by Traci Chee
“C’mon, Minnow, sing it with me!”
Three years ago, I would’ve shaken my head and hung back with Tommy while braver guys like Shig and Twitchy whooped it up, but there is no Tommy, no Shig and Twitchy. So I open my mouth and out comes the most terrible note anybody’s ever sung.
Behind us, a couple of Black ladies who followed us out of the theater start laughing, cigarette smoke trailing from their mouths.
I blush, but Stan gives them a bow. “Well, gals, think we can cut a record?”
One of them shakes her head. She’s got an easy, lopsided smile that reminds me of Shigeo’s. “You can cut one,” she says, “but no one’s going to pay to listen!”
We laugh. It feels good to laugh with strangers, walking the length of a city block, talking about our favorite songs of the night. Then, at the next corner, we go our separate ways, us strolling toward Japantown, the ladies disappearing in a cloud of smoke, the lit ends of their cigarettes seeming to float between their fingers like distant stars.
Coming together.
Drifting apart.
Since I’ve been treading these streets, looking for an apartment, picking up Stan, catching a show, I feel like I’m wearing in the city the way I’d wear in a secondhand pair of shoes. It’s not mine. It stopped being mine the day we boarded that Greyhound bus for Tanforan. But for the first time since I’ve been back, I wonder if it could be mine again, someday.
* * *
A week later, Stan and I are sitting on the steps across from the Oishis’ apartment building, waiting for a bunch of ketos to emerge from Yum-yum’s old place.
Mr. Oishi’s been back in town for a few days, trying to evict one of the white families who rented from them while they were gone. I guess the ketos in the lower flat didn’t want to surrender their apartment to a bunch of Japs, even though the Oishis own the building.
Yum-yum’s dad finally had to get the police involved, and now the ketos are supposed to be out by noon.
I’ve brought my sketchbook, and Stan’s brought a bag of popcorn, and we take turns tossing kernels into each other’s mouths. I miss more than I catch, but Stan doesn’t seem to mind. We’ve gone through half the bag by the time the moving truck pulls up to the curb, and the ketos finally start coming out of the building.
Picking up my pencil, I draw them lugging their tables, their mattresses and trunks down the steps, and I think of me and the guys carrying Yum-yum’s piano to the sidewalk, the way she played her heart out on the street.
“Good riddance,” Stan says, tossing popcorn in their direction like he’s at a propaganda show, throwing garbage at onscreen Germans.
They’ve almost filled the truck when they march back inside. There’s the sound of breaking glass. Something heavy crashing to the floor.
“They’re trashing the place,” I whisper.
Stan clicks his tongue. “Soldiers salting the earth.”
“But we’re not at war with them.”
He laughs. “What, d’you think we were let out of the camps because FDR woke up one day and realized, oh shit, he was wrong? You can’t just lock up a hundred thousand people and call it good? C’mon, Minnow. We had to fight for that. We’re fighting all the time, whether we know it or not.”
I add silhouettes behind the curtains in my drawing. “But we’re already fighting a war out there. Why do we have to fight one in our own country, too?”
Stan nods across the street, where there are the sounds of raised voices now, as if in argument. “Do you think they think this country belongs to us?” He shrugs.
Before I can answer, a girl comes out of the Oishis’ building, slamming the door behind her. She must be around my age, maybe a year or two younger, in her worn sweater and scuffed saddle shoes. Across the road, our gazes meet.
Stan waves at her, smirking.
She frowns, and for a second I think she’s going to scream at us for kicking her out, or for being Japanese, but then her fists unclench, and she trots down the steps, crossing the street in a few quick strides.
Up close, her skin is flushed, and there are tears in her eyes. If I was going to do a portrait of her, I’d do it in watercolor—splashes of paint on her cheeks and lashes.
“Is that building yours?” she asks.
“A friend’s,” I say.
The girl bites her lip. “I’m sorry . . . for what my parents are doing. I tried to get them to stop . . .”
Stan looks her up and down. “Were you the one yelling?”
She nods.
He offers her some popcorn.
Taking a few kernels, she nibbles them fretfully, like a rabbit.
I don’t think anyone knows what to say. In the Oishis’ apartment, there’s the sound of wood breaking.
“She plays the piano,” I tell her. “Our friend.” Flipping through my sketchpad, I find a picture of Yum-yum as a constellation over Tanforan, stars winking over the barracks and barbed-wire fences.
We’re all there, on the infield below. We’re all alive, and together.
I swallow the lump rising in my throat.
The girl stares at the paper for a second, her gaze darting back and forth across the page. I watch her carefully, wanting to know that she’s seen it, that she understands.
“This is where you were sent?” she asks finally.
I nod.
She lifts a finger, almost touching one of the guard towers. “It wasn’t right, was it? It should’ve never happened.”
“Nope,” Stan says. “But it’ll happen again, if we’re not careful.”
The girl nods silently. Across the street, her family is appearing again, piling the last of their belongings into the truck.
She glances over at them, then back to us. “I’d better go,” she says, slowly backing down the steps.
