The movie is almost over when Aiko shakes the bag of popcorn, and it rattles like there are only kernels left.
“Aw, man.” She starts to crumple it between her hands, the paper crinkling loudly in the crowded mess hall, the noise audible even over the ticking of the film projector and the actors onscreen.
“Shhh,” Mary hisses.
I lean forward, trying not to get in Mary’s way. I am always trying not to get in Mary’s way, even though sometimes, that’s the only way to get her to notice me. “I’ll take it,” I whisper to Aiko.
Mary glares at me, but I don’t mind. I know now that she doesn’t mean it. If she really hated me, she wouldn’t be sitting next to me. She leans back as Aiko passes the bag to Tommy, who passes it across Mary’s lap to me.
Carefully, I place a half-popped kernel in my mouth and bite down where the soft inside is showing, splitting it neatly apart. It isn’t much, but food is food, and growing up poor taught me never to turn it down when I can get it.
Most of us Japanese are poor, but Mother, my older sister, Kimi, and I were really poor. Sometimes, to help pay for rent or food, I had to leave school to help the family pick strawberries, or asparagus, or mikans. I’d miss exams; I’d fall behind in my classes. I got held back a year. My teachers would tell me I was stupid, lazy, a delinquent, useless.
But I didn’t want to tell them the truth, which was that sometimes, even the extra money wasn’t enough to feed us.
I guess we were eating fine at Gila River, but since we’ve been at Tule Lake, the portions have been shrinking. It doesn’t make sense, if you think about it, because Tule Lake has a pig farm and hundreds of acres of produce. Where’s all that food going?
“Hey, Yosh,” Stan mutters, “can you eat any louder? I don’t think the guys in back can hear you.”
“Sorry.” I eat another kernel, trying not to chew too loudly.
Tonight, they fed us canned peaches at dinner, which was a treat, but Stan thinks they’re just trying to make up for the hubbub on Monday, when the head of the War Relocation Authority was here. Five thousand people showed up to hear him talk about the food shortage, and the labor strikes, and the strikebreakers the Tule Lake project director bused in from the other camps, but they all went away again when the WRA man didn’t have anything to say. I guess some of the Caucasian staff got spooked by the assembly, though, because a bunch of them quit.
Things just keep getting worse here, which is why I’m glad for nights like this, when I can see a movie with my friends, eat some popcorn, and pretend that we’re normal teenagers who aren’t caught up in the tensions of Tule Lake.
When the film ends and the lights turn on, leaving us squinting and blinking as we pull on our coats and hats, we file out of the mess hall, our heads filled with images of snowy ski resorts and our bellies filled with popcorn. Mary, Stan, Tommy, and I walk four abreast, our breaths puffing in the chill air, while Aiko traipses ahead, belting out the words to “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
Her voice is sweet and clear in the cold, and beside me, I can hear Tommy humming under his breath, smooth and dark as syrup. You wouldn’t expect a sound like that to come from him, from Tommy Harano—who’s so frail, it looks like a good wind could knock him over—but it does.
There is something so beautiful about this, I think: us, together, in the middle of the dusty road, with the hulking shadows of the barracks looming around us.
But under it, there’s an unsettling vibrating in the air, a dull roar that’s felt as much as it is heard.
“Are those trucks?” Mary says.
Ahead, Aiko comes to a stop. Her voice dies in her throat.
We look at one another. The rumble of engines is clearly audible now. There must be at least a dozen of them, by the sound of it.
Stan sighs. “We just can’t catch a break, can we?”
“I think we should—” I begin.
But before I can finish, people come skidding around the corner from the warehouse area, running full tilt down the street. Headlights flash on the buildings one street over.
“Internal police!” someone shouts. “Run!”
Men armed with shovels and wooden clubs are sprinting past us. Their mouths are open, and their eyes are wide, and one’s bright-red blood stains the side of his face.
I am rooted to the spot, blinking. I know I should be running too, but I can’t seem to make my legs move.
Someone, I don’t know who, seizes my hand, pulling me along behind.
A truck screeches to a stop ahead of us. It is dark with yellow eyes. Half a dozen internal police officers spill out, swarming the street.
“Halt!” someone shouts. “Don’t move!”
They are knocking down bodies. People are being hauled toward the truck by their ankles, like carcasses. Someone is screaming as he’s wrestled to the ground.
I freeze again.
I can’t help it. I remember this feeling, this sense that everything around me is thin, and sharp, and brittle, and if I make a move, if I make any move, something is going to crack, someone is going to crack, someone is going to get hurt.
“Yosh, come on!”
I hear Stan yelling, but I can’t do anything. I am drifting out of my body. I am leaving my legs, and arms, and chest behind. I am a bird, or I am a puff of smoke, and the things that happen to my body aren’t happening to me.
“Kiyoshi, move!” he shouts.
I stumble, confused. I am back in my own head, my own feet. Did he push me? Stan’s face swims into focus: the hair falling over his forehead, his thick brows, the rims of his glasses, and his black, panicked eyes. Mary and Tommy and Aiko are there too; their lips are moving; they are begging me to move, to run, to come with them. All around us, the internal security men are throwing people into the barrack walls or hogtying them in the dirt.
