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"Mr. Ishida's Bookstore" by timschochet- starts post #181 (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter timschochet
- Start date
Arsenal of Doom
Footballguy
I wonder how Tim feels about this?Burton said:I have read the whole thing so far, and it's actually not bad. The debate on immigration pretty much represents my own viewpoint (the conservative side.) And story in Poland is fascinating. I'm not sure how it will all connect in the end, but I'm eager to read more.
timschochet
Footballguy
I'll take praise from anyone.I wonder how Tim feels about this?Burton said:I have read the whole thing so far, and it's actually not bad. The debate on immigration pretty much represents my own viewpoint (the conservative side.) And story in Poland is fascinating. I'm not sure how it will all connect in the end, but I'm eager to read more.
I'm kind of wondering the same thing the person in Post #50 mentioned: why not self-publish?! 
A designer in our small company writes on the side, and he self-published a book last year. Think print-on-demand. He did an initial print run to give to people with a particular interest in the topic, then later hired a publicist who has gotten him small gigs across New York State and a bit of the Southeast US. He didn't do it to make billions of dollars. He did it to take 2-3 years of hard work and get people interested in the topic to read it. He's only made a net of probably a few thousand so far, but heck, printing on-demand (higher per-piece costs) and paying a publicist and making ANY coin is good in my book.
Seriously though, why not consider finding someone to make some nice cover art, write your bio and get a good head shot, then print 50-100 of them and see where it might lead?! Worse case scenario, it makes some halfway decent gifts to family and friends around the holidays...
A designer in our small company writes on the side, and he self-published a book last year. Think print-on-demand. He did an initial print run to give to people with a particular interest in the topic, then later hired a publicist who has gotten him small gigs across New York State and a bit of the Southeast US. He didn't do it to make billions of dollars. He did it to take 2-3 years of hard work and get people interested in the topic to read it. He's only made a net of probably a few thousand so far, but heck, printing on-demand (higher per-piece costs) and paying a publicist and making ANY coin is good in my book.
Seriously though, why not consider finding someone to make some nice cover art, write your bio and get a good head shot, then print 50-100 of them and see where it might lead?! Worse case scenario, it makes some halfway decent gifts to family and friends around the holidays...
Last edited by a moderator:
Hipple Long Ware & Peete
Footballguy
This idea has potential.
timschochet
Footballguy
She hated approaching Casimir about anything. But one day, a few months after she had joined the camp, she was forced to seek him out and say, “Master, I am pregnant.”
Casimir laughed, “Do you think it is mine?” he asked.
“Or one of the other soldiers” she said quietly, for she had of course been a virgin prior to the rapes and had not been touched since.
“Well,” said Casimir, “it really doesn’t matter who the father is, since it’s to be a Jewish whelp, and we can’t have that, can we?”
”What do you mean to do?” asked Rebecca, by now terrified.
“Isn’t it obvious? You must understand this camp is no place for Jewish children. The minute that child is born, it dies,”
Rebecca would have right then and there thrown herself to the ground and begged for the life of the child, had she believed there was any chance to convince Casimir, but she knew there was not. She could not say why she suddenly needed to bear and protect this child; its very presence in her body should have been an anathema to her. But she did need to protect it; she felt this as deeply as she had ever felt anything. She would need to find someway to escape from the camp. And it would have to be soon, before she became too heavy to move.
Desperately she began to search the camp over, trying to find some means of getting away. There was none. All of the entrances to the camp were well guarded by soldiers, almost all of these knew who and what she was, since Casimir was so well-known.
Through the bushes and trees at night, then? No, she would be caught only too easily, and that would be the end. There had to be another way. But she could not find it.
As the days became weeks, and weeks turned into months, Rebecca grew more and more despondent. Did Casimir mean what he said? Was she really going to lose her baby? Was there truly no way out of here for her? The thoughts circled around and around in her head.
What finally saved her came from a completely unexpected source: water. The Ukrainians had allowed the drinking water in their camp to become stagnant. The men were not clean; their feces was allowed to befoul the water supply. And so many of them took sick, and died of what was then known only as “The Plague”.
One day Casimir was robust and healthy, leading his men on a raid of the Polish Army. The day after returning from this mission in triumph, he overslept, and complained of dizziness and a fever. Rebecca had seen several die up to this point; she knew what the inevitable result would be.
Yet during the next several days, as the Cossack got weaker and weaker still, she cared for him. She could not explain to herself why she did this; certainly she hated him far more than any man she had ever met. He had raped her sister and cut off her head as some sort of trophy, and he slaughtered countless Jews without seemingly any remorse whatsoever. He had spared her life only because she worked diligently as his slave, and he promised to kill her baby as soon as it was born, even though there was a reasonable chance he was the father (one in three, she reminded herself.)
But despite all this, there was some sort of tragic aspect about these Ukrainian horsemen. Certainly not nobility, not the way they so eagerly killed innocents in their wake. But they were heroic, there could be no doubt, and in fighting for their freedom, they displayed an awesome defiance against hopeless odds. And these odds were more hopeless every day, Rebecca knew. The Poles, recovering from their surprise, were gathering their own army which would inevitably overwhelm the Cossacks. Then, she suspected, Chmielnicki’s army and countrymen, women, and children, would be treated with the same ruthlessness as they had dealt out to the Poles and Jews. And in the end, the only real change would be the utter devastation of the land the Cossacks claimed to love so much.
So she tended to Casimir, and he, in his illness, spoke to her of his fears of what would happen. In the end, before he died, he told her she was free to go. But as he had told no one else of this, she knew that his gesture was meaningless.
All over the camp now, the fever spread. Two thirds of the Cossack Army were dying or already dead. It was therefore a relatively easy affair for Rebecca Goldstein to slip out of the encampment into the forest beyond, determined to find her way back to Lodz.
When we realize over three hundred and fifty years after these events that this was the last of the Goldsteins (Rebecca’s parents, along with all of the Jews of Lodz had been killed by Poles, but she did not know this yet) and had she died, the Goldstein family that had come from Spain and which would eventually reach America and result in David Goldstein arguing politics with me at Glenn Nakamura’s house on Saturday nights, this family would have perished right then and there, then it makes Rebecca’s survival in retrospect all the more remarkable. Consider: she had no money, food or water; she spoke no Ukrainian, and she was alone in a forest in a country where Jews were being murdered for sport all around her. Further, she was three months pregnant and already beginning to show, and she was not an attractive woman to begin with. All she had with her were the clothes on her body, a keen mind, and a thirst for survival which had somehow grown with her pregnancy. She had already been through so much, she reasoned, surely there was no worse thing to encounter.
For three days she wandered through the forest, not knowing where she was, and not encountering another human soul. Part of this was on purpose, for she attempted to avoid any Cossacks she might see signs of. She drank water from a stream, and picked berries; these were her only sustenance. She wondered if and when she would catch the fever that was so easily spread, but she did not.
Finally, out of sheer hunger, she wandered out of the forest into a village. The village would be Ukrainian, she knew, filled with women and children and old folk left behind while the men were involved in the uprising. Rebecca knew she could not pass for a Ukrainian for she only spoke a few words of the language; she could speak Polish, but she doubted that in itself would hardly get her any farther than if she attempted to speak Yiddish. Still, she knew she had no choice, and because of this, she concocted a daring plan to survive.
Weeks ago, Chmielnicki had rings forged for all of his lieutenants; these rings were painted with a red cross and sword, which was Boghdan Chmielnicki’s personal symbol, and was famous for being on the flag of the Cossack rebel army. To the Jews of the Ukraine, the symbol of the red cross and flag was an anathema, and would be despised for centuries to come, its impact matched only by the Swastika several hundred years later.
It was one of the proudest days of Casimir’s life, when after leading a successful raid of a Polish castle, he had been awarded the ring with great fanfare and ceremony from Chmielnicki himself. It meant he was one of the Great Man’s favorites, and would bear a place of high honor in the new Ukraine that would be established once the enemy had been defeated.
When Casimir had died, Rebecca had waited until no one was watching; then she had deftly removed the ring from his finger. She could not say why she did this; certainly, even if the ring was valuable (and she had no idea if it was), how would one sell it? If she was caught possessing it, she certainly would have been killed instantly. But her intuition told her that the ring would be of value to her at some later time.
Now, days later, she held the ring as she approached a lonely house on the edge of the village. She knocked on the door, and it was answered by an old woman who stared at Rebecca with great curiosity.
Rebecca Goldstein swallowed hard and began. “Good woman,” she said in Polish, “I beg for your help. My name is Sophie, and I am a Pole, I admit. I did not choose to come to the Ukraine, but I was forced by my father, a Polish trader. He and my mother and brothers were all killed by Boghdan Chmielnicki’s great army, but a Cossack named Casimir took pity on me. He allowed me to travel with him, and he fell in love with me and married me. I am pregnant with his child. He died fighting the Poles, but before he died, he gave me his ring, the ring of a high lieutenant of the Ukraine.”
She showed the ring to the old woman, whose eyes widened at the sight of it, but said nothing. So Rebecca continued: “My husband Casimir opened my eyes to the reality of Ukrainian justice. The Poles and Jews must be utterly defeated so that the Ukrainians may have their freedom! My son will be a Ukrainian, and he will carry on the fight of his Cossack father. I have renounced completely my Polish background, and I am only ashamed that I am forced to speak to you in this vile language, which is the only one I know. Please, I have been starving in the forest for several days, and yours is the first house I have come to. I am starving, and I beg you for food!”
To Rebecca, her whole speech sounded contrived. Surely this woman would think so, too. But her surprise, the old lady just smiled and said, “Come in, come in, you must hide! There are some in this village that would kill you just for being Polish; they would never understand what you have told me. Come in, I have hot soup!” And Rebecca was saved.
The old woman’s name was Olga, she lived alone, and she described herself as a patriot. Her husband and son had been killed, she said “defending us against the filthy Jews,” and she would help anyone who possessed the ring of Chmielnicki.
“But I will hide you until your baby is born,” Olga said. “You must not show your face in the village before that. So many of my friends hate the Poles, you see. I never have. I know that it is all a plot of the Jews, you know, to get Ukrainian and Pole to hate each other.”
Olga proved as good as her word. She kept “Sophie” hidden in the back room, away from all prying eyes (not that anyone came to visit her anyhow, she said,) and shared her food with the girl. All the time she lectured Rebecca on how the Ukrainians and the Poles would come together “once the Jews were destroyed” and how all of this fighting was unnecessary. Rebecca was content to stay there as she got closer and closer to childbirth. She did not argue with the old woman, but quietly pretended to agree. Several times a week Olga would peer at the ring which lay by Rebecca’s tableside. She would gaze at it with awe and reverence, but she never touched it.
When the labor pains came, Olga served as midwife; she assured the younger girl she had done it several times before. The result was a healthy baby boy. It did not resemble Casimir, and this made the girl’s heart gladden, although she wasn’t sure who exactly the baby looked like; she had blocked facial memories of the other two rapists from her mind long ago.
Olga cooed and fussed over the child. “He is adorable!” she cried, “he will grow up to be a fine Cossack, a soldier for Chmielnicki! What will you name him?”
Rebecca had already decided to name the boy Moses, after the ancestor of her family who had supposedly come from Spain, and who, like this baby and herself, was forced to accept great change. But she could not tell Olga this. “Perhaps Peter,” she said weakly, “or Stephan? I’ll have to think on it.”
“Both are good Christian names.” the old lady said. “Speaking of that, the babe will have to be baptized! How will we arrange this? I must bring the Priest here; we’ll have to let him in on our secret now, won’t we?”
“No,” said Rebecca, alarmed, “it’s far too dangerous!”
“Come now, child,” Olga said, “Father Jakub is our village priest. It’s true I haven’t told him about you, because he hates the Poles. But once he sees the baby, and knows the father is a Ukrainian, and that you are willing to have the baby raised Orthodox, I’m sure he will forgive you. Don’t you see, Sophie? The baby changes everything! Even if I wanted to, I could not hide you and a baby! No, the time has come to reveal you to the village. But you will be accepted as one of us, I assure you.”
Rebecca could not think of a way out of this dilemma. She did not believe Olga, she was sure that once her presence was known, she would be slaughtered, even if the baby lived. And if he does live, she thought, he will be raised a Ukrainian Cossack and will grow up to kill Jews like his father. I will not have it! She thought fiercely.
But what to do? She was too weak to just leave with the baby. “I agree with you,” she told the delighted Olga. “But please, please let me rest for a few days before you tell the Priest, so I can recover my strength. A week, perhaps?”
“But that would not be safe for the baby’s soul!” Olga replied superstitiously. “No, if he is not baptized immediately, who knows what demons might infest him? No, I have to summon Father Jakub immediately. Tonight!” And off she went, intending to do so.
It was then that another amazing stroke of luck entered Rebecca Goldstein’s life, for that evening was when the Polish Army entered the small village, looking for rebels. They were six hundred horsemen led by a man named Josef Volodski, who would be remembered with hatred in the Ukraine long after his death. He had been sent by Warsaw with orders to destroy the Cossack rebel army, but after a few skirmishes, this goal was denied him. Chmielnicki wisely kept his forces hidden away from a direct confrontation, preferring raids and surprise attacks.
This frustrated Volodski. Furthermore, he was horrified by the evidence he discovered of the slaughter of Polish nobles, their wives and children. (Predictably, however, he was not so horrified by the massacre of the Jews. In his mind, as in many of the Polish soldiers, the Jews were to blame for bringing about this whole state of affairs.)
Not being able to find the Cossacks who so cleverly eluded him, Volodski took out his anger on the Ukrainian countryside. His men raided village after village, killing innocents, setting fire to the houses, and generally matching the Ukrainians in brutality. Before long, the Ukraine resembled a burning pyre of land; farms that had for years fed the population were utterly devastated and would take years to rebuild. It was sadly all as Rebecca Goldstein had predicted several months ago after her plight began.
And so Josef Volodski’s troops entered the small village where Rebecca was hiding, and set it to the torch. They killed Father Jakub and several of the other villagers, and forced the rest to flee. When they came to Olga’s house, Rebecca gathered what little strength she had and appeared at the doorway with the old woman. In perfect Polish, she said to the horsemen (one of whom was Volodski himself, although Rebecca had no way of knowing this “I am Sophie Wynitski. My husband was Tomas Wynitski, brother of Andrei, the Baron of Lodz. My family has all been murdered by the Cossacks. My husband and two sons. Only this third son, just born, survived.”
Once again, Rebecca was taking a tremendous gamble. In truth Baron Andrei Wynitski did have a younger brother named Tomas, but he had died in a hunting accident when he was only sixteen. Still, her only hope was to pretend to be the wife of a Polish noble, and she guessed that the soldiers, or their leader, might well have heard of the Baron of Lodz, but might not know about the brother.
Olga stared at Rebecca in shock. I know what she’s wondering, Rebecca thought. Was I lying all this time, or was I lying now? But she had no time to worry about the old woman. Volodski had dismounted, and was studying Rebecca sharply.
“You don’t look like the wife of a noble,” he said sharply. “How can you prove you are what you say you are?”
Rebecca thought quickly. Obviously, the ring she had hidden would not work here. (In fact, she realized, if it was discovered it would probably only seal her fate.) But what else did she have? Nothing. She would have to gamble further.
Angrily, she said “Fool! How dare you question me? I am one of those you were sent here to rescue! One word to my brother in law back home, and you will be demoted to a lowly private for the rest of your life. Now take me to your camp!”
Volodski grinned; she must truly be a noble woman, only such would talk to him that way, so confidently, so arrogant. And surely the baby might be a future Baron, perhaps? If so, there might be a reward for him. He bowed to the woman. Then he pointed at Olga. “What about the old hag?” he asked.
Rebecca could hardly believe that her latest gamble had worked. She glanced at the older woman. Olga was still staring at her in shock, open-mouthed. She saved my life and helped bear my child, Rebecca thought. But she will betray me now, I’m sure of it; as soon as Olga gains her senses she will show them the ring, and the baby and I will be executed.
“This woman hid me, and served as midwife to my child,” Rebecca told the Poles. “Why, I do not know. I found this ring hidden in her bedroom.” She produced the Chmielnicki ring. “As you can see, she has either a husband or more likely a son who is a high officer in the Cossack Army!”
“That- that is your ring!” stammered Olga. “You said-”
“I?” laughed Rebecca, interrupting her. “How would I, a noble, come to own such a ring as that one? It represents everything I despise! That man was responsible for the death of my loved ones!” she said truthfully.
“Enough of this,” Volodski stormed; he took a brace of pistols from his waist and shot Olga to death. This stunned Rebecca. She had not intended for the old lady to die- had she killed her with her lies? The only possible answer was yes, but she hadn’t meant-
Deep down within her, a voice that she tried to ignore whispered it’s better that’s she’s dead. Yes she saved you, but it’s better, and you said what you said deliberately with this outcome in mind. There’s no point in lying to yourself about it, you’ve got no time. These men are staring at you; you’ll have to go with them until you’re healthy, and then you’ll have to escape again, because the moment they discover you’re no noble, as they surely will eventually, you’ll be dead.
Exhausted, she allowed herself to faint at the sight of Olga laying in the dust with blood running down her chest. She woke to find herself holding the baby, who bawled until she set him to her breast. She was lying in her familiar bed; apparently the old woman’s cottage had been spared for now.
Volodski was looking over her. “You may rest for a few days to recover your strength,” he said shortly. “You will be fed, and allowed to watch over your son, Sophie Wynitski, there is no one else to do so. Do not try to leave on your own; this cottage is well-guarded now, and I wouldn’t want you to be mistaken for an intruder.”
The Pole paused to cough, then continued. “Once you are healthy, I have assigned three of my horseman to send you back to Warsaw. Things are bad in Poland now. The Swedes have attacked the Western half of the country.”
“What?” she said, surprised she was not yet immune to shock.
Volodski grimly smiled. “Yes,” he replied, “and it’s said they are crushing our army, but this I do not believe. There is also the rumor that the Russians are preparing to invade as well.”
”I cannot believe it!” Rebecca said weakly.
Casimir laughed, “Do you think it is mine?” he asked.
“Or one of the other soldiers” she said quietly, for she had of course been a virgin prior to the rapes and had not been touched since.
“Well,” said Casimir, “it really doesn’t matter who the father is, since it’s to be a Jewish whelp, and we can’t have that, can we?”
”What do you mean to do?” asked Rebecca, by now terrified.
“Isn’t it obvious? You must understand this camp is no place for Jewish children. The minute that child is born, it dies,”
Rebecca would have right then and there thrown herself to the ground and begged for the life of the child, had she believed there was any chance to convince Casimir, but she knew there was not. She could not say why she suddenly needed to bear and protect this child; its very presence in her body should have been an anathema to her. But she did need to protect it; she felt this as deeply as she had ever felt anything. She would need to find someway to escape from the camp. And it would have to be soon, before she became too heavy to move.
Desperately she began to search the camp over, trying to find some means of getting away. There was none. All of the entrances to the camp were well guarded by soldiers, almost all of these knew who and what she was, since Casimir was so well-known.
Through the bushes and trees at night, then? No, she would be caught only too easily, and that would be the end. There had to be another way. But she could not find it.
As the days became weeks, and weeks turned into months, Rebecca grew more and more despondent. Did Casimir mean what he said? Was she really going to lose her baby? Was there truly no way out of here for her? The thoughts circled around and around in her head.
What finally saved her came from a completely unexpected source: water. The Ukrainians had allowed the drinking water in their camp to become stagnant. The men were not clean; their feces was allowed to befoul the water supply. And so many of them took sick, and died of what was then known only as “The Plague”.
One day Casimir was robust and healthy, leading his men on a raid of the Polish Army. The day after returning from this mission in triumph, he overslept, and complained of dizziness and a fever. Rebecca had seen several die up to this point; she knew what the inevitable result would be.
Yet during the next several days, as the Cossack got weaker and weaker still, she cared for him. She could not explain to herself why she did this; certainly she hated him far more than any man she had ever met. He had raped her sister and cut off her head as some sort of trophy, and he slaughtered countless Jews without seemingly any remorse whatsoever. He had spared her life only because she worked diligently as his slave, and he promised to kill her baby as soon as it was born, even though there was a reasonable chance he was the father (one in three, she reminded herself.)
But despite all this, there was some sort of tragic aspect about these Ukrainian horsemen. Certainly not nobility, not the way they so eagerly killed innocents in their wake. But they were heroic, there could be no doubt, and in fighting for their freedom, they displayed an awesome defiance against hopeless odds. And these odds were more hopeless every day, Rebecca knew. The Poles, recovering from their surprise, were gathering their own army which would inevitably overwhelm the Cossacks. Then, she suspected, Chmielnicki’s army and countrymen, women, and children, would be treated with the same ruthlessness as they had dealt out to the Poles and Jews. And in the end, the only real change would be the utter devastation of the land the Cossacks claimed to love so much.
So she tended to Casimir, and he, in his illness, spoke to her of his fears of what would happen. In the end, before he died, he told her she was free to go. But as he had told no one else of this, she knew that his gesture was meaningless.
All over the camp now, the fever spread. Two thirds of the Cossack Army were dying or already dead. It was therefore a relatively easy affair for Rebecca Goldstein to slip out of the encampment into the forest beyond, determined to find her way back to Lodz.
When we realize over three hundred and fifty years after these events that this was the last of the Goldsteins (Rebecca’s parents, along with all of the Jews of Lodz had been killed by Poles, but she did not know this yet) and had she died, the Goldstein family that had come from Spain and which would eventually reach America and result in David Goldstein arguing politics with me at Glenn Nakamura’s house on Saturday nights, this family would have perished right then and there, then it makes Rebecca’s survival in retrospect all the more remarkable. Consider: she had no money, food or water; she spoke no Ukrainian, and she was alone in a forest in a country where Jews were being murdered for sport all around her. Further, she was three months pregnant and already beginning to show, and she was not an attractive woman to begin with. All she had with her were the clothes on her body, a keen mind, and a thirst for survival which had somehow grown with her pregnancy. She had already been through so much, she reasoned, surely there was no worse thing to encounter.
For three days she wandered through the forest, not knowing where she was, and not encountering another human soul. Part of this was on purpose, for she attempted to avoid any Cossacks she might see signs of. She drank water from a stream, and picked berries; these were her only sustenance. She wondered if and when she would catch the fever that was so easily spread, but she did not.
Finally, out of sheer hunger, she wandered out of the forest into a village. The village would be Ukrainian, she knew, filled with women and children and old folk left behind while the men were involved in the uprising. Rebecca knew she could not pass for a Ukrainian for she only spoke a few words of the language; she could speak Polish, but she doubted that in itself would hardly get her any farther than if she attempted to speak Yiddish. Still, she knew she had no choice, and because of this, she concocted a daring plan to survive.
Weeks ago, Chmielnicki had rings forged for all of his lieutenants; these rings were painted with a red cross and sword, which was Boghdan Chmielnicki’s personal symbol, and was famous for being on the flag of the Cossack rebel army. To the Jews of the Ukraine, the symbol of the red cross and flag was an anathema, and would be despised for centuries to come, its impact matched only by the Swastika several hundred years later.
It was one of the proudest days of Casimir’s life, when after leading a successful raid of a Polish castle, he had been awarded the ring with great fanfare and ceremony from Chmielnicki himself. It meant he was one of the Great Man’s favorites, and would bear a place of high honor in the new Ukraine that would be established once the enemy had been defeated.
When Casimir had died, Rebecca had waited until no one was watching; then she had deftly removed the ring from his finger. She could not say why she did this; certainly, even if the ring was valuable (and she had no idea if it was), how would one sell it? If she was caught possessing it, she certainly would have been killed instantly. But her intuition told her that the ring would be of value to her at some later time.
Now, days later, she held the ring as she approached a lonely house on the edge of the village. She knocked on the door, and it was answered by an old woman who stared at Rebecca with great curiosity.
Rebecca Goldstein swallowed hard and began. “Good woman,” she said in Polish, “I beg for your help. My name is Sophie, and I am a Pole, I admit. I did not choose to come to the Ukraine, but I was forced by my father, a Polish trader. He and my mother and brothers were all killed by Boghdan Chmielnicki’s great army, but a Cossack named Casimir took pity on me. He allowed me to travel with him, and he fell in love with me and married me. I am pregnant with his child. He died fighting the Poles, but before he died, he gave me his ring, the ring of a high lieutenant of the Ukraine.”
She showed the ring to the old woman, whose eyes widened at the sight of it, but said nothing. So Rebecca continued: “My husband Casimir opened my eyes to the reality of Ukrainian justice. The Poles and Jews must be utterly defeated so that the Ukrainians may have their freedom! My son will be a Ukrainian, and he will carry on the fight of his Cossack father. I have renounced completely my Polish background, and I am only ashamed that I am forced to speak to you in this vile language, which is the only one I know. Please, I have been starving in the forest for several days, and yours is the first house I have come to. I am starving, and I beg you for food!”
To Rebecca, her whole speech sounded contrived. Surely this woman would think so, too. But her surprise, the old lady just smiled and said, “Come in, come in, you must hide! There are some in this village that would kill you just for being Polish; they would never understand what you have told me. Come in, I have hot soup!” And Rebecca was saved.
The old woman’s name was Olga, she lived alone, and she described herself as a patriot. Her husband and son had been killed, she said “defending us against the filthy Jews,” and she would help anyone who possessed the ring of Chmielnicki.
“But I will hide you until your baby is born,” Olga said. “You must not show your face in the village before that. So many of my friends hate the Poles, you see. I never have. I know that it is all a plot of the Jews, you know, to get Ukrainian and Pole to hate each other.”
Olga proved as good as her word. She kept “Sophie” hidden in the back room, away from all prying eyes (not that anyone came to visit her anyhow, she said,) and shared her food with the girl. All the time she lectured Rebecca on how the Ukrainians and the Poles would come together “once the Jews were destroyed” and how all of this fighting was unnecessary. Rebecca was content to stay there as she got closer and closer to childbirth. She did not argue with the old woman, but quietly pretended to agree. Several times a week Olga would peer at the ring which lay by Rebecca’s tableside. She would gaze at it with awe and reverence, but she never touched it.
When the labor pains came, Olga served as midwife; she assured the younger girl she had done it several times before. The result was a healthy baby boy. It did not resemble Casimir, and this made the girl’s heart gladden, although she wasn’t sure who exactly the baby looked like; she had blocked facial memories of the other two rapists from her mind long ago.
Olga cooed and fussed over the child. “He is adorable!” she cried, “he will grow up to be a fine Cossack, a soldier for Chmielnicki! What will you name him?”
Rebecca had already decided to name the boy Moses, after the ancestor of her family who had supposedly come from Spain, and who, like this baby and herself, was forced to accept great change. But she could not tell Olga this. “Perhaps Peter,” she said weakly, “or Stephan? I’ll have to think on it.”
“Both are good Christian names.” the old lady said. “Speaking of that, the babe will have to be baptized! How will we arrange this? I must bring the Priest here; we’ll have to let him in on our secret now, won’t we?”
“No,” said Rebecca, alarmed, “it’s far too dangerous!”
“Come now, child,” Olga said, “Father Jakub is our village priest. It’s true I haven’t told him about you, because he hates the Poles. But once he sees the baby, and knows the father is a Ukrainian, and that you are willing to have the baby raised Orthodox, I’m sure he will forgive you. Don’t you see, Sophie? The baby changes everything! Even if I wanted to, I could not hide you and a baby! No, the time has come to reveal you to the village. But you will be accepted as one of us, I assure you.”
Rebecca could not think of a way out of this dilemma. She did not believe Olga, she was sure that once her presence was known, she would be slaughtered, even if the baby lived. And if he does live, she thought, he will be raised a Ukrainian Cossack and will grow up to kill Jews like his father. I will not have it! She thought fiercely.
But what to do? She was too weak to just leave with the baby. “I agree with you,” she told the delighted Olga. “But please, please let me rest for a few days before you tell the Priest, so I can recover my strength. A week, perhaps?”
“But that would not be safe for the baby’s soul!” Olga replied superstitiously. “No, if he is not baptized immediately, who knows what demons might infest him? No, I have to summon Father Jakub immediately. Tonight!” And off she went, intending to do so.
It was then that another amazing stroke of luck entered Rebecca Goldstein’s life, for that evening was when the Polish Army entered the small village, looking for rebels. They were six hundred horsemen led by a man named Josef Volodski, who would be remembered with hatred in the Ukraine long after his death. He had been sent by Warsaw with orders to destroy the Cossack rebel army, but after a few skirmishes, this goal was denied him. Chmielnicki wisely kept his forces hidden away from a direct confrontation, preferring raids and surprise attacks.
This frustrated Volodski. Furthermore, he was horrified by the evidence he discovered of the slaughter of Polish nobles, their wives and children. (Predictably, however, he was not so horrified by the massacre of the Jews. In his mind, as in many of the Polish soldiers, the Jews were to blame for bringing about this whole state of affairs.)
Not being able to find the Cossacks who so cleverly eluded him, Volodski took out his anger on the Ukrainian countryside. His men raided village after village, killing innocents, setting fire to the houses, and generally matching the Ukrainians in brutality. Before long, the Ukraine resembled a burning pyre of land; farms that had for years fed the population were utterly devastated and would take years to rebuild. It was sadly all as Rebecca Goldstein had predicted several months ago after her plight began.
And so Josef Volodski’s troops entered the small village where Rebecca was hiding, and set it to the torch. They killed Father Jakub and several of the other villagers, and forced the rest to flee. When they came to Olga’s house, Rebecca gathered what little strength she had and appeared at the doorway with the old woman. In perfect Polish, she said to the horsemen (one of whom was Volodski himself, although Rebecca had no way of knowing this “I am Sophie Wynitski. My husband was Tomas Wynitski, brother of Andrei, the Baron of Lodz. My family has all been murdered by the Cossacks. My husband and two sons. Only this third son, just born, survived.”
Once again, Rebecca was taking a tremendous gamble. In truth Baron Andrei Wynitski did have a younger brother named Tomas, but he had died in a hunting accident when he was only sixteen. Still, her only hope was to pretend to be the wife of a Polish noble, and she guessed that the soldiers, or their leader, might well have heard of the Baron of Lodz, but might not know about the brother.
Olga stared at Rebecca in shock. I know what she’s wondering, Rebecca thought. Was I lying all this time, or was I lying now? But she had no time to worry about the old woman. Volodski had dismounted, and was studying Rebecca sharply.
“You don’t look like the wife of a noble,” he said sharply. “How can you prove you are what you say you are?”
Rebecca thought quickly. Obviously, the ring she had hidden would not work here. (In fact, she realized, if it was discovered it would probably only seal her fate.) But what else did she have? Nothing. She would have to gamble further.
Angrily, she said “Fool! How dare you question me? I am one of those you were sent here to rescue! One word to my brother in law back home, and you will be demoted to a lowly private for the rest of your life. Now take me to your camp!”
Volodski grinned; she must truly be a noble woman, only such would talk to him that way, so confidently, so arrogant. And surely the baby might be a future Baron, perhaps? If so, there might be a reward for him. He bowed to the woman. Then he pointed at Olga. “What about the old hag?” he asked.
Rebecca could hardly believe that her latest gamble had worked. She glanced at the older woman. Olga was still staring at her in shock, open-mouthed. She saved my life and helped bear my child, Rebecca thought. But she will betray me now, I’m sure of it; as soon as Olga gains her senses she will show them the ring, and the baby and I will be executed.
“This woman hid me, and served as midwife to my child,” Rebecca told the Poles. “Why, I do not know. I found this ring hidden in her bedroom.” She produced the Chmielnicki ring. “As you can see, she has either a husband or more likely a son who is a high officer in the Cossack Army!”
“That- that is your ring!” stammered Olga. “You said-”
“I?” laughed Rebecca, interrupting her. “How would I, a noble, come to own such a ring as that one? It represents everything I despise! That man was responsible for the death of my loved ones!” she said truthfully.
“Enough of this,” Volodski stormed; he took a brace of pistols from his waist and shot Olga to death. This stunned Rebecca. She had not intended for the old lady to die- had she killed her with her lies? The only possible answer was yes, but she hadn’t meant-
Deep down within her, a voice that she tried to ignore whispered it’s better that’s she’s dead. Yes she saved you, but it’s better, and you said what you said deliberately with this outcome in mind. There’s no point in lying to yourself about it, you’ve got no time. These men are staring at you; you’ll have to go with them until you’re healthy, and then you’ll have to escape again, because the moment they discover you’re no noble, as they surely will eventually, you’ll be dead.
Exhausted, she allowed herself to faint at the sight of Olga laying in the dust with blood running down her chest. She woke to find herself holding the baby, who bawled until she set him to her breast. She was lying in her familiar bed; apparently the old woman’s cottage had been spared for now.
Volodski was looking over her. “You may rest for a few days to recover your strength,” he said shortly. “You will be fed, and allowed to watch over your son, Sophie Wynitski, there is no one else to do so. Do not try to leave on your own; this cottage is well-guarded now, and I wouldn’t want you to be mistaken for an intruder.”
The Pole paused to cough, then continued. “Once you are healthy, I have assigned three of my horseman to send you back to Warsaw. Things are bad in Poland now. The Swedes have attacked the Western half of the country.”
“What?” she said, surprised she was not yet immune to shock.
Volodski grimly smiled. “Yes,” he replied, “and it’s said they are crushing our army, but this I do not believe. There is also the rumor that the Russians are preparing to invade as well.”
”I cannot believe it!” Rebecca said weakly.
timschochet
Footballguy
I agree regarding the editor.For this novel, my influences were James Clavell, Leon Uris, Herman Wouk, James Michener.
I've never read any Leon Uris, but have read all the others and I clearly see the influences, especially Wouk and Michener. And the Wouk is more Winds of War/War and Rememberance than Caine Mutiny or Marjorie Morningstar. But I also see the multi-generational schlock of Michener.
timschochet
Footballguy
“It’s all the fault of the Jews!” Volodski stormed, his face turning red. “No one would dare to challenge Poland-Lithuania. Who could match our armies? Yet first the Ukrainians rebel, and now the Swedes and Russians are challenging us, and we’re losing battles. Why? The only reasonable explanation is that we have been betrayed from within, and by whom else could that be other than the Jews? I say death to them all!”
Rebecca kept quiet. Inside, however, she was thinking, is that everyone’s answer? The Poles blame the Jews for the Cossacks, and the Cossacks blame the Jews for the Poles. Not a single Jew that she was aware of had ever engaged in warfare against any of these people, yet they were the ones responsible. She wondered if she and her son would be the only Jews left before it was all over.
Collecting her wits, she said, “I cannot thank you enough, Colonel Volodski, for what you have done for me and my son. I shall tell the Baron once I am back in Lodz, asnd you shall be amply rewarded, I promise you.”
Once again, he bowed to her. “It may yet be a while before you are returned to your home,” he said. “Warsaw is safe, but the Lodz area has been overrun by the Swedes. Ah well, we shall take it back soon, do not fear.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Chmielnicki ring. “Here,” he said, “keep it as a memory of your time here, and your triumph over it. I wouldn’t know what to do with such a ring.” He bowed again, and left.
So Rebecca Goldstein rested for three more days in the care of the Polish Army, who treated her as the noble she pretended to be. Then, she and her baby son rode back to Warsaw under the care of three of Volodski’s soldiers. The whole time, she wondered, what will happen when I get there? Is there some way to escape from them, before my hoax is discovered?
Thankfully, she had no need to worry. The soldiers, their duty discharged, were eager enough to leave her in front of Warsaw Castle so they could ride back to their regiment. This was a time of panic for Warsaw; the Swedish Army was coming to invade, leaving devastation in their wake. Soldiers bustled and marched everywhere, and confusion raged. No one even noticed Rebecca Goldstein and her baby disappearing into the Jewish quarter of the city, where at last she was allowed to become herself again.
But the news she learned there was equally bad, for in Warsaw she discovered Jewish refugees from Lodz that she knew and they told her the sad story: her father and mother were dead. The “son” her father had adopted was dead. Half the Lodz Jews were dead, the rest having fled in all directions, with a third or so in Warsaw. The community that her forefathers had worked so carefully to build was completely shattered. What had happened?
She was told the Swedes had invaded and had treated the Jews no more harshly than Christian Poles. In fact, Itzak had convinced a Swedish General not to destroy the castle or the fields, and thus had saved a good part of the Baron’s fortune, as well as the prosperity of the villagers, both Christian and Jew. However, the Swedish rule over the area was short lived, and when the Polish Army occupied it again, a Colonel named Bronski blamed Itzak for not resisting strongly enough. The Jews were accused of treachery, of betraying Poland to the Swedes. Itzak was executed, along with his wife and adopted son, and this was the beginning of a general massacre of the Jews. Then, the Swedes roared back into Lodz, and this time they showed no mercy. The Baron’s castle was burned to the ground, and the fields were torn apart, so there was no food. Then the Plague spread through the area, killing Swede and Pole alike. “There is nothing left there now of the old Lodz,” a man who had known Rebecca’s father reported to her. “Nothing left.”
But Rebecca had too much steely determination left within her. I’ll wait until it’s safe again, she thought, and then my son and I will return to Lodz. Until, then, I’ll live with the Warsaw Jews; they will keep my son and I safe until the time comes.
Rebecca Goldstein kept her word, but it would be nine long years before she returned to her birthplace. During that time, she was witness to ever more bloodshed. It was a time that would be later known in both Polish and Jewish history as the Deluge: first the Cossacks under Boghdan Chmielnicki began their murderous uprising. Then, the Swedes invaded Western Poland. This was followed by the Russians signing a treaty with the Ukrainians (which would ultimately result in the absorption of the Ukraine into Greater Russia), and the Russians, now as allies of the Cossacks, invading Eastern Poland. The Polish Army, in full retreat, engaged in many massacres like the one in Lodz, killing Jews where they still could be found. And perhaps worse of all, plague diseases spread through the land, killing Jew and Christian alike.
Eventually, the Poles did drive the Swedes and Russians out of their land, and came to terms with the Ukrainians, as well. But this could hardly be called a victory. The land was completely devastated. Starvation joined the other causes of death for the people. And the long term result was that Poland would never again be the major power she was considered before these disasters; for the next century and a half, she would simply be a pawn of the strong nations surrounding her, until at the beginning of the nineteenth century, she would be absorbed by three of them, and would not emerge again as an independent state until a brief period between the two world wars of the twentieth century.
In 1658, Rebecca Goldstein and her ten year old son Moses ventured forth from Warsaw towards Lodz. They walked the entire way. Moses was a strapping, muscular boy with blonde hair and dark blue eyes, the first blue eyes any Goldstein had ever possessed. He was a quiet boy who had no idea who his father was; all Rebecca would tell him was that his father was a “pious man” who had died in the Uprisings. Moses suspected this was not true, after all, why was he known as Moses Goldstein, instead of whatever his father’s name had been? But Moses did not question his mother further. He did not want to know the truth.
The two Goldsteins reached Lodz to find it a desolate wasteland; nothing was as Rebecca remembered it. Still, there was some activity. Baron Andrei Wynitski had returned from Italy, his fortune squandered. Desperately, he was attempting to bring the peasants and serfs who had survived the war back to productivity. But he had no idea how to do this; he was no manager, after all. So he spent day after day wandering aimlessly around the ruins of his castle, trying to restore order where there was none.
At length, Rebecca found him and introduced herself. “I am the daughter of Itzak Goldstein,” she said, “and this is my son, Moses. We are here to resume management of your affairs.”
The Baron smiled slowly, stunning her. “Do you also go by the name of Sophie Wynitski, claiming to be my sister-in-law?” Rebecca stared at him open-mouthed.
“You see,” Andrei said, laughing, “several months ago, a man named Volodski visited me here. This man had once been a general in the Army, and had served in the Ukraine. Now, however, he was penniless. He was after a reward, for he claimed he had rescued my sister-in-law, one Sophie Wynitski, from the Cossacks during the height of the Deluge. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him I had no sister-in-law, that my brother had died as a child twenty years before. He erupted in a rage. He described you perfectly.”
Rebecca had no idea how to respond. She realized that once again her life was in danger. She decided to bide her time and let the Baron finish.
“So I sent him away,” the Baron said, “and ever since then, I wondered who is this woman who pretends to be a relation. And now I meet you, Itzak Goldstein’s daughter, and you fit the description. So admit it, if you value your life. You pretended to be a Wynitski, did you not?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said quietly, “I admit that what General Volodski said was true, but-”
Andrei Wynitski interrupted harshly, “How dare you, a common Jewess, pretend to be related to me! Give me a good reason I should not kill you for that, here and now!”
“I lied to save my life,” Rebecca said, “and my son. They would have killed me.”
Abruptly the Baron laughed again, and Rebecca’s fears faded. “You’ve got guts, I’ll say that much for you. Had I been in your place, I would have done the same, but I don’t know if I would have the nerve you obviously showed. No I will not punish you, Rebecca, but do not repeat this deed.”
He continued to study her and said, “You are not a pretty woman, you know. Quite ugly. I suppose you know this, so it does not hurt your feelings to say it. I mention it only because so many pretty ones died in the last few years. So many of you Jews! Perhaps your ugliness saved you.”
Rebecca realized he was being serious, and so she replied, “My looks may indeed have saved me my life. They did not, however save me from suffering throughout all of these years.”
“So now you come to claim your inheritance, eh?” said the Baron. “You realize no woman has ever worked as a Wynitski agent. And anyhow, look around you! There is nothing left here for either of us. All of the fields are destroyed. My serfs are starving to death; I have nothing to feed them with. And the Jews, those that aren’t dead, are all gone.”
Solemnly, she replied, “We will replant the fields, and feed the peasants. And I will bring the Jews back.”
Rebecca Goldstein once again proved true to her words, although it would take many more years before she accomplished her goals. By the time Lodz was a reasonably stable, wealthy province again, she was in her late seventies, and her son Moses had long been in charge. By this time, the Jews had returned to Lodz, but like all of the Jews who returned to their homes all throughout Poland and the Ukraine, they were very different from their forefathers. The Deluge had borne permanent effects on them. They were unable to find answers for their sufferings through traditional means, and so sought out radical alternatives that helped them get through their daily lives. First appeared the false messiahs, Shabbtai Zvi and Jacob Frank. Then came the superstitions, and arguments over pilpul, exact translations of the Torah and Talmud. Study of Talmud, a series of laws to live by that had been written by the ancient rabbis, became the epicenter of daily life. And finally the ideas of the Baal Shem Tov spread throughout the land, creating the Hasids, who separated themselves from the other Jews through prayer and a fanatical devotion to the will of God.
Throughout these changing years, the Goldsteins kept their agency of the Wynitski estates. Rebecca’s grandsons and great-grandsons continued the tradition, and very slowly the Jewish population in Lodz grew, until by the end of the eighteenth century, there were over twenty thousand Jews living in the Lodz area, and this number was about to explode.
The cause for the explosion was the same cause that would result in the end of the Wynitskis in that part of Poland. In 1787, Solomon Goldstein was then the manager of the Lodz estates, as his forefathers had been now for so many centuries. He was a tall man, with a long beard and mustaches, and he dressed as a religious Jew of his time, mostly in black. Solomon’s wife had died years before; he had two sons at home, still unmarried. Jacob was seventeen, short with angry eyes and a burning mind. He was always questioning the rabbis, the Talmud, living in Poland, everything about his life.
Michael, the younger son was ten, more good natured and even tempered than his brother, Solomon thought, but perhaps not nearly as bright. It was not necessarily a family tradition to give over charge of the estates to the oldest son; when the time came, Solomon would choose between them based upon ability. As yet, he had been unable to make a choice.
Solomon Goldstein possessed major traits derived from his two major ancestors. Like Moses Goldstein from Spain, Solomon was always prepared for change, and this served him well, for never before or after the time period in which he lived would life have such a fluidity in this part of the world, even during the Deluge. Like his great, great, grandmother Rebecca, Solomon had steely determination. He also had two other “gifts” that were derived from Rebecca’s adventures: blue eyes (and these he passed on to both sons) and the ring taken from the Cossack, Casimir.
A word of explanation is necessary about this last. Rebecca Goldstein’s exploits, nearly one hundred years after her death, were still told and retold in this part of Poland, and particularly among the Jews; she had become a legend. Like all legends, her adventures were added to and exaggerated over time, until it was common knowledge she had killed her Cossack kidnapper and sliced off his finger to take the ring, before pretending to be the Baron’s wife in order to escape back into Poland during the Deluge. To the Jews of Lodz, Rebecca remained a heroine and a very real person, for her son Moses had lived to be ninety-seven, and there were many living who could still remember him, Solomon being among these.
So it was that the ring became a family heirloom, passed down through the generations; an odd thing for a Jew to have or wear, what with it’s cross and sword insignia, but kept as a symbol of defiance against the Ukrainian murderers who had killed so many of their people.
(Eventually, of course, over time even this meaning, based upon a fictional murder by Rebecca Goldstein, would be quite forgotten. The David Goldstein that I knew wore the ring on occasion, and this struck me as odd. When I questioned him about it, he told me that it was very old, a family heirloom from Poland, but had no idea of its history. “Obviously,” he said grinning, “it’s not a Jewish heirloom, is it?” All David knew was that it was passed down from generation to generation to the oldest child, and he planned to continue this tradition.)
Simon Wynitski, the Baron during Solomon’s time, was thirty-six years old in 1787. His own father had died three years before, and Simon, keeping up his own family tradition, now had a wife and baby son, heir to the title. But Simon, who was fated to be the last of the Wynitski Barons, was different in almost all other ways from his ancestors.
He had been educated in Paris; this had been a tradition in the Wynitski family for about one hundred years. But Simon’s student years came during a time of great change in France; the ideas of the Enlightenment infatuated him, as it did so many nobles of that time. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke preached freedom and equality for the masses. Simon returned to Lodz determined that once he became Baron, he would put these ideas into place. He traveled to Warsaw, and there joined a group of Polish aristocracy with a countenance similar to his own. The result was a new constitution, the first modern constitution written in this part of Europe. The serfs were freed, and given equal rights to all other Poles. The Christian religions of Orthodoxy and Protestantism were given equal treatment under the law. Jews were treated differently, not as a religion but as a race, but they too were granted inalienable rights, as were the Germans, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians who lived under the Polish flag. Upon his father’s death, Simon had returned to Lodz to assume his title as Baron, but he was proud of what he had helped achieve. Poland was a new country, a free country, and he was quite sure a wonderful time of prosperity was coming for everyone.
All of these accomplishments proved to be short lived. The serfs were “freed”, but they were still peasants, still illiterate, and they continued to listen to their village Priests for guidance. These priests held vast power, and in a majority of cases they used it in the same manner as the Iranian mullahs of later centuries: to preach hatred of others, mainly Protestants, Orthodox, and especially Jews.
Solomon Goldstein could have advised Simon that no laws protecting Jewish rights were worth anything in Poland. As the main outsiders, they were continued to be blamed by all sides for the miseries of the Poles. Furthermore, the Jews as a people had never recovered the middle class position they had enjoyed prior to the Cossack massacres. A few like Solomon and his family continued to enjoy financial success due to their connections to the nobility; however, the vast majority was nearly as destitute as the peasants who hated them. This did not serve the Jews well; as a result, they had lost all political power previously held and could not count on the protection of the nobility any longer.
But the biggest obstacle to egalitarian reforms within Poland came from outside the country. Following the Deluge, Poland was no longer a power, but subject to the whims of her neighbors. She was caught in the direct middle of a geographical conflict that would not be settled for the next one hundred and fifty years, until 1945. Prussia lay to the west of Poland, with a growing population and not enough land for its industry and agriculture. The Prussians eagerly grabbed chunks of Poland. Austria, afraid of Prussia’s growing strength, ripped off its own part of Poland merely in a defensive mood.
Poland’s biggest enemy, however, was Russia. After swallowing the Ukraine as a direct result of the Cossack Uprising, Russia eyed Poland as a future colony. The Russians made demand after demand of the Poles. The Polish King was a creature of the Russians, put there as a puppet in order to eventually turn the whole country over.
All of this disturbed Simon Wynitski. But what really outraged him was the news that he received, in 1790, from an official from Warsaw. This man, named Puldski, was a courier from the government, and he delivered this sensation to the Baron: Poland was no more! The government had agreed to dissolve itself, and the land was to be divided between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Lodz fell into the Prussian area, it was to be renamed “Lodsch”; and soon a German governor would be coming with troops to take over. The Baron was allowed to retain his title and holdings as part of the new agreement, but he and all of the other Lodz citizens were subject to the whim of the new rulers.
Simon did not reveal any of his rage to the messenger. Instead, he dismissed him, and summoned Solomon Goldstein. He revealed the news to the shocked Jew, and then abruptly told him, “I am leaving for Warsaw in the morning, and I am taking my family with me. There will be a revolt over this, mark my words. The Polish people will not give up their freedom so quickly. I plan to be part of that revolt.”
Rebecca kept quiet. Inside, however, she was thinking, is that everyone’s answer? The Poles blame the Jews for the Cossacks, and the Cossacks blame the Jews for the Poles. Not a single Jew that she was aware of had ever engaged in warfare against any of these people, yet they were the ones responsible. She wondered if she and her son would be the only Jews left before it was all over.
Collecting her wits, she said, “I cannot thank you enough, Colonel Volodski, for what you have done for me and my son. I shall tell the Baron once I am back in Lodz, asnd you shall be amply rewarded, I promise you.”
Once again, he bowed to her. “It may yet be a while before you are returned to your home,” he said. “Warsaw is safe, but the Lodz area has been overrun by the Swedes. Ah well, we shall take it back soon, do not fear.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Chmielnicki ring. “Here,” he said, “keep it as a memory of your time here, and your triumph over it. I wouldn’t know what to do with such a ring.” He bowed again, and left.
So Rebecca Goldstein rested for three more days in the care of the Polish Army, who treated her as the noble she pretended to be. Then, she and her baby son rode back to Warsaw under the care of three of Volodski’s soldiers. The whole time, she wondered, what will happen when I get there? Is there some way to escape from them, before my hoax is discovered?
Thankfully, she had no need to worry. The soldiers, their duty discharged, were eager enough to leave her in front of Warsaw Castle so they could ride back to their regiment. This was a time of panic for Warsaw; the Swedish Army was coming to invade, leaving devastation in their wake. Soldiers bustled and marched everywhere, and confusion raged. No one even noticed Rebecca Goldstein and her baby disappearing into the Jewish quarter of the city, where at last she was allowed to become herself again.
But the news she learned there was equally bad, for in Warsaw she discovered Jewish refugees from Lodz that she knew and they told her the sad story: her father and mother were dead. The “son” her father had adopted was dead. Half the Lodz Jews were dead, the rest having fled in all directions, with a third or so in Warsaw. The community that her forefathers had worked so carefully to build was completely shattered. What had happened?
She was told the Swedes had invaded and had treated the Jews no more harshly than Christian Poles. In fact, Itzak had convinced a Swedish General not to destroy the castle or the fields, and thus had saved a good part of the Baron’s fortune, as well as the prosperity of the villagers, both Christian and Jew. However, the Swedish rule over the area was short lived, and when the Polish Army occupied it again, a Colonel named Bronski blamed Itzak for not resisting strongly enough. The Jews were accused of treachery, of betraying Poland to the Swedes. Itzak was executed, along with his wife and adopted son, and this was the beginning of a general massacre of the Jews. Then, the Swedes roared back into Lodz, and this time they showed no mercy. The Baron’s castle was burned to the ground, and the fields were torn apart, so there was no food. Then the Plague spread through the area, killing Swede and Pole alike. “There is nothing left there now of the old Lodz,” a man who had known Rebecca’s father reported to her. “Nothing left.”
But Rebecca had too much steely determination left within her. I’ll wait until it’s safe again, she thought, and then my son and I will return to Lodz. Until, then, I’ll live with the Warsaw Jews; they will keep my son and I safe until the time comes.
Rebecca Goldstein kept her word, but it would be nine long years before she returned to her birthplace. During that time, she was witness to ever more bloodshed. It was a time that would be later known in both Polish and Jewish history as the Deluge: first the Cossacks under Boghdan Chmielnicki began their murderous uprising. Then, the Swedes invaded Western Poland. This was followed by the Russians signing a treaty with the Ukrainians (which would ultimately result in the absorption of the Ukraine into Greater Russia), and the Russians, now as allies of the Cossacks, invading Eastern Poland. The Polish Army, in full retreat, engaged in many massacres like the one in Lodz, killing Jews where they still could be found. And perhaps worse of all, plague diseases spread through the land, killing Jew and Christian alike.
