All We Left Behind

by Danielle R. Graham

  Hot damn. That news was the best Christmas gift ever. I had a million questions, but our conversation was interrupted by the priest who led us in a prayer and Christmas carols. I sang my lungs out because the songs and the service reminded me of home. After the carols, a guard prepared a projector to play a film. The Wizard of Oz – either an ironic or fitting screening to play to a bunch of prisoners who wanted nothing more than to go home. I couldn’t decide.

  ‘We’ll be home soon,’ Gordie whispered. ‘Guaranteed.’

  I slid Chidori’s picture out of my pocket and stared at it as the movie rolled. Part of me was hopeful he was right, but part of me didn’t want to be hopeful about anything. When the film was over, I hugged Gordie and wished him a Merry Christmas before we were ordered back to our barracks.

  That night I dreamt I was home on Mayne Island. Chidori and a little blond Japanese boy trimmed the Christmas tree in our house. She called me to help them place the angel on top and I lifted the boy so he could reach. He grinned as he leaned forward and balanced the angel on the tallest branch. But my leg knocked the table and a candle toppled over. The Parisian silk curtains started on fire before I could douse the flames. The floors and walls ignited immediately, and we were all engulfed in a bright orange glow. Chidori and the boy melted until they resembled the ghoulishly beautiful ceramic doll that had won first prize in the art category at the fall fair. I beat the licking flames frantically with my coat, trying to extinguish the fire.

  ‘Chidori!’ I screamed.

  ‘Hayden.’

  ‘Chidori!’ I pounded the flames, but the fire only got bigger and I couldn’t see them any more. I screamed and started to cry. ‘Don’t worry, son. Papa’s going to save you.’

  ‘Pierce. Wake up, pal. You’re having another nightmare. Ow. Goddamn it. Wake up, Hayden!’

  I woke up on my knees, chest heaving, and with a tear-streaked face.

  My hands throbbed from pounding them against the floor in an attempt to squash the imaginary flames. Everyone sat up in their bunks gawking at me. Chuck stretched his arm around my shoulders and escorted me back to my bunk.

  ‘You were dreaming. There’s no fire.’

  Chuck’s nose was bleeding. ‘Did I hit you?’

  ‘It’s okay, pal. Somebody get him some water, will ya?’

  9 February 1942

  Dear Diary,

  We have finally received official word in the post about Uncle Massey. He had been initially detained in jail in Vancouver but then in January he was given the choice to either be deported to Japan or sent to a prison road camp one province over in Jasper, Alberta. He chose the labour camp so he could at least stay in the country. The government seized all of his real-estate assets in Vancouver. They took everything he owned with no compensation. Tosh was particularly incensed by that injustice and he has busied himself researching the law, the War Measures Act, the Geneva Agreement, and anything else that he hopes might help. Tosh and my father travelled to Vancouver to plead our case in defence of Massey and his property, but unfortunately, they hit bureaucratic brick walls.

  Much to Kenji’s dismay nobody has heard what happened to Michiko and her family. The prevailing assumption is that they would have been sent back to Japan since they had only been in Canada for six years. Kenji was abruptly discharged from his job with the accountant. No cause was given, but I can assure you it had nothing to do with his work performance. Even by the standards of his ‘only worry if and when it happens’ philosophy, he must admit the time to worry has arrived.

  I am very disheartened that Tosh won’t be able to attend Law School. What if the war rages on for five or ten more years? I should have gone to classes when I had the chance. I’ll be too old to go to university by the time the war is over. What am I supposed to do if I have children, drag them around to class with me? I won’t be able to do both.

  I read through all of the history and politics books on Tosh’s bookshelf while he was in Vancouver. I discovered that the Canadian government can’t intern Canadian citizens who have been convicted of no crime. It violates the Geneva Convention and is illegal for a country’s government to do so. But then I noticed that the newspaper articles have carefully not used the word internment. They call it an evacuation or detainment, presumably to skirt the Geneva Convention.

