by Joy Kogawa
There is a jump from the bed and the round bulge disappears instantly as the smooth metal slats lie straight and flat again.
"Mark, it can't be. Listen to your cough. You're not well enough. We'll get an extension—for health reasons."
"No—no. It's my turn. Others have been filling the quota and going in my place."
All this talk is puzzling and frightening. I cradle the rubber ball against my cheek and stare up at the white tufts like tiny rabbit tails stuck all over the bottom of the mattress.
I am thinking of Peter Rabbit hopping through the lettuce patch when I hear Stephen's lopsided hop as he comes galloping down the stairs.
“The curfew, Auntie!" he is calling. "Look how dark it is. Hurry! The police!"
There is a sudden jump and Aunt Emily runs to the door. "Damn this mess," she says in a panicky voice. "I'll have to go down the back alleys." She pauses at the doorway briefly, then she is gone. I can hear her feet running through the playroom and out the open door. In a few seconds I hear the click of the latch at the back gate.
fourteen
The ball I found under the cot that day was never lost again. Obasan keeps it in a box with Stephen's toy cars on the bottom shelf in the bathroom. The rubber is cracked and scored with a black lacy design, and the colours are dull, but it still bounces a little.
Sick Bay, I learned eventually, was not a beach at all. And the place they called the Pool was not a pool of water, but a prison at the exhibition grounds called Hastings Park in Vancouver. Men, women, and children outside Vancouver, from the "protected area"—a hundred-mile strip along the coast—were herded into the grounds and kept there like animals until they were shipped off to roadwork camps and concentration camps in the interior of the province. From our family, it was only Grandma and Grandpa Nakane who were imprisoned at the Pool.
Some families were able to leave on their own and found homes in British Columbia's interior and elsewhere in Canada. Ghost towns such as Slocan—those old mining settlements, sometimes abandoned, sometimes with a remnant community—were reopened, and row upon row of two-family wooden huts were erected. Eventually the whole coast was cleared and every one of the Japanese race in Vancouver was sent away.
The tension everywhere was not clear to me then and is not much clearer today. Time has solved few mysteries. Wars and rumours of wars, racial hatreds and fears are with us still.
The reality of today is that Uncle is dead and Obasan is left alone. Weariness has invaded her and settled in her bones. Is it possible that her hearing could deteriorate so rapidly in just one month? The phone is ringing but she does not respond at all.
Aunt Emily is calling from the airport in Calgary, where she's waiting for Stephen's flight from Montreal. They'll rent a car and drive down together this afternoon.
"Did you get my parcel?" she asks.
The airport sounds in the background are so loud she can hardly hear me. I shout into the receiver but it's obvious she doesn't know what I'm saying.
“Is Obasan all right? Did she sleep last night?" she asks. It’s such a relief to feel her sharing my concern. Obasan has gone into the bathroom and is sweeping behind the toilet with a whisk made from a toy broom. "Would you like to take a bath?" I ask.
She continues sweeping the imaginary dust.
"Ofuro?" I repeat. "Bath?"
"Orai,” she replies at last, in a meek voice. “All right."
I run the water the way she prefers it, straight from the hot-water tap. It's been a while since we bathed together. After this, perhaps she'll rest. Piece by piece she removes her layers of underclothes, rags held together with safety pins. The new ones I've bought for her are left unused in boxes under her bed. She is small and naked and bent in the bathroom, the skin of her buttocks loose and drooping in a fold.
"Aah," she exhales deeply in a half groan as she sinks into the hot water and closes her eyes.
I rub the washcloth over her legs and feet, the thin purple veins a scribbled maze, a skin map, her thick toenails, ancient rock formations. I am reminded of long-extinct volcanoes, the crust and rivulets of lava scars, crisscrossing down the bony hillside. Naked as prehistory, we lie together, the steam from the bath heavily misting the room.
“Any day now is all right," she says. "The work is finished." She is falling asleep in the water.
