Daughter of Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  Around ten o’clock that evening there was a knock on the door. It was Ralph, standing on the doorstep, looking unusually sober. “Can I come in?”

  “Why would you want to? Everyone’s sick.”

  “I promise not to breathe.” He stepped inside as Ruth closed the door. “Tayama’s okay. He’s got a bunch of bruises and lacerations, but he’ll be fine.”

  The children were sleeping and Ruth motioned Ralph to the other side of the apartment, where Frank was sitting on his cot. “Keep your voice low,” she said, “I don’t want the kids hearing this if they wake up.”

  “Who”—Frank coughed mid-question—“assaulted him?”

  “The MPs have arrested Harry Ueno. Tayama claims he can identify him as one of his attackers. Says he recognized Harry’s eyes.”

  Harry Ueno had recently become quite the folk hero in camp when he accused an administration official and the chief steward of stealing war-rationed sugar and meat—rarer than gold and intended for the residents—to sell on the black market. The FBI even came to investigate, giving the official a grilling he could not have appreciated even though ultimately no charges were brought.

  Frank was doubtful about the assault charges. “I’ve met Harry a few times. He’s always seemed sincerely concerned about the welfare of the evacuees.”

  “He is,” Ralph said, “but he also thinks Japan is going to win the war and probably expects them to pin a medal on him when they ‘liberate’ Manzanar.”

  “But why would Harry attack Tayama?” Ruth asked.

  “Rumor is the men were members of the Blood Brothers and they were pissed off Tayama had introduced a motion at the JACL convention urging the U.S. government to draft Nisei men into the Army.”

  “What!” Ruth was taken aback. “Who gave him the right to do that? As if he speaks for everyone at Manzanar?”

  “Ah, you begin to perceive the problem. Even worse, the motion passed. Well, if I get drafted, it’s not like the housing’s going to be any different,” Ralph added with a halfhearted smile. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you to stick close to home tonight—the camp is even more tense than usual.”

  “So much for our plans to go out jitterbugging,” Frank said hoarsely.

  “Sorry, twinkletoes,” Ruth said, “the only items on your dance card tonight are aspirin and sleep.”

  He nodded. “Thank God tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  * * *

  But it was far from a peaceable Sunday, despite an almost unnatural calm that morning, broken only by the seven o’clock mess hall bells. Ruth—up half the night tending to the kids—slept right through breakfast, as did Frank, so her parents brought them back some fish, rice, and coffee. “Did you hear anything more about the attack last night?” Ruth asked her father.

  “Ueno has been taken to jail in the town of Independence,” Taizo told her. “People are very angry about this, they think he is being punished for—Okāsan, what is the phrase in English?”

  “‘Blowing the whistle.’ On the administration’s theft of meat and sugar. They believe that is really why he was removed from camp.”

  The children woke up coughing and Ruth had no more time for camp politics until ten o’clock, when she was surprised to hear the mess hall bells ringing—too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. She assumed a meeting was being called to discuss the jailing of Harry Ueno.

  Then, at eleven-fifteen, all the lunch bells in camp began ringing forty-five minutes earlier than usual. Ruth had just warmed up some Campbell’s chicken soup for Frank, Peggy, and Donnie; Frank felt well enough to look after the kids and told her, “Go get a good meal for yourself.” She pecked him on the cheek and left for lunch with her parents.

  When they entered the mess hall Ruth saw Jiro and Nishi eating alone at a table and knew better than to approach them with Taizo there. Jiro had decided that peace in the family was best served if he and Nishi ate their meals apart from the rest of the family. Ruth had not been able to dissuade him from this view and his absence at the table saddened her.

  They were, however, joined by Ralph, who confirmed that there had been a meeting to discuss the arrest of Harry Ueno: “A Committee of Five was appointed to demand that Harry be returned to camp. If not, there was talk of a camp-wide mess hall strike. There’s going to be a second meeting at one—that’s why lunch was called early today, to allow for bigger attendance.”

  “You are going to this meeting?” Etsuko said.

  “As a reporter. For the paper.”

