Tule Lake doesn’t even have proper buses to take us from the train depot to the Segregation Center. Instead, we’re prodded onto army trucks, where we shiver under the canvas canopies as armed soldiers slam the tailgates behind us, slapping the siding to let the drivers know we’re ready for shipment.
Mom jumps.
If this had been a bus, I would be slumped against the window, watching the barren scenery go by, but I have to settle for slouching, legs spread like a boy.
Dad makes a disapproving sound, but I don’t care what he thinks.
“You think Mas rides a truck like this at Camp Shelby?” my brother Paul, who’s eleven, asks as we begin to rattle and jolt down the road.
“Yeah,” says our older brother, Stan, “and so do POWs.”
“What’s a POW?”
“A prisoner of war.”
I don’t think the irony of Stan’s comment is lost on anyone, even Paul, whose enthusiasm wilts into silence. The other families in the truck shift uncomfortably as the road unravels behind us like a loose gray ribbon, flapping aimlessly in our wake.
As we pull into Tule Lake, someone in the back of the truck lets out a whimper of dismay.
The fences here are three times as tall as the ones at Topaz, made of chain links and topped with barbed wire, in case someone wants to try escaping, I guess, and the guard towers are even taller than that.
Oh yeah, and there are tanks. I count six of them before we’ve even left the trucks: squat, greenish-gray things with machine guns mounted on top.
“Can someone say ‘overkill’?” Stan mutters to me.
Mom shushes him.
Before, I would’ve laughed. Now I ignore him and jump from the truck before anyone else can get out. The ground is swampy with rain, and the mud splatters my pants when I land.
Tule Lake is composed of the same tarpaper barracks as Topaz, but as I walk toward one of the firebreaks, away from my family, who are gabbling and trying to count our luggage, the buildings seem to stretch even farther into the distance than they did in Utah.
Topaz used to hold eight thousand people. How many disloyals are they expecting here? Ten thousand? Fifteen?
It starts to drizzle, and in the subdued pat-pat-pat of the rain, I realize it’s eerily quiet. When we arrived at Topaz, the Boy Scouts were playing marching tunes, but here, the only sounds are of slamming doors and strained voices. If you were a cheerful person like Yuki, you could appreciate Tule Lake’s total lack of pretense.
But I am not cheerful.
“Mary,” Dad says, interrupting my thoughts, “come help your mother.”
I glance over my shoulder just long enough for him to know I heard him. Dad’s mustache is in need of trimming, I notice. Over the past couple days on the train, it’s grown over the edge of his upper lip, making him appear unkempt and wild.
I turn my back, ignoring him when he calls my name again.
Throughout the afternoon, the rest of the family unpacks their suitcases and settles into the new apartments the administration has assigned us.
I take one look inside and want to curl my lip in disgust. It’s got the same shitty coal-burning stove, but I guess they couldn’t be bothered to install any Sheetrock, because the floors are bare wood and the walls don’t reach the rafters, so we can hear every sound in the whole barrack. Add the smell of manure, and we could be back in Tanforan.
I set up my cot in one corner and flop down on the lumpy army mattress, burying my face in the book I brought from Utah.
I already read it twice on the train ride here, but it’s better than having to deal with my family.
“Don’t bother getting up,” Stan says, helping Dad sweep cobwebs from the ceiling. “We’ve got this.”
I don’t respond.
Stan doesn’t have the right to complain about anything that happens in Tule Lake. It’s his fault—his and Dad’s—that we’re here at all. Mom wanted to say “Yes” and “Yes” to the questionnaire, but they had an axe to grind. They wanted to prove something. They made us come here.
“Get up,” Dad says.
I peer over the edge of my book. He and Stan have finished setting the table next to the stove, and he’s staring at me, teeth gritted like he’s trying to stop himself from shouting. Wouldn’t want the neighbors to know he can’t control his own daughter, I guess.
