Viral

by Emily Mitchell

Instead of countering what he said, Leigh simply asked: “Which books do you want me to bring?”

  When he saw her step off the bus, holding May on her hip, he was seized with such emotion that for some minutes he found it difficult to speak.

  They sleep in Building No. 147, a cabin with unfinished walls and a tar-papered roof. They share its one room with Karl’s parents and another family, the Shinedas. They’ve hung a sheet across the middle of the room for privacy. Mrs. Shineda is a nosy gossip, so this barrier seems insufficient but it is better than nothing.

  They have two beds, and Karl built a table and chairs from scrap lumber begged from the camp authorities. At night, the wind comes through the gaps in the walls. It wakes up May, who sleeps between them. They have tried to fill the cracks with newspaper but it seems as if no matter how many crevices they stop, the wind always finds a new way in.

  The evening after the questionnaires are handed out, Karl tells Leigh that he’s going to answer no to the last two questions. His parents are still at the mess hall eating dinner. May is playing outside with other children who sleep nearby.

  Leigh listens to him quietly.

  “What do you think will happen if you answer no?” she asks when he’s finished speaking.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “All I know is that I can’t just pledge allegiance and say I’ll go into the army. Not after this.”

  Leigh thinks about this for a minute.

  “I think you’re right,” she says. “The one thing that they can’t take from you unless you let them is your conscience.”

  Leigh is a slight woman who is often mistaken for younger than her age; if you didn’t know her you might think that she was weak and tractable.

  “It’s so stupid,” she says. “You were ready to go before they sent us here.”

  This is true. During the months before evacuation, they had many conversations about Karl joining up. He’d wanted to do the right thing, to fight against the Fascists. He would probably be in the army now, except that he was sent here, to this camp, instead.

  He reaches over to take Leigh’s hand and they sit for a minute like this, looking at each other in the growing gloom.

  Then, from behind the bed sheet curtain that divides the room comes the sound of footsteps. Karl looks over and sees, in the gap beneath the curtain, a pair of feet.

  Mrs. Shineda has been on her side of the room the whole time they were talking. She has heard everything they said.

  Mrs. Shineda’s feet go over to the door and wiggle out of their house slippers. At the door, where the sheet ends and there’s a gap, she looks toward them, bows slightly and smiles. Itte kimasu, she says. I go and I return. Then she steps out into the dusk.

  “Oh, well,” Leigh says. “People were bound to find out soon enough.”

  But Karl does not like it.

  A Japanese expression comes into his head, one that he dislikes for being fatalistic: shikata ga nai. There’s nothing to be done. It was what his mother said when they were ordered from their home. It was what his father said when he had to close his store and lay off his employees.

  And now Karl will have to sit here while the news of his decision goes out into the world. Shikata ga nai.

  The next morning, Karl is with his work detail.

  Their group has been assigned to construct more sleeping cabins so each family in the camp can eventually have its own. In December there were riots over the crowding and the bad food and since then the administrators have embarked on an improvement plan. They employ internees for wages to make the camp more habitable.

  Like Karl, who was a schoolteacher, the other men did different things before. One was a plumber, one worked in a cannery, one used to be a fisherman. Although it is against camp rules, they speak to one another in Japanese. In the cold air, their breath plumes. They talk about the questionnaire.

  “I’m just going to answer the way they want,” the ex-plumber says. He hammers down tarpaper at one corner of a roof, while the ex-fisherman holds his ladder steady. “Yes and yes. What else can we do?”

  The others murmur in assent. Then the ex-plumber looks over to where Karl and the ex–cannery worker are kneeling on a tarpaulin, attaching hinges to a door. “Hey, Takagawa,” he says. “I heard that you are going to say no and no. Is that true?”

  “That’s right,” Karl says. He doesn’t look up from the work he’s doing, just keeps screwing in the hinges.

  “Why?” the ex-plumber asks.

