
During that first summer and fall of sandy congestion and wind-blown boredom, the bitterness accumulated, the rage festered in hundreds of tarpapered cubicles like ours. Looking back, what they now call the December Riot seems to have been inevitable. It happened exactly a year after the Pearl Harbor attack. Some have called this an anniversary demonstrat
ion organized by militantly pro-Japan forces in the camp. It wasn’t as simple as that. Everything just came boiling up at once.
In the months before the riot the bells rang often at our mess hall, sending out the calls for public meetings. They rang for higher wages, they rang for better food, they rang for open revolt, for patriotism, for common sense, and for a wholesale return to Japan. Some meetings turned into shouting sessions. Some led to beatings. One group tried to burn down the general store. Assassination threats were commonplace.
On the night of December 5, Fred Tayama, a leader in the Japanese American Citizens League and a “friend” of the administration, was badly beaten by six men and taken to the camp hospital for treatment. Tayama couldn’t identify anyone precisely, but the next day three men were arrested and one of these was sent out of the camp to the county jail at Independence, ten miles away. This was a young cook well known for his defiance and contempt for the authorities. He had been trying to organize a Kitchen Workers’ Union and had recently charged the camp’s chief steward, a Caucasian, with stealing sugar and meat from the warehouses to sell on the black market. Since sugar and meat were both in short supply, and since it was rumored that infants had died from saccharin mixed into formulas as a sugar substitute, these charges were widely believed. The young cooks arrest became the immediate and popular cause that triggered the riot.
Farewell to Manzanar Page 5