Eventually, the Poles did drive the Swedes and Russians out of their land, and came to terms with the Ukrainians, as well. But this could hardly be called a victory. The land was completely devastated. Starvation joined the other causes of death for the people. And the long term result was that Poland would never again be the major power she was considered before these disasters; for the next century and a half, she would simply be a pawn of the strong nations surrounding her, until at the beginning of the nineteenth century, she would be absorbed by three of them, and would not emerge again as an independent state until a brief period between the two world wars of the twentieth century.
In 1658, Rebecca Goldstein and her ten year old son Moses ventured forth from Warsaw towards Lodz. They walked the entire way. Moses was a strapping, muscular boy with blonde hair and dark blue eyes, the first blue eyes any Goldstein had ever possessed. He was a quiet boy who had no idea who his father was; all Rebecca would tell him was that his father was a “pious man” who had died in the Uprisings. Moses suspected this was not true, after all, why was he known as Moses Goldstein, instead of whatever his father’s name had been? But Moses did not question his mother further. He did not want to know the truth.
The two Goldsteins reached Lodz to find it a desolate wasteland; nothing was as Rebecca remembered it. Still, there was some activity. Baron Andrei Wynitski had returned from Italy, his fortune squandered. Desperately, he was attempting to bring the peasants and serfs who had survived the war back to productivity. But he had no idea how to do this; he was no manager, after all. So he spent day after day wandering aimlessly around the ruins of his castle, trying to restore order where there was none.
At length, Rebecca found him and introduced herself. “I am the daughter of Itzak Goldstein,” she said, “and this is my son, Moses. We are here to resume management of your affairs.”
The Baron smiled slowly, stunning her. “Do you also go by the name of Sophie Wynitski, claiming to be my sister-in-law?” Rebecca stared at him open-mouthed.
“You see,” Andrei said, laughing, “several months ago, a man named Volodski visited me here. This man had once been a general in the Army, and had served in the Ukraine. Now, however, he was penniless. He was after a reward, for he claimed he had rescued my sister-in-law, one Sophie Wynitski, from the Cossacks during the height of the Deluge. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him I had no sister-in-law, that my brother had died as a child twenty years before. He erupted in a rage. He described you perfectly.”
Rebecca had no idea how to respond. She realized that once again her life was in danger. She decided to bide her time and let the Baron finish.
“So I sent him away,” the Baron said, “and ever since then, I wondered who is this woman who pretends to be a relation. And now I meet you, Itzak Goldstein’s daughter, and you fit the description. So admit it, if you value your life. You pretended to be a Wynitski, did you not?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said quietly, “I admit that what General Volodski said was true, but-”
Andrei Wynitski interrupted harshly, “How dare you, a common Jewess, pretend to be related to me! Give me a good reason I should not kill you for that, here and now!”
“I lied to save my life,” Rebecca said, “and my son. They would have killed me.”
Abruptly the Baron laughed again, and Rebecca’s fears faded. “You’ve got guts, I’ll say that much for you. Had I been in your place, I would have done the same, but I don’t know if I would have the nerve you obviously showed. No I will not punish you, Rebecca, but do not repeat this deed.”
He continued to study her and said, “You are not a pretty woman, you know. Quite ugly. I suppose you know this, so it does not hurt your feelings to say it. I mention it only because so many pretty ones died in the last few years. So many of you Jews! Perhaps your ugliness saved you.”
Rebecca realized he was being serious, and so she replied, “My looks may indeed have saved me my life. They did not, however save me from suffering throughout all of these years.”
“So now you come to claim your inheritance, eh?” said the Baron. “You realize no woman has ever worked as a Wynitski agent. And anyhow, look around you! There is nothing left here for either of us. All of the fields are destroyed. My serfs are starving to death; I have nothing to feed them with. And the Jews, those that aren’t dead, are all gone.”
Solemnly, she replied, “We will replant the fields, and feed the peasants. And I will bring the Jews back.”
Rebecca Goldstein once again proved true to her words, although it would take many more years before she accomplished her goals. By the time Lodz was a reasonably stable, wealthy province again, she was in her late seventies, and her son Moses had long been in charge. By this time, the Jews had returned to Lodz, but like all of the Jews who returned to their homes all throughout Poland and the Ukraine, they were very different from their forefathers. The Deluge had borne permanent effects on them. They were unable to find answers for their sufferings through traditional means, and so sought out radical alternatives that helped them get through their daily lives. First appeared the false messiahs, Shabbtai Zvi and Jacob Frank. Then came the superstitions, and arguments over pilpul, exact translations of the Torah and Talmud. Study of Talmud, a series of laws to live by that had been written by the ancient rabbis, became the epicenter of daily life. And finally the ideas of the Baal Shem Tov spread throughout the land, creating the Hasids, who separated themselves from the other Jews through prayer and a fanatical devotion to the will of God.
Throughout these changing years, the Goldsteins kept their agency of the Wynitski estates. Rebecca’s grandsons and great-grandsons continued the tradition, and very slowly the Jewish population in Lodz grew, until by the end of the eighteenth century, there were over twenty thousand Jews living in the Lodz area, and this number was about to explode.
The cause for the explosion was the same cause that would result in the end of the Wynitskis in that part of Poland. In 1787, Solomon Goldstein was then the manager of the Lodz estates, as his forefathers had been now for so many centuries. He was a tall man, with a long beard and mustaches, and he dressed as a religious Jew of his time, mostly in black. Solomon’s wife had died years before; he had two sons at home, still unmarried. Jacob was seventeen, short with angry eyes and a burning mind. He was always questioning the rabbis, the Talmud, living in Poland, everything about his life.
Michael, the younger son was ten, more good natured and even tempered than his brother, Solomon thought, but perhaps not nearly as bright. It was not necessarily a family tradition to give over charge of the estates to the oldest son; when the time came, Solomon would choose between them based upon ability. As yet, he had been unable to make a choice.
Solomon Goldstein possessed major traits derived from his two major ancestors. Like Moses Goldstein from Spain, Solomon was always prepared for change, and this served him well, for never before or after the time period in which he lived would life have such a fluidity in this part of the world, even during the Deluge. Like his great, great, grandmother Rebecca, Solomon had steely determination. He also had two other “gifts” that were derived from Rebecca’s adventures: blue eyes (and these he passed on to both sons) and the ring taken from the Cossack, Casimir.
A word of explanation is necessary about this last. Rebecca Goldstein’s exploits, nearly one hundred years after her death, were still told and retold in this part of Poland, and particularly among the Jews; she had become a legend. Like all legends, her adventures were added to and exaggerated over time, until it was common knowledge she had killed her Cossack kidnapper and sliced off his finger to take the ring, before pretending to be the Baron’s wife in order to escape back into Poland during the Deluge. To the Jews of Lodz, Rebecca remained a heroine and a very real person, for her son Moses had lived to be ninety-seven, and there were many living who could still remember him, Solomon being among these.
So it was that the ring became a family heirloom, passed down through the generations; an odd thing for a Jew to have or wear, what with it’s cross and sword insignia, but kept as a symbol of defiance against the Ukrainian murderers who had killed so many of their people.
(Eventually, of course, over time even this meaning, based upon a fictional murder by Rebecca Goldstein, would be quite forgotten. The David Goldstein that I knew wore the ring on occasion, and this struck me as odd. When I questioned him about it, he told me that it was very old, a family heirloom from Poland, but had no idea of its history. “Obviously,” he said grinning, “it’s not a Jewish heirloom, is it?” All David knew was that it was passed down from generation to generation to the oldest child, and he planned to continue this tradition.)
Simon Wynitski, the Baron during Solomon’s time, was thirty-six years old in 1787. His own father had died three years before, and Simon, keeping up his own family tradition, now had a wife and baby son, heir to the title. But Simon, who was fated to be the last of the Wynitski Barons, was different in almost all other ways from his ancestors.
He had been educated in Paris; this had been a tradition in the Wynitski family for about one hundred years. But Simon’s student years came during a time of great change in France; the ideas of the Enlightenment infatuated him, as it did so many nobles of that time. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke preached freedom and equality for the masses. Simon returned to Lodz determined that once he became Baron, he would put these ideas into place. He traveled to Warsaw, and there joined a group of Polish aristocracy with a countenance similar to his own. The result was a new constitution, the first modern constitution written in this part of Europe. The serfs were freed, and given equal rights to all other Poles. The Christian religions of Orthodoxy and Protestantism were given equal treatment under the law. Jews were treated differently, not as a religion but as a race, but they too were granted inalienable rights, as were the Germans, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians who lived under the Polish flag. Upon his father’s death, Simon had returned to Lodz to assume his title as Baron, but he was proud of what he had helped achieve. Poland was a new country, a free country, and he was quite sure a wonderful time of prosperity was coming for everyone.
All of these accomplishments proved to be short lived. The serfs were “freed”, but they were still peasants, still illiterate, and they continued to listen to their village Priests for guidance. These priests held vast power, and in a majority of cases they used it in the same manner as the Iranian mullahs of later centuries: to preach hatred of others, mainly Protestants, Orthodox, and especially Jews.
Solomon Goldstein could have advised Simon that no laws protecting Jewish rights were worth anything in Poland. As the main outsiders, they were continued to be blamed by all sides for the miseries of the Poles. Furthermore, the Jews as a people had never recovered the middle class position they had enjoyed prior to the Cossack massacres. A few like Solomon and his family continued to enjoy financial success due to their connections to the nobility; however, the vast majority was nearly as destitute as the peasants who hated them. This did not serve the Jews well; as a result, they had lost all political power previously held and could not count on the protection of the nobility any longer.
But the biggest obstacle to egalitarian reforms within Poland came from outside the country. Following the Deluge, Poland was no longer a power, but subject to the whims of her neighbors. She was caught in the direct middle of a geographical conflict that would not be settled for the next one hundred and fifty years, until 1945. Prussia lay to the west of Poland, with a growing population and not enough land for its industry and agriculture. The Prussians eagerly grabbed chunks of Poland. Austria, afraid of Prussia’s growing strength, ripped off its own part of Poland merely in a defensive mood.
Poland’s biggest enemy, however, was Russia. After swallowing the Ukraine as a direct result of the Cossack Uprising, Russia eyed Poland as a future colony. The Russians made demand after demand of the Poles. The Polish King was a creature of the Russians, put there as a puppet in order to eventually turn the whole country over.
All of this disturbed Simon Wynitski. But what really outraged him was the news that he received, in 1790, from an official from Warsaw. This man, named Puldski, was a courier from the government, and he delivered this sensation to the Baron: Poland was no more! The government had agreed to dissolve itself, and the land was to be divided between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Lodz fell into the Prussian area, it was to be renamed “Lodsch”; and soon a German governor would be coming with troops to take over. The Baron was allowed to retain his title and holdings as part of the new agreement, but he and all of the other Lodz citizens were subject to the whim of the new rulers.
Simon did not reveal any of his rage to the messenger. Instead, he dismissed him, and summoned Solomon Goldstein. He revealed the news to the shocked Jew, and then abruptly told him, “I am leaving for Warsaw in the morning, and I am taking my family with me. There will be a revolt over this, mark my words. The Polish people will not give up their freedom so quickly. I plan to be part of that revolt.”
toshiba
Footballguy
I have not attempted to read this. I hate reading long posts on the internet, I hate reading electronic books. I want to hold what I read, flip pages and take it where I go. I would have no problem reading this book if after he is done posting it here someone makes it a PDF I can print.
This just seems like a really bad way to publish a book.
This just seems like a really bad way to publish a book.
oneohh
Footballguy
Timschlocket? Great word, by the way.
Arizona Ron
Footballguy
TL;DR
Jewell
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
Nicely done. I laughed. (Then I cried.)
timschochet
Footballguy
I have been rereading the novel for the first time in a couple of years as I've been posting here, and I've come to realize that most of the criticism is correct. This novel IS way too long, it IS boring, and I do much too much telling rather than showing. Even the title is awful; in short, my novel pretty much sucks.
So I have decided to scrap it. I'm going to spare all of you further punishment, and stop posting the thing. I think I'm going to completely rewrite it- I still like the story very much, but I need to redo it.
In the meantime: my other novel, Mr. Ishida's Bookstore is much shorter (under 200 pages) and, I suspect, much better written, since it deals with only one subject matter: the plight of Japanese Americans during World War II. Therefore, I have decided to post that novel here instead; hopefully the reaction will be better as well.
So I have decided to scrap it. I'm going to spare all of you further punishment, and stop posting the thing. I think I'm going to completely rewrite it- I still like the story very much, but I need to redo it.
In the meantime: my other novel, Mr. Ishida's Bookstore is much shorter (under 200 pages) and, I suspect, much better written, since it deals with only one subject matter: the plight of Japanese Americans during World War II. Therefore, I have decided to post that novel here instead; hopefully the reaction will be better as well.
You can re title it, Time Passes a Bit More Quickly This Time. But really, there were some good points in it. Some repackaging and rework might to the trick.
Happy Ragnarok
Footballguy
Seriously with the active verb thing. Would be night and day.
timschochet
Footballguy
I really appreciate that Jon. But it needs a lot of work, so I will shut it down for now and try to fix it. I think (hope) you'll like the other one better.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter One
Los Angeles October 21, 1941
The first thing I noticed was the crowd of people who were engaged in loud whispering outside the door to the bookshop. There was my friend Dorothy Iyami, and her parents, and Mr. Kuroshima and his sister. All of them were neighbors; we lived in the same building. They looked nervous; what was happening?
I walked right up to Dorothy. She was a year older than me and liked to flirt with boys. She was bright and pretty and normally had a saucy smile. But now her face was tight like the grownups around her.
“Gai-jin” she whispered, and pointed in the window. I looked, astonished. Caucasians almost never went into Mr. Ishida’s shop. All of the books inside were either Japanese or Chinese. Also, Mr. Ishida did not like white people.
Through the glass, I could see the vague shapes of two strangers in brown coats and hats, staring and gesturing at old Mr. Ishida, who had a blank look on his face. “I’d better go in there,” I said to no one in particular. “Mr. Ishida doesn’t speak English.”
Hurriedly, I pushed through the door and the familiar odor of old books hit me, which I loved. It had been two years since Grandfather had persuaded me with his typical gentle logic that I should spend a few hours each week helping out at the bookshop. The experience had proven worthwhile to me.
By entering, I interrupted the two newcomers. One of them was tall, with spectacles, and he had been nearly shouting at Mr. Ishida. I’ve noticed gai-jin do this from time to time with those who can’t understand them; they think that somehow by raising their voices, they will get their message across. Now he stopped, and stared at me. The other one stared also: he was shorter, and held out a pad of paper and a pencil. The men both looked very irritated.
“He only speaks Japanese,” I said, pointing at the bookseller. “My name is Mary and I work here sometimes. May I help you?”
“This is official business, Miss,” the tall man said. “I’m trying to locate Mr. Takeo Ishida.”
“That’s him, “I answered, “Please, what do you want with him? And who are you?”
As I was asking this, Mr. Ishida limped out from behind the counter. As usual, he was dressed all in black, like an undertaker. I knew he was only in his mid sixties, yet today his face looked lined and ancient. As he walked, dragging his right leg behind him, I could not help but notice how he studiously ignored looking at the two intruders; his eyes were only on me.
“Mariko-chan,” Mr. Ishida asked me in Japanese, “would you be so kind as to fetch your honorable grandfather? He is in the building, and if he is made aware of this situation, he will come.”
“Hai, dozo,” I answered automatically, and said to the two men, “Mr. Ishida has requested my grandfather to interpret for him. I will be right back.” And I left the bookshop as quickly as I had come.
When I got outside the light of day hit my eyes; the bookshop was always kept dim. Why was that, I wondered suddenly? I pushed through the crowd and spoke directly to Mr. Kuroshima. “He has asked for my grandfather,” I said. “Please, do you know where he is?” If anyone would know, it would be Mr. Kuroshima; he seemed to know everything that was going on in the neighborhood.
“I think he is with Mrs. Myagi, child, at her apartment. It’s number four oh-”
“I know the one!” I interrupted, and rushed into the side door which led into the building above the bookshop. This building was one of several owned by Grandfather; it was a large, six story affair with many apartments, all of them rented by Japanese. I lived on the top floor, with my parents and my baby brother. My grandparents and my uncle lived in the apartment across from us.
I rushed up three flights of stairs as fast as I could, and I was panting and out of breath when I reached number four oh seven. The door was open; Grandfather stood slightly inside, listening to Mrs. Myagi’s complaints. He turned and saw me and his face brightened.
My Grandfather was dressed in one of his three piece suits; he must have just returned from his law offices. Except for his head of iron gray hair, you would not have guessed that here was a man in his mid fifties; everything about this small man, from his firm, tough hands to the lack of wrinkles on his strong face suggested youth and energy. With his erect posture and firm sense of command, Grandfather carried himself like a king, and indeed he was our established and rightful leader.
Mrs. Myagi was what my mother referred to as an “old busybody”; she was always complaining about something wrong; either wrong with her (she had many ailments) or with the building. We all knew she liked to listen through the walls for people having arguments so that she could gossip about it later on. Just now she was telling Grandfather about the hot water situation: either it was too hot (“scalding”, she said) or too cold. Grandfather just listened patiently as he did to everyone, nodding sympathetically and promising to look into the matter.
“Please,” I interrupted, panting. “There are two gai-jin downstairs in the bookshop. Mr. Ishida has asked for you! Please come!” I could not catch my breath.
“Of course,” Grandfather said calmly, reaching for his hat. “If you will excuse me, Mrs. Myagi. I had better go at once, and see what this is about. I promise to have David look into the water problem for you.” David was my father; he managed the building for Grandfather.
“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Myagi said, “I hope everything is all right is Mr. Ishida. Poor, foolish man, his problem is he never married. Now we all know what happened to his bride to be; so sad, so terrible. But that was such a long time ago, and he should have met someone since then, he would be much happier now; but I’ve never met a man so stubborn...”
“Yes, Mrs. Myagi, if you’ll just excuse me then.” Even in a hurry, Grandfather managed to stay polite. Yet, he did not seem in a rush as he walked down the stairs. He was not slow, but he didn’t move as quickly as I would have liked.
“Please, Grandfather,” I urged, “We’ve got to go faster!”
He smiled, “And what good will it do me, child, if I hurry down these stairs and be out of breath the way you were after you came up them? How can I help Mr. Ishida then? And how can I help him if I trip and fall and injure myself? I am going at a fast enough pace.”
He paused, and beamed at me. “I haven’t even had the proper chance to wish my granddaughter well on the day she turned eleven,” he said.
I brightened, and for the moment forgot about what was happening downstairs. “Oh Grandfather, you remembered! I thought everyone had forgotten.”
“Do you really think I am so absent-minded? I am not so old as that yet! And you underestimate your parents; they are looking forward to surprising you later. It is supposed to be a secret, so you must pretend to be suitably stunned. There is to be a cake, and presents. American style,” he added with faint amusement. “Of course, your Grandmother is ignoring the fact that your mother has baked an American cake; she is making botamochi, your favorite. So the two of them will be expecting you to eat one and reject the other. You must be sure to try equal amounts of both, so that neither woman will be disappointed.”
I sighed, thinking about the competition that had gone on as long as I could remember: Mother with her American cooking and ways, and her mother-in law, my revered grandmother, who was a very traditional Japanese wife from Hiroshima and who insisted on Japanese cuisine. The truth was, I was quite fond of botamochi, that sweet, oh so tangy mixture of rice and red bean paste. And I really wasn’t sure what I thought of American cake, which I hadn’t had all that much of. But, as usual, Grandfather was right: it really wouldn’t do to prefer one over the other. Most of my mind was still occupied with the thrilling news: they did remember! A secret party, with presents!
The word “secret” brought me back around to something Mrs. Myagi had said. “Grandfather,” I asked, “What was Mrs. Myagi talking about? What happened to Mr. Ishida’s bride?”
My grandfather’s face sobered. “That was a long time ago; it is not important now. Come; let us see who the strangers are.”
The crowd was still there, only larger. Several of them bowed to Grandfather as he pushed his way through, with me in tow. Inside, the shop was just as I had left it, except that now there were several books opened and on the floor. The shorter man was grabbing volumes at random, flipping through them, and then tossing them to the ground like trash. Mr. Ishida looked on, his face still expressionless.
Grandfather wasted no time. Striding forward, he said in clear, firm English, without the trace of an accent, “Hello, there. My name is Richard Nakamura. I’m the President of the Japanese American Friendship Society. I’m also the owner of this building. Unfortunately, as you no doubt have discovered, my friend Mr. Ishida speaks no English. How may I be of service to you, gentlemen?”
The tall one, the man who had spoken to me earlier, now said, “My name is Phillips; this is Lieutenant DeAngelo. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sir.” He flashed us a badge, which my grandfather just stared at.
Phillips continued: “It’s been reported to us that this man, Takeo Ishida, has been distributing seditious materials; specifically, the newsletter known as the Tokio.” He stared menacingly at us.
My grandfather stared back calmly. “You are quite mistaken,” he replied. “I don’t know where you got this information, but it is not so. Mr. Ishida is a bookseller; he collects and sells fine and rare manuscripts. He has nothing to do with politics.” Grandfather then translated to Mr. Ishida, who nodded and said in Japanese he had never read the Tokio.
They were both lying. Mr. Ishida had copies of the Tokio hidden in the back room, and he passed them out to select friends of his. Grandfather knew this; we all did. I wasn’t allowed to read the Tokio, but I sneaked a look every so often.
It was a two page newsletter, published in Omaha, Nebraska, but it was all about Japan. Most of the stories were about Japanese victories in China, which were always described as thorough and absolute. There were also stories about the Axis powers’ great triumphs in the war against Imperialist England and the Soviet Union. Recently, there had been editorials warning President Roosevelt and the United States that they had better cooperate with Japan or “face the consequences.”
My grandfather derided the Tokio as “trashy propaganda” and “pure poppycock”. He was very much anti-fascist, and he hated the fact that Japan had chosen to ally herself with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. He was always arguing with Mr. Ishida about it. Mr. Ishida believed every word in the Tokio, and so did several of the older Japanese men we knew. But here was Grandfather, lying to these two men, in order to protect Mr. Ishida. I said nothing; my lips felt glued together.
The short man introduced to us as Lt. DeAngelo now added sharply, “We think those newsletters are here somewhere. We’d like to search this whole place from top to bottom.”
“Yes, certainly,” Grandfather said, even more calmly than before. “Do you have a warrant, please?”
The two men exchanged looks. Then Phillips said, “Are you trying to impede justice, Mr. Nakamura?”
”Quite the contrary,” my grandfather replied, “I am attempting to enforce it. If you don’t have a warrant, it would be quite unlawful for you to search, would it not?”
“It would be just fine if so long as we had this man’s permission,” Phillips said acidly, his finger pointing at the bookseller. “We wouldn’t need a warrant then. Doesn’t your friend want to cooperate with law enforcement? Ask him,” he snapped.
Grandfather spoke quietly in Japanese to Mr. Ishida, who shook his head.
“I am very sorry,” my grandfather said, his hands out wide, “but Mr. Ishida values his privacy. Now if you wish to return with a warrant, I assure you he will cooperate.”
DeAngelo rushed forward and thrust his face directly into Grandfather’s. “Let me tell you something, Nakamura. We know all about you and your sham organization. We know what’s going on in this street, too, and in this neighborhood. Listen, any day now Japan might attack us. And you think we’re going to allow a third column of enemy agents right here in Los Angeles? You’re all being watched very carefully, I can assure you.”
“Your boss, Mr. Hoover, has said that Japanese Americans are completely patriotic,” Grandfather said.
“Come on,” Phillips said to his partner, “We’re wasting time.” He looked at Mr. Ishida. “We’ll be back,” he said. And they finally left.
When he was sure they were gone, Grandfather turned to Mr. Ishida and said in Japanese, “You had better get rid of those stupid newsletters. They’ll be back with a warrant; you can count on that.”
“The Tokio is not stupid,” Mr. Ishida replied. “But who told the gai-jin about it? Who among us is the informer?”
“Does it matter?” Grandfather asked. As he spoke, he began to pick up stray books off the ground. I hurried to help him. “They would have discovered it sooner or later,” he continued. “I’ve told you time and again not to distribute that trash- it’s all lies and exaggerated anyhow.”
“That’s what you say, Goro-san.” Goro was my grandfather’s name at birth, though he had legally changed it to Richard as a young man. No one else, not even my grandmother, still called him Goro. But Mr. Ishida could not pronounce “Richard”, and anyhow he seemed to detest American sounding names as much as everything else about the country in which he resided. He always addressed me, for example, by my birth name of Mariko, though everyone else called me Mary, which was what I preferred.
Now, as the old bookseller limped forward, he went into his usual diatribe regarding the Tokio and its message. The American newspapers, he said, could not be trusted when it came to what was reported about Japan. The Yankees hated the Japanese, because the Japanese stood up for Asians against the American-British hegemony that was out to dominate the entire world. America was fearful of Japan, and rightfully so, for when the conflict between the two finally came, the Japanese would emerge surprise victors, just as they had done in 1902 against Russia.
Grandfather sighed wearily; of course he had heard all of this before, many times. Still, he took time to reply carefully, as he and I finished organizing Mr. Ishida’s books.
It would be foolish beyond belief, Grandfather said, for Japan to go to war with the U.S.A. Japan was inferior in industry, weaponry, and sheer population by a large margin. She would be inevitably crushed over time, though it might not start out that way because of the distances involved. Besides, Japan already had her hands full with the foolish, ill-advised war against China.
“I’ve been fighting my whole life,” my Grandfather said, “for equal treatment for Japanese-Americans. That treatment, particularly here in California, depends on America’s relationship with Japan. Can’t you see the two nations are natural allies? If Japan stopped this military nonsense and engaged in peaceful trade with the United States, we would all be so much better off-”
“So, Japan is the aggressor?” Mr. Ishida interrupted. “Japan is the bad one, yes? Tell me, is it Japan who enslaves Singapore, Hong Kong, the Indies, the Philippines, Shanghai, Indochina, and all the rest, or is it the Western imperialists who do this operating under American complicity? Was it Japan who placed an embargo on America’s supply of oil, or was it the other way around?”
“You don’t listen,” Grandfather said. “You never listen. Those men will be back with a warrant, and if they find that newspaper they will make trouble for you. They might even arrest you, old friend. You are not a citizen, after all. You might be interned.”
My grandfather had inadvertently mentioned what I knew was one of Mr. Ishida’s main sources of bitterness against the United States. I did not know much about the bookseller’s background, or when he had arrived in California, but I had been told that he had worked as a farm laborer in Bakersfield until he had injured his leg and had been discharged. Mr. Ishida had then borrowed the money from my grandfather, his closest friend, to open this bookshop. That had happened many, many, years ago.
In the early 1920’s, restrictive federal laws were passed, as a result of agitation by white California farming interests concerned with growing competition from the Japanese living here. These laws shut down all further emigration from Japan, and also prevented older Japanese already living here from becoming American citizens, if they had not chosen to do so already. The laws were challenged in the courts, and the cases involved went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the restrictions were finally upheld.
Mr. Ishida was one of those who had lost the opportunity to become American, unlike Grandfather, who was naturalized by his parents as a young boy. Since that Supreme Court Decision, Mr. Ishida had spoken angrily against everything American, and was always eager to point out the hypocrisy which he believed existed just below the surface of what he sneeringly referred to as “Yankee culture.”
Los Angeles October 21, 1941
The first thing I noticed was the crowd of people who were engaged in loud whispering outside the door to the bookshop. There was my friend Dorothy Iyami, and her parents, and Mr. Kuroshima and his sister. All of them were neighbors; we lived in the same building. They looked nervous; what was happening?
I walked right up to Dorothy. She was a year older than me and liked to flirt with boys. She was bright and pretty and normally had a saucy smile. But now her face was tight like the grownups around her.
“Gai-jin” she whispered, and pointed in the window. I looked, astonished. Caucasians almost never went into Mr. Ishida’s shop. All of the books inside were either Japanese or Chinese. Also, Mr. Ishida did not like white people.
Through the glass, I could see the vague shapes of two strangers in brown coats and hats, staring and gesturing at old Mr. Ishida, who had a blank look on his face. “I’d better go in there,” I said to no one in particular. “Mr. Ishida doesn’t speak English.”
Hurriedly, I pushed through the door and the familiar odor of old books hit me, which I loved. It had been two years since Grandfather had persuaded me with his typical gentle logic that I should spend a few hours each week helping out at the bookshop. The experience had proven worthwhile to me.
By entering, I interrupted the two newcomers. One of them was tall, with spectacles, and he had been nearly shouting at Mr. Ishida. I’ve noticed gai-jin do this from time to time with those who can’t understand them; they think that somehow by raising their voices, they will get their message across. Now he stopped, and stared at me. The other one stared also: he was shorter, and held out a pad of paper and a pencil. The men both looked very irritated.
“He only speaks Japanese,” I said, pointing at the bookseller. “My name is Mary and I work here sometimes. May I help you?”
“This is official business, Miss,” the tall man said. “I’m trying to locate Mr. Takeo Ishida.”
“That’s him, “I answered, “Please, what do you want with him? And who are you?”
As I was asking this, Mr. Ishida limped out from behind the counter. As usual, he was dressed all in black, like an undertaker. I knew he was only in his mid sixties, yet today his face looked lined and ancient. As he walked, dragging his right leg behind him, I could not help but notice how he studiously ignored looking at the two intruders; his eyes were only on me.
“Mariko-chan,” Mr. Ishida asked me in Japanese, “would you be so kind as to fetch your honorable grandfather? He is in the building, and if he is made aware of this situation, he will come.”
“Hai, dozo,” I answered automatically, and said to the two men, “Mr. Ishida has requested my grandfather to interpret for him. I will be right back.” And I left the bookshop as quickly as I had come.
When I got outside the light of day hit my eyes; the bookshop was always kept dim. Why was that, I wondered suddenly? I pushed through the crowd and spoke directly to Mr. Kuroshima. “He has asked for my grandfather,” I said. “Please, do you know where he is?” If anyone would know, it would be Mr. Kuroshima; he seemed to know everything that was going on in the neighborhood.
“I think he is with Mrs. Myagi, child, at her apartment. It’s number four oh-”
“I know the one!” I interrupted, and rushed into the side door which led into the building above the bookshop. This building was one of several owned by Grandfather; it was a large, six story affair with many apartments, all of them rented by Japanese. I lived on the top floor, with my parents and my baby brother. My grandparents and my uncle lived in the apartment across from us.
I rushed up three flights of stairs as fast as I could, and I was panting and out of breath when I reached number four oh seven. The door was open; Grandfather stood slightly inside, listening to Mrs. Myagi’s complaints. He turned and saw me and his face brightened.
My Grandfather was dressed in one of his three piece suits; he must have just returned from his law offices. Except for his head of iron gray hair, you would not have guessed that here was a man in his mid fifties; everything about this small man, from his firm, tough hands to the lack of wrinkles on his strong face suggested youth and energy. With his erect posture and firm sense of command, Grandfather carried himself like a king, and indeed he was our established and rightful leader.
Mrs. Myagi was what my mother referred to as an “old busybody”; she was always complaining about something wrong; either wrong with her (she had many ailments) or with the building. We all knew she liked to listen through the walls for people having arguments so that she could gossip about it later on. Just now she was telling Grandfather about the hot water situation: either it was too hot (“scalding”, she said) or too cold. Grandfather just listened patiently as he did to everyone, nodding sympathetically and promising to look into the matter.
“Please,” I interrupted, panting. “There are two gai-jin downstairs in the bookshop. Mr. Ishida has asked for you! Please come!” I could not catch my breath.
“Of course,” Grandfather said calmly, reaching for his hat. “If you will excuse me, Mrs. Myagi. I had better go at once, and see what this is about. I promise to have David look into the water problem for you.” David was my father; he managed the building for Grandfather.
“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Myagi said, “I hope everything is all right is Mr. Ishida. Poor, foolish man, his problem is he never married. Now we all know what happened to his bride to be; so sad, so terrible. But that was such a long time ago, and he should have met someone since then, he would be much happier now; but I’ve never met a man so stubborn...”
“Yes, Mrs. Myagi, if you’ll just excuse me then.” Even in a hurry, Grandfather managed to stay polite. Yet, he did not seem in a rush as he walked down the stairs. He was not slow, but he didn’t move as quickly as I would have liked.
“Please, Grandfather,” I urged, “We’ve got to go faster!”
He smiled, “And what good will it do me, child, if I hurry down these stairs and be out of breath the way you were after you came up them? How can I help Mr. Ishida then? And how can I help him if I trip and fall and injure myself? I am going at a fast enough pace.”
He paused, and beamed at me. “I haven’t even had the proper chance to wish my granddaughter well on the day she turned eleven,” he said.
I brightened, and for the moment forgot about what was happening downstairs. “Oh Grandfather, you remembered! I thought everyone had forgotten.”
“Do you really think I am so absent-minded? I am not so old as that yet! And you underestimate your parents; they are looking forward to surprising you later. It is supposed to be a secret, so you must pretend to be suitably stunned. There is to be a cake, and presents. American style,” he added with faint amusement. “Of course, your Grandmother is ignoring the fact that your mother has baked an American cake; she is making botamochi, your favorite. So the two of them will be expecting you to eat one and reject the other. You must be sure to try equal amounts of both, so that neither woman will be disappointed.”
I sighed, thinking about the competition that had gone on as long as I could remember: Mother with her American cooking and ways, and her mother-in law, my revered grandmother, who was a very traditional Japanese wife from Hiroshima and who insisted on Japanese cuisine. The truth was, I was quite fond of botamochi, that sweet, oh so tangy mixture of rice and red bean paste. And I really wasn’t sure what I thought of American cake, which I hadn’t had all that much of. But, as usual, Grandfather was right: it really wouldn’t do to prefer one over the other. Most of my mind was still occupied with the thrilling news: they did remember! A secret party, with presents!
The word “secret” brought me back around to something Mrs. Myagi had said. “Grandfather,” I asked, “What was Mrs. Myagi talking about? What happened to Mr. Ishida’s bride?”
My grandfather’s face sobered. “That was a long time ago; it is not important now. Come; let us see who the strangers are.”
The crowd was still there, only larger. Several of them bowed to Grandfather as he pushed his way through, with me in tow. Inside, the shop was just as I had left it, except that now there were several books opened and on the floor. The shorter man was grabbing volumes at random, flipping through them, and then tossing them to the ground like trash. Mr. Ishida looked on, his face still expressionless.
Grandfather wasted no time. Striding forward, he said in clear, firm English, without the trace of an accent, “Hello, there. My name is Richard Nakamura. I’m the President of the Japanese American Friendship Society. I’m also the owner of this building. Unfortunately, as you no doubt have discovered, my friend Mr. Ishida speaks no English. How may I be of service to you, gentlemen?”
The tall one, the man who had spoken to me earlier, now said, “My name is Phillips; this is Lieutenant DeAngelo. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sir.” He flashed us a badge, which my grandfather just stared at.
Phillips continued: “It’s been reported to us that this man, Takeo Ishida, has been distributing seditious materials; specifically, the newsletter known as the Tokio.” He stared menacingly at us.
My grandfather stared back calmly. “You are quite mistaken,” he replied. “I don’t know where you got this information, but it is not so. Mr. Ishida is a bookseller; he collects and sells fine and rare manuscripts. He has nothing to do with politics.” Grandfather then translated to Mr. Ishida, who nodded and said in Japanese he had never read the Tokio.
They were both lying. Mr. Ishida had copies of the Tokio hidden in the back room, and he passed them out to select friends of his. Grandfather knew this; we all did. I wasn’t allowed to read the Tokio, but I sneaked a look every so often.
It was a two page newsletter, published in Omaha, Nebraska, but it was all about Japan. Most of the stories were about Japanese victories in China, which were always described as thorough and absolute. There were also stories about the Axis powers’ great triumphs in the war against Imperialist England and the Soviet Union. Recently, there had been editorials warning President Roosevelt and the United States that they had better cooperate with Japan or “face the consequences.”
My grandfather derided the Tokio as “trashy propaganda” and “pure poppycock”. He was very much anti-fascist, and he hated the fact that Japan had chosen to ally herself with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. He was always arguing with Mr. Ishida about it. Mr. Ishida believed every word in the Tokio, and so did several of the older Japanese men we knew. But here was Grandfather, lying to these two men, in order to protect Mr. Ishida. I said nothing; my lips felt glued together.
The short man introduced to us as Lt. DeAngelo now added sharply, “We think those newsletters are here somewhere. We’d like to search this whole place from top to bottom.”
“Yes, certainly,” Grandfather said, even more calmly than before. “Do you have a warrant, please?”
The two men exchanged looks. Then Phillips said, “Are you trying to impede justice, Mr. Nakamura?”
”Quite the contrary,” my grandfather replied, “I am attempting to enforce it. If you don’t have a warrant, it would be quite unlawful for you to search, would it not?”
“It would be just fine if so long as we had this man’s permission,” Phillips said acidly, his finger pointing at the bookseller. “We wouldn’t need a warrant then. Doesn’t your friend want to cooperate with law enforcement? Ask him,” he snapped.
Grandfather spoke quietly in Japanese to Mr. Ishida, who shook his head.
“I am very sorry,” my grandfather said, his hands out wide, “but Mr. Ishida values his privacy. Now if you wish to return with a warrant, I assure you he will cooperate.”
DeAngelo rushed forward and thrust his face directly into Grandfather’s. “Let me tell you something, Nakamura. We know all about you and your sham organization. We know what’s going on in this street, too, and in this neighborhood. Listen, any day now Japan might attack us. And you think we’re going to allow a third column of enemy agents right here in Los Angeles? You’re all being watched very carefully, I can assure you.”
“Your boss, Mr. Hoover, has said that Japanese Americans are completely patriotic,” Grandfather said.
“Come on,” Phillips said to his partner, “We’re wasting time.” He looked at Mr. Ishida. “We’ll be back,” he said. And they finally left.
When he was sure they were gone, Grandfather turned to Mr. Ishida and said in Japanese, “You had better get rid of those stupid newsletters. They’ll be back with a warrant; you can count on that.”
“The Tokio is not stupid,” Mr. Ishida replied. “But who told the gai-jin about it? Who among us is the informer?”
“Does it matter?” Grandfather asked. As he spoke, he began to pick up stray books off the ground. I hurried to help him. “They would have discovered it sooner or later,” he continued. “I’ve told you time and again not to distribute that trash- it’s all lies and exaggerated anyhow.”
“That’s what you say, Goro-san.” Goro was my grandfather’s name at birth, though he had legally changed it to Richard as a young man. No one else, not even my grandmother, still called him Goro. But Mr. Ishida could not pronounce “Richard”, and anyhow he seemed to detest American sounding names as much as everything else about the country in which he resided. He always addressed me, for example, by my birth name of Mariko, though everyone else called me Mary, which was what I preferred.
Now, as the old bookseller limped forward, he went into his usual diatribe regarding the Tokio and its message. The American newspapers, he said, could not be trusted when it came to what was reported about Japan. The Yankees hated the Japanese, because the Japanese stood up for Asians against the American-British hegemony that was out to dominate the entire world. America was fearful of Japan, and rightfully so, for when the conflict between the two finally came, the Japanese would emerge surprise victors, just as they had done in 1902 against Russia.
Grandfather sighed wearily; of course he had heard all of this before, many times. Still, he took time to reply carefully, as he and I finished organizing Mr. Ishida’s books.
It would be foolish beyond belief, Grandfather said, for Japan to go to war with the U.S.A. Japan was inferior in industry, weaponry, and sheer population by a large margin. She would be inevitably crushed over time, though it might not start out that way because of the distances involved. Besides, Japan already had her hands full with the foolish, ill-advised war against China.
“I’ve been fighting my whole life,” my Grandfather said, “for equal treatment for Japanese-Americans. That treatment, particularly here in California, depends on America’s relationship with Japan. Can’t you see the two nations are natural allies? If Japan stopped this military nonsense and engaged in peaceful trade with the United States, we would all be so much better off-”
“So, Japan is the aggressor?” Mr. Ishida interrupted. “Japan is the bad one, yes? Tell me, is it Japan who enslaves Singapore, Hong Kong, the Indies, the Philippines, Shanghai, Indochina, and all the rest, or is it the Western imperialists who do this operating under American complicity? Was it Japan who placed an embargo on America’s supply of oil, or was it the other way around?”
“You don’t listen,” Grandfather said. “You never listen. Those men will be back with a warrant, and if they find that newspaper they will make trouble for you. They might even arrest you, old friend. You are not a citizen, after all. You might be interned.”
My grandfather had inadvertently mentioned what I knew was one of Mr. Ishida’s main sources of bitterness against the United States. I did not know much about the bookseller’s background, or when he had arrived in California, but I had been told that he had worked as a farm laborer in Bakersfield until he had injured his leg and had been discharged. Mr. Ishida had then borrowed the money from my grandfather, his closest friend, to open this bookshop. That had happened many, many, years ago.
In the early 1920’s, restrictive federal laws were passed, as a result of agitation by white California farming interests concerned with growing competition from the Japanese living here. These laws shut down all further emigration from Japan, and also prevented older Japanese already living here from becoming American citizens, if they had not chosen to do so already. The laws were challenged in the courts, and the cases involved went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the restrictions were finally upheld.
Mr. Ishida was one of those who had lost the opportunity to become American, unlike Grandfather, who was naturalized by his parents as a young boy. Since that Supreme Court Decision, Mr. Ishida had spoken angrily against everything American, and was always eager to point out the hypocrisy which he believed existed just below the surface of what he sneeringly referred to as “Yankee culture.”
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Now, he replied to Grandfather, by saying, “Nothing will happen to me that won’t happen to all of us. Internment’s coming, and you know it.”
Mr. Ishida was referring to something that none of us was eager to discuss. Recently, many of the California newspapers had been calling for the internment of all Japanese- Americans to distant camps far removed from the coast, should war break out between the U.S.A. and Japan. The lead ringleader for this viewpoint was the San Francisco Examiner, owned by William Randolph Hearst, but the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee also printed editorials favorable to the idea. “At a time of great peril,” one of the typical editorials read, “can we afford to allow ninety thousand people who are admittedly on the side of our enemy to exist among us? Should California be threatened with invasion, is it wrong to demand we do everything responsible to protect our loyal citizens?”
Some of the editorials had been written by allies of Caucasian farming interests who had fought for the last thirty years to curtail the wealth of Japanese farmers, whose success threatened them. Others behind the movement were ambitious politicians eager to seize on any wedge issue that might gain them power. But the scariest aspect was that a great many white Californians, perhaps even a majority, believed internment might eventually be a good idea.
The thought of being sent to some unknown place in the middle of nowhere, far from Los Angeles and my home and everything I knew terrified me. But Grandfather assured us that it was all talk, just newspaper propaganda as a result of the war tensions. My grandfather had been a lawyer for over thirty years, and he pointed out that such a move was unconstitutional, a violation of our civil rights as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Besides, he said, America would never do such a thing. Rounding up innocent people and sending them away was something the Nazis did, not Americans.
“My whole life would be a sham,” he had told us recently, “if such a thing were to come to pass. I have always loved the United States of America, and the whole point of the Japanese-American Friendship Society has been to prove that Japanese-Americans are worthwhile contributors to the ‘American Dream’. People are always prejudiced against what they do not know and can’t understand. If we make ourselves known and understood, all prejudice against us will disappear.” Grandfather was always making optimistic pronouncements such as this; listening to him, you could tell he believed it with all his heart.
Mr. Ishida, of course, believed the editorials. He laughed when Grandfather talked about the Constitution. Mr. Ishida was a well-read man; was Nakamura-san aware of how the American Indians had been treated? How about the way colored people were treated even now in the South, or Mexicans in central California, or the Chinese in San Francisco? Not to mention Hawaiians, Jews, Filipinos, and everyone else who had ever been in the way of the White Christian masters of this country. The Constitution was a sham, a mirage for those naïve enough to believe it.
“Not that I mind what they’re planning on doing,” the bookseller informed us. “If this was Japan, and there were ninety thousand Americans living there, of course I’d be for locking them all up. It makes perfect sense. No, I don’t mind that at all, except of course I do not wish to be incarcerated, if I can help it. Which I can’t.”
“Nobody’s going to be-” Grandfather started wearily, but Mr. Ishida interrupted him; he was really on a roll now.
“What I mind,” Mr. Ishida stressed, “is the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy that they practice and you believe, old friend. The idea that freedom is what matters, and their Constitution, and the rule of law. It’s all a lie. If the Americans could just admit they are no better than the Japanese or even the Germans for that matter, I would respect them a lot more.”
I could never remember seeing Grandfather visibly angry, but I could tell Mr. Ishida’s goading was getting to him. Still, he managed to contain himself, and then said, much to my regret, “And what about Mary? You spout all of this nonsense, and you don’t care what happens to you, but what about what might happen to her? It was my idea that she work here, and perhaps that was a terrible mistake. She could be arrested right along with you if you continue with the Tokio.”
I was shocked. Was Grandfather suggesting that I quit the bookshop? But I loved working there. All of those lovely old volumes and manuscripts, and the beautiful color prints that Mr. Ishida collected. I could not bear to quit now. And old Mr. Ishida was such a helpless old man, really. He had trouble reaching and lifting some of the books, and I was a great help to him, I knew. His limp was always so bad.
On the other hand, what would happen to me if I was arrested? Like internment, the thought created a dread stone that seemed to materialize in my stomach and just stay there. I never helped him with the Tokio, I wanted to say. But my mouth stayed shut.
At the mention of my name, Mr. Ishida’s eyes softened. “I would never do anything to harm Mariko-chan,” he said. “Even I don’t think they are barbarian enough to mistreat a young girl. She is in no danger over this.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.” Grandfather replied. He had found a ***** in Mr. Ishida’s armor and he meant to press it home. “We can’t know that for sure. I will have to recommend to Mary’s parents that she stop working here, unless you promise to stop distributing the Tokio.”
The two old men just stared at each other. At length, Mr. Ishida said, “Very well. I shall continue to read it, but I shall not distribute it. I shall, however, repeat what the newspaper says to certain friends of mine. Surely you can’t object to that? Isn’t free speech another one of the things you revere about this country?”
Grandfather nodded his head. “It is, and I’ll accept that compromise.”
Mr. Ishida laughed again. “Don’t you realize freedom of speech is as much a myth as everything else about America? Else, why would I be in this situation, forced to lie to the police? But I shall keep my word.”
Mr. Ishida always kept his word. So did my Grandfather. Both men were fond of telling me that even if one lost all of one’s possessions, it did not matter so long as you retained your personal sense of honor. (Yet it was true that both men had lied to the FBI.)
The books were now all in their proper place, and Grandfather said abruptly, “And now, we must go. There is still a crowd of people outside, waiting to have their curiosity satisfied. We must tell them that Takeo Ishida will not be arrested, at least, not today. And then Mary has a party to attend. It is her birthday today, you see.”
“Ah! I know!” Mr. Ishida said. I was amazed once again. Had they all known all along? “Yes, I was waiting for you to come from school, Mariko-chan, but of course I was distracted by the gai-jin. Please allow me to wish you all of my best thoughts for your future health and prosperity,” he said formerly, and bowed low.
I couldn’t help giggling. All of the older Japanese were so formal, and they used such flowery phrases! “Thank you, Mr. Ishida,” I replied.
“But my good wishes are not the whole of my present to you,” he said, smiling. “Oh no, it would be impolite indeed to simply acknowledge a young girl’s birthday and yet fail to give her something more substantial than mere providential thoughts, neh?” And he reached behind the counter and handed me a brightly wrapped package, hiding what was obviously a book.
“Oh! Arigato!” I said. I removed the wrapping. It was a slim volume of poetry, of course in Japanese. The pages appeared to be hand-written, and the calligraphy was beautiful.
“Selections from the Kokin Wakashu” he explained, referring to the oldest collection of Japanese poems compiled at Imperial request, sometime around the twelfth century in Japan. There were twenty-one such collections, but the Kokin Wakashu was the most influential, and generally considered one of the wellsprings of Japanese literature.
“Just a few of my favorites that I chose,” Mr. Ishida continued, and suddenly he seemed rather shy before me.
“That you chose-” I began. “You mean, you did the calligraphy yourself? Oh, it’s so beautiful!”
He nodded. “Actually, it was a great pleasure for me. It’s been an awfully long time since I have written formerly anything worthwhile, you know. I did it at night for the past two months, preparing for this day. And I do so love the poetry.” He quoted: “‘A confused array of red leaves in the current of Tatsuta River. Were I to cross, I would break the fabric of a rich brocade’.”
Impulsively, I hugged him. He was startled, and then patted my back. We left then, my grandfather and me.
As Grandfather explained some of the situation to the neighbors (he played down the threat issued by the FBI agents,) it occurred to me that I knew so little about Mr. Ishida. How could a former laborer on a farm be skilled in the art of calligraphy, which was a hobby of the upper classes in Japan? How did he know so much about literature, and about poetry? And who was this bride Mrs. Myagi spoke of? So many questions.
And why were Grandfather and Mr. Ishida such good friends, even though they argued bitterly about everything? This was a question that bothered my father, as well. I knew Father was none too fond of old Mr. Ishida, and when he heard about what had happened today, he would surely ask Grandfather, as he had so many times in the past, “But why do you put up with him?” Father was afraid that Mr. Ishida would get all of us into some kind of trouble eventually with his anti-American talk.
And Grandfather would reply as he always did, that Mr. Ishida was an old friend, and: “Never forget this family owes a great debt to Takeo Ishida. A debt we can never repay.”
Another mystery. Once, several months ago, I asked Father about this, but he would not tell me. So, I asked my Grandfather instead: “Grandfather, what has Mr. Ishida done for us that we owe him such a great debt?”
My grandfather looked at me for a long time, and finally replied, “Nothing, child. The truth is, he has done nothing at all.”
And he would say no more.
Mr. Ishida was referring to something that none of us was eager to discuss. Recently, many of the California newspapers had been calling for the internment of all Japanese- Americans to distant camps far removed from the coast, should war break out between the U.S.A. and Japan. The lead ringleader for this viewpoint was the San Francisco Examiner, owned by William Randolph Hearst, but the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee also printed editorials favorable to the idea. “At a time of great peril,” one of the typical editorials read, “can we afford to allow ninety thousand people who are admittedly on the side of our enemy to exist among us? Should California be threatened with invasion, is it wrong to demand we do everything responsible to protect our loyal citizens?”
Some of the editorials had been written by allies of Caucasian farming interests who had fought for the last thirty years to curtail the wealth of Japanese farmers, whose success threatened them. Others behind the movement were ambitious politicians eager to seize on any wedge issue that might gain them power. But the scariest aspect was that a great many white Californians, perhaps even a majority, believed internment might eventually be a good idea.
The thought of being sent to some unknown place in the middle of nowhere, far from Los Angeles and my home and everything I knew terrified me. But Grandfather assured us that it was all talk, just newspaper propaganda as a result of the war tensions. My grandfather had been a lawyer for over thirty years, and he pointed out that such a move was unconstitutional, a violation of our civil rights as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Besides, he said, America would never do such a thing. Rounding up innocent people and sending them away was something the Nazis did, not Americans.
“My whole life would be a sham,” he had told us recently, “if such a thing were to come to pass. I have always loved the United States of America, and the whole point of the Japanese-American Friendship Society has been to prove that Japanese-Americans are worthwhile contributors to the ‘American Dream’. People are always prejudiced against what they do not know and can’t understand. If we make ourselves known and understood, all prejudice against us will disappear.” Grandfather was always making optimistic pronouncements such as this; listening to him, you could tell he believed it with all his heart.
Mr. Ishida, of course, believed the editorials. He laughed when Grandfather talked about the Constitution. Mr. Ishida was a well-read man; was Nakamura-san aware of how the American Indians had been treated? How about the way colored people were treated even now in the South, or Mexicans in central California, or the Chinese in San Francisco? Not to mention Hawaiians, Jews, Filipinos, and everyone else who had ever been in the way of the White Christian masters of this country. The Constitution was a sham, a mirage for those naïve enough to believe it.
“Not that I mind what they’re planning on doing,” the bookseller informed us. “If this was Japan, and there were ninety thousand Americans living there, of course I’d be for locking them all up. It makes perfect sense. No, I don’t mind that at all, except of course I do not wish to be incarcerated, if I can help it. Which I can’t.”
“Nobody’s going to be-” Grandfather started wearily, but Mr. Ishida interrupted him; he was really on a roll now.
“What I mind,” Mr. Ishida stressed, “is the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy that they practice and you believe, old friend. The idea that freedom is what matters, and their Constitution, and the rule of law. It’s all a lie. If the Americans could just admit they are no better than the Japanese or even the Germans for that matter, I would respect them a lot more.”