  “Is that wise?” Taizo asked. “Wasn’t one of your coworkers on the newspaper assaulted not long ago?”

  “Joe Blamey, yeah, he was beaten up by some pro-Axis teenagers, but they were just stupid kids.”

  “Just be careful, Ralph, okay?” Ruth asked.

  She spent the afternoon tending to family but around four o’clock heard that Harry Ueno had been returned from Independence, was now in the jail inside the Manzanar police station, and the Committee of Five was trying to secure his release. There was to be another meeting at Mess Hall 22 at six P.M. This information came from a neighbor, not Ralph, whom Ruth imagined was at the Free Press reporting what he’d seen to his editor.

  At seven o’clock there was a knock on their door and Ruth, assuming it was Ralph, opened it in relief—only to find that her visitor was Koji Ono, the forty-something Issei who served as their block manager, one of the internee-elected representatives on the advisory council to the WRA.

  “Mrs. Harada, there’s a phone call for you in my office.” There was no apartment-to-apartment telephone service at Manzanar, just service between offices. “It’s Dr. Goto. Sounds important.”

  “Dr. Goto?” She was at first perplexed, then worried.

  She and Koji hurried to his office—it was already near freezing outside—and she picked up the phone. “This is Ruth Harada.”

  “Mrs. Harada, James Goto.” He sounded breathless, quite at odds with his usually calm bedside manner. “Am I correct in recalling that one of your brothers works for the Manzanar Free Press?”

  She felt a chill of premonition. “Yes. Ralph.”

  “There was a—well, frankly, a mob here, just a few minutes ago,” he said. “They wanted to kill Frank Tayama. We hid him and when they couldn’t find him, they broke into two groups—one going to the jail to free Harry Ueno and the other, I heard them say, bent on killing staff members on the Free Press.”

  “What?”

  “They had a list, a ‘death list’—God knows who all could be on it. I wanted to warn you, tell your brother to hide, just in case.”

  Ruth was nearly hyperventilating but managed to stammer, “Thank—thank you, Doctor. I’m so grateful you called.”

  “Good luck. We’re all going to need some tonight.” He hung up.

  Ruth thanked Koji and hurried back to the apartment. The kids were asleep and Frank, sedated by the codeine, was not remotely conscious. She could hear, in the distance, the sound of people running in the street, and knew there was only one thing she could do. She grabbed one of the heavy Navy peacoats that had been distributed to every household in Manzanar, put on a wool cap, and went next door to her parents’ quarters. “Okāsan, would you look after Frank and the children while I run an errand?”

  “Right now?” Etsuko asked.

  “What kind of errand?” Taizo asked.

  “I won’t be long,” she said, ignoring the question. “Don’t worry.”

  She tried to keep the fear out of her voice and rushed out.

  It was a cold, moonless night as Ruth headed south on C Street. There was a light wind at her back but at least the sand and pebbles it stirred up weren’t flying directly into her face. It wasn’t long before she was in Block 20, knocking urgently on the door to Barrack 2, Apartment 1, the bachelors’ quarters. “Ralph? Are you in there?”

  The door opened. Ralph’s friend and roommate Satoru Kamikawa stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Harada, hello. I’m afraid Ralph’s not here.”

>   “Do you know where he is?”

  “Probably still covering the demonstration. He and I were at the meeting in Block 22 when it broke into two groups, one headed for the police station to free Ueno, the other to the hospital to—”

  “To kill Fred Tayama, I know. Dr. Goto says the mob couldn’t find Tayama and were going after staff members of the Free Press.”

  “Yes, we heard Joe Kurihara’s ‘death list’ at the mess hall meeting. But I’m sure Ralph’s not on the list, Mrs. Harada. I might be, but not him.”

  “Not yet, maybe.”

  “We get these death threats at the Free Press all the time. Whenever Chiye writes a pro-American editorial someone threatens to kill her.”

  “Forgive me if I’m not as blasé about it as you,” Ruth said, irritated. “Is Ralph at the police station?”

