He was also working on a Monopoly game for her, and he and Reiko were having a great time putting it together. He was making a chess game for Ken too. And Reiko was knitting a beautiful pink angora sweater for Sally, from wool she'd ordered from Montgomery Ward with most of her salary.
Reiko had knitted a sweater for Tak too, and she'd sent away for a warm jacket for him with the rest of her money. And she and her whole knitting club had been knitting tiny little things to give Hiroko a shower after Christmas. Tak was carving her a little cradle too.
And on Christmas Day, they were all surprised with their presents from each other. Tak had bought Reiko a beautiful dress from the Sears catalog with his meager earnings, and Hiroko had given them both a poem she had written about what they meant to her, called “Winter Storms, Summer Rainbows.” And everyone loved their presents.
But the only gift anyone wanted that year was freedom. Regardless of that, it was a lovely day, in spite of where they were, and most people in the camp tried not to think of where they had been the year before, or who they had been with. The old men played go, their checker game, the women chatted and sewed, people ate and talked and dreamed, and visited each other in their little rooms, with handmade decorations. They had been incarcerated and locked up, and almost everything had been taken from them, but it was impossible to take away their spirit. They were all determined to keep going and be strong, for themselves and each other. Hiroko thought of that when she played with the symphony at the Christmas concert.
And on New Year's Eve, there was a dance at the recreation building, and a swing band that Ken had just joined played. Hiroko went to watch for a little while, and one young man asked her to dance, but she blushed and said she couldn't. Under her heavy coat, he hadn't noticed her stomach.
In January, the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad, which was an important victory for the Allies. At Tule Lake it was a quiet month, except another wave of influenza hit the camp, this one worse than any of the others. It went on for almost a month, and a few of the old people died and others were in grave danger.
And much to everyone's surprise, at the end of January, the Selective Service had reopened for Japanese men and boys and the “privilege” of volunteering for the military had been restored to them. But Ken no longer wanted to go into the army, he didn't see why he should volunteer now to serve a country that had betrayed him. Most of the other young men felt the same, and they were still in an uproar over it when camp officials asked everyone to sign a loyalty oath in the first week of February. To many of the internees, the loyalty oath was not a problem. They were all loyal to the United States, but to Ken, and many young men like him, they felt even more betrayed by the questions they were asked and the answers that were required of them. There were two questions in particular that irked them, one asking if they would be willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered, and the other was if they would foreswear any allegiance to Japan or the Emperor, neither of which should have worried anyone, since so many were Americans or had lived in the States all their lives. But the young men like Ken were particularly outraged to have had all their rights taken away from them, and now be asked if they were willing to die for a country that had treated them so badly. Ken had been desperate to join the army for over a year, but after being betrayed and incarcerated for months, he no longer wanted to serve, or do anything for his country.
And like him, just on principle, many of the young men refused to answer those two questions positively, and as a result got labeled the No-No Boys, for the two questions they refused to say yes to, and they were swiftly sent off to segregation at the higher-security area at Tule Lake, for further interrogation.
It created a huge outcry in all the camps, and Ken still hadn't signed the oath two days after he'd been shown it. Everyone else in the family had, and Ken and his father argued furiously over it. Takeo understood how he felt, and he ached for him and all the young men like him. They had been shunned and sent away, their rights as Americans had been denied them. But now their right to serve had been restored, and other than war work through the WRA, or renouncing their citizenship, there was no other way to leave the camps. This was a chance to prove themselves as Americans, to have their rights restored, to prove that they were loyal citizens, and Tak didn't want Ken to fail to do that. He had to sign the loyalty oath, not to would be a disaster.
“I don't even feel American anymore, Dad,” Ken said angrily. “I don't feel American. I don't feel Japanese. I don't feel anything,” he said unhappily, and his father didn't know what to say to him.
“You have no choice, son. I understand. I respect how you feel. But I am telling you to sign the loyalty oath. If you don't, they're going to put you in prison, and cause you a great deal of trouble. Ken, you have to.” They battled about it for days, and finally, not wanting to cause trouble for them, Ken signed, but many of his friends didn't. They didn't because it was the only opportunity they had to object to what had happened to them, but it made them instantly suspect and many of them were considered dangerous. Many renounced their citizenship immediately, and chose to go to Japan as they had threatened to for months. And Ken had threatened too, but in the end, he couldn't do it.
Those who didn't sign were rounded up from the other camps as well, and the No-No Boys wound up in the segregation section at Tule Lake. It was, in fact, at that point being built into a separate camp, for people thought to be disloyal to the United States, and security was immediately increased to deal with the problem. Tak was deeply grateful that, in the end, Ken had agreed to sign the loyalty oath, even if it meant seeing him go off to war and risk his life for his country. At least his loyalty as an American would never be questioned.
Signing the loyalty oath took a great deal of pressure off all of them, and even Hiroko felt relieved when she went back to work at the infirmary during a fresh outbreak of influenza. For Hiroko, as a genuine alien, the loyalty oath had given her a real opportunity to pledge her loyalty to the United States, which was something she wanted, although of course in her case, question twenty-seven was of no importance, since she couldn't go into the army.
