Death in Little Tokyo (20 page)

23

T
he Blue Surf Motel is an old stucco structure off Pacific Coast Highway in north Long Beach. In that section of Long Beach, Pacific Coast Highway is nowhere near the Pacific Coast. It’s miles from the beach as it makes its way toward an infamous traffic circle with a history of so many accidents that I’m convinced it was designed to reduce California’s surplus population. Local legend says the designer of the traffic circle died there in a car accident, but I think this is just an urban legend that was created to inject some justice in the universe.

The pink stucco of the building was chipped, showing white plaster underneath, and I was surprised to see the U-shaped motel was only one-story high. Since I had been told that Angela Sanchez was in room 212, I had expected to find a two-story building. Driving into the U-shaped motel court, I found that the rooms to my left were numbered in the one hundreds, the rooms to my right were in the three hundreds, and the rooms at the far end of the U were numbered in the two hundreds.

I parked my car by the door to room 212, and walked up to it. Inside I could hear the TV. A game show. I knocked, and the volume of the TV was turned down. I knocked a second time.

“Who’s there?”

“My name is Ken Tanaka.”

A pause. “I don’t know you.”

“As a matter of fact, I think you do. I believe we met once, Ms. Sanchez.”

“How the hell did you find me?”

“A friend of yours told me.”

“Fred?”

“No, someone else.”

The door opened a crack. The safety chain was on. Through the narrow opening, I saw a three-inch strip of her face, and red hair. One eye peered through the opening of the door. “It’s you!” she said with surprise.

“That’s right. I told you we met once.”

“Are you the one with the reward?”

“I’d like to talk to you about that. Can I come in?”

Silence. Her eye continued to study me. I couldn’t get a reading on the expression on the rest of her face. Finally, “What the hell happened to your face?”

“I got beat up. You should have seen it before the swelling started going down. Two guys that Matsuda worked with did the beating. But now they’re in jail. That’s one of the reasons they’re in jail and one of the reasons I helped put them in. Now I think I can help you. Can I come in? I’d really like to talk to you.”

The eye studied me for a few more seconds, then the door closed. I could hear the safety chain rattling. The door opened once again. “Come in,” she said.

I walked into a crowded motel room. Three suitcases were piled in a corner. The bed was messed up where she had been lying watching TV. An open, half eaten two-pound box of See’s Candies lay on the bed. On the wall was a painting of a sunset done in oranges, reds, and whites. It was a boat on the water. It looked like the sort of thing that’s painted by machines.

“There’s no chair,” she said. “Sit down.” She pointed at the bed. On her hands she was still wearing the multitude of rings.

I sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, and so did she.

“What the hell do ya want?” she asked.

“I want to talk about the night you were with Matsuda. I even went to your apartment and tried to talk to your boyfriend.”

“Armondo. He’s an asshole. He acts like Mr.
Macho,
but he ain’t worth shit. That’s why I dumped him and hid out here. What’s this about a reward?”

Her boyfriend seemed plenty tough to me, but I wasn’t going to argue the point. Besides, it was time to ‘fess up.

“There actually isn’t a reward. I just had to talk to you, and Ms. Martinez wasn’t going to tell me where you were without some reason other than my wanting it.”

She gave me a look that said that being lied to by a man was pretty much what she expected. It made me feel crummy. I tried a different tack. “What’s got you so scared?”

“Shit. You heard ‘bout what they did to that guy?” she said.

“I heard about what somebody did to Matsuda.”

“I’m next.”

“Who told you that?”

No answer.

“Look, there’s no reason for you to be scared, and there’s no reason for you to hide. The police want to talk to you, but not as a suspect in the murder of Matsuda, just to hear your story of what went on that night. I’ve got an interest because I want you to confirm that I was in and out of his hotel room. The police don’t suspect me in the murder anymore, and I don’t think they ever suspected you.”

“The cops ain’t the only ones I’m worried about.”

“If you’re worried about the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia, I told you the two guys that Matsuda worked for are already in jail. You don’t have anything to fear. They weren’t after you, anyway.”

“That’s not what I was told.”

“By who?”

