The Last Year of the War, page 12
The streets of Little Tokyo were less busy than usual, but still the air was charged with energy. There were unfamiliar cars on Central Avenue and First Street, which were the main thoroughfares, and Caucasian men in suits and hats were getting in and out of them, consulting papers in their hands, walking into shops with long strides, as though they were in a hurry to buy something.
Patricia, whose father was an electrical engineer who worked outside Little Tokyo, lived in a well-maintained duplex on South San Pedro Street. Mariko had been to her friend’s house many times. Patricia was the oldest of four girls, and her mother, who was half American, half Japanese, was a dance instructor, and sometimes she would allow Patricia and her friends to attend her classes at her little studio on Second Street for free. Patricia’s family lived in one of the nicer homes in Little Tokyo, with its trimmed front yard and year-round flowers in terra-cotta pots. As Mariko neared the house, she could see there were none of those strange cars parked at the curb. In fact, Patricia’s end of the street was uncharacteristically quiet. She rapped on the door and waited, but there was no answer. She rapped again. A few seconds later Mrs. Hsiu, the elderly Japanese woman who lived next door, and who must’ve heard her knocking, opened her own front door and poked her head out.
“They’re gone,” Mrs. Hsiu said quietly in Japanese, as though there were people hiding in the perimeter bushes waiting to pounce on her.
“Gone where?” Mariko asked.
“They’re gone,” the old woman said, this time emphasizing the second word so that it was clear what she meant by it. Patricia and her family had left Los Angeles. Fled.
Mariko stepped over from Patricia’s front doorstep to Mrs. Hsiu’s.
“What do you mean? Where did they go?” Mariko said as a strange anxiety fell across her.
The old woman leaned over Mariko so that she could whisper in her ear even though the two of them were alone on the street.
“They’ve gone to an aunt’s house in Nevada. Don’t tell anyone, Mariko. If anyone asks you, you don’t know where they went.”
Mrs. Hsiu leaned back over her threshold and closed the door before Mariko could say or ask anything else.
She walked slowly back to the vegetable and herb shop, sensing an alarming numbness creeping over her bones. When she got home, she didn’t tell her parents about Patricia’s family, though she wanted to. She slept fitfully that night, waking every few hours to ponder why Patricia’s family had left Little Tokyo so quietly and abruptly, and if she should tell her parents they had done so. Would it be breaking her promise to Mrs. Hsiu if she told her mother and father that they left, but not where they went? Did Lupe and Sharon know Patricia was gone?
The next morning, the ninth of December, Mariko awoke hoping against hope that her father would let her go to school. But she had overslept after having tossed and turned during the night. It was already after eight o’clock in the morning; school had already started. She got out of bed, dressed quickly, and went into the kitchen. Her parents and siblings were eating a quiet breakfast and sipping tea. Her mother greeted her but the mood around the breakfast table was somber. She opened her mouth to ask why she had been allowed to sleep in when there was a knock at the door to the residence from the street-level entrance. It was a loud knock, followed by a command that Kenji Inoue open his door to federal agents.
Mariko’s mother looked at her father with alarm.
“I’m sure it’s just a formality,” Mariko’s father said to her. Mariko’s parents, like mine, had been compelled two years earlier to register as alien nationals. Kenji Inoue was on a list just like my father had been on a list. As Kenji Inoue rose from his seat, he turned to his children. “Everyone just stay right here. Stay at the table.” He turned to the fifteen-year-old twins, Tomeo and Kaminari. “Everyone stays here.”
Tomeo nodded slowly, as though he heard what his father had said—the words were intelligible—but they did not make sense to him. Kaminari looked from one parent to the other in concern but said nothing.
The twins and Mariko listened as their father descended the stairs, shouting to whomever was standing on the other side of it, in perfect English, that he was coming. They heard him open the door. They heard a man ask if he was Kenji Inoue. They heard the front door close. Then they heard nothing for several long minutes. Then the door opened again, and Mariko heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, not the soft patter of her barefoot father.
Three men who looked very much like the men in suits and hats that Mariko had seen the previous day entered the apartment. Mariko’s mother and sister both cried out in alarm. Tomeo shot to his feet, and one of the men strode over to him and pushed him back down. Another held up a badge and announced to Chiyo that they were federal agents. Kenji was under arrest as an enemy alien and the rest of the family would in short order be taken to a relocation center pursuant to Executive Order 9066.
Mariko didn’t know what those words meant. While two of the men searched the apartment and the third one stood watch over them, Mariko asked her mother in Japanese what Executive Order 9066 was. Chiyo just shook her head as she cried into her napkin. Tomeo told her in English to be quiet. Mariko would find out many months later that Executive Order 9066 is what authorized the removal of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans just like her to detention camps.
The two men who had conducted the search left the apartment with papers and photographs, bank statements and business receipts, the lease agreement for the shop and apartment, letters from family members in Japan, and Kenji’s hori hori, a Japanese digging knife that he’d had since he was a boy. They even took the flashlight from under the kitchen sink lest it be used as a signaling device.
