But now . . . could a fifty-six-year-old man successfully embark on marriage and a family so late in life?
Kenichi hoped the answer was yes. There were certainly examples, back in the old country, of samurai who’d served in battle so long that they didn’t get around to taking a wife or fathering children until their fearsome samurai moustaches were already tinged with silver. But Kenichi was no samurai and no longer lived in the land where such legendary men ruled the history books.
Kenichi’s inquiry was answered by a family named Miyamoto. Kenichi could write to their daughter, they said, and if what he wrote pleased her, he could send for her passage across the Pacific. The young woman in question, Shizue, was twenty-two years of age and had never been married. She was pretty enough but possessed “a certain defect,” her family warned. Around the time Shizue turned sixteen, she had begun to suffer from terrible seizures that came and went without obvious provocation or warning. Kenichi understood what this meant: Shizue was an epileptic.
Her condition had taken a toll on Shizue’s personality over the years. She had been a confident, friendly child. But suffering multiple embarrassing epileptic fits as a teenager had changed her. She had grown so that she was perpetually nervous and unable to conceal her condition. At tea ceremony, her hand shook so as to spill the tea. She could not answer simple questions without speaking in a flustered stammer. Shizue was awkward in a world that did not embrace awkwardness in any form. As things stood at that time, many matchmakers considered epilepsy a disfigurement, and her increasingly shy, nervous disposition only emphasized the fact of her affliction. The Miyamoto family was at pains to find Shizue a proper marital match. Perhaps, they thought, our daughter is better suited to another continent. Perhaps, living among foreigners, she will not seem so strange or have to endure the daily embarrassments of being . . . the way she is.
And so they gave their twenty-two-year-old daughter permission to exchange letters with Kenichi. He had, after all, guaranteed that he did not mind Shizue’s condition, his property and fortune were sound, and he had further promised that whomever he took for a wife would have a life of comfort and security. It was not traditional for a man and woman to correspond before arranging a marriage, but clearly he was not a traditional man.
For his part, Kenichi insisted on exchanging letters because he wanted to know something about the mind of his future bride. He dreaded the thought of a young woman sailing halfway across the world because her parents forced her to, arriving on the orchards and hating her new life. Such an arrangement would pain his tired heart, after all his hard work and struggle to make a good life for himself in the New World.
I am much older than you, he wrote. I do not know if you imagined marrying a man of my age.
According to the traditions of courting, young women were obligated to point out their flaws, but it was uncommon for a man to do so. To point out his old age . . . perhaps she was supposed to be repulsed. However, Shizue was impressed by his sincerity.
I do not expect to fall in love with you, she wrote back, returning the favor of his honesty in kind. If we married, I would only expect to make a shared life together that is prosperous and honorable.
Kenichi was curiously comforted by these words. The sentiment was fair and true. He sent a large sum to her parents—more than enough for her passage to America, meeting the unspoken expectation. Shizue packed a small chest and prepared to make her departure. Her mind was made up. Even so, she was still as nervous as a sparrow. She wondered if this older man would truly want her for his wife in spite of her flighty nature. There was only one way to find out.
Then, while at sea, a curious thing happened. The ship sailed through a storm, and Shizue was tossed about like a ragdoll. She was sick often, throwing up into a tin pail, and utterly horrified as the ship listed so steeply from side to side, it felt as though it would certainly capsize. But something strange came over her during the worst of it: Some sort of ironclad will took over her nervous body and steadied her. She was determined to make it to America, she realized. She was surprised to realize she was not apologetic for the unladylike intensity of her determination. A cool, collected calmness came over her. The nervous tremors in her hands ceased. Her breathing became even. When she spoke, her stammer was gone.
Shizue endured three weeks at sea. When she disembarked in California, the spring of 1917 was in full bloom and she was surprised to realize her new sense of calm was still with her. Somehow she understood it would forever be with her now. The ocean had tested her, distilled her, and washed away all the apologetic tics that had previously betrayed her.
Instead of sending a wagon or a train ticket, Kenichi met Shizue himself in San Francisco, so that he might personally escort her to the piece of property up in the California foothills that was to be her new home. Their rapport was instantly just as it had been in their letters: honest and simple; they harbored between the two of them a tacit understanding. It was a quiet journey, but peaceful. Kenichi brought Shizue back to the Yamada property, watching her face and carefully reevaluating his home as it must look through her eyes. Shizue stepped down from the buggy and gazed at the little white clapboard farmhouse cantilevered into the side of a foothill.
When a small smile of approval played on her lips, Kenichi just about felt his heart split at the seams like an overripe pomegranate.
They were married and settled into their life together. Shizue was surprised to sense love in Kenichi’s heart—the kind of breathlessly optimistic, wholehearted love one might expect from a much younger man. He was also jolly, playful—a touch irreverent, even. Shizue was even further surprised when she woke up one morning and, listening to Kenichi humming cheerfully over his daily cup of strong American coffee, realized she had done the one thing she had dutifully informed him she wouldn’t do: She had fallen in love with him, too.
