Her coordination had even improved enough that gym class was no longer an obstacle course for her, and Mrs. Winter, the teacher, invited her to join the girls’ intramural basketball team!
As pleased as she was, she reminded herself that this was the school where Ralph—now a senior and an inch taller—had been picked on by hajukin bullies, and he was not alone. It was not uncommon to hear the word “Jap” in use, either spoken directly to Nisei or behind their backs. It was not just traditional reserve that made Florin’s Nisei shyer than their white classmates. The unspoken message they had heard loud and clear growing up was: You are different. You are less. You are second class. Here, among all these loud Caucasians, most of Ruth’s Nisei friends could not help but shrink back a little, going out of their way to avoid any potential conflicts.
Which was not to say that many of the white students weren’t friendly or kind—like Ruth’s friend Phyllis Thomas, with whom she was reunited in school after eight years. And Ruth couldn’t help but notice that some of the boys were quite handsome—especially one in her mathematics class, Will Lockhardt. He was tall, athletic, and had blond hair, a nice smile, and eyes as blue as a mountain lake—exotic good looks for a girl who had spent eight years at an all-Japanese school. He was also absolutely terrible at math—each time Mr. McGregor called on him for the answer to an algebraic equation, he flailed like a drowning man sinking in a sea of fractions and exponential numbers. Overcoming her shyness, Ruth quickly raised a hand and answered the question correctly, so when Will asked her after class, “How did you know that?” she happily offered to tutor him.
In study hall they wrestled quadratic equations to the ground, and over the next few weeks Will began picking up enough to get by in class. And Ruth had an excuse to gaze into those clear blue eyes, to laugh at one of his unfunny jokes, or to occasionally brush her hand against his while writing out an equation—the touch causing a most wonderful flurry of goosebumps.
She had been tutoring Will for about a month when she innocently brought up his name at home one day. Her parents were fairly liberal for first-generation Issei, allowing her to adopt American fashions and hairstyles and not objecting when Horace married a girl of his own choosing, Rose Ishida. But now they looked at her with barely concealed dismay as her father blurted out, “Has he tried to kiss you?”
Mortified beyond words, Ruth said quickly, “No, no, we’re just friends, I help him with math, that’s all.”
Her parents looked visibly relieved.
“That is good,” her father said, “because it is our feeling that Japanese girls should only marry Japanese boys.”
Oh God, this was so embarrassing. “Papa, please! We’re only fifteen!”
“It is not a question of race,” her father stressed. “We lived in Hawai'i; as people of other races respected us, so we respected them. It is a matter of tradition. If you were to marry a hajukin boy, or even a Chinese”—Ruth sank into the cushions of her chair, hoping they would swallow her up—“how could he be expected to preserve our culture? How could he understand the importance of filial piety? These things that make us Japanese need to be passed on to the next generation, and generations after that.”
“Yes, yes, I see, I understand, Papa,” Ruth said, willing to say anything to end this conversation. “You’re absolutely right. And we’re only friends anyway, so there’s nothing to worry about, is there? May I go now?” she asked, certain she would have a stroke if her father uttered another word.
Thankfully Papa just smiled with satisfaction, nodded, and Ruth fled.
The next day she informed Will that he had learned everything she had to teach and he was sure to pass Mr. McGregor’s class with flying colors. In reality he scored a C for the year, but he seemed happy not to flunk out and she was happy—well, resigned—to trade those gorgeous blue eyes for no more skin-crawling discussions with her parents about dating.
* * *
Issei, especially those in rural communities, generally did not approve of American-style, unescorted “dating.” For young Nisei, most of the opportunities to mix with the opposite sex came in group activities—classes, clubs, dances. The one time a boy had asked Ruth to dance, at freshman prom, the poor fellow was so much shorter than she that he wound up staring, with exquisite discomfort, into Ruth’s bosom for the entire length of the song. Then he smiled, bowed, and vanished like smoke.