I hop off the cot and walk out the door.
“Hey, why does she get to leave?” Paul says.
“Mary!” Mom’s voice follows me outside.
But I don’t answer, and I don’t stop.
When I get back, it’s after dinner, and Dad’s sitting at the table, smoking a pipe. While I take off my shoes at the door, Paul hops around me, asking where I’ve been.
“Nowhere,” I say.
I’m halfway back to my cot when Dad snaps, “Clean that up.”
Turning, I see a couple flecks of mud on the grimy floorboards. With a sullen look, I grab a rag from where Mom’s folded them in the corner. Stan does too, and he kneels beside me. Like that’ll make me forgive him for being a No-No and making us come here.
“Easy,” Stan says after a moment. “You’re gonna wear a hole right through the boards. What’re you gonna do when Dad makes you replace the whole floor?”
I just scrub harder.
“Aiko and Tommy came by,” he adds. “Ike says there’s a softball team.”
“Good for her,” I grunt.
We finish cleaning the floor in silence, under Dad’s baleful stare.
I was right. Tule Lake is bigger than Topaz. It’s got seventy-four blocks to Topaz’s thirty-six, divided into eight wards. The first seven wards are in regular formation, like the blocks at Topaz, but the eighth ward sticks out on its own at the far southeast end of camp. It’s still under construction, because more No-Nos are arriving every day, but the Tuleans are already calling it “Alaska” because it’s so isolated.
Tule Lake already has double the population of Topaz, and the numbers are still climbing. People say they’re expecting eighteen thousand by the time the segregation is complete. Eighteen thousand to Topaz’s eight. That’s a lot of “troublemakers” in one place, if you ask me. What genius came up with that one?
The WRA has canceled school while the loyal Tuleans move out and the No-Nos move in, but Dad enrolls me in one of the ad hoc schools the Japanese cultural organizations have set up in the rec centers. “It’ll be good for you,” he says. “Maybe you’ll learn some manners.”
Every day, we speak Japanese, learn Japanese customs, do Japanese arts and crafts. It’s supposed to prepare us to return to Japan, I guess, and some of the other girls love it, but I spend most of my time reading books under the table and fantasizing about putting a pair of hashi through my eyes.
I don’t want to go back to Japan. I didn’t even want to come to Tule Lake in the first place, only I was a few months too young to have any choice in the matter.
One day, I’m reading a novel I borrowed from the camp’s English library and pretending to practice my kanji when the door at the back of the room opens and a set of footsteps echoes loudly down the center aisle. Clop-clop-clop. They come to a stop near my desk, and out of the corner of my eye, I spy worn leather work boots and laces that have been taped at the ends to prevent them from fraying.
Annoyed, I look up.
The interruption is a boy my age. He has wavy hair and a red-and-black plaid shirt, so neatly tucked, it’s clear he’s trying too hard.
As if he can sense me judging him, he glances down.
I glare at him and shove my book farther under the table.
“Yes, Mr. Tani?” the teacher asks.
But before he can answer, someone starts up. “Does anyone else smell smoke?”
The rest of us straighten, sniffing. The kids sitting by the dingy windows peer outside.
“There’s a fire by the gym!” one shouts.
We charge out of the classroom, ignoring the teacher’s plea for us to retain order. A bunch of boys have built a bonfire between the newly constructed gymnasium and the Induction Center, where new No-Nos are processed every day. Clutching their luggage, the arrivals blink and stare dumbly at the blaze while the administrative staff try to hurry them inside.
“Banzai!”
Laughing, the boys heave a bench onto the flaming pile.
Crash!
The crowd gasps and steps back. Sparks fly upward like butterflies.
I laugh too. Some people glare at me, but I don’t care. “Banzai” is a Japanese battle cry. Stan and his friends used to say it while they were jumping out of trees or sliding down the sand dunes in old fruit crates. I don’t know if these guys are trying to prove something or if they’re just being dumb kids, but sure, whatever. Let’s burn this place down.