For a second, I’m scared—not of the girl or her family, but that this moment was too short, too small, that she’ll just go away like nothing has changed. She’ll go back to her normal life, and in a few weeks, she won’t remember ever having talked with the two Japanese boys fresh from the camps. Maybe one day, she’ll even be sitting in a diner watching a mother and son wait and wait for service, wait and wait because they aren’t white, they don’t belong here, and she’ll keep eating her grilled cheese or her Cobb salad like nothing at all is wrong.
Standing, I tear the drawing of Yum-yum from the sketchbook and offer it to the girl. “So you remember,” I say. “So you won’t forget?”
This happened. This happened to us. This happened to kids like her. This can happen again.
We cannot allow it to happen again.
With a nod, the girl takes the sketch and tucks it into her pocket.
“Keep yelling,” Stan adds. “Maybe they’ll hear you one day.”
A smile flashes across her lips. As she heads back to her family, they glare at us from the other side of the truck.
Smirking, Stan and I wave.
* * *
When we get back to the Buddhist church hostel, there’s someone lounging on the steps, watching passersby.
I squint.
I recognize that slouch.
It’s Shig.
Shigeo.
My brother.
As he stands, I see my drawing of the church gymnasium in his hands.
Am I talking? My mouth is open. Am I running? I’m barreling toward him.
“Miss me?” he asks.
I charge into him so hard, I can feel the air go out of him.
“Easy, Minnow!” he cries.
I finally find my voice. “You’re here! You came!” I’m crying and I’m hugging him, and I feel Stan slam into us both from behind.
“You son of a bitch!” Stan’s saying. “You sneaky son of a bitch!”
Shig laughs, squeezing us both so tight, I don’t think he’ll ever let go. “Chicago’s for suckers. It’s too damn cold there to have any fun at all.”
“What about your job?” My voice is wet with tears, but I don’t ca
re. Shig is here. He’s here.
“Eh, it was too much work.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?” I say.
“And miss the look on your faces?” Shig laughs again. “Never.”
* * *
I don’t know how he does it, but Shig’s return changes everything for us. He, Mom, and I help Yum-yum’s dad clean up the mess the ketos left in his building. Since the rest of the Oishis are still in Topaz, we’re going to stay with him until we find an apartment of our own.
Shig and I share a room, like we used to. I don’t realize how much I missed the sound of his breathing until I fall asleep to it the first night, quicker than I’ve fallen asleep anywhere since he left for Chicago.
The Katsumotos agree to rent out the upper flat, and Stan’s going to see about applying to UC Berkeley in the fall. He wants to be a lawyer, maybe work for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which fought for Fred Korematsu all the way up to the Supreme Court.
At our new address, we get letters from our friends.
Aiko’s considering moving back to San Francisco, since she’s going to be seventeen this year, to work for one of the officers’ families who live in the Presidio. Until their parents leave for Japan, though, both she and Tommy will be staying in Tule Lake. Although, she adds, with so many Tuleans renouncing their citizenship, who knows when the repatriates will be sent back?
Keiko’s going to move back with her parents to get the old Japanese school Soko Gakuen running again.
Bette insists that New York is the greatest city in the world and says we’re all welcome to visit her. I bet when Frankie gets out of the war, he’s going to take her up on that.
Mas tells me I’d better go back to school ASAP and graduate or else. It’s nice to hear him sounding like himself again.
So with only a couple of months left in the semester, I re-enroll at George Washington High School. On my first day back, Shig walks me all the way to campus. Together, we pass Mr. Hidekawa’s steps, the corner where the ketos jumped me, the new nightclubs, the old Katsumoto Co., the Jewish Community Center, and when we get to school, we stand on the 30th Avenue sidewalk, looking out over the football field, the concrete bleachers, the other students trudging past us—Chinese kids and Mexican kids and nihonjin kids and white kids and Black kids all together.
Shig puts his arm around my shoulders. “Study hard, Minnow, or Mas will have my head.” After a second, he adds, “But not too hard, or Twitchy will come back to haunt you.”
To my surprise, I laugh. It just kind of bubbles out of me, thinking of Twitchy flying around, a free-floating ghost boy cupping his hands to his mouth and going, “Woooo!”
“You know, for a long time, I didn’t think I could ever come back from losing him?” I say. “I didn’t think I could make it in a world without him.”
“I know, Minnow. Me too.” Shig squeezes me to him. “But here we are.”
I grin at him as the first bell rings, and there’s a sudden storm of chatter, doors opening and closing, the other students rushing to class.
I’m about to head in too when the Golden Gate Bridge appears out of the fog, stopping me in my tracks—the red towers, the flaking paint, the sections in need of repair. For some reason, it looks smaller, more fragile, like if we’re not paying enough attention, if we’re not constantly working to keep it upright, then one day, we could turn around and it’ll have collapsed on us.
But it’s still my bridge. My favorite view in the city.
Shig gives me a nudge. “Hey, you’re gonna be late.”
“I know.” Turning back, I take a breath, drinking in the sight of it: the school, the bleachers, the bridge, the fog curling into the bay. Beside me, I feel Shig breathe in too.
We made it, brother, I think.