“Get them out of here!” Stan gives me another shove.
I finally come to my senses. My face burns with shame. What was I doing, waiting for so long? When my friends were counting on me? Quickly, I grab Mary’s hand, and her fingers clamp around mine as we take off with Tommy and Aiko. Behind us are the thunder of footsteps, cries for us to halt.
But we don’t.
I can’t.
Stan told me to get them out of here. Stan trusted me to take care of them.
Stan—
Too late, I realize he isn’t with us. As we reach the nearest firebreak, I turn back in time to see two big men in black-billed caps force Stan to his knees.
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” he’s saying, and I am thinking, Shut up. Don’t move. Don’t say anything. Don’t move, Stan. But he is too far away, he is not in my head, he cannot hear me, and he continues, “I didn’t do anyth—”
Crack! One of the policemen strikes him across the jaw. His glasses fly from his face as he hits the dirt.
“Stan!” Mary is running at them. Mary is a locomotive. Mary is screaming black smoke.
No, no. Not Mary, too. I want to reach for her, I want to yank her back, I want to protect her the way I can’t protect Stan, but I am too scared, or I am too small, too frozen, too stupid, too weak.
Instead, it’s Aiko who grabs her. Aiko is saying something in Mary’s ear. Aiko is getting her to run.
For a second, I think they’re going to leave me; I think they would be right to leave me, but then they take me by the hands, and they drag me after them into the firebreak, away, away, with the sounds of clubs on bodies, the muffled, fleshy impacts, fading quickly into the dark.
The next morning, as soon as the dark weight begins to lift from the sky, I walk to the Katsumotos’. I don’t know if I slept last night, but if I slept, it wasn’t much. I couldn’t stop thinking about Stan, kept hearing the crack of his jaw and the burn in his voice, shouting, Get them out of here!
I heard what happened last night was that a bunch of men tried to stop the trucks from delivering food to the strikebreakers brought in for the farm work. The men surrounded the project director’s house, eighty guys, someone said, although another said thirty. No one knows what really happened.
In their barrack, the Katsumotos are already awake. Mary and Paul are at the table with Mr. K., who is sucking on a pipe as if it’s lit, although it isn’t, and glowering at yesterday’s newspaper as if he’s reading it, although he isn’t, while Mrs. K. paces from the coal stove to the window, peeking through the curtains, then back to the stove, where she lifts the lid on a pot, and the apartment fills with the scent of miso soup.
They haven’t heard any news about Stan. They don’t know if he was charged, or if he was injured, or where he’s being held.
Crack!
His glasses sailing through the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I know the words are inadequate. They cannot bring their boy back to them; I cannot undo what I did not do; I did not act fast enough; I could not act at all.
“It’s not your fault,” Mrs. K. says, pointing to the table, where there is a bowl of miso soup for me. “Please, sit.”
It’s Stan’s bowl.
I look away.
His arms being wrenched behind his back, and his face being pushed into the dirt. My fault, I think.
Too small, too stupid, too weak.
I wasn’t always like this, or at least, I don’t think I was.
I know I started freezing up when my stepfather, Mr. Tani, would hit me, but I don’t remember the first time it happened.
I remember one time, though, not long after my mother married Mr. Tani, we were in the orchards for the orange harvest, when I’d climb the trees with the fruit picker to collect the oranges the men couldn’t reach from the ground. I remember the bark, rough against my palms, and the leaves of the tree flashing green and yellow, with shards of blue sky beyond, and I remember finding a bird’s nest: four perfect speckled eggs cradled in twigs and feathers of cloudy gray.
I remember Mr. Tani yelling at me. It was time to go home, or it was time to move to the next tree, or he had been fired because he was drunk on the job again.
I don’t know if I moved, or if I moved too quickly, or too slow.
Did he grab my ankle? Did the branch snap beneath me?
The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and so was the nest. Inside, the eggs were cracked, the mottled shells laced with fractures. I remember looking at those breaks and knowing, knowing that they meant death, and stillness, and cold, those baby birds slowly dying within, and maybe not even knowing it.
Because of me.
Mr. Tani was knocking me around by then, shouting at me to get up, but I couldn’t move anymore. I was immobile, frozen, petrified, staring at that nest, at those eggs, at those breaks, so delicate; I swear I could hear them crack as they spread across the shells.
And those baby birds dying inside.
There’s a knock at the door, and Mrs. K. rushes to answer it, but it isn’t Stan, or an internal security officer with news of Stan.
It’s Tommy and Aiko. They don’t know any more than we do about what happened to Stan, but they tell us they heard on the way over here that the Caucasian staff showed up at the administrative offices this morning, and they found a broken baseball bat. They found blood on the walls and on the bat, and black hairs amid the blood.
Were they Stan’s?
My fault.
I stare down at my bowl, watching the green ribbons of wakame churn in the broth. My stomach churns, too, as I force myself to take another bite.
“A bat?” Mary slams down her empty bowl.
“Mary,” Mr. K. says, “please.”
