Author’s Note
History, Family History, and Fiction
We Are Not Free may be a work of historical fiction, but to me, it is more than either history or fiction. In 1942, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent spike of anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States, my grandparents and their families were uprooted from their homes and forced into incarceration camps with more than one hundred thousand other people of Japanese descent. From the beginning, telling this story has always been personal for me, because this history is my history. This community is my community. It happened; it happened to my family; and it has impacted so much about who we are and how we exist in this country.
In the course of researching this book, I interviewed a number of my Nisei relatives, whose experiences have provided inspiration for some of the novel’s narrative details, although any particulars as they occur here have been transformed into fiction. A small sampling of these elements includes: My grandmother’s blond wig and the story of how she brought it home, which are now immortalized in Yum-yum’s chapter, although my grandmother didn’t get her blond wig until after she was out of camp and in beauty school. Or, for example, my great-uncle was younger than Yuki when he was shouted out of an ice cream shop, but the words “We don’t serve Japs here” are part of his childhood. Two of my grandparents met in Tule Lake when my grandmother’s studies were interrupted by a boy walking in through the back door of the classroom, but Mary’s sullen disposition is much more like my own than my grandmother’s. In 1942, my great-aunt was a junior in high school, and in her civics classes, she was told again and again how lucky she was to be a free American. After she was incarcerated, she would sit in the grandstand at Tanforan, watching all the people strolling around San Bruno, and she would say to herself, again and again, “I am not free”—words that inspired the title of this book. For the opportunity to share these and other pieces of my family’s history, I am both honored and grateful.
As I have threaded snippets of family history through a fictional narrative, I have also woven this story through real historical events, including the forced removal of Japanese-Americans (a term I use here to encompass Issei, who were barred from becoming naturalized citizens by the Naturalization Act of 1790, as well as their descendants); the substandard conditions of temporary detention centers like Tanforan; the desolate incarceration camps such as Topaz and Tule Lake; the loyalty questionnaire and its divisive effects on the Japanese-American community; the formation, training, and campaigns of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; the turmoil at the Tule Lake Segregation Center and its period of martial law; and the return (for some) to the West Coast. Mentioned in these pages are certain public personages, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mike Masaoka, Dillon Meyer, Ray Best, and Dr. Reece Pedicord, who are historical figures, but all the characters who speak and act in We Are Not Free are works of fiction.
Always, I have endeavored to be true to and respectful of the historical events of 1942–1945 and the people who lived through them. However, in the interests of telling a good story, I have occasionally bent the details a little. For example, an Issei man was shot by a white soldier in Topaz, but the shooting occurred in April 1943, not February, as it does in Stan’s chapter. Construction on the gymnasium at Tule Lake was not completed until 1944, although I have written the gym into a scene from late October 1943. Blood on the Sun was not released in theaters until 1945, but after reading my grandfather’s letters describing his reactions to the film, I could not pass up the opportunity to include it. The Tule Lake jail, in which the graffiti SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO TO HOME appears, was not built until 1945, although I have placed a photo of it between chapters set in December 1944 and February 1945. Any other errors in geographical or historical fact are mine.
While one of my goals in writing this novel was to illustrate some of the depth and breadth of Nisei experiences during World War II, I’d like to note that these fourteen perspectives are a mere fraction of what this generation went through. With thousands of people incarcerated, their experiences varied, sometimes drastically, depending on where they were and what assets they possessed at the time of their forced removal. The story of a teenager from San Francisco, therefore, will be different from that of one from Bainbridge Island or Honolulu, just as stories from Manzanar are different from those from Topaz, Tule Lake, or Crystal City and the experiences of the Nisei in the 442nd are different from those in the Military Intelligence Service or the Women’s Army Corps. I have included some suggestions for further reading in the following pages, and it is my hope that we continue to explore our existing literature on the incarceration as well as discover more and more of these stories in the years to come.
Language
In recent years, there has been a movement to change the terminology of the incarceration. The words most often used, such as “internment,” “evacuation,” and “assembly center,” for example, are euphemisms originally intended to conceal the truth of the inhumane conditions, poor treatment, and civil rights violations that occurred in the camps. These are the terms my characters, who do not have the benefit of hindsight, use in the text. However, when speaking about the history, I have chosen to base my language on the Japanese-American Citizens League’s updated terminology, outlined in the Power of Words Handbook, including the terms “incarceration,” “forced removal,” and “temporary detention center.” I would encourage others who are speaking about the camps to do so as well.
After much thought, I decided to include three ethnic slurs in We Are Not Free, and I have tried to choose which characters use them and under what circumstances in order to illustrate the racial tensions between the Japanese-American and white communities at the time. I would like to clearly state that these terms are both offensive and outdated, and should not be repeated.
Despite their historical accuracy, I have elected not to include other historical terms for race, having chosen instead to use their modern counterparts. There are other words more accurate to the times, but they can also be heavily charged today, and it did not feel appropriate using them without unpacking them clearly and thoughtfully in a way that is sensitive to contemporary readers. It is important to me to note, therefore, that while “Black” was considered a slur in the 1940s, when my characters use the word in the novel, it is anachronistic and not intended as derogatory.
Past and Present
As with all historical events, the incarceration did not happen in isolation. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Asian sentiment in North America had been building for decades, and the unjust, often brutal treatment of nonwhite people has profound and extensive roots in U.S. history. During World War II, the mass incarceration affected over one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans—more, if we consider the people of Japanese ancestry who were deported from their homes in Latin America and imprisoned in camps in the United States. The effects of these events have been both deep and widespread, not only for those who lived them, but also for later generations of Japanese-Americans, like myself, and other communities of people of color.
Although We Are Not Free is both history and fiction, I believe it would be a mistake to relegate the racism against and mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s to some bygone era, with no relevance to current events. During my research, the more I have learned about our history, the more I have come to realize that we are part of an ongoing pattern of injustices that have affected and are still affecting millions of people of color on this continent. I don’t think it’s fair or right for me to compare the various ways minority groups have been and are being abused, oppressed, and denied their human rights in this country, but when I look around, I cannot help but feel that history is repeating itself in new and sometimes more horrific ways.
History is not dead. We have not moved on. Like Minnow and many of my other characters, I love this country because it is my home, and my parents’ home, and my grandparents’ home, and because I was raised to believe in the opportunity and equality America promises, but this does not prevent me from seeing its problems, seeing all the ways it has failed its people again and again. Rather, I’d like to think that it’s because I love this country that I am here, working in the ways that I can toward making it a better, more just, more egalitarian place for everyone—a place that, one day, I hope can truly live up to its promises.