Forgiveness

by Mark Sakamoto

  “I am here on behalf of six million Jews who were slaughtered … for no reason other than being Jews. … The ghost of Hitler still walks in Canada. The thing for which Hitler stood has been inscribed on the order-in-council which punishes little children for crimes they couldn’t commit.”

  The case was heard over two dark and miserable days in January 1946. Canada had yet to adopt the Bill of Rights. The lawyers had only technical arguments. There was no legal way to challenge the justice of the act itself.

  They threw a Hail Mary legal argument. It struck at the most basic of legal principles: habeas corpus. To banish a citizen for any reason other than conviction of a legal offence debases the most fundamental principle underpinning our society: innocence until guilt has been proven. To deport based on grounds of ethnicity was a crime against humanity. Full stop.

  The government lawyers had a much easier case to make. They simply needed to convince the court that the government was within its legal purview to enact the deportation orders. The government lawyers argued that the peace, order, and good government clause of the British North America Act gave the federal government full authority to pass the War Measures Act and the subsequent Transitional Powers Act. Because these acts were legitimate, all attached orders-in-council were to be adhered to and the content of those orders could not be examined by any court.

  Without the Charter of Rights, the hands of the highest court in the land were tied. On February 20, 1946, the court ruled in favour of King’s deportation orders, and the deportation machine heaved into motion. Japanese Canadians still on Canadian soil received gut-wrenching letters from deportees. They had arrived in a devastated country to work in a devastated economy among a devastated people that treated them as the enemy.

  The expulsion process went on for a year, during which more than four thousand people were sent back to Japan. Prime Minister King finally repealed the deportation orders.

  There was a collective sigh of relief from those who had avoided deportation. With their future secure in Canada, Japanese Canadians turned their minds to their property. So, too, did the government.

  Mitsue and her family were free to leave Taber. But where to go? They had no money. They could barely buy food. For Mitsue, the war went on day after day. She wanted to return to Celtic. She longed for the ocean, the parks, the picnics. The life she had led seemed a distant dream. So much had been taken. There was about to be more.

  Hanpei got another letter in the mail. It was from the Japanese Property Claims Commission. They were demanding that he go to the courthouse in Lethbridge to show evidence of his claim for property that had been seized and sold. The letter included a form that had to be filled out identifying all the belongings the family had had to leave behind. They did what was asked. It took them the entire evening as they walked through their Vancouver home in their minds, room by room:

  2 washstands – $4.50

  1 sideboard, base and top – $10

  10 cross-cut saws – $100 …

  It took the entire page to itemize their losses.

  They finished and stared at the foolscap paper. It was their life, in material objects. They did the math. You took our life as we knew it. Please repay us $818.

  Hanpei spent the week readying himself for court. On the appointed day, Mitsue fixed up a shirt and mended the nicest pair of trousers she could find. Hideo went with his father. They walked into the courthouse through the big oak front doors. The whole building seemed to be made of solid wood. It smelled of power.

  Hanpei clutched his list. They sat in the chamber and waited their turn. They saw a few familiar faces, but nobody said anything to each other.

  The court clerk called, “Hanpei Sakamoto.”

  Both men stood up. Hideo walked up to the bar with his father. They felt like they were on trial.

  “Provide your list of chattels to the magistrate,” stated the court clerk.

  Hanpei handed it over.

  “Is this everything?” the judge asked, perched high above them.

  Hanpei nodded while keeping his head bowed. “That is everything we left—and a claim for lost wages.”

  “Hanpei Sakamoto, claiming eight hundred and one dollars and fifty cents in chattels and six hundred dollars in lost wages,” stated the clerk.

  “That is all,” said the judge. “You may go.”

  With nothing more to add, Hanpei and Hideo both turned and left the courthouse. It was over in seconds.

  Two months later, on August 5, 1947, another letter arrived from the government. The family was eagerly expecting the money. Mitsue dreamed of using it to finally get back to Vancouver, where she belonged. They could start their lives again. They could be free.

  Hanpei’s hands were shaking as he opened the envelope. Everyone gathered around the same table where they had made the list. Hanpei opened the letter, careful not to tear it. It was from the Department of the Secretary of State, Office of the Custodian, Japanese Evacuation Section. The letter was four sentences long.

  Hanpei read it to himself and then put the paper down.

  Mitsue picked it up and read it out loud.

  Dear Sir:

  Enclose herewith is Custodian cheque in the amount of $25.65.

  These funds represent the net proceeds from sale of chattels as your property.

  No funds remain to your credit with this office. No property identified as belonging to you remains under the control of the Custodian. Your account is therefore being closed.

  Yours truly,

  F. Matheson

  There must be a mistake. Twenty-five dollars. My God.

  Hanpei held the cheque. He looked at the back of it. He blinked twice. He too was looking for the error. He sat down and hung his head.

  The next day he took the cheque and cashed it. They were too poor to be proud. It was not enough to get them to Vancouver, but it would buy food. They needed that.

  Their file was closed. The government had washed its hands of the ordeal and they were on their own. They were free and they were trapped.