A new epidemic of measles kept them busy after that for two weeks, and at the end of the second week, Hiroko stayed late into the night to help Reiko. And for once Reiko looked as tired as she was. Hiroko had been working tirelessly for days, but she wanted to give them all the help she could before the baby came. She knew that in another week or two, she would have to stay at home, at least for a little while, with the baby.
The knitting club had given her the shower by then, and everything was ready. Tami was more excited than anyone, and even Sally had softened a little bit, although she was still fairly vocal with her disapproval. But Hiroko had other things on her mind that night, as she took care of two old men and a woman who were covered with spots from the measles. She knew that she herself had had it as a child, and wasn't afraid of catching it. But their coughs raged, along with their fevers.
“How are they?” Reiko asked softly as she came by to check on her and watched admiringly. Hiroko had a genuine talent for nursing. She was doing everything she could to make them comfortable, and showed no signs of fatigue herself, although it was her second straight shift on duty. Reiko had thought of sending her home earlier, but Hiroko had insisted on staying at the infirmary with Reiko.
“They're about the same,” Hiroko said quietly, sponging their brows again, and glancing up at her cousin.
“And how are you?” It was pointless even to ask, she'd been on her feet, off and on, for hours. And Reiko noticed her rub her back a couple of times, later, when she watched her. She came back to check on her again around midnight, and told her she should go home, but Hiroko looked bright-eyed and full of energy. Reiko smiled at her and hurried off to help a doctor with what looked like a perforated ulcer.
It was two A.M. when she came by again, and this time Hiroko looked exhausted. Her patients were
finally asleep, and she was helping another nurse change the dressings on a little boy with burns. He had been playing with matches when his straw mattress caught fire, and he was crying while Hiroko held him. Reiko saw her wince several times in sympathy for the child, and when she set him down again and finally stood up, she noticed that Hiroko held on to the table. And then she knew, even before Hiroko did, that she was in labor.
“Are you all right?” she asked, and Hiroko winced again and tried to smile.
“I'm fine. My back is just tired,” she said, but she looked distracted, and Reiko smiled at her. It was time. It was the first of March, time for her baby to come.
“Why don't you sit down for a few minutes,” Reiko suggested, and knew from the fact that Hiroko did, that she was probably in more pain than she was willing to admit. Reiko got her a cup of tea, and the two women talked softly in the dim light of the makeshift nurses' station. It was freezing outside, and drafty in the barracks where they were working, but there was a cozy feeling between the two women. And as they chatted, and others came and went, Hiroko's face grew more and more strained, and she looked more and more worried. “Are you in a lot of pain?” Reiko finally asked, and this time, Hiroko looked up with eyes filled with tears, and nodded. She had tried to work in spite of it for hours, hoping it would go away, that it was not time. Suddenly she was terrified, and she didn't feel ready to face it. Just sitting there, the pains were becoming unbearable, and she suddenly clutched Reiko's hand and gasped. No one had prepared her for what this would be like. But Reiko was sitting calmly with her, and she put an arm around her and gently helped her to stand up, as two other nurses appeared and Reiko explained that Hiroko was in labor.
“Well, that's good news.” Sandra, the eldest of the nurses, smiled at her. She was a small, round, smiling nisei woman whom Reiko had worked with years before at Stanford. “I could use a little good news tonight.” She was tired of dying old people with measles. But Hiroko looked like a wide-eyed little girl as she stared at them, not knowing what to expect. “It's all right,” the older woman said soothingly, seeing what was happening to her. It was normal for young girls to panic. She was only nineteen, she had no mother at hand, and it was her first baby. But the nurses of the infirmary all took her under their wing, and two of them joined her and Reiko and led her slowly to a little cubicle they'd set aside for deliveries, carefully partitioned with old blankets. And one of them left immediately to tell the doctor they'd need him that night.
As it turned out, it was the same doctor who had been on duty the morning that she'd fainted, and he smiled warmly when he saw Hiroko again, although she could barely smile at him by the time he got there. He asked her when the pains had begun, and she looked sheepishly at Reiko, and admitted that she'd felt the first twinges early that morning, just before dawn. It had been nearly twenty-four hours by now, and the pains were getting more and more powerful with each moment. She could hardly talk as the next one came, and the nurses lay her down gently and helped take her clothes off. Reiko was standing close to her head, and holding one hand, as the doctor examined her beneath a rough drape, and Hiroko turned her face away in mortification. No one had ever examined her before this, except externally and very superficially after she fainted. No one else had ever seen or touched her except Peter.
“It's all right,” Reiko said soothingly, and Sandra took her other hand and held it.
The doctor was pleased, but surprised that she had stayed on her feet as long as she had. She was almost fully dilated and he could see the baby's hair. With an encouraging look, he told her it wouldn't be long at all. But as he left the cubicle, he signaled to Reiko, and she joined him. Hiroko was writhing with another pain, but fighting not to make any noise, so no one would hear her just beyond the partitions made of flimsy blankets. The room just beyond them was filled with sleeping patients, and Hiroko would have felt disgraced if she'd made a sound to wake them.
