by Lisa See
The FBI agents planted themselves in the middle of the room, their legs spread to hold them solidly to the ground, their fists clasped in front of their privates. Betty and Mr. Butler crowded into the dressing room too and positioned themselves a little to the side. Ruby’s gardenias, warmed by the presence of so many bodies, sent forth their stiflingly sweet scent.
“Are you Kimiko Fukutomi?” the taller of the two men asked.
Ruby stared ahead, her eyes seeing nothing. I held my breath as terror welled inside me.
“Ma’am?”
Ruby blinked and looked at the man. “I’m Ruby Tom,” she answered, her voice even. “My professional name is Princess Tai.”
The man pulled a telegram from his inside breast pocket. He glanced at it and then back at Ruby. “We received word from San Francisco yesterday. It says here you’re Japanese. My partner and I did a little digging and, ma’am, your family—”
With that, Ruby’s composure crumbled. Caught, caught, caught.
He turned his attention to me. “What about you, miss? Are you a Jap too?”
I shook my head no. Actually, my whole body shook. He was more than a foot taller than I was, so just his physical presence was menacing.
“Were you aware she’s a Jap?”
I opened my mouth.
“No!” Ruby’s voice was knife sharp. “Miss Lee is not Japanese. That will be easy to prove. And she doesn’t know anything about me.” She shifted her focus to me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry for any trouble that you might be in because of me—”
“Hey, we can’t have any Japs in our film,” Mr. Butler cut in, stating what must have been to him the most important issue.
“Kimiko Fukutomi won’t be in any films,” the second agent added. “Not where she’s going.”
“You need to come with us.” The first man rolled his neck as though he had a pinched nerve.
“May I put on some clothes first?” Ruby asked in a small voice.
“Five minutes. We’ll be right outside the door.”
As soon as the two men, Mr. Butler, and Betty left and the door closed behind them, Ruby dropped her robe. I needed to thank her for protecting me, but we had so little time. I hurried to rub off as much makeup as I could.
“Someone ratted me out.” The words came out of Ruby’s mouth, but somehow they didn’t sound as though they’d emanated from her. She stood there like a child as I lifted her left foot and put it through the leg opening of her step-ins. I repeated this action with her right foot and then pulled the fabric up her legs.
“Hey, fellas, what’s the dope?” A cheerful voice came through the walls.
“Joe …” Ruby breathed.
From outside the dressing room we began to hear the mumbling of three men in intense conversation. I slipped Ruby’s dress over her head and zipped up the back. Already she moved like an echo.
“Draw your own conclusions, pal” came through loud and clear. The door opened. “It’s your headache.”
Joe looked like a kid who’d had his ball taken from him. No. That’s wrong. He looked more like Freddie Thompson back in Plain City when the kids teased him after they discovered I was wearing his hand-me-downs—hurt and more than a little disgusted. If an eight-year-old can feel like that, imagine those emotions multiplied in a young man, who’s been trained to kill someone of your race and has not only slept with you but proposed to you as well.
“Is it true?” The words seemed to hitch in his throat.
“I’m not ashamed of who I am,” Ruby stated flatly.
“You aren’t?” he asked. “Then why didn’t you tell me you’re Japanese?”
“You wanted a China doll. I gave you a China doll,” Ruby said with a toss of her head.
I knew she was trying to protect herself from her own emotions and failures, as well as Joe’s reaction, but the impact of her mocking words on him was brutal. Color sped up his neck—anger … and humiliation. He clenched and unclenched his fists until his knuckles shone like ivory. He suddenly looked like he did the day he almost got into the fight on Treasure Island—out of control. Everything that had happened to the country was focused into hate for one person—Ruby, the woman who’d led him on, lied to him, betrayed him, and made him a sucker. He drew back his arm. Without thinking, I jumped in front of Ruby. Joe’s fist hit me square in the jaw. I felt the familiar lift into the air, but Joe was a lot bigger and stronger than my father, so I was thrown up and back with tremendous force. I slammed against the wall. My rib cage cracked on a table edge on the way down. Searing pain shot through me when I hit the floor.
