by Kirby Larson
Laughing, we walked, arm in arm, across camp to class.
Tuesday, November 24, 1942
DeeDee —
Big surprise: It rained again. I watched one of the little first-grade girls try to make her way to school. First, she’d reach down and tug on the top edge of one boot to lift her foot out of the muck. Then she’d put that foot down and do the same thing with the other boot. At the rate she was going, she wouldn’t make it to school until Christmas! I asked her if she wanted help and she said yes. I carried her piggyback the rest of the way.
Thursday, November 26, 1942
DeeDee —
Thanksgiving Day. Pop says I should make a list of the things I’m thankful for. Here goes:
Hank’s safe (as far as we know)
Mrs. Matsui is feeling a little bit better
It’s a short list. As far as I can see, there’s not much to be thankful for in this place.
Friday, November 27, 1942
DeeDee —
I finally got a letter from Trixie. She said she was so, so, so sorry she hadn’t written sooner. She’s dance team captain, which is keeping her hopping. She and Eddy broke up and that is fine with her. She has her eye on this new boy from California, anyway. “He’s a dreamboat!” Then she said she hated to be the one to break it to me, but Debbie Sue and Bud have been an item since October. It was funny—that news doesn’t even make me sad. It seems like some other Piper was Bud’s girl, not me.
At the end of the letter, Trixie promised “on her honor” — which was underlined about twelve times—to be better about writing back in the future. She signed her name with huge loopy flowers dotting the i’s.
There was a P.S. that said, “I can’t wait until you get home.”
But I wasn’t so sure about that.
Saturday, November 28, 1942
DeeDee —
They showed an old movie in Block 8 this afternoon. A Western. But it was better than nothing!
Afterward, Jim asked if I wanted to take a walk. I looked around for Betty but she had disappeared. Fink.
“Okay,” I said. We slipped into our coats and started walking.
“So did the shelf work out okay?”
“Yes. Thanks again. It was swell of you.” The notion that Jim had a crush on me made me feel stiff and awkward.
He blew into his hands to warm them. “So, I hear my sister blabbed.”
I tried to act innocent. “What do you mean?”
He tugged on the pom-pom on my hat. “Never play poker. You cannot keep a straight face.”
“Jim, look.” I grabbed his arm so he’d stop walking. “You are a great guy. And I like you a lot —”
“As a big brother.” Even behind his glasses, I could see the hurt in his brown eyes.
I nodded. I had been thinking about this ever since Betty spilled the beans. Thinking about how I’d felt about Bud — kind of a silly, lighter-than-air feeling. A feeling I didn’t have for Jim.
“Okay then.” Jim put his hands in his pockets and we started walking again. After a few steps, he stopped. “Still friends?” he asked.
I squeezed his arm. “Always friends,” I answered.
Monday, November 30, 1942
DeeDee —
I still can’t believe it. It seemed like Mrs. Matsui was getting stronger, getting better. But they took her to the hospital last night. Pneumonia. She died this morning.
Mr. Matsui hardly knew we were there when Pop and I went to see him. Pop did most of the talking. I sat there, trying not to look at the empty bed. In the back of my mind, it seemed like there was something was different about the room.
It was the walls. They were empty.
“Where is Mt. Rainier?” I asked. “The sunflowers?” I didn’t see the happy cat, either.
He didn’t answer. After a minute or so, he pointed at the potbelly stove.
Tuesday, December 1, 1942
DeeDee —
Something’s wrong. Mr. Matsui went out to gather bitterwood after lunch and he’s not back yet.
And it’s started to snow.
Wednesday, December 2, 1942
DeeDee —
Still snowing. Mr. Matsui’s still gone.
Thursday, December 3, 1942
DeeDee —
They asked for volunteers for a search party. Pop didn’t want me to go but Mr. Matsui’s my friend. I had to.
Jim and I were in a group together. He’d gone wood collecting with Mr. Matsui before so he thought he knew which way he might have gone.
This is so hard to write.
Jim and I were the ones to find him.
About 2:30 this afternoon. At first, it looked like he was asleep. So peaceful. A pile of bitterwood branches lay next to him. But something about him told me he wasn’t asleep. I hung back and Jim bent to see if he was breathing. He asked if I wanted to go for help or should he. Even though I’d never been around a dead person before, I said I’d stay. I covered Mr. Matsui with the blanket I’d been carrying and sat on the frozen ground.
I’d heard Pop preach enough funerals that the 23rd Psalm kept playing in my head: “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” There was nothing green about the place where Mr. Matsui was lying down, but I recited it out loud anyway. It comforted me to imagine him in a green field, somewhere, walking with his wife, looking for the perfect place to set up his easel.
It wasn’t long before Jim was back with the sheriff and some other men. One of them wrapped a blanket around me. I hadn’t realized I was shivering until then. Someone else gave me some hot tea to drink while the sheriff looked everything over. He found matches in Mr. Matsui’s pocket. “I wonder why he didn’t use these to start a fire,” the sheriff asked. “Plenty of sagebrush out here to burn. It might not have kept him real warm, but it would’ve worked as a signal.”
