Silver Like Dust

by Kimi Cunningham Grant

  Though few Japanese families possessed guns and even fewer owned swords, those who did have a samurai sword hanging on a living-room wall were forced to give up something of great sentimental value. Obaachan’s family did not have any—they were not from that social class—but she was still aware of the significance of these swords. In addition to their monetary value, samurai swords were family heirlooms. In Japan, the samurai always came from the highest social class, and so having a sword to hang on the wall was not only a piece of history but also a status symbol, a reminder of a family’s high social rank in the old land.

  A few Nisei, or second-generation Japanese, mostly young men educated in American universities, pointed out in Rafu Shimpo editorials that as US citizens, they had the right to bear arms according to the Constitution. The government ignored the argument, which did not inspire protests or civil disobedience on the part of Japanese Americans or their neighbors. And things were only going to get worse. By March 30, the option of evacuating voluntarily came to an end; General DeWitt announced that all people of Japanese ancestry were strictly prohibited from leaving the military zone. They were ordered to stay put until “arrangements” were made.

  Chapter 3

  ON MY SECOND TRIP TO FLORIDA, A YEAR LATER, Obaachan announces that to celebrate my twenty-third birthday, she is taking me to a Thai restaurant a few miles south of her house, a place she has been to once and thinks I will like. We are seated on a second level, one that allows a bird’s-eye view of the entire restaurant, and right beside us is a giant saltwater fish tank. Obaachan knows that she will order the Goong Gah Tiem, or garlic shrimp, which is what she had last time, with my uncle Jay. I have more trouble deciding among the many choices and try to read quickly through the detailed descriptions.

  “My uncle Kisho used to own a restaurant,” Obaachan says, closing her menu. “A Chinese one, not Japanese. Before the war.”

  “Chinese?” I say, a little perplexed. Japanese people are notoriously snooty about their food. Once, my mother discovered a bottle of La Choy in my refrigerator, and reproached me for buying Chinese soy sauce. Japanese people buy Japanese products, she explained, frustrated by my offense. I should know better. A week later, she handed me a new bottle of Kikkoman.

  “People liked Chinese food more than Japanese, I guess,” Obaachan continues. “It’s probably still true. You see Chinese restaurants just about everywhere, and even though more and more hakujin eat sushi nowadays, Japanese restaurants are not as common.”

  Obaachan’s father and Uncle Kisho had come to America together, the only members of their family to leave Japan, and they shared a close relationship. Her father was the older of the two, and like many Japanese immigrants at the time, he married the woman his parents had arranged for him. But Uncle Kisho had done things differently. Perhaps the idea of waiting for his picture bride to arrive at a designated American harbor had not appealed to him as it had to Obaachan’s father. Instead, Uncle Kisho saved his money, opened his restaurant, and waited, confident that in time, the perfect woman would come along. Eventually he met Maki, right there in Los Angeles.

  When Uncle Kisho met Maki, her life was in shambles. Her first husband had died, and she was left to care for four daughters all alone. “I have no idea how she managed,” Obaachan says, shaking her head. “They didn’t have life insurance policies back then, and I don’t know how she would’ve supported and raised a family on her own.” Obaachan seems somewhat hesitant to discuss these relatives, but I’m curious and probe a little. After Maki married Uncle Kisho, all four of her daughters were sent back to Japan to be raised by a relative. (My grandmother does not know why the daughters did not stay in America, but she admits this arrangement seems a little odd.) The eldest committed suicide. (When I press for more information about this young woman, Obaachan offers this: “She was a little bit retarded, I think.” When I ask her what she means by retarded, she shrugs. “I don’t know. She was different. Something was different about her.”) Later, when the remaining three were in the United States, the second daughter ran off with a boyfriend, a guy who worked at Uncle Kisho’s restaurant. Uncle Kisho had to track her down and bring her home. Then he arranged a marriage—not to the man she’d run off with, but to another man.

  “It was very Japanese, what he did,” Obaachan says, taking her cloth napkin and placing it in her lap. “And it was what any Japanese father would have done back then. You didn’t just run off like that.” Doing so only brought shame to the family. There were customs that you were expected to follow. Proper procedures. Even if a marriage wasn’t formally arranged, there were certain steps that had to lead up to it, like asking a representative to vouch for your respectability and integrity. “Poor Uncle Kisho. He and Aunt Maki had a lot of sadness in life. A lot of disappointment. Right before the evacuation, Kisho sold his restaurant. Probably for a pittance.”

  The server, a slim man with shiny black hair, returns to our table to take our order, his hands folded together formally, his face attentive. Obaachan tells him what she wants, and I request the Pad Ga Pow, stir-fried chicken with basil. He smiles, his crooked teeth large and bright, and promises that we will not be disappointed with our decisions. He looks at my grandmother. “Especially you,” he says. “The Goong Gah Tiem is one of our finest dishes.”

  Dinner at the Thai restaurant, though not all that extravagant, is an outing my grandmother has likely had to save for. She is not in the most comfortable of financial situations at this point in her life, and she lives frugally and cautiously to ensure that she does not run out of money. Her children take care of her—my uncle paid for her car and my aunt bought the house she lives in—but I believe she accepts these gifts only because she has no choice. She has arrived, as she likes to say, at the age when her children now tell her what to do.

