Once, when I was younger, my dad let me hold the Katsumoto Co. deposit bag for six full minutes. We had closed the store and were walking toward the bank when he leaned over, plopped the leather envelope into my hands, and said, “Here, Stan, you take it.”
Can you imagine? A whole day’s revenue steaming in my hot little hands. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the things I could do with that money. I could buy a truck or a hundred books or a swimming pool full of Jell-O. I could visit Egypt or send my little sister to a convent or buy a house for my buddy Shig so his family wouldn’t have to rent anymore. The possibilities were endless!
No, the possibilities were endless, and that was a lot of money. What if I misplaced it on our three-block walk to the bank? What if someone drove by while we were on the corner and snatched it right out of my arms? What if Bonnie and Clyde rode up with their Thompsons and opened fire?
Convinced I was going to lose the deposit bag somehow, I tried tucking it under my armpit. I tried clasping it to my chest. I tried swinging it between my thumb and forefinger like nothing bad would happen as long as I pretended not to care about it, and it nearly slipped out of my grasp.
That’s when Dad smacked me in the back of the head and snatched the bag back.
It was only six minutes, but I still remember how good it felt to hold all that money and how fucking scary it was to know it could all be taken away.
Ten years later, and it happened anyway: We lost the store. We lost our freedom. Sometimes, it feels like we’re losing even more than that.
As I pass Dining Hall 1 on my way to the post office, I watch people from Block 8 queue up for the registration, which is what the WRA is calling this stuff with the loyalty questionnaire. It’s barely ten a.m., but the line’s already starting to wrap around the building. The administration’s going to have a hell of a time if they don’t step up the pace—for every person who trickles out of the mess hall, two more join the end of the line.
But I guess it wouldn’t be Topaz without a wait.
“Hey, Katsumoto!”
I turn to find Frankie Fujita coming out of the mess hall, sporting what looks like a new black eye. Dumb kid just can’t keep his hands to himself, can he? He slouches toward me with his fists in his pockets. “What d’you got there?” he says, nodding at the letters in my hands.
I look down, frowning. Damn, I was trying not to think of them.
“Nothing,” I lie. Nervously, I shuffle the envelopes—one, two, three, four, five, six—and almost drop them. “Letters to my sweethearts.”
Frankie snorts. “What sweethearts?”
“Your mom, for one.”
“Say something else about my mom, Katsumoto, and you won’t be talking for a month.”
We both drop the subject. I stuff the envelopes in my back pocket and pat them twice to make sure they won’t fall out. “Did you fill out your questionnaire?” I ask.
He nods.
“What was on it?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I said I wanted to fight, and they said okay.”
I laugh. And they’re going to put a gun in this guy’s hands? God bless America, I guess.
Look, I didn’t want to tell Frankie, but sometimes you want things so bad, you’re scared to even say it. I wanted to stay in San Francisco. I wanted to be treated like an American citizen.
But maybe this time will be different. Maybe if I say it, it’ll come true.
I’m going to college. Hopefully.
I was supposed to go last year, after I graduated—I had the grades for it, anyway—but most universities weren’t accepting Nisei students at the time, so I didn’t bother applying. Sure, I could’ve gotten help from the Quakers or the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, who were getting kids set up at religious places like BYU and St. Olaf’s, but here’s the thing: Why should I have to?
We’ve been in camps for almost a year, and no one’s been found guilty of espionage. With background checks, people are getting resettled all the time in cities like Denver and Detroit. After the loyalty questionnaire, that process is going to go even faster. They have to accept me now. They’ve got no reason not to.
So I’m writing letters to a bunch of universities, requesting application forms. I’ll just fill them out, tell them I’m loyal, and poof! I’ll be out of here in time for summer classes, a dewy-eyed freshman just like the rest.
But it’s never that easy, is it? They couldn’t just ask, Are you loyal to the United States of America? Yes or no? and be done with it. Not this government, who said last year that there was no way to measure the loyalty of the Japanese in America. At least not until after they put us in camps.
