I find myself in comfortable surroundings. In many ways Tule Lake is superior to Manzanar: there are three well-stocked canteens that sell everything from Hawaiian shirts to fresh shrimp, sashimi, crab, and tuna. There is also excellent daikon grown here at the camp. Housing is still scarce as more “disloyals” arrive each day, but I am assured that when you are given clearance to come to Tule we will be assigned quarters together. I miss you and Dai and Haruo and the children very much, but this war will not last forever and I know that someday soon we shall all be together again.
Less than a week later, a truckload of internee farm workers overturned on the way to the agricultural fields outside camp—killing one man, injuring twenty-eight others. Tempers flared in the “colony”—as internee housing was called by administrators—when it was revealed the truck driver had been an inexperienced minor. Aggravating the tragedy was grievance over the fact that eight hundred farm workers had not been paid back wages. As laborers refused to return to the fields, meetings were called to discuss the matter.
It was resolved to form an organization, Daihyo Sha Kai—“representative body”—to lobby for safer working conditions. One person was elected to this organization from each block; Yamasora was elected from Block 17.
Daihyo Sha Kai then elected a committee of seven to negotiate with the administration—but Tule Lake’s Project Director, Ralph Best, refused to negotiate, fired the striking workers, and shipped in strikebreakers from “loyal” camps to reap the fall harvest. WRA trucks removed thirty-two thousand pounds of food supplies from camp warehouses to the tent city where the “scabs” were quartered. Not only did residents suspect the scabs were getting the best food, the strikebreakers were also earning as much in two days as the striking workers had been paid for a month’s work.
* * *
Ruth and Frank invited Etsuko to live with them until her transfer was approved, but Etsuko, not wishing to be an inconvenience, declined. So one evening Ruth asked Donnie and Peggy, “Would it be all right if Snowball went to live with Grandma for a while so she won’t be lonely for Grandpa? You can go over and play with her anytime.” They readily agreed to help Grandma, who accepted their kind gesture. Snowball, still bursting with energy, amused Etsuko with her antics and kept her company through the long nights. The grandchildren visited every day after school and the sound of their laughter, though occasionally raucous, was infinitely preferable to the haunting silence of one lonely person in a room full of ghosts.
Ruth also took Etsuko along to the baseball games that Frank and the kids enjoyed. The World Series had just ended in St. Louis with the Yankees victorious over the Cardinals 4–3, but at Manzanar there were numerous off-season games to keep the crowds happy. The one thing everyone in Manzanar could agree on was baseball. The camp boasted a hundred men’s teams and fourteen women’s teams; the sport, enthusiastically embraced in all the camps, helped knit together the evacuees’ fractured lives with a thread of community identity, morale, self-esteem, and much-needed normalcy.
Etsuko understood the game but it hardly mattered to her who won, whether it was the Manzaknights vs. the Solon Nine or the Dusty Chicks vs. the Zephyrettes. She was thrilled by the roar of the crowd and delighted in the cheers of her grandchildren. Their joy helped fill the absence in her heart.
Also welcome were letters from Ralph, who was in basic training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and reported on tensions that existed in the 442nd between the Hawaiian-born Nisei and the mainland Nisei:
The Hawaiian Nisei talk island pidgin, which the mainland Nisei don’t understand, and they call the mainlanders “Kotonks”—“the sound you get when you knock the mainlanders’ empty heads together”—and the mainland Nisei in turn call them “Buddhaheads.” First time anyone tried calling me a Kotonk I shot back in pidgin, “Why, boddah you? Like beef?” That shut them up. Since I was born and raised in Hawai'i but lived on the mainland, neither side knows what to make of me. For once the bullies are afraid of picking on me, hah!
While weather still permitted, Ruth arranged picnics along the banks of Bairs Creek, which meandered through the southwestern corner of the camp on its way to the ever-thirsty Los Angeles Aqueduct. Paths wound through a small wooded glade and rustic bridges spanned the creek; here picnickers feasted on everything from yakitori and rice to hot dogs and potato salad.