  Hideo’s friend Ted Nishimoto had taken agricultural schooling in Japan. He and his family lived down the road in Coaldale. Ted urged Hideo to think about moving his family to Medicine Hat. It had lots of sunshine, and tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn would grow well. The two men would speak late into the night.

  Mitsue kept quiet, but after Ted left she let Hideo know what she thought. She did not want to move to Medicine Hat. It felt like surrender. She would be saying goodbye to Vancouver forever. She was not ready for that. Her mother and father, brother, and two sisters had already moved back to Vancouver. Yosuke had gotten some money for the two boats that had been confiscated. But Mitsue and Hideo didn’t have enough to move back.

  So, on November 5, 1948, they moved to Medicine Hat.

  It had been six years, seven months, and twenty days since they stepped off the train from Vancouver to be claimed as labourers. In Medicine Hat they would still be labouring, but at least now it would be for themselves.

  Mitsue and Hideo packed up their family and their few possessions. Mitsue put on her finest jacket—a full-length wool jacket with a fur collar. She dressed Ron is his best sweater, with images of two moose adorning the front. Glory was wrapped in a winter parka with white trim around the hood and collar.

  Hanpei and Hideo were also dressed in their finest, topcoats and three-piece suits. Hideo wore a fedora, while Hanpei wore a fur trapper’s hat. They had already packed what they needed in the cab of the Model T that they had bought from Pat after he left for Vancouver. He had sold it to them for a song. They piled in the car and sped away. There were no goodbyes. They were anxious to start the rest of their lives.

  (From left) Hanpei, Hideo, and Margaret Sakamoto with Ted Nishimoto in Medicine Hat. Glory and Ron Sakamoto are in the foreground.

  They had seventy-eight dollars between them, just enough to rent a small plot of land at the Golden Valley Farm two miles south of Medicine Hat. Hideo
squinted as he turned onto the highway. The sun was rising. It was a new day.

  But the new day didn’t feel that much different from the day before, or the day before that.

  It took two hours to reach the city limits of Medicine Hat, and another hour to find the small road that led to Golden Valley Farm. They drove ninety-four miles south under the great, open prairie sky. The farm was tucked away in a small coulee just west of the South Saskatchewan River. They cautiously pulled up to their new home. It looked much like their old home.

  Mitsue wondered if it would ever end—the poverty, the struggle, the hopelessness.

  As promised, the door was open. The house was quite dirty, but altogether livable. God knows, they had seen worse. They unpacked and began to clean their new house. Like everything else in their lives for the foreseeable future, it was rented.

  But the land was good for farming. Ted Nishimoto said that it was well protected from the heavy prairie winds so not much topsoil would be lost.

  The next morning, Hideo took the truck into town. He had a list of the basics Mitsue needed to clean the house and make dinner. He walked into the general store and saw a stack of newspapers. He read the headline. His knees weakened.

  FIRST JAP FAMILY MOVES TO THE HAT.

  Such was their welcome.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mark 11:25

  The day after Ralph escaped death by snow, he found the commandant unrepentant. The bandage on Ralph’s left arm went unnoticed. Setting down a cup of green tea, the commandant was more interested in speaking to Ralph about the West. He always wanted to know about the West. He knew, to be sure, that the West would be victorious. That it was only a matter of time. There were rumours of a big bomb. He wanted to know what was coming for him.

  “MacRane, you have a girl—a sweetheart?”

  “No.” Ralph didn’t feel much like talking.

  “War. Coming to an end. If you had a girl. You could see her soon I think. Your mother too.”

  Oh, to see his mother. The commandant had never before spoken like this.

  A few days later, American B-29s were spotted over Japan. They looked like hulking green angels. They posed a serious threat to the soldiers and prisoners alike. Night after night, the men huddled in a shallow bomb shelter. It felt more like a mass grave. If a bomb were to strike close, it surely would be.

  Despite the risks, the men were almost gleeful. They knew now that they were not alone, that they had not been abandoned. To see something built in America, to know it was coming for them meant the world. They cheered as bombs exploded nearby.

  After a week of aerial bombing, the Americans started to mine the harbour. One twelve-hundred-pound mine missed the water, landing right beside the camp’s guardhouse. The men were fearful they’d be forced to disarm it, but the commandant’s behaviour was warming as the Americans closed in on him. He installed a soaker bathtub while a Japanese bomb squad removed the mine.

  The war’s cruelty was not quite over for the huddled men, though. Major Pulas—a captured American Marine—was caught waving to the U.S. planes as they passed overhead. Two guards scooped him out of bed and beat him mercilessly right outside the cabin door. He begged for them to stop. The dull end of two swords slammed into his back, his arms, his legs, and his hands. That was the last beating Ralph would recall.

  The first morning that Major Pulas could get out of bed was the same morning that the foundry stacks were not smoking. This struck the men as impossible. Every morning the sun rose and the stacks smoked. It would take the foundry days to relight those fires in the belly of the plant. The men stood in the parade square being counted off, each looking at the stacks, then looking again. There really was no smoke. They’d be spared their daily hell for at least a few days. At the end of the count-off, the commandant confirmed what the men suspected: “No work today.”

