Brazil-Maru

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  The din of this activity pitched about us, but we were oddly silent, dumbfounded upon seeing what two months of dreams aboard a plodding ship upon the sea had brought. The dank humidity pressed upon us. I saw Grandma Uno’s shoulders stoop; perhaps her old heart hesitated. Her grandson Kantaro nudged her at her elbow. “What is it?” he asked. She looked up at him, so tall and handsome and so anxious to step onto this land.

  “Ichiro!” my mother called back to me. I hurried on, but not before I saw Grandma Uno push Kantaro aside and walk purposely down alone to land.

  We had borne the heavy humidity of the port of Santos along with all our worldly possessions from the ship to the waiting train, and now we were climbing upward with our burdens, struggling against our better senses to gain the plateau. There was some relief as we climbed; the shadowed air filtered through the dense vegetation but so did the smell. We had traded the salty taste of the sea and the fragrance of coffee and bananas for this other smell. It had flooded the car somewhere below us as we passed through what seemed to be a black swamp of rotting vegetation that had dropped off in disintegrating pieces from the great green wall. We had captured the odor of that putrid rot within the confines of the rocking train. I had not felt seasick those many days at sea, but now suddenly I was overcome with nausea.

  For many hours the train plodded upward through the green wall. Occasionally we passed through a tunnel, but it did not seem to clear the air. I struggled with my discomfort until it passed into a kind of dream. Flitting through the green wall and mist, I saw a fox, a horned devil, a white-faced ghost, the monsters of my childhood. And then, they were gone forever as the train emerged onto a plateau, and the land stretched out for miles into the distant horizon—pastures of grazing zebu, fields of corn, coffee, and sugarcane spotted by thick patches of the old tangled forest and sweeping mango and avocado trees, and only occasionally disturbed by a lonely brick or mud-thatched cottage—a land spacious and vast, and all so different from Japan.

  “Well, Ichiro,” my father said. “What do you think? It’s beyond my imagination,” my father answered himself. “So here we are.” We looked around at my brothers huddled around and in my mother’s lap. They were all sleeping in a big heap. My father looked at me and smiled, “Ichiro, somehow I knew you’d be awake for this.”

  The train came to a stop at what seemed to be a rural way station. It was also a marketplace of sorts. Vendors sat with their produce spread on mats or makeshift stands. A few peddlers ran along the train shouting through the windows. They had wares in baskets: dried meats, fresh fish, cakes and sweets, strange fruits like bananas and papayas, and birds—some dead, some alive. A great wall of chickens squawked from their cages. I ran out the open door of the car, finally overcome by my sickness, and heaved the contents of my poor stomach onto the new land. My relief was sudden, but my attention was easily diverted by a boy who ran toward me chasing a squealing piglet. He caught the piglet, but it squirmed away and ran off, knocking me to the ground. It had jumped on my chest and over my head, leaving its dirty prints and sour smell behind. I felt an indescribable disgust and joy all at once urging me to join the boy in his chase, scurrying after the slippery pig and running toward that great wall of chickens. Just as it was about to slip between the cages, I dove upon the squealing pig, pinning it beneath my chest. I looked up at cages teetering above to see the face of the pig’s young owner, a mixture of relief and gratitude and comedy glowing in his features. For a short moment that boy and I were locked in some middle space where our two curious minds stared at the unknown.

  I remember that face as if it were yesterday, the golden sun-bleached burnish at the tips of his curly brown hair, the dark olive skin beneath a healthy glow of sweat, the richness of his deep brown eyes. The boy spoke in a language I could not understand, and yet, I was sure from that moment on that I would soon understand everything. Over the years, I have thought from time to time that I had caught a glimpse of that very boy again, but of course, it could never be the same boy. If he is indeed alive today, he must be, like me, another old man with memories.

  There were six of us in my family in 1925 when we arrived in Brazil—my father, Kiyoshi Terada; my mother, Sei; and my three younger brothers. As I said, I was the oldest son, although only nine years old. My mother was pregnant when we arrived in Brazil. Everyone spoke about her next child as being doubtless a girl, that so drastic a change in our lives on this earth would surely change the pattern, but this did not happen. Interesting to recall that with all the changes of place and fortune, some things did not change, and it was finally expected that my mother would always give birth to boys.

  My family was originally from the town of Matsumoto in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture in central Japan. My father came from a family of pharmacists, and he too had a license. My mother, who was actually a second cousin to my father, was a trained midwife. Their marriage must have seemed a logical one to their families, and there was, indeed, a quiet understanding between my parents about everything, or so it seemed to me. When Momose-sensei came to speak about starting a new life on new land in Brazil, they seemed to agree almost immediately that this was the destiny God intended for us.

  By the 1920s many Japanese, especially second sons without rights of inheritance, had left to find a livelihood abroad. We knew of several men from our town who had left for California at the turn of the century. My mother knew the fish market family whose oldest sister had left to join her husband in San Francisco. But that was the last anyone had heard or seen of these people. By the time I was born, these stories seemed like the distant past. And yet, every year more and more poor tenant farmers who complained of high taxes and no future looked for opportunities far away. The recent Kanto earthquake of 1923 had left many homeless and un employed. In cities and towns, students were unable to find work after their schooling, and strikes were rampant among the urban industries. Now my parents discussed their plans to leave too. Everyone came to share their thoughts on the matter.

