“Me too.”
“But you don’t look like one.”
“What do Americans look like?” Tomi asked.
“Like …” Dennis made a helpless gesture. “Like me, I guess.”
“Like Germans?”
“Well, we didn’t get rounded up and sent to a camp.”
“So we did because we don’t look like you?”
Dennis shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re confusing me.”
Tomi nodded. “I think everything about this camp is confusing.”
Dennis looked down at the food on his plate. “The lunch doesn’t look very good.”
“It isn’t,” Ruth told him.
Dennis took a bit of the rice and made a face. “Who would put canned peaches on rice?”
“Somebody who doesn’t have to eat it,” Tomi told him.
Dennis laughed for the first time. Then he looked around the room at the people crowded about the tables. “This isn’t much of a place. My dad read in the newspaper that you were eating steak and apple pie every day. The paper said you were living high on the hog and we were paying for it. It said the American government gave you all the sugar you wanted, while we don’t get it because we’re rationed. My mom can’t even make jam, because the government lets her buy only a little bit of sugar.”
Tomi laughed. “Look around. How much sugar do you see?”
“We haven’t had dessert yet.”
“That’s what the rice and canned peaches are supposed to be.”
Dennis made a face. “Okay, so you don’t eat so good, but what about your houses?”
“Barracks, you mean,” Ruth said.
“Yeah. I guess you’ve got silk sheets and big carpets and radios.”
“We don’t even have linoleum floors, just wood,” Tomi told him. “And they wouldn’t let us bring radios with us. Or cameras. I guess somebody’s afraid we’ll take pictures of Ellis and send them to the Japanese government.”
Dennis frowned. “Why would they care about Ellis? They’re not dumb enough to bomb Ellis, are they?” Then he realized Tomi was teasing him, and he laughed again. In a minute, Ruth and Tomi joined him. After he stopped, Dennis said, “Hey, you’re all right.”
1943 | CHAPTER NINE
NEW NEIGHBORS
WHEN Tomi returned from school one afternoon, Roy told her a new family had moved into one of the apartments in their barracks. The old family had left the camp because the man had gotten a job working on a sugar beet farm.
Despite the barbed-wire fences and the guard towers, Tallgrass wasn’t really a prison camp. The government moved the Japanese to Tallgrass and the other camps because it didn’t want them living on the West Coast, where they might contact the enemy in Japan. But the evacuees weren’t supposed to be permanent residents of the camps. The men were expected to get jobs, taking the places of those who had been drafted to fight in the war. In Colorado, the Japanese men were offered work on farms. The women, too, could get jobs in cities at defense plants or as office workers. Once they found work, the evacuees would move out of the camps, and some at Tallgrass had already done so. Others found work in the sugar beet farms around Ellis and still lived at Tallgrass.
“Are there any kids?” Tomi asked, after Roy told her about the new family.
“Yeah, I think there’s a boy Hiro’s age.”
“Yippee!” Hiro said, because his friends lived in other barracks. “Let’s go meet them, Tomi.”
The two went down the hall and knocked on the door of the new family’s apartment. A girl about Roy’s age opened the door. She was pretty, with long hair turned under, and she wore thick socks rolled down to her ankles, called bobby sox. Girls who wore them were called “bobby-soxers.” She held the hand of a small boy about four years old, while a larger boy peered out from behind her.
“Hi,” Tomi said, introducing the two of them. “We came to welcome you.”
“Welcome?” the girl replied in an angry voice. “Why would anybody welcome us to this place?”
“I guess it’s not so great, is it?” Tomi said.
“It’s horrid. I hate being here. We were living in another barracks, but the roof leaked, so they sent us here. This is almost as bad. Look at the dirt.”
“You have to dust every day, but it doesn’t take long,” Tomi said, trying to be cheerful.
The girl swept the dust off a chair and sat down, putting her hands over her face. “Dirt inside, dirt outside, everywhere you look there’s dirt. And I haven’t seen a single tree in the whole camp.”
“No,” Tomi admitted. “But some of the men are going to put in Japanese gardens, and my mom says she’ll plant vegetables. It will be better.”
