Butterfly's Shadow

by Lee Langley

  No streets. No streetcars, just a line of coaches waiting to suck in unwilling passengers and spew them out a few miles further away, at their desert destination.

  Set in a shallow dust-bowl like a scattered house of cards stood row upon row of huts. Raw timber, tar-paper, crudely constructed, flimsy shacks. Joey recalled a long-ago walk with Nancy, looking for wild blackberries. They had come upon a cluster of huts thrown up by desperate and homeless men using whatever they could cull from the waste ground around them. The inmates had called such places Hooverville – a bitter joke at the expense of a president they held responsible for their plight. The huts before him now, geometrically placed in a grimly functional grid, formed the official equivalent of a Hooverville; a government-commissioned shanty town. But there was a fundamental difference: when the homeless had put up their scattered, patched and tattered dwellings they were free to come and go as they wished. Here, stumbling from the coaches, the new arrivals could see the campsite was ringed by barbed wire with watchtowers at the corners. In the watchtowers were guards, with machine guns. The guns were trained on the camp itself, for the enemy lay within.

  No one expected trouble on day one. The buses had disgorged them, shaky and exhausted, the walk to the distant gates was daunting. Children dragged their feet and soldiers called out mechanically, telling them to keep moving, khaki-clad sheepdogs rallying a tired flock.

  Mr Takahashi felt more than tired; he felt unwell, and he stumbled, tripping on loose stones.

  The day before, with his home clean and tidied, stacking dishes on shelves as though he were simply leaving on a short vacation, he had been approached by a neighbour, who had offered to buy his car.

  ‘I guess you won’t be needing it, where you’re going.’

  The tone was amiable and Mr Takahashi was not offended by the insensitivity. After all, the statement was true. He pondered what the car might be worth; he had looked after it carefully, maintained it in immaculate condition.

  His neighbour tapped a wheel thoughtfully with the toe of his shoe. ‘Tell you what: give you a dollar for it.’

  For a moment Mr Takahashi thought it was a little joke; the American sense of humour. Then he saw the man was serious. A sourness rose up in his throat, a nausea. He said levelly, ‘The car is not for sale.’

  ‘No? Suit yourself. Be a heap of rust before you see it again.’

  Long before, when Mrs Takahashi was still alive, the couple would drive out on a Sunday, heading east on the highway, then taking the back roads to a quiet fishing spot for Mr Takahashi. Though neither of them ever spoke of this, the setting was one that brought back their Tokyo childhood. In the distance Mount Hood loomed, its volcanic peak catching the sunlight. Below its slope the woods spread out, and curving below them was the river. Changing colour with the seasons, the scene unrolled before them like a Japanese woodcut.

  Now Mr Takahashi locked the door of the house and got into his car. Unhurriedly he followed the old route until he came, not to the fishing spot but to a place where the road ran alongside a high cliff overhanging the river. He got out of the car, released the brake and pushed hard – a small man, he needed all his force to get the vehicle moving. At last it inched forward, gained momentum and sped towards the edge. He watched as it flew on, beyond the rim. It seemed to hover for a moment, as though airborne, then dropped. There was a splash, a gurgling, and the car vanished beneath the dark blue water. He turned and walked back towards the road. He knew there was a filling station not far away. Somehow he would get a ride back to town.

  Mr Takahashi stumbled on towards the camp gates. His abdomen throbbed, sending flashes of pain to his groin. A young man with a scarred cheek offered a helping arm and he accepted, nodding politely. They walked on in silence, slower than the rest, so that gradually they fell behind, overtaken even by a tiny, white-haired old woman holding a toddler by the hand. One of the soldiers barked an order to ‘keep going!’ Neither of the men looked up or replied, the younger simply increasing his support so that he was half carrying his companion.

  They arrived at the gates and moved on through to the compound where Mr Takahashi disengaged himself and bowed briefly to his helper.

  Ichir bowed in return, carefully handing over the bag he had carried from the station.

  ‘You need a doctor, senpai.’