More silence. She stared at me, her face not giving away her emotions. Finally she said, “Fred Yoshida.”

“I know that Fred is very good to you. He probably helped you with your act and your dancing. But he’s got his own interests in this affair, and what he has to hide has nothing to do with you.”

“He told me they’re out to get me,” she said all at once. “It’s some kind of Japanese thing. They’ll cut me like they cut that guy up. Fred said the only way to save my ass is to stay here and then move out of town. He even paid for this room, and he said he’ll help me scrape up enough money to move.”

“What happened that night?”

“When that guy was killed?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But Fred said they thought I knew and that’s why the Japanese Mafia is after me.”

“Fred lied to you.”

She received this assertion in silence. I tried again. “After I left you that night, what happened?”

She gave a half smile. “Ya want all the dirty details?”

I smiled back and shook my head. “No, I mean after you and Matsuda were done. What happened?”

She shrugged. “We went to the Paradise. Matsuda picked me up in a bar between shows. I like to turn a trick when I can,” she said matter-of-factly. “Japanese businessmen are always good Johns; they’re clean, not often kinky, and good tippers.”

“So Matsuda didn’t know that you worked at the Paradise Vineyard?”

“No. Like I said, he met me in a bar. After we were done, I told him to come to the theater to see the show. I thought he’d be a good John to keep in touch with, because he said he came to L.A. a lot. It doesn’t hurt to have a regular bunch of tricks. He came backstage with me and saw Fred. He just about shit. He said they hadn’t seen each other for fifty years. They said they were in some kind of concentration camp together during World War Two.”

“And?”

“And then I did my act. The next day some guy from the cops shows up at the theater wanting to know who was with Matsuda the night before. I was scared and didn’t say nothin’, so he said he’d be back with someone who could identify me. I suppose that was you.”

I nodded.

“Fred came after me and told me to get out, that it ain’t just the cops looking for me, that this Japanese Mafia wanted me, too. He told me Matsuda was cut to pieces, and it scared the piss out of me. He helped me get this room, and he’s been helping me pay for it. I’ve been bored here, but scared shitless to leave until Fred told me it was safe.”

I nodded. “I think it’s safe, now.”

24

I
drove back to L.A. feeling pretty good about linking Yoshida and Matsuda, even if it was fifty years ago. Matsuda being in Heart Mountain and Yoshida being in Manzanar puzzled me, but Angela said they had told her they were in a camp together, so there had to be some connection. I didn’t quite know what that meant yet. Before I would turn my information over to Lieutenant Johnson I decided to try and package things up neatly with documentation, and I knew just where to go for that.

About a block from the Kawashiri Boutique is the Japanese American National Museum, near Alameda and First Street. I was in it when it first opened, but I’m embarrassed to say that I was in it only once. When I had been there for the opening, something caught my eye, and when I talked to Mrs. Okada she reminded me of it. In the basement of the museum is an entire room devoted to the relocation camps. In this room is a computer system set up so you can search for the camp record of any inmate.

When I got to the museum I assuaged my conscience by paying the modest membership fee and joining the museum. Then, after asking the staff at the reception desk if the camp computer was still in the basement, I took the elevator down. The computer was a simple PC, and it took me only a few seconds to figure out how to use the database.

When I did an inquiry on Fred Yoshida in Manzanar, the system came back with the message:

No record for Fred Yoshida at Manzanar.

Just what I expected. I still didn’t know exactly what to make of the lie, but Angela said that Yoshida and Matsuda were in camp together, which meant Yoshida had to be in Heart Mountain Camp. I did a screen printout to show that Fred Yoshida had no record for Manzanar.

Then I did an inquiry for Susumu Matsuda in Heart Mountain Camp. Matsuda’s camp record came up. I did a printout of that.

Then I did an inquiry for Fred Yoshida in Heart Mountain. To my surprise I got the message:

No record for Fred Yoshida at Heart Mountain.

Like anyone else, I tried the inquiry a second time. Naturally, I got the same result.

