“The war changed everything,” Louis repeats. “And once everything changed, there was nothing we could do to change it back.”
47
U.S. DECLARES WAR, PACIFIC BATTLE WIDENS
UNITY IN CONGRESS
THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Following is the text of President Roosevelt’s war message to Congress as recorded by The New York Times from a broadcast:
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu the Japanese Ambassador to the United States delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And, while this replay stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
48
Yamada and Thorn properties * December 7, 1941
The radio squawked all day and well into the night, like some terrible shrieking war bird. Earlier that morning, Mae had settled in to help her mother darn a pile of winter socks that had inconveniently sprouted holes. She’d switched on the radio, hoping to listen to a bit of big band or perhaps a radio soap opera. The two of them were the first to hear the news. Shizue ran outside to find her husband and son. When Harry heard, he ran to fetch Ava and Cleo from their caravan.
All six of them now sat in a semicircle around the radio as though around a bonfire. The radio crackled and popped; disembodied male voices shouted in excited, jittery stage voices; nothing seemed real. The attacks had been intentional and terrifying. It was estimated that at least two thousand American servicemen, nurses, and even a number of civilians were dead, and that they perished never having had a chance to defend themselves on that sleepy Sunday morning. The radio reported atrocity after atrocity, the mounting statistics of ships downed and people wounded or dead, descriptions of the horror and confusion that had been reported at the scene. There was much speculation about how President Roosevelt and Congress would respond.
They’d spent all day like that: huddled, listening. By evening the details had been picked over and there was little fresh news added to the broadcast; one announcer replaced another, and then another replaced him, and all had begun to repeat most of the information on a kind of endless loop.
“What will happen now?” Shizue asked quietly as the radio continued to squawk. She fixed her eyes on her husband.
“War,” Kenichi replied somberly. “War will happen.”
“What will that mean for us?”
Kenichi shook his head. He tried to give her a reassuring smile but a shadow fell across his features, accentuating his advanced years.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we will not be harmed. This is America. America is made up of many things, including many Japanese. We are not alone in this country. America is part of us, and we are part of it now. The government’s leaders will not look at us as they do their enemy.”
It sounded right to everybody: Kenichi, Shizue, Harry, Mae—even to Cleo and Ava. It sounded right, and yet it did not sound quite true. Kenichi was speaking of the America as America wanted to be, not as America was.
Instinctually, they all knew: After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American people would be full of anger and fear. The nation would run on these two fuels for quite some time and behave accordingly.
Sitting on opposite sides of the room, Ava and Harry exchanged a very worried, knowing look.
* * *
The scene at the Thorn household was similar, but with the additional noise and commotion that goes hand in hand with additional children. Edith Thorn and most of her older children were clustered around their old Philco Cathedral, listening intently, grappling with the unreal terror of the events, and trying to guess what the future now held. Marion sat listening while trying to occupy a distractible five-year-old Ruthie. Otis, having just turned eighteen, was already chattering excitedly about joining up, while Edith scolded him to drop the idea at once. Gil, Lester, and Carl all sat listening intently, intimidated by the gravity of the situation but also secretly glad they had been given a temporary reprieve from their daily chores on the ranch. Ernest and Clyde were listening, too, but also taking turns punching each other as hard as they could in the arm. Frank and Rudy—six and seven, respectively—knew it sounded bad but couldn’t understand why the adults were being so boring nonetheless. They chased each other around in a boisterous game of tag until Edith caught Rudy by the ear and sent them outside. When they returned hours later, they were so exhausted they fell asleep on the floor in front of the wood-burning stove like a pair of puppies. Edith was too distracted to prepare much in the way of meals that day; dinner wound up being eggs and bacon eaten in the sitting room while continuing listening to the radio broadcast.
On the subject of what this attack meant for the United States, Guy Thorn was of course the most knowledgeable. He religiously read the newspapers every day. Louis had listened to Guy enough to know that Guy had months ago become convinced that America was destined to enter the war sooner or later.
“I would’ve guessed Europe,” he said, “but all over the Pacific the Japanese been up to no good, too. It’s obvious we ain’t gonna sit it out a
nymore. We can’t.”
Guy sat leaning forward, nearest the radio, listening intently. Beside him was his sweetheart, Lindy—a girl whose grandmother ran the boardinghouse in town, and whom Guy had courted ever since the two of them were sixteen. It was plain to everyone that Lindy adored Guy, and now, seeing how furious Guy was over the broadcast, Lindy appeared three times more distressed. She smoothed her dark brown curls nervously, and periodically reached for Guy’s hand for reassurance.