  “Momose-sensei’s lived in America, but he was very clear in his meaning. He said our future is in Brazil.”

  People remembered the 1918 Rice Rebellion when twenty-five thousand peasants protested the high price of rice. This and pro-communist and proletariat movements later provoked government repression. For people like my parents, educated Christians with socialist sentiments, Brazil would be a new beginning.

  “Anyway, we’ve missed our chance to go to America now. The Americans signed an Exclusion Act that won’t allow us in.”

  “I heard that most of Brazil is virgin forest, not like America at all. Brazil is looking for people to develop the country.”

  “What about those ads calling for contract laborers to harvest Brazilian coffee?”

  “This is different. We won’t be contract labor. We’ll have our own land from the very beginning. Momose-sensei has arranged for a concession from the state of São Paulo. We saw the maps and the allocation of the lots.”

  “Imagine, sixty acres of land for one family! How much land is that? More than an entire village, and then there are two hundred such lots available—more than 120,000 acres!”

  “And,” my father confided to his closest friends, “there will be others like us. Christians with the same convictions. We will be able to create a new civilization.”

  A new civilization. This perhaps sounds strange today, but in those early years, that is the way we used to talk about colonizing Brazil, especially about the particular Japanese colony located on the far northwestern corner of the state of São Paulo, founded by the Christian evangelist, Momose-sensei, and where my parents chose lot number thirty-three: Esperança.

  We left Japan from the port of Kobe on a ship named the Brazil-maru. The voyage on the Brazil-maru lasted some sixty days. Most of the six hundred emigrants on the ship were going to Brazil as contract laborers to work on coffee plantations, hired on by the Imperial Immigration Company. The Brazilian government required that contract labo
r enter Brazil in family units, but this was not always how things worked out. Unknown to government authorities, immigrants, when necessary, created family units, oftentimes mixing and matching relatives and friends and strangers.

  For example, I met a boy named Kōji on the ship who was borrowed by his bachelor uncle to complete a family unit. And Kōji confided to me that the woman who was traveling with them was not his mother; she was a stranger from another village. In the beginning, she was mostly seasick, and her eyes were always red from crying. I heard my mother say that this woman was running away because she did not want to marry the man her family had chosen for her. My mother, being a midwife, naturally met many women on the ship and heard the gossip. She also went to comfort this woman.

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I didn’t realize how far away Brazil is,” she sobbed to my mother.

  “You must make the best of this situation,” my mother said. “What about the poor boy? He’s not your own, but he’s only a child. He doesn’t say so, but he’s probably as homesick and afraid as you are.” I didn’t think much of Kōji’s situation then, but now I wonder what ever became of him. He was not much older than I.

  My family was different from the other Japanese on the ship. We had paid for our passage and were destined to settle land we had bought, while the contract laborers were committed to several years of labor to pay for their passage. But we were all alike in our expectations of Brazil: the promised wealth of the coffee harvest, the vastness of the land, the adventure of a new life. And I think most of the immigrants were alike in thinking that they would return—after their contracts were up or in a few years, however long it might take—to Japan with certain wealth, stories of adventure, and the pride of success. I believe my parents thought that surely they would see their homeland and their families in Nagano once again, at least to visit. As we watched the port of Kobe disappear on the ocean’s horizon, I thought I would return. But my father said to me, as I turned with the others on the deck, “Ichiro, we’re going to a new country, a new life. Everything begins from this moment. Don’t look back.” I think my father knew I would never return. He did not believe, like so many did, that Japan was the only place in the world to live.

  From that moment, my memories of Japan faded; visions of my birthplace became to me a blur. And yet, I have a very clear memory of everything from that moment on: the movement of the ship upon the sea, the snap of cards and the laughter of men gambling, the banter of immigrant talk in different dialects, quarrels with my brothers and our tireless exploration of every nook and cranny in the ship—and the camera.

  “A Carl Zeiss box camera,” Kantaro Uno boasted proudly to a crowd of interested observers who had little else to amuse themselves on the long trip at sea. “I’ve always wanted one.” He turned the camera in his hands, examining its mechanisms, blowing dust from its surface and carefully polishing the lens with a handkerchief.

  “So, Kantaro, I suppose you’ll be busy documenting our trip,” said Mizuoka, who briefly put his book down to make this observation.

  “Yes, that’s so,” said Kantaro rather too seriously. “I think it’s important to remember this passage. It’s the beginning of a new life for my family.”

  “And you’ll never again be here on this ship with the same hopes and expectations and the same youthfulness. It’s something to record,” Mizuoka agreed.

