Daughter of Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

“I don’t like the idea of taking our kids out of school either,” Rose conceded, “but at this age, it won’t make much difference to them, and the money Horace might be able to make could make a big difference to us.”

  Ruth considered that. “Well, we do have to go back sometime. And Myer was right: the Japanese helped make Florin what it is today, and we have every right to go back. It’s as much our town as it is Joseph Dreesen’s.”

  “I heard the old coot finally died,” Horace noted.

  “Good riddance,” Etsuko said with indecorous contempt, prompting laughter all around the table.

  * * *

  A little after three P.M. on April 12, 1945—two days before the Watanabes were set to leave—Manzanar was rattled, as was the nation, by the shocking news that President Roosevelt had died in Warm Springs, Georgia. Flags across the camp were lowered to half staff; shortly after, all the block managers stood outside in silent prayer, paying tribute to the man who had guided America out of a Depression and through forty months of a war more brutal and global than any other in human history. Usually stoic Japanese wept openly—even Ruth, who still harbored conflicted feelings about the man who had given the order to send them here and who was, directly and indirectly, responsible for so many of the losses they had endured. But he was still the president, and she wept for him and for Mrs. Roosevelt, whose sympathy for the plight of the internees was well known (she had visited the Gila River Camp in Arizona in 1943).

  The morning of April 14 was clear, bright, and mild; high clouds floated in a pale blue sky above the saw-toothed ridges of the Sierra Nevada. The Watanabes’ luggage was placed aboard a Greyhound bus bound for Northern California as Donnie and Peggy, thrilled to be going anywhere, raced up the steps just ahead of their father. Ruth was holding a small wooden crate from which Snowball was emitting a variety of unhappy sounds. The Arikawas had come to bid the Watanabes farewell and good luck; Ruth and Etsuko thanked them for the welcome they had extended on their first day in Manzanar: “‘One kind word can warm three winter months,’” Etsuko quoted, before she and her family boarded the bus.

  Ruth felt an unaccustomed thrill, too, as the bus passed through the open gate, beyond the barbed wire, and onto Highway 6, heading north. There were no shades on the bus to shield the outside world from their Japanese faces, and Ruth felt a weight lifted from her soul, a buoyancy of spirit she hadn’t known in three long years. Even the speed of the bus—all of forty miles an hour—was exhilarating after the stasis of life in Manzanar.

  She was free. Her children were free. That joy of release kept her weightless as a cloud for the next eight hours.

  * * *

  They arrived in Sacramento in late afternoon and took a cab to the city’s nihonmachi. Once a thriving community of Japanese-owned grocery stores, tailors, hotels, Japanese baths, lodging houses, and homes, it was now a multihued tapestry of varied races: whites, Hispanics, Chinese, and Negroes. Housing was scarce, but the local branch of the JACL had converted several houses into hostels for returning evacuees, and it was at one of these that the Watanabes and Haradas would spend a comfortable night (and possibly longer, if they couldn’t find accommodations closer to Florin).

  The next morning they browsed several used car lots (technically, every car in the U.S. was a used car ever since the auto plants had converted to war production in 1942). The most practical choice was a nine-passenger Chrysler station wagon. According to the young Chinese salesman, it retailed four years ago for fourteen hundred dollars, had only eighty thousand miles on it, and he was selling it for the bargain price of nine hundred dollars. Etsuko astonished them all by negotiating him down to eight twenty-five, then reached into her purse and withdrew the exact amount in cash.

  Painted olive green and with a huge wheelbase, the car could almost have passed for a military vehicle. The men, of course, each wanted to drive it first; they flipped a coin, Frank won, and soon the Chrysler was tooling off the lot, heading south down Stockton Boulevard.

  Within half an hour they were turning left onto Florin Road. Etsuko gazed out the window with a wistful pleasure and Ruth spontaneously took her hand, gave it a squeeze, and smiled. They were coming home at last.

  But as they entered Florin’s downtown clustered along the railroad tracks, Ruth’s smile faded. In 1942, Florin’s downtown had been busy and prospering; now many of the stores had yet to reopen, their windows soaped over or boarded up. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

  “Oh my goodness,” Etsuko said, “look. Akiyama’s Market—is gone.”

