Baachan looked amused. “What you want with memory of onion in your head?”
“Well . . . If I write them down, then if people are starving and they find my notes, they’ll know they can live on onions.”
“No need to write down. When people are starve, they eat anything. Many people eat sawdust to keep stomach from feel hungry. I try myself once, but it hurt my stomach.” Baachan spooned the carrots into a bowl. But when they took the carrots to Akira, he had fallen asleep on the floor.
Jiichan was just coming through the door. He held up a big onion triumphantly, but his face fell when he saw the carrots were already cooked. “But this make it taste better!” he said crossly to Baachan.
Baachan glanced at Hanako, shaking her head. “Old man and his onion!”
Baachan and Jiichan stood looking annoyed with each other. Were they actually going to argue over an onion? But then Jiichan tossed it in the air. “Some people eat this like apple during war,” he said to Hanako. He set it on the table, then shrugged at Baachan. “I try to help, but you right, you right. I am old man with onion.”
Mama stood up and pushed the bowl toward Hanako. “Hana, you eat this while it’s hot. Don’t let it go to waste.” Then Mama pressed her palms on Hanako’s cheeks so hard it was actually uncomfortable. “I’m so sorry I didn’t stay home so that you could have rice tonight.” She gave her hands a little shake, rattling Hanako’s brain.
“It’s not your fault, Mama.”
Hanako didn’t actually like soft carrots, but she ate every mushy bite. She wished there was some . . . fried onion on it. But she didn’t say so—it might start a war in the house! She imagined her grandparents’ lives during the war: working, eating onions and sawdust, bathing, sleeping, working. And they were two of the lucky ones.
That night, after everybody had gone to sleep, Hanako lay alone next to the kotatsu, which had cooled off. Papa had not come home yet. It was just like the old days when he didn’t get home from the restaurant until late. Hanako knew that everything he used to do—all his long hours—was so that he could afford to send her and Akira to the best college that would take Nikkei when they were old enough, if that’s what made sense. If it would have made more sense for Hanako to just take over the restaurant rather than going to college, then Papa would have decided on that instead. He said you had to be flexible so that you could make the right choice. Of course, that was back when they might have expected to have choices one day. She used to think of her future as a big plate of choices, and when the time came, she would choose from the plate. Now, maybe, she was back where Papa once was. So maybe—maybe—what she should be thinking about now was making sure that her own children had choices someday. And yet.
And yet . . . it was very disappointing the way things had gone. She had been spoiled, actually. Here in Japan, she could see there were no plates of choices. She wondered how it was in other parts of the world.
The house was so quiet! Where was Papa? But she knew where he was: out selling items to black market merchants. Hanako wasn’t exactly sure why some of these sales had to be made late, but she didn’t ask, because the words “black market” scared her a little. Japan seemed to have a sort of orderly lawlessness. That is, the black market and life in general seemed orderly and organized, and yet the markets were illegal . . . but totally in the open. And sometimes run by “gangsters.”
Once, Hanako overheard Mama and Papa discussing a vehicle that some soldiers had gotten ahold of to sell. “It’s a crazy life!” he kept repeating. “It’s the Wild West, except in Japan.” Sometimes she thought he was embarrassed to have fallen this far, but other times he seemed to love the wheeling and dealing.
She felt a sudden pang of hunger in her stomach. Despite all the grease she had eaten, she longed for more food. She wondered where Kiyoshi would cook the precious rice he had stolen. Did he own a pot? Did he have matches to start a cooking fire?
Sometimes it was very hard to tell the difference between right and wrong. For instance, now Kiyoshi and Mimi would eat well for perhaps a few weeks. So was that wrong? But family was the most important thing, Papa always said that. He told her once that she should always believe that Akira was more important than she was, and he told Akira that he should always think that Hanako was more important. And she had let Akira down. So was that wrong? Yes, it was.