  “Because I don’t think it is right to force us to say we are loyal, or to make us go into the army when our families are here.”

  “You aren’t loyal?” the ex-plumber asks.

  “The point isn’t whether I’m loyal or not,” Karl says. “The point is they don’t have the right to ask me. They are treating us like criminals when we’ve done nothing wrong.”

  The ex-plumber opens his mouth as if he’s going to say something else, but then he shuts it again and just rolls his eyes.

  The ex-fisherman shakes his head. He says: “I heard that if you say no to either question, they send you away. To a camp in Washington State.”

  “We’re already in a camp,” Karl says.

  “That place is worse. Like a real prison. I mean, no hot water, prison rations. No movies, no sports teams. And no families allowed, just men.”

  “How do you know so much about it?” the ex–cannery worker asks.

  “One of my cousins from Seattle got sent to that place for running away to go home and see his girl. I heard about it from my uncle. It’s called Tule Lake.”

  Karl feels like he should say something, but what? It doesn’t matter what the consequences are, he’s made his choice. But he thinks that he won’t mention this conversation to Leigh. No reason to worry her any more than he already has.

  Near the end of their work shift, when the other two men are out of earshot, the ex–cannery worker, whose name is Fred Nakamura, turns to Karl and says quietly: “I wish I had the guts to do what you are doing,” and Karl feels a surge of unexpected pride.

  When Karl comes back from work that afternoon, he finds his father sitting at the table in Building No. 147.

  “I don’t know,” he says when Karl enters. Karl sees the questionnaire forms spread out in front of him. “If I forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, aren’t I saying that I used to have allegiance to him? Is it some kind of trick question?”

  Hisao Takagawa has a shock of white hair on the top of his narrow head. For twenty years he owned and ran a clothing store on Fillmore Street. Now the store is shuttered and the inventory sold to competitors for a fraction of its value.

  “For you,” Hisao goes on, “this is not so bad. You are a citizen, not even married to a Japanese. There’s no chance they’ll deport you.”

  “Otsan,” Karl says, “they aren’t going to deport you.”

  Karl has always been impatient with his parents’ nervous self-defensiveness, their reluctance to trust non-Japanese. Karl was born in California. His childhood memories are filled with San Francisco’s bright and shifting light, its banks of silver fog and rows of pastel-colored houses. Their neighborhood was full of Issei and Nissei, speaking Japanese, eating the foods—mikan at new year, sunamono, manju—and playing the music of their old homeland. But he also remembers white people and black people and Chinese living only streets away.

  Once or twice when he was a teenager, he was called chink by white men in the street, older men with heavy faces and clothes more worn than his. He ignored them. Already he was interested in Communism, in the Party and its promise of a future where race and class and countries would be swept away. And where would this great change take place if not in America?

  Hisao shrugs: who knows? He clears his throat. “I have heard,” he says, “a rumor.”

  “That I am going to answer no to questions 27 and 28.”

  “Is it true?”

  Karl nods and Hisao sits back and folds his hands over his knees. “
Well,” he says. “Please think about your mother and me before you make your answers. That is all I ask.”

  “Otsan, my decision doesn’t have anything to do with you. You won’t be punished for what I do. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Is that right? How does it work if you know so much about it? Would you have thought that you could find yourself where you are today?”

  Later that evening Karl is eating dinner in the mess hall, when out of the corner of his eye he sees someone enter the room and come toward him. He looks over and sees it is Keo Sasaki, followed by a couple of other men whose names he does not know.

  Mr. Sasaki owned a big dry-goods store in his old life. There is talk that he ran a bookmaking operation, too, but no one knows for sure if this is true. Since evacuation, he has become the self-appointed spokesman for the internees, and a delegate to the Japanese American Citizens League from the camp. The administrators talk to Keo Sasaki if they want to know what people in the camp are thinking. Karl has heard him say that the American Japanese are fortunate that the government brought them to the relocation centers for their own protection, that it has provided them with work and schools and housing at a time of national crisis.