By junior year she had finally ceased growing, topping off at five feet seven inches—but now the Nisei boys were taller too. At the school New Year’s party, when a studious-looking boy named Freddy Kurahara asked her to dance, she sized him up—he was only two inches shorter—and said yes.
He slipped his hand around her waist as they slow-danced to Bing Crosby singing “Shadow Waltz.”
“I don’t know if you remember,” Freddy said, “but freshman year we both had Mrs. Barron for English.”
She tried to conceal her surprise but he just smiled and said, “It’s okay. I was just a little runt then, you wouldn’t have noticed me. But I noticed you. You always had something funny to say when Mrs. Barron called on you.”
Someone had noticed her? Two years ago? She had a secret admirer! Maybe his eyes weren’t blue, like Will Lockhardt’s—but there was a twinkle of humor in them that was equally appealing.
“Did you grow up here in Elk Grove?” Ruth asked.
“Yes, my parents own a grocery.”
“I’m a farm girl. My parents raise—”
“Grapes and strawberries,” they finished together. She laughed.
“What else is there?” he said. “Did you like growing up on a farm?”
“It’s beautiful, especially in April when the white blossoms appear on the strawberry plants and the fields turn white as snow.”
“Do your parents know you’re here? At the dance?”
“Well, sure.”
“You’re lucky. My parents don’t approve of dancing. They’re very strict and traditional—they believe ‘many temptations will come from the dancing pleasures.’ They’ve forbidden my sisters and me from engaging in it.”
“So, um, what are you doing right now?” Ruth asked, amused.
“I am enjoying New Year’s festivities and good cheer with my friends. At least that’s what I told my parents before I came. After all”—and there was that twinkle in his eye—“dancing may lead to temptation.”
He laughed, and Ruth was smitten.
They began seeing each other at school—at lunch, in study hall, and at extracurricular functions. He came to her basketball games, though he had no interest in the sport; she joined the Drama Club because he was a member. Their only physical contact, apart from dancing, was holding hands or a brief, stolen kiss; but that was enough to make her almost giddy with delight.
After two months of quietly not dating, they decided they were serious enough that they would tell their parents they were “seeing” someone at school. To their great relief, both sets of parents seemed pleased at the news. Freddy’s parents invited her to dinner at their modest home in Elk Grove, where he introduced her not as Ruth but as Dai and she was careful to call him by his Japanese name, Hisoka. His parents were traditional but warm, and at the end of the evening Ruth rejoiced that they seemed to like her.
That night she lay in bed, fancying variations of what her new name might be: Mrs. Fred Kurahara. Mrs. Hisoka Kurahara. Mrs. Dai Kurahara. Mrs. Ruth Kurahara. Counting names as others counted sheep, she drifted happily asleep.
But the next day, when Ruth saw Freddy at lunchtime, his face was a blank slate. He asked her to go outside with him in a tone she had never heard before. “What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked, but he would not answer until they were alone behind the school.
Now the blank slate cracked, and the pain revealed itself.
“I—I’m sorry, Ruth,” he said softly, “but … my parents do not approve of us seeing one another.”
“What?” She was stunned at this apparent reversal. “Wh
y not?”
“They—do not believe in interracial dating.”
“But I’m Japanese!” she said, almost laughing.
“Not ‘pure-blood’ Japanese.”
The words struck her like a hand across the face.
“What?” she said in a small, disbelieving voice.
His anguish, she could see, was genuine. “I’m so sorry, Ruth. I love you. I do. But I must respect my parents’ wishes.”
As tears welled in his eyes, Freddy turned and hurried away.
Ruth felt light-headed, her legs wobbly. She slumped against the brick wall, sank slowly onto the ground, and cried for a long while.
She could not bear to remain at school and risk seeing Freddy again. She went to the principal’s office, told his assistant she wasn’t feeling well and had to go home, and left without waiting for a permission slip.
She walked all the way back to Florin and was exhausted and forlorn by the time she got home.