  It was true. There was only a soot-stained foundation and the charred stumps of a building frame where Akiyama’s Fish Market once stood.

  “What happened to it, Daddy?” Horace’s son Will asked.

  “Looks like … fire, Will. Must’ve burned to the ground,” Horace said.

  “And Nishi Basket Factory,” Rose said, “it burned too.”

  “Even Mr. Nakajima’s restaurant,” Ruth said quietly. So many fondly remembered pieces of their past, now just blackened slabs.

  Frank pulled the car over to the curb and parked.

  The family got out and found themselves standing at the center of not quite a ghost town, with only a handful of stores still open. Among these was Florin Feed & Supply—the late Joseph Dreesen’s company. Of course.

  “I’d heard there was arson in Taishoku and Auburn,” Horace said, “but I hadn’t expected—”

  “There’s one place that’s still doing business,” Frank said in a strangely flat voice. Ruth followed his gaze and recognized, with a sick feeling, a long, narrow building, with a red sign atop advertising itself as NICK’S DINER.

  Without even thinking, Frank began walking toward it.

  Ruth quickly handed the children over to Etsuko and hurried to keep pace with her husband.

  “Honey,” she said, “is this a good idea?”

  “Probably not.” He opened the door to the diner.

  They entered and saw the familiar red vinyl booths, chrome countertop, and daily specials posted on the chalkboard. A jukebox was playing a Frank Sinatra song. Everything was almost exactly as it had been when they last saw it three years before. It was lunchtime and the diner was doing good business, most of the booths full, the customers mostly white, as was the man behind the cash register.

  Frank went up to the cashier and said, “Hi. You the owner here?”

  “Since last year,” the man replied proudly. “Nick Castellano. You folks back from the … camps?”

  “Yes, we just got back.”

  “I gotta say, I thought you people got a raw deal. Hey, you want a couple slices of pie, on the house?”

  Frank smiled. He couldn’t help liking this guy, but … “No thanks, but it’s swell of you to offer. You seem to be doing well here.”

  “Yeah, the train station pulls in a lot of customers—passengers grabbing a square meal before their train leaves.”

  “You bought this place from Carl Clasen?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Do you mind my asking—how much did you pay for it?”

  Nick looked puzzled by the question, but answered it. “Well, the building’s a lease, but I got a good deal on the inventory—thirty thousand bucks.”

  Frank felt as if he had been sucker-punched in the gut. Thirty grand for inventory he and Ruth had been forced to sell for a thousand dollars.

  Forcing a smile, he said, “Thank you. Good luck,” then turned on his heel and hurried for the door.

  “Frank?” Ruth followed him out, concerned when he didn’t respond, just ran into the alley alongside the diner. Once out of sight of anyone on the street, Frank doubled over and vomited up his breakfast.

  “Oh, honey…” Ruth placed a hand on his back. He remained bent over, waiting to see if the nausea would start again, but finally straightened. Ruth took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. As she did she saw that his eyes were glossy with tears.

  “I’m so sorry, honey,
” she said. “It’s not fair. None of it was fair.”

  “I know. I thought I knew that. But this—this I wasn’t expecting.” He sighed. “You were right. I should never have stopped at this goddamn place.”

  “What’s done is done,” Ruth said, realizing only after she’d said it that she was echoing her parents’ words in similar times of grief and helplessness.

  None of the adults asked them what had happened; they could clearly see the shame and distress in Frank’s eyes. Peggy saw it too but had no qualms about asking, “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

  He managed a smile and ruffled her hair. “Nothing, sweetie.” He turned to Horace. “You want to take the wheel for a while?”

  “Sure.”

  They drove out of the business district and down Florin Road. Soon farmland was rolling past on both sides, but the scenery was only slightly more encouraging than what they’d seen downtown. Some of the land—like the Yamada, Tanaka, and Tamohara farms, which had been left in the care of Jerry and Vivian Kara, and the Okamoto, Nitta, and Tsukamoto farms, looked after by Bob Fletcher—were flourishing, their fields lush with trellises of green grapevines and acres of green strawberry plants.