I guess asking for things to “be simple” and “make sense” was kind of a high bar.
Of course, we’re all curious to see what kind of white nonsense we have to deal with this time, so Twitchy nabs us a copy of the questionnaire, and we crowd onto the steps of the Itos’ barrack with Shig and Tommy to pore over the pages.
Don’t call it stealing. Call it “test prep.” I learned a long time ago that the secret to academic success isn’t smarts. It’s knowing what they want from you and giving it to them with a smile.
“‘Statement of United States Citizen of Japanese Ancestry,’” Twitchy begins.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s get to the good stuff.” Impatiently, Shig flips through the pages. After a second, he laughs. “‘Number nineteen: Sports and hobbies’!”
Twitchy drums the stair with his palms. “What do they care what sports we play?”
“Maybe they want us to have played American sports like football?” Tommy asks.
“Nah.” I snort. “They’re scared of us doing shit like judo and karate. They want to know if we’re forming a secret ninja army or something.” Snatching the questionnaire, I flip to the front again.
It’s from the Selective Service System. You know, the guys in charge of the draft. No wonder they’re so obsessed with armies.
Shig scoffs and takes the pages back from me. “‘Number twenty-two: Give details on any foreign investments.’ What do they think we are, rich?”
“Yeah.” I roll my eyes. “Rich ninjas.”
We laugh, but no one really finds this funny. Four pages of the government trying to trick us into revealing that, oh shit, we really are spies? We didn’t even know! Damn, shouldn’t have visited those grandparents in Fukuoka, huh? Shouldn’t have joined that Japanese theater club. Whoopsy-daisy, guess I’m a traitor now? Good to know!
Eventually, of course, we find them, Questions 27 and 28, the questions that are causing so much trouble, the questions that are actually about loyalty and not about whether we macramé in the evenings or crochet.
“What the fuck?” I say.
“What?” Twitchy glances at the questions again, then back to me. “What’s wrong with them, Stan?”
I stare at the bottom of the last page, blinking, like the words are going to cha-cha into new arrangements while I’m not looking.
But they don’t.
27. Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?_______________________
28. Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power, or organization?_______________________
Shig leans back on the steps, shrugging. “What’s so hard about that?” he says. “‘No’ and ‘Yeah.’”
“Why ‘No’?” I ask.
It’s a nifty trick, playing dumb. You ask the right questions, and people magically come around to your way of thinking. Dad hates it, but I tell him to blame Socrates.
“Can you picture me in the army?” Shig chuckles. “They’d kick me out for folding my socks wrong or something.”
Twitchy laughs. “Since when do you fold your socks?”
“But this isn’t asking you to volunteer.” I flick the paper. It snaps against my fingernail, making Tommy jump.
“It isn’t?” Shig asks.
“Nah.” I smirk. “But it is asking you to give up your loyalty to Hirohito.”
“What loyalty to Hirohito?”
“Exactly.”
Tommy’s brow furrows. “So they’re wanting us to say we were loyal to Hirohito, but we’re not anymore?”
I make finger guns at him. “Bingo.”
Shig groans, like he’s just been sucker punched. I guess we all have. “You were right, Stan. What the fuck.”
Turns out, Shig couldn’t answer “No” and “Yeah” even if he wanted to. The following day, the Topaz Times announces that Questions 27 and 28 must be answered the same. A “No” to one is a “No” to both, no room for exceptions or explanations. You’re loyal and a true American patriot, or you’re not and you’re a filthy goddamn traitor! Go back to Japan if you don’t like it!
I slide the stolen questionnaire out from under my mattress, where I’ve hidden it like a dirty magazine. Are you willing . . . Will you swear . . . I’ve got the rest of the month until I have to report for registration, and I need to figure out how I’m going to answer.
If I say “Yes” and “Yes,” I get to leave camp. I get to go to school. I get a shot at my education.
