And judging by the silence of everyone in the car that night, Frank and Etsuko had come to a similar conclusion, for neither of them would so much as mention the names Manzanar or Tanforan again—not for many years.
* * *
By midsummer more evacuees had returned to Florin, some to flourishing farms and some to ashes. Slowly the town began to regain a bit of its prewar character, with new stores readying to open and old neighbors returning to greet one another. After working the Tsukamoto farm, Horace was able to negotiate a fire-sale purchase of an abandoned farm nearby.
But aside from a few odd jobs, steady employment eluded Frank. After mentioning this in a letter to Jim Russell—now a superintendent with a dried-fruits cannery—Jim wrote back urging Frank and his family to come to San Jose:
I can get you a job, easy, in the packing shed, and there could be room for advancement. The company’s on solid ground and now that the war’s almost over they’re looking to expand. And there seems to be a more welcoming attitude here toward returning Japanese—a group called the Council for Civic Unity of San Jose has even converted the Japanese Language School into a hostel for temporary housing of all the families returning to Santa Clara County, though you’re welcome to stay with us until you find a place of your own.
Ruth was moved by Jim’s offer but a little dubious about the nature of the work. “They sell dried prunes?”
“Among other things. Their products are in all the national stores; the brand name is Sunsweet.”
“But Frank—owning a restaurant, that was your dream.”
He just shook his head at that. “No. My dream—from the moment my folks lost their farm—was to have a home again. And whatever job gets us a roof over our head and food on the table is what I want. My dream is you and Donnie and Peggy and Etsuko, too, if she wants to come with us.”
Ruth kissed him. “I love you. I’m willing to take a flyer if you are.”
Frank seemed genuinely happy to write Jim and accept his offer.
This put Etsuko at a crossroads, but she had little difficulty deciding which path to take. When Horace and Rose invited her to live with them, she replied politely but candidly:
“Haruo, I love you and your family. But I cannot live in Florin. There is nothing here for me but grief.” She promised to visit often—San Jose was only a hundred miles away, after all.
Once again the Haradas prepared to move, but before they could, the Japanese community was rocked by one more seismic shock.
* * *
“Sixteen hours ago,” President Truman announced in a radio address to the nation on August 6, 1945, “an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base … The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold.
“It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East…”
Hiroshima Prefecture had been a major source of Japanese immigrants to the United States and many had settled in Florin—including Cricket’s father, Nobu, who came from Onomichi Town in the southeast corner of the prefecture. Nobu was concerned for his relatives in the city of Hiroshima, but the scope of the damage done to it did not become apparent for days, until a thick pall of dust caused by the massive explosion finally lifted. What was left standing—and what wasn’t—stunned the world.
Newspaper headlines shouted:
HIROSHIMA POSSIBLY WIPED OUT—BLINDING FLASH VAPORIZED BUILDINGS
BOMB ERASES 60 PER CENT OF HIROSHIMA—
4-SQUARE-MILE AREA COMPLETELY WIPED FROM MAP
150,000 KILLED BY ATOM BOMB
For many, the first reaction was one of utter disbelief.
“How could one bomb do all that damage?” Cricket’s husband, Mitch, scoffed as his family and the Haradas gathered around the radio for the latest news. “Vaporizing buildings? That’s like something out of Buck Rogers!”
“This is all propaganda designed to cow Japan into surrendering!” Nobu insisted, refusing to consider the terrible alternative.
Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb leveled the port city of Nagasaki, home to a quarter of a million people. The headline in the San Francisco Examiner declared:
NEARLY ALL IN CITY KILLED
Now there were no denials from Nobu, only tears. He feared for what might have happened to a beloved aunt and uncle who lived in Hiroshima.
Six days later, the Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally. The front page of the Los Angeles Times featured a drawing of a tattered Japanese flag and, in a headline almost as large:
PEACE!