“What’s so funny?” someone asks.
It’s the boy with the loud boots. I glower at him, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave me alone.
“Mary!” From my left, Aiko appears among the other students, elbowing them aside the same way she’d wrestle to the front of a crowd at the Topaz co-op on ice cream day. Her cheeks are flushed with excitement.
I turn my back on Boots Boy. “Hey,” I say to her. Aiko’s just about the only person I can stand in this whole damn camp, maybe in this whole damn state. I mean, at least she didn’t choose to be here either.
“Should we do something?” she asks.
Maybe if we’d still been in Topaz. Maybe if we had the rest of the group to back us up. But we’re in Tule Lake now, and Stan and Tommy are both out of school. It’s just Aiko and me.
So I shrug. “Why bother?”
She blinks, and I try to ignore the hurt and disappointment in her face. After a second, she says, “What about the fire department?”
Boots Boy answers from behind me: “The fire truck’s been having trouble.”
I scowl at him. “No one asked you.”
He blinks, surprised.
“Jeez, Mary!” Aiko says. “You don’t have to be so rude.”
I bite back a retort.
“Banzai!”
Crash!
In the center of the yard, another bench lands in the bonfire.
Dad and I fight all the time now. It always starts out quiet: Dad hissing at me for stomping around the apartment, for not tucking in the corners of my sheets. Because God forbid any of our nosy neighbors hear that Katsumoto-san’s daughter doesn’t make her bed properly.
But it doesn’t take long for things to escalate to Dad snapping at me for not helping around the barrack enough. I should be sweeping the floor. I should be doing the laundry. I should be giving my mother a break.
“You made me go to Japanese school, remember?” I grumble. “What’s your excuse?”
Dad’s face contorts into something ugly and mean. Here it comes.
“I am the head of this family!” he roars. “You will listen to me when I—”
What about Stan? I want to say. I don’t see you yelling at him.
But I shut my mouth. Let Dad yell.
I don’t know what Stan does—I don’t even know where he is right now—but he doesn’t have a job either, because the WRA cut back on jobs to save money, and Dad’s not always harping at him about refilling the kettle or mopping the floors or whatever.
Since we’ve come to Tule Lake, no one’s been able to find work. Mom should be working in the mess hall, because the food they serve stinks, literally, and there’s hardly any rice because one of the cooks is stealing it for his sake still, but the old Tuleans have all the good jobs, and with the work shortage, there’s no way they’re giving them up to us.
“—if you don’t change your attitude—” Dad’s still shouting. He slams his fist on the table. Something something. “—intolerable—” Something something. “—ungrateful—”
I throw down the coal bucket. Grateful? There’s a leak in the ceiling, and we have to put a cup under it to collect the water when it rains. For this?
He’s still yelling at me as I jam my arms into my coat and my feet into my shoes and storm out the door. Surreptitiously, our neighbors peer through their windows. They want to see Katsumoto-san’s ungrateful daughter, I guess. But I’m too mad to care, and soon I’m too far away for them to spy on me anymore.
Outside, the camp is gray. Everything is gray here. The gunmetal gray of the tanks. The gray of the silt from the old shallow lakebed where the camp now stands. The gray of smoke from the coal stoves. Primitive street lamps buzz and flicker from their brackets on the sides of the barracks, illuminating gray streets and gray walls and nothing else.
In San Francisco, you’d be able to see every street lit up like it was Christmas, crossing signals flashing red and yellow and green, windows glowing with life from within. There’d be the sounds of cable-car bells, the foghorns in the distance, people yelling and moaning and listening to Your Hit Parade.
Here, there’s nothing. Because we’re nothing, I think.
Bang. Somewhere nearby, there’s a sound like something dull striking something hard. Like a fist against a door, maybe.
I look around, frowning.