I could never remember seeing Grandfather visibly angry, but I could tell Mr. Ishida’s goading was getting to him. Still, he managed to contain himself, and then said, much to my regret, “And what about Mary? You spout all of this nonsense, and you don’t care what happens to you, but what about what might happen to her? It was my idea that she work here, and perhaps that was a terrible mistake. She could be arrested right along with you if you continue with the Tokio.”
I was shocked. Was Grandfather suggesting that I quit the bookshop? But I loved working there. All of those lovely old volumes and manuscripts, and the beautiful color prints that Mr. Ishida collected. I could not bear to quit now. And old Mr. Ishida was such a helpless old man, really. He had trouble reaching and lifting some of the books, and I was a great help to him, I knew. His limp was always so bad.
On the other hand, what would happen to me if I was arrested? Like internment, the thought created a dread stone that seemed to materialize in my stomach and just stay there. I never helped him with the Tokio, I wanted to say. But my mouth stayed shut.
At the mention of my name, Mr. Ishida’s eyes softened. “I would never do anything to harm Mariko-chan,” he said. “Even I don’t think they are barbarian enough to mistreat a young girl. She is in no danger over this.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.” Grandfather replied. He had found a ***** in Mr. Ishida’s armor and he meant to press it home. “We can’t know that for sure. I will have to recommend to Mary’s parents that she stop working here, unless you promise to stop distributing the Tokio.”
The two old men just stared at each other. At length, Mr. Ishida said, “Very well. I shall continue to read it, but I shall not distribute it. I shall, however, repeat what the newspaper says to certain friends of mine. Surely you can’t object to that? Isn’t free speech another one of the things you revere about this country?”
Grandfather nodded his head. “It is, and I’ll accept that compromise.”
Mr. Ishida laughed again. “Don’t you realize freedom of speech is as much a myth as everything else about America? Else, why would I be in this situation, forced to lie to the police? But I shall keep my word.”
Mr. Ishida always kept his word. So did my Grandfather. Both men were fond of telling me that even if one lost all of one’s possessions, it did not matter so long as you retained your personal sense of honor. (Yet it was true that both men had lied to the FBI.)
The books were now all in their proper place, and Grandfather said abruptly, “And now, we must go. There is still a crowd of people outside, waiting to have their curiosity satisfied. We must tell them that Takeo Ishida will not be arrested, at least, not today. And then Mary has a party to attend. It is her birthday today, you see.”
“Ah! I know!” Mr. Ishida said. I was amazed once again. Had they all known all along? “Yes, I was waiting for you to come from school, Mariko-chan, but of course I was distracted by the gai-jin. Please allow me to wish you all of my best thoughts for your future health and prosperity,” he said formerly, and bowed low.
I couldn’t help giggling. All of the older Japanese were so formal, and they used such flowery phrases! “Thank you, Mr. Ishida,” I replied.
“But my good wishes are not the whole of my present to you,” he said, smiling. “Oh no, it would be impolite indeed to simply acknowledge a young girl’s birthday and yet fail to give her something more substantial than mere providential thoughts, neh?” And he reached behind the counter and handed me a brightly wrapped package, hiding what was obviously a book.
“Oh! Arigato!” I said. I removed the wrapping. It was a slim volume of poetry, of course in Japanese. The pages appeared to be hand-written, and the calligraphy was beautiful.
“Selections from the Kokin Wakashu” he explained, referring to the oldest collection of Japanese poems compiled at Imperial request, sometime around the twelfth century in Japan. There were twenty-one such collections, but the Kokin Wakashu was the most influential, and generally considered one of the wellsprings of Japanese literature.
“Just a few of my favorites that I chose,” Mr. Ishida continued, and suddenly he seemed rather shy before me.
“That you chose-” I began. “You mean, you did the calligraphy yourself? Oh, it’s so beautiful!”
He nodded. “Actually, it was a great pleasure for me. It’s been an awfully long time since I have written formerly anything worthwhile, you know. I did it at night for the past two months, preparing for this day. And I do so love the poetry.” He quoted: “‘A confused array of red leaves in the current of Tatsuta River. Were I to cross, I would break the fabric of a rich brocade’.”
Impulsively, I hugged him. He was startled, and then patted my back. We left then, my grandfather and me.
As Grandfather explained some of the situation to the neighbors (he played down the threat issued by the FBI agents,) it occurred to me that I knew so little about Mr. Ishida. How could a former laborer on a farm be skilled in the art of calligraphy, which was a hobby of the upper classes in Japan? How did he know so much about literature, and about poetry? And who was this bride Mrs. Myagi spoke of? So many questions.
And why were Grandfather and Mr. Ishida such good friends, even though they argued bitterly about everything? This was a question that bothered my father, as well. I knew Father was none too fond of old Mr. Ishida, and when he heard about what had happened today, he would surely ask Grandfather, as he had so many times in the past, “But why do you put up with him?” Father was afraid that Mr. Ishida would get all of us into some kind of trouble eventually with his anti-American talk.
And Grandfather would reply as he always did, that Mr. Ishida was an old friend, and: “Never forget this family owes a great debt to Takeo Ishida. A debt we can never repay.”
Another mystery. Once, several months ago, I asked Father about this, but he would not tell me. So, I asked my Grandfather instead: “Grandfather, what has Mr. Ishida done for us that we owe him such a great debt?”
My grandfather looked at me for a long time, and finally replied, “Nothing, child. The truth is, he has done nothing at all.”
And he would say no more.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Two
Dinner wasn’t as much fun as I expected. Everyone attempted to be jolly to celebrate my birthday, and I was suitable surprised and delighted. I ate large portions of both the botamochi and chocolate cake, until I felt sick, though I kept a smile on my face. I could tell both Mother and Grandmother were pleased. There were nice gifts: a sweater from Grandmother, a pretty dress from Mother and Father, a necklace from Uncle Tommy.
But through it all, I could sense the tension in the air. By now, everyone had heard of the FBI agents who had visited Mr. Ishida. Nothing like this had ever happened before. With all of the newspaper talk about internment, faces were tight and filled with secret dread.
The subject came up after Grandmother and I cleared the dessert dishes. Mother was staring hard at Father, who said abruptly, “I don’t think Mary should be helping Mr. Ishida anymore.”
I knew my mother had put him up to saying it. Father was always very quiet, reluctant to give an opinion, and Mother was always pushing him to say things. By having him say it, she kept up the appearance of the demure, proper Japanese wife who allowed her husband to make all of the important decisions. Though certainly everyone at this table knew that exactly the opposite was the case.
Grandmother looked startled; Father had spoken in English, which she only understood a little. Hastily he translated for her. Grandmother did not reply; no one did. I at least expected Grandfather to come to my defense, but he stayed quiet like everyone else, waiting. Then Uncle Tommy spoke: “Shouldn’t that be Mary’s decision?”
Outside of my mother, Uncle Tommy was the most western of all of us. I secretly had a crush on him, which was shameful, since he was my father’s younger brother, but he was so handsome! He was tall and slim, and he wore such flashy clothes, what they called “zoot suits”. Tommy was good natured and easy going. But he was also considered lazy by the rest of the family. At age 22, he still lived with his parents, but unlike his older brother, he had no interest in helping to manage his father’s properties. He had no interest in anything else the rest of the family might have considered to be serious either, it seemed. Tommy enjoyed going to nightclubs to listen to swing music, and he played guitar good enough to be in a jazz band himself, though he hadn’t managed to find a gig yet. He insisted that when he did, that would be his career. Grandfather was tolerant but considered the whole thing to be a fad that would die out eventually.
Father agreed it was a fad, but was not so patient. He often scolded Tommy for not living up to his responsibilities. Perhaps this failure by Tommy made my father feel the weight on his own shoulders a bit more heavily. Now, irritated by what he considered my uncle’s flippant response, he snapped, “Certainly not. The girl is only ten! It is up to responsible adults to see that she is not in any danger.”
The way he said responsible adults clearly indicated that he did not believe my uncle to be among their number, and Tommy’s face flushed. Before he could reply, I said quickly, “But I’m not ten anymore, I’m eleven.”
It was time for Mother to finally speak. As usual her voice was deceptively soft, but underneath the silk was iron. “Yes, Mary, but even eleven is too young to make your own decisions. If Mr. Ishida is truly in trouble with the government, it would be unwise of you to be further associated with him.”
“But that was all settled!” I argued. “There won’t be any more trouble. Ask Grandfather!”
All eyes turned to the old man.
He cleared his throat and said, “It is true, Takeo-san and I have come to an agreement. He will no longer distribute the Tokio. When the federal agents come back with their search warrants, there will be no copies for them to find. Mary will not be in any danger.”
I saw my father glance at my mother; she gave a quick shake of her head. Immediately my father said, ‘It’s not enough. How do we know we can trust old Ishida?”
The words were hardly out before I saw a flash of irritation in Grandfather’s eyes. “Takeo Ishida is a man of honor,” he said sharply. “I will not hear you speak of him so! Never forget, this family owes Mr. Ishida a great debt, which we can never repay.”
Poor Father. He was in his early thirties, but unlike Grandfather who looked ten years younger than his age, Father looked ten years older. He was a short, thin man, dedicated to my mother, and myself and the baby, Richard Jr., who was sleeping all through this argument. But he was always being pulled one way by Mother and another way by Grandfather, the two dominant figures in his life. Father was always smoking cigarettes; I rarely saw him without one in his hand. Of course, Grandfather, Mother, and Uncle Tommy all smoked as well, though not nearly as often as Father did.
Father had been a dutiful son. Unlike Tommy, he had never rebelled against the life plan that Grandfather had set for him. He had attended UCLA and received a business degree, and had come back to help Grandfather manage the buildings he had acquired. As Grandfather over the years became more and more involved with fighting for the rights of Japanese Americans through legal means and by public speeches, the my father’s own responsibilities had increased. But he did not enjoy dealing with all of the tenants, I could tell. Father would have preferred a quiet life where everyone just left him alone; but this was not to be.
It was at UCLA that Father met my mother, at a party given for Nisei students. He fell in love and within two months of having met, they were married. It was the first move he ever made without the prior approval of his parents, and no doubt it shocked them. They did not approve of my mother when they first met her. I suspected that thirteen years later, my grandmother still did not approve.
My father had failed to win my mother’s argument, so now she spoke up for herself. “It’s not simply a matter of what Mr. Ishida will do anymore,” she said in a reasonable tone. “It’s also the question of what the federal agents will do, as well. They already suspect the bookseller of being a troublemaker; perhaps they will harass him further. Perhaps news of Mary’s involvement with him will reach her elementary school. Do not forget she is the only Japanese girl at that school. Might not this subject her to mistreatment?”
It was the turn of my grandmother to speak. She would never have been the first woman in the room to give her opinion, but my mother had opened the way for her. Now she said, “It was not the idea of everyone present in this room to put Mariko in that school. Perhaps it is that school, and not honorable Mr. Ishida, which is the real danger for the girl.”
This was an old argument. We lived on the border of two public schools. Weber was where all of the neighbors’ children attended; it was seventy-five percent Japanese, with a sprinkling of Latino and colored children. In fact, it was the same school my father had once gone to, and Uncle Tommy, as well.
Brockton elementary school, on the other hand, was ninety-nine percent Caucasian. (It was less than one percent Japanese, meaning me.) The school had excellent teachers; it was nice and clean, and students from there went to the all-white high school and to good universities. My mother had decided when I was born that Brockton was where I would attend. My grandmother had always opposed this, as she opposed any move my mother made to “Americanize” me. Typically, Father was torn both ways. But Grandfather, while never revealing his true feelings on the matter, told his wife that it was for my parents to decide, that it was none of her affair. So I went to Brockton.
Grandmother never argued with Grandfather, at least not in public. She never argued with my father, either. But in a thousand little ways, she let her disapproval be known. She pushed and prodded Grandfather and Father until a compromise was reached: I would attend Brockton in the mornings and Japanese school in the afternoons. This way, it was explained, I would not forget my heritage.
Mother at first resisted this move as well; what need did I have of Japanese school? But Father was tired of being nagged on all sides, so it was decided. That I attended two schools was not so unusual; all of my Japanese friends did the same. It never occurred to me that I might have less time to play, or to have fun, or just time to be myself, the way any normal girl of my age might want. It was my life, and I can’t say I was unhappy with it.
My mother was visibly irritated with Grandmother’s remark. “Brockton has nothing to do with it,” she snapped. “We put Mary there so that she would have opportunities in the future. Why should my daughter be deprived because she is Japanese?”
“Is she Japanese?” Grandmother shot back. “Sometimes I think you would prefer it if you and she were not Japanese, Etsuko-san. You would like to pretend you are white Americans. But the world will not let you forget, and you harm this child by forcing her to succumb to your illusions.”
“That’s enough,” Grandfather said sternly, and at once Grandmother bowed her head and was silent. “It is not our decision. Listen, Erin,” he said softly, using my mother’s western name as he knew she preferred, “it would break Mr. Ishida’s heart to lose his time with Mary. He worships the girl. Did you see the gift he made for her? Mr. Ishida is a lonely old man, and Mariko-chan is the light of his life, as she is to all of us. Worse, it would be shameful to remove her now, after he agreed to remove the newsletters. And it would be dishonorable. Please do not force such a decision on this family.”
My mother made no reply; I could see she was fighting back anger at her mother-in-law, and trying to concentrate on what Grandfather was saying. Once again, Uncle Tommy jumped into the fray.
“Why is every decision always about the ‘family’?” he demanded. “All of you have something to say about this, but no one’s asking Mary what she thinks? What about it, Mary? What do you want to do?”
“I enjoy working in the bookshop,” I said. “I feel…at peace there. I can’t explain why, really, except that with all the talk of war and everything going wrong around us, it’s nice to have a quiet place, where everything’s in order, everything has it’s proper place.”
“What do you mean, ‘everything going wrong around us’, Mary?” My mother interjected, suddenly distracted by my words. “What are you talking about? Has something happened at school?”
I hesitated. They all stared at me, and for a moment I thought about telling them. But how could I? It would upset Mother so much, and they might pull me out of Brockton. Besides, I told myself, things weren’t so terrible that I couldn’t handle them. I hoped.
“Nothing specific,” I lied. “Just a feeling I get sometimes. But I do so like the bookshop. And I love old Mr. Ishida.”
I turned to my grandmother. “And you don’t have to worry about me being Japanese, Grandmother. After all, I go to Japanese school, don’t I? I love being a Japanese girl.”
“Then it is decided,” Grandfather said. As usual, he assumed leadership. “For now, Mary will continue to work at the bookshop when she has time.”
Later, Mother brushed my hair as I lay in bed in my pajamas. As she did, I watched her face. How I envied my mother’s face; she was so beautiful, with big, dark eyes and such a finely shaped nose and lips. My own eyes were too close together and my nose was too large, and I knew that I wasn’t pretty at all. Even if I became pretty one day, as sometimes adults do, I could never be as gorgeous as Mother; people stopped on the street to stare at her, Caucasians too.
I also loved my Mother’s hands; they were so smooth, with fine long fingers. Such a graceful woman! When she moved it was like watching silk pushed along by a slight breeze. Try as I might to imitate her, my movements sounded to me like the stampede of an army of elephants.
“Mother,” I said, “you’re not mad about before, are you? I do so want to keep working for Mr. Ishida.”
“No, I’m not mad, Mary,” she said, continuing to brush me softly. “Sometimes- sometimes it would be nice if decisions were left to your father and me. It seems like ‘family’ matters always have to include your grandparents as well. That is what I married into, of course, but they’re always so involved.”
I did not know how to respond to this, so I said, “I loved the chocolate cake.”
She stopped and smiled at me wryly. “As much as the botamochi?”
“Well, but I’ve had that before.”
There was just a hint of annoyance in her voice as she said, “Nothing is good enough for your Grandmother. She knew I was baking the cake, but she has to compete with me, always. It really is very tiresome.”
“Oh no mother, it wasn’t that!” I replied automatically. “Grandmother just wanted to make me happy on my birthday, that’s all!”
Mother sighed. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t let her get to me. She is a fine woman in her own way; we’re just so very different. I can live with it. Tell me something, Mary. You bothered me earlier when you said you felt safe in the bookshop. Why there? And what disturbs you so in the rest of your life that you should need to feel safe?”
“I’m not sure,” I said quickly. “Like I said, it’s just a feeling I get. I really can’t explain any better than I did earlier.”
She gazed steadily into my eyes. “If something was going on in your school, in either of your schools, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t keep any secrets from me?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I mean no. I mean, I wouldn’t keep any secrets from you.”
Oh, how I hated lying to my mother!
Etsuko (Erin) Fujika was born in 1906. My mother’s parents were not farm laborers, as were most of the Japanese who came to California at that time. Instead, they were hired as a couple for a wealthy widow named Agnes Smith, who lived in a large house in the hills of Glendale. Mrs. Smith had traveled to Japan with her husband, a millionaire businessman. He had died there, apparently of food poisoning. Agnes Smith returned to California in 1904 with her husband’s fortune intact, and two Japanese servants.
My mother’s father worked as butler and houseboy; my grandmother did the cooking. Agnes Smith had no children and few visitors. Mother was not sure whether or not her parents had been married in Japan, or here in California. She also knew nothing of what part of Japan they had come from, although Agnes Smith certainly met them in Tokyo. Fujika was a common enough name, so my ancestry on my mother’s side would be difficult to trace under normal circumstances.
As it turned out, it would become impossible for all time to learn more about them. For in 1908, a fire consumed the home of Agnes Smith. No one knows how it started, but when it was over, nothing remained of the house, Mrs. Smith, or either of my grandparents. Two badly burned arms handed the firemen a blanket carrying a two year old baby: my mother. The arms receded and were not seen again by the firemen: were they my grandmother’s? My grandfather’s? Could they have been Agnes Smith?
(For years, I used to have nightmares about this story. In my mind’s eye, I could see the two darkened arms, thrusting out of the flames, no face behind them, holding the baby. And I also used to have dreams of my mother’s parents. They watched me, faceless, caught in shadow. I was haunted by these dreams.)
Mother was put in an orphanage in Whittier, California. She lived the next seven years in that orphanage, and she would not talk about those times to anyone. I overheard Grandfather speculating once that orphanages were terrible places in those days, (not that they were much better now!) and who knows what kind of treatment she received, especially since she was the only Japanese girl there. Naturally, Mother grew up with no memory of her parents, and speaking only English. I suppose her beauty saved her, because at the age of nine, she was adopted by a family named Wilson who lived in Fullerton, in Orange County.
Travis Wilson was a contractor who helped build custom homes. He was 52 and Iris Wilson was 47 when they decided together that their childless life was too lonely. So they ended up at the orphanage in Whittier. They probably wanted a nice white baby to raise, but then as now, those were in short supply for the adoption agencies. So they settled on my mother, who was certainly happy to go with them.
Now began what my mother described as her “wonderful years”, growing up in Fullerton with a couple who loved her. Mother attended elementary school and then middle school with all Caucasians, and she was treated like everyone else. She was popular because of her good looks, and had many friends. Of course, Mother knew she was Japanese, but was unaware of what this exactly entailed, not knowing any other Japanese people in her world.
All of this ended for Mother when she was seventeen. “Really”, she told me much later, “I should have realized it long before. But I was so naïve then, and living with the Wilsons kept me very sheltered. They were such nice, gentle people, Mary. And they loved me so much! I doubt my real parents could have loved me any more.”
It was at the end of my Mother’s junior year at Fullerton High School. There was a spring dance scheduled for the soon to be seniors, followed by a private party being given by Elizabeth Holding. Elizabeth was the most popular girl in school, a blond beauty from one of the finest families in Fullerton. She had always been cordial to Mother, but the two were not friends. Mother expected to be escorted to the dance and party by Jake Knightly, a pitcher for the baseball team who had been her beau for two years. Though not in love with Jake, Mother was fond of him; she described him to me as tall with big muscles and sandy brownish hair, “with a devil may care twinkle in his eye.” They kissed on occasion, but nothing deeper than that. “It was a pleasant, meaningless high school relationship,” she told me with a sigh.
Dinner wasn’t as much fun as I expected. Everyone attempted to be jolly to celebrate my birthday, and I was suitable surprised and delighted. I ate large portions of both the botamochi and chocolate cake, until I felt sick, though I kept a smile on my face. I could tell both Mother and Grandmother were pleased. There were nice gifts: a sweater from Grandmother, a pretty dress from Mother and Father, a necklace from Uncle Tommy.
But through it all, I could sense the tension in the air. By now, everyone had heard of the FBI agents who had visited Mr. Ishida. Nothing like this had ever happened before. With all of the newspaper talk about internment, faces were tight and filled with secret dread.
The subject came up after Grandmother and I cleared the dessert dishes. Mother was staring hard at Father, who said abruptly, “I don’t think Mary should be helping Mr. Ishida anymore.”
I knew my mother had put him up to saying it. Father was always very quiet, reluctant to give an opinion, and Mother was always pushing him to say things. By having him say it, she kept up the appearance of the demure, proper Japanese wife who allowed her husband to make all of the important decisions. Though certainly everyone at this table knew that exactly the opposite was the case.
Grandmother looked startled; Father had spoken in English, which she only understood a little. Hastily he translated for her. Grandmother did not reply; no one did. I at least expected Grandfather to come to my defense, but he stayed quiet like everyone else, waiting. Then Uncle Tommy spoke: “Shouldn’t that be Mary’s decision?”
Outside of my mother, Uncle Tommy was the most western of all of us. I secretly had a crush on him, which was shameful, since he was my father’s younger brother, but he was so handsome! He was tall and slim, and he wore such flashy clothes, what they called “zoot suits”. Tommy was good natured and easy going. But he was also considered lazy by the rest of the family. At age 22, he still lived with his parents, but unlike his older brother, he had no interest in helping to manage his father’s properties. He had no interest in anything else the rest of the family might have considered to be serious either, it seemed. Tommy enjoyed going to nightclubs to listen to swing music, and he played guitar good enough to be in a jazz band himself, though he hadn’t managed to find a gig yet. He insisted that when he did, that would be his career. Grandfather was tolerant but considered the whole thing to be a fad that would die out eventually.
Father agreed it was a fad, but was not so patient. He often scolded Tommy for not living up to his responsibilities. Perhaps this failure by Tommy made my father feel the weight on his own shoulders a bit more heavily. Now, irritated by what he considered my uncle’s flippant response, he snapped, “Certainly not. The girl is only ten! It is up to responsible adults to see that she is not in any danger.”
The way he said responsible adults clearly indicated that he did not believe my uncle to be among their number, and Tommy’s face flushed. Before he could reply, I said quickly, “But I’m not ten anymore, I’m eleven.”
It was time for Mother to finally speak. As usual her voice was deceptively soft, but underneath the silk was iron. “Yes, Mary, but even eleven is too young to make your own decisions. If Mr. Ishida is truly in trouble with the government, it would be unwise of you to be further associated with him.”
“But that was all settled!” I argued. “There won’t be any more trouble. Ask Grandfather!”
All eyes turned to the old man.
He cleared his throat and said, “It is true, Takeo-san and I have come to an agreement. He will no longer distribute the Tokio. When the federal agents come back with their search warrants, there will be no copies for them to find. Mary will not be in any danger.”
I saw my father glance at my mother; she gave a quick shake of her head. Immediately my father said, ‘It’s not enough. How do we know we can trust old Ishida?”
The words were hardly out before I saw a flash of irritation in Grandfather’s eyes. “Takeo Ishida is a man of honor,” he said sharply. “I will not hear you speak of him so! Never forget, this family owes Mr. Ishida a great debt, which we can never repay.”
Poor Father. He was in his early thirties, but unlike Grandfather who looked ten years younger than his age, Father looked ten years older. He was a short, thin man, dedicated to my mother, and myself and the baby, Richard Jr., who was sleeping all through this argument. But he was always being pulled one way by Mother and another way by Grandfather, the two dominant figures in his life. Father was always smoking cigarettes; I rarely saw him without one in his hand. Of course, Grandfather, Mother, and Uncle Tommy all smoked as well, though not nearly as often as Father did.
Father had been a dutiful son. Unlike Tommy, he had never rebelled against the life plan that Grandfather had set for him. He had attended UCLA and received a business degree, and had come back to help Grandfather manage the buildings he had acquired. As Grandfather over the years became more and more involved with fighting for the rights of Japanese Americans through legal means and by public speeches, the my father’s own responsibilities had increased. But he did not enjoy dealing with all of the tenants, I could tell. Father would have preferred a quiet life where everyone just left him alone; but this was not to be.
It was at UCLA that Father met my mother, at a party given for Nisei students. He fell in love and within two months of having met, they were married. It was the first move he ever made without the prior approval of his parents, and no doubt it shocked them. They did not approve of my mother when they first met her. I suspected that thirteen years later, my grandmother still did not approve.
My father had failed to win my mother’s argument, so now she spoke up for herself. “It’s not simply a matter of what Mr. Ishida will do anymore,” she said in a reasonable tone. “It’s also the question of what the federal agents will do, as well. They already suspect the bookseller of being a troublemaker; perhaps they will harass him further. Perhaps news of Mary’s involvement with him will reach her elementary school. Do not forget she is the only Japanese girl at that school. Might not this subject her to mistreatment?”
It was the turn of my grandmother to speak. She would never have been the first woman in the room to give her opinion, but my mother had opened the way for her. Now she said, “It was not the idea of everyone present in this room to put Mariko in that school. Perhaps it is that school, and not honorable Mr. Ishida, which is the real danger for the girl.”
This was an old argument. We lived on the border of two public schools. Weber was where all of the neighbors’ children attended; it was seventy-five percent Japanese, with a sprinkling of Latino and colored children. In fact, it was the same school my father had once gone to, and Uncle Tommy, as well.
Brockton elementary school, on the other hand, was ninety-nine percent Caucasian. (It was less than one percent Japanese, meaning me.) The school had excellent teachers; it was nice and clean, and students from there went to the all-white high school and to good universities. My mother had decided when I was born that Brockton was where I would attend. My grandmother had always opposed this, as she opposed any move my mother made to “Americanize” me. Typically, Father was torn both ways. But Grandfather, while never revealing his true feelings on the matter, told his wife that it was for my parents to decide, that it was none of her affair. So I went to Brockton.
Grandmother never argued with Grandfather, at least not in public. She never argued with my father, either. But in a thousand little ways, she let her disapproval be known. She pushed and prodded Grandfather and Father until a compromise was reached: I would attend Brockton in the mornings and Japanese school in the afternoons. This way, it was explained, I would not forget my heritage.
Mother at first resisted this move as well; what need did I have of Japanese school? But Father was tired of being nagged on all sides, so it was decided. That I attended two schools was not so unusual; all of my Japanese friends did the same. It never occurred to me that I might have less time to play, or to have fun, or just time to be myself, the way any normal girl of my age might want. It was my life, and I can’t say I was unhappy with it.
My mother was visibly irritated with Grandmother’s remark. “Brockton has nothing to do with it,” she snapped. “We put Mary there so that she would have opportunities in the future. Why should my daughter be deprived because she is Japanese?”
“Is she Japanese?” Grandmother shot back. “Sometimes I think you would prefer it if you and she were not Japanese, Etsuko-san. You would like to pretend you are white Americans. But the world will not let you forget, and you harm this child by forcing her to succumb to your illusions.”
“That’s enough,” Grandfather said sternly, and at once Grandmother bowed her head and was silent. “It is not our decision. Listen, Erin,” he said softly, using my mother’s western name as he knew she preferred, “it would break Mr. Ishida’s heart to lose his time with Mary. He worships the girl. Did you see the gift he made for her? Mr. Ishida is a lonely old man, and Mariko-chan is the light of his life, as she is to all of us. Worse, it would be shameful to remove her now, after he agreed to remove the newsletters. And it would be dishonorable. Please do not force such a decision on this family.”
My mother made no reply; I could see she was fighting back anger at her mother-in-law, and trying to concentrate on what Grandfather was saying. Once again, Uncle Tommy jumped into the fray.
“Why is every decision always about the ‘family’?” he demanded. “All of you have something to say about this, but no one’s asking Mary what she thinks? What about it, Mary? What do you want to do?”
“I enjoy working in the bookshop,” I said. “I feel…at peace there. I can’t explain why, really, except that with all the talk of war and everything going wrong around us, it’s nice to have a quiet place, where everything’s in order, everything has it’s proper place.”
“What do you mean, ‘everything going wrong around us’, Mary?” My mother interjected, suddenly distracted by my words. “What are you talking about? Has something happened at school?”
I hesitated. They all stared at me, and for a moment I thought about telling them. But how could I? It would upset Mother so much, and they might pull me out of Brockton. Besides, I told myself, things weren’t so terrible that I couldn’t handle them. I hoped.
“Nothing specific,” I lied. “Just a feeling I get sometimes. But I do so like the bookshop. And I love old Mr. Ishida.”
I turned to my grandmother. “And you don’t have to worry about me being Japanese, Grandmother. After all, I go to Japanese school, don’t I? I love being a Japanese girl.”
“Then it is decided,” Grandfather said. As usual, he assumed leadership. “For now, Mary will continue to work at the bookshop when she has time.”
Later, Mother brushed my hair as I lay in bed in my pajamas. As she did, I watched her face. How I envied my mother’s face; she was so beautiful, with big, dark eyes and such a finely shaped nose and lips. My own eyes were too close together and my nose was too large, and I knew that I wasn’t pretty at all. Even if I became pretty one day, as sometimes adults do, I could never be as gorgeous as Mother; people stopped on the street to stare at her, Caucasians too.
I also loved my Mother’s hands; they were so smooth, with fine long fingers. Such a graceful woman! When she moved it was like watching silk pushed along by a slight breeze. Try as I might to imitate her, my movements sounded to me like the stampede of an army of elephants.
“Mother,” I said, “you’re not mad about before, are you? I do so want to keep working for Mr. Ishida.”
“No, I’m not mad, Mary,” she said, continuing to brush me softly. “Sometimes- sometimes it would be nice if decisions were left to your father and me. It seems like ‘family’ matters always have to include your grandparents as well. That is what I married into, of course, but they’re always so involved.”
I did not know how to respond to this, so I said, “I loved the chocolate cake.”
She stopped and smiled at me wryly. “As much as the botamochi?”
“Well, but I’ve had that before.”
There was just a hint of annoyance in her voice as she said, “Nothing is good enough for your Grandmother. She knew I was baking the cake, but she has to compete with me, always. It really is very tiresome.”
“Oh no mother, it wasn’t that!” I replied automatically. “Grandmother just wanted to make me happy on my birthday, that’s all!”
Mother sighed. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t let her get to me. She is a fine woman in her own way; we’re just so very different. I can live with it. Tell me something, Mary. You bothered me earlier when you said you felt safe in the bookshop. Why there? And what disturbs you so in the rest of your life that you should need to feel safe?”
“I’m not sure,” I said quickly. “Like I said, it’s just a feeling I get. I really can’t explain any better than I did earlier.”
She gazed steadily into my eyes. “If something was going on in your school, in either of your schools, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t keep any secrets from me?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I mean no. I mean, I wouldn’t keep any secrets from you.”
Oh, how I hated lying to my mother!
Etsuko (Erin) Fujika was born in 1906. My mother’s parents were not farm laborers, as were most of the Japanese who came to California at that time. Instead, they were hired as a couple for a wealthy widow named Agnes Smith, who lived in a large house in the hills of Glendale. Mrs. Smith had traveled to Japan with her husband, a millionaire businessman. He had died there, apparently of food poisoning. Agnes Smith returned to California in 1904 with her husband’s fortune intact, and two Japanese servants.
My mother’s father worked as butler and houseboy; my grandmother did the cooking. Agnes Smith had no children and few visitors. Mother was not sure whether or not her parents had been married in Japan, or here in California. She also knew nothing of what part of Japan they had come from, although Agnes Smith certainly met them in Tokyo. Fujika was a common enough name, so my ancestry on my mother’s side would be difficult to trace under normal circumstances.
As it turned out, it would become impossible for all time to learn more about them. For in 1908, a fire consumed the home of Agnes Smith. No one knows how it started, but when it was over, nothing remained of the house, Mrs. Smith, or either of my grandparents. Two badly burned arms handed the firemen a blanket carrying a two year old baby: my mother. The arms receded and were not seen again by the firemen: were they my grandmother’s? My grandfather’s? Could they have been Agnes Smith?
(For years, I used to have nightmares about this story. In my mind’s eye, I could see the two darkened arms, thrusting out of the flames, no face behind them, holding the baby. And I also used to have dreams of my mother’s parents. They watched me, faceless, caught in shadow. I was haunted by these dreams.)
Mother was put in an orphanage in Whittier, California. She lived the next seven years in that orphanage, and she would not talk about those times to anyone. I overheard Grandfather speculating once that orphanages were terrible places in those days, (not that they were much better now!) and who knows what kind of treatment she received, especially since she was the only Japanese girl there. Naturally, Mother grew up with no memory of her parents, and speaking only English. I suppose her beauty saved her, because at the age of nine, she was adopted by a family named Wilson who lived in Fullerton, in Orange County.
Travis Wilson was a contractor who helped build custom homes. He was 52 and Iris Wilson was 47 when they decided together that their childless life was too lonely. So they ended up at the orphanage in Whittier. They probably wanted a nice white baby to raise, but then as now, those were in short supply for the adoption agencies. So they settled on my mother, who was certainly happy to go with them.
Now began what my mother described as her “wonderful years”, growing up in Fullerton with a couple who loved her. Mother attended elementary school and then middle school with all Caucasians, and she was treated like everyone else. She was popular because of her good looks, and had many friends. Of course, Mother knew she was Japanese, but was unaware of what this exactly entailed, not knowing any other Japanese people in her world.
All of this ended for Mother when she was seventeen. “Really”, she told me much later, “I should have realized it long before. But I was so naïve then, and living with the Wilsons kept me very sheltered. They were such nice, gentle people, Mary. And they loved me so much! I doubt my real parents could have loved me any more.”
It was at the end of my Mother’s junior year at Fullerton High School. There was a spring dance scheduled for the soon to be seniors, followed by a private party being given by Elizabeth Holding. Elizabeth was the most popular girl in school, a blond beauty from one of the finest families in Fullerton. She had always been cordial to Mother, but the two were not friends. Mother expected to be escorted to the dance and party by Jake Knightly, a pitcher for the baseball team who had been her beau for two years. Though not in love with Jake, Mother was fond of him; she described him to me as tall with big muscles and sandy brownish hair, “with a devil may care twinkle in his eye.” They kissed on occasion, but nothing deeper than that. “It was a pleasant, meaningless high school relationship,” she told me with a sigh.
timschochet
Footballguy
Seven nights before the party, Jake telephoned the Wilson residence. He told Mother that he could not go with her to the dance, as he had a “family emergency”.
“What sort of family emergency do you know about a week beforehand?” my Mother asked.
There was a pause on the phone, and then Jake blurted, “Let’s not make this harder than it already is, Erin.” And he hung up the phone.
During that week, Mother learned the truth from a friend of hers named Sylvia Perlman. Jake had been informed by Elizabeth Holding that he could not bring Erin Wilson to the private party because Elizabeth’s mother would not countenance a “*****”, as she termed it, as a guest in her house. It did not matter to Elizabeth’s mother that Erin was of Japanese descent; to her, they were all one and the same. Jake had been advised to invite someone else to both the party and the dance, and he had quickly agreed, not wanting to face social ostracism. Sylvia had also not been invited, because she was Jewish.
So there it was. For nearly eight years, during her older childhood and adolescence, my mother had been treated as an absolute equal by her peers. But suddenly when the first “adult” event occurred, she was smoothly separated out as not an acceptable race.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Mother told me, and even now, eighteen years later, I could see the deep hurt and anger in her eyes. “I was embarrassed to go to school. How could I stand in the hallway day after day with those people, with Jake and Elizabeth, pretending to be nice to them, knowing all the while they had rejected me? With Sylvia, it was different. She was raised Jewish, you see, and she never expected to be invited to those parties. She seemed indifferent to the crowd that mattered. But I? I was always part of that crowd, and I know this will sound foolish and unbelievable to you Mary, but I never knew there was any bigotry. I had never heard talk against Japanese, I didn’t even think of myself that way.”
She gave herself over to tears then, and hugged me tightly. After she had dried her eyes, she continued: “That night, I hated myself. I didn’t blame them, I blamed me. I hated the fact that I was Japanese, and not some white American. And I decided I couldn’t go back.”
She never told the Wilsons the real reason behind her quitting school that weekend. My mother was always very independent and just did what she wanted. She took correspondence courses over the summer, and graduated from high school early. Mother never saw any of the Fullerton high school students again. That fall, she enrolled at UCLA.
“That was in 1924,” she told me. “The Westwood campus hadn’t been built yet. I went to school on Vermont Avenue, where the city college is now. And it wasn’t even called UCLA then! Just the University of California. Do you know that I was the last graduating class at Vermont? Your father got his degree a year after I did, and it was in Westwood.”
Mother was a commuter to the school. Every day, at six in the morning, she would get in Mr. Wilson’s new Model T, and he would drive her for an hour up Highway 5 to reach the campus. Then he would pick her up each evening, and take her back to Fullerton. “He spent four hours a day driving me back and forth for the first three years of my time in college,” Mother said. “I didn’t know how to drive myself, and we only had one car. So Mr. Wilson did it. And you know what? He never complained, never said one word about it. The whole time in that car I’d talk about my courses, grumbled about teachers, problems I was having. It was always about me. My stepfather was in his early sixties by then, and he was retired. But he put up with me. He didn’t say much; he seemed to just enjoy listening to me talk. Oh Mary, they loved me so, the both of them. I’ve never been loved so uncritically ever since!”
I wanted to say, I love you uncritically, Mother. But I didn’t say it, and anyhow I suspected it wasn’t true. It probably wasn’t even true of the Wilsons either, but Mother liked to believe it.
She was a quiet student; she had no interest in making friends. “I was through with friends,” she said. “I was only seventeen, but I felt old for my years. I wanted nothing to do with their parties and their sororities. Would a sorority have accepted me? I didn’t know, I didn’t want to know. Sometimes white boys would approach me. Some were nice and tried to talk to me, others were more fresh. I was rude to all of them, I’m afraid. I was still so angry back then, and I didn’t fancy the idea of being someone’s exotic flower, the type of girl that you date at school but have no interest in marrying. I didn’t want to be that type of girl.”
Mother took up accounting. Her plan was to move to New York after school, and get a job there. “I had read all about it, and seen it in the movies. It was so cosmopolitan. I was quite sure that a Japanese girl who was an American in every way except how she looked would do fine there. I would be accepted for what I was. That was the plan, anyway.”
“What about the Wilsons?” I asked her. “You were just willing to leave them behind; after all they had done for you?”
“I didn’t even think about it,” she admitted. “I suppose I was so very selfish back then. I was only concerned with what would happen to me. You know who paid for my tuition, don’t you? Travis Wilson. He paid every cent. And Iris made all of my clothing. I just took, took, took, from those people, and never gave anything back. But when I told them about my plans for New York, they never said a word.”
Luckily for my future existence, New York remained a dream, not the reality. It was at UCLA that my mother discovered other Japanese people for the first time. “I had never known any before,” she admitted to me. “Can you believe it? But the UCLA students, although Nisei, were really very different from me, of course.”
Nisei was the Japanese term for second generation Japanese-Americans, those that were born here. Most adults of my mother and father’s generation were Nisei. Grandfather and Mr. Ishida belonged to the first generation, which we called Issei.
One day, a pretty Japanese girl approached my mother and spoke to her in rapid Japanese.
“I’m sorry,” Mother replied in English, somewhat embarrassed. “I don’t speak Japanese.”
“You don’t?” the girl asked, clearly surprised. “But you are Japanese, aren’t you? You don’t look Chinese.”
“I suppose I am,” Mother said. “But I don’t speak it- I never learned. I was raised by American parents.”
“Really?” the girl said, “How extraordinary! How did that happen?”
My mother just stared. “Who are you?” she demanded.
The pretty girl just laughed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. Let’s start over. My name is Tammy. Tammy Osagi. My friends say I ask too many questions, and I suppose they’re right. But I’ve seen you around, you know. And I keep asking myself, who is this beautiful Japanese girl that doesn’t hang around with the gang, stays aloof from everything, and nobody knows who she is? So I decided I would meet you today, and find out for myself.”
Tammy said this all in a rush, which was how she spoke all of the time. She told Mother she was from the area of Los Angeles known as “Little Tokyo”, where most of her friends were as well. Almost all of them were the children of farmers and laborers from Japan. There were about thirty of these students at UCLA at the time. They hung out in a “gang” together, generally watching out for each other.
Tammy Osagi, as it turns out, was dating my father, David Nakamura, when she met Erin Wilson. But it was only a casual thing; neither of them was in love with each other. Or so my mother told me. According to her, when Tammy introduced her to Father, he immediately fell head over heels. Also according to my mother, Tammy didn’t mind. I had no reason to disbelief this, since I knew Tammy. Now she was Tammy Fujinaka, and she lived two buildings away from us. She had three daughters, the oldest one six years old. I thought the girls were bratty. But Tammy remained my mom’s best friend.
The combination of Tammy, David, and the “gang” opened up a new world for my mother. Despite the fact that she spoke no Japanese, she felt like she belonged. And this came at an especially good time for her, because she was by herself. Travis Wilson died of a heart attack during Mother’s sophomore year, and his wife died not six months later. My mother inherited their savings and the value of the house in Fullerton. But she was alone.
Father swept her off her feet. He was young, good looking, and the wealthiest among them. It didn’t hurt that he was the son of perhaps the most prominent Japanese American in California, the famous Richard Nakamura. And he was attracted to her. It wasn’t only that my mother was beautiful, it was that she was so different from all the other girls he had grown up with. She was of Japanese descent, and yet she was American.
This is the same reason that my grandmother so disliked her. My grandmother had been born in Hiroshima, and came here as a young adult. She had been trained by her mother in what she believed was proper: be dutiful, humble, work hard, and obey your husband. Grandmother revered my Grandfather and never publicly questioned anything he did. She preferred Japanese foods, Japanese manners, and she wore a kimono. She spoke very little English. In the back of her mind she thought that her husband would one day take her and her two sons back to Japan, their real home. Perhaps she blamed Mother for somehow preventing this.
She had tried to imbue all of her traditions on David, and the fact that he would marry a girl who was so Americanized that she could not even speak Japanese made my grandmother feel betrayed. She urged him not to do it. She wanted my grandfather to intervene. He would not. Actually, Grandfather was rather charmed by my mother from the first, although he recognized the problems she would cause. He foresaw the inevitably of the pairing and did his best to be cordial to the girl, who reciprocated. Mother was always touched that anyone could treat her with kindness and dignity.
They were married in 1927, and my mother put away her dreams of New York City and settled down to become a good Japanese housewife. Except she had no idea how to do this. Grandmother felt it was her duty to try to instruct her, by my Mother resisted, and the coldness between the two continued.
It was broken by my birth in 1930, for from the moment Grandmother held me in her arms, she finally accepted that the marriage was permanent. After that, she was much kinder to Mother, although a new competition began, one which I was caught in the middle of: the competition for my very soul. How would I be raised? Mother wanted me to be raised American, as she had been, except she hoped I would one day gain the acceptance that she had lacked. That is why Mother stubbornly insisted I attend the all Caucasian elementary school.
Grandmother wanted me to be Japanese. She desired that I would resist the western temptations that this country offered, and grow up what she termed “the proper way.” That is why Grandmother stubbornly insisted, through my father, that I attend the Japanese school.
But I had a secret which I hid from both of them: I was determined not to be “too” American, and not to be “too” Japanese. I was going to be somebody different.
I was going to be me.
“What sort of family emergency do you know about a week beforehand?” my Mother asked.
There was a pause on the phone, and then Jake blurted, “Let’s not make this harder than it already is, Erin.” And he hung up the phone.
During that week, Mother learned the truth from a friend of hers named Sylvia Perlman. Jake had been informed by Elizabeth Holding that he could not bring Erin Wilson to the private party because Elizabeth’s mother would not countenance a “*****”, as she termed it, as a guest in her house. It did not matter to Elizabeth’s mother that Erin was of Japanese descent; to her, they were all one and the same. Jake had been advised to invite someone else to both the party and the dance, and he had quickly agreed, not wanting to face social ostracism. Sylvia had also not been invited, because she was Jewish.
So there it was. For nearly eight years, during her older childhood and adolescence, my mother had been treated as an absolute equal by her peers. But suddenly when the first “adult” event occurred, she was smoothly separated out as not an acceptable race.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Mother told me, and even now, eighteen years later, I could see the deep hurt and anger in her eyes. “I was embarrassed to go to school. How could I stand in the hallway day after day with those people, with Jake and Elizabeth, pretending to be nice to them, knowing all the while they had rejected me? With Sylvia, it was different. She was raised Jewish, you see, and she never expected to be invited to those parties. She seemed indifferent to the crowd that mattered. But I? I was always part of that crowd, and I know this will sound foolish and unbelievable to you Mary, but I never knew there was any bigotry. I had never heard talk against Japanese, I didn’t even think of myself that way.”
She gave herself over to tears then, and hugged me tightly. After she had dried her eyes, she continued: “That night, I hated myself. I didn’t blame them, I blamed me. I hated the fact that I was Japanese, and not some white American. And I decided I couldn’t go back.”
She never told the Wilsons the real reason behind her quitting school that weekend. My mother was always very independent and just did what she wanted. She took correspondence courses over the summer, and graduated from high school early. Mother never saw any of the Fullerton high school students again. That fall, she enrolled at UCLA.
“That was in 1924,” she told me. “The Westwood campus hadn’t been built yet. I went to school on Vermont Avenue, where the city college is now. And it wasn’t even called UCLA then! Just the University of California. Do you know that I was the last graduating class at Vermont? Your father got his degree a year after I did, and it was in Westwood.”
Mother was a commuter to the school. Every day, at six in the morning, she would get in Mr. Wilson’s new Model T, and he would drive her for an hour up Highway 5 to reach the campus. Then he would pick her up each evening, and take her back to Fullerton. “He spent four hours a day driving me back and forth for the first three years of my time in college,” Mother said. “I didn’t know how to drive myself, and we only had one car. So Mr. Wilson did it. And you know what? He never complained, never said one word about it. The whole time in that car I’d talk about my courses, grumbled about teachers, problems I was having. It was always about me. My stepfather was in his early sixties by then, and he was retired. But he put up with me. He didn’t say much; he seemed to just enjoy listening to me talk. Oh Mary, they loved me so, the both of them. I’ve never been loved so uncritically ever since!”
I wanted to say, I love you uncritically, Mother. But I didn’t say it, and anyhow I suspected it wasn’t true. It probably wasn’t even true of the Wilsons either, but Mother liked to believe it.
She was a quiet student; she had no interest in making friends. “I was through with friends,” she said. “I was only seventeen, but I felt old for my years. I wanted nothing to do with their parties and their sororities. Would a sorority have accepted me? I didn’t know, I didn’t want to know. Sometimes white boys would approach me. Some were nice and tried to talk to me, others were more fresh. I was rude to all of them, I’m afraid. I was still so angry back then, and I didn’t fancy the idea of being someone’s exotic flower, the type of girl that you date at school but have no interest in marrying. I didn’t want to be that type of girl.”
Mother took up accounting. Her plan was to move to New York after school, and get a job there. “I had read all about it, and seen it in the movies. It was so cosmopolitan. I was quite sure that a Japanese girl who was an American in every way except how she looked would do fine there. I would be accepted for what I was. That was the plan, anyway.”
“What about the Wilsons?” I asked her. “You were just willing to leave them behind; after all they had done for you?”
“I didn’t even think about it,” she admitted. “I suppose I was so very selfish back then. I was only concerned with what would happen to me. You know who paid for my tuition, don’t you? Travis Wilson. He paid every cent. And Iris made all of my clothing. I just took, took, took, from those people, and never gave anything back. But when I told them about my plans for New York, they never said a word.”
Luckily for my future existence, New York remained a dream, not the reality. It was at UCLA that my mother discovered other Japanese people for the first time. “I had never known any before,” she admitted to me. “Can you believe it? But the UCLA students, although Nisei, were really very different from me, of course.”
Nisei was the Japanese term for second generation Japanese-Americans, those that were born here. Most adults of my mother and father’s generation were Nisei. Grandfather and Mr. Ishida belonged to the first generation, which we called Issei.
One day, a pretty Japanese girl approached my mother and spoke to her in rapid Japanese.
“I’m sorry,” Mother replied in English, somewhat embarrassed. “I don’t speak Japanese.”
“You don’t?” the girl asked, clearly surprised. “But you are Japanese, aren’t you? You don’t look Chinese.”
“I suppose I am,” Mother said. “But I don’t speak it- I never learned. I was raised by American parents.”
“Really?” the girl said, “How extraordinary! How did that happen?”
My mother just stared. “Who are you?” she demanded.
The pretty girl just laughed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. Let’s start over. My name is Tammy. Tammy Osagi. My friends say I ask too many questions, and I suppose they’re right. But I’ve seen you around, you know. And I keep asking myself, who is this beautiful Japanese girl that doesn’t hang around with the gang, stays aloof from everything, and nobody knows who she is? So I decided I would meet you today, and find out for myself.”
Tammy said this all in a rush, which was how she spoke all of the time. She told Mother she was from the area of Los Angeles known as “Little Tokyo”, where most of her friends were as well. Almost all of them were the children of farmers and laborers from Japan. There were about thirty of these students at UCLA at the time. They hung out in a “gang” together, generally watching out for each other.
Tammy Osagi, as it turns out, was dating my father, David Nakamura, when she met Erin Wilson. But it was only a casual thing; neither of them was in love with each other. Or so my mother told me. According to her, when Tammy introduced her to Father, he immediately fell head over heels. Also according to my mother, Tammy didn’t mind. I had no reason to disbelief this, since I knew Tammy. Now she was Tammy Fujinaka, and she lived two buildings away from us. She had three daughters, the oldest one six years old. I thought the girls were bratty. But Tammy remained my mom’s best friend.
The combination of Tammy, David, and the “gang” opened up a new world for my mother. Despite the fact that she spoke no Japanese, she felt like she belonged. And this came at an especially good time for her, because she was by herself. Travis Wilson died of a heart attack during Mother’s sophomore year, and his wife died not six months later. My mother inherited their savings and the value of the house in Fullerton. But she was alone.
Father swept her off her feet. He was young, good looking, and the wealthiest among them. It didn’t hurt that he was the son of perhaps the most prominent Japanese American in California, the famous Richard Nakamura. And he was attracted to her. It wasn’t only that my mother was beautiful, it was that she was so different from all the other girls he had grown up with. She was of Japanese descent, and yet she was American.
This is the same reason that my grandmother so disliked her. My grandmother had been born in Hiroshima, and came here as a young adult. She had been trained by her mother in what she believed was proper: be dutiful, humble, work hard, and obey your husband. Grandmother revered my Grandfather and never publicly questioned anything he did. She preferred Japanese foods, Japanese manners, and she wore a kimono. She spoke very little English. In the back of her mind she thought that her husband would one day take her and her two sons back to Japan, their real home. Perhaps she blamed Mother for somehow preventing this.
She had tried to imbue all of her traditions on David, and the fact that he would marry a girl who was so Americanized that she could not even speak Japanese made my grandmother feel betrayed. She urged him not to do it. She wanted my grandfather to intervene. He would not. Actually, Grandfather was rather charmed by my mother from the first, although he recognized the problems she would cause. He foresaw the inevitably of the pairing and did his best to be cordial to the girl, who reciprocated. Mother was always touched that anyone could treat her with kindness and dignity.
They were married in 1927, and my mother put away her dreams of New York City and settled down to become a good Japanese housewife. Except she had no idea how to do this. Grandmother felt it was her duty to try to instruct her, by my Mother resisted, and the coldness between the two continued.
It was broken by my birth in 1930, for from the moment Grandmother held me in her arms, she finally accepted that the marriage was permanent. After that, she was much kinder to Mother, although a new competition began, one which I was caught in the middle of: the competition for my very soul. How would I be raised? Mother wanted me to be raised American, as she had been, except she hoped I would one day gain the acceptance that she had lacked. That is why Mother stubbornly insisted I attend the all Caucasian elementary school.
Grandmother wanted me to be Japanese. She desired that I would resist the western temptations that this country offered, and grow up what she termed “the proper way.” That is why Grandmother stubbornly insisted, through my father, that I attend the Japanese school.
But I had a secret which I hid from both of them: I was determined not to be “too” American, and not to be “too” Japanese. I was going to be somebody different.