  Mr Takahashi wandered away clutching his bag, his free hand pressed unobtrusively to his side. All around him voices filled the air – frightened children crying, parents calling out anxiously, soldiers shouting orders. Bemused by the noise and uncertain where to go, his glasses thick with dust, Mr Takahashi had unknowingly circled back towards the barbed-wire fence and the gate. Startled by a shout, he quickened pace.

  From the other side of the compound Joey heard a soldier bellowing, one among many that made up the general pandemonium. When the shouts were repeated, louder and with increasing stridency, he glanced about to locate the source.

  More yells. A gunshot. A cry. Two shots in quick succession, a metallic counterpoint to the hubbub. Mr Takahashi staggered and turned. As he collapsed into the mud his face expressed bewilderment.

  People came running, shouting accusations. It was a misunderstanding, the soldier yelled, almost tearfully. He thought the prisoner was trying to escape.

  ‘He was heading for the wire, for the gate!’

  He had ordered the prisoner to stop. The man carried on walking towards the fence.

  ‘He shoulda stopped! I hollered loud enough!’

  He stared around at the now silent crowd.

  ‘He coulda been trying to escape!’

  A voice from the crowd: ‘He was sick! He barely made it from the station.’

  Sweating and scared, the soldier called for backup: these people had landed him in trouble.

  He was reprimanded. A senior officer pointed out that the men should remember not all prisoners understood English. (‘Well they friggin’ should,’ one guard muttered. ‘Bin here long enough.’)

  Mr Takahashi was carried to the hospital block. His registration details were noted; a number had become a statistic: the first camp ‘incident’.

  35

  Joey surveyed the barracks: absurdly insubstantial, set in straight lines like children’s building-block dwellings. No big bad wolf would have a problem here: a huff and a puff would blow them all down without difficulty.

  The huts were pitifully empty, all home comforts left behind. Theoretically, significant household goods – iceboxes, washing machines, valued furniture – were accepted for storage at the assembly centers ‘if crated and plainly marked with the name and address of the owner’. Much later Joey caught up with the reality: pianos, family heirlooms, lamps, crystal glasses, all carefully packed, crated and marked – and never seen again.

  Thin sheets of plywood divided each flimsy structure into half a dozen ‘apartments’ for four, six, eight or ten occupants, defined by the number of beds they could hold. Many of the plywood walls extended only part of the way to the ceiling, lit by a single, bare light bulb hanging above the rooms.

  A couple in front of Joey paused, hugging their possessions, to peer aghast through one of the doorways.

  The young wife whispered a word or two, turning to her husband, appalled. Pressing fingertips to her lips in distress, she lifted a hand in a nervous movement to smooth her hair.

  Joey caught the gesture, the curve of her cheek, and something fluttered at the edge of his mental vision: a woman, her head half turned, her rounded cheek, the collar of her kimono falling away from the nape of her neck, hair piled high. Fugitive, she was gone before he could study her. In his pocket a photograph of the same woman in a dark frock, gazing directly at the camera, hands firmly in her lap.

  A brief tour of inspection told Joey that one Tule Lake hut was much like another; the difference lay in the occupants. When Malinowski stepped ashore on his first Trobriand island and walked up the beach, he may not have been thinking of where he would sleep that night, bu
t soon enough the decision would need to be made. Joey had assumed the great man occupied a wood and thatch hut, one of the village structures that encircled the yam store, the spiritual centre of the community. Until he saw a photograph of Malinowski sitting outside a tent, and readjusted his mental picture: of course the professional observer needed a tent set apart; it provided him with privacy and a chance to write up his day’s work. Joey, surrounded by strangers as foreign to him as the islanders to the anthropologist, possessed no tent; he would have no privacy here, in this ‘village’ of shoddy boxes.

  The huts were built of cheap raw pine. As the wood dried, the planks had cracked and warped, pulling free of nails, the wood shrinking so that the dark knots contracted. When Joey touched one, the neat circle dropped out, leaving a hole.

  Behind him a voice: ‘This could be a Peeping Tom paradise.’