Bang. It’s regular, not like that beating we saw back at Topaz, punching and kicking and yelps of pain. Bang.
Fisting my hands in my pockets, I follow the sound to the next block. There’s a girl tossing a baseball against the side of a rec center and catching it as it bounces back again.
Bang.
It’s Aiko.
“Oh, hi, Mary,” she says. She sounds more tired than I’ve ever heard her. Tired and sad.
Bang.
“You’re going to piss off the neighbors.”
“Yeah.” Bang. “Well, I gotta practice somehow.”
The next time she throws the ball, I catch it. It stings my palm a little without a mitt, but she didn’t throw it that hard.
“What d’you mean?” I ask, tossing it back to her.
She smacks the ball into her mitt a couple times. “Dad won’t let me play on the Tule Lake team. He says it’s not Japanese.”
I snort. “Bullshit.”
“I know.” She lobs the ball at me, and we start a game of catch—Aiko to me to Aiko to me—the ball floating back and forth between us.
After a while, she says, “I’m gonna be out of practice.” She stares at the ground, her voice wavering. “Yuki’s gonna be so mad at me.”
“What?”
“When we get back to San Francisco.”
I turn the ball in my hands, tracing the red stitches. “You still think you’re going back to San Francisco?” I ask, throwing it back.
She snatches it out of the air and shrugs.
Her parents haven’t requested repatriation back to Japan, but we both know they don’t want to be Americans anymore. Not that they were ever really allowed to be.
The ball comes at me high. I have to jump for it.
I mean, good for the Haranos, I guess. For acknowledging the unfairness of it. For being fed up with everyone saying, God bless America! Land of the free! and then locking us up in a place like this, a prison that no one wants to admit is a prison, even the prisoners.
But their kids are American—technically, anyway—which makes it worse. I don’t know about Tommy, but Aiko’s an all-American kid. She loves baseball, comic books, and Charleston Chews. What’s she going to do in Japan?
“I’ll practice with you,” I say.
She sniffs loudly. If I were closer, I bet I’d see tears on her face. But I don’t go to her. I just toss her the ball.
The next weekend, Aiko, Tommy, and Stan drag me to a basketball game, which I hate. Worse, they bring Boots Boy, too.
They tell me his name is Kiyoshi, but whatever, I’m still going to think of him as Boots Boy. At the concession stand, he buys a bag of peanuts, carefully counting each coin the way I’ve seen Mom do at the co-op because, without any income, all we’ve got is our dwindling savings.
Tommy and Aiko seem to like him, I guess, so that’s probably a point in his favor. He and Tommy talk about music as we climb to the top part of the stands. You can hear the wistfulness in Tommy’s voice when he talks about his old records, the ones he had to sell when we left San Francisco. He talks about musicians like they’re old friends he hasn’t seen in years: Bing, the Duke, ol’ Benny, Billie, the Count.
Boots Boy says he wishes he could hear some of them live.
“Come to San Francisco,” says Tommy. “I’ll take you to the Golden Gate. All the greats play there.”
I cross my arms and slump into my seat as the referee blows the whistle and the ball goes soaring into the air. From here, you can’t see the fences, the barracks, the soldiers, the tanks. Inside the gym, it’s like everyone’s trying to pretend we’re kids at any other high school.
But how can they forget that the government has packed so many of us in here, it’s overloading the plumbing? How can they forget the work accidents or the food shortages? How can they forget the administration isn’t giving the coal workers enough breaks? Or protective gear?
I grimace as Aiko, Tommy, and Boots Boy cheer. I kind of hate them for being able to forget, for being stupid and happy, but I kind of envy them too. Sometimes I think it’d be easier to be stupid, because then at least I wouldn’t be miserable all the time.
On Tommy’s other side, Stan just sits there, miserable as me.