I was going to be me.
rick6668
Footballguy
I was probably the only one, but I was reading it and I was hoping you'd post it all.It's like watching a new series that you like but no one else seems to and then it's cancelled after 5 episodes.
timschochet
Footballguy
Sorry about that. Well, try the new one, maybe you'll like it even more.I was probably the only one, but I was reading it and I was hoping you'd post it all.
It's like watching a new series that you like but no one else seems to and then it's cancelled after 5 episodes.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Three
Brockton Elementary School was made out of red bricks. The bricks always gave me a feeling of vast power and indestructibility. When I first came to the school in 1936, they also made feel safe and secure: the bricks were somehow protective. But this feeling had changed over the years; now, in 1941, I had just started the sixth grade, and the bricks were full of a dark and hidden menace, a snarling monster waiting somewhere behind them.
Of course, there was no monster; there was only Mrs. Bernstein, my teacher. Mrs. Bernstein was in her early thirties, and overweight; she had dark brown hair and wore a slight moustache. She was not a pretty woman. I think this made her cross with the pretty girls in our class. But she didn’t like me for very different reasons; she made these reasons clear to me on the second day of school.
“It’s important to understand about the world in which we live,” she started blandly that day, and I just assumed it would be a geography lesson of some sort. Most of the kids were bored by geography and social studies in general, but I enjoyed it. The year before, I had recited from memory the capitals of every state in the Union, and over the summer I had memorized the same for South America, just for fun.
But geography was not what Mrs. Bernstein had in mind this morning. “You all know there is a war going on; Germany against England. While you were on summer vacation, Germany attacked Russia, as well. Now the Nazis have overrun most of that country, and they’re about to conquer Moscow, the capital.”
Of course, I knew much about the details of this, as Mr. Ishida had talked about it with great excitement for the last two months. The invasion of the Soviet Union, he explained, was Japan’s great chance to destroy the imperialists once and for all. My grandfather said Japan would be wise to stay out of it, and would be even wiser to end their alliance with the Germans. Most of the grownups in our community agreed with Grandfather, though some sided with Mr. Ishida.
It turned out it was Japan that Mrs. Bernstein really wanted to talk about as well, much to my great discomfort. But she went about it in a roundabout way:
“The Nazis are very, very, bad people. Hitler means to take over the earth. When he does, he plans on killing all of the Jewish people, because he hates them more than anyone. “Now, I think all of you know that I’m Jewish. There are some other Jews in this class as well, if you didn’t know: Rebecca Gold, sitting there in the front row, and Mark Levy in the back. I’ve spoken to their parents because we all attend the same Temple and it turns out that all of us have family in Poland who are suffering greatly right now under German rule. I haven’t heard from my cousins since right after the war started, but conditions are terrible there. I just pray every day that they’ll survive.”
At this point Rebecca, who had been a good friend of mine forever, raised her hand, and when she was called upon, she stood up. “My uncle lives in Cracow; we got a letter from him through the Red Cross. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews and put them in a ghetto behind tall stone walls. There isn’t enough food, and smugglers are shot to death. We haven’t heard from him since.”
“Thank you, Rebecca,” Mrs. Bernstein said. “Of course, we all hope for the best for your uncle. What we really should hope for is for Germany to be defeated; that’s the only way to save the Jews, not to mention all of the other Europeans that are enslaved by those evil people.”
She paused, drumming her fingers nervously on her desk, then continued. “Germany will never be defeated quickly while other countries remain friendly to her. Italy has been an ally all along, but now there is another powerful nation that has recently come to Germany’s aid, a nation that by its actions threatens America. That nation is Japan.”
As she said this, I felt my heart go cold. It was the first time ever I could remember this subject being introduced formally by a teacher in my school. Suddenly everyone in the class was staring at me. Was it my imagination? No, it certainly wasn’t. They were staring, and the looks were not friendly.
Mrs. Bernstein was not looking in my direction; she was not looking at anyone. But the next words she spoke were terrible:
“Why is Japan allied with Germany? Because like Germany, Japan seeks to conquer. The Japs are a treacherous race; they have been our natural enemy for nearly one hundred years. They seek to drive us and the British out of the Far East, but that is not all, oh no. The Japs want to take over Hawaii, and even that won’t satisfy them. What they really want is to conquer California and the West Coast of the U.S.A.”
Everytime she used the word “Japs”, I winced. Such an ugly term, like calling a colored person a “######”. All of us hated when Caucasians used that term; couldn’t they see that? Besides, what Mrs. Bernstein was saying just wasn’t true. Even from what I had read in the Tokio, Japan was not seeking to invade California. And the rest was an exaggeration, as well. But I held my tongue; I was getting very nervous now.
“They’ve already completed part of their scheme,” Mrs. Bernstein continued. “Japan has flooded California with *** immigrants, all of whom work for the day of our destruction. There are over one hundred and fifty thousand of these people among us, whose only loyalty is to their Emperor. They are the vanguard for the coming invasion.” And finally, she turned her eyes and looked directly at me. “Stand up, Mary Nakamura.”
Slowly I rose to my feet. I felt dreamlike, as if this were all happening to someone other than me. A distant part of my brain was thinking, one hundred and fifty thousand? Grandfather says there are only ninety thousand of us. So another exaggeration.
“Now Mary,” Mrs. Bernstein said. “You’re the only *** girl in this school so you can answer some questions for us.”
“Japanese, Mrs. Bernstein,” I said quietly.
“Excuse me, Mary?”
“Japanese. ‘***’ is considered offensive.”
A wry unpleasant smile appeared on the teacher’s lips. It was a cruel smile, and I was very afraid. “Really, Mary. Do you think I intended to be offensive to you? Of course I didn’t. The word ‘***’ though, is hardly a rude term. It’s been used commonly for years now. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, all of the major newspapers use this term frequently. I believe even President Roosevelt used that word. Didn’t he say over the summer, ‘I’m going to show the Japs they can’t push us around anymore’? So you see, Mary, I’m not being offensive at all, am I? In Fact, I spoke rather properly, don’t you think?”
I wanted to tell her that the answer was no, that I didn’t care which white people had used the word, it was a bad word because it was always used with disdain or hatred towards us. I wanted to tell Mrs. Bernstein that it would be the same as calling her a “sheeny” or “****”, which were awful terms for Jewish kids that I had heard whispered in the playground from time to time. But this was the teacher lecturing me, and I had been trained well: you do not question the sensei.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “May I sit down now?”
“No, you may not, because I was unable to ask you my question before I was interrupted by you, and I intend to do so. Now Mary, as I said, you are the only *** in this school. Now I understand you’re only ten years old, and no one is holding you responsible for what your people are plotting against us. But surely you are aware of what is going on in your community, so you can tell us: are your older friends and relatives looking forward to an invasion by Japan? Are they already plotting acts of sabotage against good American institutions? Please tell us about it, Mary.”
This question was put to me in matter of fact tones, in the same manner I had been given so many lessons in the past: Please solve the division problem on the board, Mary. Please demonstrate a compound sentence, Mary. But what was I to say? What answer was she expecting?
“Uh, Mrs. Bernstein,” I said trembling, “Uh, I don’t really think… that is-” I was stumbling my words. And they all continued to stare with those cold looks. Desperately I glanced at Martha Helms, my very best friend at Brockton. We had been like sisters since the second grade. I had spent the night at her house before, though she had not come to mine in return (she told me it was because her parents didn’t want her to spend the night in an apartment building; the Helms lived in a nice house.) I was hoping that Martha would show me some support with her eyes.
But now she was looking at me just as they all were. In Martha’s case it was as if she was seeing me for the first time, and she detested what she was looking at. It was horrible.
“No need to be nervous, Mary” Mrs. Bernstein said, and the worst part was that her voice actually sounded friendly and helpful. “No one’s going to get you in trouble. I just want you to be honest, that’s all. So tell us what you’ve seen.”
I thought of my grandfather then, and all of the stories I had been told about his bravery in the face of hatred and prejudice. I wasn’t brave. But I could pretend. So I pretended I was Grandfather; how would he reply to such questions? And then I had the simple answer. He would reply with the truth. “You can never argue with the truth, Mary,” he would always tell me. “Oh, lots of people try to, but they almost always lose. Honto (truth) is debating champion.”
I said firmly, “The truth is, Mrs. Bernstein, that the grown-ups in my community are too busy working hard all the time to be thinking about Japan and America. They just want to take care of their families and protect their children. Most of us consider ourselves American, Mrs. Bernstein, as much as anyone here.”
The class seemed surprised by my forthrightness. They couldn’t see that it was all an act; that I was pretending. However, Mrs. Bernstein stayed on the attack. “Most, Mary? So there are at least some among you who don’t consider yourselves American?”
“Some of them were not allowed to be citizens. There are laws that prevent them from doing so. So some of the older ones don’t really feel that much like Americans.”
Mrs. Bernstein let this pass by, and continued. “You’re actually telling us, Mary, that you haven’t seen any planned acts of sabotage, haven’t heard any hopeful talk of a Japanese invasion?”
“No, Ma’am” I said. It was true. Even the Tokio didn’t go so far as this. Mr. Ishida was certainly pro-Japan and probably pro-Axis as well, but he wasn’t looking towards a Japanese invasion of California, only for some far away battle that would demonstrate the martial might of the country of his birth, after which hopefully the U.S.A. would leave Japan alone. And sabotage? Against whom? We were mostly poor farmers and laborers.
Mrs. Bernstein gave a long sigh, then said, “Well, of course they’re not going to tell a ten year old what they’re thinking, but still, you’ve got eyes and ears, Mary. You really should have noticed something, don’t you think?”
Her voice was soft and chiding, as if I had just missed a math problem. “May I sit down now, Mrs. Bernstein?”
”Yes, of course, Mary, but try to pay attention in the future.”
I nodded and sat down. Pay attention? To whom? To you? Or to the saboteurs living somewhere in my apartment building?
Over the next couple of months, Mrs. Bernstein called on me often. I was a very good student, and always knew the answers to whatever problem was on the board. She would always compliment me for these efforts. But then, every few days, she would ask me another leading question about the attitudes of the Japanese in my community, and when I claimed innocence, she would always scold me to “pay more attention”.
I didn’t understand Mrs. Bernstein. I knew she was worried about her poor relatives trapped in Europe, but what did that have to do with me? Did she hate me? She was never anything but polite, except for using that terrible “***” word. And when she wasn’t questioning me, Mrs. Bernstein treated me like any other student.
It was on the playground where I really suffered as a result of what Mrs. Bernstein had caused. It began that first day, with Martha Helms and Rebecca Gold. The three of us had always played as a threesome. Now, they huddled together and wouldn’t talk to me. Nobody talked to me; it was as if I was a leper.
On the third day of school, a big boy a year older than I was walked up to me and shoved me to the pavement. “Get out of our school, you damned ***.”
His name was Harold something or other; he was always in trouble for beating up kids. Everyone thought of Harold something or other as the school bully. But he had never touched a girl before now. I wasn’t hurt, but I lay there on the ground until he went away. Nobody sought to pick me up.
Harold didn’t bother me after that day, but still nobody would talk to me. Finally, a few days later, Martha approached me at lunchtime and said softly, “It’s okay to play with you now.”
“It is?” I asked, relieved that she was actually speaking to me.
“Yes. I spoke to my mom about it, and she told me that I shouldn’t blame you for what your parents are doing.”
Martha’s mother was a pretty red-haired lady named Angela; she worked as a nurse in the county hospital. She had always been very sweet to me.
“Martha,” I said, unable to hide the exasperation in my voice. “My parents are doing nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Martha shook her head. “I don’t want to discuss it. The whole thing scares me so. I don’t know why your people would hate America so much. What did we ever do to you?”
”But we don’t hate America,” I replied.
“I said I didn’t want to discuss it! It’s all too awful. We can be friends again if we just don’t talk about this. We’ll just pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Reluctantly I nodded. Anything was better than the silent treatment I was getting. Maybe we could really pretend that the outside world didn’t exist.
“But don’t try to talk to Rebecca”, Martha continued. “She really hates you now. She blames you for what’s happening to the Jews. She’s mad at me for even speaking to you.”
“She blames me?” I said, bewildered. But why?
“Well, the Nazis and the Japs are friends, aren’t they? But anyway, the point is, I’m not Rebecca. She’s a Jew with Jew problems; just like you’re a *** with *** problems. But I’m an American, so I can be friendly to everyone. That’s how my mom explained it, and it sounded so beautiful to me, don’t you think?”
I’m an American too, Martha. After all, I was born here. But like so many other thoughts of mine, these remained unspoken. I was sad about Rebecca, but bewildered as to what to do. Everything was changing, and not for the better.
I never said a word about anything to my family. I felt ashamed, like it was my fault. My mother had fought so hard with everyone to put me in this school, and if I told, Grandmother would insist on my leaving. Secretly, I would have been pleased to leave, because the place was becoming hateful to me. Even my friendship with Martha was not what it had been.
But it would have torn my mother apart. She wanted so badly for me to be accepted; I was the hope of her life, living out the American dream that she felt she had been cheated out of somehow. I think mother wouldn’t really have minded if when I grew up someday that I would meet and marry a white husband. She really wanted me to be white. Poor Mother!
Brockton Elementary School was made out of red bricks. The bricks always gave me a feeling of vast power and indestructibility. When I first came to the school in 1936, they also made feel safe and secure: the bricks were somehow protective. But this feeling had changed over the years; now, in 1941, I had just started the sixth grade, and the bricks were full of a dark and hidden menace, a snarling monster waiting somewhere behind them.
Of course, there was no monster; there was only Mrs. Bernstein, my teacher. Mrs. Bernstein was in her early thirties, and overweight; she had dark brown hair and wore a slight moustache. She was not a pretty woman. I think this made her cross with the pretty girls in our class. But she didn’t like me for very different reasons; she made these reasons clear to me on the second day of school.
“It’s important to understand about the world in which we live,” she started blandly that day, and I just assumed it would be a geography lesson of some sort. Most of the kids were bored by geography and social studies in general, but I enjoyed it. The year before, I had recited from memory the capitals of every state in the Union, and over the summer I had memorized the same for South America, just for fun.
But geography was not what Mrs. Bernstein had in mind this morning. “You all know there is a war going on; Germany against England. While you were on summer vacation, Germany attacked Russia, as well. Now the Nazis have overrun most of that country, and they’re about to conquer Moscow, the capital.”
Of course, I knew much about the details of this, as Mr. Ishida had talked about it with great excitement for the last two months. The invasion of the Soviet Union, he explained, was Japan’s great chance to destroy the imperialists once and for all. My grandfather said Japan would be wise to stay out of it, and would be even wiser to end their alliance with the Germans. Most of the grownups in our community agreed with Grandfather, though some sided with Mr. Ishida.
It turned out it was Japan that Mrs. Bernstein really wanted to talk about as well, much to my great discomfort. But she went about it in a roundabout way:
“The Nazis are very, very, bad people. Hitler means to take over the earth. When he does, he plans on killing all of the Jewish people, because he hates them more than anyone. “Now, I think all of you know that I’m Jewish. There are some other Jews in this class as well, if you didn’t know: Rebecca Gold, sitting there in the front row, and Mark Levy in the back. I’ve spoken to their parents because we all attend the same Temple and it turns out that all of us have family in Poland who are suffering greatly right now under German rule. I haven’t heard from my cousins since right after the war started, but conditions are terrible there. I just pray every day that they’ll survive.”
At this point Rebecca, who had been a good friend of mine forever, raised her hand, and when she was called upon, she stood up. “My uncle lives in Cracow; we got a letter from him through the Red Cross. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews and put them in a ghetto behind tall stone walls. There isn’t enough food, and smugglers are shot to death. We haven’t heard from him since.”
“Thank you, Rebecca,” Mrs. Bernstein said. “Of course, we all hope for the best for your uncle. What we really should hope for is for Germany to be defeated; that’s the only way to save the Jews, not to mention all of the other Europeans that are enslaved by those evil people.”
She paused, drumming her fingers nervously on her desk, then continued. “Germany will never be defeated quickly while other countries remain friendly to her. Italy has been an ally all along, but now there is another powerful nation that has recently come to Germany’s aid, a nation that by its actions threatens America. That nation is Japan.”
As she said this, I felt my heart go cold. It was the first time ever I could remember this subject being introduced formally by a teacher in my school. Suddenly everyone in the class was staring at me. Was it my imagination? No, it certainly wasn’t. They were staring, and the looks were not friendly.
Mrs. Bernstein was not looking in my direction; she was not looking at anyone. But the next words she spoke were terrible:
“Why is Japan allied with Germany? Because like Germany, Japan seeks to conquer. The Japs are a treacherous race; they have been our natural enemy for nearly one hundred years. They seek to drive us and the British out of the Far East, but that is not all, oh no. The Japs want to take over Hawaii, and even that won’t satisfy them. What they really want is to conquer California and the West Coast of the U.S.A.”
Everytime she used the word “Japs”, I winced. Such an ugly term, like calling a colored person a “######”. All of us hated when Caucasians used that term; couldn’t they see that? Besides, what Mrs. Bernstein was saying just wasn’t true. Even from what I had read in the Tokio, Japan was not seeking to invade California. And the rest was an exaggeration, as well. But I held my tongue; I was getting very nervous now.
“They’ve already completed part of their scheme,” Mrs. Bernstein continued. “Japan has flooded California with *** immigrants, all of whom work for the day of our destruction. There are over one hundred and fifty thousand of these people among us, whose only loyalty is to their Emperor. They are the vanguard for the coming invasion.” And finally, she turned her eyes and looked directly at me. “Stand up, Mary Nakamura.”
Slowly I rose to my feet. I felt dreamlike, as if this were all happening to someone other than me. A distant part of my brain was thinking, one hundred and fifty thousand? Grandfather says there are only ninety thousand of us. So another exaggeration.
“Now Mary,” Mrs. Bernstein said. “You’re the only *** girl in this school so you can answer some questions for us.”
“Japanese, Mrs. Bernstein,” I said quietly.
“Excuse me, Mary?”
“Japanese. ‘***’ is considered offensive.”
A wry unpleasant smile appeared on the teacher’s lips. It was a cruel smile, and I was very afraid. “Really, Mary. Do you think I intended to be offensive to you? Of course I didn’t. The word ‘***’ though, is hardly a rude term. It’s been used commonly for years now. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, all of the major newspapers use this term frequently. I believe even President Roosevelt used that word. Didn’t he say over the summer, ‘I’m going to show the Japs they can’t push us around anymore’? So you see, Mary, I’m not being offensive at all, am I? In Fact, I spoke rather properly, don’t you think?”
I wanted to tell her that the answer was no, that I didn’t care which white people had used the word, it was a bad word because it was always used with disdain or hatred towards us. I wanted to tell Mrs. Bernstein that it would be the same as calling her a “sheeny” or “****”, which were awful terms for Jewish kids that I had heard whispered in the playground from time to time. But this was the teacher lecturing me, and I had been trained well: you do not question the sensei.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “May I sit down now?”
“No, you may not, because I was unable to ask you my question before I was interrupted by you, and I intend to do so. Now Mary, as I said, you are the only *** in this school. Now I understand you’re only ten years old, and no one is holding you responsible for what your people are plotting against us. But surely you are aware of what is going on in your community, so you can tell us: are your older friends and relatives looking forward to an invasion by Japan? Are they already plotting acts of sabotage against good American institutions? Please tell us about it, Mary.”
This question was put to me in matter of fact tones, in the same manner I had been given so many lessons in the past: Please solve the division problem on the board, Mary. Please demonstrate a compound sentence, Mary. But what was I to say? What answer was she expecting?
“Uh, Mrs. Bernstein,” I said trembling, “Uh, I don’t really think… that is-” I was stumbling my words. And they all continued to stare with those cold looks. Desperately I glanced at Martha Helms, my very best friend at Brockton. We had been like sisters since the second grade. I had spent the night at her house before, though she had not come to mine in return (she told me it was because her parents didn’t want her to spend the night in an apartment building; the Helms lived in a nice house.) I was hoping that Martha would show me some support with her eyes.
But now she was looking at me just as they all were. In Martha’s case it was as if she was seeing me for the first time, and she detested what she was looking at. It was horrible.
“No need to be nervous, Mary” Mrs. Bernstein said, and the worst part was that her voice actually sounded friendly and helpful. “No one’s going to get you in trouble. I just want you to be honest, that’s all. So tell us what you’ve seen.”
I thought of my grandfather then, and all of the stories I had been told about his bravery in the face of hatred and prejudice. I wasn’t brave. But I could pretend. So I pretended I was Grandfather; how would he reply to such questions? And then I had the simple answer. He would reply with the truth. “You can never argue with the truth, Mary,” he would always tell me. “Oh, lots of people try to, but they almost always lose. Honto (truth) is debating champion.”
I said firmly, “The truth is, Mrs. Bernstein, that the grown-ups in my community are too busy working hard all the time to be thinking about Japan and America. They just want to take care of their families and protect their children. Most of us consider ourselves American, Mrs. Bernstein, as much as anyone here.”
The class seemed surprised by my forthrightness. They couldn’t see that it was all an act; that I was pretending. However, Mrs. Bernstein stayed on the attack. “Most, Mary? So there are at least some among you who don’t consider yourselves American?”
“Some of them were not allowed to be citizens. There are laws that prevent them from doing so. So some of the older ones don’t really feel that much like Americans.”
Mrs. Bernstein let this pass by, and continued. “You’re actually telling us, Mary, that you haven’t seen any planned acts of sabotage, haven’t heard any hopeful talk of a Japanese invasion?”
“No, Ma’am” I said. It was true. Even the Tokio didn’t go so far as this. Mr. Ishida was certainly pro-Japan and probably pro-Axis as well, but he wasn’t looking towards a Japanese invasion of California, only for some far away battle that would demonstrate the martial might of the country of his birth, after which hopefully the U.S.A. would leave Japan alone. And sabotage? Against whom? We were mostly poor farmers and laborers.
Mrs. Bernstein gave a long sigh, then said, “Well, of course they’re not going to tell a ten year old what they’re thinking, but still, you’ve got eyes and ears, Mary. You really should have noticed something, don’t you think?”
Her voice was soft and chiding, as if I had just missed a math problem. “May I sit down now, Mrs. Bernstein?”
”Yes, of course, Mary, but try to pay attention in the future.”
I nodded and sat down. Pay attention? To whom? To you? Or to the saboteurs living somewhere in my apartment building?
Over the next couple of months, Mrs. Bernstein called on me often. I was a very good student, and always knew the answers to whatever problem was on the board. She would always compliment me for these efforts. But then, every few days, she would ask me another leading question about the attitudes of the Japanese in my community, and when I claimed innocence, she would always scold me to “pay more attention”.
I didn’t understand Mrs. Bernstein. I knew she was worried about her poor relatives trapped in Europe, but what did that have to do with me? Did she hate me? She was never anything but polite, except for using that terrible “***” word. And when she wasn’t questioning me, Mrs. Bernstein treated me like any other student.
It was on the playground where I really suffered as a result of what Mrs. Bernstein had caused. It began that first day, with Martha Helms and Rebecca Gold. The three of us had always played as a threesome. Now, they huddled together and wouldn’t talk to me. Nobody talked to me; it was as if I was a leper.
On the third day of school, a big boy a year older than I was walked up to me and shoved me to the pavement. “Get out of our school, you damned ***.”
His name was Harold something or other; he was always in trouble for beating up kids. Everyone thought of Harold something or other as the school bully. But he had never touched a girl before now. I wasn’t hurt, but I lay there on the ground until he went away. Nobody sought to pick me up.
Harold didn’t bother me after that day, but still nobody would talk to me. Finally, a few days later, Martha approached me at lunchtime and said softly, “It’s okay to play with you now.”
“It is?” I asked, relieved that she was actually speaking to me.
“Yes. I spoke to my mom about it, and she told me that I shouldn’t blame you for what your parents are doing.”
Martha’s mother was a pretty red-haired lady named Angela; she worked as a nurse in the county hospital. She had always been very sweet to me.
“Martha,” I said, unable to hide the exasperation in my voice. “My parents are doing nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Martha shook her head. “I don’t want to discuss it. The whole thing scares me so. I don’t know why your people would hate America so much. What did we ever do to you?”
”But we don’t hate America,” I replied.
“I said I didn’t want to discuss it! It’s all too awful. We can be friends again if we just don’t talk about this. We’ll just pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Reluctantly I nodded. Anything was better than the silent treatment I was getting. Maybe we could really pretend that the outside world didn’t exist.
“But don’t try to talk to Rebecca”, Martha continued. “She really hates you now. She blames you for what’s happening to the Jews. She’s mad at me for even speaking to you.”
“She blames me?” I said, bewildered. But why?
“Well, the Nazis and the Japs are friends, aren’t they? But anyway, the point is, I’m not Rebecca. She’s a Jew with Jew problems; just like you’re a *** with *** problems. But I’m an American, so I can be friendly to everyone. That’s how my mom explained it, and it sounded so beautiful to me, don’t you think?”
I’m an American too, Martha. After all, I was born here. But like so many other thoughts of mine, these remained unspoken. I was sad about Rebecca, but bewildered as to what to do. Everything was changing, and not for the better.
I never said a word about anything to my family. I felt ashamed, like it was my fault. My mother had fought so hard with everyone to put me in this school, and if I told, Grandmother would insist on my leaving. Secretly, I would have been pleased to leave, because the place was becoming hateful to me. Even my friendship with Martha was not what it had been.
But it would have torn my mother apart. She wanted so badly for me to be accepted; I was the hope of her life, living out the American dream that she felt she had been cheated out of somehow. I think mother wouldn’t really have minded if when I grew up someday that I would meet and marry a white husband. She really wanted me to be white. Poor Mother!
timschochet
Footballguy
So I kept silent and endured, and every day it seemed to get a little worse. The questioning by Mrs. Bernstein (always in such polite tones) the cold shoulder from everyone except Martha, who was willing to play with me so long as we didn’t talk about “*** stuff.” It began to affect my schoolwork. I had trouble concentrating during tests. In December I would get my report card and have to show my parents. What would my grades be? How would I explain them to my mother; me, who always got perfect marks? This fear added to my anxiety. My stomach began to hurt all the time that I was at Brockton. I had very little appetite.
There was just as much tension in Japanese School, but fortunately for me, I was not at the center of it. Unlike the large Brockton building made of bricks, Japanese school was located behind a grocer’s storefront only a few blocks from my house. We were crammed into a small, windowless, room. In true Japanese style, there were no chairs, only mats which we kneeled on. The only adornment was a full color painting of Emperor Hirohito of Japan.
The Sensei was as opposite to Mrs. Bernstein as I could possibly imagine. His name was Shigeo Watanabe, and he was short and thin, in his mid forties, with strong wiry muscles. His face was lined, and I rarely saw him without a lit cigarette poking out of the dry , corner of his mouth, which was in a perpetual sneer. The smoke from the cigarette filled the room, and always made me cough. The sneer was from contempt.
The Sensei had contempt for everything American, and especially us students who desired to become more American. When he wasn’t teaching us the language, history, or about the Emperor, he spent almost all of his time deriding American customs and habits, while we listened in silence. I often wondered whether or not the Sensei and Mr. Ishida knew each other; they were certainly kindred spirits.
“Look at their movies, and radio programs,” he would say in a typical lecture. “What are the stories that you hear? Boys leave their parents, never to return. Young girls look for work in the city. Boys and girls involved in disgraceful behavior! Parties, and drinking, and Jazz music. And these things are promoted in this society. Where is duty? Where is honor? Where is family in all this? I will tell you, it is nowhere! You have to look to the Japanese for these things. Japanese boys don’t leave their parents; they work hard and honor their parents. Young Japanese girls are cherished; they don’t need to leave their homes. We know our duty!”
Duty. In Japanese, hombun or giri (although giri really meant a person’s fate in life.) It was pounded into us every day we were in Japanese school. Honor your parents. Honor the Emperor. Honor authority. Lying is unthinkable. Cheating is unthinkable. Stealing is an unimaginable crime. Manners are everything.
My previous teachers at Brockton always commented with pleasant surprise what a well-mannered girl I was, how I never got into trouble. In truth, I was no different from any of the Nisei who attended the Japanese school. We all were taught to revere our teachers, and any kind of insubordination would have been impossible.
Yet, even here, times were changing, and this was the source of the tension that now permeated Japanese School. At the center of it was a boy named Tadeo Kimura; we all called him Todd.
Todd Kimura was two years older than me; he was tall and handsome, with a lock of hair that always fell over his eyes when he talked. All of the girls had a crush on him, me included. He was smart, very smart, but he was a rebel among us. For years he had quietly made fun of Sensei behind his back, though he was subservient and polite like the rest of us in front of him. But all that changed in the fall of that year. For the first time, Todd openly challenged our teacher in the classroom.
It began with a question, simply put, but shocking to the rest of us. Todd stood up without being asked and interrupted Sensei’s lecture by asking: “Excuse me, sir, but if America is not a good example for us, then Japan isn’t either, don’t you think?”
Mr. Watanabe gasped in shock. He just stared at Todd, and then said slowly, “What? What did you say?”
“What I mean is, Japan invades other nations like China; America doesn’t. Japan has a secret police and no freedom of speech, and the military runs the government there. I would much rather be an American, with everything wrong that you stated, than a Japanese.”
We all stared open-mouthed at this blasphemy; even though Todd was repeating things we had all discussed among ourselves and mostly agreed with. But to say it in front of Sensei!
The teacher’s response to this statement was almost instantaneous. He strode forward to where Todd was standing and back-handed him hard across the face. The boy stumbled to the ground, his lips forming an ugly welt already thick with blood.
Sensei stood over him. As Todd began to get up, Mr. Watanabe kicked him hard in the ribs, and Todd fell back down again.
“You will stay on your knees,” our teacher snapped, “and then you will beg the Emperor for forgiveness. Then you will apologize to me and to this class for your rude manners. How dare you interrupt to give your opinion? Are you the sensei now? Am I the young student? No, you stay down, and consider your error.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out another cigarette. He lit it, and addressed us. “It is not Kimura Tadeo’s duty to concern himself with what Japan does. It is not for Kimura Tadeo to question the form of government that the Emperor allows. It is for Kimura Tadeo to obey the Emperor, and to be a proud Japanese.”
After class that day, Todd wouldn’t speak to the rest of us. None of us could guess how he explained things to his parents. For the next two weeks he was silent in class unless called upon, but then, incredibly, he spoke up again.
This time the subject was Indochina. It was all over the newsreels: Japan had invaded even though Franklin Roosevelt had ordered her not to; now, the Americans were retaliating by starting an oil embargo.
Sensei was predictably condemning the President of the United States for this “treacherous” action. “By committing this crime,” he explained to us, “Roosevelt reveals to the world what he really wants: for the Asian to be forever at the mercy of the Westerner. He wants proud Japan to bow and scrape at the heels of her American master. But mark my words, Japan will not do so.”
And there was Todd standing up again. The welt on his face had cleared up, and he looked just as defiant as before. He said, “But why did Japan occupy Indochina in the first place? That land has never belonged to Japan. What gives her the right to just invade other countries?”
I fully expected another slap, as before, and possibly Todd’s expulsion from the school this time. After all, he had been warned. We watched, horrified, as the teacher just stared at Todd for a long moment.
But this time, Sensei surprised us. He lit another cigarette, and then said mildly, “Sit down, please, Kimura Tadeo. It is rude of you to stand. Sit, and I will give you the answer you seek.”
Todd was as bewildered as the rest of us, but he sat down, and our teacher actually smiled!
”Good,” he said, then continued: “What you must understand, Tadeo, is that Japan doesn’t choose to invade other countries. These actions are forced upon her. The West is greedy, always looking to take advantage, eager to seize our homeland. You’ve seen what’s happened to China? For a hundred years China has been fragmented, split apart, the slave to any Western power which wanted to take away her wealth. England and Holland and the United States have always wanted to do the same to us. But we are a proud people, with the heritage of an Emperor who is descended from the Gods themselves, so we resist. And sometimes we are forced to do things we don’t like, that we might remain a free people, and not slaves. Wakarimasu ka?” Do you understand?
It wasn’t what Sensei was saying. It was the way he addressed Todd, so reasonably, the opposite of how he had handled the situation last time. Todd was apparently just as stunned, for all he did was nod.
Of course to me what our teacher said made very little sense. Japan was certainly the aggressor. How could Sensei speak so indignantly about the western powers taking advantage of China when Japan had invaded China herself? How could he call the Japanese a “free people” when everyone knew that the government was run by a military dictatorship? Always listen very carefully to what your teachers say, Mary, my grandfather would tell me, but make your own decisions. And since they are your own decisions, you would be wise to keep them that way. Others may resent you for the choices you make.
I didn’t quite understand this when Grandfather told me, and still didn’t now. But I kept my mouth shut; I was not about to argue with Sensei. Todd was good looking and brave; I was not so good looking and a coward.
Over the next few weeks Sensei and Todd would engage in fiery discussions, mostly about Japan and the United States, while the rest of us stayed silent. This too, was a great change from the way the classes had been formerly run. It seemed as if there was no escape; outside events were shaping a net around my entire life. And each day, the net was getting tighter.
There was just as much tension in Japanese School, but fortunately for me, I was not at the center of it. Unlike the large Brockton building made of bricks, Japanese school was located behind a grocer’s storefront only a few blocks from my house. We were crammed into a small, windowless, room. In true Japanese style, there were no chairs, only mats which we kneeled on. The only adornment was a full color painting of Emperor Hirohito of Japan.
The Sensei was as opposite to Mrs. Bernstein as I could possibly imagine. His name was Shigeo Watanabe, and he was short and thin, in his mid forties, with strong wiry muscles. His face was lined, and I rarely saw him without a lit cigarette poking out of the dry , corner of his mouth, which was in a perpetual sneer. The smoke from the cigarette filled the room, and always made me cough. The sneer was from contempt.
The Sensei had contempt for everything American, and especially us students who desired to become more American. When he wasn’t teaching us the language, history, or about the Emperor, he spent almost all of his time deriding American customs and habits, while we listened in silence. I often wondered whether or not the Sensei and Mr. Ishida knew each other; they were certainly kindred spirits.
“Look at their movies, and radio programs,” he would say in a typical lecture. “What are the stories that you hear? Boys leave their parents, never to return. Young girls look for work in the city. Boys and girls involved in disgraceful behavior! Parties, and drinking, and Jazz music. And these things are promoted in this society. Where is duty? Where is honor? Where is family in all this? I will tell you, it is nowhere! You have to look to the Japanese for these things. Japanese boys don’t leave their parents; they work hard and honor their parents. Young Japanese girls are cherished; they don’t need to leave their homes. We know our duty!”
Duty. In Japanese, hombun or giri (although giri really meant a person’s fate in life.) It was pounded into us every day we were in Japanese school. Honor your parents. Honor the Emperor. Honor authority. Lying is unthinkable. Cheating is unthinkable. Stealing is an unimaginable crime. Manners are everything.
My previous teachers at Brockton always commented with pleasant surprise what a well-mannered girl I was, how I never got into trouble. In truth, I was no different from any of the Nisei who attended the Japanese school. We all were taught to revere our teachers, and any kind of insubordination would have been impossible.
Yet, even here, times were changing, and this was the source of the tension that now permeated Japanese School. At the center of it was a boy named Tadeo Kimura; we all called him Todd.
Todd Kimura was two years older than me; he was tall and handsome, with a lock of hair that always fell over his eyes when he talked. All of the girls had a crush on him, me included. He was smart, very smart, but he was a rebel among us. For years he had quietly made fun of Sensei behind his back, though he was subservient and polite like the rest of us in front of him. But all that changed in the fall of that year. For the first time, Todd openly challenged our teacher in the classroom.
It began with a question, simply put, but shocking to the rest of us. Todd stood up without being asked and interrupted Sensei’s lecture by asking: “Excuse me, sir, but if America is not a good example for us, then Japan isn’t either, don’t you think?”
Mr. Watanabe gasped in shock. He just stared at Todd, and then said slowly, “What? What did you say?”
“What I mean is, Japan invades other nations like China; America doesn’t. Japan has a secret police and no freedom of speech, and the military runs the government there. I would much rather be an American, with everything wrong that you stated, than a Japanese.”
We all stared open-mouthed at this blasphemy; even though Todd was repeating things we had all discussed among ourselves and mostly agreed with. But to say it in front of Sensei!
The teacher’s response to this statement was almost instantaneous. He strode forward to where Todd was standing and back-handed him hard across the face. The boy stumbled to the ground, his lips forming an ugly welt already thick with blood.
Sensei stood over him. As Todd began to get up, Mr. Watanabe kicked him hard in the ribs, and Todd fell back down again.
“You will stay on your knees,” our teacher snapped, “and then you will beg the Emperor for forgiveness. Then you will apologize to me and to this class for your rude manners. How dare you interrupt to give your opinion? Are you the sensei now? Am I the young student? No, you stay down, and consider your error.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out another cigarette. He lit it, and addressed us. “It is not Kimura Tadeo’s duty to concern himself with what Japan does. It is not for Kimura Tadeo to question the form of government that the Emperor allows. It is for Kimura Tadeo to obey the Emperor, and to be a proud Japanese.”
After class that day, Todd wouldn’t speak to the rest of us. None of us could guess how he explained things to his parents. For the next two weeks he was silent in class unless called upon, but then, incredibly, he spoke up again.
This time the subject was Indochina. It was all over the newsreels: Japan had invaded even though Franklin Roosevelt had ordered her not to; now, the Americans were retaliating by starting an oil embargo.
Sensei was predictably condemning the President of the United States for this “treacherous” action. “By committing this crime,” he explained to us, “Roosevelt reveals to the world what he really wants: for the Asian to be forever at the mercy of the Westerner. He wants proud Japan to bow and scrape at the heels of her American master. But mark my words, Japan will not do so.”
And there was Todd standing up again. The welt on his face had cleared up, and he looked just as defiant as before. He said, “But why did Japan occupy Indochina in the first place? That land has never belonged to Japan. What gives her the right to just invade other countries?”
I fully expected another slap, as before, and possibly Todd’s expulsion from the school this time. After all, he had been warned. We watched, horrified, as the teacher just stared at Todd for a long moment.
But this time, Sensei surprised us. He lit another cigarette, and then said mildly, “Sit down, please, Kimura Tadeo. It is rude of you to stand. Sit, and I will give you the answer you seek.”
Todd was as bewildered as the rest of us, but he sat down, and our teacher actually smiled!
”Good,” he said, then continued: “What you must understand, Tadeo, is that Japan doesn’t choose to invade other countries. These actions are forced upon her. The West is greedy, always looking to take advantage, eager to seize our homeland. You’ve seen what’s happened to China? For a hundred years China has been fragmented, split apart, the slave to any Western power which wanted to take away her wealth. England and Holland and the United States have always wanted to do the same to us. But we are a proud people, with the heritage of an Emperor who is descended from the Gods themselves, so we resist. And sometimes we are forced to do things we don’t like, that we might remain a free people, and not slaves. Wakarimasu ka?” Do you understand?
It wasn’t what Sensei was saying. It was the way he addressed Todd, so reasonably, the opposite of how he had handled the situation last time. Todd was apparently just as stunned, for all he did was nod.
Of course to me what our teacher said made very little sense. Japan was certainly the aggressor. How could Sensei speak so indignantly about the western powers taking advantage of China when Japan had invaded China herself? How could he call the Japanese a “free people” when everyone knew that the government was run by a military dictatorship? Always listen very carefully to what your teachers say, Mary, my grandfather would tell me, but make your own decisions. And since they are your own decisions, you would be wise to keep them that way. Others may resent you for the choices you make.
I didn’t quite understand this when Grandfather told me, and still didn’t now. But I kept my mouth shut; I was not about to argue with Sensei. Todd was good looking and brave; I was not so good looking and a coward.
Over the next few weeks Sensei and Todd would engage in fiery discussions, mostly about Japan and the United States, while the rest of us stayed silent. This too, was a great change from the way the classes had been formerly run. It seemed as if there was no escape; outside events were shaping a net around my entire life. And each day, the net was getting tighter.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Four
There wasn’t a single Japanese family living in Southern California that didn’t know who my grandfather was; among us, he was famous. Mothers would tell their sons, “If you behave and learn, perhaps someday you will be a great man like Richard Nakamura.”
Grandfather used to tell me, “There are legends, and there are truths, and sometimes both can be equally important.” He himself may have exemplified this idea. By the time I was eleven, I believed I knew the truth about my grandfather as opposed to the legend that most outsiders knew. Of course I was very wrong about this, as I would learn much later. Another of Grandfather’s sayings was, “The truth is like an onion. Once you peel away you find a greater truth, and a greater truth still hidden behind that. But real truth is like an onion with no fixed center; you can never stop peeling.”
My grandfather was born Goro Nakamura in 1886 in Yokohama, Japan, which was the port city outside Tokyo where Americans and Europeans had their own community after Commodore Matthew Perry opened up Japan to the west in the 1850’s. My great-grandparents had been serfs until the 1870’s when the Samurai system was abolished. This period of Japanese history was known as the Meiji Revolution, when the country tried to adapt very quickly to everything Western. Goro’s parents lived in a poverty that I have trouble imagining.
“They were thrown off the land,” my grandfather explained to me. “Of course, they had been serfs before; their lives belonged to the daimyo (great lord) who ruled over Yokohama. But when Emperor Meiji eliminated the Shogun and the Samurai class, suddenly my parents were free. Free to do what? The whole thing was a scheme, you see. The daimyos gave up their titles but retained all of their wealth and all real power, and they used the new laws as an excuse to eliminate the useless mouths on their estates.”
These former peasants were forced to flee to the cities, where they supplied labor for the new factories being opened up under Western supervision. My great grandfather worked in a hat factory in Yokohama, which was owned and operated by a British firm based out of Hong Kong. Workers there toiled sixteen hours each day, with one fifteen minute break, for barely enough rice to keep them from starvation. The top hats that were produced were then sold at great profit to the former nobility of Japan, all of whom competed with each other to be as Western as possible. The conditions of the factories were terrible: smoke filled the lungs which caused tuberculosis and diphtheria. But there were no protests, no strikes, and very little labor organization whatsoever. These people had been raised to work hard, and to accept authority, and so they did.
“”My parents met in the hat factory,” Grandfather said. “It turned out their families had known each other back on the estate, but they had never met. They met in the factory and decided to get married. The first two children, both daughters, died of tuberculosis before they were ten. Then I was born in 1886. My father was determined that I would not suffer the same fate as the others. But he had not managed to save any money. They could barely afford to live, and if they ever quit the factory, there were dozens of others who would have rushed to take their place. And then all of us would have starved to death.
“At this time, merchants from the American land known as California had arrived in Yokohama, offering great wealth and fortune to any Japanese who would come labor in fields, growing grapes and oranges. The plan was, you would go to the far away land and work hard for eight years, then return as rich as a Samurai. But they only wanted young and healthy men; no women and no children were allowed. There were of course a few exceptions that could be made, but you needed money. My parents didn’t have any.
“My father wanted to go; he knew there was no future at the hat factory. Also, he was at heart a farmer, and he was eager to work the land again, even if it was a foreign land, far away from Nippon. But he would not leave my mother and me, so it looked like a hopeless dream.”
What happened next was repeated over and over; it was the first of the great legends that surrounded Richard Nakamura’s life. My great-grandmother sold her hair to pay for passage to America for herself and her son. We were told she had beautiful long hair, and the wig-makers of Yokohama were eager to get it. This story always affected me strangely; I used to daydream that I was my grandfather’s mother, and someone cut away all of my hair until I was bald. Would I miss it? Would everyone stare at me with horror? For years I wondered about this, and yearned for a photograph of the lady in question.
(Of course, no legend is ever completely the truth, and this one was no different. What really happened in Yokohama that day that my Great-grandmother lost her hair was much more complicated and horrible, and I did not learn about it until a night at the Santa Anita racetrack, when all family secrets were revealed to me. But that was later.)
And so at age 7, in 1893, my grandfather sailed with his parents to California. Upon arriving in San Pedro, they were taken by train to Bakersfield, and then by wagons pulled by horses to Delano, a smaller town nearby. They joined Japanese camp #204, and settled down to help pick grapes.
It was back-breaking labor, just as long and hard as the hat factory. But Goro’s father enjoyed it more, because he was a farmer again. Goro’s mother and Goro himself worked almost as hard in the camp, along with the other very few Japanese women and children there, keeping it clean and a suitable environment for the men when they returned home in the evening. It was a difficult life, but no one complained. All of the Japanese were eager to earn the vast sum of thirty cents a day, which was a veritable fortune compared to what they could earn in Japan. There was not one of these men who didn’t plan on returning home after a few short years, with enough money to buy their own land, so they could work for themselves and never go hungry again.
“My father was different,” Grandfather explained. “He didn’t tell anyone except us, and we were admonished to keep it secret from the other farmers. But the truth was, my father had no intention of going back to Yokohama. After being forced off the land, he saw no future for himself there, and he also was able to perceive how big and open this new country was. His plan was to work for seven years at the camp; after expenses, that would earn us five hundred dollars. We could then use that money to purchase land of our own, here in California.
“But one day, when I was nine years old, some men showed up at the camp; they were officials with the local school board. The law said that I must attend school. My parents were very much against this; it was an added expense, as I would need extra clothes and school supplies and also would need to be fed during the hours that I was gone. Also, the work I was doing with my mother earned us valuable pennies each month from neighbors who did not have family members at the camp to keep their lodgings clean; therefore they contributed a small sum for my mother and I and others to help out. It was not much money, but it had become vital to augment our savings; now, that was at risk. Neither my father nor mother or anyone in my family that I knew of had ever had school or learned to read, so they could not see the point or value in this potential loss of money. But the men were adamant, so I went to school.”
The school was in the township of Wasco, seven miles away from the camp. Having no means of transportation save his own feet, Grandfather walked there every morning, leaving before sunrise, and returning after dark. And it was at this school that his legend continued. Within six months he learned perfect English. Within a year, he knew every answer before the teacher could ask. Goro had a photographic memory, and a sharp mind. He was hailed as a young “genius” by his teachers.
At the age of eleven, my grandfather enrolled in the local high school. Within two years he graduated with perfect grades. At the age of fourteen, Grandfather applied and was accepted to the University of Southern California. In doing so, he set two records for himself and the school: he was the youngest student ever to enroll, and he was the first Japanese student to attend a university anywhere on the West Coast.
“When I discovered what education was,” he explained to me years later, “I was consumed by it. Nothing else mattered to me. There was a whole world out there that I had never realized even existed, and it was all contained in these old gray textbooks. History, literature, math, science. They were all grist for my mill, which was my mind, you see. I realized that here was true wealth, much greater than the land that my father so desired, and yet it was free; all you had to do was grasp it!
“I ignored my family, my fellow students, everyone I knew. Even my teachers! They all thought I was a genius, but in my mind a genius is someone who creates, who changes the world for the better. I just wanted to absorb the world. I was given a scholarship to go to USC and I moved away from the farming camp. In truth I was glad to leave, because long ago I had seen the reality of my parents’ poverty. Oh, they were certainly better off than they had been in Japan, but their dream of saving enough to buy land was a mirage. Other, craftier men from our camp had already figured out how to do so, but my father was not one of these. He was what you might call a ‘soft touch’; Father was always giving money to Japanese causes or loaning it to friends. There was never enough left over to save. How my mother complained! Then the corporation that owned the farms set up a company store and began to pay the men in store credits. And this sneaky act of greed further depleted my parents’ income. I had no idea what I would study at the university, but I was determined to learn how to make enough money to make all of our lives better.”
At USC, Goro lived in a small room in a dormitory. He was shy and felt alone, and he made few friends. However, there was an economics teacher who marveled at my grandfather’s knowledge and learning capabilities. This man, a Mr. Davis, was without prejudice; he recommended that the most suitable profession for Grandfather was the law. This idea seemed outlandish, as there were not and never had been a Japanese attorney in the history of the United States, so far as anyone knew. But Mt. Davis was convinced that Goro’s abilities to sort through data to come to the heart of the matter was perfect for the courts; he agreed to sponsor Goro to attend the law school once he graduated.
“That was in 1905,” he explained, “and I was nineteen years old. I had spent five years at USC and ready to find myself at last. I enjoyed what I knew about the law and was excited by Mr. Davis’ idea. In addition, I was a popular man on campus.”
The main reason for the popularity was the Russo-Japanese war. Japan, a tiny underdog, defeated Russia, a great power. All throughout the western United States, there was great sympathy for this plucky little Asian country which had stood up to the powerful Russians in a sort of David vs. Goliath naval battle. President Theodore Roosevelt was called upon to settle the dispute.
“I was the only Japanese at USC at the time, so I was the one they loved. Because I was so well read and well spoken, professors would call on me to come to their dinner parties so that I could expound on the war and give a ‘professional’ opinion. They all assumed that because of my ‘brilliance’ I must come from some position of high honor back in Japan. I was served too well to disabuse them of this.”
He gave me a grand smile and said, “And this was the same time I learned about America, Mary. I had read all kinds of history as a teenager. In fact, I had read two well-written books on Japanese history, and as a result I knew more about that subject than I ever would have living in Japan. But somehow I had skipped the history of the United States. And here I had a revelation. For all of its warts, America is a country, the only country that exists which is founded upon the principal of individual liberty. This makes it the most moral country on Earth. Can you understand what that means?”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t completely sure I understood. This conversation took place last summer, when on a lazy day I had decided to ask my grandfather to fill in the gaps of his life story. He proceeded to do so, though he simply leaped over the wider ones, as I was later to learn.
“No, you don’t really understand,” he said, gazing at me sharply. “But you will, Mary. And in order for you to know what I felt, you’ve got to realize that in the country I came from, as in most nations in the world, your fate is set for life from the moment you were born. Yes, they eliminated the Samurai class a few years before my birth, but that really didn’t change anything. If your father was a fisherman, you would be a fisherman, too. There is no escape from this in Japan. Everyone is trapped, no matter what the worth of the person. In America, anyone can be whoever they want to be, and that is wonderful!”
(How opposite this perspective was from both my sensei and Mr. Ishida! Time and again, I had listened to one or both of them say that, in Japan, everyone knew who they were and everyone had a role, and you felt like you were a part of something, the nation. Here, they complained, you were a part of nothing, of chaos. There was no order here whatsoever. What was odd was, as opposed as they were, both philosophies seemed attractive to me at different times. I could get so mixed up about such things. Was everyone this way?)
My grandfather continued, “The ideas of liberty and justice were written by wealthy white men, and they most likely intended to restrict these treasures to themselves. But the wonderful thing about good ideas, Mary, is that they have a life of their own. And so they spread throughout this land. And the other point is, this is a Christian land, too. And Christianity is a moral religion, as well.”
He explained to me how the combination of American ideals together with Christianity started the abolition movement which culminated in the end of slavery with the Civil War. “Imagine, Mary,” he said, and there were actually tears in his eyes, “men gave their lives here so that other men could be free. What other nation in the world have you ever heard of that does that? It’s unique. That is why when I realized these things, I took three steps that changed my life at the time of the Russo-Japanese war: I became an American citizen. I changed my first name to Richard, to make myself sound more Western. And I converted to Christianity.”
Grandfather was a romantic, of course. The Civil War was a more complicated affair than what he explained to me, and there were Christians on both sides of that conflict; all of this I learned later when I read some books for myself on the subject. But you could never convince my grandfather of this. As far as he was concerned, Americans and Christians were shining knights who were always fighting the good fight for liberty.
With Mr. Davis’ help, my grandfather entered law school. Of course he excelled as he had done all throughout his college years. But he remained a loner. “I told you I was popular,” he said, “but I was also a freak. The only Japanese man most of these people had ever seen. I was in their classes, attending church with them, living in their dormitory, but none of them knew what to make of me. They invited me to parties, and took their photographs with me, but they kept their distance. And then I learned I was to be married.”
Back at the farming camp, my grandfather’s exploits had made him the most eligible bachelor in the growing Japanese community. A man named Okaza from Kyoto had a fourteen year old sister living there that he wanted to bring to California, but he could not afford it. So he approached my great-grandfather, who once again had managed to save up a little money in the hope of buying land of his own. If Honorable Nakamura-san would pay for the passage of his sister Yuko, Okaza explained, she would then marry the son of Nakamura-san when she arrived.
This pleased my great-grandfather, and he agreed quickly, once again forsaking the dream of land for another few years. He was proud of Goro (he refused to refer to him as Richard) but also worried; the boy was becoming too Western, too distant from his family what with all those books he was reading. A good Japanese wife would settle him down.
