And by the following week, General De Witt announced proudly that the removal of a hundred thousand persons of Japanese ancestry from Military Area Number One had been completed. Ten thousand of them were at Tanforan, and they still had absolutely no clue as to where they were going.
Peter had left Stanford by then, and even the battles of Corregidor and Midway didn't interest him. All he could think of now was Hiroko. He had one week left, and he wanted to spend every possible minute of it with her. And fortunately for them, no one interrogated or stopped him again. He left his car far from the gate, and always came in on foot, looking bland and unassuming. He drew no attention to himself, and the lieutenant thought he was his friend now. But Peter managed to spend as many as eighteen hours a day at the camp with Hiroko, and sometimes twenty.
And when no one was looking, she fingered her gold ring, and remembered the day of their wedding. But no matter how tightly they clung, or how many times he said he loved her, or she him, the moment came. The last day, the final night, the last hour. She lay in his arms for hours that night, looking up at the stars, thinking of where he would be, and the memories they had to hold on to. He was leaving for Fort Ord in the morning. There were no words left by the time he walked her back to the stall where she lived with her cousins. The others had gone to bed by then, but Tak was waiting for them. He wanted to say goodbye to him. Peter had been like a brother to him.
“Take care of yourself.” Peter said hoarsely to Takeo, barely able to say good-bye as they embraced. The moment was just too painful. “It'll be all over soon. I'll let you know how to write to me,” he said, wanting to encourage him to hang on, and not sure how to do it. It had been easy to see in the past month how disheartened Takeo had become. If he hadn't had his family, he would have broken.
“You too, Peter, stay safe. For all our sakes.” Peter looked down at Hiroko, who was crying softly. She had cried all afternoon, all night. She had tried so hard to be strong for him, but she couldn't do it. And neither could Peter. As he stood at the end of the row with her, he held her in his arms, and they both cried. Everyone had gone to bed by then, and there was no one to watch them, and by then, Hiroko was sobbing softly.
“I'll be back, Hiroko. Just know that. No matter what happens, or where you are, I'll be there when this is over.”
“So will I,” she said staunchly. She knew, as young as she was, that he was the only man she would ever love. And she was his now. “I am yours forever, Peter-san,” she said, repeating the words of their wedding.
“Take care of yourself, please God …take care, I love you,” he said, holding her for one last time, and kissing her as their tears mingled on their cheeks. “Genki de gambatte,” she said softly, slowly regaining her composure. “Stay well with all your might.” He had heard the phrase a lot recently and knew what she was saying.
“You too, little one. Just remember how much I love you.”
“I love you too, Peter-san,” she said, and then bowed low to him as slowly, he walked away.
They let him out the gate, and she stood there and watched him. She stood there for as long as she could see him. And then she walked slowly back to her stall, where she lay in her clothes, on the straw, thinking of Peter, and each moment they had shared. It seemed impossible that he was gone, that they were here, that this was the end, and not the beginning. She hoped it wouldn't be…. He had to come back to her…. He had to live…. She murmured the words of a Buddhist prayer as she lay there, and Takeo tried not to hear her.
Chapter 12
THE WEEKS after Peter left were exquisitely painful for Hiroko. She went through the motions of activity every day. She stood in line, but seldom ate. She cleaned their stall. She helped carry endless buckets of water. She showered when the water was hot and Reiko told her to. And she played with Tami. But her mind was gone, her soul, her life, her husband. And no one knew he was even that. They thought he was their friend, her boyfriend. Only Reiko suspected how much more he had been. She had been watching them for weeks, and she was afraid that Hiroko would get sick now, from pining for him. Her entire being seemed to be entwined in Peter's. She asked her to work in the infirmary with her, to keep her busy. And they needed help. Ten thousand people had at least as many ailments. There were sore throats and colds, and injuries, stomach ailments, and a constant flow of new cases of measles. There was whooping cough, and old people with heart disease and pleurisy, and several times a week there were emergency operations. There were minimal supplies and medicines, but they had some of the best doctors and nurses in San Francisco, all of whom had been evacuated with them. They had been no more exempt than anyone else, and all they could do now was practice with what was available to them. But at least the infirmary kept Hiroko busy.
She heard from Peter several times. He was in training in Fort Dix, but she scarcely knew more than that. Two of his letters arrived completely blacked out by censors. All she could read was “my darling” and at the very end, “I love you. Peter.” The rest was gone, and she couldn't even begin to guess what he had told her. She wrote to him as well, and wondered if the same thing had happened to her letters.
Her birthday came and went in July, and the anniversary of the date she had come to the States. The little vegetable garden the woman had planted in the next row had begun to grow, and someone had started both a knitting club and a glee club. There was boxing now, and sumo wrestling, and several softball teams. There were lots of activities for the children, and religious groups mainly for the women. And once, Hiroko had run into the old Buddhist priest who had secretly married her to Peter. She had smiled at him, and he bowed, but they said nothing to each other.
And still there was no word of when they were leaving. They knew that some people had been sent to a camp called Manzanar in northern California, but most of the evacuees in Tanforan had gone nowhere.