If I say “No” and “No,” I give all that up, but at least I’ll keep my self-respect.
I check the post office every day to see if my applications have come in, but it isn’t until a week later that I finally get a reply.
I open it right there at the counter, ignoring the way Bette, who’s behind me, huffs and tosses her hair. She already waited an hour to get in here. She can wait a few seconds longer.
Surprise twist! It’s not an application at all. It’s a letter describing all the hoops I’ll have to jump through, some of them flaming, if I want to attend their undergraduate program. Given these prerequisites, if I’d still like an application form, they’ll be happy to supply one.
They want me to be the acrobat, but they’re the ones bending over backwards to reject me without really having to reject me. I wonder if they’ve got a manual or something, some step-by-step instructions on how to keep undesirables out of their hallowed alabaster institutions.
Part I: Salutations
Call the subject “my dear.” At all times, you must cultivate an air of gentility, so in the event that you are unfairly accused of bigotry, you will have your respectability as your defense. Bigots are not well-mannered, but you, my dear, are a paragon of propriety. Ergo, you cannot be a bigot!
Bette’s at the counter now, picking up the new camera she ordered by mail. “Get anything good today, Stan?” she asks.
I crumple the envelope and toss it toward the trash, where it hits the rim and falls to the floor, uncurling like a cramped fist. “Oh, you know,” I say, “the usual.”
Since we graduated last year, Twitchy and I have gotten jobs with the commissary. Every morning, we load up the truck from the iceboxes and warehouses to deliver food to the mess halls. It’s a job a trained monkey could do, but hey, it’s a paycheck, which is more than my dad brings in right now.
Sometimes, when we’re done, we swing by to pick up Shig and Tommy after school, and we go joyriding around camp for a while. Sometimes we return the truck with our heads spinning because Twitchy thought it would be funny to turn circles in the firebreak.
Whiplash. Hilarious.
Today, we’re lounging around in the truck bed while Shig tells us he said “Yes” and “Yes,” like Frankie, Bette, Mas, and Yum-yum, although he didn’t volunteer. “I just want to graduate and work at the commissary with you guys,” he says, folding a random page of the Topaz Times. “Can’t do that if I’m getting my toes shot off in Europe.”
“You could’ve kept your toes if you’d said ‘No,’” I point out.
He’s silent for a second as he fiddles with that piece of paper. I think he’s turning it into some kind of bird. A seagull, maybe, like the ones we used to chase around the playground, almost convinced we could catch them. Then he says, “Yeah, I know. But it’s what my dad would’ve wanted.”
That’s five of my friends who’ve declared “Yes” and “Yes” for this country. Five out of nine. More than half. I think of the questionnaire and that pre-rejection rejection stuffed under my mattress, the paper crimping from the bed springs.
I’m still waiting on five colleges. I could still get out of here if I say “Yes-Yes” too.
I sigh. It’s a weekend afternoon, so the barrack is pretty quiet. Mom’s at work at the dining hall, and my younger brother, Paul, is out, probably caterwauling on the other side of the barbed-wire fence with his friends. The guards on the watchtowers must see them, but it must not matter, because they’re just kids, I guess. The most harm they can do is pulling the legs off of scorpions to watch them wriggle in the dust.
Dad, as usual, is in his chair by the stove, reading his newspaper.
“What would you say?” I ask Mary, who’s reading. “If you had to answer the questionnaire?”
She glances over the edge of her book and back down again, like I’m a gnat she can’t be bothered to swat.
Thanks, Mary. I love you, too.
“I’m not seventeen yet,” she says. “I don’t get a say.”
And that’s the conversation. What a victory! I should run around camp with my fists in the air and the American flag draped over my shoulders.
Mom likes to say Mary’s a woman of few words, but really she’s just a grouch. I reach over to ruffle her hair, but she ducks out from under my hand, rolling her eyes.