I admire her for her bravery, and for her ferocity. Mary is the kind of person who acts, heedless of danger. She is the kind of person who would never freeze.
As Mary and her father start arguing, I finish my soup, get up so Aiko can sit at the table, and peer out the front window. On the street, groups of people are on their way to work or school, huddled together like clumps of dandelion seeds floating over an overgrown ditch.
As I watch them, I hear a voice crackle in the distance: “DISPERSE.”
Then screams.
At the end of the street, shapes appear in the fog—military police in their helmets and gas masks. They’re storming down the road, monstrous, boots thudding on the ground. Behind them, a column of armored vehicles crawls along the street.
“DISPERSE.” The loudspeaker crackles again. “RETURN TO YOUR HOMES.”
People are already running, but the soldiers don’t give them a chance to clear the roads. One of them flings a gas grenade into the middle of the street.
People shriek and scatter as noxious white smoke hisses from the canister. They are coughing, they can’t breathe, they are—
I should help them. I should do something. But I can’t.
Mr. K. is already at the door, throwing it open; he is motioning someone inside. They are trying to wash her eyes with water; she is retching and crying—
Outside, the army trucks roll past, blaring commandments from the loudspeaker:
“RESIDENTS ARE CONFINED TO THEIR BARRACKS. ONLY ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL ARE TO REPORT TO WORK. SCHOOL IS CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. ALL OUTDOOR GATHERINGS ARE PROHIBITED.
“TULE LAKE IS UNDER MARTIAL LAW.”
Stan writes that he is in the stockade, the 250-by-350-square-foot area beyond the motor pool at the southwestern edge of camp. He says he’s being fed well, and he asks for a change of clothes, a shaving razor, and maybe one of those law books from the library, if we can get it. He doesn’t mention any mistreatment, but the mail is being censored through the military police, so we can’t be certain of anything.
We’ve been permitted to leave our barracks, but school is still canceled, so Mary, Aiko, Tommy, and I loiter by the motor-pool fences, which is the closest we can get to the stockade, hoping to get a glimpse of Stan. To pass the time, we play catch, or we sit and talk, or we watch the coal crew or the farmers filing onto the work trucks at bayonet point.
One day, Aiko brings a stack of comic books for Mary to give to Paul. They look well cared for, no wear on the spines, no creased pages. Tommy has told me Aiko loves comics almost as much as she loves softball and one of the guys from their old camp, Mas Ito, who’s now in basic training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
Gingerly, I leaf through the comic book at the top of the pile. When I was younger, I used to borrow comic books from the boys at school and read them at lunchtime, devouring every page, as if by memorizing it or loving it enough, I could somehow make it mine.
Mary frowns. “Why’re you giving these up?”
“I don’t want them anymore,” Aiko says with a small, sad shrug.
“Yeah, but why?”
Aiko scowls, which is an expression I think she must have learned from Mary, because for a moment, they look like they could be sisters. “Because they fight Japs,” she says.
We all glance at the soldiers stationed at the nearby guardhouse with their submachine guns.
“I’ll see if Paul wants these,” Mary says.
Sometimes, when the guards get bored, they demand to see our identification cards, which have been issued to everyone aged twelve and older. We always have them, because people who are discovered without them are immediately arrested.
Some come back. Some don’t.
That’s the way it is in Tule Lake now. They say the army is here to retain order, but there’s no order. Every day, I hear about more people being arrested—for curfew violation, or for making wisecracks about the internal security officers, or for having the same name as one of the so-called agitators. They say they’re here for our safety, but no one feels safe when they’ve got a gun pointed at them. People disappear. People are held without charges or trial.
And still, we wait by the motor-pool gate, and look, and hope. What else can we do, when we have so little power?
One night, I wake up sweating. Somewhere, someone’s shouting. Bang! Something crashes against the floor.
I’m half-asleep still, half dreaming. I must be. He’s not here. He can’t be here.
Mr. Tani.
My stepfather. He’s found us. He’s come to Tule Lake. I can hear his voice again. He’s going to hit me. He’s going to haul me out of bed, calling me stupid, calling me slow, calling me weak, over and over, so many times, I start to believe him.
Thud, thud, thud! someone knocks.
I stare up at the ceiling, my blood roaring in my ears like distant truck engines. For a second, I am bound in my blankets, pinned here, frozen, waiting.
Mr. Tani.
Except I realize it can’t be Mr. Tani, because Mr. Tani never knocked. He just barged in, smelling of sake, and started throwing me around.
“Get up, Japs!” someone shouts. “Surprise inspection! Get out here!”
I blink as the feeling returns to my body, and I carefully peel back the covers, swinging my legs over the edge of the cot. My limbs feel shaky with fear, or relief, or both.
It’s not Mr. Tani.
It’s the army.
Sporadic lights shine through the windows as Mother, Kimi, and I pull on our coats and boots.
“Hurry up!”
Mother is trembling, so Kimi and I help her out of the barrack and into the street. Outside, our neighbors are lined up with their hands behind their heads.
The sight of it stops me in my tracks. We look like criminals.
We aren’t criminals.
“Get over there,” one of the soldiers says, jabbing at Mother with a Tommy gun.