Ruby remained as beautiful and still as a statue—the long hair of her wig trailing down her back, her skin as pale as the gardenia petals, her eyes set like stone. I whimpered in the corner, tentatively touching the places where I hurt as I had so many times when my father beat me, but I wasn’t paralyzed by fear. I’d learned how to act in a crisis, and I felt all my senses sharpen to be ready for what might happen next.
Joe’s eyes widened with the horror of what he’d done. He looked frantically from me to Ruby and then back at me again. He shook his head. No to hitting me? No to Ruby? He loosened his fists, tightened them again when his eyes met Ruby’s, and then he bolted from the room.
Ruby rushed to my side. “I can’t believe you did that for me. Are you all right?”
I bit my lips to hold back the pain. Ruby helped me into a chair then kneeled before me.
“We don’t have much time,” she whispered urgently.
I took a breath to speak and winced as my lungs pushed against my ribs.
“Go after him,” she implored as the FBI agents entered. “Please go after him. Please … He’s going to need someone …”
She squeezed my knees then rose to face the agents. I got up and lurched toward the door.
“Goodbye, Grace,” I heard her say.
“Goodbye, Ruby.” The words felt like dust in my mouth.
With my right arm cradling my throbbing left side, I limped down the pretty little pathway outside the dressing room. I found Joe next to a fountain, doubled over, his hands on his thighs, his whole body shaking.
“I was a prize sap.” He spat out the words, disgusted with himself. “I guess I had that coming.”
I was in such physical agony that it was hard for me to speak. “You aren’t a sap, and you didn’t deserve that.”
“Did you know?” He pulled himself up to face me. He sighed. “Of course you did. Helen too, I’ll bet. You three—”
“We begged her to tell you.”
He stared at me, weighing what I’d said. He didn’t apologize for hitting me, and he didn’t ask if I was in pain. He was so blindsided by Ruby’s lies—and mine too, I guess—that he wasn’t thinking straight. When he came to himself again he’d feel dreadful remorse. For now, though …
“A woman can tell a lie a mile long, and a man will believe it’s the truth.”
There was nothing I could say. Ruby had lied to him, and he had believed it. I’d kept her secret, knowing it would devastate him if he ever found out. I’d protected him and her. Now I was seeing the painful results.
He then made a crisp turn on his heel and strutted in the direction of the gate. Hurt radiated from his shoulders. I could tell that he still hadn’t registered that he’d hit me.
My jaw burned. It was going to swell if I didn’t get some ice on it quick. I’d also landed on some old injuries. I’d either fractured or broken a couple of ribs on my left side, so every breath burned like a hot poker twisting between my bones. When I got back to the dressing room, the two FBI agents were gone and so was Ruby, but David Butler was waiting for me. He held Ruby’s wig in his hands. The gardenias lay crumpled on the floor.
“I’ve got a scene to shoot, and I need an Oriental dancer,” he said. “Can you do it?”
“Absolutely!” I rubbed my jaw. It hurt like hell, and my side was killing me. Too much was happening for me to process my feelings�
�I was worried spitless about Ruby, sad for Joe, and sick with guilt that my opportunity had come at such a terrible price—but this was my chance. I had to embrace and accept it, didn’t I? “But we’d better hurry. I’m going to bruise up pretty soon.”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” he said, repeating what he’d told Ruby earlier. “This is Hollywood. We’ve got makeup for that, and with the right lighting I can make anyone look good.”
“I’m feeling pretty woozy too. Do you think I could have a couple of aspirin?”
“Aspirin? Betty will get you something a lot stronger than that.”