I started shivering even harder then. I pulled the blanket around me as tight as I could, but I still couldn’t stop.
Jim came over and rested his hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”
I couldn’t find my voice to answer. I didn’t think I would ever be as sad as I was at that moment, thinking of Mr. Matsui so lonely and heartbroken that he wouldn’t even use those matches. You know how people say they can feel their hearts break in two? That is what I felt like today. My heart couldn’t hold itself together anymore and tore right apart, the two jagged edges scraping the inside of my chest.
Jim helped me back to the Blue Box. He said my name and when I looked at him in answer, he just shook his head.
Pop made me some more hot tea when I got home, sweetening it with sugar he’d hidden somewhere. He stoked the stove and covered me with every blanket in the house but I couldn’t stop shivering.
Friday, December 4, 1942
DeeDee —
I stayed in bed all day. Pop offered to bring Betty for a visit, but I pulled the blanket over my head and didn’t answer.
My heart is still in two pieces. If I concentrate on lying very, very still it doesn’t hurt so much.
Once, I dozed off and when I woke up, the first thing I saw was the shelf Jim made with my wooden menagerie on it. I thought about Mr. Matsui gathering the bitterwood, inspecting each piece carefully with his sparkling eyes. He told me he read the wood, to find out what animal was hidden within. Then he would reach for his pocketknife and his wrinkled hands would patiently carve each feather or foot or face. One animal took him so many hours but he never seemed to mind.
He’d had so much taken away from him but he gladly gave these perfect creations away.
To me.
I will never, ever forget him.
Saturday, December 5, 1942
DeeDee —
Pop made popcorn and brought the chessboard into my room and we played game after game after game.
I can’t ever remember my father spending a whole day with me. I know he had a lot of things to do. Getting ready for church. Getting ready for the memorial. But he spent the day with me
. It was like being wrapped up in the softest, fluffiest quilt in the world.
I have finally stopped shivering.
Sunday, December 6, 1942
DeeDee —
Pop said I didn’t have to but I wanted to go to the memorial for Mr. Matsui. It was in Block 28, in the social hall where we hold church. Pop did the service so I sat with Mrs. Harada. We held hands the whole way through and afterward she gave me a hug, with an extra squeeze. It was her way of telling me she wanted to squeeze the sad out. I wish a hug really could do that.
While the adults gathered in small clumps, Jim came up to me. “Let’s get some fresh air.” Our breath hung like comic strip bubbles in the cold air as we paced around. We walked by the well, around the high school in Block 23, and past an area where there was talk of building a ball field come spring.
Jim turned me so my back was to the camp buildings. In front of me stretched a patch of frozen ground that went on forever. “I hate this place,” I said. “Everything about it is ugly.”
“Now it’s ugly,” Jim said. “But there’s beauty out there.”
I told him he was nuts. He told me to pretend it was summer. July. August.
I shivered. I didn’t think my imagination was that good.
He started talking. About rows of zucchini and carrots and cucumbers and radishes and peas.
“I don’t like peas,” I said.
“You’ll like these. Fresh. Right out of the pod.” He kept talking, pointing farther off to where there would be cabbage and potatoes and broccoli and eggplant. And sunflowers.
His words were like Mr. Matsui’s paintbrushes, sweeping color and life across the blank, barren canvas of Minidoka. I could see it — see the gardens and could almost taste the harvest.
He put his arm around me in a big-brother hug. “Every time we make something beautiful out of something ugly,” he said, “we will keep Mr. Matsui’s memory alive.”
We stood there, together, puffing clouds of breath, until our feet were numb.
“It’s so unfair,” I said, finally.
“A lot of life is,” he said. “Some of it we can’t do a darned thing about. But we can make a difference in some situations. And I think if we can, we should.”
Then without a word, we turned together and walked back to Block 28.
And back to life in the camp.
Monday, December 7, 1942
DeeDee —
As if we needed a reminder, our Social Studies teacher made a big deal out of it being the one-year anniversary of Pearl Harbor. She said it was the perfect opportunity to discuss the implications of Japan’s aggression. I could hardly believe my ears. The coal in the classroom’s potbelly stove has more feelings than she does. Despite the fact that all of the kids were staring out the windows or at the floor, she forged ahead, trying to start a discussion about whether the relocation of the Japanese was the right thing to do. Red spots popped up on her cheeks and her voice got shrill as she kept pushing for someone to say something. She called on several of the Nisei students by name, but they looked away and wouldn’t answer her. What did she expect?
Then she called on me. My stomach rolled around like a tumbleweed. What did she want me to say? Yes, I thought sending nice men like Mr. Harada away was a good idea? Yes, locking up the people I’d grown up with was a reasonable thing to do? Yes, making any human being live in a camp like Minidoka was the way to win a war?
