Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky

by Sandra Dallas

  “What about my doll?” Tomi asked. Her grandparents had sent her a Japanese doll with long black hair and bangs just like Tomi’s. Her name was Janice. Tomi was too old to play with dolls, but she loved Janice too much to give her up.

  Mom shook her head. “Surely, they can’t object to a doll.”

  Tomi and Hiro sat beside their mother and watched as the fire burned. “I don’t understand,” Hiro said at last. “What did Pop do?”

  “Nothing,” Mom replied. “He didn’t do anything. It’s because he’s Japanese.”

  “No he’s not. He’s an American,” Hiro insisted.

  Mom nodded, and then she asked Tomi to fix tea.

  Tomi filled the kettle with water and placed it on the stove. She let the water boil, then set it aside a minute to cool before she poured it over the tea leaves in the teapot. The finest tea, Tomi knew, required hot, not boiling, water. After letting the tea steep, she poured it into blue-and-white china cups, each with a different design. Tomi picked up her mother’s cup and handed it to her, wondering if they would have to get rid of the tea set.

  Mom carried the tea to the table, and Tomi and Hiro sat down on either side of her. Hiro gulped his drink, but Tomi held her cup in her hand, letting the warmth rise and fill her nose with the sweet smell of tea.

  “As you know, your father came to America from Japan when he was eighteen years old,” Mom began. Tomi and Hiro had heard that story many times, but Mom always started at the beginning, and so she repeated how Pop had come to the United States because he thought there were more opportunities here for a boy like him. Pop got a job on a farm, laboring long hours at back-breaking work. He believed that was the way to get ahead. He saved his money and rented a few acres of farmland, where he grew strawberries.

  The farm was successful. So he sent to Japan for a “picture bride.” Picture brides were Japanese girls who wanted to marry Japanese men living in America. They sent their photographs to what was called a marriage broker. Pop chose Sumiko. She wasn’t the prettiest of the girls whose pictures he studied, but she looked like the sweetest. Sam thought she would be a worker, too. So he paid her way to America, and they were married.

  They were a good match. Sam and Sumiko cared about each other just as much as any American couple who had married for love. Many times, Tomi had seen her father take the picture bride photograph out of his wallet and smile at it.

  “Your pop wanted us all to be Americans. That’s why we speak English at home and wear American clothes. America’s made up of people from all over the world,” Mom said. She reminded Tomi and Hiro that the immigrants were Americans now, but they hadn’t forgotten their foreign cultures. That was why the Mexicans in California ate tortillas and chili and sang beautiful songs in Spanish and the Germans held a harvest festival where they served beer and bratwurst. The Japanese weren’t any different. Mom fixed spaghetti and tuna fish casseroles along with Japanese food and dressed just like other women in California, wearing a kimono only on special occasions.

  Tomi knew all that, and she squiggled in her chair, wishing her mother would get on with it.

  Finally, Mom did. “Everything was all right until Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor last December and America declared war on Japan. Some Caucasians—white people—think we’re spies just because we came from Japan. They believe we’ll help the Japanese invade America.”

  “Invade means ‘land here,’ ” Tomi explained to Hiro.

  “I already know that,” he said.

  “These people think we’re loyal to Japan instead of America,” Mom continued.

  “But can’t they see our flag?” Hiro asked. “And don’t they know we say the Pledge of Allegiance and Pop decorated his truck with red, white, and blue crepe paper for the Fourth of July parade?”

  Mom looked down. “They say it doesn’t matter, that we’re only trying to trick them into believing we’re loyal.”

  “Why would they take Pop?” Hiro asked.

  Mom shook her head. “This is war. People are scared.”

  “They’re scared of us?” Tomi looked at her brother, then at her mother, who wasn’t much taller than Hiro. Tomi glanced at her reflection in the mirror across from the table. How could anyone be afraid of her?

  “Shikata ga nai,” Mom said. That was her favorite expression. Of course, it was a Japanese expression, but there was no reason it couldn’t be used in America. It meant “It cannot be helped.”

