Authors: Mariko Nagai
To DW and JNW.
Part II. “Camp Harmony”
Puyallup Assembly Center, Puyallup, Washington
Part III. Minidoka Relocation Center
Hunt, Idaho
Part IV. Minidoka Relocation Center
Hunt, Idaho
About the Japanese American Internment
Imprisoned in here for a long, long time,
We know we’re punished tho’ we’ve committed no crime,
Our thoughts are gloomy and enthusiasm damp,
To be locked up in a concentration camp.
Loyalty we know and Patriotism we feel,
To sacrifice our utmost was our ideal
To fight for our country, and die mayhap;
Yet we’re here because we happen to be a JAP.
We all love life, and our country best,
Our misfortune to be here in the West,
To keep us penned behind that DAMNED FENCE
Is someone’s notion of NATIONAL DEFENCE!!!!!
DAMNED FENCE!
Prologue— Unknown poet from Minidoka Concentration Camp
We held our breath for three years.
We did not have anything to call
our own except for the allowed number
of bags: two. We did not have anything
except for a rose garden my grandfather
made from hard earth and spit.
We lived behind a barbed wire fence
under a stark blue sky that could break
your heart (as it did break my grandfather’s).
We lived under a sky so blue
in Idaho right near the towns of Hunt and Eden
but we were not welcomed there.
Through Sears & Roebuck catalogs
we lived outside of America.
Dust came through Eden, dust went
through our barracks, toward the sky,
westward, back to our home by the sea
in the city by the sea, in Seattle.
The house is surrounded by roses
of all names: Bride’s Dream, Chicago
Peace, Mister Lincoln, Timeless, Touch
of Class. The house is surrounded by hues
of red and white: red like an azure-sun,
red like the sunset over the Pacific Ocean,
red like Grandpa’s fingertips,
white so transparent they call it Tineke,
the kind of white that looks like Seattle on a rainy day.
The living room is a mixture of East
and West: Grandpa packed a little of Japan
when he came here across the sea—a sword,
a photograph of himself as a small boy,
dolls for future daughters he never had—
memories of his once-ago life.
Grandpa is a rose breeder.
He calls roses
bara
; he calls them his
kodomo—
children.
My father sometimes helps out Grandpa,
though most of the time, he works in an office
downtown writing articles for a newspaper.
Mother sits in the kitchen, always singing.
My room upstairs is All American: a bed,
an old desk, white lace curtains my mother sewed,
pictures of Jamie and me on the wall.
My brother Nick’s room next to mine is filled
with trophies he won in track races.
Grandpa calls me by my middle name,
Masako
,
and he calls Nick
Toshio.
He never speaks
English; says that he lived longer in Japan
than he has in America, and that there’s no more
space for another language or culture.
He speaks to us in Japanese, my parents speak
to him in Japanese, and Nick and I speak
some words in Japanese, but mostly in English.
Just like our breakfast, rice and pickled
plums with milk and potatoes, they all mix together.
I was singing with the Sunday school
choir, practicing our Christmas carols,
all our mouths opening and closing as one
to sing the next note.
We were singing “Silent Night, Holy
Night,” and just as the boys hit
their lowest key, the door burst
open like a startled cat dashing.
The next note lay waiting
under Mrs. Gilbert’s finger; our mouths kept
the
O
shape, when a man yelled,
the Japs bombed
Pearl Harbor
. The world stopped.
The next words got lost.
Oh, oh, oh,
someone wailed, until I realized that it was
coming out of my mouth,
my body shaking, trembling.
And the world started again
but we were no longer singing as one.
Jap, Jap, Jap
, the word bounces
around the walls of the hall.
Jamie, my best friend, yells out, “Shut your
mouth!” but the word keeps
bouncing like a ball in my head.
As soon as I get to my Language
Arts class, the entire class gets quiet.
Mrs. Smith looks down
like she’s been talking about me,
or maybe she doesn’t see me.
She clears her voice; she calls
out our names, one by one; she pauses
right after Marcus Springfield.
She clears her throat, calls out
Mina Tagawa
.
And instead of calling out Joshua
Thomas, she starts to talk
about what happened yesterday.
My face becomes hot and heavy; I look
at my hands, then at the swirling
pattern on the desk. I look at my hands again,
yellowish against the dark brown
desk, and Jamie’s hair, golden,
right near it.
Jap-nese
, Mrs. Smith
starts.
Jap-nese
have attacked Pearl
Harbor.
Jap-nese
have broken
the treaty.
Jap-nese
have started the war.
Even the newspaper that Father works for screams in
bold letter headlines:
Japs. Japs. Japs.
I feel everyone’s eyes on me. I hear
Chris Adams snickering behind me, whispering
Jap Mina
.
I’m not
Japanese
, I want to yell.
I am an American
, I scream
in my head, but my mouth is stuffed
with rocks; my body is a stone, like the statue
of a little Buddha Grandpa prays to
every morning and every night. My body is heavy.