  Now he comes to where Karl is sitting.

  “Mr. Takagawa,” he says. “Would you walk outside with me?”

  They go slowly, making a circuit around the building. Mr. Sasaki takes cigarettes from the breast pocket of his coat and offers one to Karl who accepts it. He is not afraid of Keo Sasaki, he tells himself.

  At last Mr. Sasaki says: “I heard something and I want to find out from you if it is true.”

  “What did you hear?” Karl asks. He knows the answer perfectly well, but to admit that would be to confirm the suspicion.

  “You are going to refuse to swear your allegiance to our country.” He takes a pull on his cigarette and exhales smoke.

  “The way I answer those questions is no one’s business but mine,” Karl says.

  Mr. Sasaki sighs. “I wish,” he says, “that were true. I wish none of us had to answer any of these questions. We wouldn’t be here at all. We’d be at home. Your father would be running his store, I would be running mine . . .

  “Unfortunately, we are at war. Normal considerations have to be suspended. Think about this for a minute. We have said to the authorities here and to the War Relocation Office that we shouldn’t be imprisoned because we are loyal Americans. How will it look if, when they ask us, some of our young men refuse to pledge their loyalty?

  “Don’t you want to be allowed to leave this place? Think about the welfare of your people.”

  Karl feels the anger tighten in his face. “My people aren’t only Japanese,” he says. “I act in solidarity with anyone who tries to do what is right when other people try to convince them to do what is easy.”

  Mr. Sasaki stops walking. “Is that really what you think?” he says, wearily. “Have you looked around? I don’t see very many of your non-Japanese brothers in this camp. I didn’t see them protesting when we were sent away last year. On the contrary, I saw them lining up to buy your father’s stock for nothing and live in your vacated apartment.”

  His voice has risen in anger, but now he resumes walking at his slow, meditative pace. “I understand you are a man of principle,” he says. “Just remember that I am not the only one who knows what you mean to do. Other people might not be so tolerant, you know. People get angry, get frustrated and then who can say what could occur? I dislike the idea of anyone being hurt.”

  Mr. Sasaki drops the butt of his cigarette onto the frozen ground where it rolls and makes a black dash on the frost. Then he turns and walks away without another word.

  Karl goes back to the mess hall to finish eating. No one asks him what Keo Sasaki said. Leigh takes May to get ready for bed and he stays at the table talking and smoking with a few men in the light and warmth.

  As he is walking back to Building No. 147 he notices that he is being followed. There are three figures, maybe four walking behind him. Karl walks faster and so do they. He turns left down one of the rows of cabins. They turn left, too.

  He stops and turns to face them. Now he counts five in all.

  “What do you want?” he says loudly, hoping that people in the surrounding buildings will hear.

  “Are you Karl Takagawa?” one figure asks.

  “Yes,” he says. He stands up straight. “What do you want?”

  The one who spoke approaches and Karl recognizes him, a skinny kid with slicked-back hair, though he does not know his name.

  “We wanted to tell you,” the young man says, “that we are going to answer no. We’ve decided. Why should we go into the army now? We have to stand up for ourselves.”

  Karl looks around at the others for the first time. They are all nodding and in the near-dark he can see that they are smiling. He laughs out loud with relief and claps the slick-haired leader on the back.

  “Well done,” he says. “Well done. That’s great. We’ll show them.”

  But later, when Karl tells Leigh what Mr. Sasaki said to him, she sits down abruptly on their bed like someone has let go of the strings that were holding her upright.

  “He’s just a trumped-up old windbag,” Karl says. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Leigh says, “I heard that if you say no you might get sent away. To another camp. Is that true?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you heard about it, too?”

  “Yes. I heard about it.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” He does not reply to this. Leigh looks away from him, and he can tell that she is trying not to cry.