  Constable Stuart knows we are not spies! And what I sincerely do not understand is – if expats are allegedly all spies, why did he not confiscate cameras and short-wave radios from the Bauers or the Tagliettis, or threaten to imprison them in internment camps years ago when we declared war with Germany and Italy? Why has the frenzy only become irrational now?

  The Sakai family heard from a relative that two Japanese-Canadian milkmen were arrested in Vancouver for being out before dawn. Do you know what they were doing out before dawn? They were delivering milk. For goodness’ sake, is that not the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? Has the entire world truly gone mad?

  My greatest fears, now that they are coming to fruition, have left me feeling strangely numb. It must be shock.

  Chi

  Chapter 22

  In the third week of February, on a Tuesday, I was in town to pick up grocery rations for my mother and noticed something was wrong. The Japanese-Canadian families were especially tense and purposeful. They were behaving oddly. Mrs Kadonaga loaded her chickens into a crate and stacked them onto the back of Mr Aitken’s truck to give them away. Mr Teremura gave Mrs Jones a wagon full of her family’s dishes and linens. The Sumi family had nailed boards over the windows.

  Something was definitely wrong, so I ran the rest of the way to the house and burst open the front door. My father sat, hunched at the kitchen table, staring down into a cup of tea with the radio on in the background. Patch sat in the corner with his ears pressed to his head as if he could sense the gravity of the mood. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked my father.

  ‘The evacuation orders were published by the government today. All of the Japanese Canadians need to leave the coastal areas on April twenty-first.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Somewhere outside the one-hundred-mile protection zone.’ He shook his head apologetically. ‘Sorry, son, that’s all I know.’

  Distraught, I sprinted all the way to Chidori’s house. A thin plume of smoke rose from the chimneys and the Cadillac was parked next to the truck. Kenji was next to the greenhouses, digging a hole for a large brown trunk that had fine china and crystal packed in it. Tosh stood in front of a huge bonfire, throwing books into it and watching the flames flare up. He was eerily expressionless.

  I leapt onto the porch and pounded on the door. Chidori’s grandmother answered and bowed. ‘Hayden-san. Come.’ She turned, walked down the hall, and pointed up the staircase. ‘Chidori. Go.’ She bowed again and walked away.

  It seemed like she wanted me to go upstairs, but if Chidori’s father found out, I would get my hide tanned.

  Her grandmother poked her head back into the hall and gestured with her frail hand towards the stairs. ‘Go, go. Hayden-san.’

  I climbed the stairs, trying not to make them creak. The first room on the right was Kenji’s. His Asahi baseball cap hung on the hook. The room on the left was nearly empty, except for the bed and a desk. Presumably Tosh’s, since he was burning all his belongings out back. Chidori’s door was closed. I inhaled and knocked softly. Nobody answered. I knocked again, then placed my hand around the clear glass knob and opened the door a crack to tilt my head in.

  Lace curtains floated in the breeze with a faint hint of lavender. A floral quilt with neatly folded corners covered the bed. The pillows were cased in white cotton and decorated with pink satin ribbons. The diary I had given her for Christmas was open on the bedside table next to a silver-handled brush and hand mirror. On the wall above the bed hung framed watercolours of ballerinas, and the ones hung above the dressing table were of birds.

  I opened the door wider. Chidori lay on the far side of the room, curled up on the wood
floor next to the bed, hugging her knees into her chest as if she had been beaten.

  ‘Chi,’ I whispered.

  The sound of my voice caused her eyes to clench shut. She covered her face with her hands, ashamed to be seen in a broken-down state.

  I eased across the room and crouched down to lift her off the floor. She was light, like a bird, and barely made a dent as I placed her on the bed. ‘It’s going to be okay. I’ll figure something out.’ I slid down onto the mattress next to her and wrapped my arms around her trembling body.

  She buried her face against my chest and her breath sounded as if she wanted to cry, but no tears came out.

  ‘It’s okay to cry,’ I whispered and stroked her hair.