And curiously, in America, Shizue finally became the good Japanese she never was back home. She was calm and graceful in all things—in the meticulous decoration and organization of the house, in the careful way she spoke and dressed, in the way she kept the old traditions, even arranging for a small teahouse and ancestral shrine to be added onto their existing home. Nonetheless, Shizue also embraced the new, and perhaps it might be said that her greatest grace was in blending the East with the West in harmonious balance. She knew adopting Western culture—at least to some degree—was important to her husband, who had struck out from Japan to make his home in California for a reason.
In those first weeks, as their mutual respect grew into genuine affection and then love, they began—shyly at first—to consummate their marriage. Shizue wondered if children would come; she waited anxiously every month with a mixture of excitement and fear to find out what her fate as a mother might be. Slowly, as each month passed and Shizue experienced the normal bleeding, the excitement and fear turned to puzzlement and then, bit by bit, a sort of silent, empty worry. Though her seizures had lessened, she was convinced her epilepsy was at the root of the problem. She visited the local doctor, but he could not tell her much, except that bearing children was a challenge for some women. Ironically, prior to this intersection in her life, Shizue had not thought about children—or the lack of them—very much. Now it was all she thought of.
She cried—never in front of her husband, never anywhere he could see—and, stony-faced once more, accepted her future as a barren woman. It was her fault, she was sure. She was being punished for her spectacular, inborn deficiency, and now her husband was being punished, too.
* * *
Weeks, months, and eventually years passed. Kenichi was anxiously awaiting a family, too, although he understood his wife’s sensitivity enough to carefully conceal this desire. Kenichi’s prime reason for eagerly wanting a family was to experience the miracle and blessing of a child, to pass along love and the fruits of his hard work to another living being. But Kenichi had a handful of more complicated r
easons as well: He was not a U.S. citizen, and neither he nor his wife was permitted to become a citizen under various anti-Oriental exclusion laws. This had never affected the Yamadas directly in the past, but as the state of California began passing more and more legislation aimed at ensuring aliens were not allowed to own property, Kenichi understood that everything he had worked so hard for was in jeopardy.
Other Chinese and Japanese families in the area were navigating their way around the potential legal pitfalls by transferring their holdings into the names of their children, who, having been born on American soil, instantly possessed the citizenship that had been barred to their parents. Kenichi knew their lives—his and his wife’s—would be best secured if they could manage to have a child. But he also understood how wounded she was upon discovering their difficulty in conceiving.
A dedicated husband, he pretended to delight in Shizue alone, in the good company she provided.
There are many theories about the circumstances that best beget a child, and in the case of Kenichi and Shizue Yamada, it is certainly compelling that only when Kenichi had proved his love was unwavering, only when Shizue felt the pressure of the duty of motherhood fall from her shoulders, that they were finally blessed with a child. After almost three years of trying, Shizue’s body ceased to bleed. She assumed it was a mistake, of course; her body was merely playing tricks on her. But the doctor who attended her—the same doctor who had condescendingly patted her hand and comforted her by telling her it was simply not possible for some women—confirmed the pregnancy.
Young Haruto was born in the autumn of 1920. The birth was not an easy transaction. First, the thing Shizue feared most—a seizure—sent her into early labor. Compounding this was the fact that the baby’s neck was caught in the umbilical cord and it was only by some strange combination of coordinated actions on the part of all involved—Shizue, midwife, and baby—that he was not strangled. The second he breathed the air, unleashing the full power of his squalling lungs on a small, attentive audience, he was a miraculous joy to behold. They were so overcome at the moment of his birth—a moment Kenichi insisted on being present for—they forgot to count toes or demand to know the sex. A boy, they were later told, a very healthy baby boy. And then came the name: Haruto, after Kenichi’s mysterious uncle. But as he would also be an American child, it would be “Harry” for school, “Harry” for his American friends. Although they could not know, this was indeed a fitting name for a baby who had, from a certain point of view, performed his first escape act and who would one day idolize the great Harry Houdini.
Kenichi was surprised to discover how much purpose he found in being a parent, especially given how long he had postponed this phase of his life. By the time of Haruto’s birth, Kenichi had turned sixty and understood this made him an old father. Nevertheless, he was determined his son shouldn’t suffer for it, and to his own gratification and surprise, a wave of fresh energy and enthusiasm sprang from some unknown well within him.
When Haruto grew into a toddler, Kenichi spent countless hours wandering the orchards with the boy perched atop his shoulders. As Haruto grew, they made a game together, joining in on the pruning and picking. The Yamada land was a wondrous playground for a small child; Haruto grew into an adventurous, outdoorsy boy. Some years later, when Haruto was going on nine years old, Kenichi and Shizue were blessed with a second child: a little girl. They named her Mai—a name that would be easily converted to “Mae” by her American schoolmates. In spite of the age gap—or perhaps because of it—Haruto was exceptionally kind to his little sister, caring for her with a gentle, protective touch. As she grew bigger, Mai also roamed the property, helping and playing in the orchards. On an early school report, Mai was asked to name one of her favorite things, and the teacher would help her write out the words. She wrote, “The smell of satsuma blossoms in Papa’s orchard.” Kenichi took one look and knew in his heart that everything he had done, all of his work, had been so his daughter might write down that one sentence. It was worth it to him.
