Eyes of the Emperor (9 page)

On June 5, 1942, the army loaded us onto the sugarcane train and sent us down to Iwilei Depot, near Honolulu Harbor—1,432 island troops.

Finally, they were letting us be real soldiers. I was proud to stand up for something I believed in, no matter what guys like Sweet thought.

But still, I was scared.

Who would I be when I was looking down the barrel of some German rifle? Or worse, a Japanese one. Who would I be then? A soldier? Or a coward?

From the depot, we marched with all our gear to the pier, where we were to board the USAT
Maui,
a transport ship.

The minute I'd heard we were shipping out to the mainland, I called Mrs. Higashi and asked her to tell my family. When I saw Ma at the harbor with Herbie I felt overwhelmingly
sad. I was about to leave the island—for the first time in my life.

Herbie stood solemnly with his hands jammed into his pockets. His T-shirt and bare feet reminded me of everything I was leaving behind. From here on my life would be made up of things and places I'd never known before.

Ma, wearing a gray dress and black sweater, looked shrunken into herself.

I hugged her. “Where's Pop?”

“Working.” She looked off to nowhere, her eyes glistening with tears.

Herbie moved closer, surrounding her with his arm, something I'd never seen him do before. It both relieved and saddened me to know that he had grown a couple of years in the past few months.

I let my barracks bag drop off my shoulder.

Ma looked everywhere but at me, pressing a white handkerchief to her mouth.

“Ma,” I said softly. “I going be okay. Please… don't worry.”

She closed her eyes and tears squeezed out.

“Herbie,” I said. “Write to me, okay? Every couple of weeks, if you can. Let me know what's going on. I'll write, too.”

Herbie dropped his arm off Ma's shoulder and glanced away.

“What?” I said.

“You better come back …I mean… when it's over.”

I reached out and ruffled his hair. “You got it, little man.”

Herbie smiled, though he tried not to. He dug into his pocket. “Here.”

“What's this?”

“A good-luck charm.”

I took the deep blue stone, polished smooth, like turquoise, but darker. “Where'd you get this?”

“You know that team we play, the Rats?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the pitcher, you know, the haole—Billy? I won that stone off him in a bet.”

“You made a bet with a haole?”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “What is this? Turquoise?”

“Lapis. That's what Billy said. I like the color. You don't see stones like that around here.”

“Sure don't.”

I rubbed it between my finger and thumb, then dropped it into my pocket. “I'll carry it everywhere. Thanks, Herbie.”

We glanced into each other's eyes, then quickly looked away. It wasn't something we usually did. We weren't like that. But we were getting that way.

I shook his hand, then pulled him close and hugged him. So what if the guys saw? Who cared?

“Write,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I turned to Ma, who still wouldn't look at me. “I'll be back for sure,” I said, then hugged her.

She shook her head, the handkerchief still pressed to her mouth. She was trembling.

It tore me up, but I had to go.

I headed onto the gangway with my platoon and Sweet, who was still with us, barking orders, scowling.

Halfway up I glanced back one last time. I nearly ran back down when I saw Ma gazing up at the ship, her hands reaching toward me, almost lost in the waving crowd.

A few hours later we were steaming out of Honolulu with news that a huge battle between the U.S. and Japan was raging to the west, at Midway Island. If the Japanese won, they'd take Hawaii next.

That thought almost made me jump overboard and swim home. Ma, Herbie, and Pop were the ones who had to be brave, not me. The monster was looking down
their
throats.

For the first time in years, tears fell from my eyes.

We headed to San Francisco, berthed three decks down, where the air was stale and stank like fuel. We slept in triplestacked canvas bunks with less than two feet between them. The lightbulbs were dim and the portholes were blacked out. Before the first day was over, half of us were so seasick we couldn't even stand up.

So, so miserable.

Day after day.

But when Admiral Nimitz announced in a radio address broadcast over the loudspeakers that the U.S. had defeated the Japanese at Midway, the whole ship broke out in the longest cheer I'd ever heard in my life. For now, our families were safe.

It had been a long time since I'd felt that good.

On June 10, we slipped under the Golden Gate Bridge, so big and so high I couldn't believe anybody could have built it.

But even better was all that land—solid ground—sun-shine, clean air, green hills on one side, biggest city I ever saw on the other.