“I don’t care. I hate Tallgrass, and I hate the government for sending us here.”
Just then, Hiro turned to the older boy and asked if he wanted to go outside and play. “When spring comes, we’re starting a baseball team. Do you want to join?”
“Do I!” the boy replied. “I was the best catcher in my whole grade. My name’s Wilson. Can I go outside, Helen?” he asked his sister.
“Might as well. There’s nothing to do here,” she told him.
As the two boys left, Tomi heard Wilson say, “Somebody told me you can hit a ball like Joe DiMaggio.”
“Jeepers!” was all Hiro could say. Being compared to the great Yankee baseball player was the finest compliment anybody could give a little boy. Tomi knew Hiro had made a good friend.
“At least one of us is happy,” Helen said bitterly. “What’s here for me? It’s not like I play baseball.”
“Aren’t you in school, or do you work?” Tomi asked.
“How can I do anything? I have to take care of Carl.” She glanced at her little brother.
“What about your folks?”
“They’re dead. Dad was killed in a fishing boat accident. Mom died of pneumonia just before we got sent to Colorado.”
“At Santa Anita?” Tomi asked.
“A place like that, a fairground. There wasn’t any hospital.”
“I’m sorry. That must be hard.”
“I hate America,” Helen said.
Tomi glanced down at Carl. “You mean it’s just you and your brothers? You’re taking care of them all by yourself?”
Helen nodded.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Don’t you have any relatives who can help?”
Helen shook her head. “They’re all in Japan. I wish I was there, too.”
Tomi’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “But Japan’s our enemy. We’re at war with Japan. We’re Americans.”
“I used to think that, too. I’m Nisei. That means I was born here. But look at the way this country treats us. If the government hadn’t rounded us up and sent us to the fairground, my mother wouldn’t have gotten sick. I’d be back in San Francisco going to school. Now I have to sit in this dirty room and take care of my brothers.”
“I’m sorry,” Tomi said, thinking “I’m sorry” didn’t solve anything.
1943 | CHAPTER TEN
BUYING a TANK
RUTH was slumped in the doorway of her barracks when Tomi stopped on the way to the dining hall.
“I heard there’s a cook on the other side of the camp who makes Japanese food for breakfast. We ought to go there sometime,” Ruth said. “I’d give a quarter for just one bite of real Japanese food—that is, if I had a quarter.”
“You know what I miss?” Tomi asked. “Strawberry ice cream. We used to make our own with fresh strawberries and cream from Mr. Lawrence’s cows. We’d take turns turning the crank on the freezer. In the summer, we’d sit in the dark watching fireflies and eating ice cream.”
“There’s an ice cream parlor in Ellis. One of the Boy Scouts told me. Maybe in the summer, we can get passes to go there every day.”
“That would be wonderful.” Then Tomi remembered she had to hurry and grabbed Ruth’s hand. “Come on. I promised Mom I’d come
back and take her to that class. If I don’t go with her, she might stay home. Mom doesn’t like standing up in front of people. At home, she never spoke out when she was with white ladies. But I told her that here, everybody’s Japanese.”
Ruth nodded. “Ditto. My mom’s shy, too. But she needs to get out. All she does is sit in the room and hold Ben’s toys. Do you think this will work?”
“We have to try.”
A couple of weeks before, when one of the women who taught at the camp saw the quilt Mrs. Hayashi was making with Mom’s help, she’d asked Mom if she would teach a class in quilting. Mom said no, thank you, she wasn’t good enough. That wasn’t the real reason, however. Mom could sew anything. She turned down the request because she didn’t want to get up in front of a group of women.
“You should, Mom. It’s so cold in the winter at Tallgrass that people need quilts. And you can teach them just the way you did Mrs. Hayashi,” Tomi told her.
“I couldn’t,” Mom said.
“That’s selfish,” Roy spoke up. He had been listening in. “What if we needed warm quilts and somebody refused to teach you how to make them?”
Mom frowned. She said she wouldn’t know any of the women in the class.