At the table, Dad doesn’t look up. Honestly, I don’t even know if he knows we’re here. He turns the page of his paper. Smoke curls from his pipe like the mustache of a cartoon villain.
Before the evacuation, Dad was always in motion. He was restless and impatient, an earthquake of a man. He was insistent that we work harder, move faster, bring home better grades, sweep the floors, restock the shelves, learn to take inventory. At the store it was always “Do it again, Stan,” and “Hurry up, Stan.” On family outings, it was “Keep up or be left behind.”
Then there’s Dad after the evacuation: Every day, he sits by the stove with a weak cup of coffee and the most current edition of the newspaper. He reads that thing every day, page by page, skipping nothing, not even the ads. It takes him hours, because his English isn’t great and he won’t be caught dead taking Americanization classes with Mom. When he finishes, he flips the whole thing over and starts again from the beginning.
You could look through our windows and think nothing’s wrong. He’s healthy, I guess. He’s tidy. His mustache is trimmed. But he’s like a wax figure. If I sat him too close to the stove, he’d melt.
I get my second and third responses from colleges on the same day, and I swear they could’ve been written by the same prim white secretary for the same prim white dean. The only difference is that one calls me “Mr. Kistumoto.” It’s nice to have a little variety in your rejections, like extra fiber.
Part II: Requirements
List requirements that at first glance seem reasonable but are in fact nearly impossible to meet. For your convenience, examples are provided below.
Example A.
Knowing that the applicant, being from an alien family, is likely one of the working class and therefore lacking adequate savings for either tuition or room and board, DO make it agonizingly clear that out-of-state tuition is due in full before the beginning of the first semester but that searching for lodging or employment will not be permitted until after the applicant has arrived. Money is the key to many doors, fellow white person, and one’s inferiors must always be reminded that without it, all of those doors are closed.
If this had been before the evacuation, Dad would’ve yelled at me. “Not good enough, Stan,” or “You spent money on a stamp for this, Stan?” He would’ve yelled at the university, the heavens, the Director of Admissions, the guys at the post office. I don’t know a lot of Issei who yell, but Dad used to love it. I think it was one of the most American things about him, how he seized upon the freedom to be loud, to be heard, to claim his own space, even if his space encroached on everyone else in earshot.
I mean, if throwing your freedom around like that isn’t quintessentially American, I don’t know what is.
Now he just sits at the table, staring at his paper, and I quietly pile the letters with the questionnaire and shove them under my mattress.
When Twitchy announces that he’s volunteered for the army, like Frankie and Mas, everybody congratulates him, because Twitchy’s the kind of guy who can make enlisting seem like the war’s already won. With a laugh, Bette turns up Mas’s Silvertone radio, proclaiming, “This calls for a party!”
They all leap up, except for Tommy and me, who sit off to the side.
“Mom and Dad are going to say ‘No’ to the questionnaire.” Tommy’s voice is nearly drowned out by the music. “They’re tired of the way America’s treated them.”
I shrug. “Aren’t we all?”
In the middle of the barrack, our friends are dancing, singing along to the radio, and I probably know the song, but I don’t hear the words. All I hear is “Yes” and “Yes” and “Yes” and “Yes.”
“I’m going to say ‘No’ too,” Tommy says.
I put my arm around him.
Tommy’s been chasing after his parents’ approval for as long as we’ve known him. Maybe if he proves he’s a “No-No” too, he’ll finally get it.
But I doubt it.
Another pre-rejection, another white-gloved, backhanded slap in the face.
Part II: Requirements
(continued)
Example B.
Ambiguity over specificity. DO limit the academic courses that the applicant has access to, but DO NOT provide details that he or she may contest. DO instruct the applicant that his or her activities will be under surveillance and jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which, at its discretion, may remove him or her from your institution. DO cite “national security concerns” to allay any of the applicant’s objections. It’s a matter of national security! One wants one’s country to be safe, doesn’t one? If the applicant is a “good” nonwhite person, he or she will be happy to comply with your demands.