We docked in Oakland, and the second we got off the ship, me, Chik, Cobra, and about three hundred other soldiers dropped to our knees and kissed the pavement.

Before we could get back up, armed troops swooped down on us.

“Move along!” they shouted, herding us away from the civilian families who had sailed with us. The troops, Sweet among them, marched us onto three different trains.

“Keep the window shades down,” Sweet said as I stowed my gear and found a place to sit. “We don't need people seeing you and panicking over a train full of Japs.”

That did it.

“Sir,” I said. “You wrong to call us Japs. Japs are the ones who bombed Pearl Harbor—the enemy, not us. We're Americans.”

Boom!

Sweet had me in the aisle.

“Fifty push-ups, Private, then fifty more. I want you down there licking spit until your arms fall off. You hear me? Private? You hear what I said?”

“Yes, sir!”

“I don't take insubordination of any kind. You don't talk back to a superior. You do that again, you're in the brig, understand?”

“Yes, sir!” I spat.

His boots were planted an inch from my face. I glanced up. His face was red and veins bulged in his neck. I thought he was going to kick me.

He spun around and slammed down the aisle to the next car.

When he was gone I got up, rubbing my burning arms. “Fool,” I mumbled.

“We going to prison,” Cobra said. “They tricked us into thinking we were going to fight!”

“But why, Cobra?” Chik said.

“You watch.”

I fell into a seat.

Two armed guards came in and pushed down the aisle, studying us. I lowered my gaze when one of them locked on me.

The train jerked ahead, and I soon fell asleep.

I woke with a jump when, sometime later, the train squealed and jolted to a stop.

I lifted the shade and peeked out. A station.

Not twenty feet from my window, a crew of workers were digging with picks and shovels.

“Hey, come look,” I said.

Chik, Cobra, and PeeWee squeezed in around me.

It was a shock. Never in our lives had we seen white guys doing pick-and-shovel work.

Cobra clicked his tongue. “Prisoners, ah? Must be a chain gang.”

“But no guards,” Chik said.

He was right. They were free men.

The train moved on.

Sweet let us raise the shades when we weren't in some town or city, and ho, what a sight. I'd never been anywhere that I couldn't see the ocean. It was the strangest feeling to be
inside
the land. Trapped in it. We were islanders, used to small places. Only because we knew the ocean did we understand endlessness like this—mountains far away in the hazy distance, dry desert, red hills, miles and miles of pastures, cows, horses, farmland so perfect it looked fake. Amazing.

On and on, the train clicking along the tracks, with nothing from Sweet about where we were going.
Click, click, click
—the sound lulling me to sleep—until I realized something and popped awake. My birthday had come and gone on that ship!

I was seventeen.

Days later, when we just about couldn't take it anymore, we crossed into a green land of forests, lakes, cows, and no mountains.

“You're in Wisconsin, grunts,” Sweet said, finally giving us something. “Anyone ever heard of it?”

“Only all of us, you fool,” Cobra mumbled.

When the train stopped, I peeked out the window.

Yah!

My scalp prickled. Felt like my hair rose straight up. Cobra was right—prison was right outside the window!

Faces peered back at us through a chain-link fence—Japanese faces. And one face I could hardly believe.

A guy standing off by himself.

Sakamaki.

Chik and Cobra shoved in around me. We gaped at him. And all those people. So sad, so beaten. A fire burned in my throat.

“It's really true,” Cobra whispered.

“Can't be,” Chik said. “No.”

But there was the proof—Sakamaki. The guy we'd captured at Waimanalo.

A feeling of complete emptiness washed over me. The feeling you get when you give up.

But the train jolted and moved ahead.

Sakamaki's fingers clutched the chain-link fence as we pulled away. He glared at us, his face strangely pockmarked. His eyes were fierce. Probably he still wanted to be shot.

But the rest of those faces seemed hopeless and confused. Men and women, young, old. Who were they? What crime had they committed?

We looked at them and they looked back, and something passed between us—something like deep, deep sorrow.

But not Sakamaki. He lived in another world.

The train stopped for the last time less than a mile down the line.

From there we were bussed into Camp McCoy, a sprawling
army reservation of fields, forests, creeks, and low hills. Tall trees framed the camp itself, a tidy place.

But back in the far corner of the camp was the prison. An internment center, they called it. Except for Sakamaki, it wasn't a place for enemies but for people the government had kicked out of all those West Coast states.

Just people. Americans.