“You’ll know Mrs. Hayashi,” Tomi told her. “And me.”
“You would go?”
Tomi thought that over. She’d spoken too quickly. She didn’t want to sew with a bunch of women, but she’d go if it were necessary. She could always sneak out after Mom got started.
Now, the two girls ran down the street to the dining hall and joined the line waiting to get in. A girl from school motioned for the two girls to join her at the head of the line—“spacing” it was called. But Tomi knew that crowding in line was rude, so she shook her head, and she and Ruth waited their turn. It wasn’t long, and they gobbled their lunch of canned spaghetti and raced back to the barracks.
When Tomi reached the room, she found Mom sitting on one of the rough chairs that Roy had made, her back very straight. Her hands were at the sides of her face, however, and she looked as if something was wrong.
“Come on, Mom, we’re late. We’re picking up Mrs. Hayashi and Ruth. Mrs. Hayashi is scared to go. Can you imagine?” Tomi wondered if Ruth was telling Mrs. Hayashi that Mom was scared. “You know everybody,” Tomi said to reassure her mother.
“That doesn’t mean I can be a teacher.”
“Sure you can.”
Tomi wasn’t so sure, however. Mom had come a long way since leaving the farm, but she was a woman who disliked being the center of attention. Mom forced herself to complain to the officials about things in the camp that were wrong. But that was because she was concerned about Tomi and Hiro and Roy. She’d never before agreed to stand up before other women as a teacher.
“You said you’d do it. So shikata ga nai. It can’t be helped now.” Tomi took Mom’s hand. “Besides, you have to be there for Mrs. Hayashi. She won’t go if you don’t.”
Mom nodded, and Tomi smiled to herself, because she knew Mom would not let down a friend.
Mrs. Hayashi was even more ill at ease than Mom when she left her apartment. Both women looked their best, with hats, and Mrs. Hayashi wore high-heeled shoes and even gloves. Still, they reluctantly followed their daughters down the street to one of the barracks buildings that had been turned into classrooms. “Maybe no one will come,” Mom whispered to Mrs. Hayashi.
But the room was full of Japanese women who stood around a table talking. They were dressed up, too, as if this were an important occasion. When they saw Mom, they bowed and greeted her, some in English, some in Japanese. One woman had brought her daughter with her and said the girl could thread the needles.
Mom bowed back and said, “Hello. I am Mrs. Itano.” Then, her hands shaking a little, she opened her paper sack and took out her scissors, needle, thread, and bits of fabric. “Welcome to our first quilting class. I am your teacher.”
Tomi grinned at her. Mom was going to be all right.
Tomi watched as Mom told the ladies to take out the scraps of fabric they had brought. When Mom was busy examining the pieces, Tomi nodded at Ruth. They would slip away and play. But as she started for the door, she heard Mom’s voice. “Tomi, stay please. Take a seat. You are going to be my star pupil.”
Tomi sighed. She did not care about sewing, and she especially did not care about making quilts.
“We will each make a pieced quilt,” Mom said. The ladies leaned forward to hear her. “Piecing is mostly squares and triangles.” Mom held up a square of fabric and cut it on the diagonal, from upper right to lower left.
The ladies nodded their understanding.
Mom explained they would assemble the squares and triangles into a block. It would take many blocks to make a quilt.
“I don’t have so much material,” one lady complained.
Mom looked at the small stash of fabric the woman had brought, then glanced around the table. No one had enough for a quilt. She thought that over, then brightened. “I know. We will make one big quilt, all of us together.”
“Who will get the quilt?” Mrs. Hayashi asked.
“Maybe we draw straws,” another said.
“Yes,” Mom said. “But it doesn’t seem fair if we all work on the quilt and only one keeps it.”
“We could give it to the hospital,” Mrs. Hayashi suggested, and Mom nodded.
“I know,” Tomi spoke up. “We can have a raffle. The money will go to the war effort.”
The ladies smiled at each other and nodded. Mrs. Hayashi said, “It is a good idea. We can sell tickets for five cents. Maybe we will make enough money to buy a tank.”