At the end of August, the Germans laid siege to Stalingrad, and by then Hiroko had caught the dysentery that affected everyone. She was working in the infirmary, but there was never enough medicine, and week by week she got thinner. Reiko worried about her, but she said that she felt fine, and stomach ailments were so ordinary in camp that the doctors paid no attention to her. Still, it worried Reiko to see her look so pale and obviously feel so poorly, but there was nothing they could do about it. And Takeo hadn't been well either. He had had pains in his chest more than once. Most of the time he said nothing about it, but on one occasion he had had to go he down in their stall. And after Peter left, he always seemed quiet and disheartened. More than anything, he was lonely and had no one to talk to. He had no interest in joining any of the clubs that were proliferating. He kept mostly to himself, and the only one he seemed to want to talk to, other than his wife, was Hiroko.
“You miss him terribly, child, don't you?” he asked one day, and she nodded. It had taken every ounce of strength she had just to put one foot in front of the other since June. Without Peter, there was nothing to live for. And all she could do now was listen to the echoes of her memories and dream of the future. The present held nothing for her. It was empty.
In September, he wrote and told her he was in England, and there were rumors of something big coming up soon, and he'd let her know as soon as he was transferred. All they had for him now was an APO box, and in the next several weeks, his letters to Hiroko became less and less frequent. She wondered, with terror, if the letters would ever find her, if and when they moved her.
Day after day she went to the infirmary, and the combination of monotony and fear was killing. They still didn't know if they'd be separated from their families, or even their children. But at least for the moment, as they waited, things seemed peaceful.
Reiko even had her assisting with their minor surgeries. She was good at it, and the doctors liked her. And the only tragedy was when they lost a ten-year-old-boy during an appendectomy, simply because they didn't have the right instruments or medication. It had depressed Reiko and Hiroko terribly, and th
e next morning, when she had to go to work, Hiroko was so ill with stomach problems that she couldn't go. But more than anything, she couldn't bear the thought of another child dying, or seeing another operation.
Instead, during the morning, she helped Tami make another dollhouse. They'd been working on it for a while, but it was difficult without the materials or tools, and it was taking forever. And the other one she'd had at home had been so pretty. Tami always looked wistful when she compared them.
Takeo agreed to watch Tami that afternoon, and out of a sense of responsibility, Hiroko went back to the infirmary to help Reiko. And her cousin was pleased to see her.
“I thought we'd lost you forever.” She smiled. It had been a rough day for Hiroko the day before, and she knew it.
“I just couldn't take it again.” And she certainly looked ill. Much of what they ate was spoiled, and everyone got sick frequently, mostly with food poisoning, and some with ulcers.
“Just take it easy. Why don't you roll bandages for us today?” Reiko suggested, giving her plenty of work to do, and Hiroko was grateful not to have to tackle anything more upsetting.
At the end of the day, they slowly walked back to their stall, still wearing their caps and aprons. They didn't wear full uniforms, there were none available, but their caps helped to identify them as medical personnel, or nurses. But when they got to the stall, Takeo looked even worse than Hiroko had that morning.
“What's wrong? Are you all right?” Reiko asked him quickly, afraid it was his heart again. He was too young to have those problems, but they'd been through a lot in the past five months since April.
“We're leaving,” he said quietly with a look of despair. It was late September, it was almost exactly five months since they had been there.
“When?”
“Sometime in the next few days, maybe sooner.”
“How do you know?” she asked sharply. There were so many rumors, it was hard to know what was true anymore. And after five months there, she was almost afraid to leave. This was unpleasant and uncomfortable, but at least it was familiar.
He silently handed her a slip of paper. Her name was written on it, and the names of their three children.
“I don't understand,” she said. “You're not on this.” She looked up at him with frightened eyes, and he nodded, and held up another piece of paper. It bore his name, but showed a different day and time for his departure. He was leaving a day later. “What does this mean?” she asked. “Do you know?”
Takeo sighed. “The man who handed these to me said it must mean we're going to different destinations, otherwise we'd be on the same piece of paper.”
Reiko only looked at him, and began to cry silently as she reached out and held him. There were others who had had the same news who were crying nearby. Married children were being sent separately from their parents and younger siblings, uncles and aunts. The administration wasn't worried about who went where. And then she realized suddenly that there was no slip for Hiroko.
“I didn't get one for her at all,” Takeo explained, still puzzled. Hiroko spent the entire night terrified, sure that they would be leaving without her, and she would be completely alone at whatever camp they sent her to, without relative or friend or husband. Just thinking about it made her sick again the next morning. But shortly after that, as she prepared to leave for the infirmary, they came to find her. She was leaving even later than the others, obviously to yet another place, the day after Takeo. And there was no time even to think about it. Reiko and the children were leaving in the morning, without them.