But so many in Florin could feel no peace. Soon letters began arriving from Japan telling of the unprecedented destruction to Hiroshima—and of deaths unlike any in human history. The men and women who were outside were incinerated instantly, the heat of the blast etching their silhouettes in concrete, leaving behind only wraithlike shadows. Many of those who survived the initial blast were soon soaked in a “black rain” that stormed down soot, dust, and invisible roentgens of radioactivity that first sickened, then killed them all.
Nobu’s aunt survived, but his uncle died in the blast; there wasn’t even a shadow left behind. Dying with him in Hiroshima were thousands of American-born Kibei—children sent to Japan for their education, a common and now-tragic practice among the Issei.
Florin’s disbelief and shock gave way to grief, sorrow, and anger. Some Issei cursed America and “the damned hajukin” for what they had done. Some blamed Japan for starting the war. All grieved for cousins, sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews they had lost.
Ruth still felt disbelief, as well as horror, at the magnitude of the devastation. “Jesus,” she said to Frank, “all those people. All those civilians…”
“They’re far from the first,” he noted grimly.
He was right. This war had seen more civilians targeted for mass slaughter than in any previous war: Nanking. Dresden. London. Manchuria. Auschwitz. Dachau. In her heart Ruth wept for them all. But this …
“My God. What kind of world has this become, where someone can press a button and an entire city vanishes in a single flash of light?”
* * *
While doing their best to console Cricket’s family and other neighbors, the Haradas were also preparing for their move to San Jose. With Horace’s help, they transferred their household belongings from the Florin Community Hall and into a rented truck for the drive south.
The night before the trip, as Ruth and Frank lay in bed, exhausted and overwhelmed, Ruth spoke into the darkness:
“Is it wrong for me to feel relief that at least the war is over?”
Her husband took her hand in his.
“No. It’s not,” he said gently. “The war is over, and we can move on with our lives. We’re owed that much. To live a quiet, ordinary life again.”
She smiled. She liked the sound of that.
“You promise?” she said, teasing. “A quiet, ordinary life?”
“I promise.”
It was a promise, they both knew, he had no power to keep—but Ruth loved him for it, and, starting with a long kiss, showed him how much.
PART THREE
'Ohana
Chapter 14
1948
Donnie, now ten, and Peggy, eight, were playing ball, normally a fine thing for children to be doing on a warm, sunny day in August—if they were outside. Not in the living room, where a pop fly ricocheted off the ceiling and fell toward Peggy. She reached up to catch it, just as Max—a sixty-pound golden retriever—jumped up, snatching the ball in his mouth. “Good catch, Max!” Peggy took the ball, now dripping with dog slobber, and pitched it to Donnie, but it spun wildly astray and into the kitchen, where it crashed into what sounded like the refrigerator. Max eagerly galloped after it, but even he stopped dead when he heard:
“Peggy! Donnie!” And moments later: “Y
uck! Did you spit on this?”
“Not me, Mom!” Donnie called.
“Me neither!” Peggy said.
Ruth held the slimy ball with two fingers as if it were a giant booger. “How many times have I told you not to play ball in the house?”
Donnie and Peggy were silent. They knew this was a trick question.
“Go out in the backyard and play, that’s what it’s there for!”
“It’s too hot outside,” Donnie protested.
“It’s a zillion degrees,” Peggy added helpfully.
“Yeah? You want to see how hot things can get in here? Out! Out! You too, Max.” Ruth wedged the ball between the dog’s jaws and marched them—in steely, Mommy-means-it silence—to the back door. Reluctantly the kids ran out into a perfectly nice grassy yard graced by pink-blossomed azalea bushes and a tall palm tree whose long shadow was ticking toward high noon.
As the sunlight hit her Peggy moaned, “I’m melting.”
Ruth suppressed a chuckle. “Don’t worry, sweetie, that only happens to wicked witches. So be good and have fun!”
She shut the door and returned to their brand-new Kelvinator, now defaced by a small ding in the door. Peggy really had quite an arm; maybe they could trade her to the San Francisco Seals. Only two weeks of summer vacation left, Ruth told herself. If I could get through three years in internment camps, I can get through this.