Papa was working in the fields near the house and asked her why she was home so early. She didn’t answer, just hurried inside without even removing her shoes. Disturbed, Taizo followed her in, and when her mother asked, “Butterfly, what is wrong?”—Ruth turned on the stairs and snapped at them, almost savagely:
“Freddy’s parents made him break up with me. Because I’m hapa. Because I’m not ‘pure-blood’ Japanese!”
She saw the expected shock, pain, and, yes, guilt in their eyes as that sank in. Fine, she thought bitterly. Let them stew in their own juices.
She pounded up the stairs and into her room. When Etsuko came in to comfort her, Ruth would have none of it, telling her to get out. She had never said this to her mother before, and the hurt in Etsuko’s eyes was raw. But so was hers. Etsuko nodded and did as she was asked.
Ruth sat on her bed and cried. She hated being hapa. She hated being Japanese. Why couldn’t she just be herself, like her white friends?
No one would ever want her or marry her because she wasn’t “pure.” She hated her Hawaiian blood. She hated her Hawaiian mother, whoever she was, for giving birth to her, for giving her away. Damn her—why couldn’t she have loved her and raised her so she would have had a normal life? Why?
* * *
She said none of this to her parents, of course. By morning she realized how much that would hurt them and she remembered all the love they had given her over the years. It wasn’t their fault the Kuraharas rejected her—but it still hurt to know that her own parents shared some degree of their prejudice and closed-mindedness. She had always seen them as perfect, and it pained her to realize they were only human, and products of their culture.
She and her parents never discussed the subject again, and when Ruth returned to school she did her best to avoid Freddy. She quit the stupid Drama Club and changed study halls. She made a point of eating lunch with Phyllis or Cricket or some other friend, and if she caught a glimpse of Freddy from across the room she quickly turned her attention elsewhere.
She skipped junior prom and throughout her senior year rebuffed every boy who showed the slightest interest in her. She wanted no more brush-offs, no more goodbyes.
But there was one goodbye she could not avoid.
Ruth was the first to notice, in that winter of 1934, that Mayonaka’s appetite had decreased; all she did was drink water. She was old—exactly how old they didn’t know, but she had been with them for fourteen years. When their veterinarian, Dr. Hoffman, came to treat an abscess on Bucky’s left hoof, Ruth asked him if he would look at Mayonaka; he kindly agreed.
Mayonaka was lying stretched out beneath her favorite window, warming herself in a shaft of sunlight. It did not take long for the vet to diagnose that she was in the final stages of kidney failure. Blinking back tears, Ruth asked what could be done for her.
“Make sure she has plenty of fresh, clean water and a quiet place to rest,” he said. “Looks like she’s already found that. There’s nothing else to do. She may live another few months, or another few weeks. I’m sorry, Ruth.”
Ruth nodded and thanked him.
She nursed Mayonaka tenderly in her waning days, making sure she had enough water, sleeping beside her, stroking her. She held her and told her how much she loved her, as Mayonaka purred contentedly. Ruth marveled at how two souls—two completely different species—could make each other so happy. If you were kind to animals, they repaid that kindness a thousandfold. People disappointed; animals never did.
After Mayonaka had warmed herself in the last of her sunlight, fading away into the night for which she had been named, Taizo cremated her body and sifted her ashes into a small urn. Stanley and Ralph made a makeshift grave marker out of a large stone, writing her name on it in kanji characters, and her urn was buried beneath it. Beside the marker Etsuko placed a vase of flowers, a stick of incense, and a bowl filled with water. The water was traditional for Japanese graves, but it seemed especially fitting here and brought a small smile to Ruth’s face. Etsuko chanted a sutra and thanked Mayonaka for the joy and grace she had brought to their home. The incense was lit, the sweet scent of sandalwood lofted on the wind.
Ruth thought: Goodbye, my true and tender friend. You will always be loved, and never be forgotten.