  With Major Pulas’s beating on their minds, the men tried hard not to smile. This would be a holiday unlike any they’d had.

  Another day passed: no work. Then another. And another.

  Then four days into their reprieve as slave labourers, they saw what they had prayed long and hard for: an American fighter bomber. They had seen the B-29s. A few of those had almost killed them. But this plane meant something entirely different, raising their spirits and their hopes.

  The fighter planes were used by the U.S. Marines, and they flew from a nearby island base or an aircraft carrier. These were not long-range bombers. They didn’t venture far. Their presence meant troops—American troops, lots of them.

  The plane banked hard over the camp and hailed bullets across the fence, strafing everything in sight. The men’s hearts beat hard in their chests as every foundry explosion brought them closer to their loved ones.

  That was when Ralph finally allowed himself to believe. Staring at the foundry engulfed in flames, he thought to himself: I am going to survive this. The fire cleansed his heart. It scorched his anger. It lit a mighty hope in him. He was going to live. For the first time in five years, he was sure of it.

  Most of the Japanese guards disappeared soon after the Corsairs were spotted. Only a few stuck around. Air raids become the norm. A few days later, Ralph awoke to screams of warning.

  “Cover!”

  “Incoming!”

  Ralph scrambled out of his hut to dash to the bomb shelter. He saw two huge B-29s flying low as he ran across the parade grounds. There were no bombs going off in the harbour and the foundry had been destroyed. These B-29s were bearing straight for the camp.

  “They know this is a POW camp. They know we are here. Right?” asked a man beside him in the shelter.

  The men had painted a white cross on the mess hall. Was that enough? Would the pilots believe it? Everyone crouched and waited. Most prayed.

  The plane’s powerful engines screamed as it flew directly above the camp. Seconds of silence turned into one minute. A second minute passed. No explosions. At the three-minute mark, a few brave souls peeked out of the bomb shelter. Their view was glorious, but there were no cries of joy. The men were trying not to break down in tears. Dozens of forty-five-gallon barrels on parachutes were falling from the sky, blocking the sun. It was a supply drop. Leaflets hit the ground first. They were in Japanese, warning the guards of stiff penalties for withholding the supplies. The warnings were largely unnecessary as the men had free rein of the camp already. They piled out to chase the barrels as they fell. It was like keeping one’s eyes on a snowflake.

  Ralph remembered what a forty-five-pound barrel was capable of doing. He thought of his brother on the back of ol’ Jack. He knew these barrels would save their lives once they came back to earth, but right now they were heavy objects hurtling through the air. They were deadly.

  “Let ’em land! They’re coming in fast!”

  It was no use. You can’t tell a starving man to wait in line.

  Ralph stood watching helplessly as two men left through the gates, following one barrel. Like everyone, they had been ravaged by war, starvation, disease, and beatings. They were skeletons. They were blinded by these offerings. They stood in the field, arms outstretched, but the barrel was coming in too fast. It clipped one man and the weight of it crushed his skull. He was dead before the parachute softly furrowed onto the ground. His blood was smeared across the U.S. Army logo.

  There was no time to grieve. The men had to nourish themselves. They opened the barrels and ate beef, cheese, crackers, chocolate. They ate whatever they could. All the while, they wept. The camp doctor warned the men that they would get sick if they ate too much. Their bodies were not prepared for the food. Having discharged his medical duty, he then proceeded to gorge himself.

  Ralph found something even more important than food in his barrel. Placed between a row of canned peaches and army-issue blankets was a Gideon New Testament bible. It was as if it had been packed just for him. He ate the peaches but he clutched the bible. He was going to live and he was going to live by those words.

>   The war was over for the Japanese Imperial Army. The rumoured bomb was real, and while the men did not see the mushroom cloud, its effects were dramatic and immediate.

  For the first time in years, every morning brought hope. It also brought a large breakfast. The men cooked powdered eggs, they fried canned meat, they drank coffee. They dipped eggs into ketchup. They remembered their mothers’ kitchens and their local diners. For the first time, they thought with anticipation of friends and family. They would see their people again. They would hold loved ones in their arms. Each familiar taste, each nourishing bite brought them closer to that reunion. Not a dinner went by without someone openly sobbing. It was almost too much to handle all at once. The men were dining out on hope and lost love.

  Several days later, after a large second helping of breakfast, and a bath, Ralph saw a group of men crowded around the main gate. As he approached, he saw two marines. They wore clean, dark green uniforms and polished black boots. They were shaven and each had a sidearm. Ralph held back tears as he heard one of them say, “Hang tough—we will have you out of here pretty quick. General McArthur is in Yokohama and the war is over.”

  Ralph had never, ever heard anything sweeter.

  The crowd stayed, pressing the two airmen for more details. They had four years to catch up on. But Ralph had heard all he needed to hear. His war—his apocalypse—was over. He had seen the four horsemen and lived. He turned and walked straight to his hut. He got on his knees beside his bunk, clutched his bible, and thanked God for sparing him. He opened the bible and ran his fingers across a single passage, Mark 11:25: “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”