And then she felt it again, what her teacher had talked about, the sense of being here. Except it was more like the here of pain, like if you were standing in the most beautiful place in the world, but someone you loved had just died. Like the way her mother had described it when she went to see the place where her mother had drowned, off the dazzling coast of Hawaii. For the Nikkei from America, the grown-ups accepted this kind of pain for their children. Papa would accept any humiliation or pain or risk any scandal to get some rice and bacon grease. At the same time she knew from history books that it was not just them. It was so many people across so many centuries across so many continents. It was people in every race and of every age who had felt this pain.
When Hanako had been confused, her teacher had said, “Someday you will understand, and then you will be almost grown up.” So, maybe that was now, these past few weeks here in Japan. She was growing up. That was what being hungry, and seeing your brother hungry, brought you.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Papa was buying two-day-old fish once a week. He’d discovered that the occupation forces had bags of salt. And the Japanese wanted salt. So he’d been getting paid with salt and then “buying” fish with this. But somehow even the fish didn’t make Akira happy. He was just different somehow. To Hanako it seemed as if he’d had some energy sucked out of him. He wasn’t tired, exactly. Maybe “lazy” was the word. Hanako, Akira, and Jiichan went to get butter and sugar another time, and Akira had sat in his seat and shook parts of his body almost the whole time. Sometimes he shook his head, other times a leg, and sometimes he even shook his hands quickly in the air.
And then sometimes at home he would stare at Hanako—or even just at a wall—in a way that was strange. It made Hanako’s stomach hurt, actually. Could she be getting an ulcer from worrying about him? He would stare at a wall, and Mama would stare at him. Unlike Hanako, Akira couldn’t remember the restaurant and that whole life before camp. Sometimes she thought maybe he had nothing to look forward to, because he couldn’t remember being free and getting plenty of food at the same time. He didn’t understand that it was possible to have both in your life.
Sometimes all that staring made Hanako happy to get out of the house and go to school in the mornings. She would feel relieved to stroll in the cool breeze, away from any worries for the duration of her walk.
Except for on the first day of school, the other kids hadn’t seemed that interested in Hanako’s Americanness. But then one day, during recess, the girls crowded around her as if by plan. “Why is your hair so long?” a round-faced girl asked in Japanese. She was even taller than Hanako, with shimmery skin and a curious air.
Hanako touched her braid defensively, though the girl didn’t seem to mean any harm. “I like it this way,” she replied.
“But nobody else here has hair like that,” a smaller girl said. This particular girl never wore shoes, and like Hanako, she seemed to own only two skirts. “Aren’t you loyal to the emperor?”
Hanako didn’t know what a braid had to do with loyalty to the emperor; she didn’t know much about the emperor. She knew he was the one who had made the radio announcement to all of Japan declaring that the nation was surrendering to the Allied forces. And she knew he was revered by the people and even the military. He lived in a palace. But US General Douglas MacArthur had stripped him of his divinity, so now he was a man, not a god. The general must have been an extremely powerful person to change someone from a god into a man. She could not fathom it. When she used to see the directors of the camps she had lived in, they had seemed powerful. But General MacArthur must be at a whole different
level of power.
“I don’t know much about the emperor,” Hanako admitted.
The other girls seemed confused. “So why did you come to Japan if you aren’t loyal to the emperor?” the small girl scoffed.
Hanako thought that over. “My father decided we should come here.”
“So then your father is loyal to the emperor?”
Hanako squirmed and finally lied. “My father loves the emperor. He hopes to meet him one day.”
All the girls giggled at that. “Nobody meets the emperor!”
Hanako remembered suddenly that the emperor’s name was Hirohito, but she was sure this little snippet of information wasn’t going to impress these girls. Then she felt a sudden burst of defiance.
“What does my hair have to do with the emperor?” she asked.
“It has to do with respecting us,” the small girl said. “You were just in a war with us less than a year ago! I don’t think you respect us.”
Hanako started to say she was locked up, but that would open up a whole new line of questioning. So instead she simply said, “I respect everybody.” That is, she was polite to everybody, even to President Roosevelt, whom she had never met. But she would have been polite to him if she’d ever met him. Was that the same as respect?
