Was it the bitterness in her voice or her use of the words “concentration camp” that so disconcerted Ruth?
She picked up her mail—a postcard from Stanley informing her that he and his family had been transferred to the relocation center at Minidoka, Idaho—and stepped outside. Still thinking of the woman’s words, Ruth started to cross the street and nearly collided with Ralph, on his way to work at the Free Press across the street.
“Sis!” he said. “Hey, take it easy, you’ll mow somebody down!”
“Sorry.” Ruth laughed in chagrin and noticed that Ralph was not alone; with him was a Nisei woman in her late twenties, her hair pulled back in a bun, wearing glasses and a man’s shirt, tails out, over her khaki pants. She was puffing away on a Lucky Strike. Despite herself, Ruth was shocked: hardly any Nisei women smoked cigarettes, much less in public.
“Ruth, this is the editor of the Free Press, Chiye Mori. Boss, this is my sister, Ruth Harada.”
Miss Mori—Chiye—extended a hand. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“And you,” Ruth said. “Ralph’s family is honored that he’s working at the Free Press.”
“Well,” Chiye said with a chuckle, “it’s free in the sense that it doesn’t cost anything, I guess. But we do our best. How are you and your family settling in here at Manzanar?”
“Oh, it’s … fine. But the … atmosphere is a bit different from Tanforan.”
“Yeah, the atmosphere has way more sand in it,” Ralph joked.
“You seem disturbed by something, Mrs. Harada,” Chiye noted.
Ruth told them about her encounter with the Black Dragons—she was hesitant to discuss the delicate matter of the woman and her condoms—and Chiye nodded knowingly. “You’ve arrived at a tense time for Manzanar, Mrs. Harada. There’s a lot of conflict and distrust these days, even between Nisei and Issei—the elders feel that their traditional authority is being undermined by the young Nisei leaders, and the Nisei—”
“Sis,” Ralph jumped in, “why don’t I swing by your barrack after lunch? When I have more time to talk?”
“Sure, that would be swell,” Ruth said, aware of the uncharacteristic gravity in his tone. “Good meeting you, Miss Mori.”
“You too, Mrs. Harada.”
Ruth walked home along A Street, trying to puzzle out what Miss Mori had meant and why Ralph seemed so anxious to cut off the conversation. Passing the intersection with Fourth Street, she received yet another shock.
“Miaow?”
Ruth stopped short. Had she really heard that, or just imagined it?
“Miaoowww…”
No, it was real—and coming from somewhere up Fourth Street. Ruth followed the plaintive little cries to the corner of Block 19.
Leaning up against a garbage can was a small cat.
No—a kitten. Brown—or maybe white; it was covered in dust—no more than four or five weeks old.
But this was impossible—pets were prohibited in the camps. Was this a stray? Where did it come from, in the middle of the Mojave Desert?
“Oh, you poor baby,” she said. Its big green eyes—almost comically too large for its head—gazed up at her with part fear, part supplication.
“Miaowww?”
Ruth bent down and gently picked up the kitten. She cradled it in the crook of her left arm while she stroked its head with her right hand. It purred faintly and Ruth’s heart melted. She didn’t give a damn if it was prohibited—she hadn’t been able to save Slugger, but she could save this sweet baby. “It’s okay, honey, you’re safe now.”
She turned with the cat in her arms—only to flinch at the sight of a Nisei policeman standing about six feet away, watching her.
Her heart quickened; she prepared herself to run if necessary. But the officer made no move, just said, “S’okay, ma’am. We get these all the time. Sometimes they wander in from Lone Pine or Independence. That a kitten?”
“Yes,” Ruth said, uncertain of where this was going.
“Somebody probably dumped a litter on the side of the road.”
Ruth was aghast. “People do that?”
“They dumped us on the side of the road, didn’t they?” he said mordantly. “Cute little guy—or is it a girl?”
“Girl, I think. Hard to tell at this age.”
“She looks thirsty. Better take her home and give her some water.”
“But … I thought dogs and cats weren’t allowed here.”