The matter was settled with a few bows between the parents, along with the ceremonial drinking of a bottle of sake that Okaza had hoarded away for such an occasion.
My grandmother was sent passage to San Pedro; she had no idea of what was to await her when she arrived. My grandfather only learned of the scheme the day before the ship came.
“My father came to see me at USC,” he mused to me, “He had never come to see me before. It was a tremendous expense for him to take the day off and pay for the train ticket. I showed him the campus and he walked around, gawking at everything. Then, when we returned to my dormitory room, he turned and said to me, “Good news, Goro-san! Tomorrow morning a boat arrives from Kyoto, and your bride is on it. Tomorrow you are to be married!
“I didn’t spend too much time thinking about girls, Mary; I was always so busy with my books and school. But it never occurred to me to disobey or even question my father. Though I had become American, I was also still Japanese. If Father said I was to be married the next day, then that was what it would be.”
He smiled somewhat more shyly than usual. “As it turns out, I was very lucky. Yuko was a wonderful girl, and I’ve never regretted a day. I would have married whoever my father chose, but I thank God it was Yuko.”
Nakamura Yuko noh Okaza understood her duty from day one. Because her husband was a Christian, she immediately converted to Christianity herself. She could not move into the dormitory, so Richard was forced to find a small apartment for the two of them. They settled near downtown in an area already filled with enough Japanese settlers that it was called “Little Tokyo.” Grandmother soon fit in and was a quite popular young wife in the community.
However, she stayed completely out of Grandfather’s public Western life. She made no attempt to learn English or to meet with any of his Caucasian colleagues or acquaintances. She was the perfect, quiet, Japanese wife, and she would stay at home patiently waiting for her husband to return. In all of Grandmother’s life, she never changed this attitude, which she considered to be proper for all women. And this was one of the reasons there later was so much trouble between her and my mother.
There wasn’t a single Japanese family living in Southern California that didn’t know who my grandfather was; among us, he was famous. Mothers would tell their sons, “If you behave and learn, perhaps someday you will be a great man like Richard Nakamura.”
Grandfather used to tell me, “There are legends, and there are truths, and sometimes both can be equally important.” He himself may have exemplified this idea. By the time I was eleven, I believed I knew the truth about my grandfather as opposed to the legend that most outsiders knew. Of course I was very wrong about this, as I would learn much later. Another of Grandfather’s sayings was, “The truth is like an onion. Once you peel away you find a greater truth, and a greater truth still hidden behind that. But real truth is like an onion with no fixed center; you can never stop peeling.”
My grandfather was born Goro Nakamura in 1886 in Yokohama, Japan, which was the port city outside Tokyo where Americans and Europeans had their own community after Commodore Matthew Perry opened up Japan to the west in the 1850’s. My great-grandparents had been serfs until the 1870’s when the Samurai system was abolished. This period of Japanese history was known as the Meiji Revolution, when the country tried to adapt very quickly to everything Western. Goro’s parents lived in a poverty that I have trouble imagining.
“They were thrown off the land,” my grandfather explained to me. “Of course, they had been serfs before; their lives belonged to the daimyo (great lord) who ruled over Yokohama. But when Emperor Meiji eliminated the Shogun and the Samurai class, suddenly my parents were free. Free to do what? The whole thing was a scheme, you see. The daimyos gave up their titles but retained all of their wealth and all real power, and they used the new laws as an excuse to eliminate the useless mouths on their estates.”
These former peasants were forced to flee to the cities, where they supplied labor for the new factories being opened up under Western supervision. My great grandfather worked in a hat factory in Yokohama, which was owned and operated by a British firm based out of Hong Kong. Workers there toiled sixteen hours each day, with one fifteen minute break, for barely enough rice to keep them from starvation. The top hats that were produced were then sold at great profit to the former nobility of Japan, all of whom competed with each other to be as Western as possible. The conditions of the factories were terrible: smoke filled the lungs which caused tuberculosis and diphtheria. But there were no protests, no strikes, and very little labor organization whatsoever. These people had been raised to work hard, and to accept authority, and so they did.
“”My parents met in the hat factory,” Grandfather said. “It turned out their families had known each other back on the estate, but they had never met. They met in the factory and decided to get married. The first two children, both daughters, died of tuberculosis before they were ten. Then I was born in 1886. My father was determined that I would not suffer the same fate as the others. But he had not managed to save any money. They could barely afford to live, and if they ever quit the factory, there were dozens of others who would have rushed to take their place. And then all of us would have starved to death.
“At this time, merchants from the American land known as California had arrived in Yokohama, offering great wealth and fortune to any Japanese who would come labor in fields, growing grapes and oranges. The plan was, you would go to the far away land and work hard for eight years, then return as rich as a Samurai. But they only wanted young and healthy men; no women and no children were allowed. There were of course a few exceptions that could be made, but you needed money. My parents didn’t have any.
“My father wanted to go; he knew there was no future at the hat factory. Also, he was at heart a farmer, and he was eager to work the land again, even if it was a foreign land, far away from Nippon. But he would not leave my mother and me, so it looked like a hopeless dream.”
What happened next was repeated over and over; it was the first of the great legends that surrounded Richard Nakamura’s life. My great-grandmother sold her hair to pay for passage to America for herself and her son. We were told she had beautiful long hair, and the wig-makers of Yokohama were eager to get it. This story always affected me strangely; I used to daydream that I was my grandfather’s mother, and someone cut away all of my hair until I was bald. Would I miss it? Would everyone stare at me with horror? For years I wondered about this, and yearned for a photograph of the lady in question.
(Of course, no legend is ever completely the truth, and this one was no different. What really happened in Yokohama that day that my Great-grandmother lost her hair was much more complicated and horrible, and I did not learn about it until a night at the Santa Anita racetrack, when all family secrets were revealed to me. But that was later.)
And so at age 7, in 1893, my grandfather sailed with his parents to California. Upon arriving in San Pedro, they were taken by train to Bakersfield, and then by wagons pulled by horses to Delano, a smaller town nearby. They joined Japanese camp #204, and settled down to help pick grapes.
It was back-breaking labor, just as long and hard as the hat factory. But Goro’s father enjoyed it more, because he was a farmer again. Goro’s mother and Goro himself worked almost as hard in the camp, along with the other very few Japanese women and children there, keeping it clean and a suitable environment for the men when they returned home in the evening. It was a difficult life, but no one complained. All of the Japanese were eager to earn the vast sum of thirty cents a day, which was a veritable fortune compared to what they could earn in Japan. There was not one of these men who didn’t plan on returning home after a few short years, with enough money to buy their own land, so they could work for themselves and never go hungry again.
“My father was different,” Grandfather explained. “He didn’t tell anyone except us, and we were admonished to keep it secret from the other farmers. But the truth was, my father had no intention of going back to Yokohama. After being forced off the land, he saw no future for himself there, and he also was able to perceive how big and open this new country was. His plan was to work for seven years at the camp; after expenses, that would earn us five hundred dollars. We could then use that money to purchase land of our own, here in California.
“But one day, when I was nine years old, some men showed up at the camp; they were officials with the local school board. The law said that I must attend school. My parents were very much against this; it was an added expense, as I would need extra clothes and school supplies and also would need to be fed during the hours that I was gone. Also, the work I was doing with my mother earned us valuable pennies each month from neighbors who did not have family members at the camp to keep their lodgings clean; therefore they contributed a small sum for my mother and I and others to help out. It was not much money, but it had become vital to augment our savings; now, that was at risk. Neither my father nor mother or anyone in my family that I knew of had ever had school or learned to read, so they could not see the point or value in this potential loss of money. But the men were adamant, so I went to school.”
The school was in the township of Wasco, seven miles away from the camp. Having no means of transportation save his own feet, Grandfather walked there every morning, leaving before sunrise, and returning after dark. And it was at this school that his legend continued. Within six months he learned perfect English. Within a year, he knew every answer before the teacher could ask. Goro had a photographic memory, and a sharp mind. He was hailed as a young “genius” by his teachers.
At the age of eleven, my grandfather enrolled in the local high school. Within two years he graduated with perfect grades. At the age of fourteen, Grandfather applied and was accepted to the University of Southern California. In doing so, he set two records for himself and the school: he was the youngest student ever to enroll, and he was the first Japanese student to attend a university anywhere on the West Coast.
“When I discovered what education was,” he explained to me years later, “I was consumed by it. Nothing else mattered to me. There was a whole world out there that I had never realized even existed, and it was all contained in these old gray textbooks. History, literature, math, science. They were all grist for my mill, which was my mind, you see. I realized that here was true wealth, much greater than the land that my father so desired, and yet it was free; all you had to do was grasp it!
“I ignored my family, my fellow students, everyone I knew. Even my teachers! They all thought I was a genius, but in my mind a genius is someone who creates, who changes the world for the better. I just wanted to absorb the world. I was given a scholarship to go to USC and I moved away from the farming camp. In truth I was glad to leave, because long ago I had seen the reality of my parents’ poverty. Oh, they were certainly better off than they had been in Japan, but their dream of saving enough to buy land was a mirage. Other, craftier men from our camp had already figured out how to do so, but my father was not one of these. He was what you might call a ‘soft touch’; Father was always giving money to Japanese causes or loaning it to friends. There was never enough left over to save. How my mother complained! Then the corporation that owned the farms set up a company store and began to pay the men in store credits. And this sneaky act of greed further depleted my parents’ income. I had no idea what I would study at the university, but I was determined to learn how to make enough money to make all of our lives better.”
At USC, Goro lived in a small room in a dormitory. He was shy and felt alone, and he made few friends. However, there was an economics teacher who marveled at my grandfather’s knowledge and learning capabilities. This man, a Mr. Davis, was without prejudice; he recommended that the most suitable profession for Grandfather was the law. This idea seemed outlandish, as there were not and never had been a Japanese attorney in the history of the United States, so far as anyone knew. But Mt. Davis was convinced that Goro’s abilities to sort through data to come to the heart of the matter was perfect for the courts; he agreed to sponsor Goro to attend the law school once he graduated.
“That was in 1905,” he explained, “and I was nineteen years old. I had spent five years at USC and ready to find myself at last. I enjoyed what I knew about the law and was excited by Mr. Davis’ idea. In addition, I was a popular man on campus.”
The main reason for the popularity was the Russo-Japanese war. Japan, a tiny underdog, defeated Russia, a great power. All throughout the western United States, there was great sympathy for this plucky little Asian country which had stood up to the powerful Russians in a sort of David vs. Goliath naval battle. President Theodore Roosevelt was called upon to settle the dispute.
“I was the only Japanese at USC at the time, so I was the one they loved. Because I was so well read and well spoken, professors would call on me to come to their dinner parties so that I could expound on the war and give a ‘professional’ opinion. They all assumed that because of my ‘brilliance’ I must come from some position of high honor back in Japan. I was served too well to disabuse them of this.”
He gave me a grand smile and said, “And this was the same time I learned about America, Mary. I had read all kinds of history as a teenager. In fact, I had read two well-written books on Japanese history, and as a result I knew more about that subject than I ever would have living in Japan. But somehow I had skipped the history of the United States. And here I had a revelation. For all of its warts, America is a country, the only country that exists which is founded upon the principal of individual liberty. This makes it the most moral country on Earth. Can you understand what that means?”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t completely sure I understood. This conversation took place last summer, when on a lazy day I had decided to ask my grandfather to fill in the gaps of his life story. He proceeded to do so, though he simply leaped over the wider ones, as I was later to learn.
“No, you don’t really understand,” he said, gazing at me sharply. “But you will, Mary. And in order for you to know what I felt, you’ve got to realize that in the country I came from, as in most nations in the world, your fate is set for life from the moment you were born. Yes, they eliminated the Samurai class a few years before my birth, but that really didn’t change anything. If your father was a fisherman, you would be a fisherman, too. There is no escape from this in Japan. Everyone is trapped, no matter what the worth of the person. In America, anyone can be whoever they want to be, and that is wonderful!”
(How opposite this perspective was from both my sensei and Mr. Ishida! Time and again, I had listened to one or both of them say that, in Japan, everyone knew who they were and everyone had a role, and you felt like you were a part of something, the nation. Here, they complained, you were a part of nothing, of chaos. There was no order here whatsoever. What was odd was, as opposed as they were, both philosophies seemed attractive to me at different times. I could get so mixed up about such things. Was everyone this way?)
My grandfather continued, “The ideas of liberty and justice were written by wealthy white men, and they most likely intended to restrict these treasures to themselves. But the wonderful thing about good ideas, Mary, is that they have a life of their own. And so they spread throughout this land. And the other point is, this is a Christian land, too. And Christianity is a moral religion, as well.”
He explained to me how the combination of American ideals together with Christianity started the abolition movement which culminated in the end of slavery with the Civil War. “Imagine, Mary,” he said, and there were actually tears in his eyes, “men gave their lives here so that other men could be free. What other nation in the world have you ever heard of that does that? It’s unique. That is why when I realized these things, I took three steps that changed my life at the time of the Russo-Japanese war: I became an American citizen. I changed my first name to Richard, to make myself sound more Western. And I converted to Christianity.”
Grandfather was a romantic, of course. The Civil War was a more complicated affair than what he explained to me, and there were Christians on both sides of that conflict; all of this I learned later when I read some books for myself on the subject. But you could never convince my grandfather of this. As far as he was concerned, Americans and Christians were shining knights who were always fighting the good fight for liberty.
With Mr. Davis’ help, my grandfather entered law school. Of course he excelled as he had done all throughout his college years. But he remained a loner. “I told you I was popular,” he said, “but I was also a freak. The only Japanese man most of these people had ever seen. I was in their classes, attending church with them, living in their dormitory, but none of them knew what to make of me. They invited me to parties, and took their photographs with me, but they kept their distance. And then I learned I was to be married.”
Back at the farming camp, my grandfather’s exploits had made him the most eligible bachelor in the growing Japanese community. A man named Okaza from Kyoto had a fourteen year old sister living there that he wanted to bring to California, but he could not afford it. So he approached my great-grandfather, who once again had managed to save up a little money in the hope of buying land of his own. If Honorable Nakamura-san would pay for the passage of his sister Yuko, Okaza explained, she would then marry the son of Nakamura-san when she arrived.
This pleased my great-grandfather, and he agreed quickly, once again forsaking the dream of land for another few years. He was proud of Goro (he refused to refer to him as Richard) but also worried; the boy was becoming too Western, too distant from his family what with all those books he was reading. A good Japanese wife would settle him down.
The matter was settled with a few bows between the parents, along with the ceremonial drinking of a bottle of sake that Okaza had hoarded away for such an occasion.
My grandmother was sent passage to San Pedro; she had no idea of what was to await her when she arrived. My grandfather only learned of the scheme the day before the ship came.
“My father came to see me at USC,” he mused to me, “He had never come to see me before. It was a tremendous expense for him to take the day off and pay for the train ticket. I showed him the campus and he walked around, gawking at everything. Then, when we returned to my dormitory room, he turned and said to me, “Good news, Goro-san! Tomorrow morning a boat arrives from Kyoto, and your bride is on it. Tomorrow you are to be married!
“I didn’t spend too much time thinking about girls, Mary; I was always so busy with my books and school. But it never occurred to me to disobey or even question my father. Though I had become American, I was also still Japanese. If Father said I was to be married the next day, then that was what it would be.”
He smiled somewhat more shyly than usual. “As it turns out, I was very lucky. Yuko was a wonderful girl, and I’ve never regretted a day. I would have married whoever my father chose, but I thank God it was Yuko.”
Nakamura Yuko noh Okaza understood her duty from day one. Because her husband was a Christian, she immediately converted to Christianity herself. She could not move into the dormitory, so Richard was forced to find a small apartment for the two of them. They settled near downtown in an area already filled with enough Japanese settlers that it was called “Little Tokyo.” Grandmother soon fit in and was a quite popular young wife in the community.
However, she stayed completely out of Grandfather’s public Western life. She made no attempt to learn English or to meet with any of his Caucasian colleagues or acquaintances. She was the perfect, quiet, Japanese wife, and she would stay at home patiently waiting for her husband to return. In all of Grandmother’s life, she never changed this attitude, which she considered to be proper for all women. And this was one of the reasons there later was so much trouble between her and my mother.
TidesofWar
Footballguy
You need to work Nick Saban in somehow
timschochet
Footballguy
“All was well in my life at that time,” Grandfather explained. “I had graduated from law school and I accepted a position at Hubert and Korn, one of the city’s best firms. Their biggest client, Western Shipping, had begun trade with the Japanese government following the war; all sorts of goods traveled back and forth between California and Japan. The firm needed someone who could read and translate Japanese, and oversee important documents in both languages. I was the perfect choice, the only choice as a matter of fact. They saw me as an oddity, I’m sure: a strange little man dressed in black suits all the time who kept to himself and lived in another universe. But I served them well. In a very short time Western Shipping had doubled its income as a result of the Pacific trade, and I was critical in handling vital paperwork.
“The owner of Western Shipping was a man named George Holden, the father of Prescott Holden whom you know, Mary. George was in his fifties then, a self made man. He had come to southern California years earlier from Kentucky without a penny in his pocket or even a year of schooling. But he was smart and the time was right for innovators. As a young man he went to work in a San Pedro shipyard; within a year he owned it. Within three years he modernized it using new methods that seemed to spring with great clarity out of his extraordinary mind. By the time Holden was thirty, he was a millionaire.
“And he was a visionary, Mary. He cared little about money or power, what mattered to him was the work. He changed the history of the California shipyard. Of course, he’s forgotten now, but Western Shipping as you know remains one of the richest corporations in all of the United States, and none of it would have been possible except for George Holden.
“When he met me for the first time, I knew it was going to be different, because he looked at me not as a Japanese but as a man. ‘You’re the one I want,’ he told me. I had been handling his papers through the law firm for three years, but I had never met the man before. ‘I’m going to hire you away from this firm; I want you to work for me exclusively. I need a personal lawyer on the payroll, and you’re it. In the next few years I’m going to make a large fortune, which means you will surely make a small one working for me. Are you interested?’
“I asked him, ‘Are you hiring me to handle your Japanese accounts?’ He just laughed and said, ‘No, I’m hiring you to handle all of my accounts.’ I was amazed and replied without thinking, ‘Why would you want a Japanese man working for you?’ He stared at me and said, ‘I don’t. I just want the best man to work for me.’ And that’s the sort of person he was.”
The firm might have been resentful about losing my grandfather and most of Holden’s business, but he paid them off well and still retained them for larger services, so they grudgingly agreed to release Grandfather from his contract. And Holden was right; he did make a large fortune in those years before the First World War, and Richard Nakamura began to make a lot of money himself.
“As I said, it was a good time,” he told me. “David was born, so we had a happy family at home. I was making good money, and in our community, well, people had a high opinion of me. There were no other Japanese lawyers, you see. It was considered extremely prestigious. My parents were very proud, and I was able to give my father the extra money he needed so he was finally able to purchase a small patch of land in the San Fernando Valley. Unfortunately, all of the years of labor caught up with him, so he was not able to appreciate it; within one month after we bought the land, he dropped dead of a heart attack. Mother came to live with us, but she was never well. She died a few years later.
“But those were the only personal shadows. Otherwise, all was well. When I wasn’t working, I went to church, and I had many friends. George Holden respected me and treated me like a son. I met his real son, Prescott at the same time. He was my age.”
I didn’t tell Grandfather, but I never much cared for Uncle Prescott. He was a tall, heavy man who visited us infrequently. Of course he had inherited his father’s shares in the company, which Grandfather was still connected with in some ways, so Uncle Prescott was worth many millions of dollars. But he never seemed genuine to me. For one thing, he had small eyes in a very broad face, and his constant smiles never seemed to involve them. He told me to call him “Uncle”, and he was in and out of our lives every few months, always bringing my family gifts. I knew he was very generous in his contributions to Grandfather’s various organizations and charities, and that Western Shipping, which had major trading interests with Japan, was one of the few corporations that promoted a greater understanding of Japanese Americans. But even so, I did not like him.
Grandfather would never express his own feelings, but now he said, “Prescott is a fine person, but he’s not the man his father was. George Holden was a visionary, as I said. He understood that we in California are inevitably tied to Japan, and that trade and immigration strengthens both parties and makes everyone richer. Prescott of course says the same thing publicly, but does he really understand it the way his father did? I don’t know for sure.”
“Why didn’t you stay with Western Shipping?” I asked. My Grandfather smiled, knowing where this was going.
“You want me to tell you about the Kuroshima Affair, which changed my life,” he said. “Of course you have heard snippets from other people but you want your grandfather to explain what really happened. You are a very precocious child, Mary, and you are never satisfied with anything less than the whole story. Very well, then I will tell you what happened, and you will know forevermore what is legend and what is reality.”
Abruptly his lips tightened and his face grew somber. “For you to understand the Kuroshima Affair, Mary, you must also understand the context, and that means that I need to explain to you some very unpleasant things about the past. There are those adults, your father perhaps among them, who believe that such things as I might tell you now are not suitable for a child of ten. But I disagree. So long as you are a thinking person, Mary, there is no piece of knowledge that should be prohibited from you. Are you a thinking person, Mary?”
“I guess so,” I replied, having never thought too much about it.
“Good, I agree,” Grandfather replied. “I am one also. You will be surprised to learn, Mary, how few of us there are in this world. We are definitely in the minority. Most people simply do what they’re told, and when they think at all, they think as they are told to think. But we are the ones who make the difference, Mary.
“And also, you should be aware that there are two types of thinking people: those who use facts to inform their opinion, and those who use opinions to inform their facts. Always try to be in the former group, Mary: this is very difficult to attain. It means being willing to change what you believe in if the facts contradict it. Most people will never agree to do so. I struggle against the latter myself, and you will as well, at times. But it is a constant battle you must fight.”
I didn’t understand him and told him so. How could anybody ever ignore facts?
He just grunted. “How indeed? But as to not understanding me, you will someday. On to the Kuroshima Affair. I will tell you the whole story, as it happened:
“I have told you that it was a happy time for me, Mary, the years before the First World War. But that was personal. For our people, the Japanese American immigrants in California, those were dark times, worse than now, perhaps.
“More and more Japanese followed my father’s example and left the large farming interests to purchase their own land. Because they were so productive at growing, this angered the White farming interests, and they pressured President Theodore Roosevelt to cut off all further immigration from Japan. The result was the Gentleman’s Agreement, which prohibited all Japanese males from coming to California, though we were still allowed, under a quota, to immigrate to Hawaii.
“But the Gentleman’s Agreement had an opposite effect of what was intended. Men already here, not wealthy enough to return to Japan, sent for women to marry. These were the famous ‘picture brides’ some of whom you know personally. They were very brave women, Mary, to travel so far to a land they did not know and marry a man who was a stranger. Unlike your grandmother, they did not come to San Pedro but to Angel Island which is off San Francisco, where all immigrants from Asia arrived after 1913. These women settled down, worked as hard as their husbands, and produced children. And our community began to grow.
“Of course, this made the powers that be even angrier. A number of organizations were started, designed for the most part to keep us down. The most prominent, and to my mind most despicable, was the Anti-Asian League, which was begun by a journalist named Edgar Walker, who worked for the Los Angeles Examiner, which was owned by Hearst. William Randolph Hearst has always been against us, Mary. He is an isolationist, and a fierce conservative, but I don’t think he himself is racist. However, to his shame he did allow a racist to run his Los Angeles newspaper back then. Walker would write columns with titles such as, ‘The Yellow Peril- Will It Conquer California?’ and ‘How Do We Keep Our Children Safe From The Slanted Eyes That Watch Them?’ The League pushed for more stringent regulations, and together with the farming interests, they helpt to establish several laws through the legislature that were later challenged as unconstitutional. In order to limit land ownership, a Japanese could not purchase more than ten acres of land. I’ll get to the details of this law later on; it was at the heart of Kuroshima. But there were other laws as well. Japanese children could not attend schools with White children. Although most of the immigrants were not Christian, Buddhist and Shinto Temples were prohibited in Los Angeles and San Francisco. And most damaging of all, after 1914 Japanese not born here were not allowed to become citizens.
“This last law was repeated on a federal level and then challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. That case was in 1924, Ozawa vs. United States, and I wrote one of the briefs on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, and I remain proud of that to this day, even though we lost that battle. But all of this came later. Most of the laws I have described to you were unenforceable, so they were either circumvented or easily ignored. But there were ugly incidents at this time as well, and these had scarring effects that had more impact on us than the laws.
“A Japanese man named Myamoto worked on a farm for a white couple named Henderson in the Central Valley. One night this Myamoto snuck into the Hendersons’ house with a machete and killed both the man and his wife. Even worse, he then killed their children as well. Myamoto surrendered to the authorities but refused to give any reasons for his actions. He was tried and hung a month later.
“Those were dark days after the Myamoto killings, Mary. We were afraid to leave our homes. Walker wrote in the Examiner that the deaths were ‘proof positive that the *** can never be trusted. We show him kindness, and he rewards us with treachery. The *** is not really a human being…” and so forth. There were incidents of Japanese laborers being beat up on the street.
“Two months after Myamoto was put to death, two young Japanese men, boys really, were seen in San Francisco talking rudely to a white woman. Or so the story went; nobody to this day is really sure what happened. A mob formed, and the two boys were dragged down to Fisherman’s Wharf and hung to death. It was a lynching, Mary; you’ve read about them. They happen all the time to Black men down south for basically the same crime. But this lynching took place in California, and it happened to Japanese.
“In the midst of these events Tadeo Kuroshima came to visit me. He was a strong man, in his thirties, a laborer; you see the muscles rippling on his arms and back, so you knew he was a hard worker. He had arrived, he told me, from Nagasaki in 1904, and had saved his money until 1914, when he sent for a bride that his mother chose for him. Now they were married with two young girls; it was a typical story for our people.
“In 1917, a man named Knight approached Tadeo. Knight was the son of farmers, and he had inherited over 40 acres of land in the San Fernando Valley. Tadeo had worked for his father for the last ten years or so. The land in question was lush and wealth-producing; it grew oranges, all for the Los Angeles markets. Since Tadeo had taken charge for old man Knight, he had doubled the productivity. Kuroshima was a smart as well as hard worker.
“Harold Knight, the son, was in his forties, unmarried, and he cared nothing about the land he inherited. He was a gambler who enjoyed playing cards in San Francisco, and what he cared most about was money. He didn’t want to wait for it, so instead of retaining Kuroshima and collecting monthly income, he simply offered to sell Tadeo all the land if the man could come up with enough cash.
“Tadeo had the cash. As I said, he was thrifty, and Knight’s father had been generous. But there was the law that restricted any Japanese from purchasing more than ten acres. How to get around this?
“No problem, Knight told him. He would sell ten acres to Tadeo, ten acres to Tadeo’s wife, and ten acres each to Tadeo’s two baby daughters. This was a scheme a lot of Japanese were apparently using to circumvent the laws. But Tadeo had to agree to purchase all of the land, and the cash had to be upfront.
“Tadeo told the man he would think it over and reply in the morning. That night, Tadeo’s wife pleaded with him not to do this; it would take all of their savings, and this Knight fellow couldn’t be trusted, however honorable the man’s father had been. But Tadeo was like so many of us, Mary. The dream of having land, owning land of his own was too great, any risk was worth it. The next morning he told Mr. Knight he agreed, and paid him the money. Four sets of papers were drawn up and recorded, one for each ten acres.
“A year passed, and the land was even more productive. Also, that was a time when the end of the War brought a skyrocket in demand for oranges. Tadeo worked as hard as he ever had, and yet he was eyeing more land next to his, which he knew he could also achieve much with. But it would take a few years for him to save up the money he had paid Knight, and he would have to hope that those wretched laws changed, as well.
“Meanwhile, Harold Knight had taken all of the cash, lived high for a while, and then lost it all at cards and the horse track. Once more he was flat broke. That’s when he came up with his scheme to take all of his former land back.
“He approached the San Fernando Sheriff, who was an old friend of his, and told him that this sneaky Oriental had stolen his land. Yes, Knight had signed papers and had them recorded, but these papers were illegal because some of the acres had been sold to children, which was an obvious attempt to go around the law. No mention that money had changed hands. No mention that Knight had instigated the sale. The Sheriff took Knight at his word that he had been ‘tricked’. Poor Tadeo was arrested and brought before a judge for a preliminary hearing. The Judge, a man named Edwards, was also friends with the Sheriff and Knight, though this was not revealed at the time. Knight testified, and the Sheriff testified. The Judge ruled that because Tadeo was not a citizen, he would not be allowed to testify. Tadeo Kuroshima was sentenced to six months in prison for ‘cheating an American citizen’; in addition, all of his ownership papers of the land were revoked and all forty acres were returned to the ownership of Harold Knight.”
Grandfather paused to swallow some tea. I was shocked at the injustice of the story I was hearing. How could such a thing be possible, here, in California? And if it was possible, what kept my grandfather from sharing the pessimism of Japanese like my sensei and Mr. Ishida?
Of course I did not ask this; instead, I just waited for Grandfather to continue his tale, which he now proceeded to do. “Tadeo went to jail quietly, without protest. His wife and children went to stay with a friend. Of course the story spread through the Japanese community, and people were outraged, in some ways even more so than at the hanging of the two boys. After all, that had been a quick event, caused by emotional hatred and a mob. This, on the other hand, had been planned out beforehand. But what could we do? Where could we turn? There was no one to speak for us.
“And so, when Tadeo Kuroshima was released from the jailhouse six months later, he came to Los Angeles to see me. I arrived home from work one evening, and he was there, waiting. Of course he had heard of me, as I had heard of him. After all, Mary, it is not bragging for me to tell you that I was perhaps the most prominent Japanese man in Los Angeles, certainly not the wealthiest by any means, but I made a good living, and I had already invested in the first of my apartment houses, the one we are now living in. I was a deacon in our church, then as now, and people looked up to me. And, most importantly, I was the only Japanese attorney.
“I knew why he had come, and I dreaded it, Mary. I quickly offered the man money which was cowardly of me, and which he proudly rejected. ‘I don’t want money, but justice,’ he said. ‘I want my land back. It’s my land; I paid for it, and now it has been stolen.’ He was a simple man, but he understood that he had been done wrong, and he believed that I could help him.
“I was terrified, Mary. For years I had in mind an ideal about America, which I have explained to you: a place where all are entitled to justice. I originally studied law with the dream that I would help to enforce this justice, and hopefully on behalf of my own people, Japanese Americans. Now, the time had come to live up to what I believed, and I did not want to do it. I was wealthy, doing so well, one of the lucky ones. Why risk all of that for a man I did not know? I could lose my position at Western Shipping, everything. Chances were nothing could be done for this poor man anyway, and even if something could, would it really make any difference in the big scheme of things?
“Over the years, I had come to the comforting conclusion that time would take care of prejudice, Mary. After we had been here for a few generations, we would come to be more accepted and less mistreated; this had been the pattern with Irish, Jews, and Poles who had come to this country. Of course, all of those groups are white and easy to fit in, but I still believed that the same rules would apply; it would just take a little longer. But these thoughts were an excuse to me, so that I would not have to take any action myself.
“And I was wrong. Time itself is not a solution, Mary. Yes, struggle takes time, but it also takes action. And here was that action staring me in the face. And so I was scared.
“I told him I’d have to think about it, and to come back in a few days. And so I did think about it, Mary; I thought very little about anything else, really. I didn’t discuss it with your grandmother, though she of course had met the man and had overheard the original conversation. But she did not mention it, nor give any viewpoint. For her, whatever I might decide to do was correct. I know you think this is old-fashioned; certainly I could never imagine your mother acting in such a way, or you either, even at the age of ten! But that was how my wife was raised, and so I did not bother to ask her opinion.
“I did not discuss the issue with George Holden either, not then. If I had, and he had said he couldn’t release me for this, or if he threatened to fire me over it, then that would have been the excuse I needed to reject Kuroshima, and nobody would have blamed me for it. And in my mind, that was a dodge. Whatever decision was made, it had to be mine, and no one else’s.
“And so I thought. And I prayed. And in the end, Mary, I put aside the thought of what it would do to my career as ultimately unimportant. And I put aside what might happen to Tadeo Kuroshima as unimportant as well. And finally, the fact that he was Japanese and I was Japanese was not really vital, either. What mattered, Mary, was that this was the United States of America. From the moment I learned about this great country in books, long after I arrived here, I realized that America is much more an idea than a land. The idea is about, as your pledge of allegiance says, liberty and justice for all. If you take away that idea, Mary, the U.S.A. becomes no different from any other country, like France or Germany or Mexico or even Japan: just a place that you’re from, and no longer a place that you’re going to. I decided that the idea was worth fighting for. And now I had the opportunity to do so. How could I reject it and live with myself ever afterwards? And so my choice had been made.
“I told Takeo I would fight for him, and I thought the man would cry, he was so moved. He should not have been. I had no idea what I was going to do about his case. But of course the first thing I did was what I dreaded most: I informed George Holden I would need a leave of absence, and I told him why; I could not have kept such a thing a secret. I expected, frankly, to be terminated then and there.
“But George surprised me once again. He had not heard about the case; while it had spread through our community, it had not been reported in any newspapers, so it would have been extremely unlikely for him to have known anything about it. However, when George did hear my tale, he was outraged. ‘We can’t keep treating people this way,’ he said to me. ‘We need to expand our commerce with Japan, and stuff like this isn’t helping any. You take all the time you need, Richard. If you want to work out of this office, you do that. I’ll back you 100%.
“You do not understand, Mary, what amazing words those were for a white man to say to an oriental back then. It showed amazing courage on George’s part, and over the next several months that courage and support buoyed me all through my struggle.”
My grandfather then proceeded to describe what followed: his lawsuit against Harold Knight and also the County of Los Angeles. Through George Holden, he found a sympathetic newspaper reporter with the Los Angeles Times who reported the story for the general public; this created a great controversy. Harold Knight became a local celebrity; he was vilified by liberals and other open-minded citizens of the era. On the other side, Edgar Walker held Knight up as a hero, and wrote in the Examiner, “Here we have a case of a white man who fought back against the Yellow Tide, a white man who would not allow himself to be murdered in his bed by an oriental who has proven himself every bit as crafty and ruthless as that murderer, Myamoto.”
Grandfather received death threats. Though he himself was never harmed, two other Japanese men were beaten up as a warning to us all. The night before the trial began, George Holden came to visit my grandfather. He said he had been approached by some important men, including an associate of the Governor of California, who informed him that it would be bad for the state of this lawsuit was pursued to the finish. The publicity might result in other lawsuits on behalf of Orientals, and some powerful interests were concerned as to where that might lead.
A compromise was offered: Tadeo and my grandfather must drop their suit. In return, Kuroshima would very privately be given forty acres of choice land from a generous anonymous businessman, though it would not be the land he had lost. He would also be given the sum of five thousand dollars to spend on the land if he chose. Grandfather would receive three thousand dollars, equal to a year of his salary, for his effort thus far. And all they had to do was drop the case and also tell the newspapers that they were incorrect; that even though injustice might have occurred, it was wrong to question the authority of the state.
Grandfather smiled with amazement as he told me about this conversation. “George explained that it was important to Western Shipping that I agree to the compromise. He had been warned that Sacramento could make things very difficult for the future of his company. And do you know what he told me then, Mary?”
When I shook my head, my grandfather said with a grin, “He told me that he had told them all to go to Hell, and that he would fire me if I accepted such a bad deal. These men were running scared; they didn’t want us to assert our rights. ‘You fight them, Richard,’ he told me, ‘You fight them not just for the Japanese, but for all of us who want every man to have an honest chance!’ And so I did.”
My grandfather won the case. The key moment came when the sheriff, under cross-examination, admitted that he had accepted a bribe from Harold Knight. Knight himself was not present at the trial; he was already in prison on two counts of fraud involving a gambling scheme and the news that he had attempted to sell the property again, twice, to two different businessmen. Tadeo was awarded $30,000.00 in punitive damages from the County of Los Angeles, and also received a written apology from the Governor.
The victory made all the newspapers, and it made Grandfather famous overnight. It changed his life dramatically. He formed the Japanese-American Friendship Society soon afterwards, and began to give public speeches on behalf of Asian immigrants. He continued his position at Western Shipping, but he also began to take more private cases.
Soon, the name of Richard Nakamura was a scourge of the white farming interests, as he won more and more rights for our people.
“But every time I would win, they would just pass new laws,” he said gravely. “I tried to speak on behalf of the Japanese farmer, but no one wanted to listen. The Edgar Wallaces of the world were much more influential than I was. Still, I never felt it was a losing battle, Mary. I thought, and still do, that we would eventually reach equality here. Although I have to say we are certainly not being helped much by the actions of Japan.”
I knew that Grandfather deplored what the Japanese had done, especially the rape of Nanking, and the sinking of the Panay gunboat, both events which were widely reported in Los Angeles. “It has set our cause back thirty years,” he would say. Grandfather would argue with whoever would listen that the best course for Japan would be to give up her fruitless hope of empire and become a pacific trading partner of the United States.
“We are natural allies,” he would tell me. “George Holden was so right about that all those years ago. Yet we seem to be spiraling towards war.” And he would sadly shake his head.
My grandfather did not want to discuss what would happen if we did go to war, and more specifically, what would become of us. In public, he assured everyone that there was no foundation to the rumors that we all might be sent away to concentration camps. In private, he said nothing, and this scared me more than any words he might have had. Looking at him, I knew that if such an event occurred, he would consider his life a failure; he could not bear it to be so.
But Grandfather was our bedrock, the one in our family (and in our community) that we relied on the most. If he were to falter, it would be devastating for all of us. I think he recognized this, which is why he did his utmost to stay positive.
I had a conceit; even at eleven, I believed myself to be the closest to him. No one, not my father or Uncle Tommy or even my grandmother was as knowing of Grandfather as I was. I, Mary Nakamura was his special one.
But as it turned out, I hardly knew my grandfather at all.
“The owner of Western Shipping was a man named George Holden, the father of Prescott Holden whom you know, Mary. George was in his fifties then, a self made man. He had come to southern California years earlier from Kentucky without a penny in his pocket or even a year of schooling. But he was smart and the time was right for innovators. As a young man he went to work in a San Pedro shipyard; within a year he owned it. Within three years he modernized it using new methods that seemed to spring with great clarity out of his extraordinary mind. By the time Holden was thirty, he was a millionaire.
“And he was a visionary, Mary. He cared little about money or power, what mattered to him was the work. He changed the history of the California shipyard. Of course, he’s forgotten now, but Western Shipping as you know remains one of the richest corporations in all of the United States, and none of it would have been possible except for George Holden.
“When he met me for the first time, I knew it was going to be different, because he looked at me not as a Japanese but as a man. ‘You’re the one I want,’ he told me. I had been handling his papers through the law firm for three years, but I had never met the man before. ‘I’m going to hire you away from this firm; I want you to work for me exclusively. I need a personal lawyer on the payroll, and you’re it. In the next few years I’m going to make a large fortune, which means you will surely make a small one working for me. Are you interested?’
“I asked him, ‘Are you hiring me to handle your Japanese accounts?’ He just laughed and said, ‘No, I’m hiring you to handle all of my accounts.’ I was amazed and replied without thinking, ‘Why would you want a Japanese man working for you?’ He stared at me and said, ‘I don’t. I just want the best man to work for me.’ And that’s the sort of person he was.”
The firm might have been resentful about losing my grandfather and most of Holden’s business, but he paid them off well and still retained them for larger services, so they grudgingly agreed to release Grandfather from his contract. And Holden was right; he did make a large fortune in those years before the First World War, and Richard Nakamura began to make a lot of money himself.
“As I said, it was a good time,” he told me. “David was born, so we had a happy family at home. I was making good money, and in our community, well, people had a high opinion of me. There were no other Japanese lawyers, you see. It was considered extremely prestigious. My parents were very proud, and I was able to give my father the extra money he needed so he was finally able to purchase a small patch of land in the San Fernando Valley. Unfortunately, all of the years of labor caught up with him, so he was not able to appreciate it; within one month after we bought the land, he dropped dead of a heart attack. Mother came to live with us, but she was never well. She died a few years later.
“But those were the only personal shadows. Otherwise, all was well. When I wasn’t working, I went to church, and I had many friends. George Holden respected me and treated me like a son. I met his real son, Prescott at the same time. He was my age.”
I didn’t tell Grandfather, but I never much cared for Uncle Prescott. He was a tall, heavy man who visited us infrequently. Of course he had inherited his father’s shares in the company, which Grandfather was still connected with in some ways, so Uncle Prescott was worth many millions of dollars. But he never seemed genuine to me. For one thing, he had small eyes in a very broad face, and his constant smiles never seemed to involve them. He told me to call him “Uncle”, and he was in and out of our lives every few months, always bringing my family gifts. I knew he was very generous in his contributions to Grandfather’s various organizations and charities, and that Western Shipping, which had major trading interests with Japan, was one of the few corporations that promoted a greater understanding of Japanese Americans. But even so, I did not like him.
Grandfather would never express his own feelings, but now he said, “Prescott is a fine person, but he’s not the man his father was. George Holden was a visionary, as I said. He understood that we in California are inevitably tied to Japan, and that trade and immigration strengthens both parties and makes everyone richer. Prescott of course says the same thing publicly, but does he really understand it the way his father did? I don’t know for sure.”
“Why didn’t you stay with Western Shipping?” I asked. My Grandfather smiled, knowing where this was going.
“You want me to tell you about the Kuroshima Affair, which changed my life,” he said. “Of course you have heard snippets from other people but you want your grandfather to explain what really happened. You are a very precocious child, Mary, and you are never satisfied with anything less than the whole story. Very well, then I will tell you what happened, and you will know forevermore what is legend and what is reality.”
Abruptly his lips tightened and his face grew somber. “For you to understand the Kuroshima Affair, Mary, you must also understand the context, and that means that I need to explain to you some very unpleasant things about the past. There are those adults, your father perhaps among them, who believe that such things as I might tell you now are not suitable for a child of ten. But I disagree. So long as you are a thinking person, Mary, there is no piece of knowledge that should be prohibited from you. Are you a thinking person, Mary?”
“I guess so,” I replied, having never thought too much about it.
“Good, I agree,” Grandfather replied. “I am one also. You will be surprised to learn, Mary, how few of us there are in this world. We are definitely in the minority. Most people simply do what they’re told, and when they think at all, they think as they are told to think. But we are the ones who make the difference, Mary.
“And also, you should be aware that there are two types of thinking people: those who use facts to inform their opinion, and those who use opinions to inform their facts. Always try to be in the former group, Mary: this is very difficult to attain. It means being willing to change what you believe in if the facts contradict it. Most people will never agree to do so. I struggle against the latter myself, and you will as well, at times. But it is a constant battle you must fight.”
I didn’t understand him and told him so. How could anybody ever ignore facts?
He just grunted. “How indeed? But as to not understanding me, you will someday. On to the Kuroshima Affair. I will tell you the whole story, as it happened:
“I have told you that it was a happy time for me, Mary, the years before the First World War. But that was personal. For our people, the Japanese American immigrants in California, those were dark times, worse than now, perhaps.
“More and more Japanese followed my father’s example and left the large farming interests to purchase their own land. Because they were so productive at growing, this angered the White farming interests, and they pressured President Theodore Roosevelt to cut off all further immigration from Japan. The result was the Gentleman’s Agreement, which prohibited all Japanese males from coming to California, though we were still allowed, under a quota, to immigrate to Hawaii.
“But the Gentleman’s Agreement had an opposite effect of what was intended. Men already here, not wealthy enough to return to Japan, sent for women to marry. These were the famous ‘picture brides’ some of whom you know personally. They were very brave women, Mary, to travel so far to a land they did not know and marry a man who was a stranger. Unlike your grandmother, they did not come to San Pedro but to Angel Island which is off San Francisco, where all immigrants from Asia arrived after 1913. These women settled down, worked as hard as their husbands, and produced children. And our community began to grow.
“Of course, this made the powers that be even angrier. A number of organizations were started, designed for the most part to keep us down. The most prominent, and to my mind most despicable, was the Anti-Asian League, which was begun by a journalist named Edgar Walker, who worked for the Los Angeles Examiner, which was owned by Hearst. William Randolph Hearst has always been against us, Mary. He is an isolationist, and a fierce conservative, but I don’t think he himself is racist. However, to his shame he did allow a racist to run his Los Angeles newspaper back then. Walker would write columns with titles such as, ‘The Yellow Peril- Will It Conquer California?’ and ‘How Do We Keep Our Children Safe From The Slanted Eyes That Watch Them?’ The League pushed for more stringent regulations, and together with the farming interests, they helpt to establish several laws through the legislature that were later challenged as unconstitutional. In order to limit land ownership, a Japanese could not purchase more than ten acres of land. I’ll get to the details of this law later on; it was at the heart of Kuroshima. But there were other laws as well. Japanese children could not attend schools with White children. Although most of the immigrants were not Christian, Buddhist and Shinto Temples were prohibited in Los Angeles and San Francisco. And most damaging of all, after 1914 Japanese not born here were not allowed to become citizens.
“This last law was repeated on a federal level and then challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. That case was in 1924, Ozawa vs. United States, and I wrote one of the briefs on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, and I remain proud of that to this day, even though we lost that battle. But all of this came later. Most of the laws I have described to you were unenforceable, so they were either circumvented or easily ignored. But there were ugly incidents at this time as well, and these had scarring effects that had more impact on us than the laws.
“A Japanese man named Myamoto worked on a farm for a white couple named Henderson in the Central Valley. One night this Myamoto snuck into the Hendersons’ house with a machete and killed both the man and his wife. Even worse, he then killed their children as well. Myamoto surrendered to the authorities but refused to give any reasons for his actions. He was tried and hung a month later.
“Those were dark days after the Myamoto killings, Mary. We were afraid to leave our homes. Walker wrote in the Examiner that the deaths were ‘proof positive that the *** can never be trusted. We show him kindness, and he rewards us with treachery. The *** is not really a human being…” and so forth. There were incidents of Japanese laborers being beat up on the street.
“Two months after Myamoto was put to death, two young Japanese men, boys really, were seen in San Francisco talking rudely to a white woman. Or so the story went; nobody to this day is really sure what happened. A mob formed, and the two boys were dragged down to Fisherman’s Wharf and hung to death. It was a lynching, Mary; you’ve read about them. They happen all the time to Black men down south for basically the same crime. But this lynching took place in California, and it happened to Japanese.
“In the midst of these events Tadeo Kuroshima came to visit me. He was a strong man, in his thirties, a laborer; you see the muscles rippling on his arms and back, so you knew he was a hard worker. He had arrived, he told me, from Nagasaki in 1904, and had saved his money until 1914, when he sent for a bride that his mother chose for him. Now they were married with two young girls; it was a typical story for our people.
“In 1917, a man named Knight approached Tadeo. Knight was the son of farmers, and he had inherited over 40 acres of land in the San Fernando Valley. Tadeo had worked for his father for the last ten years or so. The land in question was lush and wealth-producing; it grew oranges, all for the Los Angeles markets. Since Tadeo had taken charge for old man Knight, he had doubled the productivity. Kuroshima was a smart as well as hard worker.
“Harold Knight, the son, was in his forties, unmarried, and he cared nothing about the land he inherited. He was a gambler who enjoyed playing cards in San Francisco, and what he cared most about was money. He didn’t want to wait for it, so instead of retaining Kuroshima and collecting monthly income, he simply offered to sell Tadeo all the land if the man could come up with enough cash.
“Tadeo had the cash. As I said, he was thrifty, and Knight’s father had been generous. But there was the law that restricted any Japanese from purchasing more than ten acres. How to get around this?
“No problem, Knight told him. He would sell ten acres to Tadeo, ten acres to Tadeo’s wife, and ten acres each to Tadeo’s two baby daughters. This was a scheme a lot of Japanese were apparently using to circumvent the laws. But Tadeo had to agree to purchase all of the land, and the cash had to be upfront.
“Tadeo told the man he would think it over and reply in the morning. That night, Tadeo’s wife pleaded with him not to do this; it would take all of their savings, and this Knight fellow couldn’t be trusted, however honorable the man’s father had been. But Tadeo was like so many of us, Mary. The dream of having land, owning land of his own was too great, any risk was worth it. The next morning he told Mr. Knight he agreed, and paid him the money. Four sets of papers were drawn up and recorded, one for each ten acres.
“A year passed, and the land was even more productive. Also, that was a time when the end of the War brought a skyrocket in demand for oranges. Tadeo worked as hard as he ever had, and yet he was eyeing more land next to his, which he knew he could also achieve much with. But it would take a few years for him to save up the money he had paid Knight, and he would have to hope that those wretched laws changed, as well.
“Meanwhile, Harold Knight had taken all of the cash, lived high for a while, and then lost it all at cards and the horse track. Once more he was flat broke. That’s when he came up with his scheme to take all of his former land back.
“He approached the San Fernando Sheriff, who was an old friend of his, and told him that this sneaky Oriental had stolen his land. Yes, Knight had signed papers and had them recorded, but these papers were illegal because some of the acres had been sold to children, which was an obvious attempt to go around the law. No mention that money had changed hands. No mention that Knight had instigated the sale. The Sheriff took Knight at his word that he had been ‘tricked’. Poor Tadeo was arrested and brought before a judge for a preliminary hearing. The Judge, a man named Edwards, was also friends with the Sheriff and Knight, though this was not revealed at the time. Knight testified, and the Sheriff testified. The Judge ruled that because Tadeo was not a citizen, he would not be allowed to testify. Tadeo Kuroshima was sentenced to six months in prison for ‘cheating an American citizen’; in addition, all of his ownership papers of the land were revoked and all forty acres were returned to the ownership of Harold Knight.”
Grandfather paused to swallow some tea. I was shocked at the injustice of the story I was hearing. How could such a thing be possible, here, in California? And if it was possible, what kept my grandfather from sharing the pessimism of Japanese like my sensei and Mr. Ishida?
Of course I did not ask this; instead, I just waited for Grandfather to continue his tale, which he now proceeded to do. “Tadeo went to jail quietly, without protest. His wife and children went to stay with a friend. Of course the story spread through the Japanese community, and people were outraged, in some ways even more so than at the hanging of the two boys. After all, that had been a quick event, caused by emotional hatred and a mob. This, on the other hand, had been planned out beforehand. But what could we do? Where could we turn? There was no one to speak for us.
“And so, when Tadeo Kuroshima was released from the jailhouse six months later, he came to Los Angeles to see me. I arrived home from work one evening, and he was there, waiting. Of course he had heard of me, as I had heard of him. After all, Mary, it is not bragging for me to tell you that I was perhaps the most prominent Japanese man in Los Angeles, certainly not the wealthiest by any means, but I made a good living, and I had already invested in the first of my apartment houses, the one we are now living in. I was a deacon in our church, then as now, and people looked up to me. And, most importantly, I was the only Japanese attorney.
“I knew why he had come, and I dreaded it, Mary. I quickly offered the man money which was cowardly of me, and which he proudly rejected. ‘I don’t want money, but justice,’ he said. ‘I want my land back. It’s my land; I paid for it, and now it has been stolen.’ He was a simple man, but he understood that he had been done wrong, and he believed that I could help him.
“I was terrified, Mary. For years I had in mind an ideal about America, which I have explained to you: a place where all are entitled to justice. I originally studied law with the dream that I would help to enforce this justice, and hopefully on behalf of my own people, Japanese Americans. Now, the time had come to live up to what I believed, and I did not want to do it. I was wealthy, doing so well, one of the lucky ones. Why risk all of that for a man I did not know? I could lose my position at Western Shipping, everything. Chances were nothing could be done for this poor man anyway, and even if something could, would it really make any difference in the big scheme of things?
“Over the years, I had come to the comforting conclusion that time would take care of prejudice, Mary. After we had been here for a few generations, we would come to be more accepted and less mistreated; this had been the pattern with Irish, Jews, and Poles who had come to this country. Of course, all of those groups are white and easy to fit in, but I still believed that the same rules would apply; it would just take a little longer. But these thoughts were an excuse to me, so that I would not have to take any action myself.
“And I was wrong. Time itself is not a solution, Mary. Yes, struggle takes time, but it also takes action. And here was that action staring me in the face. And so I was scared.
“I told him I’d have to think about it, and to come back in a few days. And so I did think about it, Mary; I thought very little about anything else, really. I didn’t discuss it with your grandmother, though she of course had met the man and had overheard the original conversation. But she did not mention it, nor give any viewpoint. For her, whatever I might decide to do was correct. I know you think this is old-fashioned; certainly I could never imagine your mother acting in such a way, or you either, even at the age of ten! But that was how my wife was raised, and so I did not bother to ask her opinion.