The third man, who had stood watch, told Chiyo that she had less than two weeks to get herself and her children ready to leave for the relocation center.
“Relocation center?” Chiyo said, having finally found her voice.
“You are arresting us?” Kaminari asked, incredulous.
“You are going to be detained,” the man said. “Not just you. All Japanese Americans.”
“Why? What for?” Tomeo said. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“It is for the protection of everyone, including you. You will be allowed to bring only what you can carry.” The federal agent turned to Mariko. “No toys. Only what you absolutely need.”
He turned back to Chiyo. “You will be notified where your husband is when it’s been decided if he is to face any charges.”
“My husband has done nothing wrong,” Chiyo shouted angrily, fully in charge of her voice again.
The man, unfazed by her tone, gazed about the kitchen and living room for a moment, and when he looked again at Chiyo his face looked sad, like he was not happy about the situation himself. “You’d be wise to sell all this,” he said, as though somehow he knew there would be looters and squatters within days of the emptying of Little Tokyo, as though he knew whatever the people of Little Tokyo did not sell or take with them would not be here when and if they ever came back for it.
The man turned to leave, and Mariko said quietly to his back, “I’m not a child who plays with toys,” but he didn’t hear her.
When he was gone, Mariko, her siblings, and her mother sat in dazed silence for several seconds.
“Can they do this?” Kaminari said.
“They are doing it!” Tomeo growled, and Mariko was astonished that he used that tone with his twin. He had used it with Mariko now and then, but never Kaminari.
After the FBI agents left, neighbors started to come by the apartment, and then the shop, which Tomeo and Kaminari opened by midmorning at their mother’s request. While Chiyo spent the afternoon conferring with the Inoues’ closest friends about what she should do on Kenji’s behalf, Mariko looked for an opportunity to slip away. She needed to talk to Sharon and Lupe.
She needed to talk to Charles.
What she wanted to do most was sneak into the school and look inside her locker. Whatever note he had dropped inside it late Friday afternoon was still there. But there was no way to enter unnoticed, in broad daylight no less, a building teeming with faculty and students. She must instead go to Sharon’s house after school—she lived closer to Little Tokyo than Lupe—and tell her what had happened and ask her to give a note to Charles on her behalf. If Mariko had known where Charles lived, she would’ve stolen away to his house and stayed hidden in some bushes or behind a tree or wall until she saw him walking home, and then she would’ve told him face-to-face that she still wanted him as her boyfriend. She didn’t think he was the type to turn his back on her just because she was Japanese. She didn’t think he was . . .
Alone in the apartment, Mariko went to her parents’ room and pulled out a piece of her mother’s stationery from the little writing desk by the closet. She chose a fountain pen and wrote a quick note before her mother could return and find her there, and ask her what she was doing.
Dear Charles:
I just want you to know that I am very sad about what happened Sunday in Hawaii. We are all terribly sad. I’m not going to be allowed to come back to school. My family and I and everyone else in Little Tokyo are going to be taken to a relocation center somewhere. It’s not safe for us here, we’ve been told. I don’t know how long I will be gone. I wanted you to know why I haven’t been in school, why I haven’t answered your last note. I am sure you wrote one.
I still want to be your girlfriend.
Very much.
I hope you still want to be my boyfriend.
I wish I could see you before we go. I don’t know where they are taking us. But I will not forget you. I promise.
Mariko Inoue
She said nothing about her father’s arrest. She didn’t want him to know about that. She didn’t want anyone to know about that.
At a little after three, while her siblings and mother were still busy, Mariko crept away. The streets of Little Tokyo were abuzz with activity. Little conversations were happening outside every storefront, every public building, every restaurant, every home. Worried, angry, fearful faces were everywhere. Most of her neighbors paid her no mind at all as she walked past them; they were too distracted by the posters that had been plastered all over the community, with mandates that all of them would be evacuated out of Little Tokyo, that they were to pack only what they could fit into a suitcase, and that they were advised to sell what they owned.
As she stepped out of the boundaries of the Japanese community, Mariko noticed that people were now not just staring at her, but glaring at her, pulling their children away from her. “Filthy Jap,” one balding man said as he started to pass her on the sidewalk. He was walking a little brown dog on a leash that looked up at Mariko and wagged its tail. “Go back where you belong!” the man spat. She ran from him but felt his gaze on her long after he was no longer in earshot.
The sideways glances, the angry stares, the looks of disapproval and disdain and disgust, continued as she made her way from boulevard to boulevard as fast as she could.
When she finally made it to Sharon’s apartment building, she ran up the stairs to 2C and rang the doorbell. The door opened and Sharon looked at her with an odd mix of affection, fear, and dread. Her friend put a finger to her lips, looked behind her to see if anyone in the household was wondering who was at the door. Then she stepped out onto the landing and closed the door.
“I don’t know if my mom should see you here. My brother’s . . . he’s in the navy, you know.”
Cold fear rippled through Mariko. She had forgotten. “He’s . . . he’s okay, isn’t he?”
“He wasn’t in Hawaii, but still. Mom’s pretty upset. Dad, too.”