I don’t know how to speak anymore.
We are not Americans, the eyes tell us.
We do not belong, the mouths curl up.
We are the enemy aliens, the Japs,
the ones who have bombed
Pearl Harbor, killing so many soldiers
who were enjoying their Sunday
morning in Hawaii, who were waking
up to their breakfasts of oatmeal and toast.
Death to Japs
, they say. The voice
from the radio says
Jap-nese
,
a pause between
Jap
and
nese
, just like Mrs. Smith.
Mother walks down Main Street with her head
up, her back straight, though
men spit at her and women hiss
at her.
Masa-chan, Onnanoko rashiku
sesuji o nobashina-sai.
(Masako,
keep your back straight like a
good girl), Mother says as she pulls
on the whitest kid gloves,
one by one, stretching her fingers
straight to sheath each finger.
Masa-chan, tebukuro
hamenasai. Amerika-jin wa
sahou ni kibishii kara.
(Masako,
put on your gloves. Americans
are strict with manners), Mother says
as she straightens her jacket.
We pass by the stores that sell
oatmeal and toast and go to Mr. Fukuyama’s shop:
Patriotic Americans,
says a sign on the window.
She buys a bag of rice and
umeboshi
and bonito
flakes. If I could, I would keep
only my first name,
Mina
, my American name,
and tear off
Masako Tagawa
like the
pages of journals I tore out when I found
out that Nick Freeman liked Alice
Gorka. I would change my hair color into a honey
blond that changes into lighter
shades of almost white during the summer,
just like Jamie’s. If I could change
my name, if I could change my parents,
I could change my life: I would be an American.
But I already am.
We’re best friends, no matter what
, Jamie
says as we sit under the Christmas
tree together.
We’re best friends until
we die
, I say.
She hands me a small packet wrapped
in a bright red wrapping paper.
Open it, open it
, she urges. Mr. Gilmore’s humming
drifts in from his workshop in
the backyard, and Mrs. Gilmore’s baking
smells of cinnamon and nutmeg.
We sit under a big Christmas tree lit by small twinkling
lights like lost fireflies late in summer.
A package the size of my palm, so light like a butterfly;
Jamie chanting,
Open it, open it!
I undo the ribbon gingerly, then unfold the red
paper, one corner at a time. In the middle,
a jagged half of a heart. She pulls her sweater
down,
See, I have half a heart, too.
And whenever we are together, we have a whole heart
.
Only then do the two halves become one.
When I come home, the house is quiet.
Basho is outside, looking confused.
Mother is not home, where she always is,
waiting with a cup of green tea between
her hands and a glass of milk for me.
Everything is turned inside
out, rice scattered all over the kitchen
floor, all the drawers wide open
with cloth strewn all over the floor
like garbage the day after the circus
left town. A note,
I will be back soon
,
in Mother’s beautiful and careful handwriting
pinned to the door like a dead butterfly.
It is only later, too late for dinner,
too late for a glass of milk and cup of tea,
when Mother and Grandpa come home
looking like they are carrying the night
on their backs, their bodies heavy
from the weight they drag through
the door.
Men came this afternoon,
they said they are from the government;
your father had to go with them so he can
answer some questions,
Mother says quietly
as she sits down on the sofa, heavily
throwing her weight down.
When is he coming home?
I ask. Basho mewls, climbs next
to Grandpa, pressing his body so close that his tail
curled around the bend in Grandpa’s
skinny body.
I’m not sure, honey, I’m just
not sure,
Mother says quietly.
Grandpa takes his owl-like glasses off slowly,
presses his eyes with the palms
of his hand like he was pressing down the dirt
around his rose trees, and leans back
on his rocking chair. Mother leans back, too.
I sit, the word
war
ringing
through my head, forgetting about milk,
forgetting about dinner, forgetting about
history homework, thinking only about Father
in prison.
This year, there wasn’t a
Christmas tree, or dinner with
our neighbors.
There weren’t any New Year’s
festivities this year,
no mochi—sticky rice—
no giving of money or playing games.
Without Father’s face red as a beet
from sake, and Grandpa
singing as he plays
the
shamisen—
the three
stringed lyre made out
of a skin of virgin cat—
there is no laughter, no joy.
Mother hurries from the dining
room to the kitchen,
sleeves of her kimono
fluttering
like a humming bird’s
wings. All is quiet in this
house, with its small
ornament of bamboo
and pine branches
Grandpa left hanging
on my door.
Happy New Year it is not.
Father looks small
sitting behind the bars,
surrounded by
soldiers towering
over him. He smiles,
then coughs, once,
twice. He asks me
how I am, whether
I’ve been a good girl,
and have obeyed my elders.
He squints his eyes,
his eyes bigger without
his glasses.
Mother gives him
nigiri
—rice balls—and he smiles,