I was stumped. I wanted to tear into the guts of the program to see if there was some programming error, but obviously the museum wasn’t going to let a visitor do that. Instead, I printed out a list of all the Yoshida’s at Heart Mountain to see if I could see a “Frederick” or something similar instead of “Fred.” Yoshida’s a common name, so there were several names on the list, but none that looked like Fred. Could Yoshida have lied about being in camp? If so, why had he and Matsuda told Angela that they knew each other from camp?

On an impulse, I tried Naomi Okada at Heart Mountain. I got the message:

No record for Naomi Okada at Heart Mountain.

There had to be a problem. Mrs. Okada told me that she not only looked up her records on the museum computer, she was even able to get her camp files from the National Archives. I knew she had been at Heart Mountain. I considered the possibility that the programmer who put together the system made some kind of programming mistake. Then the answer dawned on me. It was so simple I almost hit myself in the head. Maybe I wasn’t really cut out for a career in detecting or in computers.

I did a printout of the Yoshidas at Manzanar to make sure. As with Heart Mountain, there were no “Fred” or “Frederick” Yoshidas listed, but there were several Yoshidas, just as there would be several “Smith” or “Jones” listings in a phone book. If I could get to the program I could do the next step automatically, but instead I took the printouts with me back to the office to do things the old-fashioned way, by hand.

When I was at the museum I learned that Heart Mountain had fewer than twelve thousand inmates, which made it like a small town. In small towns everyone knows everyone’s business, and I had talked to a friendly resident of Heart Mountain only a few days before. I picked up the phone and called Mrs. Okada.

She was surprised to hear from me again and doubly surprised to hear I wanted to talk to her and not her grandson. She was almost astounded when I said I wanted to talk some more about Heart Mountain Camp. She agreed to see me immediately.

When I reached her house, we again went through the little dance over tea. It’s sort of a modern Japanese tea ceremony. Finally we settled in to talk.

“Well, I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.”

“Are you writing a book about life at Heart Mountain?”

“Actually, I’m interested in one of the people in the camp at the time you were there.”

“Who?”

“A Mr. Susumu Matsuda.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Okada said, surprised. “Is that what you’re here about?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean about the murder in the camp.”

“Mr. Matsuda was involved in a murder?”

“Well, indirectly,” she said. “It was his girlfriend, Yuki Yoshida, who was killed.”

Like I said, Yoshida is a common Japanese name, but I took a chance. “Did Yuki Yoshida have a brother or a relative who wanted to be a dancer?”

“Of course! Jiro, her brother. We used to call him Fred, because he always wanted to be Fred Astaire. He was always involved in some kind of show or entertainment.”

“And his sister was killed?”

Mrs. Okada shook her head. “Yes, it was a terrible thing. She went out one night, and they found her body the next morning.”

“What happened?”

“She went out after curfew. Sneaking out was something we did, usually to meet boys.” A wisp of a smile crossed her face. “Or just for the fun of it. Anyway, poor Yuki must have been attacked. Her skull was crushed by a rock. They found her body the next morning. They did an investigation, but I think it was one of the white guards that did it, and they did a cover-up because of that.”

“And Jiro, Fred, was her brother?”

“That’s right. He wasn’t at the camp at the time. He had volunteered for the army. He was a yes-yes man.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh, in the camps the government wanted us to sign a complicated loyalty oath. For the men, two of the questions on it asked if they would fight for the United States and if they gave up any allegiance to a foreign power. That meant Japan. A lot of the men didn’t like these questions. A huge number were U.S. citizens who thought of themselves as loyal Americans, and they thought it was an insult to say they ever had any allegiance to any country but the U.S. Others felt it was unfair for the U.S. to ask if they would fight when their families were being held in the camps.”

“And Fred Yoshida answered ‘yes’ to both questions?”

“That’s right. That’s why he was a yes-yes man. Most men answered yes-yes. I can’t remember the exact number, but I think it was something like eighty-five percent said they would fight for the U.S. even though we were in the camps.”

“And that’s how they formed the Four Forty-second and other Nisei combat units?”

She nodded.

“The Four Forty-second had a great record.”

“That’s because they used those boys for cannon fodder,” she said. “It was terrible. They wouldn’t complain in public, but a lot of them wrote home that they were always being put in the heavy fighting because the generals didn’t want to use white troops. They felt they had to endure it or else people would say they were disloyal to the U.S.”