We’re home.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
HISTORY, FAMILY HISTORY, AND FICTION
We Are Not Free may be a work of historical fiction, but to me, it is more than either history or fiction. In 1942, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent spike of anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States, my grandparents and their families were uprooted from their homes and forced into incarceration camps with more than one hundred thousand other people of Japanese descent. From the beginning, telling this story has always been personal for me, because this history is my history. This community is my community. It happened; it happened to my family; and it has impacted so much about who we are and how we exist in this country.
In the course of researching this book, I interviewed a number of my Nisei relatives, whose experiences have provided inspiration for some of the novel’s narrative details, although any particulars as they occur here have been transformed into fiction. A small sampling of these elements includes: My grandmother’s blond wig and the story of how she brought it home, which are now immortalized in Yum-yum’s chapter, although my grandmother didn’t get her blond wig until after she was out of camp and in beauty school. Or, for example, my great-uncle was younger than Yuki when he was shouted out of an ice cream shop, but the words “We don’t serve Japs here” are part of his childhood. Two of my grandparents met in Tule Lake when my grandmother’s studies were interrupted by a boy walking in through the back door of the classroom, but Mary’s sullen disposition is much more like my own than my grandmother’s. In 1942, my great-aunt was a junior in high school, and in her civics classes, she was told again and again how lucky she was to be a free American. After she was incarcerated, she would sit in the grandstand at Tanforan, watching all the people strolling around San Bruno, and she would say to herself, again and again, “I am not free”—words that inspired the title of this book. For the opportunity to share these and other pieces of my family’s history, I am both honored and grateful.
As I have threaded snippets of family history through a fictional narrative, I have also woven this story through real historical events, including the forced removal of Japanese-Americans (a term I use here to encompass Issei, who were barred from becoming naturalized citizens by the Naturalization Act of 1790, as well as their descendants); the substandard conditions of temporary detention centers like Tanforan; the desolate incarceration camps such as Topaz and Tule Lake; the loyalty questionnaire and its divisive effects on the Japanese-American community; the formation, training, and campaigns of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; the turmoil at the Tule Lake Segregation Center and its period of martial law; and the return (for some) to the West Coast. Mentioned in these pages are certain public personages, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mike Masaoka, Dillon Meyer, Ray Best, and Dr. Reece Pedicord, who are historical figures, but all the characters who speak and act in We Are Not Free are works of fiction.
Always, I have endeavored to be true to and respectful of the historical events of 1942–1945 and the people who lived through them. However, in the interests of telling a good story, I have occasionally bent the details a little. For example, an Issei man was shot by a white soldier in Topaz, but the shooting occurred in April 1943, not February, as it does in Stan’s chapter. Construction on the gymnasium at Tule Lake was not completed until 1944, although I have written the gym into a scene from late October 1943. Blood on the Sun was not released in theaters until 1945, but after reading my grandfather’s letters describing his reactions to the film, I could not pass up the opportunity to include it. The Tule Lake jail, in which the graffiti SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO TO HOME appears, was not built until 1945, although I have placed a photo of it between chapters set in December 1944 and February 1945. Any other errors in geographical or historical fact are mine.
While one of my goals in writing this novel was to illustrate some of the depth and breadth of Nisei experiences during World War II, I’d like to note that these fourteen perspectives are a mere fraction of what this generation went through. With thousands of people incarcerated, their experiences varied, sometimes drastically, depending on where they were and what assets they possess
ed at the time of their forced removal. The story of a teenager from San Francisco, therefore, will be different from that of one from Bainbridge Island or Honolulu, just as stories from Manzanar are different from those from Topaz, Tule Lake, or Crystal City and the experiences of the Nisei in the 442nd are different from those in the Military Intelligence Service or the Women’s Army Corps. I have included some suggestions for further reading in the following pages, and it is my hope that we continue to explore our existing literature on the incarceration as well as discover more and more of these stories in the years to come.
LANGUAGE
In recent years, there has been a movement to change the terminology of the incarceration. The words most often used, such as “internment,” “evacuation,” and “assembly center,” for example, are euphemisms originally intended to conceal the truth of the inhumane conditions, poor treatment, and civil rights violations that occurred in the camps. These are the terms my characters, who do not have the benefit of hindsight, use in the text. However, when speaking about the history, I have chosen to base my language on the Japanese-American Citizens League’s updated terminology, outlined in the Power of Words Handbook, including the terms “incarceration,” “forced removal,” and “temporary detention center.” I would encourage others who are speaking about the camps to do so as well.
After much thought, I decided to include three ethnic slurs in We Are Not Free, and I have tried to choose which characters use them and under what circumstances in order to illustrate the racial tensions between the Japanese-American and white communities at the time. I would like to clearly state that these terms are both offensive and outdated, and should not be repeated.
Despite their historical accuracy, I have elected not to include other historical terms for race, having chosen instead to use their modern counterparts. There are other words more accurate to the times, but they can also be heavily charged today, and it did not feel appropriate using them without unpacking them clearly and thoughtfully in a way that is sensitive to contemporary readers. It is important to me to note, therefore, that while “Black” was considered a slur in the 1940s, when my characters use the word in the novel, it is anachronistic and not intended as derogatory.