  ‘No. They win if they know they hurt me.’

  ‘They only win if they break you. Don’t ever let them break you.’

  Her fingers clutched the fabric of my shirt as if they couldn’t bear the thought of letting go. ‘I don’t know how to do that. I’m already cracking.’

  ‘As long as we always love each other, they can never break either of us. Always remember our love is stronger than anything they can put us through. Okay?’

  She lifted her chin and stared into my eyes. ‘What if I never see you again?’

  My throat jammed with a ball of emotion that felt impossible-to-swallow. I held her tighter and rested my cheek on top of her head. I didn’t know how I was going to prevent that from happening but what I did know was I would die trying. There was no point to anything if it wasn’t for her.

  We remained in an embrace until it grew dark and she eventually fell asleep. The sound of her breathing was peaceful, and if I hadn’t seen her distressed face earlier, I would have assumed she was serenely dreaming. I wanted to stay, but it was getting late and improper for me to be in her bedroom. I carefully slid off the bed, placed a blanket over her, and tiptoed back downstairs.

  Mr Setoguchi was reading in his chair in the living room. Our eyes met. My breath stopped moving in and out as he stared at me. When he finally focused back down at the book in his hand, without any comment about my presence, I made my exit.

  Chapter 23

  ‘Pierce, pass the gravy boat, will ya?’ Philip joked. The other lads in the barrack laughed as I handed an imaginary gravy boat across the table and he pretended to elegantly pour it over his empty plate. ‘Mmm. Just like home,’ he said with a big grin, then stuffed his mouth with a make-believe feast. His pantomime made my stomach growl and my mouth water. The good mood the Christmas festivities had put me in was gone, faded away. Back in the doldrums.

  F/O Pierce Duration as POW: 215 days.

  They gave us all shots in our arms for Lord knows what. It made everyone queasy and it caused a handful of us to become violently ill. Marlon, Lenny and I vomited and suffered from diarrhoea so severely that the guards threw us into the latrine and locked the door. We had to sleep on the floor for two nights and the smell was worse than rotting fish carcasses in August. Eventually, a doctor was brought in to examine us. He gave us some sort of fluid that made Lenny and me feel better. Marlon didn’t recover. He died two days later.

  F/O Pierce Duration as POW: 251 days.

  I have been too lethargic to write in my log because nothing different really happens around this stagnant place. Except, there was a rifle shot yesterday. If a guard ever asks me to turn around, I won’t. He’ll just have to do what he’s going to do in my chest, then explain to the International Red Cross how I was trying to escape by running backwards. Maybe they were hunting and plan to serve rabbit stew for dinner. Ha. Comical.

  ‘Put that damn journal down, Hayden. Let’s throw the football around,’ Arnold said.

  I sighed and closed my notebook. ‘I don’t feel up to it. It’s too cold outside.’

  ‘Get up. I ain’t gonna let you just give up and die from the blues. You’re the only one in this gloomy, Godforsaken ice tundra who can throw a proper spiral.’

  I rolled off my bunk and dragged my feet to follow him outside into the snow-covered yard. We played catch for a while before I noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the crack in the latrine wall. I acted as if I had dropped the ball, then wandered over casually. Gordie had written that the Russians were gaining ground. A sliver of hope. I handed it to Arnold and then went long to catch his next pass.

  F/O Pierce Duration as POW: 252 days.

  The bucket of drinking water froze. Indoors! And we have to ration what’s left of the coal, so we only light the stove at night. If I ever get to leave this frozen hell, and if Chidori and I have kids, I’m going to teach them how to throw a proper spiral – even if they’re girls … scratch that. When Chidori and I have kids, not if. When I return home, not if.

  19 March 1942

  Dear Diary,

  We have been notified that we will only be permitted to evacuate with one-hundred-and-fifty pounds of belongings. I desperately wish I could take each of my diaries with me, but given that I have a stack of nearly thirty journals collected through the years, I must admit it is not a practical use of limited space. I will travel with the new journal Hayden gave me for Christmas and leave the others in my closet with the rest of my belongings that I cannot carry with me.