“I knew about the Four Forty-second record, but it never occurred to me why they earned so many medals, citations, and Purple Hearts for a unit their size. I suppose that when Fred Yoshida answered yes to both questions, he joined the army.”

“That’s right,” she said. “But something happened to him. I can’t remember if he was hurt in combat or something. Anyway, he was in a hospital when Yuki was killed. He couldn’t even go to her funeral.”

“He was hurt in a training accident with a hand grenade.”

She looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

“He told me.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she said. “Is he still working at that place?” She said the last two words with a clear tone of disapproval.

“Yes, he is.”

She snorted in disgust. “He claims that’s the only kind of job he can get where he’s involved in show business and in choreographing dancing. If that’s the case he should get a job where he isn’t involved in show business or dancing.”

I shrugged. “Could you tell me more about Mr. Matsuda?”

“Susumu was a no-no man and a
kibei.”

“Kibei? That’s a word I’m not familiar with.”

“A kibei was someone who was educated in Japan, even though he was an American. Most of us were educated in the U.S. and bought into the American dream. But since they were educated in Japan, the kibeis had a hard time adjusting, and I think that was one reason Susumu answered ‘no’ to both questions about renouncing allegiance and being willing to fight for the U.S. After the war he actually emigrated to Japan and even gave up his U.S. citizenship. It was a big scandal. I’ve never thought about it before, but his first name, Susumu, means ‘ to go forward’ in Japanese. Yet he was someone who always wanted to go back.”

“What kind of person was he?”

“He took being sent to the camps personally.” She paused. “I guess it was personal. But it wasn’t because of anything we had done as individuals; it was because of us being Japanese. The Germans and Italians weren’t put in camps, just us. Susumu just rebelled about the whole notion of being in camp and said it really didn’t prove our loyalty if we cooperated. So he was always getting into some kind of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Little things. There were all these rumors that he was involved in some kind of theft with the gangs in the camp, but Yuki said it wasn’t true, and I guess she would know.”

“And she was Matsuda’s girlfriend?”

“At least until the incident of the yes-yes and no-no questions came up. In fact, people my age still have hard feelings about the whole yes-yes and no-no controversy. It sounds silly, but there are still fights about this, even after all these years. People still hate each other because they were on one side of the issue or the other. It’s strange. It should all be history now, but instead it still seems that the feelings are strong and fresh as ever. Yuki sided with her brother at the time. Fred said the only way to prove that we were really loyal was to say yes-yes to both questions and to fight for the United States. Susumu and Fred had a big fight over that. That sort of broke up Yuki and Susumu, too.”

“And then Yuki got murdered?”

“Yes, about two months after the fight. After Fred had gone off to the army and got hurt.”

“And you think one of the guards killed her?”

“They had a big investigation, but it was all a phony thing. They never came up with any suspects. It was just a cover-up. It was disgusting.”

“By the way, Mrs. Okada, Okada is your married name, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes. My maiden name was Hirao.”

“So your camp records would be listed under Hirao?”

“Yes, Naomi Hirao.”

“Just as Fred Yoshida’s records would be listed under Jiro Yoshida. Both of you have your camp records listed under names that you don’t use now.” That’s why I couldn’t find their records when I did my search. I silently apologized to the programmer who set up the museum’s system for suspecting there was a bug.

“Did Fred return to Heart Mountain after his injury?” I continued.

“No. They thought there might be trouble because a guard probably killed his sister. So they shipped poor Fred and his entire family off to Manzanar. They were always shuffling people around from camp to camp to separate who they thought might be troublemakers.” She brightened up a bit. “Are you investigating Yuki’s murder? That happened fifty years ago.”

“No, I’m not investigating Yuki Yoshida’s murder,” I said. “I’m investigating Susumu Matsuda’s murder. Didn’t you see the article about him in the
L.A. Times?”

“I told you that with my eyes I can’t read too much anymore. I knew about the murder in Little Tokyo, but I didn’t know that was the same Matsuda who was at Heart Mountain with me.” She shook her head. “Well, it’s a small world, isn’t it?”