  1942 | CHAPTER THREE

  THE END of SCOUTING

  ROY burst through the door and threw his clarinet case onto a chair. Tomi’s brother was in the school orchestra, and he and four other boys had their own band called the Jivin’ Five. They played at school and church dances. “I ran into Mr. Lawrence down the road. He told me the FBI arrested Pop. What happened?”

  “They think he’s a spy,” Hiro replied.

  “They think we’re all spies,” Tomi added.

  “For growing strawberries?”

  “For being Japanese,” Mom said.

  Roy sat down and put his head in his hands. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Last week, a woman asked about hiring the Jivin’ Five to play for a party, but she said she didn’t want me there.” The other members of the band were Caucasians.

  “Jivin’ Four doesn’t sound like much,” Tomi said.

  “I guess we just have to wait until people figure out we’re not the enemy.”

  But some people insisted the Itanos were the enemy.

  A few days later, Tomi went to her friend Mary Jane Malkin’s house for her weekly Girl Scout meeting. Tomi loved scouting. The members of her troop were her best friends. They had come to the Itano place in the fall to work on their merit badges for gardening. Pop had showed them how he planted the strawberries and cared for them. He’d let the scouts have a piece of land for their own garden. All the girls had gotten their gardening badges. Tomi had been the first. She worked hard to earn badges and had more than anyone else in her troop. And she’d sold more Girl Scout Cookies than any of the other scouts, too. Tomi liked to think up projects for her troop, and when war was declared, she’d suggested they learn to knit and make socks for the soldiers. All the girls went to the Itano house to learn knitting from Mom, who was good at knitting and sewing. Tomi wanted Mom to be a scout leader, but Mom was too shy.

  Tomi was proud of her green uniform and yellow scarf. She ironed it every week so that it was fresh for the after-school meeting. She and Martha always walked to the Malkin house together on Girl Scout days.

  As they reached the porch, Mrs. Malkin came outside and stood in front of the screen door, blocking their way. Mary Jane was beside her. “Go on in, Martha,” she said.

  Martha paused a moment, looking at Tomi, but Mrs. Malkin opened the door. “I told you to go inside, Martha.”

  Martha glanced at Tomi and did as she was told, but she stood just inside the screen. Tomi started to follow, but Mrs. Malkin put her hand on the door and held it closed. “I’m sorry, Tomi, but you’re not welcome here anymore.”

  Tomi didn’t understand. She tried to recall if she had done something wrong. Maybe she’d forgotten to wear her uniform or she’d failed to complete the work for a merit badge, but those things wouldn’t have kept her from attending a meeting. She turned to Mary Jane, who was standing next to her mother, but her friend wouldn’t look at her. Instead, Mary Jane rubbed the toe of her shoe back and forth on the porch floor.

  “Why? What did I do?” Tomi asked.

  Mrs. Malkin looked uncomfortable then. “It’s best that you not be a scout anymore. I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry to Tomi.

  “Why? Why can’t I be a scout anymore?”

  “This is an American troop.”

  Tomi looked at Mrs. Malkin. “I’m an American. I was born right here in California, before you moved here from Ohio.”

  “We don’t allow Japs in this house,” Tomi heard Mr. Malkin say. She’d never liked him much. He expected Po
p to give him a discount on strawberries, and whenever the scouts had a family potluck, he took more than his share of Mom’s Japanese food.

  “Don’t be difficult, Tomi. That’s the way things are,” Mrs. Malkin told her.

  “That’s not fair,” Martha said through the screen. “Tomi can’t help who she is. She’s the best scout in the whole troop. You can’t ask her to leave.”

  Mrs. Malkin looked back at Martha. “Be still. This does not concern you, Martha. You’re too young to understand.”

  “I do so understand. Maybe I don’t want to be a scout if Tomi can’t. Come on, Tomi, let’s go home.”