“I did not discuss the issue with George Holden either, not then. If I had, and he had said he couldn’t release me for this, or if he threatened to fire me over it, then that would have been the excuse I needed to reject Kuroshima, and nobody would have blamed me for it. And in my mind, that was a dodge. Whatever decision was made, it had to be mine, and no one else’s.
“And so I thought. And I prayed. And in the end, Mary, I put aside the thought of what it would do to my career as ultimately unimportant. And I put aside what might happen to Tadeo Kuroshima as unimportant as well. And finally, the fact that he was Japanese and I was Japanese was not really vital, either. What mattered, Mary, was that this was the United States of America. From the moment I learned about this great country in books, long after I arrived here, I realized that America is much more an idea than a land. The idea is about, as your pledge of allegiance says, liberty and justice for all. If you take away that idea, Mary, the U.S.A. becomes no different from any other country, like France or Germany or Mexico or even Japan: just a place that you’re from, and no longer a place that you’re going to. I decided that the idea was worth fighting for. And now I had the opportunity to do so. How could I reject it and live with myself ever afterwards? And so my choice had been made.
“I told Takeo I would fight for him, and I thought the man would cry, he was so moved. He should not have been. I had no idea what I was going to do about his case. But of course the first thing I did was what I dreaded most: I informed George Holden I would need a leave of absence, and I told him why; I could not have kept such a thing a secret. I expected, frankly, to be terminated then and there.
“But George surprised me once again. He had not heard about the case; while it had spread through our community, it had not been reported in any newspapers, so it would have been extremely unlikely for him to have known anything about it. However, when George did hear my tale, he was outraged. ‘We can’t keep treating people this way,’ he said to me. ‘We need to expand our commerce with Japan, and stuff like this isn’t helping any. You take all the time you need, Richard. If you want to work out of this office, you do that. I’ll back you 100%.
“You do not understand, Mary, what amazing words those were for a white man to say to an oriental back then. It showed amazing courage on George’s part, and over the next several months that courage and support buoyed me all through my struggle.”
My grandfather then proceeded to describe what followed: his lawsuit against Harold Knight and also the County of Los Angeles. Through George Holden, he found a sympathetic newspaper reporter with the Los Angeles Times who reported the story for the general public; this created a great controversy. Harold Knight became a local celebrity; he was vilified by liberals and other open-minded citizens of the era. On the other side, Edgar Walker held Knight up as a hero, and wrote in the Examiner, “Here we have a case of a white man who fought back against the Yellow Tide, a white man who would not allow himself to be murdered in his bed by an oriental who has proven himself every bit as crafty and ruthless as that murderer, Myamoto.”
Grandfather received death threats. Though he himself was never harmed, two other Japanese men were beaten up as a warning to us all. The night before the trial began, George Holden came to visit my grandfather. He said he had been approached by some important men, including an associate of the Governor of California, who informed him that it would be bad for the state of this lawsuit was pursued to the finish. The publicity might result in other lawsuits on behalf of Orientals, and some powerful interests were concerned as to where that might lead.
A compromise was offered: Tadeo and my grandfather must drop their suit. In return, Kuroshima would very privately be given forty acres of choice land from a generous anonymous businessman, though it would not be the land he had lost. He would also be given the sum of five thousand dollars to spend on the land if he chose. Grandfather would receive three thousand dollars, equal to a year of his salary, for his effort thus far. And all they had to do was drop the case and also tell the newspapers that they were incorrect; that even though injustice might have occurred, it was wrong to question the authority of the state.
Grandfather smiled with amazement as he told me about this conversation. “George explained that it was important to Western Shipping that I agree to the compromise. He had been warned that Sacramento could make things very difficult for the future of his company. And do you know what he told me then, Mary?”
When I shook my head, my grandfather said with a grin, “He told me that he had told them all to go to Hell, and that he would fire me if I accepted such a bad deal. These men were running scared; they didn’t want us to assert our rights. ‘You fight them, Richard,’ he told me, ‘You fight them not just for the Japanese, but for all of us who want every man to have an honest chance!’ And so I did.”
My grandfather won the case. The key moment came when the sheriff, under cross-examination, admitted that he had accepted a bribe from Harold Knight. Knight himself was not present at the trial; he was already in prison on two counts of fraud involving a gambling scheme and the news that he had attempted to sell the property again, twice, to two different businessmen. Tadeo was awarded $30,000.00 in punitive damages from the County of Los Angeles, and also received a written apology from the Governor.
The victory made all the newspapers, and it made Grandfather famous overnight. It changed his life dramatically. He formed the Japanese-American Friendship Society soon afterwards, and began to give public speeches on behalf of Asian immigrants. He continued his position at Western Shipping, but he also began to take more private cases.
Soon, the name of Richard Nakamura was a scourge of the white farming interests, as he won more and more rights for our people.
“But every time I would win, they would just pass new laws,” he said gravely. “I tried to speak on behalf of the Japanese farmer, but no one wanted to listen. The Edgar Wallaces of the world were much more influential than I was. Still, I never felt it was a losing battle, Mary. I thought, and still do, that we would eventually reach equality here. Although I have to say we are certainly not being helped much by the actions of Japan.”
I knew that Grandfather deplored what the Japanese had done, especially the rape of Nanking, and the sinking of the Panay gunboat, both events which were widely reported in Los Angeles. “It has set our cause back thirty years,” he would say. Grandfather would argue with whoever would listen that the best course for Japan would be to give up her fruitless hope of empire and become a pacific trading partner of the United States.
“We are natural allies,” he would tell me. “George Holden was so right about that all those years ago. Yet we seem to be spiraling towards war.” And he would sadly shake his head.
My grandfather did not want to discuss what would happen if we did go to war, and more specifically, what would become of us. In public, he assured everyone that there was no foundation to the rumors that we all might be sent away to concentration camps. In private, he said nothing, and this scared me more than any words he might have had. Looking at him, I knew that if such an event occurred, he would consider his life a failure; he could not bear it to be so.
But Grandfather was our bedrock, the one in our family (and in our community) that we relied on the most. If he were to falter, it would be devastating for all of us. I think he recognized this, which is why he did his utmost to stay positive.
I had a conceit; even at eleven, I believed myself to be the closest to him. No one, not my father or Uncle Tommy or even my grandmother was as knowing of Grandfather as I was. I, Mary Nakamura was his special one.
But as it turned out, I hardly knew my grandfather at all.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Five
It was in November of that same year that I learned more of the truth about Mr. Ishida and his bookstore. Of course I did not learn all of the truth; sometimes I think we never learn all of the truth, even about ourselves, until the day we die (and perhaps not even then?) But at least, in November, I thought I had the answers.
It was Mrs. Myagi that finally told me the story. She had mentioned it on that day the FBI had come, and I knew she was what my father described as “a soft touch”. I waited until I got her alone one day, and asked, “Mrs. Myagi? Can you tell me what you meant about Mr. Ishida’s bride, and how he was unlucky?”
She looked at me oddly for a moment and then replied reluctantly, “Oh, I couldn’t, Mariko-chan. Oh no, you’re far too young to hear a story like that, and I could tell the other day that your honorable grandfather did not wish to have it told. And it really is Mr. Ishida’s private business anyway. So let’s just forget all about it, shall we?”
But I could tell that she was dying to tell me. Relating gossip was what Mrs. Myagi loved best, after all. So I pushed a little bit, knowing she would give in: “Oh please, I am old enough, really, and I promise I won’t tell anyone, honest!”
As I suspected, this was all the old woman needed. “Well,” she replied, glancing down the hallway, “If you won’t say it was I who told you…” and then she proceeded to relate what she knew.
Takeo Ishida came from a fine family in Yokohama, which is also where my grandfather came from, and there was some indication that he knew my family there. But they would not have been friends, or even close acquaintances, because the Ishidas were samurai, the ruling class of Japan. The Ishida clan had been minor allies of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the family which had ruled imperial Japan between the years of 1600 and 1868. For years they had collected their income as bodyguards and soldiers for the great rulers. After Commodore Perry forcibly opened up Japan to the west in the 1850’s, Takeo’s grandfather became a member of the shishi, a rebellious group of young xenophobic samurai who blamed the Shogunate for allowing Japan to become servile to the gai-jin (foreigners.) This man, Ishida Hiro, became infamous in Japan when he assassinated the English ambassador by running him through with a samurai sword. When Ishida was hung for his crime three days later, he died with the words, “Sonno-joi!” on his lips, the battle cry of the shishi, which meant: Honor the Emperor! Expel the barbarian!
Although men like Ishida Hiro were killed, their cause turned out to be successful, because the once impotent Emperor was able with their help to wrest control from the Shogunate. Now, thought poor samurai families like the Ishida, our day has come! Surely the Emperor will reward our effort, while stopping the foreigners in their tracks. To their great shock, Meiji instead dissolved the samurai class. This had no effect on the very wealthy samurai who still retained all of their land and income. But to families like the Ishida, it meant they were forced into the middle classes in order to get by. No longer would their rank alone be a privilege that separated them from the common masses; now they were just like anybody else.
Just as bad a betrayal was the Emperor’s insistence on attempting to absorb Western culture rather than resist it. Almost overnight, Japan turned into a country that couldn’t get enough of the West, as they tried to modernize every aspect of their lives. This “Meiji Revolution”, as it was called, had a profound effect on the Ishida clan; it made them believe that everything was lost, that nothing that had been revered would be protected in the future. And they became bitter.
Takeo’s father took out this bitterness like so many of his class by joining the new army. Because of his samurai heritage, he was instantly made an officer, and he was allowed to keep his hereditary sword. Though Ishida Hiro had been hung by the government, he was revered in Japan, and this allowed Ishida Ito, his son, to be promoted quickly up the ranks.
“And who knows how far the old man might have gotten, if not for the scandal,” Mrs. Myagi gushed breathlessly, having gotten to the juiciest part of the tale. “Ishida Ito had a sister, Fujika. She was also the daughter of the martyr Hiro, and she was young and beautiful. But! Ishida Fujika, while in Yokohama, did the unthinkable. She fell in love with an eta boy and ran off with him!”
Eta. The slang term for Burakumin, which meant “filthy ones.” For a thousand years, eta had been the untouchables of Japanese society, considered unclean by samurai, peasants, and even merchants, the lowest of the low. Burakumin handled animal hides and tar and ate meat, which most Japanese, being Buddhist, refused to touch. They lived by themselves, usually in the poorest part of every city, and were not allowed to marry outside of their class.
I knew very little about eta, having never met one. At Japanese school, they were the butt of every joke: “He smells worse than an eta!” But I don’t think anyone of us knew what we were talking about. It was said that there were Burakumin living among us, but that they were hiding; having escaped Japan, they infiltrated among the rest of us pretending to be normal Japanese, and hoping to infect us like a disease. I was told that in the early days of Little Tokyo, long before I was born, detectives made a living out of identifying eta who had attempted such a masquerade; they were usually then banished from the community.
In recent years though, this kind of thing did not occur, though it was still talked about with approval by some of our elders.
I had been raised by my parents and especially by my grandfather to revere the idea of justice, but it never crossed my mind that this applied to eta. Not knowing what they looked like, I imagined them to be slimy creatures, almost non-human and filthy in appearance. I hoped I would never have to meet one.
“Of course the family disowned the girl,” Mrs. Myagi told me. “And who would not? To do something so shameful to your ancestors, and willingly!” The Ishida clan pronounced her dead, led by her own mother, the revered widow of Ishida Hiro. And in the army, Ito was treated sympathetically by his fellow officers. But he was not promoted. He remained a captain while others of his peers reached the titles of colonel and general. It was whispered inside the corps: there is a weakness with the Ishida. This man cannot be trusted.
Takeo was already a teenager when this happened; he idolized his father, who was becoming increasingly depressed about having to lose his life dream over his sister’s mistake.
Finally, unable to bear the shame any longer, Ishida Ito committed seppuku, taking his own life.
Takeo’s mother had died a few years earlier, and he was an only child. His father’s suicide left him the last of the Ishidas. He was seventeen at the time. He did not wish to follow his father’s footsteps in the army, because he was aware that as the nephew of a woman who had run away with eta, he would never be promoted. But what other opportunities were there for a young Japanese man without money at the turn of the century? As a son of a formerly prominent soldier, Takeo had received a fine education that was denied members of the lower classes (like my own great grandparents); this explained why Mr. Ishida was so fond of books and skilled at the use of calligraphy. But these attributes could not be used for financial gain. And so Takeo opted to come to America.
In making this choice, he gave up his pampered life and lived among the Japanese laborers. Unlike them, Mr. Ishida had no real skill at farming, but he was a hard worker. It is unknown whether his original intent was to stay in California, or to return to Japan some day; in those days, as a young man, Ishida Takeo was very quiet, and barely spoke to anyone. However, soon after he arrived he ran into Grandfather, who was then just starting USC, and had returned to the labor camp to visit his parents. Takeo had known my family in Japan, and now they sought to form again what had been an earlier friendship.
Or so I was told, rather blandly, by Mrs. Myagi that day. Which made me stop her in the middle of telling her tale in order to ask, “Excuse me, Mrs. Myagi, but how is that possible? My great-grandparents were common laborers in Yokohama in a hat factory, while Mr. Ishida was of samurai descent, and the son and grandson of important soldiers. How could they have even known each other, much less been friends?”
The older woman looked just as confused as I was. But then she just shook her head dismissively. “Child, am I supposed to know everything? I’m telling you the story as I have heard it. Who knows how people know each other. Yokahama is not that large a city, even now. Perhaps they passed each other on the street. Who can say?”
But I knew now there was something wrong with this story. In Japan, different classes simply did not mingle with each other, except with risk of great scandal, as was the case with Takeo’s aunt and the eta so long ago. And what made the story odder still is that my grandfather and Mr. Ishida were so unlike in every way. My grandfather was eternally optimistic, friendly to everyone, and quite an outgoing personality. Mr. Ishida was a pessimist, curt to the point of being rude to those he did not know, and had an earned reputation as a withdrawn, quiet figure. Yet from the moment they ran into each other here in America, they became fast friends.
“Poor Mr. Ishida is a man of three tragedies he can never recover from,” Mrs. Myagi explained. “The first tragedy occurred when his father killed himself over the eta scandal. I wonder if Ito even realized he was leaving a parentless child behind? It was loneliness that brought Ishida Takeo to America, Mariko-chan.
“The second tragedy occurred when Mr. Ishida was only 26. I told you he was not much of a farmer. That year he got his foot caught in a metallic grinder. Oh it must have been so painful, I can hardly imagine. Poor Mr. Ishida was hospitalized for weeks, and when he recovered from his injury, he had a strong limp and needed a cane to get around, as he’s had ever since. Of course, the farm combine fired him; he was worthless to them.”
There was no back pay offered, no compensation, no offer to pay for the hospital bills. Such ideas were unheard of in those days for any laborers, much less Japanese.
Unable to continue farming, which he despised anyway, Mr. Ishida borrowed monies from my grandfather in order to set up his bookshop. Grandfather exhausted his own savings at the time in order to bring the dream of the bookshop about.
(And again, this part of the tale made no sense to me, either. Why should Grandfather, no matter how close he had somehow been to Mr. Ishida back in Japan, give over his savings to the other man? My grandfather was a generous man as was proven time and again, but surely this was too much to give to someone who was not a member of the family? I knew Grandfather would not tell me the answer, so I resolved to ask Mr. Ishida one day. As it turns out, I never did.)
The bookshop was an oddity; it could hardly be called a financial success. Mr. Ishida collected old and rare Japanese and Chinese books and manuscripts. Some of these, especially the prints that I so enjoyed looking at, could truly be considered works of art. Visitors would come from all over California having heard of the bookshop, but for all this, there were simply not enough customers to make a real difference. Most of our people were laborers and had no time to read. Those that did were usually from Mr. Ishida’s own samurai class, and there were few of these in America at this time.
And of course, because Mr. Ishida spoke no English, there weren’t many Caucasians who ever came in. Once in a while a college professor or librarian would visit and spend some time inspecting the volumes, but Mr. Ishida was always so cold to gai-jin of any sort that they often chose not to return.
The most common white visitor to the bookshop was a police officer named Lieutenant O’ Reilly. He was a tall, heavyset man in his late thirties with a friendly grin that never seemed to leave his face. This section of Little Tokyo was his beat, and he made sure to patrol it frequently, often on foot.
All of the children knew him; the younger ones always gathered around because the lieutenant often had candy in his pockets that he enjoyed passing out. “How are my little Jappo kiddies today?” he would say. He would nod to everyone and pat men on the back. “How you doing, slant eyes?” he would ask. He never called anyone in our community by their names; it was always “slant-eyes” or “Jappo” or “my yellow friend.” And always that grin that seemed to say, I don’t mean nothing by it, don’t take it personal, just got to tell it like it is, right?
As I grew older, Lieutenant O’Reilly made me uncomfortable. I noticed he was always staring at my mother, at her chest and private areas with a concentrated abandon that would have been considered terrible manners by one of us. Sometimes he looked at some of my girlfriends in the same way, the ones like Dorothy Iyami who were more mature for their age. Thank goodness that he never stared at me like that! I suppose I was simply too plain to really look at for very long. In this case, the fact did not displease me.
As I said, the police lieutenant visited the bookshop often, at least once a month. And when he did, Mr. Ishida would always hand him a white envelope full of cash. O’Reilly would just laugh, pretending to be surprised. Then he would wink at me and leave just as soon as he had arrived, whistling some popular tune as he stepped out the door.
“Why do you give him money, if you dislike him so?” I once asked Mr. Ishida in Japanese, since it was so obvious about his distaste for the policeman.
One thing Mr. Ishida had in common with his old friend my grandfather was that they both treated me as an adult, and would try to answer all of my questions. On this occasion, the bookseller replied, “You will find, Mariko-chan, that there is no real freedom anywhere in this world. All of us are bound to one set of rules or another, and if we want to do business, we must pay. Always we must pay. From the moment I opened up this bookshop over twenty years ago, I have paid policemen to add their protection. If I did not, this place would likely be robbed or burned down; who knows what might happen? So I have paid, just as all the businesses pay, just as you shall pay someday. Nothing is free.”
“But why do you dislike him so much?” I persisted.
He sighed. “Really, all gai-jin are the same, little one. None are to be trusted, really. Since I began I have worked with several policemen. Some have been bad, others worse. But there is something especially distasteful about this man, this O’Reilly. You can see it in his face; he secretly hates us all. He would like to have us exterminated, because we embarrass him by our presence. Oh, I don’t mean killed, really, just disappear. He will be happy if Japan attacks America. He will take it out on us; you will see.”
I shivered with dread at the thought of that big man suddenly abandoning his friendly nature. Mr. Ishida noticed this and smiled at me. “Have courage, Mariko-chan. I will not tell you not to be concerned, because I don’t wish to treat you as a child. But concern is not the same as despair. Whatever happens, we shall survive it.”
It was in November of that same year that I learned more of the truth about Mr. Ishida and his bookstore. Of course I did not learn all of the truth; sometimes I think we never learn all of the truth, even about ourselves, until the day we die (and perhaps not even then?) But at least, in November, I thought I had the answers.
It was Mrs. Myagi that finally told me the story. She had mentioned it on that day the FBI had come, and I knew she was what my father described as “a soft touch”. I waited until I got her alone one day, and asked, “Mrs. Myagi? Can you tell me what you meant about Mr. Ishida’s bride, and how he was unlucky?”
She looked at me oddly for a moment and then replied reluctantly, “Oh, I couldn’t, Mariko-chan. Oh no, you’re far too young to hear a story like that, and I could tell the other day that your honorable grandfather did not wish to have it told. And it really is Mr. Ishida’s private business anyway. So let’s just forget all about it, shall we?”
But I could tell that she was dying to tell me. Relating gossip was what Mrs. Myagi loved best, after all. So I pushed a little bit, knowing she would give in: “Oh please, I am old enough, really, and I promise I won’t tell anyone, honest!”
As I suspected, this was all the old woman needed. “Well,” she replied, glancing down the hallway, “If you won’t say it was I who told you…” and then she proceeded to relate what she knew.
Takeo Ishida came from a fine family in Yokohama, which is also where my grandfather came from, and there was some indication that he knew my family there. But they would not have been friends, or even close acquaintances, because the Ishidas were samurai, the ruling class of Japan. The Ishida clan had been minor allies of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the family which had ruled imperial Japan between the years of 1600 and 1868. For years they had collected their income as bodyguards and soldiers for the great rulers. After Commodore Perry forcibly opened up Japan to the west in the 1850’s, Takeo’s grandfather became a member of the shishi, a rebellious group of young xenophobic samurai who blamed the Shogunate for allowing Japan to become servile to the gai-jin (foreigners.) This man, Ishida Hiro, became infamous in Japan when he assassinated the English ambassador by running him through with a samurai sword. When Ishida was hung for his crime three days later, he died with the words, “Sonno-joi!” on his lips, the battle cry of the shishi, which meant: Honor the Emperor! Expel the barbarian!
Although men like Ishida Hiro were killed, their cause turned out to be successful, because the once impotent Emperor was able with their help to wrest control from the Shogunate. Now, thought poor samurai families like the Ishida, our day has come! Surely the Emperor will reward our effort, while stopping the foreigners in their tracks. To their great shock, Meiji instead dissolved the samurai class. This had no effect on the very wealthy samurai who still retained all of their land and income. But to families like the Ishida, it meant they were forced into the middle classes in order to get by. No longer would their rank alone be a privilege that separated them from the common masses; now they were just like anybody else.
Just as bad a betrayal was the Emperor’s insistence on attempting to absorb Western culture rather than resist it. Almost overnight, Japan turned into a country that couldn’t get enough of the West, as they tried to modernize every aspect of their lives. This “Meiji Revolution”, as it was called, had a profound effect on the Ishida clan; it made them believe that everything was lost, that nothing that had been revered would be protected in the future. And they became bitter.
Takeo’s father took out this bitterness like so many of his class by joining the new army. Because of his samurai heritage, he was instantly made an officer, and he was allowed to keep his hereditary sword. Though Ishida Hiro had been hung by the government, he was revered in Japan, and this allowed Ishida Ito, his son, to be promoted quickly up the ranks.
“And who knows how far the old man might have gotten, if not for the scandal,” Mrs. Myagi gushed breathlessly, having gotten to the juiciest part of the tale. “Ishida Ito had a sister, Fujika. She was also the daughter of the martyr Hiro, and she was young and beautiful. But! Ishida Fujika, while in Yokohama, did the unthinkable. She fell in love with an eta boy and ran off with him!”
Eta. The slang term for Burakumin, which meant “filthy ones.” For a thousand years, eta had been the untouchables of Japanese society, considered unclean by samurai, peasants, and even merchants, the lowest of the low. Burakumin handled animal hides and tar and ate meat, which most Japanese, being Buddhist, refused to touch. They lived by themselves, usually in the poorest part of every city, and were not allowed to marry outside of their class.
I knew very little about eta, having never met one. At Japanese school, they were the butt of every joke: “He smells worse than an eta!” But I don’t think anyone of us knew what we were talking about. It was said that there were Burakumin living among us, but that they were hiding; having escaped Japan, they infiltrated among the rest of us pretending to be normal Japanese, and hoping to infect us like a disease. I was told that in the early days of Little Tokyo, long before I was born, detectives made a living out of identifying eta who had attempted such a masquerade; they were usually then banished from the community.
In recent years though, this kind of thing did not occur, though it was still talked about with approval by some of our elders.
I had been raised by my parents and especially by my grandfather to revere the idea of justice, but it never crossed my mind that this applied to eta. Not knowing what they looked like, I imagined them to be slimy creatures, almost non-human and filthy in appearance. I hoped I would never have to meet one.
“Of course the family disowned the girl,” Mrs. Myagi told me. “And who would not? To do something so shameful to your ancestors, and willingly!” The Ishida clan pronounced her dead, led by her own mother, the revered widow of Ishida Hiro. And in the army, Ito was treated sympathetically by his fellow officers. But he was not promoted. He remained a captain while others of his peers reached the titles of colonel and general. It was whispered inside the corps: there is a weakness with the Ishida. This man cannot be trusted.
Takeo was already a teenager when this happened; he idolized his father, who was becoming increasingly depressed about having to lose his life dream over his sister’s mistake.
Finally, unable to bear the shame any longer, Ishida Ito committed seppuku, taking his own life.
Takeo’s mother had died a few years earlier, and he was an only child. His father’s suicide left him the last of the Ishidas. He was seventeen at the time. He did not wish to follow his father’s footsteps in the army, because he was aware that as the nephew of a woman who had run away with eta, he would never be promoted. But what other opportunities were there for a young Japanese man without money at the turn of the century? As a son of a formerly prominent soldier, Takeo had received a fine education that was denied members of the lower classes (like my own great grandparents); this explained why Mr. Ishida was so fond of books and skilled at the use of calligraphy. But these attributes could not be used for financial gain. And so Takeo opted to come to America.
In making this choice, he gave up his pampered life and lived among the Japanese laborers. Unlike them, Mr. Ishida had no real skill at farming, but he was a hard worker. It is unknown whether his original intent was to stay in California, or to return to Japan some day; in those days, as a young man, Ishida Takeo was very quiet, and barely spoke to anyone. However, soon after he arrived he ran into Grandfather, who was then just starting USC, and had returned to the labor camp to visit his parents. Takeo had known my family in Japan, and now they sought to form again what had been an earlier friendship.
Or so I was told, rather blandly, by Mrs. Myagi that day. Which made me stop her in the middle of telling her tale in order to ask, “Excuse me, Mrs. Myagi, but how is that possible? My great-grandparents were common laborers in Yokohama in a hat factory, while Mr. Ishida was of samurai descent, and the son and grandson of important soldiers. How could they have even known each other, much less been friends?”
The older woman looked just as confused as I was. But then she just shook her head dismissively. “Child, am I supposed to know everything? I’m telling you the story as I have heard it. Who knows how people know each other. Yokahama is not that large a city, even now. Perhaps they passed each other on the street. Who can say?”
But I knew now there was something wrong with this story. In Japan, different classes simply did not mingle with each other, except with risk of great scandal, as was the case with Takeo’s aunt and the eta so long ago. And what made the story odder still is that my grandfather and Mr. Ishida were so unlike in every way. My grandfather was eternally optimistic, friendly to everyone, and quite an outgoing personality. Mr. Ishida was a pessimist, curt to the point of being rude to those he did not know, and had an earned reputation as a withdrawn, quiet figure. Yet from the moment they ran into each other here in America, they became fast friends.
“Poor Mr. Ishida is a man of three tragedies he can never recover from,” Mrs. Myagi explained. “The first tragedy occurred when his father killed himself over the eta scandal. I wonder if Ito even realized he was leaving a parentless child behind? It was loneliness that brought Ishida Takeo to America, Mariko-chan.
“The second tragedy occurred when Mr. Ishida was only 26. I told you he was not much of a farmer. That year he got his foot caught in a metallic grinder. Oh it must have been so painful, I can hardly imagine. Poor Mr. Ishida was hospitalized for weeks, and when he recovered from his injury, he had a strong limp and needed a cane to get around, as he’s had ever since. Of course, the farm combine fired him; he was worthless to them.”
There was no back pay offered, no compensation, no offer to pay for the hospital bills. Such ideas were unheard of in those days for any laborers, much less Japanese.
Unable to continue farming, which he despised anyway, Mr. Ishida borrowed monies from my grandfather in order to set up his bookshop. Grandfather exhausted his own savings at the time in order to bring the dream of the bookshop about.
(And again, this part of the tale made no sense to me, either. Why should Grandfather, no matter how close he had somehow been to Mr. Ishida back in Japan, give over his savings to the other man? My grandfather was a generous man as was proven time and again, but surely this was too much to give to someone who was not a member of the family? I knew Grandfather would not tell me the answer, so I resolved to ask Mr. Ishida one day. As it turns out, I never did.)
The bookshop was an oddity; it could hardly be called a financial success. Mr. Ishida collected old and rare Japanese and Chinese books and manuscripts. Some of these, especially the prints that I so enjoyed looking at, could truly be considered works of art. Visitors would come from all over California having heard of the bookshop, but for all this, there were simply not enough customers to make a real difference. Most of our people were laborers and had no time to read. Those that did were usually from Mr. Ishida’s own samurai class, and there were few of these in America at this time.
And of course, because Mr. Ishida spoke no English, there weren’t many Caucasians who ever came in. Once in a while a college professor or librarian would visit and spend some time inspecting the volumes, but Mr. Ishida was always so cold to gai-jin of any sort that they often chose not to return.
The most common white visitor to the bookshop was a police officer named Lieutenant O’ Reilly. He was a tall, heavyset man in his late thirties with a friendly grin that never seemed to leave his face. This section of Little Tokyo was his beat, and he made sure to patrol it frequently, often on foot.
All of the children knew him; the younger ones always gathered around because the lieutenant often had candy in his pockets that he enjoyed passing out. “How are my little Jappo kiddies today?” he would say. He would nod to everyone and pat men on the back. “How you doing, slant eyes?” he would ask. He never called anyone in our community by their names; it was always “slant-eyes” or “Jappo” or “my yellow friend.” And always that grin that seemed to say, I don’t mean nothing by it, don’t take it personal, just got to tell it like it is, right?
As I grew older, Lieutenant O’Reilly made me uncomfortable. I noticed he was always staring at my mother, at her chest and private areas with a concentrated abandon that would have been considered terrible manners by one of us. Sometimes he looked at some of my girlfriends in the same way, the ones like Dorothy Iyami who were more mature for their age. Thank goodness that he never stared at me like that! I suppose I was simply too plain to really look at for very long. In this case, the fact did not displease me.
As I said, the police lieutenant visited the bookshop often, at least once a month. And when he did, Mr. Ishida would always hand him a white envelope full of cash. O’Reilly would just laugh, pretending to be surprised. Then he would wink at me and leave just as soon as he had arrived, whistling some popular tune as he stepped out the door.
“Why do you give him money, if you dislike him so?” I once asked Mr. Ishida in Japanese, since it was so obvious about his distaste for the policeman.
One thing Mr. Ishida had in common with his old friend my grandfather was that they both treated me as an adult, and would try to answer all of my questions. On this occasion, the bookseller replied, “You will find, Mariko-chan, that there is no real freedom anywhere in this world. All of us are bound to one set of rules or another, and if we want to do business, we must pay. Always we must pay. From the moment I opened up this bookshop over twenty years ago, I have paid policemen to add their protection. If I did not, this place would likely be robbed or burned down; who knows what might happen? So I have paid, just as all the businesses pay, just as you shall pay someday. Nothing is free.”
“But why do you dislike him so much?” I persisted.
He sighed. “Really, all gai-jin are the same, little one. None are to be trusted, really. Since I began I have worked with several policemen. Some have been bad, others worse. But there is something especially distasteful about this man, this O’Reilly. You can see it in his face; he secretly hates us all. He would like to have us exterminated, because we embarrass him by our presence. Oh, I don’t mean killed, really, just disappear. He will be happy if Japan attacks America. He will take it out on us; you will see.”
I shivered with dread at the thought of that big man suddenly abandoning his friendly nature. Mr. Ishida noticed this and smiled at me. “Have courage, Mariko-chan. I will not tell you not to be concerned, because I don’t wish to treat you as a child. But concern is not the same as despair. Whatever happens, we shall survive it.”
timschochet
Footballguy
I couldn’t help comparing Mr. Ishida’s words on this occasion with my grandfather’s and so I said, “Grandfather always talks about how this is the land of freedom. We learned that in school, as well. But you keep saying we’re not free at all.”
He stared at me, and I watched his hands as they absently piled books in neat stacks. Although the hands were lined, I could see the delicate grace of them; these were not the hands of a common laborer.
“Tell me, Mariko,” he said, “did you learn about your ideas of freedom in Japanese school? From the sensei?”
I shook my head. “It was in the American school.”
He nodded. “I thought as much. And your revered grandfather, that’s where he got it as well. I came here as an adult, though not much older than you. But I received a classical Japanese education, one that was designed for the children of samurai, which I was. So I will tell you what I learned, Mariko-chan, and what I know today. There is no freedom. All of us, from the most common man to the richest king are guided by karma in all that we do. We live our lives bound to karma, trapped by it. It was karma that my grandfather was killed gloriously serving the Emperor. It was karma that your grandfather went to university here and became a well known attorney.
“There is no place in the world where people are free to do as they wish, Mariko. What makes this place, this America worse than the others is they have the pretense of being free here. They teach you that you can do anything you want, be anything you want. But do you believe that is true? Do you think an oriental or a Black man or a Mexican could be a Senator or a President? Of course not. And it’s not just limited to race, either. Most white people don’t live under the restrictions that we do, but they are just as trapped. Only a very few ever reach positions of leadership, and usually their entire lives are pre-ordained. Your grandfather is my oldest friend, and I cherish him, but he has always been naïve about this. He will never tell you these truths, little one, so I will. Freedom is an illusion that will hurt you unless you are willing to give it up.”
Now, talking to Mrs. Myagi, I thought again about this conversation, and I knew I could not walk away without learning what made him such a bitter man. So I asked, “Please tell me what the third tragedy was, Mrs. Myagi.”
She sighed. I was sure it was the answer to my original question, but she had avoided telling me so far. Now she straightened, and for the first time she seemed to me not an old gossip, but a stately woman with a great deal of dignity.
“Did you know that I was one of the ‘picture brides’, Mariko? That is correct. I was born in a village outside of Osaka, and I had two sisters who married men in the same village. There was no man for me. One day, the matchmaker came and said the men of California were looking for brides. So, four girls from my village had our photographs taken, and then we went to Yokohama and got on a boat for America. I left my family and my friends behind, to live with a man I did not know. Do you imagine you could have done such a thing, Mariko-chan?”
I shook my head. Of course I knew all about the picture brides, but all the same, I couldn’t imagine leaving my own family behind. How awful!
Mrs. Myagi smiled grimly. “Well, it was that or starve. There was no one for me to marry, and there simply was not enough food. And so I left. We spent a long time on that ship, and many of the girls were sick the whole time. I met many girls on that ship; we were all young, from all over Japan. And do you know what else we had in common? We were all scared.
“There was a girl from Kyoto, Tadashima Fujiko was her name. I remember her well, Mariko. She was seventeen, and not very pretty. No, she was actually an ugly girl. I don’t believe she left Japan because of monetary or starvation concerns, but because no men wanted her. Yet there had been a man in California who wanted her; and this was Takeo Ishida.
“Mr. Ishida had no family left alive to write to, but he did know army friends of his father. They connected him with the matchmaker, who sent him a number of different photographs to choose from. Some of the women were quite pretty, and there was a photo of poor ugly Fujiko, sent by her desperate parents. And Mr. Ishida wrote back that it was Fujiko that he wanted. He wrote that there was something in her eyes, a sadness that attracted him. And that this was the girl he was sure he was meant to fall in love with.
“Such a letter was shocking in itself, Mariko. Japanese men don’t speak of love, which is a Western concept anyway. Most of the letters were simple contracts that dealt solely with practical issues like money and travel arrangements. But Mr. Ishida was always a romantic type. By then he already had his bookshop. Despite the fact that he no longer lived in Japan, for Fujiko it was quite a catch.
“Oh, she was so proud, Mariko! It was the first time anyone had done a kindness for her in her entire life; the first time anyone cared. And so she let us all know she was going not to a mere stranger, but to a man who had fallen in love with her. She didn’t tell us out of malice or spite, but with a sense of surprised happiness and wonder.
“However, ugly as she was, she elicited envy on the ship. I told you we were all frightened, and most of us knew nothing about our future husbands, and so it seemed intolerable to some that this one ugly girl should seem so confident and happy. There was another woman, named Ujimi, I can’t remember what her first name was anymore, it was so many years ago. But this Ujimi girl was pretty enough, but she was a bitter girl; she hated having to leave Japan. And she hated Fujiko.
“The Ujima girl was from Yokohama, and had a father in the army. When she heard Fujiko’s tale, she recognized the name. And then she told all of us the scandal: that this Takeo Ishida had to flee to the United States because his aunt married an eta, and this is the reason his father had killed himself in shame, and who knew? Perhaps the story was even more sordid, and perhaps Ishida-san was eta himself. And that was surely the reason that he had sent for Fujiko, for what pretty girl would consort with such a man from a tainted family?
“The Ujima girl twisted and twisted the story until we all thought that more likely than not, Fujiko was marrying an eta herself, and we all laughed at her and ostracized her. I’m afraid I was no better than the rest. As I said, we were all scared, and I think we took out our fright on the poor girl.
“Fujiko didn’t say a word, but her face was always white after that. We all left her alone. She stayed silent for two whole days. Then, on the last night before we were scheduled to arrive, Fujiko jumped off the ship, and was never seen again. She drowned.”
“How terrible!” I said. “She killed herself? Over a rumor?”
Mrs. Myagi nodded. “She didn’t have a good opinion of herself, Mariko, only a hope caused by the letter. But her lack of self confidence must have caused her to believe every word that the Ujima girl had spoken, that only an eta would want her. She had no reason to live. Of course, Mr. Ishida was not eta. Another girl who knew the family assured us that it was only the aunt who married one, and that Ishida Takeo was of purest samurai descent. But this was after the fact, Mariko-chan. Why this girl stayed silent during the harassment of Fujiko, I will never know.
“After that we all felt ashamed, even the Ujimi girl. But it was too late. We arrived at Angel Island, off of San Francisco. There we were interned for seven days while they tested us for tuberculosis and other diseases. After that, we were all brought to the shoreline, where our new husbands were waiting for us. Oh, I remember being so nervous that day; we all were!
“There were many awkward and shy greetings and bows, and as we met our men, we all noticed one man limping among them, searching in vain for she who was not there. Of course this was Mr. Ishida. No one said a word to him. Finally it was I who broke off from my new husband and said, ‘You must be Ishida Takeo.’
“He nodded, and so I said, ‘Tadashima Fujiko is dead. She was distressed about your aunt who married an eta, and so she jumped off the ship. She took her own life.’
“It was such an artless, terrible thing for me to say, Mariko-chan, but I thought it was better to tell him the truth before others did. Perhaps I was rash; I wonder about that to this day.
“But Mr. Ishida only nodded, and said, ‘Karma.’ And then he turned around and limped off. He never spoke of the matter again, though those that knew him often did. And so now you know the third tragedy. After losing so much, he lost his bride as well.”
I could not help crying when she told me this story. It was so very sad, and it made me feel so sorry for Mr. Ishida. But in truth, I felt sorry for him anyway. He was such a somber man, and the only pleasure he seemed to have in his entire life was his precious books.
Of these, there was a certain collection that were not for sale. Mr. Ishida held back from his public the most rare of manuscripts, art and poetry. There were perhaps two hundred of these special books that he kept in the back room, on a shelf which even I as his only employee (though part-time) was not allowed to touch. However, from time to time Mr. Ishida would pull down one of his private collection himself and open it for me, so that I could see the exquisite calligraphy, the beautiful artwork. I had no idea what the monetary value of these works were, but to us they were priceless.
I could never tell Mr. Ishida what I had heard about him from Mrs. Myagi; it would have been a terrible invasion of his privacy to even bring it up. And from that day, I did not look at Mrs. Myagi the same, either. No longer was she just a tell-all busybody who managed to irritate my father with her constant management requests. Now she was also part of that rare breed, the picture-brides, whom in my romantic mind’s eye I saw as brave and heroic beyond belief.
However, a few days after I heard the tale I was working in the bookshop, sorting new arrivals in alphabetical order, when I could not help myself and said, “Mr. Ishida, I love these books as much as you do, I think. But I also love school, my friends, my family. Isn’t there something else in this world you cherish in addition to this?”
It was not meant to be a challenge, though it certainly sounded that way when it came out. Almost as soon as I spoke the words I regretted them. Who was I to question this man’s life? How could I possibly know what he was feeling or thinking?
But Mr. Ishida just looked at me and nodded. “Your company,” he said.
He stared at me, and I watched his hands as they absently piled books in neat stacks. Although the hands were lined, I could see the delicate grace of them; these were not the hands of a common laborer.
“Tell me, Mariko,” he said, “did you learn about your ideas of freedom in Japanese school? From the sensei?”
I shook my head. “It was in the American school.”
He nodded. “I thought as much. And your revered grandfather, that’s where he got it as well. I came here as an adult, though not much older than you. But I received a classical Japanese education, one that was designed for the children of samurai, which I was. So I will tell you what I learned, Mariko-chan, and what I know today. There is no freedom. All of us, from the most common man to the richest king are guided by karma in all that we do. We live our lives bound to karma, trapped by it. It was karma that my grandfather was killed gloriously serving the Emperor. It was karma that your grandfather went to university here and became a well known attorney.
“There is no place in the world where people are free to do as they wish, Mariko. What makes this place, this America worse than the others is they have the pretense of being free here. They teach you that you can do anything you want, be anything you want. But do you believe that is true? Do you think an oriental or a Black man or a Mexican could be a Senator or a President? Of course not. And it’s not just limited to race, either. Most white people don’t live under the restrictions that we do, but they are just as trapped. Only a very few ever reach positions of leadership, and usually their entire lives are pre-ordained. Your grandfather is my oldest friend, and I cherish him, but he has always been naïve about this. He will never tell you these truths, little one, so I will. Freedom is an illusion that will hurt you unless you are willing to give it up.”
Now, talking to Mrs. Myagi, I thought again about this conversation, and I knew I could not walk away without learning what made him such a bitter man. So I asked, “Please tell me what the third tragedy was, Mrs. Myagi.”
She sighed. I was sure it was the answer to my original question, but she had avoided telling me so far. Now she straightened, and for the first time she seemed to me not an old gossip, but a stately woman with a great deal of dignity.
“Did you know that I was one of the ‘picture brides’, Mariko? That is correct. I was born in a village outside of Osaka, and I had two sisters who married men in the same village. There was no man for me. One day, the matchmaker came and said the men of California were looking for brides. So, four girls from my village had our photographs taken, and then we went to Yokohama and got on a boat for America. I left my family and my friends behind, to live with a man I did not know. Do you imagine you could have done such a thing, Mariko-chan?”
I shook my head. Of course I knew all about the picture brides, but all the same, I couldn’t imagine leaving my own family behind. How awful!
Mrs. Myagi smiled grimly. “Well, it was that or starve. There was no one for me to marry, and there simply was not enough food. And so I left. We spent a long time on that ship, and many of the girls were sick the whole time. I met many girls on that ship; we were all young, from all over Japan. And do you know what else we had in common? We were all scared.
“There was a girl from Kyoto, Tadashima Fujiko was her name. I remember her well, Mariko. She was seventeen, and not very pretty. No, she was actually an ugly girl. I don’t believe she left Japan because of monetary or starvation concerns, but because no men wanted her. Yet there had been a man in California who wanted her; and this was Takeo Ishida.
“Mr. Ishida had no family left alive to write to, but he did know army friends of his father. They connected him with the matchmaker, who sent him a number of different photographs to choose from. Some of the women were quite pretty, and there was a photo of poor ugly Fujiko, sent by her desperate parents. And Mr. Ishida wrote back that it was Fujiko that he wanted. He wrote that there was something in her eyes, a sadness that attracted him. And that this was the girl he was sure he was meant to fall in love with.
“Such a letter was shocking in itself, Mariko. Japanese men don’t speak of love, which is a Western concept anyway. Most of the letters were simple contracts that dealt solely with practical issues like money and travel arrangements. But Mr. Ishida was always a romantic type. By then he already had his bookshop. Despite the fact that he no longer lived in Japan, for Fujiko it was quite a catch.
“Oh, she was so proud, Mariko! It was the first time anyone had done a kindness for her in her entire life; the first time anyone cared. And so she let us all know she was going not to a mere stranger, but to a man who had fallen in love with her. She didn’t tell us out of malice or spite, but with a sense of surprised happiness and wonder.
“However, ugly as she was, she elicited envy on the ship. I told you we were all frightened, and most of us knew nothing about our future husbands, and so it seemed intolerable to some that this one ugly girl should seem so confident and happy. There was another woman, named Ujimi, I can’t remember what her first name was anymore, it was so many years ago. But this Ujimi girl was pretty enough, but she was a bitter girl; she hated having to leave Japan. And she hated Fujiko.
“The Ujima girl was from Yokohama, and had a father in the army. When she heard Fujiko’s tale, she recognized the name. And then she told all of us the scandal: that this Takeo Ishida had to flee to the United States because his aunt married an eta, and this is the reason his father had killed himself in shame, and who knew? Perhaps the story was even more sordid, and perhaps Ishida-san was eta himself. And that was surely the reason that he had sent for Fujiko, for what pretty girl would consort with such a man from a tainted family?
“The Ujima girl twisted and twisted the story until we all thought that more likely than not, Fujiko was marrying an eta herself, and we all laughed at her and ostracized her. I’m afraid I was no better than the rest. As I said, we were all scared, and I think we took out our fright on the poor girl.
“Fujiko didn’t say a word, but her face was always white after that. We all left her alone. She stayed silent for two whole days. Then, on the last night before we were scheduled to arrive, Fujiko jumped off the ship, and was never seen again. She drowned.”
“How terrible!” I said. “She killed herself? Over a rumor?”
Mrs. Myagi nodded. “She didn’t have a good opinion of herself, Mariko, only a hope caused by the letter. But her lack of self confidence must have caused her to believe every word that the Ujima girl had spoken, that only an eta would want her. She had no reason to live. Of course, Mr. Ishida was not eta. Another girl who knew the family assured us that it was only the aunt who married one, and that Ishida Takeo was of purest samurai descent. But this was after the fact, Mariko-chan. Why this girl stayed silent during the harassment of Fujiko, I will never know.
“After that we all felt ashamed, even the Ujimi girl. But it was too late. We arrived at Angel Island, off of San Francisco. There we were interned for seven days while they tested us for tuberculosis and other diseases. After that, we were all brought to the shoreline, where our new husbands were waiting for us. Oh, I remember being so nervous that day; we all were!
“There were many awkward and shy greetings and bows, and as we met our men, we all noticed one man limping among them, searching in vain for she who was not there. Of course this was Mr. Ishida. No one said a word to him. Finally it was I who broke off from my new husband and said, ‘You must be Ishida Takeo.’
“He nodded, and so I said, ‘Tadashima Fujiko is dead. She was distressed about your aunt who married an eta, and so she jumped off the ship. She took her own life.’
“It was such an artless, terrible thing for me to say, Mariko-chan, but I thought it was better to tell him the truth before others did. Perhaps I was rash; I wonder about that to this day.
“But Mr. Ishida only nodded, and said, ‘Karma.’ And then he turned around and limped off. He never spoke of the matter again, though those that knew him often did. And so now you know the third tragedy. After losing so much, he lost his bride as well.”
I could not help crying when she told me this story. It was so very sad, and it made me feel so sorry for Mr. Ishida. But in truth, I felt sorry for him anyway. He was such a somber man, and the only pleasure he seemed to have in his entire life was his precious books.
Of these, there was a certain collection that were not for sale. Mr. Ishida held back from his public the most rare of manuscripts, art and poetry. There were perhaps two hundred of these special books that he kept in the back room, on a shelf which even I as his only employee (though part-time) was not allowed to touch. However, from time to time Mr. Ishida would pull down one of his private collection himself and open it for me, so that I could see the exquisite calligraphy, the beautiful artwork. I had no idea what the monetary value of these works were, but to us they were priceless.
I could never tell Mr. Ishida what I had heard about him from Mrs. Myagi; it would have been a terrible invasion of his privacy to even bring it up. And from that day, I did not look at Mrs. Myagi the same, either. No longer was she just a tell-all busybody who managed to irritate my father with her constant management requests. Now she was also part of that rare breed, the picture-brides, whom in my romantic mind’s eye I saw as brave and heroic beyond belief.
However, a few days after I heard the tale I was working in the bookshop, sorting new arrivals in alphabetical order, when I could not help myself and said, “Mr. Ishida, I love these books as much as you do, I think. But I also love school, my friends, my family. Isn’t there something else in this world you cherish in addition to this?”
It was not meant to be a challenge, though it certainly sounded that way when it came out. Almost as soon as I spoke the words I regretted them. Who was I to question this man’s life? How could I possibly know what he was feeling or thinking?
But Mr. Ishida just looked at me and nodded. “Your company,” he said.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Six
As the weeks of that autumn went by, the tension that I had prayed would fade away became more and more pronounced. The FBI returned to the bookshop, but by then all copies of the Tokio were gone. The newspapers said that President Roosevelt had requested the FBI to investigate whether the California Japanese would be a threat to the nation if war came. The FBI found no evidence of this, but that fact didn’t seem to change anyone’s mind. A Los Angeles Times editorial included the words, “The very news that there is no evidence of sedition is itself very suspicious, and we must all be on our guard against these people in the coming months.” It seemed that no matter what we did, we would be considered the Enemy.
Mr. Ishida took a sour sort of triumph in the times. He would say to anyone who listened, “I have been saying for my entire life that America is not the country it pretends to be, that its ideals are a sham and a lie, and now we can see this coming to fruition before our eyes. They hate Japanese; therefore, why shouldn’t Japan defend herself before we are all made slaves of the Western imperialists? And if they do put us into concentration camps, that will prove that all the talk about individual liberty is a lie, as well. Are we not individuals? We are not white men, so the answer is clearly no!”
Although Mr. Ishida no longer distributed the Tokio, he still managed to obtain copies and read them himself, and later he would disseminate information to his friends, and from them to our community. According to these sources, The United States was cowering before a mighty Japan, offering one concession after another. FDR was proposing to fly to Japan on the Pan Am Clipper, to bow before the Emperor and beg forgiveness for his country’s arrogance! (I’m not sure that even Mr. Ishida believed the last story, though he did repeat it.)
Grandfather said that all the rumors were nonsense; however, he did believe that both sides were being unreasonable, and he criticized the Roosevelt government as much he did the Japanese. “There’s no need for this,” he told me. “Both parties are being stubborn. FDR needs to realize that the Japanese cannot leave Indochina now without being embarrassed and looking weak before white aggressors, which will never happen. Japan must recognize that any conflict with America must inevitably result in Japan’s destruction. A face-saving solution must be found to avoid war. Yet it seems they refuse to do so.”
Under the sponsorship of Preston Holden, my grandfather made numerous public speeches on behalf of the loyalty of the Japanese Americans. He travelled up and down the state, arguing with whoever would listen that in the event of war, we would rally to the flag just like every other citizen. These speeches were ill-attended, and ignored by the press. At one park in San Francisco, he was pelted with rotten fruit until he was forced to stop. “Get off the stage, you ####### ***!” a listener jeered.
Grandfather came home from these trips around California spent and exhausted. My grandmother feared for his health, and she petitioned my father to speak to him about it. Father managed the buildings while my grandfather was gone, and he used that an excuse. “I can’t handle the load alone,” he told him as we were all eating dinner. “I need you here.”
Grandfather replied, “At this time, there is nothing more important in the world for our people than what I’m doing. We have to stem this bad feeling against us, before it’s too late.”
“But you’re not accomplishing anything,” my father persisted. “Nobody’s listening to you. Perhaps we need to stay quiet, not make waves. And anyway, I’m worried about you, father; you’re wearing yourself out.”
Grandfather looked past him and stared at his wife. “I know who’s worried about me,” he said.
My grandmother blushed and bowed her head. She replied in Japanese, “Yes, I asked David to speak to you. You are scaring me, husband, with your persistence. I am afraid you will make yourself sick. And I also do not want you to get into trouble.”
We all looked back at Grandfather, but he just shrugged and said, “It must be done,” and would say no more about it.
Mother refused to admit there was any trouble at all. If anyone brought up the threat of war, she would quickly change the subject. If pressed, she would say, “But what has any of this to do with us? We’re American. We’ve got nothing to do with Japan.” And she would point to me and say, “Mary goes to an all Caucasian school and they love her there, they treat her like everyone else, no different.” And then she would hold up the baby in her arms and say, “Someday Richard Jr. will be a doctor or a lawyer, as Yankee as apple pie!”
“As Yankee as apple pie” was one of mother’s favorite sayings, and as the days passed that fall of 1941 she attempted to make it come true. We were not allowed to speak any Japanese in our apartment, although I continued to use the language with my grandparents and Mr. Ishida. Where sometimes in the past we ate sushi and other Japanese dishes, we now only dined on pure traditional American fare. And Mother began to pressure my father about moving away from the apartment building. She argued that we could afford to move to a house, preferably in a more “American” neighborhood. Somehow, she must have thought that if she proved to herself how being of Japanese descent made no difference, she could convince everyone else as well. My father sighed and said he saw no reason to move, that we were comfortable where they were. He would have given in, however, if not for the events of December 7, and after. Father always eventually gave in to what Mother wanted; she was a strong-willed woman.