I finally found out where he’s been going. Since he and Tommy can’t find work, they’ve been hanging out in the camp’s English library. Tommy’s been teaching himself to read music. Stan’s reading law books and following cases like Fred Korematsu’s. Korematsu was arrested and convicted for defying the exclusion order last year, but he’s been appealing his case, and Stan’s been following every news article about it.
That’s the thing about Stan. He knows what’s going on here, even if he won’t say it.
It makes me want to take him by the collar and shake him until he admits this place is awful. This place is worse than Topaz. I don’t know what I would’ve said to the questionnaire if I’d been old enough to answer it, but I know that if I’d brought us here, if I’d done this to us, I wouldn’t be sitting there pretending everything was hunky-dory.
Crack!
From outside, something hits the window above us. The glass splits but doesn’t shatter.
Someone screams. Aiko, Tommy, and Stan jump to their feet, but Boots Boy is rooted to the spot, his soft eyes wide, the bag of peanuts clenched tight in his hand.
Crack!
Another window, ten feet away, breaks.
People are running for the exits. Some of the basketball players are stumbling around like they don’t know what to do with themselves if there’s not a ball to chase.
“Let’s get out of here.” Stan reaches for my arm, but I jerk out of his reach. He looks hurt, but whatever.
Boots Boy still hasn’t moved. He seems like he’s frozen in place.
“Come on, Kiyoshi!” Aiko cries, tugging his arm.
That seems to snap him out of the spell he was under. His face reddens—I’m not sure if he’s angry or embarrassed or what—and he nods at Aiko gratefully.
We scramble down the bleachers, stepping on peanut shells and candy-bar wrappers. My shoe slips in someone’s spilled drink.
Outside, a crowd is forming near the side of the building, where people are pushing and shouting at one another. As I run into the darkness with the others, I glance over my shoulder. The broken windows of the gymnasium are lit up from behind like giant, glowing eyes, always keeping watch on us.
Aiko and I normally walk back to the barracks together, but one day in mid-October, she has to stay behind for some reason, so I’m trudging alone through the light snow when a fire truck goes roaring past the next intersection, its sides painted a blazing red.
Two seconds later, there’s a screech.
A crash.
People start yelling. All around me, they’re flinging open their doors and racing for the intersection.
Lowering my head, I turn and stalk away in the opposite direction.
I haven’t made it a block when someone shouts behind me, “Hey, Mary! Wait up!”
Glancing over my shoulder, I see Boots Boy jogging toward me. He’s got on the same red-and-black plaid shirt he was wearing the day of the bonfire.
I keep walking, but he catches up to me anyway.
“Did you hear the crash?” he asks.
I shrug.
“Was anyone hurt?”
This guy can’t take a hint, can he? “How should I know?” I say.
“It wasn’t like this in my old camp,” he continues as if I’m not being rude to him. I wonder if he’s dumb or just nice. “Gila River was the camp they showed to the public, you know. It wasn’t like—”
A WRA warden races past us, and Boots Boy’s voice trails off as we watch the man run toward the site of the accident.
In Topaz, after Mr. Uyeda was shot and the camp almost rioted, most of the guards were removed. But here, there are military police; wardens, most of whom are nihonjin; internal security officers, most of whom are white; and Immigration and Naturalization Service officers, too. They all wear different hats and different uniforms, but they’re all there to do the same thing: contain us.
“Anyway,” Boots Boy says, “there weren’t any fences at Gila River, except for these little white picket ones in front of the barrack—”
I was determined to ignore him until he went away, but that gets my attention. “You didn’t have fences?” I interrupt.
He shrugs.
“And you didn’t run away?”
“Where to? They put us in the middle of the desert for a reason, and barbed wire would’ve made it look bad for the First Lady and the cameras that came with her. That’s what I told her, anyway . . .”
I stop for a second. I mean, I knew Eleanor Roosevelt visited Gila River in April, but I didn’t think she’d really talked to any of the people who had to live there. Boots Boy is still walking, so I have to jog to catch up. Normally I’d be annoyed, but right now he’s too interesting to be annoyed at. “Wait,” I say. “You met Eleanor Roosevelt?”