“Officially, no. Unofficially—cat? What cat?”
He tossed her a grin and walked casually away.
Ruth felt a thrill of relief. She gazed into the kitten’s beseeching eyes and suddenly everything she had been worrying about dwindled in significance. She hurried home, where she filled a teacup with water from the outside tap. The cat lapped it up as if she hadn’t had a drop in days. Ruth took some dried tuna she’d bought at the canteen, let it soak in water to soften up, and offered a little piece of it in the palm of her hand. The kitten sniffed it—then quickly gobbled it up. Ruth smiled at the familiar sandpapery feel of her tongue on her skin. She fed her a little more tuna.
Sated, the cat lay on the floor and dozed, her chest rising and falling as she slept. Ruth was smitten.
Fortunately, when Frank came home around one o’clock—he was working first shift in the kitchen—he too fell in love with the ball of fluff. “What’s a little angel like her doing in a place like this?”
“Abandoned. I’ve been brushing her with a fine comb. She was covered with fleas.”
“We’ll need to order cat food and flea powder from the Sears catalog,” he said, and with that, the cat was a member of the family.
When she picked up Donnie and Peggy from nursery school, Ruth told them that there was a surprise waiting for them. They tried guessing all the way home, but their wildest guesses did not anticipate a tiny white kitten padding around the apartment, exploring her new surroundings.
“Oooh! A kitty, a kitty!” Peggy cooed.
“Can we pet him?” Donnie asked eagerly.
“Her. Yes, but you have to be gentle and not frighten her.”
Ruth picked up the kitten and the kids gently stroked her back. She immediately began purring like a well-tuned car engine.
“What’s her name?” Peggy asked.
“I thought maybe you and Donnie could pick one for her.”
“She’s like Mary’s lamb,” Peggy said. “White as snow!”
“Like a big snowball!” Donnie said.
“Snowball. That sounds good.”
“Snowball,” Donnie addressed the cat sweetly, “you sure are cute.”
“I love her so much, Mommy, can we keep her?” Peggy implored.
“You bet,” Ruth said. “But it’s our little secret, okay? Except for family.”
Frank smiled, thinking: A snowball in hell, how appropriate. But the happiness on his children’s faces was lovely to see, and it wasn’t just them; he saw the tenderness in Ruth’s eyes and knew this filled a void in her as well.
* * *
That morning Taizo was tasked with picking hot chili peppers and was provided with gloves to prevent any contact with the capsacin oil, which burned like a firebrand if it touched the skin, mouth, or eyes. Harvesting peppers also required a delicate touch, since the branches were fragile and liable to break if tugged too hard. Taizo used hand pruners to snip the ripe peppers from the branch, then deposited them into a basket. By ten o’clock the temperature had climbed to ninety degrees, and Taizo had to stop himself from using his gloved hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. He remembered to drink water and take his salt pills, which seemed to be working: by midday he hadn’t experienced much muscle cramping.
The crew ate lunch in the cool shadow of Mount Williamson and then it was on to the cornfield. Taizo was told how to judge whether an ear was ready to be harvested—the end of the ear should be rounded and blunt, not pointed—but it took him a few tries to find the right angle to twist the ear off the stalk, then toss it in
to the wagon following alongside. He had to find his rhythm quickly to keep up with the wagon—a fast look, twist, snap off the ear, toss it into the wagon, then repeat the process for the next ear of corn. After ten minutes he hit a good pace—look, twist, snap, toss—and used his sleeve to wipe away the sweat that was dripping from his brow.
After an hour Taizo began to tire but—seeing the Nisei workers around him not slackening their pace—he pushed on.
* * *
Ralph came by that afternoon and was as surprised and charmed by Snowball as the kids and Etsuko had been. But it didn’t take long for him to turn to Ruth and Frank and suggest, “You two want to take a little walk?” At Manzanar, walking the camp was the closest thing to privacy you could find. Etsuko agreed to stay with the children and Snowball, who was now rambunctiously jumping from cot to cot as if they were trampolines.