“It will be good to lie down," I shout, rousing her and draining the tub. I help her to stand and she moves to her room, her feet barely leaving the floor. Almost before I pull the covers over her, she is asleep.
I am feeling a bit dizzy from the heat myself.
Aunt Emily said she and Stephen would be here by four this afternoon. I should clear up the place as much as I can before they arrive. Find a safe place for all the papers.
This diary of Aunt Emily's is the largest I have ever seen. The hard cover is gray with a black border and "Journal" is written in fancy script in the middle. What a crackling sound old paper makes.
It has no page numbers and most of the entries begin "Dear Nesan”. It's a journal of letters to my mother. "Merry Christmas, Dearest Nesan, 1941" is printed in a rectangular decorated box on the first page.
Should I be reading this? Why not? Why else would she send it here?
The handwriting in blue-black ink is firm and regular in the first few pages, but is a rapid scrawl later on. I feel like a burglar as I read, breaking into a private house only to discover it's my childhood house filled with corners and rooms I've never seen. Aunt Emily's Christmas 1941 is not the Christmas I remember.
The people she mentions would be my age, or younger than I am now: her good friends Eiko and Fumi, the student nurses; Tom Shoyama, the editor of the New Canadian; Kunio Shimizu, the social worker, my father, Tadashi Mark; Father's good friend Uncle Dan; and Father's older brother, Isamu, Sam for short, or Uncle as we called him. Obasan is fifty years old in 1941.
In the face of growing bewilderment and distress, Aunt Emily roamed the landscape like an aircraft in a fog, looking for a place to land—a safe and sane strip of justice and reason. Not seeing these, she did not crash into the oblivion of either bitterness or futility but remained airborne.
The first entry is dated December 25, 1941.
Dearest Nesan,
In all my 25 years, this is the first Christmas without you and Mother. I wonder what you are doing today in Japan. Is it cold where you are? Do your neighbours treat you as enemies? Is Obaa-chan still alive?
When you come back, Nesan, when I see you again, I will give you this journal. It will be my Christmas present to you. Isn't it a sturdy book? It’s one of Dan's Christmas gifts to me.
I'm sitting in the library, writing at the desk which has the picture of you and me beside the ink bottle. There are so many things to tell you. How different the world is now! The whole continent is in shock about the Pearl Harbor bombing. Some Issei are feeling betrayed and ashamed.
It's too early yet to know how the war will affect us. On the whole, I’d say we're taking things in our stride. We’re used to the prejudice by now after all these long years, though it's been intensified into hoodlumism. A torch was thrown into a rooming house and some plate-glass windows were broken in the west end—things like that.
The blackouts frighten the children. Nomi had a crying bout a few nights ago. I don't tell you this to worry you, Nesan, but I know you will want to know. There was a big storm during the last blackout. Nomi woke up. That peach tree is too close to her window. When the wind blows, it sways and swings around like a giant octopus trying to break in. Aya had the spare bed in Nomi’s room just as you arranged before you left, but since she's had to stay so much longer, she's moved into the main bedroom and Mark sleeps in the study downstairs. Aya slept through the whole storm but Mark woke up to find Nomi sitting on his pillow, hitting the Japanese doll you gave her. He tried to take the doll away from her and she started to cry and wouldn't stop. He said it's the first time she's ever really cried. She doesn't understand what's g
oing on at all. Stephen does, of course. He went through a phase of being too good to be true but now he's being surly. He told Aya to "talk properly”.
All three Japanese newspapers have been closed down. That's fine as far as I'm concerned. Never needed so many anyway. It's good for the New Canadian, which is now our only source of information and can go ahead with all the responsibility. Our December 12 headline is “Have Faith in Canada”. Thank God we live in a democracy and not under an officially racist regime. All of us Nisei are intent on keeping faith and standing by. We were turned down for the Home Defense training plan but we're doing Red Cross work, buying War Savings bonds, logging for the war industries and shipyards, benefit concerts—the regular stuff.