Of course, I continued to not tell either one of them what was going on at Brockton, where the situation had become even worse. Mrs. Bernstein read one editorial after another to the class about the treacherous Japs living among us, and then she would call me up and force me to answer her questions about the community. I was ignored at lunch and recess by everyone except Martha, who began to tell me how I might become a hero if I snitched to the police about what my family and friends were plotting. Martha seemed genuinely excited by this idea. She daydreamed she would tell the newspapers that she, Martha Reilly, had convinced me to turn in the saboteurs. When I tried to tell her that I didn’t know any “saboteurs” and once again how we were a hard working community and patriotic Americans, Martha grew irritated with me.
“If you’re so patriotic, why don’t you want to help the police? Everyone says that your people are full of traitors, Mary. Yet you won’t lift a finger to help us. Maybe you’re not nearly as pro-American as you say you are.” And she stomped off and didn’t speak to me for three days. After that, Martha apologized for being rude, but then once again insisted that I turn somebody in. This continued for days afterwards.
Japanese school was quieter, because Sensei and Todd Nakamura had reached a truce; they no longer talked politics with each other or with the class. Nothing was further said about Japan’s intentions, or those of the United States. But my teacher continued to find ways to complain about the land where we all lived. Like Mr. Ishida, he had nothing bur negatives to offer when he described America. But starting in November, these speeches were few and far between.
The last day of November was a Sunday, and it was going to be a special evening, because I was accompanying Uncle Tommy to his first live performance. Last month, Tommy had become part of a jazz trio. There was Louis Washington, a Black trumpeter who made sweet sounds in the style of his idol, Louis Armstrong, and then there was the band leader, Reggie Kelly, a Caucasian; he played bass guitar. I had listened to the three of them several times because they often rehearsed in a storage room in the back of one of Grandfather’s apartment buildings. Because Reggie had formed the band, they were called the Reggie Kelly Trio.
I thought they were swinging. I was a big fan of jazz music, although my parents did not allow me to own any records. But Tommy was always playing Benny Goodman and Django Reinhardt for me. Uncle Tommy tried to model his own guitar style on Reinhardt, though he admitted to me he wasn’t nearly as good. To me, though, Tommy was a god; my handsome cool uncle who was always on my side.
I knew both my grandparents and my father were concerned about Uncle Tommy, not just his lack of seriousness but also that he seemed to have no interests in girls or getting married. Although none of them perceived the truth about Tommy, my mother did. She quietly suggested to my father once that perhaps Thomas was one of those men who were not attracted to women at all, but instead were attracted to men. My father blanched at this, stammered that such a thing was ridiculous, and that he refused to hear any more about it. I never heard my mother or anyone else bring up this subject again.
The Reggie Kelly Trio had rehearsed for a month and had landed a gig at a famous jazz club called The Swing, which was only a few blocks from where I lived. Years ago, Billie Holiday had performed there when she was just starting out, and this gave the club a tremendous reputation. Ordinarily, my parents would never have allowed me to enter into such a place, but Tommy promised he would watch over me and make sure I would be back early. Since no other family member was willing to go (they all hated jazz), I suppose my mother felt that my presence would be a sign of support, so she consented.
In the late afternoon, dressed in a warm coat, I held my uncle’s hand (his other hand carried his guitar case) as we walked the streets of downtown Los Angeles on the way to The Swing. There was a brisk wind in the air, and I felt the excitement of being truly free for the first time in weeks. That walk was the last time I would feel that way.
When we got to the club, there was Reggie Kelly and Louis Washington waiting outside. There was also another man whom we had not met before, holding a guitar case like my uncle’s. He introduced himself as Reggie’s brother Brian.
Reggie looked embarrassed. “Hey Tommy,” he said quietly, “There’s no easy way to tell you this. The manager, when he signed us up, he didn’t tell the owners that the guitarist, was, you know, Japanese. And anyway, it’s a damn shame, but the owners raised a stink. Seems it’s OK for Louis here; they’ve got mixed bands and colored bands all the time, but they’re worried that with all the war talk, people just won’t accept a Japanese.”
Louis spoke up. “I said we should just walk out,” he said angrily. “They don’t want one of us; they don’t get any of us. I still feel that way.” He was furiously polishing his trumpet..
“I thought about it,” Reggie said. He could barely look at Tommy while he was saying this, and he never once glanced in my direction. “But look, Tom, this is our big break. I mean, it’s awful what they’re doing, but it’s not my fault. And I think we have to ignore it and go on with the gig. I called my brother, who plays some mean chords. And so…” his voice trailed off.
“Hey, no worries,” Tommy said, as I could feel my eyes fill with tears. “I totally understand; it’s not your fault. And I agree you’ve got to go on; it’s your big chance. I would have insisted on it.” He clapped Reggie on the back.
“Thanks, man,” Reggie said, and he looked very relieved. “Hey listen, why don’t you come backstage with us? You can watch the show from the wings, you and little Mary.”
My uncle shook his head. “Naw, I gotta get her back anyhow. You guys enjoy yourselves. Lemme know how it works out, OK?” And after a few handshakes, we turned and left.
I cried all the way home. “It’s so unfair,” I said when I could speak.
“Yeah, well don’t tell my folks,” he said. “I’d rather not have to talk about it. We’ll tell them the show was cancelled because the management found somebody new.”
I nodded. I understood that he didn’t want them to be concerned. I was keeping my own secrets from my parents. Did everyone have things they didn’t tell?
Tommy put his arm around me. If he was upset, I couldn’t tell; he seemed remarkably chipper. “Anyway, don’t worry about it, little Mary. There’ll be other gigs. And as soon as this war scare dies down, I’ll be back in the trio; you’ll see.”
But I never heard my uncle play guitar again.
As the weeks of that autumn went by, the tension that I had prayed would fade away became more and more pronounced. The FBI returned to the bookshop, but by then all copies of the Tokio were gone. The newspapers said that President Roosevelt had requested the FBI to investigate whether the California Japanese would be a threat to the nation if war came. The FBI found no evidence of this, but that fact didn’t seem to change anyone’s mind. A Los Angeles Times editorial included the words, “The very news that there is no evidence of sedition is itself very suspicious, and we must all be on our guard against these people in the coming months.” It seemed that no matter what we did, we would be considered the Enemy.
Mr. Ishida took a sour sort of triumph in the times. He would say to anyone who listened, “I have been saying for my entire life that America is not the country it pretends to be, that its ideals are a sham and a lie, and now we can see this coming to fruition before our eyes. They hate Japanese; therefore, why shouldn’t Japan defend herself before we are all made slaves of the Western imperialists? And if they do put us into concentration camps, that will prove that all the talk about individual liberty is a lie, as well. Are we not individuals? We are not white men, so the answer is clearly no!”
Although Mr. Ishida no longer distributed the Tokio, he still managed to obtain copies and read them himself, and later he would disseminate information to his friends, and from them to our community. According to these sources, The United States was cowering before a mighty Japan, offering one concession after another. FDR was proposing to fly to Japan on the Pan Am Clipper, to bow before the Emperor and beg forgiveness for his country’s arrogance! (I’m not sure that even Mr. Ishida believed the last story, though he did repeat it.)
Grandfather said that all the rumors were nonsense; however, he did believe that both sides were being unreasonable, and he criticized the Roosevelt government as much he did the Japanese. “There’s no need for this,” he told me. “Both parties are being stubborn. FDR needs to realize that the Japanese cannot leave Indochina now without being embarrassed and looking weak before white aggressors, which will never happen. Japan must recognize that any conflict with America must inevitably result in Japan’s destruction. A face-saving solution must be found to avoid war. Yet it seems they refuse to do so.”
Under the sponsorship of Preston Holden, my grandfather made numerous public speeches on behalf of the loyalty of the Japanese Americans. He travelled up and down the state, arguing with whoever would listen that in the event of war, we would rally to the flag just like every other citizen. These speeches were ill-attended, and ignored by the press. At one park in San Francisco, he was pelted with rotten fruit until he was forced to stop. “Get off the stage, you ####### ***!” a listener jeered.
Grandfather came home from these trips around California spent and exhausted. My grandmother feared for his health, and she petitioned my father to speak to him about it. Father managed the buildings while my grandfather was gone, and he used that an excuse. “I can’t handle the load alone,” he told him as we were all eating dinner. “I need you here.”
Grandfather replied, “At this time, there is nothing more important in the world for our people than what I’m doing. We have to stem this bad feeling against us, before it’s too late.”
“But you’re not accomplishing anything,” my father persisted. “Nobody’s listening to you. Perhaps we need to stay quiet, not make waves. And anyway, I’m worried about you, father; you’re wearing yourself out.”
Grandfather looked past him and stared at his wife. “I know who’s worried about me,” he said.
My grandmother blushed and bowed her head. She replied in Japanese, “Yes, I asked David to speak to you. You are scaring me, husband, with your persistence. I am afraid you will make yourself sick. And I also do not want you to get into trouble.”
We all looked back at Grandfather, but he just shrugged and said, “It must be done,” and would say no more about it.
Mother refused to admit there was any trouble at all. If anyone brought up the threat of war, she would quickly change the subject. If pressed, she would say, “But what has any of this to do with us? We’re American. We’ve got nothing to do with Japan.” And she would point to me and say, “Mary goes to an all Caucasian school and they love her there, they treat her like everyone else, no different.” And then she would hold up the baby in her arms and say, “Someday Richard Jr. will be a doctor or a lawyer, as Yankee as apple pie!”
“As Yankee as apple pie” was one of mother’s favorite sayings, and as the days passed that fall of 1941 she attempted to make it come true. We were not allowed to speak any Japanese in our apartment, although I continued to use the language with my grandparents and Mr. Ishida. Where sometimes in the past we ate sushi and other Japanese dishes, we now only dined on pure traditional American fare. And Mother began to pressure my father about moving away from the apartment building. She argued that we could afford to move to a house, preferably in a more “American” neighborhood. Somehow, she must have thought that if she proved to herself how being of Japanese descent made no difference, she could convince everyone else as well. My father sighed and said he saw no reason to move, that we were comfortable where they were. He would have given in, however, if not for the events of December 7, and after. Father always eventually gave in to what Mother wanted; she was a strong-willed woman.
Of course, I continued to not tell either one of them what was going on at Brockton, where the situation had become even worse. Mrs. Bernstein read one editorial after another to the class about the treacherous Japs living among us, and then she would call me up and force me to answer her questions about the community. I was ignored at lunch and recess by everyone except Martha, who began to tell me how I might become a hero if I snitched to the police about what my family and friends were plotting. Martha seemed genuinely excited by this idea. She daydreamed she would tell the newspapers that she, Martha Reilly, had convinced me to turn in the saboteurs. When I tried to tell her that I didn’t know any “saboteurs” and once again how we were a hard working community and patriotic Americans, Martha grew irritated with me.
“If you’re so patriotic, why don’t you want to help the police? Everyone says that your people are full of traitors, Mary. Yet you won’t lift a finger to help us. Maybe you’re not nearly as pro-American as you say you are.” And she stomped off and didn’t speak to me for three days. After that, Martha apologized for being rude, but then once again insisted that I turn somebody in. This continued for days afterwards.
Japanese school was quieter, because Sensei and Todd Nakamura had reached a truce; they no longer talked politics with each other or with the class. Nothing was further said about Japan’s intentions, or those of the United States. But my teacher continued to find ways to complain about the land where we all lived. Like Mr. Ishida, he had nothing bur negatives to offer when he described America. But starting in November, these speeches were few and far between.
The last day of November was a Sunday, and it was going to be a special evening, because I was accompanying Uncle Tommy to his first live performance. Last month, Tommy had become part of a jazz trio. There was Louis Washington, a Black trumpeter who made sweet sounds in the style of his idol, Louis Armstrong, and then there was the band leader, Reggie Kelly, a Caucasian; he played bass guitar. I had listened to the three of them several times because they often rehearsed in a storage room in the back of one of Grandfather’s apartment buildings. Because Reggie had formed the band, they were called the Reggie Kelly Trio.
I thought they were swinging. I was a big fan of jazz music, although my parents did not allow me to own any records. But Tommy was always playing Benny Goodman and Django Reinhardt for me. Uncle Tommy tried to model his own guitar style on Reinhardt, though he admitted to me he wasn’t nearly as good. To me, though, Tommy was a god; my handsome cool uncle who was always on my side.
I knew both my grandparents and my father were concerned about Uncle Tommy, not just his lack of seriousness but also that he seemed to have no interests in girls or getting married. Although none of them perceived the truth about Tommy, my mother did. She quietly suggested to my father once that perhaps Thomas was one of those men who were not attracted to women at all, but instead were attracted to men. My father blanched at this, stammered that such a thing was ridiculous, and that he refused to hear any more about it. I never heard my mother or anyone else bring up this subject again.
The Reggie Kelly Trio had rehearsed for a month and had landed a gig at a famous jazz club called The Swing, which was only a few blocks from where I lived. Years ago, Billie Holiday had performed there when she was just starting out, and this gave the club a tremendous reputation. Ordinarily, my parents would never have allowed me to enter into such a place, but Tommy promised he would watch over me and make sure I would be back early. Since no other family member was willing to go (they all hated jazz), I suppose my mother felt that my presence would be a sign of support, so she consented.
In the late afternoon, dressed in a warm coat, I held my uncle’s hand (his other hand carried his guitar case) as we walked the streets of downtown Los Angeles on the way to The Swing. There was a brisk wind in the air, and I felt the excitement of being truly free for the first time in weeks. That walk was the last time I would feel that way.
When we got to the club, there was Reggie Kelly and Louis Washington waiting outside. There was also another man whom we had not met before, holding a guitar case like my uncle’s. He introduced himself as Reggie’s brother Brian.
Reggie looked embarrassed. “Hey Tommy,” he said quietly, “There’s no easy way to tell you this. The manager, when he signed us up, he didn’t tell the owners that the guitarist, was, you know, Japanese. And anyway, it’s a damn shame, but the owners raised a stink. Seems it’s OK for Louis here; they’ve got mixed bands and colored bands all the time, but they’re worried that with all the war talk, people just won’t accept a Japanese.”
Louis spoke up. “I said we should just walk out,” he said angrily. “They don’t want one of us; they don’t get any of us. I still feel that way.” He was furiously polishing his trumpet..
“I thought about it,” Reggie said. He could barely look at Tommy while he was saying this, and he never once glanced in my direction. “But look, Tom, this is our big break. I mean, it’s awful what they’re doing, but it’s not my fault. And I think we have to ignore it and go on with the gig. I called my brother, who plays some mean chords. And so…” his voice trailed off.
“Hey, no worries,” Tommy said, as I could feel my eyes fill with tears. “I totally understand; it’s not your fault. And I agree you’ve got to go on; it’s your big chance. I would have insisted on it.” He clapped Reggie on the back.
“Thanks, man,” Reggie said, and he looked very relieved. “Hey listen, why don’t you come backstage with us? You can watch the show from the wings, you and little Mary.”
My uncle shook his head. “Naw, I gotta get her back anyhow. You guys enjoy yourselves. Lemme know how it works out, OK?” And after a few handshakes, we turned and left.
I cried all the way home. “It’s so unfair,” I said when I could speak.
“Yeah, well don’t tell my folks,” he said. “I’d rather not have to talk about it. We’ll tell them the show was cancelled because the management found somebody new.”
I nodded. I understood that he didn’t want them to be concerned. I was keeping my own secrets from my parents. Did everyone have things they didn’t tell?
Tommy put his arm around me. If he was upset, I couldn’t tell; he seemed remarkably chipper. “Anyway, don’t worry about it, little Mary. There’ll be other gigs. And as soon as this war scare dies down, I’ll be back in the trio; you’ll see.”
But I never heard my uncle play guitar again.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Seven
“This is a special news program. The Japanese have bombed Hawaii. At six o’ clock this morning, in a surprise attack, the Japanese air force attacked the United States Navy in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, just outside of Honolulu. We have no reports about damage at this time. To repeat, the Japanese have bombed Hawaii…”
We sat frozen around the radio, my parents and I. Baby Richard was crying, insistently demanding my mother’s attention, but she ignored him for a moment. Then she picked him up. I was unable to finish my breakfast; in fact, I felt like I was going to throw up.
“It’s a joke,” my mother muttered as she gave a bottle to the baby. And she repeated it more loudly. “It’s a joke. It’s like that Orson Welles play on Halloween a few years ago, The War of the Worlds, remember? Remember how many people that scared? They’re just trying to do it again!”
“On a Sunday morning?” my father asked, and Mother shot him a look that seemed to combine her fright with contempt. But my father wasn’t done. “I’m wondering what we should do.”
“What do you mean, ‘what we should do’?” my mother remarked shrilly, and her anger reached Richard and caused him to cry again. “Even if it is real, why should we do anything? What’s it to do with us?”
Her rising voice blocked off the drone of the radio, which continued to repeat the same message over and over: Japan had attacked. Japan has attacked. We are at war. At war with our people. Only I am an American.
My father just stared at my mother, unable to answer. He looked shriveled and helpless to me. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to look at anyone.
Abruptly there was a knock on the door, and Grandfather entered the room. He was dressed in his best suit, and I recalled it was Sunday morning, and he would be going to church. My parents were only sometimes church goers, and Grandmother never went; I suspect she was still a Buddhist at heart. Grandfather never tried to force anyone to go. I enjoyed going with my grandfather, and I had already put on a dress waiting for him to arrive to pick me up. Even so, I was surprised that he did so, with the news we all just heard.
Grandfather was carrying a small black bag I had never seen before; it was somewhat bigger than a briefcase. Behind him was my grandmother and Uncle Tommy, and I knew that we were not going to attend church that morning.
They came into the room, crowding it, and everyone’s face was as solemn as my parents. As usual, however, my grandfather took charge. His back was stiff and erect and he retained his commanding air. Grandfather took one long look at my parents and immediately knew why they had been arguing. Turning to my mother, he said, “It’s not a hoax. It’s all over every radio station. It’s true enough. Now we must accept the fact, and go forward.”
My mother started to speak, words of protest on her lips. Then abruptly she hid her face in her hands and fled into the bedroom. No one moved to stop her. My father’s face was white.
Grandfather said, “We must all have great courage now. Also, we must do whatever the authorities request of us. We cannot give them any reason to be suspicious. Shigata ga nai.”
Shigata ga nai. It meant, it can’t be helped, or whatever’s to be will be. I couldn’t remember Grandfather using that phrase before very often; however, in the months and years to come, shigata ga nai would become a byword for us, and an answer to all of our troubles.
Grandfather looked at my father and said, “I want you and Thomas to watch your mother. I am going to talk to some of our tenants. Then I may be…gone for a while.” He said this in English, which Grandmother barely understood, yet now she turned to him and demanded. “What do you mean, husband? Where are you going?”
My grandfather rarely showed signs of affection in public. Now, however, he took my grandmother’s hand and kissed it lightly. Staring deeply into her eyes, he said, “You have always been the most important person in my life.”
Grandmother said nothing, but bowed her head deeply. My Grandfather reached for his hat, and then said, “Mary! Would you please accompany me?”
I knew I would be safe with Grandfather. I took his hand, and we left together. But we did not leave the apartment building, not yet. Instead, we knocked on the door of every apartment. Each one was answered by the same drawn, frightened faces: parents and grandparents, children and babies. By now, they had all heard the news about the war.
For each family, my grandfather’s message was the same: “It may be difficult for the next few days. There will be incidents. Things will be out of control for a while. Be calm. Be patient. Follow instructions. Don’t react. It would be best to go out as little as possible. Soon they will realize we had nothing to do with it.”
No one asked who “they” were, for of course we all knew. Each man and woman who answered the door thanked my grandfather and agreed with him. Even Mrs. Myagi, her ancient face as scared as I ever saw it, embraced Grandfather and sobbed in his arms, filled with gratitude. “Arigato, arigato, Nakamura-san” she said over and over again.
“Shigata ga nai”, my Grandfather continued to repeat.
I said nothing during all of these visits. I began to wonder why my grandfather had asked me to come with him. He seemed so patient, so full of energy giving the same message over and over. My heart was pounding and I was wondering about the war news, and what was happening in Hawaii, and if I would go to school tomorrow.
Then, as we reached the third floor of the apartment building, Grandfather turned to me. “Listen, little one, there is not much time left.”
I looked at his watch; it was only 8:30 in the morning. “I don’t understand,” I replied, “What do you mean about time?”
“Never mind,” he said abruptly. “I have to visit the rest of these people, and then go to the next building if possible. I want you to go and see Ishida-san. And here is what I wish you to tell him…”
“Say it again, Mariko-chan, if you would,” Mr. Ishida said. “I want to make sure I understand you correctly.”
So I repeated what I had been told: “Grandfather says that you are to take a few boxes of your best books and manuscripts, the ones in the back room, and hide them somewhere in your apartment. Hide them where the authorities will not look.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Mr. Ishida mused. “But I don’t understand why. Does your honorable grandfather really believe-” But he stopped, apparently realizing by looking at me that I was as bewildered as he was.
“And he said, be quick about it, neh?” he said. “Well, I shall need your help, Mariko-chan. Come into the back room with me. But we needn’t hide the boxes. I’ll simply give them to a friend of mine upstairs. I won’t even tell you which one, to protect you. The police will never look. Come, we have work to do.”
As we sorted through the books in the back, choosing which ones were priceless enough to go into the two boxes, Mr. Ishida told me he was actually relieved by the news. “Now we shall see,” he said triumphantly. “Of course, it will be awful for us here, there’s no getting around that. But perhaps the white men won’t dare be too harsh. They know if they do, Japan will punish them severely. Oh, it’s going to be a marvelous thing, Mariko-chan, to finally see the Americans get their comeuppance! They’re so arrogant; the Japanese soldier will teach them a thing or two!”
Trembling, I asked, “Do you think Japan will conquer America, Mr. Ishida?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. And they don’t want to; why should they? All they want is for the Yankees to leave them alone. The Japanese will win a few battles, and Roosevelt will be forced to negotiate with them; you’ll see. And after that we’ll have the trade and prosperity your grandfather is always talking about. You know, he’s right about us being natural partners. Only the Americans need to realize it too. Well, now Japan will force them to. I would guess that the entire United States Navy has already been destroyed. Most likely Hawaii is already occupied by Japanese forces.”
I was startled by this. “But they didn’t say anything about that in the news.”
Mr. Ishida uttered a sharp laugh. “I wouldn’t believe anything I hear on the radio from now on, Mariko-chan. Or the newspapers, either. Both will be full of Yankee propaganda. You’ll never get the true story. In fact-”
He was interrupted by a loud smash of glass that came from the outer room. “Stay here,” he said abruptly, and rose to his feet. He quickly left the room, but I peered from behind the doorway. Shattered glass shards were everywhere. Someone had thrown a brick from outside, right through the window.
“####### JAPS! ####### *** BASTARDS!” I heard a young man yell, and a car’s tires skidded away. At the same time, my grandfather rushed into the doorway. He and Mr. Ishida stared at each other.
“Did you see them?” Mr. Ishida asked. “Did you get the license plate, perhaps, so that we might report it?”
Grandfather shook his head. “It will do no good, not today; you know that, old friend. Did Mary tell you what to do?”
“It’s done,” the bookseller replied. “I will go right now with the two boxes upstairs. But…this mess!”
“Leave it,” my grandfather said. “You can clean up when you get back. I’ll watch. And I must speak to Mary one more time.”
I stepped forward in the room, careful as they were not to step on the glass. “Here I am, Grandfather.” In the distance I heard sirens.
My grandfather heard them too. “There’s no more time. Take the books, now!” he said urgently to Mr. Ishida, who bowed in response and then limped with a speed I had never before witnessed from him to the back room. He lifted both boxes with surprising strength and exited the bookshop.
“What’s it all about, Grandfather,” I asked, as the sirens grew louder. “Why are we doing this?” I noticed he still held the black bag tightly in one hand, and again I wondered what it was he was carrying.
“Listen Mary,” he told me, “I didn’t want your grandmother to witness this, which is why I left her upstairs. But you’re to watch everything and tell her what has transpired. Wakarimasu ka?” Do you understand?
“Hai,” Yes, I replied, though I didn’t, not really. The sirens stopped and into the shop came Police Lieutenant O’ Reilly, along with FBI Detectives Phillips and Salvatore. “What the devil happened here?” the heavy policeman demanded.
My grandfather told him. “Some young men drove by and threw a brick in the window. They yelled out vulgarities and sped away. I’m afraid I arrived too late to tell you much about them.”
O’Reilly nodded. “Well, that’s to be expected. If your damn countrymen hadn’t pulled such a sneak attack, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Blame your fellow Japs.”
“I am an American citizen, Lieutenant,” my grandfather replied wearily. “You are my countrymen, not them.”
“Oh Jesus,” the policeman muttered, redfaced. And he strode forward, pointing a thick finger in my grandfather’s chest. “Listen, I’m having enough trouble this morning from all of this bull####, and I’m not going to listen to your *** propaganda. Do you understand?”
“Where is Mr. Ishida?” Philips interrupted. He appeared to be in charge of the trio.
“I believe he has gone upstairs to visit a friend,” my grandfather replied calmly. “He should return shortly.”
Philips turned to Salvatore. “You and O’Reilly wait for him. I’ll take Nakamura in my own car.” Turning to Grandfather, he said, “You need to come to FBI headquarters with me, Mr. Nakamura. We’re to go immediately.”
“I see,” replied my grandfather with the same amount of infinite calm. “Please, am I under arrest?”
The FBI man hesitated. He stared hard at my grandfather. “I have the authority to do so, Mr. Nakamura, if you don’t come with me voluntarily.”
“I understand,” Grandfather said, holding his ground. “So I’m to come with you, but if I refuse, I will be arrested and forced to come with you. So either way I am forced, yet you wish me to come with the pretense that I did so under my own free will. That will surely protect you later if anyone asks, am I correct?”
Officer O’Reilly rushed forward and punched my grandfather hard in the stomach. I saw my grandfather double over and sag to his knees, and I screamed and rushed to his side.
“That’s enough!” Philips snarled at O’Reilly. “Don’t forget who’s in charge here. You’re just a beat cop, the hired help. Get it?”
“####### ***,” O’Reilly said. “Listen, pal, the wife has got a brother in Honolulu, serving on a PT Boat, okay? And we can’t get through; we don’t know if he’s alive or dead. So I ain’t taking any #### from this ***, and I ain’t taking any #### from you!”
As I tended to Grandfather and the other FBI man, Salvatore, just watched us, hs face impassive, Phillips got right into O’Reilly’s face. “I don’t give a flying #### about your family or anything else you have to say. I am in charge here. One word from me and you will lose your badge and be placed on suspension. You pull a stunt like that again and it will happen. Now do we understand each other or do I call the Police Commissioner right now?”
O’Reilly glared at Phillips, and then at us. He nodded and backed away.
Phillips walked up to Grandfather, who with my help had risen to his feat. I could tell by the way he was holding his stomach that he was hurt, however, and out of breath.
“Mr. Nakamura,” Phillips said, “It’s not going to helpful for either of us to delay this any further. Please don’t antagonize my men. I have a list of Japanese leaders that I am to bring to FBI headquarters for questioning. That’s my job, and I’m going to do it. Now, you may be gone for some time. Perhaps you would like to take some clothes and toiletries along with you; we can go to your apartment if you’d like so that you can gather your things.”
My grandfather lifted the bag he was holding. Trying to catch his wind, he gasped, “I anticipated this would happen. I am prepared. I did not want- I did not want my people to see you escorting me back to my apartment. That would have unduly frightened them. It is better if we simply go.”
Phillips nodded. “My car is outside.”
“No Grandfather!” I pleaded. “Don’t go!”
He just patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t tell your grandmother that I was struck,” he said. “Tell them all I shall return shortly.”
At that moment, Mr. Ishida reentered the room. He stared at all of us, clearly stunned.
“Good,” Phillips said. “Mr. Nakamura, you may translate for me. I have orders that this bookshop is to be closed for the time being, and that all the books and manuscripts here are to be confiscated and removed to FBI headquarters for examination. Mr. Ishida will be left alone, unless he attempts to prevent us; in that event, he will be arrested.”
Grandfather’s face evinced no surprise as he translated this news to Mr. Ishida. The bookseller’s face turned white, and he said in Japanese, “Ask them by what right do they take this action, Nakamura-san. Ask them if they have a judge’s order to do so.”
My grandfather replied quietly in the same language, “I think that would be unwise, old friend. Their anger is great this morning, and I have no wish to challenge them any further.”
“But they must have a warrant to take all of my books!” Mr. Ishida insisted. “I know the law. Just because Japan attacked America, this gives them the right to ignore their own laws?”
Reluctantly Grandfather turned to Phillips and said, “Mr. Ishida wishes to know if you have a warrant to take his books away.”
Phillips muttered something under his breath, and this time it was the shorter fellow, Salvatore, who appeared upset and angry. Up to this moment he had not said a word, but now he snapped, “That day is past. We don’t need any warrants with you types. This man ain’t even a citizen; he’s an enemy alien. Tell him we can do whatever we want with these books, and he’d better not say nothing.”
Still, Mr. Ishida stubbornly shook his head. “No take books.” he said clearly in broken English. “No judge, no take books!”
Salvatore looked at Phillips, who nodded. Instantly the shorter man grabbed a manuscript at random. It was a collection of 19th century poems accompanied by some prints of Japanese landscapes. Salvatore began to rip the pages from the book. Torn prints fell to the floor. The old bookseller tried to stop him, but he was no match for the younger and stronger Salvatore who just pushed him away.
“He can continue to tear these books up,” Phillips said. “Headquarters needs to look at them, but we can just as easily destroy them. Or we can burn this place down. Now is he willing to let us have the books? Ask him!”
“This is a special news program. The Japanese have bombed Hawaii. At six o’ clock this morning, in a surprise attack, the Japanese air force attacked the United States Navy in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, just outside of Honolulu. We have no reports about damage at this time. To repeat, the Japanese have bombed Hawaii…”
We sat frozen around the radio, my parents and I. Baby Richard was crying, insistently demanding my mother’s attention, but she ignored him for a moment. Then she picked him up. I was unable to finish my breakfast; in fact, I felt like I was going to throw up.
“It’s a joke,” my mother muttered as she gave a bottle to the baby. And she repeated it more loudly. “It’s a joke. It’s like that Orson Welles play on Halloween a few years ago, The War of the Worlds, remember? Remember how many people that scared? They’re just trying to do it again!”
“On a Sunday morning?” my father asked, and Mother shot him a look that seemed to combine her fright with contempt. But my father wasn’t done. “I’m wondering what we should do.”
“What do you mean, ‘what we should do’?” my mother remarked shrilly, and her anger reached Richard and caused him to cry again. “Even if it is real, why should we do anything? What’s it to do with us?”
Her rising voice blocked off the drone of the radio, which continued to repeat the same message over and over: Japan had attacked. Japan has attacked. We are at war. At war with our people. Only I am an American.
My father just stared at my mother, unable to answer. He looked shriveled and helpless to me. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to look at anyone.
Abruptly there was a knock on the door, and Grandfather entered the room. He was dressed in his best suit, and I recalled it was Sunday morning, and he would be going to church. My parents were only sometimes church goers, and Grandmother never went; I suspect she was still a Buddhist at heart. Grandfather never tried to force anyone to go. I enjoyed going with my grandfather, and I had already put on a dress waiting for him to arrive to pick me up. Even so, I was surprised that he did so, with the news we all just heard.
Grandfather was carrying a small black bag I had never seen before; it was somewhat bigger than a briefcase. Behind him was my grandmother and Uncle Tommy, and I knew that we were not going to attend church that morning.
They came into the room, crowding it, and everyone’s face was as solemn as my parents. As usual, however, my grandfather took charge. His back was stiff and erect and he retained his commanding air. Grandfather took one long look at my parents and immediately knew why they had been arguing. Turning to my mother, he said, “It’s not a hoax. It’s all over every radio station. It’s true enough. Now we must accept the fact, and go forward.”
My mother started to speak, words of protest on her lips. Then abruptly she hid her face in her hands and fled into the bedroom. No one moved to stop her. My father’s face was white.
Grandfather said, “We must all have great courage now. Also, we must do whatever the authorities request of us. We cannot give them any reason to be suspicious. Shigata ga nai.”
Shigata ga nai. It meant, it can’t be helped, or whatever’s to be will be. I couldn’t remember Grandfather using that phrase before very often; however, in the months and years to come, shigata ga nai would become a byword for us, and an answer to all of our troubles.
Grandfather looked at my father and said, “I want you and Thomas to watch your mother. I am going to talk to some of our tenants. Then I may be…gone for a while.” He said this in English, which Grandmother barely understood, yet now she turned to him and demanded. “What do you mean, husband? Where are you going?”
My grandfather rarely showed signs of affection in public. Now, however, he took my grandmother’s hand and kissed it lightly. Staring deeply into her eyes, he said, “You have always been the most important person in my life.”
Grandmother said nothing, but bowed her head deeply. My Grandfather reached for his hat, and then said, “Mary! Would you please accompany me?”
I knew I would be safe with Grandfather. I took his hand, and we left together. But we did not leave the apartment building, not yet. Instead, we knocked on the door of every apartment. Each one was answered by the same drawn, frightened faces: parents and grandparents, children and babies. By now, they had all heard the news about the war.
For each family, my grandfather’s message was the same: “It may be difficult for the next few days. There will be incidents. Things will be out of control for a while. Be calm. Be patient. Follow instructions. Don’t react. It would be best to go out as little as possible. Soon they will realize we had nothing to do with it.”
No one asked who “they” were, for of course we all knew. Each man and woman who answered the door thanked my grandfather and agreed with him. Even Mrs. Myagi, her ancient face as scared as I ever saw it, embraced Grandfather and sobbed in his arms, filled with gratitude. “Arigato, arigato, Nakamura-san” she said over and over again.
“Shigata ga nai”, my Grandfather continued to repeat.
I said nothing during all of these visits. I began to wonder why my grandfather had asked me to come with him. He seemed so patient, so full of energy giving the same message over and over. My heart was pounding and I was wondering about the war news, and what was happening in Hawaii, and if I would go to school tomorrow.
Then, as we reached the third floor of the apartment building, Grandfather turned to me. “Listen, little one, there is not much time left.”
I looked at his watch; it was only 8:30 in the morning. “I don’t understand,” I replied, “What do you mean about time?”
“Never mind,” he said abruptly. “I have to visit the rest of these people, and then go to the next building if possible. I want you to go and see Ishida-san. And here is what I wish you to tell him…”
“Say it again, Mariko-chan, if you would,” Mr. Ishida said. “I want to make sure I understand you correctly.”
So I repeated what I had been told: “Grandfather says that you are to take a few boxes of your best books and manuscripts, the ones in the back room, and hide them somewhere in your apartment. Hide them where the authorities will not look.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Mr. Ishida mused. “But I don’t understand why. Does your honorable grandfather really believe-” But he stopped, apparently realizing by looking at me that I was as bewildered as he was.
“And he said, be quick about it, neh?” he said. “Well, I shall need your help, Mariko-chan. Come into the back room with me. But we needn’t hide the boxes. I’ll simply give them to a friend of mine upstairs. I won’t even tell you which one, to protect you. The police will never look. Come, we have work to do.”
As we sorted through the books in the back, choosing which ones were priceless enough to go into the two boxes, Mr. Ishida told me he was actually relieved by the news. “Now we shall see,” he said triumphantly. “Of course, it will be awful for us here, there’s no getting around that. But perhaps the white men won’t dare be too harsh. They know if they do, Japan will punish them severely. Oh, it’s going to be a marvelous thing, Mariko-chan, to finally see the Americans get their comeuppance! They’re so arrogant; the Japanese soldier will teach them a thing or two!”
Trembling, I asked, “Do you think Japan will conquer America, Mr. Ishida?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. And they don’t want to; why should they? All they want is for the Yankees to leave them alone. The Japanese will win a few battles, and Roosevelt will be forced to negotiate with them; you’ll see. And after that we’ll have the trade and prosperity your grandfather is always talking about. You know, he’s right about us being natural partners. Only the Americans need to realize it too. Well, now Japan will force them to. I would guess that the entire United States Navy has already been destroyed. Most likely Hawaii is already occupied by Japanese forces.”
I was startled by this. “But they didn’t say anything about that in the news.”
Mr. Ishida uttered a sharp laugh. “I wouldn’t believe anything I hear on the radio from now on, Mariko-chan. Or the newspapers, either. Both will be full of Yankee propaganda. You’ll never get the true story. In fact-”
He was interrupted by a loud smash of glass that came from the outer room. “Stay here,” he said abruptly, and rose to his feet. He quickly left the room, but I peered from behind the doorway. Shattered glass shards were everywhere. Someone had thrown a brick from outside, right through the window.
“####### JAPS! ####### *** BASTARDS!” I heard a young man yell, and a car’s tires skidded away. At the same time, my grandfather rushed into the doorway. He and Mr. Ishida stared at each other.
“Did you see them?” Mr. Ishida asked. “Did you get the license plate, perhaps, so that we might report it?”
Grandfather shook his head. “It will do no good, not today; you know that, old friend. Did Mary tell you what to do?”
“It’s done,” the bookseller replied. “I will go right now with the two boxes upstairs. But…this mess!”
“Leave it,” my grandfather said. “You can clean up when you get back. I’ll watch. And I must speak to Mary one more time.”
I stepped forward in the room, careful as they were not to step on the glass. “Here I am, Grandfather.” In the distance I heard sirens.
My grandfather heard them too. “There’s no more time. Take the books, now!” he said urgently to Mr. Ishida, who bowed in response and then limped with a speed I had never before witnessed from him to the back room. He lifted both boxes with surprising strength and exited the bookshop.
“What’s it all about, Grandfather,” I asked, as the sirens grew louder. “Why are we doing this?” I noticed he still held the black bag tightly in one hand, and again I wondered what it was he was carrying.
“Listen Mary,” he told me, “I didn’t want your grandmother to witness this, which is why I left her upstairs. But you’re to watch everything and tell her what has transpired. Wakarimasu ka?” Do you understand?
“Hai,” Yes, I replied, though I didn’t, not really. The sirens stopped and into the shop came Police Lieutenant O’ Reilly, along with FBI Detectives Phillips and Salvatore. “What the devil happened here?” the heavy policeman demanded.
My grandfather told him. “Some young men drove by and threw a brick in the window. They yelled out vulgarities and sped away. I’m afraid I arrived too late to tell you much about them.”
O’Reilly nodded. “Well, that’s to be expected. If your damn countrymen hadn’t pulled such a sneak attack, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Blame your fellow Japs.”
“I am an American citizen, Lieutenant,” my grandfather replied wearily. “You are my countrymen, not them.”
“Oh Jesus,” the policeman muttered, redfaced. And he strode forward, pointing a thick finger in my grandfather’s chest. “Listen, I’m having enough trouble this morning from all of this bull####, and I’m not going to listen to your *** propaganda. Do you understand?”
“Where is Mr. Ishida?” Philips interrupted. He appeared to be in charge of the trio.
“I believe he has gone upstairs to visit a friend,” my grandfather replied calmly. “He should return shortly.”
Philips turned to Salvatore. “You and O’Reilly wait for him. I’ll take Nakamura in my own car.” Turning to Grandfather, he said, “You need to come to FBI headquarters with me, Mr. Nakamura. We’re to go immediately.”
“I see,” replied my grandfather with the same amount of infinite calm. “Please, am I under arrest?”
The FBI man hesitated. He stared hard at my grandfather. “I have the authority to do so, Mr. Nakamura, if you don’t come with me voluntarily.”
“I understand,” Grandfather said, holding his ground. “So I’m to come with you, but if I refuse, I will be arrested and forced to come with you. So either way I am forced, yet you wish me to come with the pretense that I did so under my own free will. That will surely protect you later if anyone asks, am I correct?”
Officer O’Reilly rushed forward and punched my grandfather hard in the stomach. I saw my grandfather double over and sag to his knees, and I screamed and rushed to his side.
“That’s enough!” Philips snarled at O’Reilly. “Don’t forget who’s in charge here. You’re just a beat cop, the hired help. Get it?”
“####### ***,” O’Reilly said. “Listen, pal, the wife has got a brother in Honolulu, serving on a PT Boat, okay? And we can’t get through; we don’t know if he’s alive or dead. So I ain’t taking any #### from this ***, and I ain’t taking any #### from you!”
As I tended to Grandfather and the other FBI man, Salvatore, just watched us, hs face impassive, Phillips got right into O’Reilly’s face. “I don’t give a flying #### about your family or anything else you have to say. I am in charge here. One word from me and you will lose your badge and be placed on suspension. You pull a stunt like that again and it will happen. Now do we understand each other or do I call the Police Commissioner right now?”
O’Reilly glared at Phillips, and then at us. He nodded and backed away.
Phillips walked up to Grandfather, who with my help had risen to his feat. I could tell by the way he was holding his stomach that he was hurt, however, and out of breath.
“Mr. Nakamura,” Phillips said, “It’s not going to helpful for either of us to delay this any further. Please don’t antagonize my men. I have a list of Japanese leaders that I am to bring to FBI headquarters for questioning. That’s my job, and I’m going to do it. Now, you may be gone for some time. Perhaps you would like to take some clothes and toiletries along with you; we can go to your apartment if you’d like so that you can gather your things.”
My grandfather lifted the bag he was holding. Trying to catch his wind, he gasped, “I anticipated this would happen. I am prepared. I did not want- I did not want my people to see you escorting me back to my apartment. That would have unduly frightened them. It is better if we simply go.”
Phillips nodded. “My car is outside.”
“No Grandfather!” I pleaded. “Don’t go!”
He just patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t tell your grandmother that I was struck,” he said. “Tell them all I shall return shortly.”
At that moment, Mr. Ishida reentered the room. He stared at all of us, clearly stunned.
“Good,” Phillips said. “Mr. Nakamura, you may translate for me. I have orders that this bookshop is to be closed for the time being, and that all the books and manuscripts here are to be confiscated and removed to FBI headquarters for examination. Mr. Ishida will be left alone, unless he attempts to prevent us; in that event, he will be arrested.”
Grandfather’s face evinced no surprise as he translated this news to Mr. Ishida. The bookseller’s face turned white, and he said in Japanese, “Ask them by what right do they take this action, Nakamura-san. Ask them if they have a judge’s order to do so.”
My grandfather replied quietly in the same language, “I think that would be unwise, old friend. Their anger is great this morning, and I have no wish to challenge them any further.”
“But they must have a warrant to take all of my books!” Mr. Ishida insisted. “I know the law. Just because Japan attacked America, this gives them the right to ignore their own laws?”
Reluctantly Grandfather turned to Phillips and said, “Mr. Ishida wishes to know if you have a warrant to take his books away.”
Phillips muttered something under his breath, and this time it was the shorter fellow, Salvatore, who appeared upset and angry. Up to this moment he had not said a word, but now he snapped, “That day is past. We don’t need any warrants with you types. This man ain’t even a citizen; he’s an enemy alien. Tell him we can do whatever we want with these books, and he’d better not say nothing.”
Still, Mr. Ishida stubbornly shook his head. “No take books.” he said clearly in broken English. “No judge, no take books!”
Salvatore looked at Phillips, who nodded. Instantly the shorter man grabbed a manuscript at random. It was a collection of 19th century poems accompanied by some prints of Japanese landscapes. Salvatore began to rip the pages from the book. Torn prints fell to the floor. The old bookseller tried to stop him, but he was no match for the younger and stronger Salvatore who just pushed him away.
“He can continue to tear these books up,” Phillips said. “Headquarters needs to look at them, but we can just as easily destroy them. Or we can burn this place down. Now is he willing to let us have the books? Ask him!”
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My grandfather did what he was told. I could tell Mr. Ishida was in shock. He just nodded to the men. “Take the books. No hurt the books,” he said.
A crowd began to gather, just as the last time the FBI had come to the bookshop. As we all watched, O’Reilly had a police truck drive straight up to the building. More policemen came out and began to load books into the truck. They were sloppy; some books slipped and fell into the dirt and mud in the street. There seemed to be no order and no reason involved; the books were just thrown into the truck like trash. Mr. Ishida just watched now, his face hiding any emotion. As I watched, I suddenly wondered where Grandfather was. I realized that he and Lieutenant Phillips must have driven away. I knew that soon I would have to seek out my family and tell them. But I couldn’t take my eyes away from what they were doing to the bookshop.
Dorothy Iyami, who had also been there that other day, came to stand next to me. “It is the end,” she said solemnly.
“Of the bookshop?” I said. “No, they said that they were going to look over the books to make sure they were- that Mr. Ishida wasn’t causing trouble. And then they would return them.”
“It’s the end of everything,” Dorothy said.
“Now listen to me,” Officer O’Reilly said loudly. His face was red. Of course every one of us knew this man, he had joked with us for so many years. But there was no humor in his face today.
“Until I get orders telling me different,” O’Reilly boomed, “All of you Japs are a security risk. We’ve gotten word that the invasion’s on its way, that dirty yellow bastards are going to try and attack us here in California, and they’re counting on your help! Well, we ain’t going to allow it. Any *** I see doing anything suspicious gets arrested. Any *** that questions authority gets shot. I don’t want to see any of you out on these streets after dark. In fact, unless you’ve got some provable official business, I don’t want to see any of you out here on the street at all. Go back to your apartments. Now are we clear, or do I have to arrest some of you right now?”
No one moved at first. I could see everyone was looking at each other, wondering if anyone would challenge this man. Our spokesman, Richard Nakamura, had vanished. Only I knew where he had gone, and no one could say when he would return.
Then, quietly, and one by one, the Japanese in the crowd bowed and returned to their apartment buildings. The old beliefs were strong; we did not question authority. Even Dorothy, normally so independent, did what she was told this time. After a few moments, the only Japanese left were myself and Mr. Ishida.
He turned to me, “Go tell your parents what has happened,” he said. “We must await the return of your grandfather this evening to decide what to do next.”
But my Grandfather did not come back that night, or the following night, either.
Chapter Eight
“I don’t think she should return to school today,” my father said. “It could be dangerous.”
“She must return to school,” my mother insisted.
I watched them both with my schoolbooks in my hand. I was trying to be brave. My parents looked exhausted. They had been up most of the night. My father had talked about going to FBI headquarters to see about Grandfather, and then hesitated to do so. Also, many, many people had visited my father to inquire about Richard Nakamura.
Now, a new crisis was upon them. Secretly I hoped my father would win the argument, and allow me to stay home. I did not want to face anyone at Brockton today. But I kept my face blank; I said nothing.
“If she doesn’t go,” Mother said, “she will be treated as different forever afterwards. She will be ostracized. We can’t have that. She can miss tomorrow, if she wants. But today Mary must go to school to show them that she is just as American as anyone else. You do understand that, don’t you, Mary?”
I looked at my mother’s face and I wanted to scream, don’t try to relive your life through me! It’s not my fault you couldn’t go to some stupid party, and I don’t care about stuff like that anyway. Stop trying to use me to gain your own acceptance! But I said nothing; I only nodded.
“What nonsense are you talking about, Erin?” my father said, irritated. I could never remember him actually losing his temper at Mother; he always got irritated. “Listen, you saw what happened to Mr. Ishida’s store! It’s not safe out there! We don’t dare send the girl into such a hornet’s nest.”
“You’re afraid,” my mother said, her voice harsh.
Ignoring the accusation, my father continued, “Japanese school is closed down; that’s been confirmed. Most of the kids aren’t even going to the closer school today, until we know more about the situation. And you want Mary to go to a place where she’s the only Japanese? Today? Never!”
“Never” lasted another twenty minutes. In the end, of course, my mother got her way. She always did with my father. She drove me to school just as always, and as I left the car, she said, “Remember who you are. You are Mary Nakamura, an American.” Then my mother drove off, and left me to my fate.
Which didn’t take too long. I don’t think the other students expected me to come that day, one day after Pearl Harbor. The class was noisy when I entered, but everyone immediately was silent as I took my seat towards the front of the class. No one said a word; they all stared. After a few minutes, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned to Martha Helms, and tried to pretend I was angry, instead of scared. “What are you all staring at?” I demanded. “I’m just a kid. I had nothing to do with it. I’ve never been to Hawaii!”
“Shut up!” Rebecca Gold hissed from behind me. “Shut up, you ***. My father says we should kill all Japs. My father says-”
“Hey, take it easy, Becky,” Mark Levy said. He was sitting next to her as usual, and he looked unnerved. “There’s no need to talk to Mary like that.”
“There’s thousands dead!” Rebecca said, and she was suddenly crying. “Thousands dead because of the Japs, and – and everyone says they’re on their way here, and they kill white kids, and we all could be dead too, and soon!”
I looked around the room at all of the faces. Mark Levy looked sympathetic, but didn’t say anything else. A few other girls patted Rebecca’s back. Everyone else just glared at me. Except Martha, I noticed. My oldest friend in the class just looked away and avoided my eyes.
“Martha?” I said, “My voice hesitant. “Martha, you know my family had nothing to do with it, don’t you? We’re American, like you!”
“I don’t know you,” Martha said, still not looking at me. “Don’t speak to me. I don’t ever want you to speak to me again.”
My head was swimming; I felt dizzy. Would I wake up soon, I wondered?
Abruptly everyone was quiet again as the door opened, as Mrs. Bernstein stepped in. She was wearing a red sweater over a white skirt, and pinned to her chest was a small American flag. Mrs. Bernstein was heading to her desk at the front of the class when she noticed me, and stopped.
She stared directly at me, and I was unable to read her face, except it was filled with emotion. At first slowly, then with a quick pace she moved towards me. She did not speak. I saw her left hand open and swing backward. I knew what was about to happen; I remembered what the Sensei had done that time to Todd Kimura. But I just watched as the hand whipped forward and landed hard against my cheek and mouth. I was knocked backwards and landed hard on the back of my head against the floor. I blacked out.
I heard voices from a distance; my head hurt, and I did not want to open my eyes.
“…was a regrettable occurrence, Mrs. Nakamura, but under the circumstances, I don’t really think we can blame Mrs. Bernstein. Everyone is affected by what’s happening a little differently. And the nurse tells us your daughter is not really hurt, there was only a little bleeding, and she’ll be up soon. So I really think…”
A man’s voice. I thought it sounded like the Principal of the school, Mr. Warner. He was an unmarried man in his mid-fifties, always very formal and reserved.
“You’re not supposed to hit a child!” It was my mother, and I realized she had her arms around me. I gathered we must be in the Principal’s office. Oh, how my head hurt! I kept my eyes shut tight.
“I could press charges,” my mother continued, and I could feel her anger.
I heard Mr. Warner clear his throat. “That would be most unfortunate,” he said. “And really, Mrs. Nakamura, under the circumstances, do you think that’s wise?”
“What are you talking about?” Mother demanded.
Again a hesitation. Then:”Have you been listening to the radio, Ma’am? Only a few hours ago, President Roosevelt addressed the Joint Congress. We’re going to war against the Japanese. And the newspapers keep warning us that we’re in peril here on the West Coast. You do realize that, don’t you?”
I could feel my mother trembling. Fear? Anger? Perhaps a little of both. “I don’t see what that’s got do with anything!”
“You don’t? How’s it going to look, Mrs. Nakamura, you suing the school for an incident that took place the day after Pearl Harbor? A Japanese student gets slapped? Do you think anyone’s going to listen to you? I’m really telling you this for your own good. Don’t make this situation any worse than it is.”
There was a long silence after that, maybe twenty seconds or so. Finally, my mother said, “I’ll think about that. But in the meantime, you’ve got to move my daughter out of that class. She can’t have that same teacher. You’ll have to find another teacher for her.”
Again the clearing of the throat, and the hesitation. “You still don’t understand the gravity of the situation, do you, Mrs. Nakamura? What happened today was, regrettably, totally predictable. It could happen again, at any time. I have no way to prevent it.”
I could tell from the sound of her voice that my mother was incredulous. “You’re actually telling me that you’re unable to prevent a teacher from striking my child? What kind of principal are you?”
This time, there was irritation in Mr. Warner’s voice. “I’m not going to argue with you, Mrs. Nakamura. I’m trying to resolve a potentially explosive situation here.”
“What are you telling me then?” Mother’s voice was shrill. “What exactly are you telling me?”
“It is my opinion that Mary shouldn’t attend Brockton at this time. It’s too dangerous for her, and frankly, disruptive for the school.”
Obviously my mother was expecting this, because she immediately shot back, “You can’t keep my daughter from attending here. How dare you? She is just as American as anyone else! You have no right to decide such a thing.”