Taizo was never far from Etsuko’s thoughts, and as they walked the arbored pathways she told Ruth stories she had never shared before, of her childhood in Hōfuna, of her marriage to Taizo: “Our families were neighbors. I knew Taizo’s face across the border of our two farms and long before we reached maturity our families had arranged our marriage. I remember being grateful that our homes were close—unlike some brides, who moved so far away they never saw their families again.”
She laughed. “How naive I was! When Taizo’s father died and his eldest brother inherited the vineyard, I had no idea I would end up moving across an ocean and never see my mother and father again.”
That sounded so cruel to Ruth, but she just said, “When you and Papa married, did you know each other well?”
“Not well, but I like to think he found me as pleasing as I found him. He had grown from a sickly child into a strong, kind man. Kindness is scarce in this world, Dai; that is why we were so happy that you found Frank. In Honolulu I knew ‘picture brides’—who had only seen a photograph of their betrothed—who came to the grocer’s with blackened eyes or broken teeth. I shuddered and was grateful I had Taizo, whose only touch was tender.”
Ruth slipped her hand into hers. “You’ll be with him again soon.”
“At the start, we were apart for two years—only men were allowed to emigrate from Japan to America. I had to wait until the law was changed to allow women. At least I know today that I will not have to wait that long.”
* * *
On Monday, November 1, WRA Director Dillon Myer visited Tule Lake on an inspection tour and was greeted by a crowd of at least six thousand internees outside the administration building, peacefully protesting working conditions. The protestors gradually dispersed without incident. But the size of the crowd alarmed the hajukin staff, their fears stoked by another incident occurring at the same time: a group of fifteen internees stormed the camp hospital and assaulted the widely disliked chief medical officer, Dr. Reece Pedicord, blaming him for the recent death of a Japanese baby.
Two evenings later, Taizo was awakened past midnight by a rumbling noise that sounded as if the earth itself were tossing in its sleep. He went to the window, looked out, and was astonished to see Army tanks lumbering through the streets. Soldiers inside announced through bullhorns: “Stay indoors! Do not leave your barracks, stay inside!”
Taizo could not go back to sleep, but those who did woke the next morning to find three hundred military police occupying the camp. There were armed soldiers stationed on every corner as radio patrol cars and tanks prowled the streets. The thunderous roar of jeeps, cars, and tanks was a deafening display of power orchestrated to strike fear into the internees.
Compounding this was a racket of construction as a barbed-wire fence was being erected between the colony and the administrative area: no internees, even ones employed in administration, were permitted inside, and those who tried to report to work were rewarded with tear gas fired by military police. This was a tactic the Army would continue to exploit: tear gas to break up small groups of unarmed internees peacefully waiting in line at latrines, showers, or coal piles—harassing them for the sole purpose of intimidating the populace.
Tule Lake was now under martial law—and ninety-nine percent of the internees, including Taizo, had absolutely no idea why.
* * *
That same morning, as she was grocery shopping at the Manzanar canteen, Ruth was greeted by the front page of the Los Angeles Daily Mirror:
ARMY TAKES OVER TULE LAKE CAMP
Seizure Follows Disclosure of Aliens’ Sabotage at Segregation Center
TULE LAK
E, Nov. 4. (U.P.)—The Army tonight took over the Tule Lake Japanese’s segregation center at about 10:30 P.M., according to Lt. Col. Verne Austin …
Accounts of sabotage and openly avowed loyalty to Japan came to light today in further revelations of just what happened Monday … Ernest Rhoades, the resigned fire chief at the camp, asserted that all fire alarm telephones had been destroyed, sand and broken glass were tamped into hydrants, and automobiles were damaged, one having been scratched with the words: “To hell with America.”
Ruth found herself standing at an intersection of horror and disbelief, knowing only one thing for certain: this news had to be kept from her mother.
But the camp was already buzzing with conflicting stories about what was happening at Tule Lake, and when she returned Ruth found a shaken Etsuko standing on her doorstep, a tremor in her voice.
“Dai, have you heard? There were ten thousand rioters at Tule Lake! They threatened to kill Mr. Myer and the Army had to come in to save him!”
“Okāsan, it’s not that bad, I’ve seen the papers.”