“Yeah. She was saying we had to be in camps because we hadn’t been integrated into the rest of American society like the Germans and the Italians, and I told her we hadn’t been integrated because we weren’t allowed to buy or move anywhere except into neighborhoods that were already Japanese, so whose fault was it that we couldn’t integrate?”
I smile, even though I decided weeks ago that I wasn’t going to like him. But Boots Boy seems smarter than I thought.
“It was still nice, though,” he says, “compared to this.”
I shrug. “Why’d you leave? ’Cause you wanted to be a No-No so bad?”
Now it’s his turn to be silent, although he doesn’t stop walking with me. Our footsteps make soft impressions in the dirt: my saddle shoes and his old boots, frayed laces tapping lightly against the leather.
“To get away from my stepdad,” he says finally.
I glance at him again. What did Kiyoshi’s stepdad do that was so bad, Kiyoshi had to change camps to get away from him? I mean, I hate my dad, but it must have been really, really bad for Kiyoshi to have to come here.
“Shit,” is all I can think to say.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Kiyoshi.”
Huh, I guess I’ve started thinking of him as Kiyoshi, then.
He glances sideways at me, a sad little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I just hope he doesn’t follow us here.”
We walk the rest of the way to my barrack in silence, but it’s not my usual stewing, fuming silence. It’s like for the first time in months, I’ve been entrusted with something important, something true, and it’s been so long since that’s happened that all I want to do is hold on to it.
For once, Dad doesn’t yell at me the whole afternoon and evening. I get the water for the kettle without being asked. I fetch coal for the fire before Stan has to. It almost feels like old times when I used to help Mom and Dad around the store: counting stock, replacing fruits and vegetables in the crates, always making sure the oldest produce was in front, even though all the Issei ladies went through every single pear or melon to make sure they got the best one.
But when Dad says, “You’re being so helpful tonight, Mary,” like it’s a surprise, like I wasn’t a good, dutiful daughter who looked up to him for years, I remember that he could never admit when he was wrong then, either. I remember that he’d go charging onward even if he’d made a mistake, too bullheaded to ever change course or say he was sorry.
Stan shoots him a look. “Couldn’t just leave it alone, could you, Dad?”
“Whatever.” Grabbing my mitt, I leave the barrack to find some empty building to throw a ball against and hope that something breaks.
Two days later, we hear sirens again. Outside the fence, police cars and ambulances roar down the new road to the farms, where the harvesters have been at work all week, picking potatoes.
Later, we learn one of the farm trucks turned over. Twenty-nine people are injured.
One dies.
The farm workers go on strike for safer working conditions. Agitators take to the streets. Small groups stand under the guard towers, singing the Japanese national anthem.
We’re troublemakers, all right, and trouble is coming. You can feel it simmering in the mess halls and in the firebreaks, and it’s just a matter of time before the camp erupts.
That night, Dad and I argue about something—I don’t even know what—and when I come home from school the next day, my ball and mitt are gone. I’m confined to the barrack, he says, until I earn the privilege of freedom.
I want to say, What freedom? But I just bury my face in my book until he prowls to the other room, fists clenched at his sides.
They want me here? Well, I’m here, and I hate it, and I make sure they know it. For a week, I throw my books down when I get back from school. I whack the doorframe with the coal bucket when I refill it. I am the seething, sullen presence they wish they could forget, only I won’t let them.
It gets so bad, I don’t even have to say anything to piss Dad off. I turn a page of my book, and he’s yelling at me about my attitude, my disrespect, the expression on my face. I don’t even think he cares if the neighbors know our business now. Mary Katsumoto’s a bad egg or Katsumoto-san can’t keep his temper or whatever. As long as he gets to yell at me, I guess it doesn’t matter.