Mother freezes. In the floodlights, she looks like a cornered animal, barely daring to breathe.
There is that feeling again, that feeling as if the world is a sheet of ice, as if it will shatter, as if there will be a snap! and we will be on the ground as gunfire rains over our heads.
“Move!”
Carefully, Kimi and I each take one of Mother’s arms and guide her toward our neighbors. The frosted ground crackles with every step.
We stand by, immobile, as they charge into our homes. Through the open doors, we hear the sounds of our belongings being ransacked: cots being overturned, drawers being thrown to the floor, chests being kicked over. Up and down the block, they’re hauling away radios, and kitchen knives, and a Japanese printing press.
Suddenly, there’s a cry from one of the barracks and the sound of a scuffle, and a Japanese man is frogmarched down the steps. Despite being in nothing but his underclothes, he looks proud: his back straight, his chin held high.
How does he do it? How does he look so serene?
“Who is that?” I whisper to Kimi.
“One of the judo teachers,” she says. “They say he’s one of the instigators of the incident at the director’s house, but—”
“Shut it!” one of the MPs—military police—barks, prodding her with a bayonet.
She snaps her mouth shut with an audible click.
Mr. Tani never hit Kimi or Mother the way he hit me, but I know it affected them, having to listen to it, or to watch it, if they weren’t pretending to be asleep.
Sometimes I think I should be angry at them, and sometimes I am, for letting it happen, but then I think about how if things had been different, if Mr. Tani had knocked one of them around instead, I think I would have frozen, the way I froze when they took Stan. I would have let something bad happen to Mother, or Kimi, or both, and I already hate myself for letting it happen to me; I don’t think I could live with it if it had happened to them.
When the judo teacher is loaded into a truck with the rest of the contraband, one of the children starts crying. I can’t tell where the sound is coming from, because there’s a spotlight mounted to one of the jeeps, and it keeps crossing and recrossing us: bright and dark, bright and dark, bright and dark.
Soldiers are emerging from our barrack now, carrying Mom’s rice barrel, a couple of jars of tsukemono she’s been saving, and canned goods we bought from the co-op when we could.
“That’s our food,” Mom says in a panicked whisper. Her face is taut with fear. “What are we going to eat, Yoshi? They’re not feeding us enough in the mess halls anymore. That food is all we have—”
On the back of my head, my hands are starting to shake. I should do something. I should try to stop them, or reason with them, or plead.
But I can’t, and neither can she, and neither can any of us. What can any of us do? They are armed, and there are more of them, and I am just one person, one boy, one stupid boy, one useless boy, who can’t even protect himself.
Bright and dark, bright and dark.
The child is still crying.
A few days after Thanksgiving, I’m on my way to the Katsumotos’ barrack to help them make tsukemono for Stan and the other prisoners. Each ward is sending something in preparation for the holidays, and although Mother, Kimi, and I don’t have enough to spare, the least I can do is help.
As I’m passing one of the mess halls, an army truck drives up, laden with food: eggs, cans, bread, rice, wilted bunches of chard. The soldiers on the back of the truck don’t bother getting off to unload, however. They simply check their clipboard and heave the food onto the ground. Crates shatter. I flinch. It actually hurts, seeing the cartons of eggs break, the sacks of rice split, spilling thousands of white grains into the dirt like miniature avalanches.
As the soldiers drive off, the mess-hall staff rush to save what they can. Kneeling, I help them scoop up broken pieces of spaghetti, bruised apples, and mackerel that smells as if it’s already turned.
They scurry back to the mess hall, leaving me in the road, surrounded by scattered grains of rice, which I begin to pick up, one by one, filling my handkerchief with them.
They can be washed; they can be eaten. We won’t even know the difference.
I still remember the taste of dirt on my tongue. We’d have nothing to eat, and Kimi would take me out to the weed patch behind our apartment, where she’d put a pinch of soil in my palm.
“Just swallow,” she used to say. “It tastes bad, but when it gets to your stomach, you’ll forget you were hungry.”
With a handful of rice in my handkerchief, I walk the rest of the way to the Katsumotos’, where Mary, Mrs. K., and I spend the evening slicing daikon, napa cabbage, beets, and turnips that are only slightly bad. We cut off the ruined parts and toss the rest into jars with salt and garlic, or turmeric, sugar, and vinegar, and soon, the whole apartment smells of pickling liquid.
I like working with Mary. Her hair, which is normally in her face, is pulled back, so you can see her eyes, which are shaped like dark seeds. It also means you can really see her scowl at you when you mess up.
She eyes my knifework, frowning. “Don’t cut yourself.”
Sheepishly, I move the paring knife, the only kind of knife they’ve left us after the raids, away from my thumb. “Thanks.”
She rolls her eyes.
Tommy and Aiko were supposed to have been here too, but Mr. Harano wouldn’t let them come. He’s strict, their father, and I don’t think he treats either one of them very well, because it seems like they’ll take any excuse to be away from their apartment when they can.
It’s nearing curfew, so Mrs. K. wraps a jar of each batch of tsukemono in a furoshiki and ties it neatly, handing it to me with a little bow. “For your mother and sister,” she says.