  Kantaro smiled, pleased with the attention. He was then no more than twenty years old. His closely cropped schoolboy’s head of hair was growing out in an unruly mass, adding a slightly wild edge to his handsome features and the eager intensity shining in his eyes. His forehead was burned by the tropical sun as we slipped over the Indian Ocean, Kantaro having spent hours on deck studying his photographic compositions. His white shirt hung limply about his broad shoulders, and something about his demeanor exuded strength and certainly the vigor of youth to which Mizuoka referred.

  Shūhei Mizuoka was a scholar of sorts, an intellectual, professorial in his manner. He spent much of his time immersed in his many books. I heard that he had completely stuffed his baggage with books and papers, clothing being incidental to his needs. At other times, Mizuoka seemed to emerge from his reading to discuss at length some obscure subject or another with Kantaro’s father, Naotaro Uno. My father was sometimes led into these discussions, not always because of a genuine interest in the subject matter but because my father, like Naotaro Uno and Shūhei Mizuoka, was a Christian. Our three families were brought together on the ship by the simple fact that we were all destined for Esperança.

  Mizuoka’s interest lent an added but immeasurable value to the possession of the camera. Quite suddenly, it had been raised to a special function in the living history of our travels to Brazil. Moreover, the owner, young Kantaro Uno, had been raised to the prominent position of a photographic reporter.

  However, I heard the talk of other passengers on the ship who were perhaps either unimpressed or jealous. They muttered their feelings over interminable card games, looking out to the endless sea, turning the evidence over again and again to confirm their original prejudices without having to face a thousand misgivings about leaving their homes and families behind.

  “Where did they get the money to buy such a camera? Do you know what that thing is worth? You could buy a passage on this ship for the price of that camera.”

  “Kantaro insisted that his father buy the camera for him when we docked at Singapore.”

  “A spoiled son, no doubt. Where will this get them in Brazil?”

  “That Uno family is from Hyogo. Kansai people who like to show off. Naotaro was the village head. I heard they sold everything to pay a debt. Now they’re going to Brazil with what’s left.”

  “I heard that too. Naotaro lost his money over some religious retreat in the mountains,” the man snickered. “Good Christianity. Bad business.”

  They all laughed and shook their heads. “These Christians have other ideas.”

  “Intellectual types with university educations.”

  “They say Naotaro graduated from Keio University. His family were the only Christians in his village. His uncle is a Christian priest.”

  “What are these people going to do in Brazil—pick coffee? Ha!”

  “I wonder. They even brought their old grandmother. Poor old woman. Imagine bringing such an old woman along.”

  “Have you talked to her? A very proud woman from an old family. She told me that she was convinced to come by her grandson Kantaro.”

  “Of course. The spoiled one with the camera.”

  “She dotes on him. Be careful. You can’t say a bad word about that grandson of hers. Do you know what she said? She said that, at her age, eighty-eight, Kantaro convinced her to go to Brazil to start a new life.”

  “I’ll admit I admire an old woman with spirit like that.”

  “A new life. Such nonsense. Taking a poor old lady away from her birthplace. It’s a crime.”

  So the gossip went. The Unos seemed oblivious to all of it. Kantaro took his photographs, and old Grandma Uno, Naotaro and his wife Waka, their other sons, Jiro and Saburo, and their daughter Ritsu, all went about their business on the ship as if some invisible power had anointed them with a certain special prestige. Other people accused them of having airs, of being snobs, of pretending to still have money when everyone knew that Brazil was a distant solution to their real destitution. At that time I did not think so much about these things, but perhaps the Unos were different, at least different from my parents and their quiet and humble manners. My parents were in no way conceited about their religious beliefs, their education, their social rank or their proposal to start anew as colonists in Brazil. That they were endowed with any special mission would have seemed presumptuous to them, no matter what they believed when Momose-sensei had come to talk to them about starting a new civilization. I knew even then as a young boy that we were somehow different from the other immigrants on the ship. I knew, in part, that it was because
we were called Christians and because we were going to Brazil with our own money to settle on our own land. The Unos were proud to be different, flamboyant in their talk and gestures, all in a way that seemed appropriate to a great adventure. Kantaro’s new camera seemed to me to represent the future, a great gamble at great expense, a wonderful exuberant spirit, so different from anything that I had known before.

  The youngest Uno son, Saburo, was two years older than me. Even in those days, Saburo wore a cap. It was a blue cap which was always tilted rebelliously, I thought, to one side. Later it would be a baseball cap of one sort or another, but always a cap and always crooked. Saburo, being older but also an Uno, treated me with friendly disdain. And yet, as time wore on, we became inseparable partners. With Kōji, we made a threesome and spent many hours planning adventures to forbidden areas of the ship. We had been chased out of the kitchen several times. We had also gone down into the hold of the ship to inspect the furnace, but we were especially curious about the officers’ quarters; so one night, after making a series of careful plans, we were able to sneak up as far as the door. There was loud drunken laughter and singing coming from the room. I was afraid to look in, but Saburo of course was bolder and crept up to the door. He motioned to us, and we all came forward to look.

  I must admit my embarrassment at what I saw. Even though the woman was not Kōji’s real mother, I felt ashamed for him. When she saw us, the woman jumped up, sending the man on top of her sprawling. “Kōji!” she cried and rushed toward the door.