* * *
Released from the crippling debt that had hobbled the farm’s fortunes, Taizo and Jiro felt unfettered, weightless with freedom. The money that had gone each month to Sumitomo Bank could now be spent repaying other creditors like Mr. Noriji as well as on improvements in irrigation and even a good used truck. Fruit prices and market demand remained low, but Dreesen, as their landlord, provided feed and other supplies, and so by the end of the first year of their arrangement the farm had made a modest profit. Dreesen seemed satisfied. These days no farmers were getting rich, but thanks to Japanese farmers’ intensive farming techniques they were at least faring better than most in the nation, where one out of every four farms was failing, or—as violent windstorms raked away topsoil in the Midwest, reducing entire farms to blizzards of blinding dust—simply disappearing.
Now a portion of the Watanabes’ income could be saved for their children’s education. Horace, Taizo’s firstborn son, was content to stay on the farm with Rose and their two toddlers, so Stanley, next in line, was able to study engineering at Sacramento Junior College. Ralph also chose to remain at work on the farm, while Ruth had decided that she wanted to become a veterinarian. On his next visit she told Dr. Hoffman of her plans.
“Well, those are good intentions, Ruth,” he said, “but being a vet’s a pretty rough and tumble job. You’ve got to be able to lift ninety-pound hogs, treat cattle and horses that weigh hundreds of pounds—holding these big critters back while you treat them, keeping them from hurting you or themselves. Women just don’t have the body strength for that kind of work.”
Ruth was crestfallen. “Aren’t there any women veterinarians?”
“If there are I don’t know of any. I’m sorry, but those are the facts.”
Ruth was disappointed and angry. She met with the school’s senior advisor, Mrs. Householder, who presented her with the frankly limited career options for a Nisei girl in 1934. Teaching was a traditionally female occupation, and nursing or midwifery was a possibility, as was business school. Maybe she could become a bookkeeper, or a secretary. Assuming she could even find a job with eleven million people out of work in America.
Nursing came closest to being a vet—but when she raised the subject with her parents, her father became unaccountably vehement. “No! Absolutely not,” he declared. “Nursing is not a—a ‘clean’ profession!”
“‘Clean’?” Ruth repeated, without understanding.
“There is the danger from germs, disease—I will not allow it!”
Even her mother looked startled by how frankly emotional Papa seemed to be on the subject. “Otōsan,” Etsuko said gently, “things in medicine have changed a great deal since—”
“Do not people still get sick?” he countered. “Do t
hey not die?”
“But Papa,” Ruth said, “nowadays there are antiseptic procedures—”
“No!” Her father remained adamant. “This discussion is over.”
Baffled and angered by his old-fashioned obstinacy, Ruth stormed out of the house. Etsuko gently put a hand on Taizo’s arm. “Otōsan, I understand your fear, but she does not. Perhaps it is time that we tell her the truth.”
Taizo sighed, annoyed at himself for losing patience and control.
“No,” he said, “it is better that she does not know. Anger passes, but knowledge can be a curse.”
* * *
Ruth ran outside and into the barn. She was so sick of Papa’s fussy old ideas about everything! She wanted to live in twentieth-century America, not nineteenth-century Japan. She saddled up Bucky and rode him out of the corral, down the bridle path between farms. She let him gallop full bore, his hooves kicking up whorls of dust that reminded Ruth of the tornado that plucked Dorothy out of Kansas. If only she too could be carried away to Oz!
But the path ended not at the Emerald City but at the endless emerald expanse of strawberry plants nearly ripe for harvest. She reined in Bucky and looked back. The parallel ribbons of green strawberry plants receded into the distance toward her family’s farm, like arrows pointing the way to her future.
As if in confirmation of this, in mid-May came the customary week off from school for Florin’s Nisei to help their families harvest the crops. Donning sun bonnets and gloves, Ruth and her family—with the aid of dozens of hired migrant Filipino laborers—toiled in the fields from dawn to dusk. It was grueling work—Ruth spent most of her time bent over the plants at a ninety-degree angle and by day’s end her back ached like a sore tooth. Even her young knees were sore from so much stooping and squatting; she couldn’t imagine how hard this must be for her parents, Uncle Jiro, and Aunt Nishi.
Daughter of Moloka'i Page 9