I take it, bowing back. “Thank you, Mrs. Katsumoto.”
“Did you give him the one he bled in?” Mary asks from the table, where she’s wiping down the cutting boards.
Mrs. K. looks horrified. I can see her almost reach for the furoshiki, then hold herself back. “He did what?”
Mary laughs. I love her laugh. It’s loud and brash, and I don’t get to hear it often—I don’t think anybody does—but now it fills the barrack, following me as I bow again and step out into the night.
When I get home, Mother claps her hands as I unwrap the furoshiki. “This is so kind,” she says, holding each of the jars to the light. Some of the colors are pale still, but the daikon is already turning sunbeam yellow in the turmeric.
“We must find a way to thank them,” she says, patting the top of each jar, as if blessing them.
I reach into my back pocket for the handkerchief of rice. “I also got—”
I’m interrupted by a sharp rapping at the door.
We freeze, staring at each other, wide-eyed. It’s after seven p.m. No Japanese person should be knocking right now. Which means . . .
“Internal security,” someone says. “Open up.”
The air feels fragile, as if breathing it will fracture something. Cautiously, Kimi lays the book she was reading on her cot and gets up, padding across the floor in her slippers.
As soon as she opens the door, the internal security officers barge inside. There are two of them, their faces pale, their hands hard and grabbing; they’re coming for me, and I—
It’s like Mr. Tani all over again. The lights are too bright; I’m bewildered and blinking. I’m being seized by the arms.
“That’s him,” one of them says.
“You’re under arrest,” says the other.
I blink slowly. I am?
“What for?” Kimi demands. Her hands are on her hips.
“Curfew violation.”
Mother is motionless, clutching the jar of takuan to her chest like it’s the only thing she can hold on to. It’s okay, Mother, I think.
“It’s only five minutes past seven!” Kimi snaps. She’s small, slender, her head sometimes seeming too big for her neck, like a doll’s, but now she gets into the officers’ faces, her eyes narrowed, her canines sharp.
I’ve never seen Kimi stand up to anyone before.
It is kind of magnificent.
“Five minutes past curfew is past curfew,” one of them says.
“But he—”
The other one cuts her off: “You’d better pack a bag. Quick, now.”
She glares at them for a second, her eyes brimming with tears, before she spins around, stuffing my clothes into a suitcase. Trouser legs and shirtsleeves flying like kites in the pale yellow light of our single bulb.
Mom still hasn’t moved, and neither have I.
“What’s this?” one of them says, lifting my closed fist. “Contraband? Let go.”
I try. I want to tell him I try.
For some reason, I’m thinking of the eggs in the road, the cartons of eggs, the yolks oozing out, into the mud, yellow as melted butter.
“Come on, you Jap—”
He has to pry open my fingers, wrenching them back one by one, and it hurts, I want to tell him it hurts, until the handkerchief drops.
Dirty, uncooked rice spills all over the floor. I hear the grains rattle, but I can’t look down. Tears form in my eyes, blurring my vision.
The internal security officers laugh.
Then one of them is at the door, and the other one has my suitcase. “Move,” he says, prodding me.
I trip, banging my knee into the edge of my cot.
He grabs me again, shaking me. “Don’t try anything funny, now.” I’m being marched toward the door, but my legs aren’t working. I fall; I hit the floor; there are grains of rice beneath my fingers.
Mother finally finds her voice: “Kiyoshi!”
“What’s the big idea?” one asks. “D’you think this is a joke?”
I am trying to get to my knees when he smacks me across the head, and then I really start crying. The tears come hot and fast and large, burning down my cheeks. I don’t mean to; I don’t even know why I’m doing it. I’ve been knocked around worse than this, but—
I think of that judo teacher who walked down those steps with grace. I don’t want to be uncooperative, or slow, or weak . . . but I am. Mr. Tani knew it, and Mother and Kimi knew it, and I know it, and now these men know it too.
They’re seizing me now, they’re roughing me up, but I am soaring out of my body, I am untethered from my own bones, from the grip of their hands, from my tears. I am safe, even though they are hurting me.
Kimi is screaming at them as they shove me down the steps. My tongue splits as I accidentally bite down on it. I am in the dirt, tasting blood and dust.
I think of the smell of oranges, sunlight flashing in the leaves.
Then I’m being pulled toward a truck, I’m being arrested, and I don’t know if I’m coming back.
The last I see of Mother and Kimi, they’re standing in the doorway, Mother still holding the jar of takuan, and the light behind them is the color of egg yolks.
They don’t tell me how long I’ll be here. They don’t tell me if there’s going to be a trial. They just throw me in the stockade and leave me.
The stockade barracks are like the ones in the rest of camp, but they’re crammed wall-to-wall with cots. The men in here are like sardines, jam-packed so close together, there’s hardly enough space to walk between beds.
The room smells like body odor and cigarettes, with the faint hint of vomit.
But Stan is here.
I hardly recognize him when I see him, because his head’s been shaved, poorly, I think, with uneven patches here and there, and he’s lost so much weight in the last twenty-four days, he looks like you could snap him in half.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” he says, struggling to sit up. I think he’s sick. His skin is moist and pale, and there’s a sour smell about him, like bile.