There have been the usual letters to the editor in the papers. Rank nonsense, some of them. The majority are decent, however. The RCMP are on our side. More than anyone else, they know how blameless we are. When the City Fathers proposed canceling all our business licenses they said we did not rate such harsh treatment. Isn't that encouraging? But now the North Vancouver Board of Trade has gone on record to demand that all our autos be confiscated. What would doctors like Dad and the businessmen do? If they take something that essential away from 23,000 people the rest of British Columbia will feel some of the bad side effects. Remember the boat that Sam and Mark finished last winter with all the hand carvings? It was seized along with all the fishing boats from up and down the coast, and the whole lot are tied up in New Westminster. Fishing licenses were suspended a couple of weeks ago as well. The dog-salmon industry, I hear, is shorthanded because the Japanese cannot fish anymore. But the white fishermen are confident that they can make up the lack in the next season, if they can use the Japanese fishing boats.
There was one friendly letter in the Province protesting the taking away of the right to earn a living from 1,800 people. Said it wasn't democracy. But then there was another letter by a woman saying she didn't want her own precious daughter to have to go to school with the you-know-who's. Strange how these protesters are so much more vehement about Canadian-born Japanese than they are about German-born Germans. I guess it’s because we look different. What it boils down to is an undemocratic racial antagonism—which is exactly what our democratic country is supposed to be fighting against. Oh well. The egg man told me not to worry.
It's the small businesses that are most affected—the dressmakers, the corner store, etc.—because the clientele are shy of patronizing such places in public. Lots of people have been fired from their jobs. Business on Powell Street is up slightly since most of us who usually go to the big department stores like Woodward's don't anymore.
A couple of Sundays ago the National President of the Imperial Order of Daughters of the Empire, who obviously doesn't know the first thing about us, made a deliberate attempt to create fear and ill will among her dominion-wide members. Said we were all spies and saboteurs, and that in 1931 there were 55,000 of us and that number has doubled in the last ten years. A biological absurdity. Trouble is, lots of women would rather believe their president than actual RCMP records. It's illogical that women, who are the bearers and nurturers of the human race, should go all out for ill will like this.
Are you interested in all this, Nesan?
I've knit Dad and Mark a couple of warm sweaters. Dad is back in full-time service in spite of his heart. When gas rationing starts he won't be able to use the car so much. It’s so sleek it’s an affront to everyone he passes. I wish he'd bought something more modest, but you know Dad.
He has to report every month to the RCMP just because he didn't take time to be naturalized, and didn't look far enough ahead to know how important it was. Politics doesn't seem to mean a thing to him. I feel so irritated at him.
But worse than my irritation, there's this horrible feeling whenever I turn on the radio, or see a headline with the word “Japs" screaming at us. So long as they designate the enemy by that term and not us, it doesn't matter. But over here, they say "Once a Jap always a Jap”, and that means us. We're the enemy. And what about you over there? Have they arrested you because you're a Canadian? If only you'd been able to get out before all this started. Oh, if there were some way of getting news.
The things that go on in wartime! Think of Hitler shiploading people into Poland or Germany proper to work for nothing in fields and factories far from home and children—stealing food from conquered people—captive labour—shooting hundreds of people in reprisal for one. I'm glad to hear that the Russian army is taking some of the stuffing out of Hitler's troops. War breeds utter insanity. Here at home there's mass hatred of us simply because we're of Japanese origin. I hope fervently it will not affect the lives of the little ones like Stephen and Nomi. After all, they are so thoroughly Canadian. Stephen and the Sugimoto boy are the only nonwhite kids in their classes. Mark says Nomi thinks she's the same as the neighbours, but Stephen knows the difference. Came crying home the other day because some kid on the block broke his violin. Children can be such savages.
There is a lapse of over a month until the next entry.
February 15, 1942.
Dearest Nesan,
I thought I would write to you every day but, as you see, I haven't managed that. I felt so sad thinking about what the children are having to experience I didn't want to keep writing. But today I must tell you what's happening.