One night, we’re standing in the center of the apartment, where Mom and Stan and Paul can see us. Paul is covering his ears as he stares at a comic book he must have borrowed from Aiko. Mom is folding undershirts, pretending she can’t hear us.
“What happened to you?” Dad shouts. “You used to be such a good girl!”
“And you used to be a good parent,” I snap. “Things change!”
Mom slaps me. It bursts across my cheek, hot and sharp.
Suddenly, all the sound in our neighbors’ apartments cuts out.
I’m too stunned to even react. I didn’t even notice her get up.
“Do not speak to your father like that.” She doesn’t yell like he does, but she doesn’t have to. Her voice will slice right through you.
I stare at her. I haven’t moved to cup my cheek, even though I can feel it stinging the whole right side of my face. I stare at her so long, she folds her hand awkwardly, as if she’s ashamed of what it’s done.
Clenching my jaw, I spin on my heel and stalk out into the dark, slamming the door so hard, it pops back open again.
I find myself in the administration area, near the Housing Office, this nice, quiet whitewashed building, all its nice, quiet employees gone home for the night, all its windows dark.
Damn it.
I pick up a stone and pitch it through the pane closest to me. It shatters, fragments of glass falling to the ground and shattering again.
Grabbing a new rock, I break another window.
Damn it all.
Why won’t anybody admit they were wrong? Why won’t they just call this what it is? Why does everyone keep lying?
They said we were citizens. They said we were “dangerous.” They told us they were being considerate of our needs. They said it was an “evacuation” and a “migration,” not an incarceration.
They said the camps were full of opportunity.
They said they weren’t violating our rights.
I run out of rocks before I run out of windows.
And for what? So they can save face? So they can go on thinking they were right? Dad was right? This is fine?
I need something else to throw. I put my head down, scanning the ground for another stone. A brick. Something. I feel like I should be scared of getting caught—someone might have heard the breaking glass; someone might have called internal security—but I don’t even care at this point.
I don’t see any more stones, but I do see a pair of shoes. Men’s shoes.
Stan’s shoes.
Looking up, I glare at him for a moment. His glasses are speckled with rain—I guess it’s raining; I didn’t even notice—and he has my coat under one arm, but that’s not what he’s offering me. He’s offering me a rock. A good one. Just smaller than fist-size.
I jerk my head at him. A challenge.
You do it.
Smirking, he winds up and pitches the stone at the Housing Office. Together, we smash the remaining windows until there are no more panes to break.
We stand there together amid the broken glass, glittering like frost in the dim light. “Feel better?” Stan asks, holding out my coat to me.
I snatch it from him. “Hardly.”
He backs away, hands raised like I’m going to bite.
I roll my eyes. But I’m smiling when I stalk past him, and I don’t bother trying to hide it.
Dad and I are the only ones in the barrack the next day when a young guy comes to the door. He’s wearing all white, and he speaks in lightly accented English, like maybe he’s Kibei or something: “Your presence is requested at the funeral service for Mr. Shimomura.”
The guy who died in the farm-truck accident last week.
“Why?” I say.
The Kibei guy looks annoyed. Who is this guy? He’s not from our block, or I would’ve seen him in the mess hall or something. Beyond him, I see an elderly couple being escorted from their apartment by another guy in white.
I don’t recognize him, either.
“It’s a show of support for the widow,” the Kibei guy says.
“Don’t know her, either.” I’m starting to close the door when Dad comes up behind me.
“We’ll go,” he says. “Let us put on our shoes and coats.”
I’m turning to glare at him when I notice his voice. It’s not loud, like it usually is when he’s pissed off. Instead, it’s even, almost placid, like he’s afraid of his own volume.
That’s when I see the billy club in the Kibei’s hand. Jesus.
“Whatever,” I say.
When we leave the apartment, Dad and I are caught up in a crowd being herded toward the funeral parlor. People are being turned away from the mess hall and the latrines, forced to walk with the others by young guys with truncheons.