With only a week left to decide whether I’m a “Yes-Yes” or a “No-No,” I stop by the mess hall one day while Mom’s peeling ginger for the pot of teriyaki sauce she’s preparing. Except for a few of the staff who are washing rice or sweeping the kitchen at one end of the large wood-beamed room, the place is empty, benches stacked upside down on the tables. Picking up a nearby towel, I start wiping down the serving counter, like I would’ve done at Katsumoto Co. My hands come away smelling of mildew.
Nothing says “clean” like nasty old towel, I guess.
Mom shrugs when I ask her how she’s going to answer the questionnaire. “I don’t know . . .” Lifting her cutting board, she flicks slices of ginger into the saucepot. “I’ve been in this country since I was a little girl, you know. I don’t see why I shouldn’t make my loyalty official.”
“What about Japan?”
“What about it? I’ve never met the emperor.” Serenely, she pours a few glugs of shoyu into the pot.
“Oh yeah, and Roosevelt’s your best buddy, right?”
She laughs and adds a sprinkle of government-rationed sugar. “You never know,” she says good-naturedly. “Did you hear the First Lady might be visiting the camps soon? What if he goes with her? What if he eats some of my saba shioyaki? How embarrassing if I was a No-No.”
I grin at her. “So you want to say ‘Yes’ just in case the president comes to eat at your mess hall?”
“Don’t you listen, Stanley? I told you, I’m not sure.” Glancing over her shoulder, she sneaks a bottle of sake from under her apron and pours some into the pot.
I laugh. “But Mom! FDR!”
She sighs, capping the bottle. “Have you talked to your father yet?”
Part III: Closings
End your letter with a heartfelt sentiment such as “Very truly yours.” DO be genteel. How could anyone be angry with you when you were so polite?
Only one more college left to hear from now. I can already feel the boot kicking me out on my ass.
There were a lot of incidents at Katsumoto Co., particularly in the 1930s when Japan started annexing parts of China and Russia. It was the solemn duty of all true Americans to fight the Yellow Peril wherever they found it, and there was always a new threat to scrub from the door, glass to sweep from the sidewalk, a cracked window to tape or board over with plywood.
But I was only there once when it happened.
I was thirteen, and it was winter, so the dark came early, and when the lights were on inside, we couldn’t see out the windows to the street. I used to like that, just Dad and me in our little world of aisles, shelves, bags of rice, boxes of tea. I liked the feeling of the store shutting down, the calm that followed the after-work rush.
We closed out the register. We turned out the lights. We were at the door, all ready to go, both of us thinking of the chicken karaage Mom had promised us for dinner, when someone slammed into the glass with the flat of their hand—crack!
“Goddamn Nips!”
Pale faces swam into view outside the windows.
“This is a white man’s neighborhood!”
Dad grabbed my shoulder. I swear he was going to rip off my arm or something. “Stan,” he said. I’d never heard my dad’s voice like that—high and tight and shallow—like it wasn’t his voice at all, like he was some high-voiced, arm-ripping stranger. “Go to the back room.”
“This is a white man’s country!”
They were laughing at us. I could hear them as we slunk toward the storeroom, where they couldn’t see us, where they couldn’t say those things to our faces and laugh.
Crack! Someone struck the window, not with a hand this time, but with a brick.
What a dunce. Even I, at thirteen, knew that blunt force wasn’t a good way to shatter a window.
You need something sharp. Like an ice pick.
Picking up the crowbar he used to pry open shipping crates, Dad shoved me behind him and crouched by the door of the back room, ready to swing.
Peering past him, I watched the letters appear on the windows in white paint, backward but unmistakable:
JAPS GO HOME
After they left, Dad telephoned the police. He filed a statement. He did some yelling. We scrubbed the paint and replaced the windows and went on as if nothing had happened, at least on the outside.