Mr. Butler handed me Ruby’s wig and robe, and sent me to Hair and Makeup. When I got there, I put in a quick call to Max Field, the agent Helen, Eddie, and I had used when we were in Los Angeles. He agreed to reschedule his day, come to Paramount, work out a quick contract, and watch the filming so he could book me elsewhere. I forced myself to push away thoughts of Ruby and Joe and handed myself over to the nice ladies. They began by pulling apart my hairdo and then pinning the strands as close to my head as possible to fit the wig over my skull. When they were done with me, I was transformed. For the first time, I wasn’t just a China doll. I was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Mr. Butler studied me and decided against new gardenias.
“You don’t need them,” he pronounced. “You’re exquisite as you are.”
With that compliment lifting my spirit, I found my mark. This was my dream, but working on a soundstage is not the same as working in a club. You don’t have an audience, wanting to be entertained. You don’t have the feeling that people are with you. You want to express yourself and sell the number, but you’re basically playing to an empty room—with cameras aimed at you—and it’s very, very difficult. No matter what I did, Mr. Butler didn’t like it. He asked me to use Ruby’s fans. She’d always said that what she did was a lot harder than it looked, and she was right. I was naked except for a patch, and I had to walk around for three choruses, which is a long time in music. At least one rib was broken or fractured, and those feathered fans were heavy. I was also scared silly, because I’d never done anything like that. I lost my balance and heard a couple of men on the crew snicker.
“Let’s try the bubble,” Mr. Butler suggested.
But it wasn’t easy to turn with the bubble and not have my fanny flash in front of the camera. I heard “Cut! Cut! Cut!” too many times to count. I was humiliated and ashamed of my poor performance.
“Do you have anything else?” Mr. Butler asked in frustration.
“I might,” I said. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll come up with something that will work with your music. I can show your audience the world,” I promised.
I went to a corner of the soundstage and began to count in my head. One, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight. Mr. Butler had just made his first Road picture, which probably meant he wanted something “exotic,” so I took hand gestures from Siamese and Burmese dance routines I’d encountered at the exposition on Treasure Island, hula I’d learned from Ruby, and bits of Chinese opera movements I’d seen with Monroe, and then brought them into ballroom styling. When I showed the dance to Mr. Butler, he said, “Perfect! I love it! Let’s shoot it!”
Someone slapped some very long false fingernails on me, powdered me for shine, and blotted my lipstick. Since I needed a last-minute costume, they tied me into a sarong like Dorothy Lamour and had me take off my shoes so I could dance barefoot. I performed the routine several times as Deanna Durbin and another actor wisecracked their way through a scene in the foreground.
I was going to be a motion-picture star.
RUBY
Whirlpool Valley
“Who’s going to win the war?” Agent Parker asked in a harsh voice.
“The United States,” I answered.
“Are you pro-Japan?”
“No.”
“Then why did your father and brothers go fishing on a Sunday?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were they sending signals from their boat to the Jap planes as they flew into Pearl Harbor?”
“I’m sure they didn’t,” I answered.
“Are you aware that your mother made her language students sing the Jap national anthem before every class?”
“Yes, but you’re making it sound worse than it was. Her students learned Japanese faster when they had a melody to follow.”
Agent Parker exchanged glances with his partner, Agent Holt. We were in a windowless office somewhere in L.A. I was angry at myself for being caught, livid that my big Hollywood chance had been lost, and more furious at whoever had reported me than I was scared of the men, but I was working overtime not to let them see my emotions.
“This is the first time I’ve heard about my parents since the attack on Pearl Harbor,” I volunteered, flashing Agent Parker my pearly whites. “Where are they? And what about my brother? His name is Yori Fukutomi—”
“We’re the ones asking the questions, sweetheart,” Agent Holt notified me.
How I would have liked to have biffed him one right then, but I needed to keep my head about me.
“Did your parents take food or oil to Jap ships at sea?” Agent Parker resumed.
“No.”
“Did they hide any Japs in their house?”
“No.”