  That night Karl cannot sleep. Eventually he gets out of bed and feels his way across the room. By touch he finds his coat and cigarettes. He opens the door and steps outside. The only lights are the arc lamps on the guard towers and over the main gate.

  He sits on the front stoop and smokes. After a minute, he hears the door creak open behind him. May is standing there.

  “I can’t sleep,” she says. “I want to sit with you.”

  “All right, just for a minute.” He opens one side of his coat and she curls against him.

  “Daddy, why won’t Doreen play with me?” May asks.

  Oh, dear. Doreen is Keo Sasaki’s niece. How can he explain this mess in terms a six-year-old can understand?

  “Well,” he starts, “Do you think that you should do what is right even if other people don’t like it?”

  “Yes,” May says.

  “So I made a decision that some people don’t like.”

  “I see,” May says. Her voice is sleepy. “I wish that Doreen would stop being mean to me.”

  “She will,” he says, hoping he sounds like he is sure.

  • • •

  The next day, the last before the forms are due, everyone is subdued.

  When Karl comes back to change his shirt before supper, he finds Leigh sitting on the front steps of Building No. 147 looking distraught.

  “I can’t find May. She didn’t come back from school with the other kids.”

  He can tell that she’s imagining the worst: an accident or some harm visited on May because of Karl. He goes to Leigh and takes her hand.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “She can’t be far. You stay in case she comes back here. I’ll go and find her.”

  He searches among the cabins. He calls May’s name. He asks any children he meets if they’ve seen her. He knocks on the doors of the cabins where her playmates’ families sleep. No one has seen her.

  It is already beginning to get darker and colder. What if she has fallen and hurt herself? What if she is hiding, scared because of something the other children said or did?

  Some of the people he asks come out to help him search. Hana Sumiyoshi puts on her husband’s big overcoat since she does not have one of her own. Helen Nakamura, who works in the mess hall where they eat. The guys from his work detail, even the ex-plumber. Some of the children
May plays with after school, some adults he doesn’t know. Soon there is a big group of them hunting through the cabins altogether.

  • • •

  It feels like some kind of parade, some kind of celebration, all of them out with flashlights and hurricane lamps that shine gold in the gathering blue-gray dark. Still there is no sign of May.

  Finally, a little boy tells him that he saw a girl and a boy going toward the main gate of the camp a short while before. Karl sets off in that direction.

  As he comes in sight of the gate, he notices that both the sentries have left their posts, which is strange. He keeps going toward the edge of the camp, looking for some sign of the children. Then he sees where the sentries have gone. They are over where the little stream runs along the boundary fence, standing among the gray skeletons of bushes on its banks. It is almost completely dark now, but they are illuminated by the arc lamps that shine along the boundary fence to prevent escapes: two white men in mud-colored uniforms, long wool coats, wool hats under their helmets.

  They are looking down at something in the ditch.

  Karl is behind them, so he cannot see their faces, and they have not heard him approach; he is perhaps twenty-five feet from them, but the wind blows away the sound of his footsteps. He hesitates. He does not want to seem to have been sneaking up on them. They are armed, after all.

  Then, while he is deciding what to do, he sees one of the sentries nudge the other with his elbow: hey, watch this. From the holster on his belt, the man draws out his pistol. With a big exaggerated movement that uses his whole arm, he aims it at something in the stream bed in front of him, something Karl cannot see.

  Karl stands rooted to the spot. His throat has gone dry. Is it an animal the man is aiming at? A tin can stuck in the ice? The man is still poised as if he’s going to shoot, as if he’s looking for just the right angle from which to fire.

  After a little while, the other man seems to grow uncomfortable. He reaches over and pushes the barrel of the pistol down toward the ground. The first man laughs and holsters his gun. Then both men turn and walk back toward their posts at the main gate.

  Karl, standing in the dark, watches them come toward him. He thinks that at any moment they might see him. But the darkness is full now and they pass by about fifteen feet from him without knowing it.