But Kenichi understood that, while their home made for a perfect haven for his two young children, the world beyond their property lines wouldn’t always be so accommodating. He understood, too, that Haruto and Mai were not like him; they were nisei—second-generation Japanese in America—and would only call California home. The sounds of their American names, Harry and Mae, would eventually ring more familiar in their ears than Haruto and Mai. The Japanese words Kenichi and Shizue coaxed from their children’s mouths were bound to quickly rust and decay. It was unlikely either child would ever set foot in Japan. Kenichi also knew that one day his children’s assumptions—primarily the assumption that their identities as Americans was a given—might be shattered by others who might throw stones.
Of course, he could never have predicted the sharpness of the stones that would be thrown during war, or how thorough the shattering. Kenichi was more like his children than he knew. The land belonged to him, but he believed he belonged to it, too. They had adopted each other; this was how America constantly reshaped herself. A good citizen, a polite neighbor . . . Kenichi believed he was safe, and home.
25
Newcastle, California * September 17, 1943
It’s the nature of the friendship between those two boys that puzzles me,” Agent Bonner says, shaking his head at Deputy Henderson and staring into the giant amber eye of his beer glass. “It’s an awful big change: One minute Louis Thorn and Harry Yamada are sworn enemies, and the next minute the Yamadas trust Louis enough to sign over their land for safekeeping—the very land that started their beef in the first place.”
The two men are perched on a pair of stools at the bar. To Agent Bonner’s relief, it is dim and cool inside the saloon, the damp air scented with a mixture of barley and mildew. As promised, Deputy Henderson had shown Bonner the way to Murphy’s Saloon, and the agent was making good on his offer to buy a round.
Bonner absently inspects his surroundings as they drink and talk. Decorations in the saloon are spare and reassuringly free of a feminine touch. Old newspaper clippings hang in cockeyed frames on the walls; the bulk of the clippings themselves date back to the Gold Rush days, featuring local prospectors who struck it rich. Laid out in haphazard fashion, they make up a sporadic, lopsided mosaic of various shades of yellowing newspaper, a conspicuous overuse of exclamation marks, and the occasional flash of a toothy grin glimpsed through a wild man’s beard. The only other adornments in the saloon are posters urging folks to buy war bonds, a smattering of colorful brewery advertisements, and a few now-defunct Anti-Saloon League signs and handbills—no doubt displayed with a sense of humor.
“You ain’t the first to puzzle over it, that’s for sure,” Deputy Henderson replies now. “There’s been a lot of talk all over town.”
“Say, fellas,” comes a voice from behind the bar. “Will you have another?”
Bonner glances at his glass and realizes it’s already empty. A short, broad-shouldered man with a red complexion and dark, badly trimmed hair is looking at them with a stern expression that would be best described as a glare if it were not for the kindly crinkles around the man’s eyes. The bartender flips a dishrag over his shoulder and leans on his elbows, waiting.
“I meant to ask: Are you Joe Abbott?” Bonner inquires.
“I am. Will you have another?”
Bonner flicks his eyes in the direction of his companion. Henderson smiles awkwardly and looks away, scratching sheepishly at the scar of a healing pimple. It is clear that he is willing to drink as many as Bonner is willing to buy.
“Well, all right,” Bonner replies, after a pause. “Suppose after one, a second tastes twice as nice.”
The bartender retrieves their glasses, places them under the taps, fills them with lukewarm beer, and picks up the wooden paddle used for slicing off the foamy heads.
“You say you’re Joe Abbott?” Bonner repeats.
“I di
d. Who wants to know?” the bartender asks, shutting off the taps once the glasses are frothing over. He arches a wary eyebrow at the stranger.
“This here is Agent Bonner from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Deputy Henderson announces in an eager, important tone, thumbing in Bonner’s direction.
Bonner nods in tacit greeting.
“Hmph,” Joe replies, unimpressed, slicing away the foam. Despite his show of indifference, his left eye begins to twitch ever so slightly, and it is clear he isn’t saying the one thing he’s thinking: Why does “Agent Bonner from the Federal Bureau of Investigation” know my name, and what does he want?
“You read the headlines about how Harry and Old Man Yamada broke out of that camp up at Tule Lake, didn’t you?” Henderson prompts.
“I did,” Joe replies.
“Well, that’s why Agent Bonner’s here: He was investigating their whereabouts.” Henderson pauses and looks thoughtful for a brief moment. “Course, now it looks like there may be nothin’ left to investigate,” he adds, “since there ain’t nobody to track down anymore.”
“What does that mean?” Joe asks in a flat voice, leery.
“Well, you seen the smoke yesterday, ain’t you?” Henderson continues.
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