  In March of 1942, Obaachan’s father began urging Uncle Kisho to sell the Chinese restaurant while he still could and then move into the house on Pico Street so they could all be together. For some time only three people had been living in the house, Obaachan and her parents, so there was lots of room. When Uncle Kisho and Aunt Maki and her two youngest daughters moved in, that raised the total to seven. Shortly thereafter, Obaachan’s sister, Sachiko, and her husband moved in, too. Eight and a half months pregnant at the time, Sachiko was due with her first child any day.

  I can imagine my own father doing the same thing, were he in a similar situation, gathering together what pieces of his family he could, trying to maintain a sense of calm and solidarity during a stressful time. Obaachan’s two brothers were no longer in Los Angeles. By this point, Ren, the one who’d been asked to resign from Fresno Air Force Base, had been drafted by the US Army and had left for basic training in Arkansas, and Jack, Obaachan mentions briefly, was also gone.

  “Where was Jack?” I ask.

  She looks away and mumbles that she does not remember, which I sense is not entirely true, but when I press her for answers, she reminds me, peering over her glasses and looking at me sternly, that we agreed not to talk much about the siblings. She takes a deep breath, pausing, so that her silence holds its weight with me. “I was telling you about the house,” she says then, shifting my attention to a subject more comfortable for her. “Sure, it was crowded, with nine of us living there,” she says. “But we knew it was temporary. By that time we understood that we would not be in LA for long, and we figured they would send us off by the household. Papa believed that if we were under the same roof, we would have a better chance of getting sent to the same place.”

  The server passes, slowing and glancing at our glasses to make sure that we haven’t run out of water, and says the food will be out in just a few minutes. He smiles and continues to a nearby table, again with his hands folded in his official style. He begins to take their order, nodding and repeating each request. Obaachan takes a sip of her water, trying to avoid the ice because it hurts her teeth, and looks at me from across the table. “In other words, if we had to leave o
ur home, we wanted to leave it together.”

  In the end, her father was right: families were evacuated by the household. But there was a hitch in his plan that he hadn’t anticipated. Just after Sachiko had her baby, she and her husband announced that they were leaving for Sacramento to be with her husband’s family. Although Obaachan’s father might have been devastated to learn that he would be separated from his daughter and new grandson, he knew that in Japanese families, the husband’s word—even if that husband was a son-in-law—was not to be questioned. He did not oppose their decision.

  “I got to meet my little nephew before we were sent away,” Obaachan says, “but then, as soon as my sister recovered, the three of them moved out. They didn’t say much except that their plans had changed. That’s how they ended up in Arkansas during the war,” Obaachan explains. “They went with his family, not ours.”

  For the next few years, the only thing that would allow my grandmother to stay in touch with her sister was letters—letters that were, in accordance with military protocol, always opened and read by the authorities before they were delivered. Knowing this, I think I begin to understand a little better the detached relationships my grandmother now shares with her siblings. For some, hardship and separation create a special bond, a closeness that cannot be understood by outsiders. This didn’t happen with my grandmother and her family. Instead, they seem to have drifted apart during the war, and the rift never repaired itself. Although her sister and two brothers are still alive, Obaachan corresponds sparingly with them: Christmas and birthday cards are their only communication. The evacuation splintered the family, much more permanently than they might have imagined back in 1942. Their letters would not be enough to hold them together.

  Across every city in the new “military zone,” posters were stapled to telephone poles and taped to store windows. Labeled “Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry,” they applied to anyone with as little as one-sixteenth Japanese blood. These instructions were also listed in the newspapers, and Papa, who could only read Japanese, read them in the Rafu Shimpo. Dated April 1, 1942, the instructions stated that everyone would be removed from the designated areas by noon of April 7. Obaachan’s family had six days to pack. The instructions, however, were vague, raising questions that were overwhelming:

  “Evacuees must carry with them on departure for the Reception Center, the following property:

  a. Bedding and linens (no mattress) for each member of the family.

  b. Toilet articles for each member of the family.

  c. Extra clothing for each member of the family.

  d. Sufficient knives, forks, spoons, plates, bowls and cups for each member of the family.

  e. Essential personal effects for each member of the family …”

  But what kind of extra clothing should they take? Heavy winter coats or lightweight summer dresses? What were “essential personal effects”? And how many toiletries would they need exactly? To make things more difficult, each person was limited to what he or she could carry in terms of how many parcels. No extra luggage was permitted.

  At last the server returns with our food, one hot plate in each hand. He places the garlic shrimp in front of Obaachan, and then sets down my Pad Ga Pow. The sweet smells of shallots and basil pour off my plate. The chicken, with its savory sauce and scattered bell peppers, looks delicious. Obaachan gushes over the meal, tells the server she was here a few months back, with her son, and that today we’re celebrating my birthday. The server makes a slight bow, grins, and backs away. For a few minutes, we eat in silence, enjoying the unusual blends of flavors.