They walked down to B Street and, safely out of earshot, Ralph said, “Sorry, Sis, about cutting you off with Chiye this morning. But trust me, you don’t want to spill a lot of loose talk around reporters.”
“What’s this about?” Frank asked. Ruth told Frank about her close brush with the Black Dragons as well as her experience with the woman at the post office.
“Yeah, I can believe that,” Ralph said, nodding. “There’s a ton of anger and resentment in this place. Grievances against the administration over living conditions, shortages of meat and sugar … and Christ, there are more political factions than at an anarchists’ convention!”
“No kidding,” said Frank. “On my first day I had to choose between two different kitchen worker unions.”
“Yeah, a surprising amount of dissension comes out of the mess halls. Harry Ueno, the head chef at Mess Hall 22, founded the Mess Hall Workers’ Union, while Fred Tayama at Mess Hall 24 started a competing group that’s very pro-administration. Fred also belongs to the Japanese American Citizens League—they’re so gung-ho America they probably shit red, white, and blue turds.” Ruth and Frank laughed. “And you’ve met the Blood Brothers, a.k.a. the Black Dragons. They hate the JACL because they claim JACL leaders in Los Angeles like Tayama were working with the FBI, ratting out innocent Issei to the Feds. They claim he’s still informing at Manzanar.”
“How do you know all this?” Ruth wanted to know.
“Because with my usual half-assed luck, I find myself smack in the middle of another faction—many of the Free Press staff are Communists, but they’re rabidly antifascist and pro-America Communists. How do you like them apples?”
“It sounds,” Frank said, “like what you get when you rip ten thousand innocent people out of their homes, put them all in one square mile of desert, and surround them with a barbed-wire fence.”
“Is there anything we can do about any of this?” Ruth asked.
“Not a damn thing, Sis. Just keep your head low and watch your step. You never know when you’ll step on a goddamn landmine.”
* * *
By midafternoon Taizo was still keeping up the bruising pace—look, twist, snap, toss—but was breathing harder, his pulse pounding in his temples. His skin felt hot, but at least he wasn’t sweating as much. None of the younger workers seemed to be having any difficulty, so he refused to betray his own. Look, twist, snap, toss. The sun was too damned bright, it was giving him a throbbing headache, and … Suddenly he felt nauseous and dizzy, as if he were seasick; he struggled to keep his balance. Twist—snap—
He stopped, the ear of corn still in his hand, momentarily disoriented.
“Pop!”
Horace’s voice. He turned toward it. Horace was running toward him and Taizo’s head was suddenly spinning on some new, terrible axis—
And then night covered him like a black tarpaulin.
* * *
Ruth, Etsuko, and Ralph hurried into the hospital, a two-story, 250-bed facility in the northeast corner of the camp. At the nurses’ station in the men’s ward, they were told that Taizo was in Room 3—but the room was empty. They returned to the nurses’ station and this time a different nurse—a pretty young woman with a warm smile whose nametag identified her as NURSE ETO—told them, “I know where he is, come with me.”
They followed her to the bathroom, where a young, handsome Nisei doctor was bent over a bathtub—the first bathtub Ruth had seen in four months!—with a stethoscope pressed against her father’s chest. Next to him stood another nurse—and Horace. “Mom!” he called out. “Come on in!”
Etsuko went to him as Ruth and Jiro watched from the doorway. All but Taizo’s head was immersed in water, a damp cloth covering his forehead.
“Is he all right?” Etsuko asked anxiously.
“He’s suffering from heatstroke,” Nurse Eto explained. “He’s being immersed in cool water in order to lower his body temperature.”
The doctor took away the stethoscope and said, “Heartbeat is back to normal, and his temp is down to a hundred and one.” He stood, held out his hand instinctively to Etsuko. “Mrs. Watanabe, I take it?”