“Well now,” Mr. Warner said, sounding somewhat primly, “As to whether a Japanese girl can really be an American at this time, even if she was born here- well, that’s something for the courts to decide. A lot of people might disagree with you there, you know. For myself, I’ve tried to be understanding and tolerant of your people. Haven’t I been reasonable here? But that dastardly bombing of Hawaii, that was a terrible thing, Mrs. Nakamura. Just terrible, a treacherous act, really. And so I really don’t know about your citizenship. No, I really think I’m going to have to expel Mary at this time.”
Expelled from school. And the Japanese school was closed. Was there to be no school for me ever again?
“You can’t do this,” my mother said, but this time her voice was a whisper, and she sounded defeated.
“I’m afraid I must. For your daughter’s safety. And for the good of the school.”
“You’re expelling her because she is Japanese!”
“Mrs. Nakamura, the truth is she never really belonged here anyway. As I said, this incident was entirely predictable. Listen, I know what you were trying to achieve by putting her here a few years ago, but I can honestly tell you now I’ve always known it was a mistake. We don’t have any other Orientals at this school, and if you’ve noticed, we don’t have any Negroes, either. That is something I’m quite proud of, Ma’am. It’s my judgment that people belong with their own kind. I know we’ve got some Jews here, and some people have complained about that, but I tell them, it’s a public school, so what can I do? But yours is a different situation, altogether. A matter of safety, as I’ve said.”
Suddenly I couldn’t stand to hear his voice any longer. My head hurt worse than ever, but I opened my eyes, pretending I had been asleep all this time. “Mother?” I asked, and my voice was groggy. “What happened?”
“Shh, it’s all right. We’re in the Principal’s office. How do you feel, darling?”
“OK, but my head hurts. Can we go home?”
“We’re leaving right now. Can you walk, sweetie?”
“I think so,” I said, and I got to my feet a little unsteadily. “Hello, Mr. Warner.”
“Hello, Mary. I was just telling your mother I thought it best if you stayed home for at least a few days, then we’ll see.”
“We’ll talk about that more, later,” Mother said firmly.
“Of course,” the Principal said, and he gave me a warm smile. “You get better, Mary.”
“Thank you, Mr. Warner.” It all seemed like a play we were acting out. Had he really just expelled me from school?
“Come on, Mary, let’s go.” With her arm around my shoulder, we left the office.
The sun was in my eyes when we exited the schoolhouse and made our way into the school parking lot where Mother’s Packard was. Because we were wealthy, we were one of the only families in my neighborhood with a car. Most people used the trolley to get to work, and trains for longer distances.
It was still in the middle of the school day, so there should have been no one there; I was therefore surprised to see three white men in the parking lot waiting for us. Instinctively I knew this meant trouble, and I think my mother sensed it too. Her arm tightened around my shoulder, but we continued to walk forward.
I didn’t recognize any of them: they were all in their late thirties or early forties: parents of other students, I assumed. They looked absolutely normal, the sort of men you might see on any street. Two were dressed in business clothes, but the man in front wore a red checkered shirt and workpants. He was short and stout, with thinning blond hair. His clothes were stained and dirty and I guessed he was in construction of some sort. His face was nearly as red as his shirt; he glared at us; obviously, he was very angry. The other two were nondescript, almost seeming to be out of the situation, waiting to see what would happen.
And they blocked the way to our car. As bad as I felt, every nerve in me told me to run. Forget about the Packard, we can get it later. We need to leave here, now! There was no one else around.
My mother got within five feet, still holding on to me, and stopped. “Please excuse us,” she said quietly.
For a moment the three said nothing, just stared, then Red Shirt said, “You the *** ##### who’s got this brat going to our school?”
“That’s none of your business; kindly let me pass,” my mother said, and tried to walk past him. The man grabbed her arm.
“Listen, #####. We don’t want your brat at our school. Do you understand? We don’t want any of you ####### people here. So you get the #### out.”
I was so terrified, but Mother was very brave. She showed only disdain on her face, and just said, “Let go of me, please.”
Instead of just letting go, Red Shirt shoved Mother backwards, and she fell down. I screamed and reached for her. One of the other men grabbed me and pulled me backward, and that’s when Red Shirt and the other man started to beat up my mother. They kicked and punched her. Mother huddled into a fetal position on the ground. They yelled names and kept beating her. I screamed and cried and the man held me tight.
Finally Mr. Wilson rushed out of his office. “Get out of here!” he yelled. “You! Owen Jesselson! I’m astonished at you! And Harry Dickerson and Vern Michaels! Whatever do you think you’re up to?”
The naming of the men seemed to shame them. They got up and walked swiftly away. I rushed to my mother; she continued to lay there. Finally she lifted her head; I could tell she was bruised but all right. I couldn’t stop sobbing.
Mr. Wilson did not ask my mother how she was. Instead he said rather brusquely, “You’d best leave now. I tried to warn you this sort of thing could happen. There’s no place for your daughter here anymore. I’ll send you the appropriate papers in the mail; I would prefer if you did not return.” And with that, he turned on his heel and re-entered his offices.
As we drove away, I knew that I would never again step inside Brockton Elementary School.
A crowd began to gather, just as the last time the FBI had come to the bookshop. As we all watched, O’Reilly had a police truck drive straight up to the building. More policemen came out and began to load books into the truck. They were sloppy; some books slipped and fell into the dirt and mud in the street. There seemed to be no order and no reason involved; the books were just thrown into the truck like trash. Mr. Ishida just watched now, his face hiding any emotion. As I watched, I suddenly wondered where Grandfather was. I realized that he and Lieutenant Phillips must have driven away. I knew that soon I would have to seek out my family and tell them. But I couldn’t take my eyes away from what they were doing to the bookshop.
Dorothy Iyami, who had also been there that other day, came to stand next to me. “It is the end,” she said solemnly.
“Of the bookshop?” I said. “No, they said that they were going to look over the books to make sure they were- that Mr. Ishida wasn’t causing trouble. And then they would return them.”
“It’s the end of everything,” Dorothy said.
“Now listen to me,” Officer O’Reilly said loudly. His face was red. Of course every one of us knew this man, he had joked with us for so many years. But there was no humor in his face today.
“Until I get orders telling me different,” O’Reilly boomed, “All of you Japs are a security risk. We’ve gotten word that the invasion’s on its way, that dirty yellow bastards are going to try and attack us here in California, and they’re counting on your help! Well, we ain’t going to allow it. Any *** I see doing anything suspicious gets arrested. Any *** that questions authority gets shot. I don’t want to see any of you out on these streets after dark. In fact, unless you’ve got some provable official business, I don’t want to see any of you out here on the street at all. Go back to your apartments. Now are we clear, or do I have to arrest some of you right now?”
No one moved at first. I could see everyone was looking at each other, wondering if anyone would challenge this man. Our spokesman, Richard Nakamura, had vanished. Only I knew where he had gone, and no one could say when he would return.
Then, quietly, and one by one, the Japanese in the crowd bowed and returned to their apartment buildings. The old beliefs were strong; we did not question authority. Even Dorothy, normally so independent, did what she was told this time. After a few moments, the only Japanese left were myself and Mr. Ishida.
He turned to me, “Go tell your parents what has happened,” he said. “We must await the return of your grandfather this evening to decide what to do next.”
But my Grandfather did not come back that night, or the following night, either.
Chapter Eight
“I don’t think she should return to school today,” my father said. “It could be dangerous.”
“She must return to school,” my mother insisted.
I watched them both with my schoolbooks in my hand. I was trying to be brave. My parents looked exhausted. They had been up most of the night. My father had talked about going to FBI headquarters to see about Grandfather, and then hesitated to do so. Also, many, many people had visited my father to inquire about Richard Nakamura.
Now, a new crisis was upon them. Secretly I hoped my father would win the argument, and allow me to stay home. I did not want to face anyone at Brockton today. But I kept my face blank; I said nothing.
“If she doesn’t go,” Mother said, “she will be treated as different forever afterwards. She will be ostracized. We can’t have that. She can miss tomorrow, if she wants. But today Mary must go to school to show them that she is just as American as anyone else. You do understand that, don’t you, Mary?”
I looked at my mother’s face and I wanted to scream, don’t try to relive your life through me! It’s not my fault you couldn’t go to some stupid party, and I don’t care about stuff like that anyway. Stop trying to use me to gain your own acceptance! But I said nothing; I only nodded.
“What nonsense are you talking about, Erin?” my father said, irritated. I could never remember him actually losing his temper at Mother; he always got irritated. “Listen, you saw what happened to Mr. Ishida’s store! It’s not safe out there! We don’t dare send the girl into such a hornet’s nest.”
“You’re afraid,” my mother said, her voice harsh.
Ignoring the accusation, my father continued, “Japanese school is closed down; that’s been confirmed. Most of the kids aren’t even going to the closer school today, until we know more about the situation. And you want Mary to go to a place where she’s the only Japanese? Today? Never!”
“Never” lasted another twenty minutes. In the end, of course, my mother got her way. She always did with my father. She drove me to school just as always, and as I left the car, she said, “Remember who you are. You are Mary Nakamura, an American.” Then my mother drove off, and left me to my fate.
Which didn’t take too long. I don’t think the other students expected me to come that day, one day after Pearl Harbor. The class was noisy when I entered, but everyone immediately was silent as I took my seat towards the front of the class. No one said a word; they all stared. After a few minutes, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned to Martha Helms, and tried to pretend I was angry, instead of scared. “What are you all staring at?” I demanded. “I’m just a kid. I had nothing to do with it. I’ve never been to Hawaii!”
“Shut up!” Rebecca Gold hissed from behind me. “Shut up, you ***. My father says we should kill all Japs. My father says-”
“Hey, take it easy, Becky,” Mark Levy said. He was sitting next to her as usual, and he looked unnerved. “There’s no need to talk to Mary like that.”
“There’s thousands dead!” Rebecca said, and she was suddenly crying. “Thousands dead because of the Japs, and – and everyone says they’re on their way here, and they kill white kids, and we all could be dead too, and soon!”
I looked around the room at all of the faces. Mark Levy looked sympathetic, but didn’t say anything else. A few other girls patted Rebecca’s back. Everyone else just glared at me. Except Martha, I noticed. My oldest friend in the class just looked away and avoided my eyes.
“Martha?” I said, “My voice hesitant. “Martha, you know my family had nothing to do with it, don’t you? We’re American, like you!”
“I don’t know you,” Martha said, still not looking at me. “Don’t speak to me. I don’t ever want you to speak to me again.”
My head was swimming; I felt dizzy. Would I wake up soon, I wondered?
Abruptly everyone was quiet again as the door opened, as Mrs. Bernstein stepped in. She was wearing a red sweater over a white skirt, and pinned to her chest was a small American flag. Mrs. Bernstein was heading to her desk at the front of the class when she noticed me, and stopped.
She stared directly at me, and I was unable to read her face, except it was filled with emotion. At first slowly, then with a quick pace she moved towards me. She did not speak. I saw her left hand open and swing backward. I knew what was about to happen; I remembered what the Sensei had done that time to Todd Kimura. But I just watched as the hand whipped forward and landed hard against my cheek and mouth. I was knocked backwards and landed hard on the back of my head against the floor. I blacked out.
I heard voices from a distance; my head hurt, and I did not want to open my eyes.
“…was a regrettable occurrence, Mrs. Nakamura, but under the circumstances, I don’t really think we can blame Mrs. Bernstein. Everyone is affected by what’s happening a little differently. And the nurse tells us your daughter is not really hurt, there was only a little bleeding, and she’ll be up soon. So I really think…”
A man’s voice. I thought it sounded like the Principal of the school, Mr. Warner. He was an unmarried man in his mid-fifties, always very formal and reserved.
“You’re not supposed to hit a child!” It was my mother, and I realized she had her arms around me. I gathered we must be in the Principal’s office. Oh, how my head hurt! I kept my eyes shut tight.
“I could press charges,” my mother continued, and I could feel her anger.
I heard Mr. Warner clear his throat. “That would be most unfortunate,” he said. “And really, Mrs. Nakamura, under the circumstances, do you think that’s wise?”
“What are you talking about?” Mother demanded.
Again a hesitation. Then:”Have you been listening to the radio, Ma’am? Only a few hours ago, President Roosevelt addressed the Joint Congress. We’re going to war against the Japanese. And the newspapers keep warning us that we’re in peril here on the West Coast. You do realize that, don’t you?”
I could feel my mother trembling. Fear? Anger? Perhaps a little of both. “I don’t see what that’s got do with anything!”
“You don’t? How’s it going to look, Mrs. Nakamura, you suing the school for an incident that took place the day after Pearl Harbor? A Japanese student gets slapped? Do you think anyone’s going to listen to you? I’m really telling you this for your own good. Don’t make this situation any worse than it is.”
There was a long silence after that, maybe twenty seconds or so. Finally, my mother said, “I’ll think about that. But in the meantime, you’ve got to move my daughter out of that class. She can’t have that same teacher. You’ll have to find another teacher for her.”
Again the clearing of the throat, and the hesitation. “You still don’t understand the gravity of the situation, do you, Mrs. Nakamura? What happened today was, regrettably, totally predictable. It could happen again, at any time. I have no way to prevent it.”
I could tell from the sound of her voice that my mother was incredulous. “You’re actually telling me that you’re unable to prevent a teacher from striking my child? What kind of principal are you?”
This time, there was irritation in Mr. Warner’s voice. “I’m not going to argue with you, Mrs. Nakamura. I’m trying to resolve a potentially explosive situation here.”
“What are you telling me then?” Mother’s voice was shrill. “What exactly are you telling me?”
“It is my opinion that Mary shouldn’t attend Brockton at this time. It’s too dangerous for her, and frankly, disruptive for the school.”
Obviously my mother was expecting this, because she immediately shot back, “You can’t keep my daughter from attending here. How dare you? She is just as American as anyone else! You have no right to decide such a thing.”
“Well now,” Mr. Warner said, sounding somewhat primly, “As to whether a Japanese girl can really be an American at this time, even if she was born here- well, that’s something for the courts to decide. A lot of people might disagree with you there, you know. For myself, I’ve tried to be understanding and tolerant of your people. Haven’t I been reasonable here? But that dastardly bombing of Hawaii, that was a terrible thing, Mrs. Nakamura. Just terrible, a treacherous act, really. And so I really don’t know about your citizenship. No, I really think I’m going to have to expel Mary at this time.”
Expelled from school. And the Japanese school was closed. Was there to be no school for me ever again?
“You can’t do this,” my mother said, but this time her voice was a whisper, and she sounded defeated.
“I’m afraid I must. For your daughter’s safety. And for the good of the school.”
“You’re expelling her because she is Japanese!”
“Mrs. Nakamura, the truth is she never really belonged here anyway. As I said, this incident was entirely predictable. Listen, I know what you were trying to achieve by putting her here a few years ago, but I can honestly tell you now I’ve always known it was a mistake. We don’t have any other Orientals at this school, and if you’ve noticed, we don’t have any Negroes, either. That is something I’m quite proud of, Ma’am. It’s my judgment that people belong with their own kind. I know we’ve got some Jews here, and some people have complained about that, but I tell them, it’s a public school, so what can I do? But yours is a different situation, altogether. A matter of safety, as I’ve said.”
Suddenly I couldn’t stand to hear his voice any longer. My head hurt worse than ever, but I opened my eyes, pretending I had been asleep all this time. “Mother?” I asked, and my voice was groggy. “What happened?”
“Shh, it’s all right. We’re in the Principal’s office. How do you feel, darling?”
“OK, but my head hurts. Can we go home?”
“We’re leaving right now. Can you walk, sweetie?”
“I think so,” I said, and I got to my feet a little unsteadily. “Hello, Mr. Warner.”
“Hello, Mary. I was just telling your mother I thought it best if you stayed home for at least a few days, then we’ll see.”
“We’ll talk about that more, later,” Mother said firmly.
“Of course,” the Principal said, and he gave me a warm smile. “You get better, Mary.”
“Thank you, Mr. Warner.” It all seemed like a play we were acting out. Had he really just expelled me from school?
“Come on, Mary, let’s go.” With her arm around my shoulder, we left the office.
The sun was in my eyes when we exited the schoolhouse and made our way into the school parking lot where Mother’s Packard was. Because we were wealthy, we were one of the only families in my neighborhood with a car. Most people used the trolley to get to work, and trains for longer distances.
It was still in the middle of the school day, so there should have been no one there; I was therefore surprised to see three white men in the parking lot waiting for us. Instinctively I knew this meant trouble, and I think my mother sensed it too. Her arm tightened around my shoulder, but we continued to walk forward.
I didn’t recognize any of them: they were all in their late thirties or early forties: parents of other students, I assumed. They looked absolutely normal, the sort of men you might see on any street. Two were dressed in business clothes, but the man in front wore a red checkered shirt and workpants. He was short and stout, with thinning blond hair. His clothes were stained and dirty and I guessed he was in construction of some sort. His face was nearly as red as his shirt; he glared at us; obviously, he was very angry. The other two were nondescript, almost seeming to be out of the situation, waiting to see what would happen.
And they blocked the way to our car. As bad as I felt, every nerve in me told me to run. Forget about the Packard, we can get it later. We need to leave here, now! There was no one else around.
My mother got within five feet, still holding on to me, and stopped. “Please excuse us,” she said quietly.
For a moment the three said nothing, just stared, then Red Shirt said, “You the *** ##### who’s got this brat going to our school?”
“That’s none of your business; kindly let me pass,” my mother said, and tried to walk past him. The man grabbed her arm.
“Listen, #####. We don’t want your brat at our school. Do you understand? We don’t want any of you ####### people here. So you get the #### out.”
I was so terrified, but Mother was very brave. She showed only disdain on her face, and just said, “Let go of me, please.”
Instead of just letting go, Red Shirt shoved Mother backwards, and she fell down. I screamed and reached for her. One of the other men grabbed me and pulled me backward, and that’s when Red Shirt and the other man started to beat up my mother. They kicked and punched her. Mother huddled into a fetal position on the ground. They yelled names and kept beating her. I screamed and cried and the man held me tight.
Finally Mr. Wilson rushed out of his office. “Get out of here!” he yelled. “You! Owen Jesselson! I’m astonished at you! And Harry Dickerson and Vern Michaels! Whatever do you think you’re up to?”
The naming of the men seemed to shame them. They got up and walked swiftly away. I rushed to my mother; she continued to lay there. Finally she lifted her head; I could tell she was bruised but all right. I couldn’t stop sobbing.
Mr. Wilson did not ask my mother how she was. Instead he said rather brusquely, “You’d best leave now. I tried to warn you this sort of thing could happen. There’s no place for your daughter here anymore. I’ll send you the appropriate papers in the mail; I would prefer if you did not return.” And with that, he turned on his heel and re-entered his offices.
As we drove away, I knew that I would never again step inside Brockton Elementary School.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Nine
“Have you heard from your honorable grandfather?” Mr. Ishida asked me. I had not seen him in two days. The bookshop had been closed down, and apparently he had not left his apartment since that time. He looked the same to me, which was odd, because everything in my whole life seemed different.
I shook my head. It was Wednesday morning, and I hadn’t seen Grandfather since he had been taken away Sunday morning. It was the first time I had even ventured outside of our apartment since the incident at Brockton. But we were out of food, and Father was sending me to the market. Mr. Ishida had accosted me before leaving the building.
Now he looked surprised. “But surely your parents- haven’t they attempted to have him released?”
I hesitated, wondering how much to tell him. Then I blurted out: “My mother- my mother was beaten up the other day.”
He nodded at me. “At the American school. I have heard; it is all over the building. But I also heard she was not badly hurt.”
“She isn’t, but- but she seems to be in some kind of shock. My father is afraid to leave her alone.” My eyes started to tear up. “My uncle Tommy seems stunned as well. Grandmother asks what we should do about Grandfather, but my father just stares and doesn’t say much.”
I suppose I was expecting some sort of comfort and sympathy from Mr. Ishida, as I would have received from almost anyone else, but instead he just shook his head and muttered, “Weak.” Then he said to me sharply, “This is no time for weakness, Mariko-chan.”
I stared at him, bewildered.
“Your father, unfortunately, is weak,” he went on. “He has no fortitude. I suppose this may not be his fault, for he and his brother were born in this country, never had hunger in their belly, never had to work for a meal. They had easy lives, Mariko-chan. You also, but I see a strength in you that your father does not possess. Your mother is strong, but she is also haunted, I believe, by nightmares long past. Well, no matter. You must be strong now, for your Grandfather.”
He began to limp down the hallway, expecting me to follow, and of course I did. “These young Nisei bewilder me,” he was saying. “Everyone is this apartment building is shocked and stunned, like your father, Mariko-chan. What do they expect? Do they think the Yankees are going to allow themselves to be attacked, and not retaliate against us who are at hand? I told you long ago, we must prepare for the worst. Now listen, Mariko, today, you and I will go and fetch your grandfather.”
I stopped; I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. “But how?” I whispered.
“He is at FBI Headquarters, yes? You will obtain the address. Then we will go there by trolley. I need you with me; I need someone to translate.”
“But how will we get him out?” I asked.
Mr. Ishida shrugged. “How can I know until I get there? We shall see what we shall see. But it is inexcusable that no one has gone yet. He has been there for three days, and what must your grandmother be thinking? Her sons have a duty to her and their father, and they have let him down. We shall have to do the job for them. Now get that address, little one, and then we shall go there, right away.”
Neither of us said a word on the trolley. We were not the only Japanese. Todd Kimura, the boy who had been the rebel at Japanese School, was also riding with his mother. He saw me and gave me a mischievous grin. I couldn’t help but smile back. All of the other Japanese kids were out of school, as well. Just like me, they had all been asked by the principal to go home on Monday, “until the situation clarifies itself.” And of course Japanese School had been closed. Todd didn’t seem to mind very much. They got off two stops before us.
There were a few whites on the trolley, and a couple of Negroes as well. They all gave us hostile stares. I tried to avert my eyes, but Mr. Ishida seemed indifferent. He sat upright, as still as a statue.
When we reached our stop, there were still two blocks to walk to our destination. Very quietly, Mr. Ishida began to talk as we made our way there. To my shock, he told me he had received and read a copy of the Tokio, and he quickly described its contents.
The Omaha newspaper had declared that the United States had attacked Japan at sea, forcing the Imperial government to retaliate with the stunning bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Americans were shocked by Japanese valor. Already, the United States Navy was fleeing Hawaii, and in a matter of days it would be occupied by the Emperor’s troops. Manila had already surrendered. Singapore was ready to surrender. The Emperor had offered magnanimous terms to President Roosevelt. If the President would now publicly recognize Japan as the rulers of all Asia, and would also issue an apology for starting the war, there could be peace again. The United States would be allowed to preserve its mainland intact, though Hawaii was of course forever lost. However, if the Americans insolently refused this kind and generous offer, the Emperor would order total war, and the inevitable result would be the destruction of the Yankees.
Once again it occurred to me to wonder how Japanese Americans living in Nebraska could possibly know what was going on halfway around the world, especially when the news seemed to contradict everything the American newspapers and radios were reporting. And how could Japan have conquered Manila so soon, only three days after Pearl Harbor? It made no sense. But I said nothing to Mr. Ishida, for though his face remained passive, I could tell by the tremor in his voice how excited he was.
“And that is not all,” the bookseller continued, as we walked. “The Emperor has also taken a special interest in us, Mariko-chan. He has warned the Yankees that careful attention will be given to the treatment of the Issei and Nisei, and that Japan will not look fondly on those who abuse us. I’m tempted to repeat this to the jailers of your honorable grandfather, but then they might discover where I got the information, and as the Tokio is still illegal, I dare not jeopardize those men who were brave enough to secure me a copy.”
“No, please don’t” I urged. I knew what the reaction would be to any insistence by Mr. Ishida that the FBI should be afraid of the Japanese Emperor, and I was beginning to regret that we had come.
But Mr. Ishida stopped walking; he turned to me and smiled. “You underestimate me, Mariko-chan. I am not a stupid man. I know that these men believe us to be in their power, and as they are correct, at least for the present time, it would be foolish for me to challenge that. My goal is to have your father released, not to join him in incarceration.”
He paused, and then continued walking. “I also know your Grandfather doubts the veracity of the Tokio. Perhaps you do as well. I think it is true. At least, I hope it is true; it soothes my mind. If it is a lie as your grandfather swears, that is something I do not wish to know. So for now, I will accept it with gratitude. Do you understand?”
Again I was forced to shake my head. Either something was true or it wasn’t. I gave this opinion to Mr. Ishida. He just laughed, and exclaimed how delightfully young I was. This comment was also very confusing to me.
The uniformed officer behind the desk glared at us and asked me again to repeat what we wanted. I did so, rather nervously. The large waiting room was crowded with Caucasians entering and exiting, many of them also in uniform.
The officer, a young man with dark black hair and rim glasses, screwed up his entire face into a tight knot. “Tell the old man, I don’t know who the heck this Richard Nakamura is, and I don’t care. Tell him to beat it, and that goes for you too, miss.”
I spoke to Mr. Ishida in Japanese and he replied firmly to me. I said to the officer, “Mr. Ishida will wait here until Mr. Richard Nakamura is released. He asks me to request of you, sir, if you don’t know who Mr. Nakamura is, perhaps you could please ask a supervisor?”
I knew that Mr. Ishida believed he was just being polite, but now the officer stepped out from behind the desk and pointed a thick finger at the old man’s chest. “You tell this *** if he doesn’t scram right now, I’ll arrest him. Tell him that!”
Trembling, I did as the officer asked. There was no change in Mr. Ishida’s face. Quietly and calmly he spoke to me, though I was not eager to repeat his words to this young white man. Mr. Ishida noticed that, and added, “Courage, Mariko-chan.”
“Well?” The officer demanded. Other people had stopped what they were doing, staring at us and apparently mesmerized by the confrontation.
I cleared my throat, and then I replied, “Mr. Ishida says, if you arrest him, good, then that means you will now be holding two innocent old Japanese men instead of one.”
The officer swore something under his breath, and then he waived us over to a bench on one of the adjoining walls. “Wait there,” he growled, “I’ll talk to the adjutant.”
We waited. Many others came in and out. The officer had disappeared, and now an hour passed before an older officer confronted us. Once again, I was asked to interpret. Once again Mr. Ishida was asked to leave, and was threatened. He refused again, and once again we were asked to wait. This time we waited for three hours, before yet another confrontation, this time with a plainclothes man.
Throughout all of the waiting and argument, Mr. Ishida kept the same stoic look on his face. How brave he was, I thought, and how patient! Could I ever learn to be that way? He was so different from my grandfather, yet both of them were for me heroic.
It was very late that same evening when I finally opened the door of my apartment. When I did, I saw my mother rush towards me and wrap her arms around me, and I could hear her sobs of relief. Behind her, I saw my father wringing his hands, and saying, “You had us worried sick! Where the devil have you been?”
But my eyes weren’t on either of them, or on my baby brother who was crying in his crib, the commotion having woken him. In my excitement, my eyes were only for my grandmother, who was sitting on the couch, her countenance just as stoic as Mr. Ishida had been. When she saw my grandfather behind me, she slowly rose, and came forward. Although I had been with and spoken to Grandfather for a few hours now, I could see him through my grandmother’s eyes: tired, in crumpled clothes, looking a little worse for wear, but all right, alive, without wounds that could be seen.
Grandmother’s eyes were filled with tears as she bowed low to my grandfather. It was a traditional, formal bow of a filial Japanese wife. Grandfather bowed back, and I could see his face held back great emotion.
“Yes,” he said, in answer to their unspoken questions, “I did not have a pleasant time of it. But thanks to the amazing perspicacity of Mary here and my old friend Ishida-san, I am home. And I am here to stay.”
Mr. Ishida had hung back in the hallway, not wishing to intrude on the family reunion. But when I looked back there, he was already gone.
“Have you heard from your honorable grandfather?” Mr. Ishida asked me. I had not seen him in two days. The bookshop had been closed down, and apparently he had not left his apartment since that time. He looked the same to me, which was odd, because everything in my whole life seemed different.
I shook my head. It was Wednesday morning, and I hadn’t seen Grandfather since he had been taken away Sunday morning. It was the first time I had even ventured outside of our apartment since the incident at Brockton. But we were out of food, and Father was sending me to the market. Mr. Ishida had accosted me before leaving the building.
Now he looked surprised. “But surely your parents- haven’t they attempted to have him released?”
I hesitated, wondering how much to tell him. Then I blurted out: “My mother- my mother was beaten up the other day.”
He nodded at me. “At the American school. I have heard; it is all over the building. But I also heard she was not badly hurt.”
“She isn’t, but- but she seems to be in some kind of shock. My father is afraid to leave her alone.” My eyes started to tear up. “My uncle Tommy seems stunned as well. Grandmother asks what we should do about Grandfather, but my father just stares and doesn’t say much.”
I suppose I was expecting some sort of comfort and sympathy from Mr. Ishida, as I would have received from almost anyone else, but instead he just shook his head and muttered, “Weak.” Then he said to me sharply, “This is no time for weakness, Mariko-chan.”
I stared at him, bewildered.
“Your father, unfortunately, is weak,” he went on. “He has no fortitude. I suppose this may not be his fault, for he and his brother were born in this country, never had hunger in their belly, never had to work for a meal. They had easy lives, Mariko-chan. You also, but I see a strength in you that your father does not possess. Your mother is strong, but she is also haunted, I believe, by nightmares long past. Well, no matter. You must be strong now, for your Grandfather.”
He began to limp down the hallway, expecting me to follow, and of course I did. “These young Nisei bewilder me,” he was saying. “Everyone is this apartment building is shocked and stunned, like your father, Mariko-chan. What do they expect? Do they think the Yankees are going to allow themselves to be attacked, and not retaliate against us who are at hand? I told you long ago, we must prepare for the worst. Now listen, Mariko, today, you and I will go and fetch your grandfather.”
I stopped; I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. “But how?” I whispered.
“He is at FBI Headquarters, yes? You will obtain the address. Then we will go there by trolley. I need you with me; I need someone to translate.”
“But how will we get him out?” I asked.
Mr. Ishida shrugged. “How can I know until I get there? We shall see what we shall see. But it is inexcusable that no one has gone yet. He has been there for three days, and what must your grandmother be thinking? Her sons have a duty to her and their father, and they have let him down. We shall have to do the job for them. Now get that address, little one, and then we shall go there, right away.”
Neither of us said a word on the trolley. We were not the only Japanese. Todd Kimura, the boy who had been the rebel at Japanese School, was also riding with his mother. He saw me and gave me a mischievous grin. I couldn’t help but smile back. All of the other Japanese kids were out of school, as well. Just like me, they had all been asked by the principal to go home on Monday, “until the situation clarifies itself.” And of course Japanese School had been closed. Todd didn’t seem to mind very much. They got off two stops before us.
There were a few whites on the trolley, and a couple of Negroes as well. They all gave us hostile stares. I tried to avert my eyes, but Mr. Ishida seemed indifferent. He sat upright, as still as a statue.
When we reached our stop, there were still two blocks to walk to our destination. Very quietly, Mr. Ishida began to talk as we made our way there. To my shock, he told me he had received and read a copy of the Tokio, and he quickly described its contents.
The Omaha newspaper had declared that the United States had attacked Japan at sea, forcing the Imperial government to retaliate with the stunning bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Americans were shocked by Japanese valor. Already, the United States Navy was fleeing Hawaii, and in a matter of days it would be occupied by the Emperor’s troops. Manila had already surrendered. Singapore was ready to surrender. The Emperor had offered magnanimous terms to President Roosevelt. If the President would now publicly recognize Japan as the rulers of all Asia, and would also issue an apology for starting the war, there could be peace again. The United States would be allowed to preserve its mainland intact, though Hawaii was of course forever lost. However, if the Americans insolently refused this kind and generous offer, the Emperor would order total war, and the inevitable result would be the destruction of the Yankees.
Once again it occurred to me to wonder how Japanese Americans living in Nebraska could possibly know what was going on halfway around the world, especially when the news seemed to contradict everything the American newspapers and radios were reporting. And how could Japan have conquered Manila so soon, only three days after Pearl Harbor? It made no sense. But I said nothing to Mr. Ishida, for though his face remained passive, I could tell by the tremor in his voice how excited he was.
“And that is not all,” the bookseller continued, as we walked. “The Emperor has also taken a special interest in us, Mariko-chan. He has warned the Yankees that careful attention will be given to the treatment of the Issei and Nisei, and that Japan will not look fondly on those who abuse us. I’m tempted to repeat this to the jailers of your honorable grandfather, but then they might discover where I got the information, and as the Tokio is still illegal, I dare not jeopardize those men who were brave enough to secure me a copy.”
“No, please don’t” I urged. I knew what the reaction would be to any insistence by Mr. Ishida that the FBI should be afraid of the Japanese Emperor, and I was beginning to regret that we had come.
But Mr. Ishida stopped walking; he turned to me and smiled. “You underestimate me, Mariko-chan. I am not a stupid man. I know that these men believe us to be in their power, and as they are correct, at least for the present time, it would be foolish for me to challenge that. My goal is to have your father released, not to join him in incarceration.”
He paused, and then continued walking. “I also know your Grandfather doubts the veracity of the Tokio. Perhaps you do as well. I think it is true. At least, I hope it is true; it soothes my mind. If it is a lie as your grandfather swears, that is something I do not wish to know. So for now, I will accept it with gratitude. Do you understand?”
Again I was forced to shake my head. Either something was true or it wasn’t. I gave this opinion to Mr. Ishida. He just laughed, and exclaimed how delightfully young I was. This comment was also very confusing to me.
The uniformed officer behind the desk glared at us and asked me again to repeat what we wanted. I did so, rather nervously. The large waiting room was crowded with Caucasians entering and exiting, many of them also in uniform.
The officer, a young man with dark black hair and rim glasses, screwed up his entire face into a tight knot. “Tell the old man, I don’t know who the heck this Richard Nakamura is, and I don’t care. Tell him to beat it, and that goes for you too, miss.”
I spoke to Mr. Ishida in Japanese and he replied firmly to me. I said to the officer, “Mr. Ishida will wait here until Mr. Richard Nakamura is released. He asks me to request of you, sir, if you don’t know who Mr. Nakamura is, perhaps you could please ask a supervisor?”
I knew that Mr. Ishida believed he was just being polite, but now the officer stepped out from behind the desk and pointed a thick finger at the old man’s chest. “You tell this *** if he doesn’t scram right now, I’ll arrest him. Tell him that!”
Trembling, I did as the officer asked. There was no change in Mr. Ishida’s face. Quietly and calmly he spoke to me, though I was not eager to repeat his words to this young white man. Mr. Ishida noticed that, and added, “Courage, Mariko-chan.”
“Well?” The officer demanded. Other people had stopped what they were doing, staring at us and apparently mesmerized by the confrontation.
I cleared my throat, and then I replied, “Mr. Ishida says, if you arrest him, good, then that means you will now be holding two innocent old Japanese men instead of one.”
The officer swore something under his breath, and then he waived us over to a bench on one of the adjoining walls. “Wait there,” he growled, “I’ll talk to the adjutant.”
We waited. Many others came in and out. The officer had disappeared, and now an hour passed before an older officer confronted us. Once again, I was asked to interpret. Once again Mr. Ishida was asked to leave, and was threatened. He refused again, and once again we were asked to wait. This time we waited for three hours, before yet another confrontation, this time with a plainclothes man.
Throughout all of the waiting and argument, Mr. Ishida kept the same stoic look on his face. How brave he was, I thought, and how patient! Could I ever learn to be that way? He was so different from my grandfather, yet both of them were for me heroic.
It was very late that same evening when I finally opened the door of my apartment. When I did, I saw my mother rush towards me and wrap her arms around me, and I could hear her sobs of relief. Behind her, I saw my father wringing his hands, and saying, “You had us worried sick! Where the devil have you been?”
But my eyes weren’t on either of them, or on my baby brother who was crying in his crib, the commotion having woken him. In my excitement, my eyes were only for my grandmother, who was sitting on the couch, her countenance just as stoic as Mr. Ishida had been. When she saw my grandfather behind me, she slowly rose, and came forward. Although I had been with and spoken to Grandfather for a few hours now, I could see him through my grandmother’s eyes: tired, in crumpled clothes, looking a little worse for wear, but all right, alive, without wounds that could be seen.
Grandmother’s eyes were filled with tears as she bowed low to my grandfather. It was a traditional, formal bow of a filial Japanese wife. Grandfather bowed back, and I could see his face held back great emotion.
“Yes,” he said, in answer to their unspoken questions, “I did not have a pleasant time of it. But thanks to the amazing perspicacity of Mary here and my old friend Ishida-san, I am home. And I am here to stay.”
Mr. Ishida had hung back in the hallway, not wishing to intrude on the family reunion. But when I looked back there, he was already gone.
desert rose
Footballguy
Is this in audiobook format?
Courtjester
The Town Drunk
This story needs more Zombies or perhaps Aliens...
timschochet
Footballguy
When I'm done posting this I will write a new novel, off the top of my head, just for the FFA. There will be zombies and aliens and anything else you people want. I'll take suggestions.
Joe T
Footballguy
Jolly Swagman
Footballguy
why not just put the whole thing out in a PDF for people to read at their leisure
H.K.
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
I feel the love.
timschochet
Footballguy
Chapter Ten
In the days that followed, Grandfather revealed to us more of what had happened to him. He had been questioned over and over again about what he knew regarding Japanese espionage. Of course he knew nothing. They threatened to beat him up, but they did not. It would have made no difference; my grandfather wouldn’t have been able to please them with his answers. Finally, in part because of Mr. Ishida showing up when he did, my grandfather was abruptly released.
As it turned out, on the same day that Pearl Harbor was attacked, the FBI arrested every leader within the Japanese-American community. Most of them were released within a few days. Some were being held even now, a week and a half later. As far as we knew, there was absolutely no evidence of espionage or other suspicious activities.
Grandfather insisted this didn’t matter. He was convinced that the arrests were a result of an illogical but entirely reasonable fear that California would shortly be attacked by Japan. Of course this could not happen; the Japanese navy was too far away, and much of the United States Navy was still intact and safe in Hawaii; that would surely have to be destroyed before any move was made on California. Moreover, my grandfather explained, it was unlikely that Japan would ever try to conquer the West Coast of the U.S.A., whatever happened: it was simply too far away.
But the public did not know this. There had been reported sightings of submarines. A blackout in one part of Los Angeles had created widespread chaotic behavior. People were in a panic. Under such circumstances, Grandfather reasoned, actions taken against us were entirely reasonable. We just had to be patient as a people; sooner or later the white Californians would realize that they were in no danger, and then we would be treated normally again. “Live your lives, but quietly,” Grandfather urged. But we were afraid as well. Very few Japanese went out into the streets. We stay huddled in our apartments. All Japanese labor on the large farms abruptly stopped. As a people, we just waited to see what would become of us. But because the labor stopped, families were no longer able to pay the monthly rent to my father and grandfather. And their income began to shrink, until it was non-existent.
Prescott Holden looked resplendent in his bright new uniform, which had been perfectly tailored to fit his broad form. He was, he explained, a full colonel in the Army, his duties involved converting Western Shipping completely to the benefit of the war effort. Prescott expected to make a fortune out of this; he wanted his company to come out of this war as the largest shipping concern in the entire state. And of course, he was proud to serve his country.
It was supposed to be a private meeting between the two men in my grandfather’s apartment. No one was supposed to know about Mr. Holden’s presence. But I was hiding in the closet, peeking through the partially closed door and trying to listen as best I could. There was little else for me to do. I felt cooped up in the apartment building, and I missed school terribly. But like everyone else, I was afraid to step outside.
So I wandered up and down stairways, creating games in my head. When I saw Prescott Holden entering the building, I knew he was there to meet Grandfather, and I knew I just had to listen in. So I followed him without his knowing it, and hid.
“The thing is,” Uncle Prescott was saying, “You can’t keep coming to my office, Richard. It’s embarrassing for you, and it’s embarrassing for me. You wanted to see me? All right, I’ve come to you. Now tell me what you want, man.”
My grandfather paused for a long moment, and then replied, “You came to me, Prescott, because you didn’t want to be seen with me at your office. And it’s true; you were embarrassed by my visits to you, though I assure you I was not. But we are meeting here so that no one will know about it, no one who counts. Isn’t that right, Prescott?”
Uncle Prescott’s face turned pink, and his voice sounded irritated. “Get to the point, Richard. I’m a busy man.”
“I know you are. Look Prescott, I’m not upset with you. I come to you with no pride and no shame. You see what is happening to my people. We are harassed on a daily basis. My own granddaughter was kicked out of school for the crime of being Japanese, and her mother was beaten up in the school parking lot. All farming work has stopped. The people are terrified to leave their homes. Now, the old rumors of relocation have come back. The people look to me as a leader, and I have no answers for them.”
“It’s terrible,” Prescott agreed. “I’m sure it will pass, though. You know what people are like, Richard. Such a lousy, sneaky attack. So of course they’re angry.”
“Prescott, you and your father have always supported our cause.”
“My father was a dreamer.”
“He was a visionary, Prescott. He saw the value of the Japanese who came here, and he knew what great Americans we would become. And he was right, Prescott! You know yourself there are no more patriotic Americans than the Nisei. I’ve heard you say it a hundred times!”
Uncle Prescott was starting to look nervous; he could tell where this was going. “Richard, that’s all in the past, there’s nothing I can do-”
Grandfather overrode him. “You’re a public man, Prescott, a very important man. We need someone respectable to speak up for us. Oh, the American Civil Liberties Union has done so, but they’re not taken seriously by the powers that count in this state. You are, Prescott. A public speech by you, a few words of support, would have a tremendous effect. It would be in all the papers; it would turn the tide. Will you do it?”
It was Uncle Prescott’s turn to pause. He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the cigars he enjoyed, and lit it. Then he said, “So that’s what you’re asking?”
“That’s what I’m asking, Prescott.”
‘Richard, I’m sorry, but it’s so naïve. For all of your legal knowledge, you’ve always been naïve, a dreamer just like my father. Listen my friend, one reason I’m considered a good businessman is because I know which way the wind is blowing, and I never spit into it, because if I did, I’d just get spit right back on my face. And this isn’t any wind, sir, it’s a tornado. It will do absolutely no good at all for me to give such a speech. It will change nobody’s opinion, of that I can guarantee you. Only time will do that.”
“Perhaps,” my grandfather conceded, “but all we can do is try. We have to try, don’t we? I’m counting on your help.”
Uncle Prescott took a long smoke from his cigar, and I was suddenly terrified that I would cough and be discovered. But I managed to hold it in.
“I’ll be frank with you, Richard,” he said. “I told you it would do you no good. But it would do me a whole lot of harm. Things are very tenuous right now for Western Shipping; everything’s on the edge. Our competitors are on our heels, trying to take my government contracts away from me. A statement from me, about your situation, that would classify me in government eyes as ‘unreliable’. And then bye bye contracts. You get the picture? I employ a lot of people, Richard. I want to help you, but my employees depend on me, too. I just can’t risk it. Surely you understand?”
My grandfather was shaking his head during this speech, and now he said, “Prescott, You forget I was your father’s personal and company lawyer for many, many years, and your company lawyer as well for part of that time. I know these contracts would be difficult to break, and if they tried, you could tie them up in court, and you know it. Besides, you may have competitors, but none of them have your capacity at the moment, and we both know that, and the government knows it, too. And if I read correctly, there’s enough shipping demanded so that all California companies will be needed to operate at full capacity. So your business would not be affected in the least.”
“Well, I’m afraid we’ll have to disagree about that, Richard. But even so, there are other considerations as well. I could come out of this war a prominent man. I feel a need to serve my country, you know, business is not all I care about. Who knows? I might even run for governor someday. Or even higher! I can’t afford to get involved in anything so controversial.”
Grandfather’s voice was cold. “So you would place personal ambition over the plight of poor, innocent people whom your words might have a slight chance of helping?”
Uncle Prescott stubbed out his cigar. “This is a hopeless conversation, Richard. I can’t expect you to understand my position in this matter. I’m deeply concerned over your situation, I truly am, but I just can’t risk taking a part in it. I have to say no, Richard.”
As I watched my grandfather, I couldn’t help thinking about the Kuroshima affair. Grandfather had risked everything, his career, even his life, to help a poor man he had only met once. But here was Uncle Prescott, who was risking little but would still not help. I was angry, and I bit down on my lower lip to keep from crying out in rage and despair over all that had befallen us.
“Of course,” Prescott said jovially as he put his hat and coat on, “if you ever have any personal needs, Richard, you know there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, all you have to do is ask. But send me a note though, huh? Really a bad business for you to keep coming to the office.”
I waited silently as the two men shook hands. And I waited silently while my grandfather sat there, looking defeated for several minutes thereafter. Finally, as if summoning up some vestige of courage he had stored away for just this moment in time, he stood up straight, adjusted his hat and suit, and then exited the apartment.
Only then did I leave the closet, and only then did I allow the tears to flow down my face.
In the days that followed, Grandfather revealed to us more of what had happened to him. He had been questioned over and over again about what he knew regarding Japanese espionage. Of course he knew nothing. They threatened to beat him up, but they did not. It would have made no difference; my grandfather wouldn’t have been able to please them with his answers. Finally, in part because of Mr. Ishida showing up when he did, my grandfather was abruptly released.
As it turned out, on the same day that Pearl Harbor was attacked, the FBI arrested every leader within the Japanese-American community. Most of them were released within a few days. Some were being held even now, a week and a half later. As far as we knew, there was absolutely no evidence of espionage or other suspicious activities.
Grandfather insisted this didn’t matter. He was convinced that the arrests were a result of an illogical but entirely reasonable fear that California would shortly be attacked by Japan. Of course this could not happen; the Japanese navy was too far away, and much of the United States Navy was still intact and safe in Hawaii; that would surely have to be destroyed before any move was made on California. Moreover, my grandfather explained, it was unlikely that Japan would ever try to conquer the West Coast of the U.S.A., whatever happened: it was simply too far away.
But the public did not know this. There had been reported sightings of submarines. A blackout in one part of Los Angeles had created widespread chaotic behavior. People were in a panic. Under such circumstances, Grandfather reasoned, actions taken against us were entirely reasonable. We just had to be patient as a people; sooner or later the white Californians would realize that they were in no danger, and then we would be treated normally again. “Live your lives, but quietly,” Grandfather urged. But we were afraid as well. Very few Japanese went out into the streets. We stay huddled in our apartments. All Japanese labor on the large farms abruptly stopped. As a people, we just waited to see what would become of us. But because the labor stopped, families were no longer able to pay the monthly rent to my father and grandfather. And their income began to shrink, until it was non-existent.
Prescott Holden looked resplendent in his bright new uniform, which had been perfectly tailored to fit his broad form. He was, he explained, a full colonel in the Army, his duties involved converting Western Shipping completely to the benefit of the war effort. Prescott expected to make a fortune out of this; he wanted his company to come out of this war as the largest shipping concern in the entire state. And of course, he was proud to serve his country.
It was supposed to be a private meeting between the two men in my grandfather’s apartment. No one was supposed to know about Mr. Holden’s presence. But I was hiding in the closet, peeking through the partially closed door and trying to listen as best I could. There was little else for me to do. I felt cooped up in the apartment building, and I missed school terribly. But like everyone else, I was afraid to step outside.
So I wandered up and down stairways, creating games in my head. When I saw Prescott Holden entering the building, I knew he was there to meet Grandfather, and I knew I just had to listen in. So I followed him without his knowing it, and hid.
“The thing is,” Uncle Prescott was saying, “You can’t keep coming to my office, Richard. It’s embarrassing for you, and it’s embarrassing for me. You wanted to see me? All right, I’ve come to you. Now tell me what you want, man.”
My grandfather paused for a long moment, and then replied, “You came to me, Prescott, because you didn’t want to be seen with me at your office. And it’s true; you were embarrassed by my visits to you, though I assure you I was not. But we are meeting here so that no one will know about it, no one who counts. Isn’t that right, Prescott?”
Uncle Prescott’s face turned pink, and his voice sounded irritated. “Get to the point, Richard. I’m a busy man.”
“I know you are. Look Prescott, I’m not upset with you. I come to you with no pride and no shame. You see what is happening to my people. We are harassed on a daily basis. My own granddaughter was kicked out of school for the crime of being Japanese, and her mother was beaten up in the school parking lot. All farming work has stopped. The people are terrified to leave their homes. Now, the old rumors of relocation have come back. The people look to me as a leader, and I have no answers for them.”
“It’s terrible,” Prescott agreed. “I’m sure it will pass, though. You know what people are like, Richard. Such a lousy, sneaky attack. So of course they’re angry.”
“Prescott, you and your father have always supported our cause.”
“My father was a dreamer.”
“He was a visionary, Prescott. He saw the value of the Japanese who came here, and he knew what great Americans we would become. And he was right, Prescott! You know yourself there are no more patriotic Americans than the Nisei. I’ve heard you say it a hundred times!”
Uncle Prescott was starting to look nervous; he could tell where this was going. “Richard, that’s all in the past, there’s nothing I can do-”
Grandfather overrode him. “You’re a public man, Prescott, a very important man. We need someone respectable to speak up for us. Oh, the American Civil Liberties Union has done so, but they’re not taken seriously by the powers that count in this state. You are, Prescott. A public speech by you, a few words of support, would have a tremendous effect. It would be in all the papers; it would turn the tide. Will you do it?”
It was Uncle Prescott’s turn to pause. He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the cigars he enjoyed, and lit it. Then he said, “So that’s what you’re asking?”
“That’s what I’m asking, Prescott.”
‘Richard, I’m sorry, but it’s so naïve. For all of your legal knowledge, you’ve always been naïve, a dreamer just like my father. Listen my friend, one reason I’m considered a good businessman is because I know which way the wind is blowing, and I never spit into it, because if I did, I’d just get spit right back on my face. And this isn’t any wind, sir, it’s a tornado. It will do absolutely no good at all for me to give such a speech. It will change nobody’s opinion, of that I can guarantee you. Only time will do that.”
“Perhaps,” my grandfather conceded, “but all we can do is try. We have to try, don’t we? I’m counting on your help.”
Uncle Prescott took a long smoke from his cigar, and I was suddenly terrified that I would cough and be discovered. But I managed to hold it in.
“I’ll be frank with you, Richard,” he said. “I told you it would do you no good. But it would do me a whole lot of harm. Things are very tenuous right now for Western Shipping; everything’s on the edge. Our competitors are on our heels, trying to take my government contracts away from me. A statement from me, about your situation, that would classify me in government eyes as ‘unreliable’. And then bye bye contracts. You get the picture? I employ a lot of people, Richard. I want to help you, but my employees depend on me, too. I just can’t risk it. Surely you understand?”
My grandfather was shaking his head during this speech, and now he said, “Prescott, You forget I was your father’s personal and company lawyer for many, many years, and your company lawyer as well for part of that time. I know these contracts would be difficult to break, and if they tried, you could tie them up in court, and you know it. Besides, you may have competitors, but none of them have your capacity at the moment, and we both know that, and the government knows it, too. And if I read correctly, there’s enough shipping demanded so that all California companies will be needed to operate at full capacity. So your business would not be affected in the least.”
“Well, I’m afraid we’ll have to disagree about that, Richard. But even so, there are other considerations as well. I could come out of this war a prominent man. I feel a need to serve my country, you know, business is not all I care about. Who knows? I might even run for governor someday. Or even higher! I can’t afford to get involved in anything so controversial.”
Grandfather’s voice was cold. “So you would place personal ambition over the plight of poor, innocent people whom your words might have a slight chance of helping?”
Uncle Prescott stubbed out his cigar. “This is a hopeless conversation, Richard. I can’t expect you to understand my position in this matter. I’m deeply concerned over your situation, I truly am, but I just can’t risk taking a part in it. I have to say no, Richard.”
As I watched my grandfather, I couldn’t help thinking about the Kuroshima affair. Grandfather had risked everything, his career, even his life, to help a poor man he had only met once. But here was Uncle Prescott, who was risking little but would still not help. I was angry, and I bit down on my lower lip to keep from crying out in rage and despair over all that had befallen us.
“Of course,” Prescott said jovially as he put his hat and coat on, “if you ever have any personal needs, Richard, you know there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, all you have to do is ask. But send me a note though, huh? Really a bad business for you to keep coming to the office.”
I waited silently as the two men shook hands. And I waited silently while my grandfather sat there, looking defeated for several minutes thereafter. Finally, as if summoning up some vestige of courage he had stored away for just this moment in time, he stood up straight, adjusted his hat and suit, and then exited the apartment.
Only then did I leave the closet, and only then did I allow the tears to flow down my face.