Snowball, having observed the chaos from the sanctuary of the second-floor landing, rested her head on her paws and went to sleep.
Ruth smiled despite her aggravation. The Haradas had been lucky to find this place—a small, two-story stucco house on North Fifth Street, a block from Jackson Street, the heart of San Jose’s thriving Japantown. They had spent two years in a one-bedroom shoebox of an apartment on First Street, but fortunately Frank was promoted to foreman of the packing shed just as the housing shortage began to ease. Etsuko generously contributed to the down payment from her bank funds; she had her own bedroom, the kids each had small rooms of their own, and the Haradas had a real home for the first time since Florin. Ruth was especially happy that her mother had adapted well to their new community—she was currently out enjoying dim sum with church friends at Ken Ying Low restaurant. Etsuko still grieved for Taizo, as did Ruth, but seemed content with her new life.
The chime of the doorbell found their chatty mailman, Mr. Ng, on the doorstep. “Lots of letters today, Mrs. Harada,” he said, handing Ruth a bundle. “Another one from Japan.”
“Oh, that must be my Uncle Jiro.” Jiro and Nishi had returned to Japan in 1946, where they were relieved to discover Akira, wounded but alive, in an Imperial Army hospital in Tokyo. Upon his deportation to Japan, Akira had indeed been drafted into the Japanese army—but in combat he could not bring himself to shoot at American troops. He was branded a coward by the soldiers in his unit, several of whom gave him a beating so severe it came close to puncturing his left lung. Jiro and Nishi took him back to Hōfuna, where he slowly regained his health. And as soon as she was permitted to travel to Japan, Akira’s wife, Tamiko, joined him with their children.
After Mr. Ng left, Ruth glanced at the envelope from Jiro and one from Stanley in Portland, feeling a pang of regret that her once-close family was now so widely scattered. They did see Horace and his family at least once a month; Ralph was the nearest, studying journalism at UC Berkeley on the G.I. Bill.
But as she flipped through the packet of letters, bills, and circulars, she was surprised to see an envelope addressed to her parents—both of them—at their old rural route in Florin. The latter address had been crossed out and someone—most likely Cricket—had handwritten below it FORWARD TO: 659 N. FIFTH STREET, SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA.
Even more surprising was the postmark—Honolulu, Territory of Hawai'i—and the sender’s name: “R. Utagawa.”
She could have waited until Etsuko returned and handed the letter to her. But the Honolulu address seemed to signal bad news—the death of an old friend, perhaps, though Ruth had never heard her parents mention any “R. Utagawa.” Etsuko was still fragile emotionally—they had only recently succeeded, after much stress and bureaucracy, in getting the federal government to return Taizo’s cremated remains from Tule Lake—and Ruth hesitated to add another death to her mother’s burden of grief.
Or perhaps Ruth was simply curious. In any event, she didn’t think her mother would mind if she took a peek inside. She opened the envelope and took out a piece of folded notepaper. The letter was handwritten with an odd leftward slant, as if the writing had been an awkward task. But as she focused on what the words actually said, Ruth’s curiosity turned to shock:
August 13, 1948
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe:
My name is Rachel Utagawa. My late husband and I gave Ruth up for adoption. A day has not gone by since that I haven’t thought of her. I wonder how she is. Is she married? Does she have children of her own? Sister Mary Louisa Hughes has told me what good people you are, and how much you love Ruth. I’m happy to know she had such good parents. I would give anything in the world to hear her voice or see her face, even once. It is a longing, a setsubō, which has never gone away. I intend no disrespect to you. I am her mother by blood, but you are her parents by law and by love. I hope you will look kindly on this request. Thank you.