“Those goddamn sneaky Japs,” Guy said angrily, shaking his head. “I’m only surprised our own government let it happen like this. I bet none of our sailors even knew what hit ’em . . .” He continued shaking his head as a funny expression wormed its way over his lips, twisting them in anger and disgust.
Louis shivered to think of it: Those men aboard their Navy ships, resting one minute and sinking to the bottom of the harbor floor the next—trapped, drowning, likely clawing like animals for a surface they would never again see. It was an ugly picture, and, like many ugly pictures, once you imagined seeing it, you couldn’t stop seeing it. To attack like that . . . the only thing to conclude was that Japan—and the Japanese—were a ruthless, vicious people.
As though reading his brother’s mind, Guy broke into Louis’s meditative state.
“What do you think of your friends next door now?”
It was a statement, not a question. Since the garden party at Buster Farrow’s Santa Barbara estate, Guy’s opinion of the Yamadas had regressed to its previous vitriolic state. Louis felt it was his own fault: In Hollywood, in his state of excitement, Louis had sent a cable to Guy telling him the figure Buster Farrow had offered. He’d made it sound like a done deal. He never should have done any of that—Ava had warned him against it—but he could hardly take it back now. When Louis had come home a few days after sending that cable, his tail between his legs and none the richer, Guy’s anger and disgust was written on his face. If you lie down with dogs, Guy had said to Louis, don’t expect to get anything but fleas.
“The Yamadas aren’t like the Japs that did this,” Louis murmured now, after a moment’s pause. He was mad at Harry—this time he had plenty of reason to be—but even so, Harry’s family didn’t have anything to do with Pearl Harbor.
Guy looked at him but said nothing.
“The Yamadas aren’t to blame for this,” he insisted.
Although . . . as the radio broadcast droned on and on, Louis wondered just how much he truly meant it.
49
Yamada property * December 15, 1941
A group of four agents came unannounced, knocking very early, dressed in suits, their mouths drawn and their brows furrowed. There was no true sunrise that morning, only a dim glow in the gloomy December sky, flat and gray. For a little over an hour, the men rifled the house, emptying drawers and making a mess, while the entire Yamada family waited patiently in the sitting room. Shizue watched as the agents unplugged and carried away their family radio, along with a box of family photographs, decorative scrolls, and a large number of old letters from her family back in Japan. Enemy contraband. Shizue knew that was what they were looking to find; she couldn’t imagine why this might include her daughter Mai’s baby portrait or old photos of Shizue’s aunts back in Japan, dressed in full kimono. The world had gone mad overnight.
When their search was concluded, the agents insisted Kenichi and Haruto go with them to be interviewed. They declined to name the location, and the Yamadas knew better than to ask.
“Don’t worry. We will be back soon,” Kenichi said to Shizue in an incredibly calm voice, as though he were running into town for a bag of grain or some kerosene. He pulled on a weatherproof jacket that hung from a hook by the front door and smiled serenely, though he knew exactly where he was being taken.
Shizue nodded, but did not believe him. And sure enough, the hours ticked by with no sign of their return, and the long wait began.
* * *
“Where have Mr. Yamada and Harry gone?” Ava asked a little later, noticing their coats missing from the pegs by the front door.
She’d spent the morning with her mother, doing chores on the back property. Under ordinary circumstances, Ava didn’t set foot in the Yamada house very often; she and her mother were grateful to be staying on their property and wanted to give the family their privacy. But when Ava had returned from the far side of the acreage, making her way past the barn and the house, she had noticed an awful lot of fresh tire treads in the dirt. Ava thought perhaps she’d ask Harry about it.
Now, as Shizue tried to answer Ava’s question, she pressed her lips together and shook her head as though trying to shake the explanation loose. Her eyes turned glassy.
“He said not to worry . . . that they will be back soon . . .” was all she could muster, repeating the words her husband had spoken to her a few hours earlier.
Ava didn’t need to ask anything more. She comprehended exactly what had happened. They’d all been on edge, ever since all the newspapers exploded with news about Pearl Harbor a week or so ago. America was at war with Japan; everyone—even folks in town who’d known them for years—had begun looking at the Yamadas differently.