A girl named Ayako, who was the ringleader, hadn’t spoken yet. Her brows were furrowed, her head tilted. The other girls glanced at her. “All right,” Ayako said at last. “As long as you respect us.”
The bell rang, and Hanako felt like the ringing was a blessing.
Papa had taken some of his cash and bought a bag of rice at the black market in Hiroshima. He came home early just to bring the bag to them. Hanako felt incredibly relieved. She knew she’d still done a bad thing, but she felt free now. Absolved. That was really what having money could do. Like if you lost a dollar, you might get in trouble, but it wasn’t a big worry if your father had another dollar to give you. She knew this because she lost a dollar once, and even though Papa scolded her, she could see he wasn’t that upset. Not like he would be if that happened today.
So now there was rice again. As Hanako cooked with her grandmother, Baachan whistled. She whistled so much better than Jiichan could! Everybody was in an extremely good mood—she could hear Akira squealing in the other room. He used to do that a lot when Papa would take his arms and twirl him around. Papa only did that when he was in a very, very good mood. In general, he was a somewhat serious person and didn’t do a lot of that kind of monkey play even before the camps. But once they were imprisoned, he was serious every second.
Hanako asked, “Baachan, was Papa a big crybaby or just a crybaby sometimes? And was he always serious when he was a child?”
“Oh, no! He silly boy many time. I cannot tell you how silly.”
“Did he become more serious after he left or before?”
Steam rose from the soup, and Baachan brushed sweat from her face. “Before. Once he decide to go to America, he change. He very determine. But he happy serious.” She paused and looked wistfully toward the living room. “Not like now. He very different than last time I saw him.”
“Do you miss how silly he was?”
Baachan stared down at the floor, then raised her eyes. “It make me love him more now because . . . because I know life has been hard for him. I cannot stand to think of it.” She wiped away a tear. “He stay in Japan, maybe life be even harder. But we try very much to make his life easy. We spoil him. Sometimes he had to work in field. Many time he had to. But then we get home from work all day, and we let him take bath first. We give him warmest blanket, we give him most food. We give him everything we can give him.” She lay her hands on her heart.
Hanako took the ladle from her and stirred the soup. She thought she should change the subject, because now she had made Baachan remember . . . something. Her eyes were wet, her hands still over her heart. “Baachan, is the emperor a good man?” she asked.
Suddenly, Akira ran into the room with his shirt pulled over his head. He had his hands out in front of him and ran right into a counter. But he just laughed while Hanako pulled his shirt straight. He hadn’t acted like this since they’d been in Japan. In America he used to have a kind of chipmunk-like energy, always scuttling here and there. Here he’d mostly sat still, like the old people in the restaurant used to.
Baachan nodded, then frowned, then nodded again. “Some say yes and some say no. The military cause war, not emperor. He everything, and then he nothing. He god, and then he have no power. It very hard to explain the emperor. He part of kokutai. You know this word?”
Hanako shook her head.
“It is spirit of Japan. No, ‘spirit’ not right word. I don’t know right word. It is what make Japan Japan. Many people worry surrender to America would mean Japan lose kokutai.”
“I think I understand,” Hanako said. “I can tell Japan is different. You can feel it even when you’re just walking down the path. I can feel it now!” She’d just realized that.
“You study emperor today?”
“No, some girls were asking if I respected the emperor.”
“Girls be mean to you?” Baachan asked with concern, peering up at her.
“No, they weren’t being mean, exactly. They kind of ganged up on me, but then they weren’t mean. I think they were curious.”
“Yes, you very different from Japanese girl.” Baachan smiled affectionately. “But I like you that way.”
“You didn’t ask me if I know anything about the emperor,” Akira suddenly piped up.
“You know about emperor?” Baachan asked in surprise.
“Yes, the name of his era is Shōwa, and that means ‘bright, enlightened peace.’ But there was a war, no peace,” Akira said proudly. “Did you know that, Hanako?”