  But here, too, there had been arson, writing its black signature on the land: the charred remains of farmhouses, only brick chimneys and cement foundations still standing. The fields were ashen shadows of themselves.

  Sadder still were the farms—presumably left in someone’s care—that had seemingly been abandoned and left to die.

  As Horace turned up French Road, toward what used to be the Watanabe farm, Ruth began to feel the same queasiness that Frank had at the diner. The car pulled into the driveway, parked, and the Watanabes got out to survey what had once been their home, their green inland sea. The structures were still standing but the grounds had been looted of anything of value: tractor, tools, animals, even the wooden posts of the corral. The fields were filled not with ripening fruit but with thickets of weeds and the dried tendrils of grapevines clinging to rotting trellises. Even the buried family heirlooms had been unearthed and stolen.

  Etsuko’s eyes filled with tears. Perhaps, she thought, it is better that Taizo did not live to see this; it would have broken his heart.

  “But … wasn’t Dreesen planning on working this?” Frank said.

  “He did not want the farm,” Etsuko said bitterly. “He only wanted us not to have it. To keep it out of Japanese hands.”

  They stood staring into this wasteland, this embodiment of Dreesen’s hate reaching out to torment them, unfettered by the constraints of death.

  At last, Horace spoke up. “I … think I’d like to drop by Bob Fletcher’s place. See if he could use some help on one of the farms he’s looking after.”

  Etsuko turned from the empty shell of the home she had loved, walking with quiet determination back to the car. “I have seen enough here.”

  * * *

  Bob Fletcher was delighted to see the Watanabes again and told Horace that he could indeed use his help harvesting the Tsukamoto farm: “Al and Mary have been living in Kalamazoo, Michigan, you know, but they’re planning on coming back here this summer. I’ve got migrant workers from Oklahoma working their farm and the others, but I could always use an extra hand with the harvest. And if you need a place to stay, I don’t think Mary and Al would mind if I put you up in their house until they got back.”

  After they’d thanked Bob for his generosity, Frank drove to the Tsukamoto farm, dropping off Horace, Rose, Jack, Will, and their luggage. Then Frank, Ruth, Etsuko, Peggy, and Donnie headed back into town to check on the belongings they had left in the Florin Community Hall. Members of the JACL were there to help them locate their things, and everything was accounted for and undamaged—not that they had anywhere to take it.

  They left the Community Hall and were halfway to their car when they heard a familiar voice:

  “Ruth! Ruth!”

  Ruth turned and saw, across the street, her old friend Chieko—“Cricket”—her always-expressive face full of delight.

  Ruth felt the same joy. Cricket ran across the street and the two women embraced. “Oh, Ruth, it’s so good to see you! Welcome home!”

  “It’s so good to see you too.” This was truly the only decent thing to happen today. “I heard you were sent to Rohwer.”

  “Oh yeah, that was fun. Marooned in the middle of a swamp. Mosquitoes the size of crows, I swear! But we made it back okay, give or take a few pints of blood, and I even got my old job back at the post office.”

  “You remember my mother, and Frank and the kids…”

  “Oh my gosh, look how big they are! Hi, Donnie, Peggy, remember me?”

  “No,” the kids said, in indifferent unison.

  Cricket laughed. “That’s okay, you were little guppies then. Not big fish like you are now.” She turned back to Ruth. “I saw what happened to your old place, I’m so sorry. Do you have somewhere to stay?”

  “No, we just arrived.”

  “Then you’re staying with us,” Cricket decided. “We’ve got plenty of room. Oh, what a beautiful cat!” She poked her finger into Snowball’s carrying crate; Snowball hissed. “I know, honey, you don’t like it in there, do you? Well, we’ve got plenty of room for you to roam around, you’ll love it!”

  “Cricket, we don’t want to impose—” Ruth began.