Though there were so many thoughts crashing around in my head, I didn’t say any of them out loud. In the end, I shrugged, too, like everyone else had, and studied the top of the picnic table we use for desks. When I looked up, I caught Betty’s eye. She nodded.
One small victory in this crummy war.
Thursday, December 10, 1942
DeeDee —
I’ve got such a nasty cold that Pop told me to stay home from school. That was fine with me. I feel too lousy even to write letters, though I owe one to Hank.
A girl named Jeanne Takahashi is staying with us for a few days. She’s on her way to a nursing job in Chicago. She fluffed my pillows, made me cinnamon toast and tea all day, and put cool cloths on my forehead.
I told her she’s the best nurse in the world and she smiled and said she hoped they thought so in Chicago because at her last job all they could see was that she was Japanese.
Saturday, December 12, 1942
DeeDee —
The camp manager gave out extra passes so people could go into town to do their Christmas shopping. Pop took a carload in the Blue Box, including Betty. She and I met up and shopped for the perfect presents to give our big brothers. I decided on a nice Parker 51 pen — so Hank can write me more letters! — and Betty bought a Zane Grey book for Jim because he’s read everything in the Minidoka library.
We were so happy with our purchases that we decided to celebrate with ice cream sodas. Betty’s partial to strawberry sodas but I’m a chocolate girl, through and through. We walked over to Twin Falls Drug, which has the biggest soda fountain in the city. But when we got there, we saw a new sign in their window. NO JAPS.
Betty said it was so cold, who cared about ice cream, but I said, let’s go over to the Falls Café. The only sign in their window said BLUE PLATE SPECIAL, $1.00. We went in and ordered our sodas.
But neither of us finished our drinks. I guess we’d both lost our taste for something sweet.
Tuesday, December 15, 1942
DeeDee —
Margie called today. Long distance! It must’ve cost a fortune but it was so good to hear her voice. First she talked to Pop about the house and work and Stan, who’s still in England. When I got on with her, we didn’t talk about anything important and that was the best part of all. Ten whole minutes of girl stuff.
It was better than a whole case of Sky Bars.
Wednesday, December 16, 1942
DeeDee —
You can only get one glass of milk a day in the dining hall now. That’s kind of hard on the little kids.
We finally started our typing unit at school. Because of the shortage of typewriters, the teacher drew an oversized keyboard on a piece of wrapping paper that she stapled to the wall. During class, she tells us which fingers to use to press which letters. Like, “Right pointer finger, type j three times. Left pointer finger, type f three times.” We have to pretend our laps are keyboards.
It’s pretty silly.
Thursday, December 17, 1942
DeeDee —
I looked back in my diary to see when the camp manager promised to have the bathrooms working. It was November 1st! Over a month later and we’re still using latrines. Which are flooded from all the rain. I try hard not to use them while I’m at school but Betty and the others don’t have a choice.
Friday, December 18, 1942
DeeDee —
Pea-soup foggy and cold. It’s hard to believe, but the food is getting even worse in the dining halls. They serve fish every Friday, usually a nasty black cod, which tastes even worse than it smells. And it seems like most weeks are starting to have two Fridays in them!
Monday, December 21, 1942
DeeDee —
For the past two weeks, Mikey and Tommy haven’t talked about anything else but the Christmas trees that were coming to their elementary school. (They go to Huntville, in Block 10; Stafford Elementary is for the kids in Blocks 21 through 44.) I’d see them in the dining hall and they’d say, “Do you think they’ll come today, Piper?” Or I’d pick Betty up to walk to school and they’d ask me.
Well, today was the “big” day, the one the boys had been waiting for. And what a bust! Nothing but scrawny and pathetic excuses for trees. Some are just branches. The disappointment from the elementary school hung as thick as a winter fog over the camp. I mean, when you’re a little kid, is there anything more exciting than a Christmas tree?
I couldn’t stand Betty’s little brothers’ sad, puppy-dog eyes. She and I put our heads together about what to do. The answer was practically right
in front of us! Sagebrush. That is one thing there is no shortage of here. After school, we wandered around behind Block 29, where the Victory gardens are going to be planted come spring. It took a while but we found a tree-shaped clump of sagebrush and dragged it back to the high school. We “requisitioned” some silver spray paint from the art supply cupboard and went to work. After supper, we snuck the “tree” into the boys’ classroom. Mrs. Harada had a supply of red ribbon she’d given to us. Betty tied bits of it around whole walnuts and hung them in the silver. I brought the animals Mr. Matsui had carved for me and set them in the branches.
Betty posed next to our “tree” and I snapped a photo to send to Hank. Then she took my Kodak from me. “You’re always behind the camera,” she said. “You need to be in front of it once in a while!” Before we turned off the lights to leave, we stood back and admired our creation. I’d give anything to see the boys’ faces in the morning!