“The baby looks big to me,” he said to Reiko. “I don't want to have to section her here. She's going to have to do everything she can to push that baby out. I don't care if you ladies have to stand on her stomach, Rei. I don't want to have to do that kind of surgery here in camp, unless I have to. It's too risky for her and the baby.” She nodded, worrying about Hiroko, who still had not confirmed that Peter was the father of her baby. If it was Peter, as it surely was, he was tall and broad, and the baby might be much too big for Hiroko to deliver on her own. But she said nothing to the doctor about the baby's father, as he moved on to check on some other patients.
The other nurse was helping Hiroko breathe and trying to keep her calm when Reiko got back to her bedside. The two women exchanged a knowing look, as Hiroko seized their hands again, and this time she cried out, despite the flimsy blankets around her and the patients on the other side of them who might hear her.
“It's all right, go ahead,” Sandra encouraged her. “Don't worry about it. If they don't like it, they can go to another hospital.” She smiled, and Hiroko tried not to scream but lost the battle as the next pain engulfed her.
“Aunt Rei,” she said hoarsely, “this is terrible. … Is there medicine? …something …” They had given whatever they had to patients for pain ever since she'd worked there, she couldn't imagine surviving this without it. But they needed what anesthesia they had for surgeries, not for delivering babies, and Reiko knew she could not give her anything unless the doctor said so. And he hadn't suggested it when he came by to see her.
He came back several times in (he next two hours, and at four-thirty, he told her to start pushing. But the baby was so large it didn't move at all. It just sat trapped where it was, unable to go back, and unwilling to go forward.
“Stubborn little thing,” the doctor said, after battling with a pair of forceps that left Hiroko gasping in agony, as three nurses held her. It was six o'clock by then, and they had gotten nowhere in the last few hours. He glanced at Reiko from time to time, and she remembered his warning, but there was nothing they could do to help Hiroko move the baby.
“Try, Hiroko, come on,” Sandy told her. “Push as hard as you can.” She had, but it was exactly what her own mother had experienced with Yuji. The baby was too big, the mother too small. But this wasn't Kyoto. And there was no hospital to go to. There were only these women helping her, and a minimum of tools and options. The doctor tried the forceps again, and then told Sandy to press as hard as she could on Hiroko's stomach, just above the baby. They were going to try to force the baby out. Hiroko screamed as she thought she felt her ribs breaking, and the baby moved forward a tiny bit, as the three nurses working with her gave a cheer, including Reiko, but Hiroko didn't acknowledge them or smile. She was in too much pain and growing weaker by the moment.
“More!” the doctor said, trying the forceps again, as Sandy pushed harder and this time the other nurse added pressure as well. Hiroko screamed again and looked pitifully at Reiko. But her cousin could do nothing for her.
“No … no … I can't…. No! …” Hiroko said breathlessly, fighting them, and then suddenly all she could think of was Peter, and the promises they'd made each other. Suddenly, she knew that if she did not do this for him, she would die, and so would their baby. The agonies she'd been through that night were for him, and she could not give up or stop until she had done what she was there to do, bring his child into the world, and be there for him when he returned. No matter what happened now, she could not fail him. Remembering that gave her a strength she never knew she had. She fought valiantly to help push her child into the world, but still the baby refused to move. It seemed hopeless to her, and to everyone who watched her. And after another hour, both their heartbeats were weakening slowly. The doctor knew he had no choice. No matter what the risk, he had to do it. She was bleeding a lot too, and two women had hemorrhaged to death in childbirth the week before. He wanted to do what he could to control the damage while he still had the option, and to save, if not Hiroko, at least the baby's life.
&nbs
p; “Take her to the operating room,” he said to Sandy in a tone of somber resignation. “She can't do this anymore.” But Hiroko heard him and clutched his hand, looking ghostly pale and very frightened.
“No!” She knew that was how Yuji had been born, and how they had both almost died. Her father had told her the story, to prove to her how dangerous the old ways were, but here they had no choice. There were only the old ways, or death if those methods failed. Feeling demons behind her, she battled the forces of nature with fresh fervor, knowing that what she might lose was her own or her baby's life. She fought with all the terror of what she knew might happen if she didn't succeed in pushing the baby out. The doctor tried the forceps one more time and dared even more than he should have. But he had felt Hiroko's struggle for life. And both nurses pressed on her again, as Hiroko fought with everything she had, and for yet another moment it seemed hopeless. And then it came, moving slowly at first, and then hurtling forward with another pain and then another, and suddenly there was a terrifying scream, and a long thin howl, and then a little shout of fury. He had a bright red face, and soft brown hair, and dark blue almond-shaped eyes, and except for a hint of something faintly Japanese, he looked exactly like his father, as Hiroko lay staring at him, totally spent and unable to believe she had done it.
“Oh …” Hiroko said, almost too weak to speak as she looked at him in wonder. He was so beautiful, so perfect, and very large, just as the doctor had said. They weighed him on a little scale they had.
Silent Honor Page 24