The day before I have to report for registration, the sixth and last university sends me a response. I’m sitting on the edge of my cot as I open it, the paper crackling like fire in the thick silence of the barrack.
By the stove, Dad doesn’t look up.
This is it, I think. This is the last one. The last rejection. I’m not going to college after all. At least after this, I’ll know. Good fucking riddance.
Except it’s not a rejection. It’s an application.
No hoops. No flames. No bigotry with a smile. I have to read it twice to be sure.
It’s just the form.
I exhale slowly. What a thing. What a beautiful thing, getting the chance to be rejected like anybody else.
What a shitty thing that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
Carefully, I tuck the application back into the envelope, hardly daring to touch it in case it disintegrates.
“Dad,” I say, “they sent me an application.”
At first, I don’t think he’s heard me. He doesn’t turn. He doesn’t move. Wax Dad. Evacuation Dad. Maybe some things there’s just no coming back from.
But then he folds his newspaper and lays it on the table by his elbow. His chair scrapes along the Masonite floor.
Dad’s up. Dad’s walking toward me. “One out of six,” he says. His voice is softer than I remember. “Sixteen percent.”
“I know, I know.” I smirk. “If this were a test, I’d have failed.”
He takes me by the shoulders, and his eyes are serious and wounded and alive. “I don’t think this was a test for you.”
That evening, Dad invites me on a walk. People are always stretching their legs or searching for arrowheads after dinner, and we join them in the firebreak that runs along the edge of camp, between the barracks and the fences.
For a while, Dad putters along. He must be trying to hide how out of shape he is or something, because even after the evacuation, he always moved with precision and purpose: making the coffee, packing his pipe, turning the page of his newspaper. He’s not the kind of man who dawdles.
But when we pass a couple of Issei grandmas shuffling through the dust, he says loudly, “My son Stan was invited to apply to a university.”
And I realize he’s not puttering. He just wants to brag.
“Dad!” I say.
“Stan is going to college,” he says to the grandmas. He’s not quite yelling, but close enough.
I roll my eyes and leave him behind to bask in their congratulations, but I can’t help putting my hand to my chest pocket to make sure the application is still there.
I guess I could’ve left it in the barrack, but a dozen things could’ve happened to it there. What if Mary accidentally threw it the trash? What if someone in the barrack left their hot plate on and started a fire? What if someone left the door open and the wind just kind of swept it away?
No, I want my hope right here, where I can hold it.
Every few minutes, Dad stops to tell someone else, and soon I’m twenty yards ahead of him. The sun’s almost gone now, but there’s still that last sliver of red on the horizon, steeping the camp in a fiery glow.
Nearby, Mr. Uyeda, one of the bachelors from Block 8, is tossing a stick for his dog. Every time he throws the stick, the little mutt runs after it, yelping, and doesn’t stop until she’s got the stick in her mouth. Then she brings it back, drops it at Mr. Uyeda’s feet, and starts barking again. It’s a wonder he can think with all that racket, but I guess he’s old and hard of hearing, so maybe it doesn’t bother him.
I don’t know where these pets keep coming from, because we weren’t allowed to bring any from home, but—
Crack!
I jump.
For some reason, I think of a white hand—Japs go home.
By the fence, Mr. Uyeda collapses.
A gunshot, I think. It was a gunshot. Someone shot him. There he is, groaning, wriggling in the dust.
He might be dying.
There might be shouting. Someone might be screaming.
It might be me.
I dash forward. Someone’s got to help him. Someone’s got to do something. I can’t leave him there. I can’t let him die.
I haven’t gone two steps when I’m tackled. My glasses are knocked from my face. The world blurs.
I try to fight, but someone wrestles me to the dirt. My arm is being grabbed. It’s going to be ripped right out of its socket.
Dad. It’s Dad. He was twenty yards behind me. How did he move so fast?
Against my ear, his voice is high and taut. “Don’t, Stan. Don’t. No, no.”