Sincerely yours,
Rachel Utagawa
1726 S. King St.
Honolulu, T.H.
ph. HON 68412
Nothing on earth could have prepared Ruth for these words. Now it was she who felt fragile, and burdened with a knowledge she had never anticipated. This woman—Rachel Utagawa—was her “natural” mother. Up until this moment she had never been more than a concept to Ruth, an empty phrase—natural mother; Hawaiian mother—with no face, no name, no voice, no part in Ruth’s life other than the leaving of it. Now, knowing her name, reading her plea, Ruth felt only anger that this woman should intrude herself into Ruth’s life, at a time when that life had returned to something resembling normal. After all these years, now she wanted to be part of her life?
Ruth’s pulse was racing. She sat down on the living room couch, trying to regulate her breathing. On her last visit to their family doctor, Dr. Higuchi, he had warned her that she was in danger of becoming hypertensive.
“Mom!” Donnie yelled from outside. “Can we come in? I’m hungry!”
“I’m starving,” Peggy amplified.
Grateful for the distraction, Ruth hid the letter inside a book. She made three tuna fish sandwiches and ate lunch with her children. Watching them eagerly devour their food, the indoor baseball paled in significance and she was reminded of how adorable they could be. Their presence reassured her of all that she had in life—and no slip of paper could take that away.
After lunch the kids went out to play again and Ruth reluctantly reread Rachel Utagawa’s letter. Her anger had ebbed and she allowed herself to see the sorrow and regret written, not so invisibly, between the lines. Setsubō: she had heard her parents use this word at Manzanar.
Ruth heard her ten-year-old self ask Etsuko why her “Hawaiian mother” gave her away: “Didn’t she love me, like you do?” She remembered Etsuko’s response: “Oh, butterfly, I am sure she did. But she had no choice.” At the time Ruth didn’t understand that. As she grew older, she assumed it meant her mother was underage, or unmarried. She had never asked again.
Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know—or to let go of her resentment.
Could she ignore this woman’s setsubō—knowing that her parents had felt the same longing for something lost to them?
* * *
She hid the letter on the top shelf of her bedroom closet and did not mention it to Etsuko for fear it might upset her; the last thing she wanted to do was cast any doubt on how much she loved her mother. But over the course of the next three days she came to realize that she could not gainsay her “Hawaiian mother” what she said she longed for: “I would give anything in the world to hear her voice.” It
might turn out to be nothing more than that—Ruth certainly didn’t want more—but that much, at least, she could give her.
On Sunday morning Ruth feigned illness—an upset stomach, not far from the truth—and let Frank take the kids on the short walk to the Japanese Methodist Church, about a block and a half down Fifth Street. Etsuko had an even shorter walk: San Jose’s beautiful Buddhist Temple stood almost directly across the street. Once alone in the house, Ruth took the letter out of the closet. She read it over again, took a deep breath, then picked up the telephone and dialed the phone number given in the letter.
She heard the hiss and crackle of the radio-telephone connection between the mainland and Hawai'i—God only knew how much this call would cost—followed by a ring. Ruth fought a sudden, panicky impulse to hang up. Another ring—and then Ruth heard, across a gulf of three thousand miles, a woman’s voice, still groggy with sleep:
“Yes?”
She sounded a bit irritated, actually. Ruth belatedly remembered the time difference between California and Hawai'i. Damn. Well, no turning back.
“Is this … Rachel Utagawa?” she asked.
For a moment the only answer was the hiss of static.
“Hello?” Ruth repeated.
All grogginess was quickly gone: “Yes, this is she.”
“My name is Ruth Watanabe Harada.” Then, apologetically: “It’s three hours earlier in Hawai'i, isn’t it? I must’ve woken you up.”
“That—that’s all right,” the woman’s voice said. “I’m sorry, I … wasn’t quite … prepared for this.”
“Well,” Ruth said dryly, “that makes two of us.”
Good God, she thought. Her voice—it sounds so much like mine.
“Are you calling from … California?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. San Jose.” Desperate for something to say, Ruth started to explain how Rachel’s letter had gone to her parents’ old address in Florin, “but a girl at the local post office went to high school with me, and—”
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