Things are changing so fast. First, all the Japanese men—the ones who were born in Japan and haven't been able to get their citizenship yet—are being rounded up, one hundred or so at a time. A few days ago, Mark told me he felt sure Sam had been carted off. I took the interurban down as soon as I could. Isamu couldn't have been gone too long because not all the plants were parched though some of the delicate ones had turned to skeletons in the front window. I tried to find the dog but she's just nowhere. I looked and called all through the woods and behind the house.
Grandma and Grandpa Nakane will be so upset and confused when they find out he's gone. You know how dependent they are on him. They went to Saltspring Island a couple of weeks ago and haven't come back yet. I know they're with friends, so they must be all right.
We know some people who have left Vancouver. Dad says we should look around and get out too, but we just don't know any other place. When we look at the map it’s hard to think about all those unknown places. We were thinking of going to Kamloops, but that may be too close to the boundary of the "protected area”.
It's becoming frightening here, with the agitation mounting higher. It isn't just a matter of fear of sabotage or military necessity anymore, its outright race persecution. Groups like the "Sons of Canada" are petitioning Ottawa against us and the newspapers are printing outright lies. There was a picture of a young Nisei boy with a metal lunch box and it said he was a spy with a radio transmitter. When the reporting was protested the error was admitted in a tiny line in the classified section at the back where you couldn't see it unless you looked very hard.
March 2, 1942.
Everyone is so distressed here, Nesan. Eiko and Fumi came over this morning, crying. All student nurses have been fired from the General.
Our beautiful radios are gone. We had to give them up or suffer the humiliation of having them taken forcibly by the RCMP. Our cameras—even Stephen's toy one that he brought out to show them when they came—all are confiscated. They can search our homes without warrant.
But the great shock is this: we are all being forced to leave. All of us. Not a single person of the Japanese race who lives in the "protected area” will escape. There is something called a Civilian Labour Corps and Mark and Dan were going to join—you know how they do everything together—but now will not go near it as it smells of a demonic roundabout way of getting rid of us. There is a very suspicious clause “within and without" Canada, that has all the fellows leery.
Who knows where we will be tomorrow, next week. It isn't as if we Nisei were aliens—technically or not. It breaks my heart to think of leaving this house and the
little things that we've gathered through the years—all those irreplaceable mementos—our books and paintings—the azalea plants, my white iris.
Oh, Nesan, the Nisei are bitter. Too bitter for their own good or for Canada. How can cool heads like Tom's prevail when the general feeling is to stand up and fight? He needs all his levelheadedness and diplomacy, as editor of the New Canadian, since that's the only paper left to us now.
A curfew that applies only to us was started a few days ago. If we're caught out after sundown, we're thrown in jail. People who have been fired—and there's a scramble on to be the first to kick us out of jobs—sit at home without even being able to go out for a consoling cup of coffee. For many, home is just a bed. Kunio is working like mad with the Welfare Society to look after the women and children who were left when the men were forced to "volunteer” to go to the work camps. And where are those men? Sitting in unheated bunk cars, no latrines, no water, snow fifteen feet deep, no work, little food if any. They were shunted off with such inhuman speed that they got there before any facilities were prepared. Now other men are afraid to go because they think they'll be going to certain disaster. If the snow is that deep, there is no work. If there is no work, there is no pay. If there is no pay, no one eats. Their families suffer. The Daily Province reports that work on frames with tent coverings is progressing to house the 2,000 expected. Tent coverings where the snow is so deep? You should see the faces here—all pinched, gray, uncertain. Signs have been posted on all highways— “Japs Keep Out”.
Mind you, you can't compare this sort of thing to anything that happens in Germany. That country is openly totalitarian. But Canada is supposed to be a democracy.
All Nisei are liable to imprisonment if we refuse to volunteer to leave. At least that is the likeliest interpretation of Ian Mackenzie's “Volunteer or else" statement. He's the Minister of Pensions and National Health. Why do they consider us to be wartime prisoners? Can you wonder that there is a deep bitterness among the Nisei who believed in democracy?