Clark and Division

by Naomi Hirahara

  Roy’s thick locks, on the other hand, were gone as a result of the mandatory military buzz cut. The younger Bello brother at the barbershop had done the deed, and my mother had been the one to sweep up the cut hair and put it in the trash.

  “Hope that you’re not like Samson and lose all your powers with your hair gone,” Ike said.

  That comment went over my mother’s head and she merely bowed toward Ike, dazzled that he was going to be a doctor.

  Roy’s hair actually didn’t look bad. He had become a different version of Roy, one who had definitely left his produce market and Manzanar days behind.

  “Seems like all we do lately is say goodbye,” I said.

  “We’ll see each other again,” Roy said.

  “Probably not here, though.”

  “No, not Chicago. But back in California.” As soon as Roy mentioned our home state, a warm feeling spread throughout my stomach. Could we return home someday?

  “The winter’s coming, Aki.” Roy readjusted his grip on the handle of the duffel bag he was carrying. “I doubt that you can survive a Chicago winter.”

  I thought back to the story of when Roy feared that his toes were frostbitten during that cold snap earlier in the year.

  “No, I will,” I said. That much I was definitely sure of.

  Acknowledgments

  ˚˚˚

  First of all, I am indebted to Erik Matsunaga and Bob Kumaki, who guided me through Chicago’s Japanese America, both past and present. Erik, like me, is a social historian with a passion for maps and geography. Look for his work on Chicago on the website Discover Nikkei. Erik also introduced me to Catherine Grandgeorge at the Newberry Library in Chicago; thank you for directing me to documents that described what it was like to work at the library in the 1940s.

  Bob and his wife, Mary Collins, kindly hosted me in their home and introduced me to touchstones of Japanese American life in Chicago: the Buddhist Temple of Chicago’s chicken teriyaki fundraiser and festival, Montrose Cemetery, and various Chicago neighborhoods, including Uptown, home of the Aragon.

  My Soho Crime editor, Juliet Grames, pushed me to make the voice of Aki Ito as real and immediate as possible. Truthfully, it was a process, but I’m so happy to have gone through it to honor the experiences of Japanese Americans who struggled to make a life for themselves after being released from America’s wartime detention centers. Thanks to Soho Press publisher Bronwen Hruska, and everyone else under her leadership, including those I’ve directly interacted with—Amara Hoshijo, Rachel Kowal, and Steven Tran.

  Filmmaker Janice D. Tanaka generously shared her research, including photographs and newspaper clippings, with me. These and anecdotal stories helped give life to the characters in Clark and Division, who represent real people who have remained hidden after all these years.

  Contributing their knowledge and observations to the rewriting process were Janet Savage, Amisa Chiu, Jane Yamashita and Eileen Hiraike. Also providing certain concrete details were Gwenn Jensen; Clement Hanami and Jamie Henricks, both of the Japanese American National Museum; Karen Kanemoto of Chicago’s Japanese Mutual Aid Society; Tim Asamen; Michael Masatsugu; Duncan Williams; Yukio Kawaratani; and Lily Havey. What would Japanese American historic scholarship be without Arthur A. Hansen and Brian Niiya? Thanks to both for their careful reading.

  The City of Pasadena Individual Arts Grant made it possible for me to develop the beginning of the book, as well as engage in discussions at the Pasadena Central Library and the La Pintoresca Branch Library. My gratitude to librarians Christine Reeder and Melvin Racelis, as well as fellow presenters Sharon Yamato and Lynell George.

  The Los Angeles Public Library has remained a vital source of material, even providing archival books from Chicago published in the 1930s and 1940s. The Hill Avenue Writers, namely Kristen Kittscher, Kim Fay and Désirée Zamorano, helped me to produce parts of the first draft by merely sharing their creative presence. Thanks to the Hill Avenue Branch of the Pasadena Public Library for providing a space for our gatherings. Helping during the rewriting process were accountability partners: Sarah Chen, San Gabriel Valley Women Writers and members of the Crime Writers of Color. As I was very remiss in failing to credit Kathryn Matsumoto in my final Mas Arai novel, Hiroshima Boy, I must mention her here. Mea culpa for my earlier omission.

  My agent, Susan Cohen, has been a steadfast cheerleader for this project, making me realize that a story like Aki’s deserves a place on library bookshelves and in people’s personal libraries, digital and physical.

  For keeping me sane and balanced, I thank my husband, Wes; my mother, Mayumi; my brother, James, and sister-in-law, Sara; and my best nephew, Rowan. Tulo will always be the best dog companion of the 2020 pandemic.