  “Yes, he wanted to see it through.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  Satoru admitted, “No. Things were starting to look pretty bad. I tried to talk Ralph into coming back with me, but … your brother is a very determined young man.”

  “Yes,” Ruth said, “and I’m going to kick his determined head in if somebody already hasn’t. Thank you.”

  She turned and wended her way through Block 20 to B Street, where she turned right. She heard increasing noise and commotion ahead of her, and the probing of searchlights from on high made her feel like a criminal on the lam. She pulled her cap lower over her ears against the chill, then turned on Third Street until she reached A Street. She turned right, then stopped short, her heartbeat skipping like a stone across water.

  There were at least five hundred people gathered in front of the police station; like her, most were bundled up in Navy peacoats. Cautiously she made her way around the back of the crowd. The protestors were separated from the police station by a buffer zone of about a hundred military police armed with machine guns, rifles, and shotguns; but the soldiers were significantly outnumbered by the protestors.

  One man was standing on the roof of a parked car, declaring in a loud angry voice: “We will kill all the dogs in Manzanar, starting with the biggest dog, Tayama! Then George Hayakama and Tom Imai and the rest of the stooges on the camp police force! And those Communist dogs at the Free Press, Chiye Mori, Tad Uyeno, James Oda—”

  Those last names quick-froze Ruth’s blood more than the biting cold. Her gaze swept across the building that ran parallel to the police station—where she saw, in a window, a familiar pair of eyes peeking out between curtains.

  Her heart skipped again, this time with relief.

  Slowly she made her way toward First Street, trying not to attract any undue attention; fortunately the crowd was focused on the speaker atop the car. She glanced up the street. Hanging from the very first door on the right was the sign: DEPARTMENT OF REPORTS / FREE PRESS.

  She backed up, reached the door; it was locked. She waited until there was a burst of applause from the crowd to the oratory, then rapped as quietly as she could on the clapboard door. When no response came, she waited for more covering crowd noise, then rapped again and whispered as loudly as she dared, “Ralph! For God’s sake, it’s me, Ruth! Open up.”

  The door quickly opened, Ruth rushed in, and a surprised Ralph locked the door behind her.

  “Sis! What are you doing here?” he whispered.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered back. “The protesters are out to kill Free Press staff, and here you are in the first place they’ll look!”

  “Oh hell, I’m not on any death lists,” Ralph assured her. “I’m strictly small fry. The big fish went into hiding after the afternoon rally.”

  “You’re taking a hell of a chance!”

  “It’s my job. Satoru and I were here this afternoon, watching the crowds, and no one thought to look for us here.”

  “Ralph, please come back to our barrack, you’ll be safer—”

  “Sis, I’m a newsman. Somebody has to report what’s happening.”

  “And you seriously think the administration will let you print that?”

  “Maybe not. But I’ll still try.” He nodded to the side window. “C’mon, I think that looney tune on the car has finally stopped talking.”

  Ruth reluctantly followed him to the window. From outside now came the sounds of—voices raised in song? In Japanese? Ruth understood the words—Kimigayo wa, chiyo ni yachiyo ni, “May your reign continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations”—but Ralph had to identify it for her as “Kimigayo,” the Japanese national anthem.

  “What’s going on inside the police station?” Ruth asked.

  “The Committee of Five went in a while ago. They brokered the deal to get Ueno back to Manzanar, but now the crowd wants him released. And they want inus killed. I think the committee’s lost control of the mob.”

  Indeed, the protestors were becoming more belligerent—inching closer to the soldiers, hooting at them. A few yelled “Banzai!” and in response some MPs shouted back, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” A sergeant barked at his men, “Hold your ground!” Most of the soldiers looked young and scared, flinching when people threw stones or lighted cigarettes at them. An Army captain ordered the crowd to disperse, but they ignored him and kept needling the soldiers like little boys poking sticks into a nest of scorpions.

  Satoru was right. This was looking very bad.

  The captain tried to reason with the protestors, speaking at some length, but when protestors threw large stones at him, he retreated behind the line of MPs. He repeated the order to disperse, but the crowd only jeered.