1943 | CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOLVING TWO PROBLEMS
AS THEY left the quilt room, Tomi told Ruth, “I don’t think they’ll make enough money to buy a tank; maybe only a gun.”
“Who cares if it’s only enough for a handful of bullets? This might be the first time I’ve seen Mother smile since Ben died,” Ruth said.
Indeed, Mrs. Hayashi was smiling as she told Mom, “I think my husband has some indigo cloth from Japan left from the store. It is just cotton and was used to make work shirts a long time ago. The people who took over the business wanted only silk. The blue cotton is very old and very beautiful. I will ask my husband if the people in San Francisco will send it to us for a quilt.” She took Mom’s arm and smiled at her. “Perhaps we could make a Japanese design with your squares and triangles.”
Then she asked if Tomi was going to help piece the quilt.
“Who, me?” Tomi asked and made a face. “I don’t care about sewing. But I’ll sell raffle tickets. Maybe everybody in camp will buy one. What’s five cents times five thousand?”
“A lot,” Ruth replied. “You know, I think quilting takes Mother’s mind off Ben, at least for a little while. She seems happier when she’s sewing. But other times …” Ruth shrugged. Then she said, “I don’t want to talk about Ben.” She changed the subject. “Who’s that new girl in your barracks? She looks familiar. She was standing in the hall when I came to your apartment yesterday, and she looked angry.”
“You mean Helen,” Tomi said. “She lives there with her two brothers. They’re orphans. Her mom died just before Helen came to Tallgrass.”
Ruth stopped and cocked her head. “Now I remember. I think I know her. She used to sing in the choir at our church in San Francisco. She’s a bobby-soxer. She has a beautiful voice.”
“She doesn’t sing here. Mostly, she just looks mad,” Tomi said.
“That’s too bad. I was mad when I came here, but now, I’m not so mad. Does she work?” Many of the internees held jobs in the camp. They weren’t paid much. Most received twelve to sixteen dollars a month to work in the post office or the print shop, where they produced posters for the war effort. Professional people, such as doctors, made only nineteen dollars. But the jobs filled their time and made the people feel useful. It also gave them a little money they could spend in the camp store or on
items they sent away for in the Montgomery Ward catalogue. Mom was paid twelve dollars a month for teaching the quilting class, and she’d promised to spend her first paycheck on boots for Tomi.
“Helen doesn’t work even though she’s old enough to have a job. She doesn’t go to school either. She has to take care of her little brother. She’s like a mother to him. The camp was going to divide up the three of them and put them with different families, but Helen said no. She wouldn’t give up her brothers,” Tomi told Ruth. “It’s not fair.” She remembered that she had once told Ruth it wasn’t fair that Pop was in prison, and Ruth had replied that it wasn’t fair her brother, Ben, had died.
“There are a lot of things at Tallgrass that aren’t fair.”
The two hurried to catch up with their mothers when something occurred to Tomi. She put her hand on Ruth’s arm, and the two stopped. “I have an idea …”
Ruth looked at Tomi, a question on her face. “What?”
“I have an idea,” Tomi repeated. “Your mother …” She paused, thinking that what she was about to say was none of her business.
“My mother what?”
“Helen needs somebody to watch her brother Carl. He’s four, the age you said Ben was when he died.”
“And?”
Tomi took a deep breath. “What if your mother took care of him?”
“You mean you want her to work as a nursemaid? Mother would never do that. She’s never worked a day in her life except for helping Father at the store. We could use the money, but Mother would think taking a job was … well … disgraceful. It would be as if she said Father couldn’t provide for us and she had to help out. It would make Father feel useless.”
“What if it’s not a real job? Helen probably couldn’t even pay her if she wanted to. Maybe your mother could just ‘help out.’ With your brother gone, she might like having Carl around.”
Ruth looked down at the ground, thinking. “I don’t know,” she said at last.
“You could ask her,” Tomi said.
Ruth shook her head. “She’d say no, just like your mother did the first time she was asked to teach the quilting class. We’d have to find another way. We’d have to make her think it was her idea.”
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