Dad’s gripping my arm hard, like he’s sure I’m going to twist away from him, so I march alongside him, kicking up silt with every step.
There are so many people in the streets, we don’t even get close to the funeral parlor. We’re at the back edge of the crowd, and behind us, more guys in white are pacing back and forth like guards.
Just what we need, I think. More guards.
Dad mutters a curse in Japanese. “This is a show of something, all right, but it’s not for the widow.”
The funeral parlor’s at the corner of Ward 5, near the cemetery. It’s not in front of the administration building or anything, but a crowd of Japanese this size is going to get their attention, no matter where it is.
This is a statement from some camp faction to the WRA, and I’m caught in the middle of it.
I’m always caught in the middle of everything.
I yank my arm out of Dad’s grasp, ignoring him when he cries out in alarm. I shove through the crowd, trying to find a way out, but everywhere I look, there are guys with clubs blocking my way.
Stubbornly, I try to push through them, but they shove me back into the crowd. My ankle twists underneath me. I stumble.
From behind, Dad grabs my arm, steadying me. “Watch who you’re pushing around,” he snaps. “That’s my daughter.”
One of them shrugs. “Keep your daughter in line.”
Overhead, the camp loudspeakers crackle to life: “HONORED GUESTS . . .”
Dad stares at the men, one eyelid twitching, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. I’ve seen him angry, but I’ve never seen him like this. “Get out of our way,” he growls.
For a second, I’m afraid for him. For us. We’ve already lost so much.
“Dad,” I say, tugging his sleeve.
He doesn’t move. I don’t think he even breathes.
But before the men can do anything, the loudspeaker dies overhead. There’s a sudden squeal, and the scratchy voice cuts out.
The administration has killed the power.
A ripple of anger runs through the crowd, and one of the club guys nods at the others. Like a bunch of stooges, they trot past us into the crowd, toward the funeral parlor.
Dad collapses on the stoop of the nearest apartment. He looks deflated, like a paper balloon that’s been struck one too many times.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I’m about to snap at him when I pull back, blinking.
He’s sorry?
I must have heard wrong. Dad’s never apologized for anything in his life.
But then he continues, “I had to choose from a list of bad options, and I don’t know that I chose right.”
I feel like I should be gloating. I should at least be smug. But honestly, all I feel is tired. Maybe I’ve been tired for a long time, only I was so angry, I didn’t even know it.
I sit beside him. “Okay,” I say softly.
He nods. Without looking at me, he pats the back of my hand. “We’re going to be all right, Mary.”
I sigh. Somewhere in the distance, someone’s shouting. Maybe they’re trying to give the funeral sermon. Maybe they’re trying to calm down the mass of people who have started grumbling and shifting their feet. Maybe they’re trying to rile everyone up. In the crowd, there’s an undercurrent of something hot and dense, like pressure building in the dark.
For a moment, I allow myself to lean on Dad’s shoulder, and for a moment, I feel him lean back. “I hope so,” I say.
TULE LAKE, Nov. 2—Ten employees of the Tule Lake Segregation Center were held hostage yesterday by 5,000 Jap internees, sources report. Among the hostages were project director Ray Best and head of the War Relocation Authority, Dillon Myer, who was visiting the site.
While Best and Myer met with project officials, a mob of disloyal Japanese surrounded their offices in a blatant display of force, compelling administrators to meet with a Jap committee. After a few hours during which the committee presented its demands, the hostages were released, and the Japs dispersed.
The hostage situation occurred simultaneously with two additional incidents, when Chief Medical Officer Dr. Reece M. Pedicord was severely beaten by a gang of Japs and when several automobiles belonging to white civilians were vandalized in the parking lot. No suspects in either the beating or the vandalism have been apprehended.
In case of future insurrections, a battalion of military police under the command of Lieut. Col. Verne Austin is situated outside the camp.