Takeo went to the administration building that afternoon along with countless others, and nothing had changed as they explained it to him. He was still a Japanese national, and a greater security risk, and his wife and children weren't. They were non-aliens, the new word for citizen. And he was the enemy, as was Hiroko. In addition, his work as a professor of political science concerned them a great deal, and he was going to have to be interrogated with a number of other people who posed a similar, or equal, problem. He was going to a highly secured camp, they explained, where the highest-risk evacuees would be sent. His wife would be sent somewhere with less security. And when he asked if he could join her eventually, they said that it would depend on many things, and they had no idea as to the outcome. As for Hiroko, she clearly was an enemy alien, she had admitted to them that she had family in Japan, and a brother in the air force. Her category was the greatest risk of all, they said without sympathy. And they were also aware through the FBI that she was romantically involved with a highly political Caucasian.
“He's not highly political, for heaven's sake,” Takeo argued with them on her behalf. “He was my assistant at Stanford.”
“Well be happy to discuss that with you in the interrogation, sir,” they said bluntly, “and with her. Well have plenty of time to do it.”
But when he told Reiko about it that night, he was certain they were sending him to prison. And possibly Hiroko as well. They made her ties to Japan sound extremely ominous. She was a nineteen-year-old girl, and a student, and she was in love with an American. It hardly seemed enough to die for, but none of them were convinced they wouldn't be shot as spies. Not even Hiroko. As she listened to him, and others that night, she felt certain that she would go to prison as a spy, and probably be executed, and even terrified as she was, she tried to force herself to accept it.
When she and Takeo said good-bye to Reiko and the children the next day, it was with the certainty that they would never meet again. And despite all her years of hearing about samurai and their dignity, Hiroko could not contain her grief as she said good-bye to Tami.
“You have to come with us,” the child said, wearing her number tag on her coat again. “We can't leave you here, Hiroko.”
“I will go somewhere else, Tamisan, and perhaps later I'll join you.” But she looked pale and ill as she stood there and embraced their mother, thinking of her own, and sure that she would never see any of them again. They had been told that they were going to a camp for lesser security risks than Takeo and Hiroko, so perhaps they would be safe there. And friends came to wave at the bus before it left, and the shades would be drawn so they could not see where they were going. For a long time Tak and Reiko just stood holding each other as they cried and their children watched them. He kissed each of them, sure that he would never see them again, and told them to take good care of their mother. And then there was a grim moment when he said good-bye to his son. There were few words, but vast emotions. And there were other scenes around them just like it. It was Ken's second painful farewell that day. Peggy and her family had been sent to Manzanar earlier that morning.
And then finally, in a blinding flash of pain, Reiko and the children boarded. The shades were lowered, their frightened faces disappeared, and the bus lumbered off to a destination unknown, in the North, as Takeo and Hiroko watched them. And the next day was no better. She went alone to say good-bye to Tak this time. He looked gray and tired, and ancient for a man of fifty-one, who had looked youthful only months before. But the past months had taken an immeasurable toll on him. And like Reiko, Hiroko thought she was seeing him for the last time, and braced herself for it.
“Take care of yourself,” he said gently, feeling dead inside from having left his loved ones the day before, but he felt something for her as well. She had a life ahead of her, a future, if they didn't kill her here, which they might still. But he hoped for her sake that Peter would come back for her eventually. They deserved each other. “God bless you,” he said, and then got on the bus without looking back at her. But she stood for as long as she could, watching the bus disappear in a cloud of dust, and then she went back to their deserted stall to wait till morning.
And that night she walked over the fields where she had lain with Peter. She sat in the tall grass quietly, and wondered what would happen if she never came out again, if she just sat there till she died, or they found her. What if she didn't leave on the b
us in the morning? But they had her name now. And her number. And they knew something about Peter. Apparently the FBI had a file on him, because of her, and his work at Stanford. And she had told them about her brother in the Japanese air force. They would come and look for her if she didn't show up at the bus. And they might do something to Peter, or the others, if she didn't cooperate, so she couldn't let that happen.
She sat for a long time, thinking of Peter, praying for him, longing for him, and then she walked slowly back, as they once had together. And like a vision from the past, she saw the old Buddhist priest on her way back and she smiled at him, wondering if he'd acknowledge her. He bowed to her, and then he stopped her.
“My prayers are very strong for you, and your husband,” he said softly. “Walk softly, and always with God beside you.” He bowed again, and then walked on, as though his thoughts had moved on to another subject. But seeing him that night had been like a blessing, and she felt stronger.
She had a shower early the next day, before she left, and packed the last of her things in her one small suitcase, and she found one of the origami birds she had made for Tami in the straw beside her mattress. It was like a sign from her, a memory of a friendly face, and someone she loved, as she held the little paper bird in her fingers, picked up her bag with her other hand, and walked to the bus in silence. She saw one of Sally's friends, but the girl didn't acknowledge her, and one of the doctors Reiko had worked with. She shuddered slightly as she boarded the bus, afraid of what they'd do to her wherever she was going. But there was no way to change it now, and the others were gone. Tak and Reiko, the children …Peter …There was nothing left to do except what the old priest had told her the night before. Walk with God beside her …and walk softly …and wait for Peter. And if she died now, at their hands, which she thought was possible, and accepted, at least he would know how much she loved him.
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