“No, I didn’t,” Hanako admitted.
“Oh, you already learn,” Baachan said, looking like she’d burst with pride. “How you learn this?” She suddenly looked like she might cry again! “Only five year old and already you learn. You may be genius! We will see, but you may be!”
“Mama is teaching me. And I’m almost six.” He held up his hands for no reason, admiring his sharpies. “Baachan? Do you like the emperor?”
Baachan looked left and right, as if someone might overhear, then said in a low voice, “I have not met emperor, so I cannot like. I cannot respect. There was a time, maybe I get arrested if I say such a thing as this. But to you I can say: I cannot judge someone I have not met. If I do not know how they are in their home, how can I say I like? How can I say good or bad? If I know someone, I can judge.” She held her hand to her forehead as if trying to see something in the glare of the sun. “I cannot see far. I cannot see past this house, my fields, my family. That is not my life to see that far, to understand the emperor. That is not my fate. My fate is to see you, to take care of you, to cook your dinner. That is all I want.”
“But, Baachan,” Akira said, “don’t you want to know what the emperor is like?”
She shook her head. “Maybe when you grow up, you will see beyond your home, you will know people like that. Maybe that will be your fate. It is not mine.” For a moment an unexpected look almost of envy passed over her face. Then it was gone, and she said, “If that is your life, I will be proud of you. So proud.” She paused. “If that is not your life, I will also be so proud of you. So you see? I will be proud of you!”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
In early February, for his birthday, Papa brought home a little bit of salt, and Hanako and Baachan made onigiri—rice balls—at dinner. Baachan also obtained a little seaweed from a neighbor, as well as what looked like about a hundred tiny sesame seeds. She cut the seaweed into different types of strips, which she wrapped around the onigiri in pretty ways. Then Hanako sprinkled several seeds atop each rice ball. When they were done, Hanako stared at the rice, because she wanted to remember forever how pretty it all looked. She wanted to remember forever how good it felt to make the onig
iri for Papa. She wanted to remember forever how fun it was to watch Baachan design this simple food like an artist. It was such a happy evening that she could hardly sleep later that night.
A couple of weeks later they went to Kobe and got more butter and sugar to trade for rice. But Akira and the whole family knew some hungry hours before then. Papa occasionally used some money to buy more rice and once even surprised them by giving Mama money to buy one-day-old fish when the fish seller bicycled down the street ringing his bell. But mostly Papa was saving . . . saving . . . for what, Hanako wasn’t sure.
Coming home from Kobe—bringing back rice—was another happy time. And yet. The very next night, after they returned from Kobe, Hanako lay in bed and thought of Kiyoshi, and she wasn’t able to fall asleep. She suddenly almost wanted to kill him. She had given him her cakes in the train station, and her shoes, and he had repaid her by stealing rice! The anger rose up in her mouth and tasted like rotted meat. She tried to get the thought of him out of her head, but she couldn’t. It was wrong to be bitter, Papa always said so, but what could you do to get such feelings out of your heart?
Then she realized light was still glowing in the living room. She got up to see why and was surprised to see that Papa was using an electric lamp.
“We have electricity?” she cried out.
“It’s expensive,” he said. “I shouldn’t be using it, but I couldn’t find the oil for the lamp.”
In front of him was an electric fan, or what was left of it. Papa took things apart when he needed to relax. Hanako didn’t know why he found that relaxing, but he did. To her, it seemed it would be stressful, because what if you couldn’t put it back together? But usually he didn’t do it unless he was deeply disturbed or concerned about something. For instance, when he took out a loan to expand their restaurant, he managed to turn their only bicycle into a pile of gears and chains and random pieces of metal that he never put back together. One time he’d shown Hanako how an electric iron worked. It had a thermostat made of bimetal, which was two different metals attached to each other. When it got hot enough, one metal curved more than the other, which turned the heat off. At least, that was the way she remembered it.
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