“Don’t get up,” I say, helping him back under the covers. “You look terrible.”
“Gee, you sure know how to flatter a guy.” He grins. One of his teeth is missing.
I think of his legs being knocked out from under him, of his face being mashed into the dirt. My fault.
“Stan, I’m—”
He squints at me, putting on his glasses, which have been broken and taped back together. “Ouch. You could crack a mirror with a face like that. Here.” He tosses me a rag. “What’d they get you for?”
Gently, I touch the rag to my swollen lip. “I was out five minutes past curfew.”
To my surprise, Stan laughs. “At least you know what you did! Some guys get hauled in with no explanation at all.” He looks a little wild, laughing like that, with his uneven hair, his missing tooth, that shine of sweat on his forehead.
I try to smile, but it’s hard to smile when I want to cry again. I sniff, trying not to meet his gaze. “What happened to your hair?” I say.
“It’s a good look, right? I call it ‘Buddhist chic.’” He rubs his stubbled head, and his gaze turns solemn, despite his light tone. “Some of the guys jumped me. They wanted everyone to have the same haircut. Solidarity in baldness, I guess.”
I glance around the room, where men are lying on their cots, sleeping, or reading, or smoking and talking in small groups. Against one wall, someone plays a ukulele. Most of them are wearing knit caps to cover their shaven heads, but I spy the judo teacher who was arrested during the night raid, playing a game of Go. He looks like that statue The Thinker, his chin resting atop his fist, a paragon of stillness amid the stinking chaos of the barrack.
“That guy has hair,” I say, pointing.
“That’s Mr. Morimoto. They respect him too much to jump him.” Stan leans back against the pillow with a sigh. “You’d think it’s the judo, but in reality, he bites.”
“Really?”
“Nah, it’s the judo. And the whole leader-in-the-community thing.” Stan chuckles. “How’s Mary and the rest of the family?”
“They’re doing fine. You don’t need to worry,” I tell him. “How are you?”
“Stir-crazy and mad as hell. No matter how many times I tell them I was at the movies that night, they still think I’m one of the guys who threatened the project director. They haven’t questioned me in a while, though. What d’you wanna bet they’ve forgotten I’m here?”
I keep thinking of him falling, of his body hitting the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out.
Stan blinks, his mouth half-open in surprise. “Huh?”
My hands knot in his blanket. “For getting you arrested.”
He laughs again. “Those goddamn ketos arrested me.” He pats me on the arm. “Come on, don’t look like that, Yosh. It’s not your fault I’m in here. You didn’t do anything wrong. None of us did.”
I get him a cup of water, which I make him drink. “I wish I could believe you.”
The stockade is no joke.
For more than a hundred prisoners, there are only five toilets, and three of them aren’t working. There’s no hot water and only one tub, so we wash our faces and clothes in the sinks, shivering in the winter chill. Most of the time, we stink.
In another part of the camp is a tent called the “bullpen” where Lieutenant Swinson, the Police and Prisoner Officer, puts anyone who looks at him funny. It’s guarded day and night by an MP with a rifle and bayonet, which means the prisoners have to sleep out there on the frozen ground with only a bit of canvas and a little stove to protect them from the cold.
I haven’t been to the bullpen yet, and neither has Stan, and we go out of our way to stay out of trouble.
He’s on his way to being healthy again, but because of the poor conditions, illnesses sweep through the barrack in waves. Someone is always coughing, or vomiting, or running a fever. To pass the time, I think, and to distract themselves, the stockade prisoners decorate the walls with pictures of pinup girls and family photographs. Someone’s always playing guitar or the ukulele, and there’s always a game of hanafuda going so the guys can gamble for cigarettes and oranges.
Stan and I keep to ourselves mostly, talking, or reading letters we receive from camp:
Dear Stan and Yosh,
Do you know about Radio Tokyo? It’s a broadcast from Japan, and some of the men in camp can pick it up with their radios. (Don’t ask me which men, because I don’t know.) I haven’t heard it myself, but sometimes I see these flyers with highlights from the broadcast. Can you believe it? They’re saying Japan is winning the war in the Pacific. They talk about these big American casualties, all these warships sunk and everything. The numbers don’t make any sense at all, but people in camp eat it up.
They’ve convinced my parents, anyhow. They’re talking about trying to get on the next prisoner exchange ship, even though I tell them our governments have their own agendas in who they want to send back. I suppose I can’t blame them—they only want to return to Japan as soon as possible.
I don’t know what I’m going to do if that happens. I’ve never been to Japan, and you know how bad my Japanese is, Stan. I can barely say こんにちは. But I don’t want to keep disappointing them.
I’m enclosing a pack of gum. Hopefully it won’t be confiscated.
Take care of yourselves,
Tommy
P.S. Aiko sends her love. Mary gives you the finger.
P.P.S. No, Mary gave me the finger. To you, she says, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
We don’t receive the pack of gum, of course. Sometimes we don’t even receive our letters. It’s like that here. Random. Every so often, someone is taken away for questioning, or someone is locked in the bullpen or returns from the bullpen. Someone new is arrested, or someone is released. There’s no logic to it, no reason we’re here, and no end in sight.