I’m still scrabbling at the dust, trying to get to Mr. Uyeda. Kids break out of the camp all the time. All the time. To catch snakes and pull the legs off scorpions. They don’t do any harm. Mr. Uyeda couldn’t do any harm. He was too old. He was hard of hearing. Did someone tell him to stop? Before they shot him? Did they warn him before they killed him?
He’s still squirming on the ground, but his movements are getting smaller and smaller. It’s so dark out here now. I can’t see. Where’s his dog? Did they shoot his fucking dog?
They hold us for interrogation in one of the administrative offices. What did we see? Was Mr. Uyeda trying to escape? What was he doing by the fence?
Nothing, we tell them. Nothing.
For hours, they question us. What do we know? Was Mr. Uyeda part of a conspiracy against the United States? What was he trying to do, so close to the barbed wire?
Nothing.
Nothing.
He was a Yes-Yes. He was one of the first to answer the loyalty questionnaire. He was playing with his dog.
For maybe the hundredth time, I take out the envelope with my college application inside it and begin turning it over and over in my hands. The corners are bent now. The crisp white paper, smudged with fingerprints. I’m going to tear the thing to pieces if I keep messing with it, but I can’t stop.
“What’s going to happen to the killer?” I say suddenly.
Dad squeezes my hand, as if in warning. His knuckles are dirty and cut up from wrestling me to the ground. He saved me, I think. I would’ve run over to Mr. Uyeda. I would’ve been shot too. I would’ve been dead or in a hospital, and they’d be asking Dad if it was me who was trying to escape.
Never mind the fact that I wouldn’t have needed to. Never mind the college application. Never mind the resettlement. Never mind the one hundred thousand people who haven’t been found guilty of a single traitorous thing. Never mind that as of tomorrow, I could’ve been a Yes-Yes too.
One of our interrogators blinks. “Killer?” He looks dumbfounded.
“Yeah, killer,” I say. “That’s what you call someone who kills people.”
The man says nothing.
For a second, I think I’m going to puke.
“Can you at least tell me what happened to his dog?” I say.
“Stan . . .” Dad’s eyes are bloodshot and swollen from lack of sleep.
But how can we sleep? How can we go back now, or go on? “Yes” and “Yes”? A dewy-eyed freshman just like the rest? Whistling on my way to some ivy-laden lecture hall, far from the fences, while Dad brags up and down the firebreak where Mr. Uyeda was shot for playing fetch with his dog? How can we do it? How can we do anything, after this?
They tell me no one’s seen the dog.
In this time of turmoil, there are those among us who wish to retaliate against the W.R.A. for the death of Mr. Uyeda. These disgruntled fools will pretend to stage an insurrection, but when they are faced with the consequences of their agitations, they will reveal their duplicitous nature, groveling and begging for mercy.
These are the same people who cry for their pitiful condition, who bemoan the loss of their homes and household goods, and call first for the restitution of their civil rights before they declare themselves loyal to this, their homeland.
But I say it is they who have made themselves pitiful with their spineless demands! These are not the virtues of the Japanese people. Let us silence the words of those who seek the pity of others, for they should be ashamed to share their weakness openly.
For there are those who, at this time for patriotism, publicly pledge their allegiance to America, though they have borne the same afflictions. There are those who, even now, are bravely standing on the battlefield, ready to fight for their nation. Put aside your personal feelings. Commit yourself to serving your country. These are the long-cherished tenets of the Japanese people. Moreover, they are the privilege of those who live in these great United States.
Exile those who would shirk and run away! These scoundrels who claim there is no future or security in the U.S. do not deserve the blessings of this nation. Cast aside these troublemakers! We must live life in the essence of the Japanese spirit, burning with love and obligation to America, our homeland.
Awaken, descendants of Japan! You, within whom the Japanese spirit burns! Come together and demonstrate the beauty of our people to the world, rejecting the humiliation of these shameful disloyals and malcontents!
That is all I have to say.