They grilled me for two days. They asked the exact same questions, and I gave the exact same answers again and again and again—always with my best Princess Tai smile. My inquiries, on the other hand, were met by stony silences, flip ripostes, or threats. When I asked if I could go to the powder room, they pursed their lips and looked away. When I asked who’d turned me in, Agent Holt quipped, “Lies, betrayals, and disappointments. That’s what friendship’s all about, sweetheart,” which narrowed the field down to … who? Ida? Charlie? Eddie? One or all of the Lim Sisters? A band member? Maybe Monroe? One of the many men I’d dated since becoming Princess Tai who’d gotten suspicious about me and made a lucky guess? When Agent Holt got tired of my answers, he warned me: “There are people a lot tougher than us. You want to be in a room with them?” Was the threat real? I didn’t want to find out, so I tried to elaborate a little bit. When Agent Parker pressed me on why my family had always lived near naval facilities, I replied, “No one else wanted to live in those neighborhoods, so the rents were cheap.” He didn’t like that response. “Just how long have you and your family been spying on America?” he bellowed only inches from my face.
At night, I was locked in a cell and given a tray of food. I wasn’t allowed to telephone anyone. I wasn’t given clothes, a toothbrush, or a hairbrush. I didn’t cry, because inside I was boiling. Someone had given me up and robbed me of my opportunity for real fame. I kept going over and over it in the night. When I got to the end of my loop, I’d repeat something my mother used to say to me. Sakki naita karasu ga mo warau. The crow that was crying a few minutes ago is already laughing now. In Japanese, Mom explained, the word for crying sounded like birds making noise even though the written characters were different. “Crows are smart, stubborn, tough survivors,” she told me. “But also remember, Kimiko, that the gaijin—the white foreigners—can’t hear the difference if we are crying or laughing because they don’t see us as human. You will forever trick them. And tomorrow you will fly and laugh your way across the sky again.”
On the morning of the third day, I was brought again to the windowless room. My body—my mouth especially—felt foul. I prepared myself for another day of questions. The agents entered—all business.
“We’re going to lay it out for you straight,” said Agent Parker. “We’ve got a special internment camp in Arizona called Leupp. It’s where we keep Japs we suspect are traitors to the United States. Two of those internees are your mother and father.”
“They’re alive?” I was incredulous and grateful but also wary.
“What do you think we’d do? Take them out and shoot them?” Agent Holt scoffed.
Maybe.
; “The War Relocation Authority has your brother in an internment camp in Utah,” Agent Parker went on. “If it were up to me, we’d keep you here until you told the truth—”
“I’ve told the truth,” I said.
Agent Parker kept going. “But we’ve been ordered to give you a choice. Do you want to be sent to your parents or to your brother?”
Both men leveled their peepers at me to see how I’d answer.
I WAS LOADED onto a train with a handful of other straggler Japanese: some single men and a couple of families, who had, like me, managed to avoid being detected and caught until now. One family had suitcases and packages around them—all the worldly belongings they could carry. The father wore a business suit. The mother had a hand-knit cardigan draped over her shoulders. Their teenage daughter wept into a handkerchief, while her younger siblings jostled and wiggled on their shared bench.
I was still in the dress I’d worn to the studio. No bed linens, no toiletries, no clothes. I had my purse with me and about fifty bucks, which wouldn’t get me far. Everything else I owned, including all my savings, was in my apartment. (What I hadn’t spent on clothes and other extravagances was in a box under my bed. Neither Grace nor I trusted banks.) I was alone and unprotected. The others regarded me wordlessly. Armed guards at either end of the car kept watch over us. I heard a little girl ask her mother almost the same question I’d wondered about my own parents: “Are they going to shoot us?” “If they were going kill us,” her mother answered, “they would have done it already.” When we passed through train stations, we were commanded to pull down the blinds, because the guards couldn’t guarantee what would happen if locals saw us.
Hours later, we stepped off the train and into a nighttime dust storm. I couldn’t breathe. I stretched my arms in front of me, but the dust was so thick I couldn’t see my hands. Me, in that! And it was freezing. I didn’t have a coat, and neither did the others. We were herded into trucks covered with canvas and driven over bumpy roads. Dust and sand continued to swirl around us. I covered my nose and mouth with a sleeve, and closed my eyes.