And under the jokes, and the songs, and the laughter, there’s that feeling like the air is being stretched tighter and tighter and tighter, and soon, all it will take is one move, one step, one breath, for it to snap.
On December 30, Lieutenant Swinson takes two prisoners from our barrack and puts them in the bullpen. He gives no explanation.
In protest, we don’t leave the barrack for roll call. The men have done things like this before, Stan tells me, when they weren’t getting enough rice, or when they wanted a sick prisoner to be taken to the hospital. It feels new to me. To not move, and to do it on purpose, and to have that be powerful somehow.
The judo teacher, Mr. Morimoto, asks that the prisoners in the bullpen be released, since there was no reason for them to be there in the first place.
Lieutenant Swinson tells him that if we clean up the stockade, he’ll let the men out of the bullpen.
Mr. Morimoto says we can do that, if we have supplies like mops, buckets, rags, and soap.
We don’t get them.
But Mr. Morimoto begins cleaning all the same. Taking one of his own undershirts, he leaves the barrack to begin wiping down the latrine.
Those who are healthy—or the ones who aren’t slinging the bull, gambling, or lying around, at least—join him. After making sure Stan is resting, because he’s still weak, I help clean the sinks. In the frigid water that flows from the taps, my fingers quickly go numb.
Mr. Morimoto’s hands are cracked with cold and the dry air. It must be painful for him, I think, scrubbing grime from the drain, but he doesn’t complain. His face is placid, even though there is a deep anger in his eyes that I’ve also seen in Stan’s.
“Why are you doing this, sir?” I ask after a while.
He grunts. “What do you mean?”
“Lieutenant Swinson didn’t get us the cleaning supplies.”
“If someone always said, You have to do this for me before I do this for you, then nothing would ever get done,” he says. “If I say I will do something, then I do it. Acting in a forthright and honest manner is the only way to retain one’s dignity.”
I glance around the latrine with its three malfunctioning toilets, and at the soiled rags in our hands. I think about the men being arrested and the men being released; the bullpen and the interrogations; and the letters we receive or the letters we don’t. I think about the unpredictability of it, the dreadful whimsy, as if our lives are no longer governed by sense or patterns, and so we cannot rely on anything, not on food, or warmth, or security, or freedom. “Even here?” I ask.
Mr. Morimoto nods. “Especially here.”
Although we spent all yesterday cleaning the stockade, the prisoners in the bullpen aren’t released. Mr. Morimoto doesn’t look surprised, just weary.
“What do you think is going to happen?” I ask Stan.
“I bet Swinson’s gonna want us to sit in a circle and braid each other’s hair or something. Maybe a tea party.”
I grin and give his bald head a rub. “You’ll be left out, then.”
He shoves me off, grimacing. “Tea with Swinson? I’d rather eat my shoe.”
At the mention of food, my stomach growls. We had only two slices of bread for breakfast this morning. “You might have to,” I say, “if things continue as they are.”
Like yesterday, when it’s time for roll call, no one leaves the barrack. One of the MPs comes to yell at us, but no one moves. No one is even tempted.
I keep thinking about what Mr. Morimoto said about acting according to his beliefs. We don’t all believe the same things in here, especially about whether we’re Japanese or American, whether we want to stay in this country or go, but we all know that our treatment in this place is unjust, and that makes it easier to act as one.
Soon, however, we hear the gate rattling open, the sound of boots hitting the frozen ground. Soldiers march around the exterior of the barrack, banging on the walls with bayonets, shouting, “Get up, you lazy Japs! Time for roll call! Come out on your own, or we’ve got ways to make you come out!”
I lean over to Stan, whispering, “Are they talking about gas? There are sick guys in here.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t think a little tear gas will clear up their sinuses?” He sounds like he’s joking, but he’s so angry, I can almost feel it coming off him in waves, like heat or cold.
Mr. Morimoto sighs and draws a hand down his face.
And we obey.
The air is frigid as we file out of the barrack. It hits the back of my throat like a thousand needles. Behind me, Stan starts coughing. I turn around to help him, but someone shouts at me to keep moving.
When I hesitate, Stan gestures me onward.
Slowly, we line up, standing there with the cold seeping into our bones as they count us.
One Jap, two Japs . . . eighty-eight, eighty-nine Japs . . . one hundred thirty Japs . . . one hundred ninety-nine, two hundred Japs . . . in a stockade meant for less than a hundred.
I can’t feel my fingers anymore. In my shoes, my feet have gone thick and solid as ice. All around me, men are coughing and sniffling. Two rows ahead, I can see one of them shivering so hard in his coat, he looks as if he’s going to shake apart. I hope it’s over now; I hope we can go back inside.
But Lieutenant Swinson isn’t done with us. He paces up and down in the yard, sneering like he’s won a contest. Then he stops. “You.” He jabs a gloved finger at Mr. Morimoto. “To the bullpen.”