  Ichir had decided Joey would make a congenial room-mate. He plucked two strangers from the crowd and manoeuvred them through the door: Kazuo. Taro. Now room-mates.

  One by one, huts were filled. No squabbling, no pushing; tradition dictated that young deferred to old. Larger families took the bigger rooms, six or eight squeezed into a cramped living space, possessions piled against walls or stored under narrow army cots. No running water. In each room a pot bellied, wood-burning stove stood centre floor, steel stovepipe piercing the roof. No one was deceived into thinking this was a temporary holding place: a shoddy box without curtains, rugs or furniture was now home.

  On the first day Joey carried his tin plate to the mess hall and lined up with the rest at the counter. An elderly couple ahead of him stared with dismay at grey American meat and potatoes. They moved on, to the next dish.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Spam sushi.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘It’s a Hawaiian specialty.’

  ‘Ah!’

  They examined a dish of overcooked and pallid vegetables. Moved on.

  They accepted a spoonful of rice and found somewhere to sit. Tasted. Exchanged glances.

  ‘Undercooked,’ she whispered. ‘Burnt,’ he said. They nibbled the bread.

  The young ones in the line were equally unhappy. ‘What happened to the burgers?’

  ‘The hot dogs?’

  The mess hall guards watched, baffled: what was the problem with these people? Some of the best Japanese cooks in Portland had volunteered for the kitchen. What more did they want?

  The army delivered B-rations, cans by the crateload, blocks of cured meat, sacks of beans, rice, flour, sugar. The internees lined up. The garbage bins overflowed.

  Waiting in line became a part of daily life. Joey fell into line for the mess hall, the post room, the wash house and the toilet.

  Stepping out of the hut door after lights out, heading for the latrine block, he was picked up by a blinding beam: the searchlight from one of the watchtowers. It followed him to the latrines, and back to his hut, like a stage spotlight following the star. Without doors, or division stalls, there could be no privacy beyond the basic male and female separation.

  Dear Nancy, he began – a letter that, like many others, remained in his head, unwritten – I’m in limbo, surrounded by people I wouldn’t spend time with and whose state of mind I can’t understand. I hate the way they look – I mean the way they look at the guards: their smiling, bowing eagerness to be agreeable. Why should anyone be agreeable here? This is a place of wickedness and we should bang our tin plates on the table, rattle our cutlery, hurl rocks. I’m surprised they allow us knives to cut up our food, dangerous enemy aliens that we are. I’m thinking: I should organise a protest march, but who would take part? To the guards I’m one of the enemy shiftily disguised to look like an American. To the inmates I’m a puzzle, probably a spy . . .

  Writing letters in his head helped, to a point. Real letters were more difficult. Long ago, Joey had read and reread his father’s letters from Washington, those scraps scribbled in odd moments from the vets’ encampment on the bank of the Anacostia. The determined cheerfulness and circumscribed subject matter had rung false to him. But now he understood and saw those letters differently, he could decode them, now that he found himself faced with writing home.

  He skimmed over everyday matters: the weather, ‘changeable’; the way people were settling in, ‘surprisingly well’; the food, ‘home-cooking it ain’t’. None of this bore much resemblance to the truth. The weather was enervating, the food disgusting, the old people dazed and helpless, the young angry. He made no mention of the sirens that blasted them awake in the morning; of quiet, hopeless weeping, of snores or squabbles from the adjoining rooms. Nothing about sickness or death, nor of the ever-watchful eye of the searchlight. He saw that there was a convention to the writing of letters home: you did not moan on the page and you tried to find ways to cheer up the reader. When Nancy’s letters arrived, strewn with little jokes, drawings, and a line or two from a favourite poem, he became aware that she too was obeying the rules. ‘Well, we had the rose festival, as usual . . .’ She described the patriotic floral banners carried through the streets. ‘But no parade of automobiles smothered in blooms this year.’ She did not mention the shortage of gas, so the letter reached him uncensored.

  Others were less adept at navigating the rules: sometimes letters were delivered with lines blacked out, or scissored from the page. Parcels were searched insensitively.

  Ahead of Joe, collecting her mail, a woman asked, politely, ‘Why have you slashed this garment please?’