  Then, Obaachan chuckles as she remembers something. “What I recall being most anxious about with the packing was the “toiletries” part. We thought about sanitary napkins, and we were terrified by the prospect of running out. We bought hundreds of them!” She and the two cousins went out and bought large pieces of canvas and then sewed them into giant sacks. They filled each one with sanitary napkins, stuffing it with as many thick white pads as they could. “We didn’t know if we’d be able to buy them where we went. We didn’t know anything.” She sighs. “You just had to guess, and try to prepare as best you could.”

  Her mother’s heart condition further complicated those preparations. First, there was the decision as to whether or not she should even go along. Her doctors had spoken with the authorities and had obtained special permission for her to stay behind in Los Angeles. She would simply live in the hospital as a long-term patient. To an extent, knowing Mama was in the hands of qualified physicians would be reassuring to Papa. After all, there might not be doctors, hospitals, clean facilities, or beds where they were going. The conditions might be too harsh; the weather, too severe. In fact, the trip itself might be too much for her. The doctors had warned from the start that even under the strictest supervision and the most ideal circumstances, Mama’s weak heart would not last long.

  But on the other hand, the idea of leaving her behind was deeply unsettling; there was no guarantee that they would or could come back. Ever. And in the meantime, would the family be able to keep in touch with her? If her health grew worse, would someone contact Papa? Would he be able to come say goodbye? Would the family ever see her again? In the end Papa decided that Mama should not stay behind. Despite the risks involved in what might lie ahead, having her close to him and knowing he could be there for her if she needed him was most important.

  On one of the six afternoons they had to prepare for their departure, Papa and Uncle Kisho went shopping at a department store downtown and picked up matching winter coats for their wives: thick, gray ones with fur collars. Although they did not know whether they would actually need them, the possibility of facing a winter without a warm coat was not a challenge they were willing to ask their wives to risk. Obaachan’s father also picked up some metal camping plates and an electric hot plate. These articles, along with the sheets, towels, and clothing, were added to the suitcases. Item by item, the family was checking off the list.

  But packing was only one part of preparing to leave. The house, the furniture, the belongings that could not be carried—arrangements had to be made for all of these things. While many people chose to store their furniture and appliances in governmentrun warehouses, Papa wanted to avoid having to do that. The posted instructions made it clear that there would be no guarantees regarding items left in those warehouses: “The United States Government through its agencies will provide for the storage at the sole risk of the owner of the more substantial household items, such as iceboxes, washing machines, pianos and other heavy furniture …” What that meant, Papa understood, was that there was no way of knowing whether those things would be there when he returned.

  Instead, he found a tenant to rent his house, fully furnished: a minister, an African American man whose church was nearby. As soon as the family found out where they would be sent and what their mailing address would be, Papa would contact the minister. For his part, the minister promised to send the agreed-upon amount each month by a certain date. Papa felt good about the deal. Compared to many Japanese, who had no choice but to sell off their farms and belongings for far less than their worth, he had not made such a bad arrangement.

  “None of our non-Japanese neighbors were willing to help,” Obaachan says, shaking her head and setting her fork on her plate. “They wouldn’t store things for us, or assist in any way. These were people we’d known for years, people who’d watched my siblings and me grow up. But all of a sudden, they wanted nothing to do with us. We were on our own.”

  Like Obaachan’s father, Mama, too, had her decisions to make. Although she was not a sentimental woman, she insisted on holding on to her Noritake china, the lovely white set her parents had sent from Japan as a wedding gift. She would not, as her friends and neighbors did, sell something so valuable for a meager amount, nor would she smash them to pieces, as some desperate women did in a flurry of spite. She would not give them up if she could help it. Papa, alway
s resourceful, found a church that was willing to store his wife’s beloved china.

  “My sister has it all now,” Obaachan says with a smile. “She showed it to me the last time I went to visit her, in LA, a few years ago. My mother never made it back to the West Coast, you know, but Sachiko must have gone to the church and picked up Mama’s china, after the war.” Her voice quiets at this memory. The irony is still painful. “It’s strange, what survives, and what doesn’t.”

  The day of evacuation finally arrived. April sunshine tumbled auspiciously on the yard, and the forsythias Papa had spent years caring for bloomed in bright yellow splashes in front of the house. Mama, using a smooth black cane Aunt Maki had purchased from a family friend, stepped cautiously off the porch. Obaachan held on to her mother’s arm, supporting her. Mama’s hair was twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she wore a gray tweed suit. Papa made one last trip through each room of the house, doing a final check, or maybe saying goodbye to all that he had worked for.

  At the sidewalk, the minister waited with his wife. Papa handed him the keys, and the minister reminded Obaachan to send him their new address as soon as she learned what it was. Because her father could not read or write in English, Obaachan would be the one responsible for corresponding with the minister. The men shook hands, and Papa managed a muffled “thank you” in English, one of the few phrases he knew. As they reached the corner of the lot, Obaachan took a final look at the house, and then at Mama, who seemed tired already, leaning on her cane. The minister’s wife raised her arm in a wave. Papa never turned back.