  At the captain’s signal the soldiers started putting on gas masks, then began throwing tear gas canisters into the crowd. Stormy clouds of white smoke erupted behind the protestors and within seconds they were choking on the gas filling their lungs and stinging their eyes. The crowd dispersed, scattering in all directions—but some at the front of the crowd surged forward in panic, toward the line of soldiers.

  Suddenly the air was torn by the jackhammer noise of machine guns and shotguns—at least two dozen rounds ripping into the crowd.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ralph shouted.

  Shotgun rounds tore into a young man—he looked like a teenager—a red fog briefly enveloping his torso as he fell, facedown, onto the ground. At least ten other people, most of them running away, also fell.

  “Oh God!” Ruth cried. “No!”

  Most protestors were fleeing for their lives, but a few were fighting back. They opened the driver’s side door of a parked car, released the parking brake, then pushed it forward, sending it speeding toward the military police. The car clipped off the northeast corner of the police station but kept bearing down on the line of soldiers. An MP fired a short burst of machine gun fire that blew out the car’s tires; it veered and crashed into an Army truck.

  The remainder of the crowd now fled, leaving behind almost a dozen broken bodies beneath a wreath of smoke.

  Ruth and Ralph stared in shock.

  “Shit,” Ralph said softly.

  Soldiers hurried to the fallen and began carrying them into the police station, presumably for first aid.

  “We’d better get out of here,” Ruth said. “If we’re found in here, everybody in camp will think we’re spies—inus.”

  They hurried up First Street, along with scores of others fleeing the violence. At the first intersection they turned right onto B Street. The wind carried the distant wail of an ambulance siren. But though most people were trying to escape, there were also angry groups shouting “Kill the inus!” Ruth and Ralph gave these a wide berth. Ruth wondered how it had come to this, how it was that they could be running for their lives from both the U.S. military and their own people?

  A searchlight beam swung toward them and they ducked, missing it by inches. An Army jeep bristling with armed soldiers barreled up Fifth Street, causing Ruth and Ralph to fall back until it passed; when it had, they ran across the next firebreak until they reached Fourth Street, where Ralph had to stop, p
rop himself up against a barrack wall, and catch his breath.

  “Where the hell are we?” he said between gasps. “The Russian front?”

  “It’s cold enough,” Ruth agreed. “Are you going to be okay?”

  He nodded, took a last gulp of air, and they continued running.

  Mess hall bells began pealing all over camp, summoning people to meetings, even now. There was a very wide firebreak between Sixth and Seventh Streets and as they raced across it, Ruth felt exposed and vulnerable.

  They made a beeline for Barrack 3. Ruth yanked open the door to her apartment and she and Ralph rushed in, slamming the door shut behind them.

  The lights were off but everyone in the room—Etsuko, Frank, the children—were wide awake. How could they fail to be, Ruth realized, with the world turned upside down outside their walls?

  “Mommy, Mommy!” Peggy cried, running to her mother and wrapping her arms around her legs. “You’re back!”

  Donnie, too, ran up and embraced her. “Where were you, Mommy, why is there so much noise?”

  “It’s all right, sweeties,” she said, wrapping her arms around them.

  Snowball sidled up and rubbed her head against Ruth’s leg.

  “Honey, thank God,” Frank said softly. “Where were you? I wanted to go look for you but didn’t know where to begin.”

  “Later,” she told him, then, to the kids: “You two are up way past your bedtime. Time to go to sleep, okay?”

  But though she tucked them in, the commotion outside, the constant knell of kitchen bells and the keening of ambulance sirens, kept them awake and afraid. Finally, Ruth gave them each less than a teaspoon of Frank’s cough syrup, and the codeine in it had them kayoed within minutes.

  The adults went to the other side of the small apartment, Ralph and Etsuko sitting in chairs, Ruth and Frank side by side on the cot. Ruth and Ralph explained where they had been and what happened, tears again filling Ruth’s eyes as she recounted the shootings. “I’m sorry,” she told Frank, “I know it was dangerous, but I had to find Ralph.”