  ‘Checking for contraband, smuggled items.’

  ‘What can be smuggled in the hem of a skirt?’

  ‘Who’s to know? That’s the point, lady.’

  One day Mrs Yamada, the young wife from the next room asked Joey, diffidently, ‘For what reason are you here?’

  ‘My mother comes from Nagasaki.’ Comes, not came: she’s still there. Isn’t she?

  Mrs Yamada studies him closely, trying to find some visible confirmation of his words.

  ‘Her name is Cho-Cho.’

  ‘Ah. A beautiful name. How does she write it?’

  How does she write it? The question is incomprehensible.

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  She smiles again. ‘There are different ways of writing names. The characters –’ She sees his confusion and moves on, tactfully.

  ‘So. Beautiful name, symbolic of transformation. Caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly. There are many stories about butterflies. Mostly sad.’

  He recalls his childhood name, the word his mother sometimes used when she called to him. He speaks it aloud – ‘Kanashimi’ – and Mrs Yamada repeats the word and nods, smiling: ‘Ah. It means “sorrow”. Also “trouble”.’

  He had been well named, then.

  Later, she confides that her marriage to Mr Yamada had taken place two days before they had to leave their home for internment.

  ‘This is our honeymoon.’

  Ichir became exasperated by Joey’s refusal to join in, be part of the group.

  ‘Lighten up, man, or you’ll go crazy in here. You laugh or you lose it.’

  He helped set up a loudspeaker system in the canteen. Someone magicked in a jukebox. The young crowded in, clustered, relaxing to the familiar beat: Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Harry James and his new singer, Frankie Sinatra.

  But Joey obstinately remained outside the stream of camp life. Stranded in an interior exile he used observation as a tool: for him this was not imprisonment, it was extreme fieldwork. Malinowski urged the study of primitive institutions as living, functioning realities; he had looked at sea-washed shores, yam gardens and complex kinship laws; here the exotic was set in a mundane bleakness. Inside the bare huts Joey noted colourful posters and hand-painted pictures being pinned to walls.

  A truck pulled in at the gate loaded with scrap timber which vanished before nightfall. In the next few days, glancing through windows as he passed, he saw the rough planks reinvented as bookshelves, dressers, frames to be draped with c
loth as room dividers. Curtains were soon improvised to prevent guards or curious outsiders like Joey from looking in.

  From the sidelines he saw how a social order was established – committees, hierarchies. The helpers and the helped. Where there were children, there was a schoolroom and teachers, albeit without desks or chairs. Where there were sickbeds, nurses. Project farm workers needed? Four hundred volunteered. Maintenance men? Another four hundred. Construction workers, garbage disposers, janitors, firemen, transport drivers. Round the barracks optimistic women planted shrubs, hedges, and flower beds to soften the stark environment. Old men slowly created a Japanese garden in a shadowy corner, carrying rocks, gravel, a stunted tree, watering obsessively to encourage moss.

  Fifteen thousand people, bobbing rudderless on a sea of anxiety and fear determined to build a viable social structure by recreating within the confines of the barbed-wire fences a simulacrum of a normal world.

  As the others organised their days, improved their surroundings, watered flowers, grew herbs, Joey found himself maddened by their docility, their acceptance of injustice, the way they bowed and smiled; the way they listened, dark eyes intent behind their heavy glasses. He was not one of them, not part of this keep busy, keep despair at bay movement. Perversely, he was irritated by their skill and speed and ingenuity; he did not accept the nothing-to-be-done-about-it fatalism of Shikata ga na – one of the few phrases he had learned to translate.

  But inside the cramped, comfortless hut, barriers slowly dissolved. Kazuo was training to be an accountant and had been preparing for an exam when the Defense Command Order was pinned to the wall in his office; Taro’s family had arranged for him to marry a rich girl in Tokyo, when Pearl Harbor changed their plans; now parents and younger siblings occupied a hut further down the row.

  ‘They’re not happy; they wanted me to squeeze in there with them, where they could keep an eye on me.’