“I knew your father should never have gone there!”
Ruth embraced her mother. “I’m sure he’s fine. He’s not the sort to be part of any violence. He’s probably having breakfast in the mess hall right now. We’ll write him a letter and he’ll write back saying he’s all right.”
“Good. Yes. Oh, that stubborn old man!”
* * *
The mess hall was thick with rumor, speculation, suspicion, and fear. Why had the Army taken over the camp? Why couldn’t people go to work? What had happened during the night to so drastically alter life at Tule Lake?
Yamasora, glancing nervously around the room as he ate breakfast with Taizo, confided, “From what I heard, last night some hajukin drivers signed out a truck from the motor pool and used it to deliver more stolen food to the strikebreakers. Some Japanese from the motor pool got into a scuffle with white security officers, and when a small crowd gathered around Director Best’s house, wanting him to intervene in the theft, he got the idea they were planning to abduct him and he called in the Army.
“The military police arrested eighteen internees, mostly members of Daihyo Sha Kai. They’re in the stockade and nobody is allowed to see them. This could be the excuse Best needs to get rid of us so-called troublemakers.”
“Are you safe, Yamasora-san?” Taizo asked, concerned.
“Oh, I’m pretty low on the totem pole,” he said hopefully. “I’ll be fine.”
The next day the Army began the first of many barracks searches for contraband, confiscating such legal and illegal items as liquor, paring knives, scissors, carpenters’ and gardeners’ tools, wooden canes, binoculars, cameras, and radios with short-wave capability. They also took away human “contraband,” arresting anyone they suspected of being involved in the events of November 1 or 4, or anyone with a reputation for “agitation”—like members of Daihyo Sha Kai.
Taizo was alone in his apartment when the soldiers came to search; as he stepped out of their way and into the doorway, he overheard sounds of a scuffle outside. He turned to see Yamasora being dragged out of his office by two MPs. One of the soldiers twisted his arm so violently that Yamasora shrieked in pain. Taizo ran toward his friend.
“What are you doing!” Taizo yelled. “There is no cause for that!”
“Go home, Grandpa,” one of the men said with offhanded contempt, turning away. This young, cocky, contemptuous American soldier seemed to embody every indignity Taizo had endured these past eighteen months.
Taizo reached out and took the soldier’s arm in an attempt to get his attention. “What has he done? Are you—”
As casually as he might use a flyswatter, the soldier brought his rifle up and slammed its butt into the side of Taizo’s head, which exploded into fireworks behind his eyes. He fell in a daze to the ground.
He was groggily aware of being pulled to his feet, a gun pressed into the small of his back, as the soldiers marched them toward a waiting jeep.
Taizo’s head began to clear as he and Yamasora were led into an empty office in the administration building, where they were handed over to two big hajukin men in shirtsleeves—not Army, perhaps internal security—who quickly got down to business. They pushed the two prisoners up against a wall, told them to raise their hands above their heads, and “stay that way.”
“Okay, Tojo,” one of the men said to Yamasora, “we know you were part of the dirty business on Sunday night, so you might as well come clean.”
“I wasn’t even there!” Yamasora protested.
The security man coldcocked him, driving his fist into Yamasora’s face. Yamasora’s nose spurted blood as his body began to fall sideways.
“I said stand up, Jap!” the other man snapped, and Taizo now noticed he held something in his hand.
A baseball bat.
“I swear, I wasn’t there!” Yamasora pleaded.
The man grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and viciously slammed him into the wall. “Don’t give us that shit!”
The man with the bat swung it with cruel velocity into Yamasora’s side. His ribs fractured with a sound like a string of firecrackers popping.
Yamasora collapsed like a stringless marionette.
“Stop it!” Taizo shouted. “This is inhuman!”
“Inhuman? That’s funny. Tell that to the fifteen hundred GIs you Japs just butchered at Tarawa.”
The other security man bent down beside Yamasora. “C’mon, Nip, this doesn’t have to be so hard. Tell us what you know about the leaders of your Daihyo Shit Kaka or however the fuck you say it.”
Yamasora responded in kind: “Fuck you.”