  More Reading and Resources

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  For those who want to read nonfiction accounts of this “resettlement” period in Chicago, I first highly recommend the Japanese American National Museum’s REgenerations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families, Communities, and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era, helmed by Arthur A. Hansen and Darcie Iki. The Chicago interviews were organized and predominantly conducted by Mary Doi, who did a splendid job. It is all available online via Calisphere.

  The extensive papers of Charles Kikuchi include interviews with sixty-four Japanese Americans who had moved to Chicago in the 1940s from World War II detention camps. These papers are part of UCLA’s Special Collections and are accessible through the Online Archive of California.

  Erik Matsunaga has mapped historic Japanese American communities in Chicago and documented stories of notable individuals through interviews. You can find his maps and stories online at Discover Nikkei and @windycitynikkei on Instagram.

  The Japanese American Service Committee in Chicago has the best collection of historic material regarding the resettlement under one roof. Their digital archive provides photographs from the 1940s, capturing the life of young Nisei in the Windy City. Moreover, Ryan Yokota’s Nikkei Chicago website is a wonderful repository of “untold stories of Nikkei (Japanese Americans in Chicago).” The Nikkei Chicago article, “The Forgotten Story of Japanese American Zoot Suiters,” by Ellen D. Wu is especially illuminating in envisioning a character like Hammer Ishimine. I can also heartily recommend her book, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority.

  Alice Murata’s book, Japanese Americans in Chicago, published by Arcadia, provides a good photographic overview. She’s also written numerous essays on the Nisei experience in Chicago.

  The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches by Greg Robinson unveils little- known stories, including accounts of those who lived outside of the West Coast and were of mixed race. Also, his groundbreaking After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics analyzes the experience of Japanese Americans as they left wartime confinement. Furthermore, I can recommend Valerie Matsumoto’s City Girls for documentation of activities embraced by Nisei women before and during World War II.

  Charlotte Brooks has also done extensive research on the topic of Japanese Americans in Chicago. Refer to her article, “In the Twilight Zone between Black and White: Japanese American Resettlement and Community in Chicago, 1942–1945,” in the March 2000 Journal of American History.

  Densho remains the best digital source of Japanese American history in general. Their encyclopedia entries on “Hostels” (Brian Niiya) and “Resettlement in Chicago” (Ellen Wu) contain succinct information on those respective topics.

  To get a snapshot of what the prevailing thoughts were of the different communities in Chicago in the postwar era, Chicago Confidential (1950) is quite illuminating. Its characterizations can be offensive in several places, but its cynical outsider’s point of view provides an unvarnished take on various neighborhoods.

  For information about African American soldiers during World War II, I can recom
mend The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II, compiled and edited by Mary Penick Motley. Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Wave of Black Migration contains illuminating oral histories about African Americans moving into Chicago.

  Regarding the history of abortion in the US, Leslie J. Reagan’s When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973, is a must-read. It contains specific arrests in Chicago in the 1940s.

  I’ve been enamored with the region in Los Angeles referred to as Tropico ever since I heard the name spoken by a Nisei interviewee. My good friend, Heather Lindquist, resides in the area and her love for walks around the Los Angeles River, especially during the pandemic, helped me to envision Aki’s attraction to the neighborhood as well. Our friendship was forged through exhibition work at the Manzanar National Historic Site and co-writing the book Life after Manzanar, which includes some material on Chicago. Another friend, Donna Graves, has written about the early Japanese immigrant presence in Tropico. Other sources of information include Laura R. Barradough’s Making the San Fernando Valley: Rural Landscapes, Urban Development, and White Privilege; Kevin Roderick’s The San Fernando Valley: America’s Suburb, Los Angeles; and two books published by Arcadia, Early Glendale and Atwater Village.

  Another Arcadia book, Chicago’s Polish Downtown, written by Victoria Granacki in association with the Polish Museum of America, provides an overview of this ethnic community, while Polish-American Politics in Chicago by Edward R. Kantowicz features more analysis.

  For those seeking to dive into the archives about law enforcement in Chicago, I can direct you to The Police and Minority Groups issued by the Chicago Police Department in 1946; Chicago Police Problems, issued by the Citizens’ Police Committee of Chicago, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1931; and Criminal Justice in America/The Kohn Report: Crime and Politics in Chicago, edited by Aaron Kohn.

  And last of all, periodicals from the 1940s, not only mainstream newspapers, can provide interesting details. All ten Japanese American camp newspapers are available via the Densho website and certain libraries. The archive for past issues of the Pacific Citizen can also be found on its website.