“Would you like me and my mother to sit with you . . . maybe keep you company while you wait?” Ava asked, hesitant, sympathetic. There was something else mixed into Ava’s concern—a shiver of wild panic, something to do with her feelings for Harry—but she pushed it aside. It was enough to focus on offering consolation to the woman standing before her.
“No,” Shizue replied. There was certainty in her voice. “I’m sure they will return soon. Thank you,” she said with an air of finality.
Ava nodded respectfully and quietly let herself out the kitchen door again. She went to find her mother, and together they began to wait and worry a small distance away from the house, in their little caravan.
“They can’t keep them,” Cleo reasoned. “They haven’t done anything wrong. They can’t keep them if they haven’t done anything wrong.”
Ava did not answer, wishing her mother was right for once.
* * *
Afternoon eased into evening, eventually the winter light faded from the sky, and Kenichi and Haruto were not back. Shizue stared out the kitchen window, which pointed to the road beyond, pretending to do dishes. Finally, when all the dishes were done and put away and Shizue could pretend no longer, she simply remained standing, staring out the window, gripping the edge of the empty sink with no guile or subterfuge. When her daughter prodded her, she refused to move to the sitting room, where she might be more comfortable, and which offered the same view.
“Why have those men taken Tōsan and Onīchan away?” Mai asked. “What do they want with them?”
“They want to determine where their loyalty lies,” Shizue answered, wearing a vacant expression, her lips seeming to move independent of the rest of her face.
Mai frowned. The way her mother said it, it sounded like loyalty was something you could misplace, like a bone their dog had buried in the garden and couldn’t find again.
“I don’t understand,” Mai said, shaking her head. “Their loyalty is here, in this home . . . with us . . . isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Shizue replied, her voice hollow and distant. “Their loyalty remains here, on this land. But those men will want to know if their loyalty lies with America.”
“Well? Isn’t this land America?” Mai demanded. She pointed out the window at the land that surrounded the farmhouse. “Isn’t this all America?”
Shizue’s head jerked. Her eyes suddenly flicked from the window to her daughter’s face. Mai was thirteen. A teenager now; a girl no longer.
“Yes,” Shizue answered. “But it is also our land, and we are Japanese.”
“I’ve never even been to Japan,” Mai said.
Her daughter was American, Shizue realized, and so only had access to that exclusively on
e-sided porthole that looked out onto the world and was peculiar to all Americans. Through such a porthole—and perhaps ironically—Mai could not glimpse herself as other Americans saw her. Shizue did not know how to explain the panicked fears that would dictate the circumstances of their future now, the belief that America’s Japanese population was not as horrified by Pearl Harbor as the rest of America was; that all Japanese, no matter how far from “home,” were secretly glad. It was an ugly belief, born of hatred and fear.
Still angry and confused, Mai gazed back into her mother’s delicately shaped face and large, lovely eyes. She had never seen her mother look so sad.
“I’ve never even been to Japan . . .” Mai repeated softly.
Shizue’s eyes lingered on Mai for a moment.
“It is not so simple,” she said. She turned back to look out the window as a solitary tear rolled down one cheek.
* * *
Finally, after nearly twenty-four hours had passed and it was once again early dawn, Shizue heard an automobile coming up the drive. She was trembling as her eyes searched beyond the windowpane for signs of what was imminent, part hopeful her husband and son were coming home, part terrified that the men in suits were coming to take her and her daughter away now, too.
But Shizue was in luck: Kenichi and Haruto had been questioned and released. Other Japanese-American men who had been rounded up for interrogation were not so lucky; many were accused of conspiring against the United States, of secretly radioing boats off the coast of California, of hoarding resources, or of outright plots of terrorism. If the accusation could be made to stick—no matter how flimsy the allegations—the men being questioned swiftly found themselves on a bus to a detainment center in Bismarck, North Dakota. It was nothing short of a miracle that Kenichi and Haruto had not joined these men, as owning an airplane in and of itself presented a threat. The wild argument could be made that Kenichi and Haruto were conducting some kind of aerial surveillance. But as it turned out, the Yamadas’ saving grace was that neither Kenichi nor Shizue remained in touch with any of their relatives back in Japan. Kenichi was an old man; his parents had long since passed away, and Shizue’s ties had faded letter by letter, until it became clear that she was never returning to Japan. This lack of traceable communication was enough for the F.B.I. to let them go . . . for now. There was a second consideration, too, Kenichi said—involving the ownership of the Stearman—but he would explain later.
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