  Obaasan asked me to accompany her on a walk to view the cherry blossoms before we leave. There is a Japanese tradition celebrated for two weeks every spring when the cherry blossoms bloom. It is called Hanami. It is a reminder of our mortality and the importance of seizing the present moment because life, like the blossoms, is ultimately fleeting. I will have to ask her how the philosophy applies if the present moment is not something I want to hold onto.

  I accept the past is gone now. I can only pray that the future is more promising than the present. I dread saying my goodbyes. It will feel too final when I do. And Hayden, what will I do when the time comes? I cannot even fathom that heartbreaking pain right now.

  What else is there to say at a time like this? I must have faith that the war will end soon and we will be permitted to return home quickly. I do remind myself every day, as Hayden suggested, that we are strong enough to survive whatever happens. We must never give up and never break. I have faith that I can do that, especially if the ultimate goal is to see Hayden again one day.

  Farewell Diary, my old friend. I pray we meet again soon. Shikata ga nai.

  Chi

  Chapter 24

  I was blindly determined to protect Chidori from being taken away from Mayne Island. I thought of every possible way to convince the officials to let her stay with me. I even considered hiding her, but I was personally informed with an official hand-delivered letter that anyone found assisting the Japanese would be arrested and jailed. I came to the conclusion that being officially married might be our only chance. I didn’t know for sure if they would let the bride of a non-Japanese Canadian stay with her husband, but it was worth a try. The day before the officials were supposed to meet the ship at Miner’s Bay, I went to the Setoguchis’ in desperation to speak with her father again.

  He was busy in the greenhouse when I found him, getting everything in order so the employees could manage things while he was gone. I followed him as he walked down the rows because he didn’t have time to stop working. ‘Mr Setoguchi, I’d like to ask your permission to marry Chidori.’ I paused to let him respond, but he didn’t say anything. ‘I think if we are married, she won’t have to be evacuated. She and I could stay here and take care of the greenhouses until you get back.’

  ‘The last time I checked, the war was still raging, Hayden. Even if the authorities allow Chidori to remain here as your spouse, if you are called to service, she’ll be left here all alone during a very dangerous time. It’s safer for her to stay with her family. Together.’

  I sighed and stared out the glass panes at the blue sky. My stomach clenched painfully because he was right. ‘I’ll come with you. They can throw me in the prisoner camp too. At least she and I will be together.’

  He continued to chec
k each plant. After a long while, he said, ‘No point in you being detained. If overseas conscription isn’t instated, you’re better off staying here and earning a living while we’re gone. Say your goodbyes, Hayden.’

  I stopped following him and stood in the middle of the greenhouse like a deflated tyre. With no further arguments I eventually left.

  Chidori was on the back porch of their house with her mother and grandmother. They were sewing cash money into the linings of clothing. When I reached the bottom step, she rested the clandestine coat on her lap.

  ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk.’ My voice sounded identical to the time my father had to tell me my first dog had died. I hadn’t meant for it to, that’s just how it came out.

  Chidori glanced at her mother before she met me at the stairs. Her palm rested on my cheek and she closed her eyes as if she was trying to memorize how it felt. I wanted to kiss her, but her grandmother and mother were both watching. Instead, I laced my fingers around hers and escorted her to the path that led to Bennett Bay.

  ‘How is your mother holding up?’ I asked as we strolled.

  ‘She was very upset about not being able to bring all of the possessions that are precious to her. She was torn between family mementoes with sentimental value and her collection of treasures with actual monetary value. She was adamant about packing things like dinner placemats that prove we are a dignified family, which seems so silly to me, but she insisted that dignity is one thing that must be held on to. Grandmother told her it was best to leave all of the belongings behind so nobody can take them from her later. Ever since then, Mother has been repeating Shikata ga nai like a prayer.’