“Yes. Will he be all right?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’m Dr. Goto, chief of medical services. Your son says Mr. Watanabe had heat cramps yesterday. It’s not unusual to see that progress to heat exhaustion or heatstroke.” As he spoke, the second nurse gently dabbed Taizo’s face with a wet sponge. “We see this especially with older patients who aren’t used to temperatures in the high desert.”
“Is he awake?” Etsuko asked. “May we speak with him?”
“Sure, for a couple of minutes.”
Etsuko went to her husband’s side at the bathtub, sat down on a stool. “Otōsan? Can you hear me?”
His eyes half opened. He took in the sight of his family with mild alarm. “Have I awakened at my own funeral?” he said weakly.
Everyone laughed. “You are going to be fine,” Etsuko said. “It was too hot out there for you, that’s all.”
Taizo nodded. His eyes drooped closed as he drifted back to sleep.
“I think that’s all for now,” Dr. Goto said. “Nurse Eto, will you assist Nurse Sasaki?” He took the Watanabes into the ward and told them, “We’re going to keep him for a day or two to make sure the sunstroke hasn’t done any damage to his brain or other organs. Then after he’s discharged, he needs to stay inside, rest, and avoid the sun and further exertion for at least a week…”
“Doc,” Ralph said, “should a man his age really be out there working the fields in this kind of heat?”
“If he were my father, I’d advise against it.” Ruth’s heart sank at the doctor’s words. “I know how much pride Issei men take in working, but … that’s a conversation you might have with him once he’s recovered.”
* * *
Taizo was discharged two days later and had no objection to resting at home for the rest of that week. When Ruth brought Snowball over to meet him, her father seemed quite taken with her; as a cat lover he heartily approved of the new addition to the family.
When Ruth and Horace gingerly brought up the subject of whether Taizo should stop working in the fields, he was surprisingly unresistant. “Yes,” he agreed, “I suppose that might be for the best.” He did not tell his family of the intense shame he felt, having fainted in front of all the younger workers. Surely they must have thought him a weak old man, unfit for hard labor. He could not bear the thought of going back among them, of seeing the naked pity in their eyes.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
His days as a farmer were over; he knew that now. He spent his time playing go with Etsuko or sitting outside in the shade, Snowball dozing in his lap, watching the passing parade of other people’s lives—like so many Issei men with too much time and no work to do. His small smile belied the sorrow in his eyes. Ruth saw this and ached for him, for all he had lost—his farm, his livelihood, his role as provider. It made her angry; it made her want to weep. The sturdy oak was now old and bending in the wind.
Chapter 10
It was eight o’clock in the evening on Saturday, December 5, 1942. Tayama had just returned—with permission of the administration—from the national JACL convention in Salt Lake City and was stretched out on his bed, working on a speech, when there was a rapping on the door. Expecting a friend, he called out, “Come in.” The door banged open and the six masked men burst in, three rushing to each side of his bed. One of them began beating Tayama in the head with his club while the others pummeled his body and legs. Despite the drubbing he was taking, Tayama somehow managed to roll out of bed, scramble to his feet, and grab a chair, using it as a weapon to defend himself.
Outside, a little girl saw the fight through the open door and screamed. Tayama’s assailants panicked and fled back into the dark pockets of the camp. A neighbor called for an ambulance, and Fred Tayama, blood trickling from his scalp, had just enough time to consider himself lucky before he collapsed.
* * *
Three blocks away, in Block 31, Ruth heard the ambulance’s siren as it arrived at Block 28—and by the time Tayama was on his way to the hospital, word of the attack had spread, like ripples in a koi pond, throughout camp. There was shock, but no overwhelming sympathy, for the injured man. Tayama was widely disliked at Manzanar; he was seen as an inu, an informer and collaborator with the camp administration. Just recently, it was said, he had met with the FBI, and a short time later an internee at Manzanar, viewed as an “agitator,” had been arrested and spirited away.
Ruth didn’t know Tayama but hoped he would be all right. At the moment her hands were full caring for Donnie, Peggy, and Frank, all of whom shared the same winter cold and fever. Frank’s cough was so bad that Dr. Goto had prescribed him cough syrup with codeine.
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