The man with the bat bent down and rested the bat on his shoulder like Babe Ruth aiming for a ball—but in this case the ball was Yamasora’s face.
Taizo ran at the man as he swung, grabbing the bat before it connected.
“Goddamn!” the other security man said with a laugh. “This old Jap’s got more balls than the young one.”
The man with the bat yanked it away from Taizo, then swung it into the side of Taizo’s head. Mercifully he would not recall the moment of impact.
* * *
Taizo woke to exquisite agony; he reached up to touch the side of his head, which was swollen, tender to the touch, and caked with dried blood. Hazily he became aware of his surroundings. He felt a chill in the air and heard a moaning that sounded like the cry of an obake, a ghost. Taizo’s head throbbed like a beaten drum, but the cries of the wailing man bespoke pain far greater than his own.
“Taizo? Good, you’re awake. You all right?”
Taizo looked up. Yamasora was sitting beside him, his face battered and bloodied, his arm in a sling made of old rags. Taizo looked around. He was lying on a thin pallet resting directly on the cold ground, his body covered by two even thinner blankets. He and a number of other men were squeezed into a single Army tent; there was no oil heater, and judging by the light it seemed as if night would not be long in coming.
“Where are we?” Taizo asked.
“They call it the ‘bullpen.’ The stockade. Taizo, you shouldn’t have tried to help me. Now you’re in the same miserable boat I’m in. I’m sorry.”
Taizo sighed and said with what he thought was commendable stoicism, “I fear I shall never be able to enjoy a baseball game again.”
Yamasora laughed. “I think that goes for all of us.”
“Who is moaning?”
Yamasora nodded to a man, big as a sumo wrestler, two beds down. “That’s Tom Kobayashi. Officer Martin hit him with a bat so hard that the bat broke in two. He has an open wound on his scalp and is in constant pain.”
“Has he had medical attention?”
“Nope. None of us have. Dr. Mason from the hospital was there at the interrogations, in case a doctor was needed, but he didn’t lift a damn finger.”
Taizo was introduced to his fellow prisoners—all younger than he, most arrested on the night of N
ovember 4 and beaten by security officers. Tokio Yamane’s mouth was in bad shape after repeated punches, with only four teeth remaining. Another man was told, “Confess or I’ll make your eyes come out of your head” and then struck brutally in both eyes, each now blackened and as swollen as puffer fish. “They laughed as they hit us,” said Bob Hayashida, who worked at the motor pool. “There were WRA officials there watching and a security guy told one of them, ‘It’s open season on Japs, like to try your hand? It’s like shooting ducks!’”
It was all more than Taizo could take in. His head was still throbbing and he lay back onto his pallet, which was cold as an open grave. He closed his eyes and woke to the sound of mess hall bells ringing.
An MP entered the tent and escorted the prisoners to the Army mess hall for dinner. As Taizo walked, he saw that the “bullpen” was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence covered by wooden boards—so no one could see in?—with armed guards in each corner. In the mess hall Taizo was surprised when told to take a tray and help himself to the ham, eggs, sausages, and hot coffee—and even more surprised that the prisoners sat surrounded by white soldiers who seemed unperturbed by their presence.
That night the wind yowled like a cat, the gusts rippling the canvas of the tent’s walls and causing the tent poles to wobble like fragile saplings. Cold drafts of air blew in through the cracks and the temperature inside plunged below freezing. Taizo wrapped himself in his two blankets, for what little good it did, and did his best to sleep.
* * *
The headlines in the Los Angeles papers only grew more histrionic: PLAN OF TULE LAKE JAPS TO BURN BUILDINGS RELATED, with the story asserting that the internees “heaped oil-soaked sacks of straw about the administration building where they were holding 150 whites” in an attempt to “burn the place down.” Another claimed that TULE LAKE RIOTS MAY HAVE BEEN TOKYO-INSPIRED, “staged by ringleaders on direct orders from Tokyo.” Etsuko was beside herself with fear for Taizo’s safety, exacerbated by the lack of a reply to the letter she and Ruth had written.
Daughter of Moloka'i Page 20