“I’m . . . I didn’t . . . I can’t . . .” But Mariko couldn’t find the words to express her own confusion over what had happened.
“I know,” Sharon said, her eyes filling with tears. “But I think you should go. My brother . . .”
Her friend did not finish her sentence and Mariko could see the conflict in Sharon’s thoughts. America was at war with Japan. Sharon was American. She was Japanese. Her closest friend was torn between allegiances.
Mariko felt inside her skirt pocket for the note she had written to Charles. Sharon had to give the note to him before her friend’s loyalties fell too heavily on the side of fear and family. No one else could help her.
“Please,” Mariko said softly as her eyes pricked with tears. “Please give this note to Charles? We’re being evacuated. Please?” She extended the envelope to her friend.
Sharon, her eyes also glassy with emotion, took the note and nodded. “I’m so sorry, Mariko,” Sharon said, as she put the note in her own skirt pocket. “I’m so sorry this is happening.”
“I am, too,” Mariko whispered. She took a step forward and wrapped Sharon in an embrace. “Tell Lupe good-bye for me?”
Her friend shuddered in her arms. “I will,” Sharon said.
“I’ll try to write you.”
Sharon nodded and pulled away, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “Where are they taking you?”
Mariko shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
Both girls heard a voice from inside Sharon’s apartment. Her mother was calling for her.
“You should go,” Sharon whispered.
Mariko started to leave, but then stopped and turned. “Don’t forget me, Sharon. And please tell Charles not to forget me, will you? I don’t know if I will see him before we go. I don’t think I will. I don’t even know where he lives. Will you tell him not to forget me?”
Sharon nodded wordlessly as tears slid down her freckled cheeks.
“Sharon?” said a voice from within the apartment on the other side of the door.
Mariko flew down the stairs without looking back.
Over the next few days Mariko hoped against reason that somehow Sharon would come to Little Tokyo with a response from Charles.
But her friend did not come.
* * *
• • •
Mariko’s mother could not do what the FBI agent had suggested she do with the household goods. The dishes and crystal, the rice bowls, the teapots, the silks and tablecloths and woodblock artwork—all the treasures from Japan—Chiyo could not bring herself to sell them for one-tenth of their value. Other families up and down the streets of Little Tokyo were holding what were widely being called “evacuation sales”—a pathetic euphemism for what they really were: heartbreaking efforts to quickly dispose of their belongings. But the buyers, nearly all non-Japanese, knew everyone in Little Tokyo was desperate. If you were offered ten dollars for a nearly new stove, you took it. Chiyo could not so devalue all the visible things of what had been a happy life.
Mariko awoke in the middle of the night on the thirteenth of December to the sound of shattering glass and porcelain. Kaminari, who had worked ten hours that day in the shop, lay in her bed, snoring lightly. Mariko crept out of the room and went into the kitchen, where a light was burning. Her mother was leaning over the windowsill, throwing dishes out onto a cement slab at the head of the vegetable patch two stories below. The sound of the breakage was beautiful and terrible at the same time. Remaining plates, bowls, cups, and saucers sat on the countertop at her mother’s elbow, ready to be hurled to the ground.
“What are you doing, Mommy?” Mariko asked, even though it was obvious what her mother was doing.
Chiyo startled at Mariko’s voice but quickly recovered. “We can’t take these with us. I don’t want anyone else having them, Mariko. I don’t want anyone who hates us because we’re Japanese eating off them.” Her mother picked up a plate and calmly tossed it out. A second later, the sound of its impact against the cement reached their ears.
“This is how I want to say good-bye to the life we had here,” Chiyo continued as though speaking to herself now, not her youngest daughter. “We should get to decide that at least.” She picked up a powder blue teacup with willow branches painted across it and turned to Mariko, extending the arm that held the cup.
Mariko looked at the teacup but did not reach out her hand to take it. “We’re not coming back here? Ever?”
Her mother peered at her. “Come back to what? What will there be to come back to?”
“Our life! Our friends,” Mariko said. Charles.
“All of our friends will already be with us.” Chiyo wagged the cup in her hand toward Mariko.
“Not all my friends are Japanese, Mommy.”
Her mother smiled without mirth. “Oh, yes, they are. I assure you any friend you have now is Japanese.”
Mariko could not tell her mother about Charles. She would not understand. Mariko reached for the cup and curled her hand around it. She could do this for her mother. She could break all the dishes they had if it would make her mother less sad about what was happening to them. Because when the war was over, Mariko would convince her parents to come back to Los Angeles. And when they returned, it wouldn’t have to be to Little Tokyo. They wouldn’t have to live in a house full of Japanese heirlooms anymore. They were Americans. They could live in an American neighborhood and eat macaroni and cheese on new plates. They could eat fried chicken. And hot dogs. And Twinkies. Yes, they were Japanese, but this was not Japan. This was America, and Los Angeles was their home. Sharon and Lupe were here. Charles was here. Her life was here.
Mariko stepped to the counter, leaned toward the window, and dangled the cup over the ledge. Then she let it go. The shattering sounded a little like applause.