For a second, Mr. Morimoto does nothing, but he is not frozen the way I freeze sometimes. He is thinking. You can see it in his slow breaths, his steady gaze, the opportunity he gives Swinson to reconsider his stance, to change his mind, to stop this senselessness. This not-moving, this small space of disobedience, is not out of fear but out of defiance.
Then, with a sigh, Mr. Morimoto leaves his place in line.
People start muttering.
“What about the rest of us?” Stan’s hoarse voice rises above the others. “I could use a change of scenery!”
“Yeah!” someone shouts.
Before, I might have wanted Stan to be quiet. I might have thought that would keep him safe.
But that only works in a world that makes sense, and the world of Tule Lake does not make sense. In the world of Tule Lake, you are a citizen and you are an enemy; you are an alien and you are a traitor. You have rights; you have no rights. You have a knife; you have a jar of pickles; you have contraband. In the world of Tule Lake, you are fed and you are starved; you are arrested for rioting, for seeing a movie, for curfew violation; you are guilty until you’re proven innocent, and you’re never proven innocent because you never get charged; you are guilty, and you have committed no crime . . .
“Enough!” Lieutenant Swinson barks. He jerks his thumb at Mr. Morimoto. “If anyone else wants to join him, you can step right up.”
Everyone shuts up.
The air strains under the weight of our silence. A green leaf. A nest of feathers. A groaning branch.
All it takes is one move, and Lieutenant Swinson will snap. He’ll have someone hauled off by their ankles. He’ll beat someone into the ground. He’ll loose his MPs on us like dogs.
In the world of Tule Lake, they want you to obey, they want you to be a troublemaker, they want you to admit to things you haven’t done and allegiances you never held, they want you to accept these injustices with a smile. In the world of Tule Lake, you are shot at the gates for trying to get to work on time, for moving too fast, for scaring the Caucasians.
You move, or you do not move; you freeze, or you act; it doesn’t matter. You are too dangerous anyway, too yellow, too slow, too stupid, too weak anyway. You are arrested anyway. You are beaten anyway.
So I move.
The frost crunches as I take a step, a single step, one step forward.
In the silent yard, the sound is like an avalanche.
Or a breaking branch.
Or an eggshell.
It takes a second for Lieutenant Swinson to notice, but when he sees me in the fifth row, his eyes bulge. His cheeks inflate. A vein in his temple pops, blue as a fragment of sky.
But before he can say anything, before he can shout and rail and thunder, before he can have me dragged away, the other prisoners, every one of them, all around me, step forward. The earth trembles under our weight, the weight of all of us, more than two hundred Japs, moving and immovable.
But it doesn’t break.
And neither do I.
Saturday, January 8, 1944
Dear Mas,
I bet you thought you’d heard the last of me, huh? Sorry to break it to you, but you can’t get rid of me that easily. You know Tule Lake’s been under martial law since November? Well, I guess the MPs thought I was mixed up in some kind of trouble, because they picked me up one night like a sack of potatoes and dumped me in the stockade to rot.
That’s why I haven’t written all these months. It wasn’t you. It was me!
Well, it was the army, anyway.
It’s been kind of a rough time, but everything changed about a week ago when the guy in charge of the stockade, this blond-wolf type named Swinson, lines everybody up and starts picking people out at random for extra punishment. “You! You! You! I’m an insecure asshole who needs to subjugate others so I can feel better about myself! Wah!” And when we kick up a fuss about it, he says anybody who doesn’t like it can step right up and try him.
So this new friend of mine, Yosh, he does. And then we all do! You would’ve gotten a kick out of it, Mas. All the little guys standing up for what’s right.
Of course, Swinson had no idea what to do. I guess he didn’t know how to punish all two hundred of us, so he just kind of left us there, standing in the snow for three hours, while he went to get orders from his superior or something. When he finally came back, he said we’d all be on bread and water for the next twenty-four hours.
But we’d had enough.
They’d imprisoned us, isolated us, made us sick with poor quarters and treatment. Now they were going to starve us too? You’ve got to be kidding me.
So we did the only thing we could. If all they were going to give us was bread and water, then we weren’t going to eat at all. Not until they told us why we were there. Not until they gave us fair trials. Not until they stopped treating us like we were less than human.
I’m telling you, Mas. They were torturing us. We were goddamn Americans on goddamn American soil, and they were torturing us. I know you’re an army guy now and everything, but you wouldn’t have stood for it, either. No one in their right mind could.
We were on hunger strike for a week, and surprise, surprise! At the end of it, nothing had really changed, although they did let me, Yosh, and some other guys go yesterday. Why? Who knows? Who can fathom the perverse inner thoughts of a guy like Swinson?
There are 187 prisoners still in the stockade, and I don’t know when they’re getting out, but I hear the army is going to give control of the camp back to the W.R.A. any day now, so maybe things will change.
Or maybe they won’t. Who knows? It’ll be another surprise!
I know you said you were joining the combat team to show them what the Nisei are made of, to show them we’re as American as any blond-haired, blue-eyed keto.
Now I just hope you can make them see us as human.
Fight hard and come home safe, Mas. We’re counting on you.
Sincerely,
Stan