  “Oh, for gosh sakes, you’re not. Stay with us however long you need to get your bearings. That is all, I am not taking no for an answer! I’m almost done at the post office—I work first shift, so I can pick up Abby from school at three. Meet me at my folks’ place, it’s still standing and we’re all living there!”

  She raced back across the street and into the post office building.

  “I am glad some things remain the same,” Etsuko said with a smile.

  * * *

  Cricket, her husband, Mitch, and their daughter, Abby, lived along with Cricket’s widowed father in the family farmhouse off Gerber Road, which had been conscientiously looked after by George Feil. Though Cricket’s otōsan, Nobu, was the same age as Taizo would have been, he did not hesitate to join his hired migrant workers in preparing the fields for harvesting. Etsuko watched him work from her bedroom window and wanted to cry. She was not comforted by the lush fields and familiar terrain surrounding it; in truth, she did not enjoy being there. But Cricket and her family were so generous and kind that she would have died rather than betray her feelings in any way.

  Frank spent his time looking for jobs at cafes, lunch counters, or diners anywhere from Florin to Walnut Grove, but few Japanese restaurants had reopened yet and the hajukin eateries were still wary of hiring “Japs.”

  Meanwhile, half a world away, Soviet troops launched their final assault on Berlin, Mussolini was executed by Italian partisans, and on April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker before Allied troops could capture him. Each evening the two families would gather around the big console radio to hear the good news from Europe—culminating, on May 7, with the German army’s unconditional surrender to Allied forces. The next day America and the world celebrated V-E Day, the end of war in Europe.

  But in the wake of the Nazi defeat, new horrors unlike any the world had ever seen were exposed: the Nazi extermination camps, where six million Jews were starved, tortured, and gassed to death. Pfc 1st class Ralph Watanabe—whose field artillery battalion was attached to the U.S. 4th Division—was outside the city of Dachau when he and his unit liberated a satellite slave labor camp, Kaufering IV Hurlach. As Ralph wrote his sister:

  Sweet Jesus, Sis, we never expected anything like this. We shot the locks off the prison gates and all these people struggled to get to their feet. They were wearing black and white striped prison uniforms and round hats, just like you see in the movies—but you never saw this in a movie. They were walking skeletons, nothing but skin and bones, with sunken eyes that bored right into your soul. They were so weak from hunger they could barely shuffle out of the camp, and you
could only give them tiny bits of food or water because they’d been starving so long their bodies had forgotten how to handle solid food.

  One Polish woman was afraid, she’d never seen people with Japanese features and she couldn’t understand the pidgin some of the guys used. One of my buddies got down on his knees in front of her and said, “From my God to your God, we are your liberators.”

  Too many of them died, even with medical attention. I cried myself to sleep that night.

  But by the time she received this letter, Ruth had already seen the Nazi atrocities for herself—in the movies.

  At the Alhambra Theatre in Sacramento, Ruth, Frank, and Etsuko watched the first newsreel footage out of the death camps, luridly titled NAZI MURDER MILLS!—and yet that was not hyperbole. The Watanabes and a mostly white audience took in grisly images of what the narrator called Nazi “hellholes.” First they saw American POWs—emaciated, starving, with ugly untreated wounds—rescued from a German POW camp. Then came the slave labor and extermination camps, like Buchenwald. Ruth flinched at the sight of burned corpses stacked like kindling and a single lifeless foot extruding from a lime pit. The handful of survivors bore the livid scars of torture racks. And then there were the furnaces, many no bigger than bakery ovens, where both the dead and the living were cremated. “Don’t turn away, look!” the narrator demanded of his audience, the oven door open to expose the skulls inside, skulls that once had human faces and housed human souls.

  They said nothing to one another on the drive back to Florin, and only years later would they realize that they all shared the same thought at the same time: whatever they had suffered at Manzanar, it could not compare to the suffering and brutality they had witnessed that night. Ruth resolved never to gripe again about what she had endured in the war. It seemed … disrespectful. So many millions dead, but she was alive. Her mother, her children, her husband, they were alive. Her father was gone, but felled by a bacterial infection, not gassed in an oven. That night she buried her anger deep inside and put on her outside face tight enough to choke her.