  Tomi shook her head. If Martha quit, that would only make things worse. Tomi heard the other scouts whispering behind the door and knew they would blame Tomi. They would tell everyone at school that Martha’s leaving was Tomi’s fault. “No, you stay,” Tomi whispered. She turned quickly, so that no one would see the tears in her eyes. She wished she were so small she could disappear. She wouldn’t run, though. Instead, she forced herself to walk at a normal pace until she turned the corner and was out of sight. Then when no one could see her, Tomi broke into a run and didn’t stop until she reached home. There she ripped off her yellow Girl Scout scarf and threw it into the stove.

  The next week on Girl Scout day, Tomi wore a regular dress. Mom didn’t ask why. She knew.

  Although Mr. Lawrence talked to a lawyer, there wasn’t anything that could be done about Pop. The lawyer explained that the government had passed wartime laws that allowed it to keep men in prison when they were only suspected of being spies. There didn’t have to be proof.

  A few weeks after Pop was taken away, Mom received a letter from him, saying he had been sent to New Mexico. There were no details, because most of the letter was blacked out. There wasn’t even a return address, so Mom couldn’t write him—or visit him. But they couldn’t have done that anyway, because they had been told they couldn’t go more than five miles from their home. And they weren’t allowed to be out after dark, either.

  By then, the government was asking all Japanese living on the West Coast to move away from the ocean—to Montana and Colorado and Kansas, where they would be too far away to contact the Japanese enemy. Mom refused. How would Pop ever find them if they left California? she asked. Besides, they couldn’t just walk away from the farm Pop had worked so hard to make successful. Roy volunteered to quit school so that he could take Pop’s place with the strawberries, but Mom wouldn’t let him. “Pop wants you to finish high school, because he didn’t have that opportunity in Japan,” she told him.

  Even if Roy had quit school, it wouldn’t have made a difference, because in February, just two months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, the government issued Executive Order 9066. The order allowed the government to round up all Japanese people living on the West Coast and send them to ten “relocation camps” in California, the mountain states, and Arkansas. Roy scoffed at that. “Relocation, heck! They’re sending us to prison.”

  In April, the government notified the Itanos that they had just two weeks to get ready to move. They would be allowed to take with them only what would fit into their suitcases. That meant just clothes and underwear, a tablecloth, a little bedding, maybe a few personal items such as photographs. There wouldn’t be time to harvest the crop. Mom was frantic. “Who’ll take care of the strawberries?” she asked Mr. Lawrence. “They’ll die.”

  “I’ll find someone. Don’t you worry about that, Mrs. Itano,” he said.

  “But what about our things? We can take so little. What will happen to our furniture, my china, the refrigerator?”

  Mr. Lawrence thought that over. “If I can’t find anybody to rent the place, I don’t have any way to protect the house after you leave, and who knows how long you’ll be away. I’m afraid anything you leave behind could be stolen. You’d better sell what you can. There are men out there who will buy everything.”

  Later that day, Mrs. Lawrence came to the Itano house with Martha and said, “I can store some of your things, your china and silver, at our place. I wish there was room for the big items, but there isn’t.”

  Tomi helped pack up the dishes and plates Mom had brought from Japan, the silverware Pop had bought her for her birthday, and the Philco radio, which Roy had fixed after the FBI men tore it apart. The government men had told them they weren’t to take any radios with them. Or cameras or flashlights either.

  As Martha and Mrs. Lawrence got into their car with the boxes, Tomi came out of the house holding Janice, the doll her Baba had sent her from Japan. Mom had said there wasn’t room in the suitcase for the doll, and it had to be left behind. “Will you take care of Janice for me, Martha?” Tomi asked. When they were younger, the two girls had played dolls together, Martha with her blonde doll that looked like the movie star Shirley Temple and Tomi with the Japanese doll.

  Martha smoothed her dress, then reached for the doll and set it carefully in her lap. “Janice will be waiting when you get back,” she said.

  Later that day, a man who ran a second-hand store came to the door and said he’d buy the Itanos’ furniture.

  “At least we won’t have to give things away,” Mom told Tomi. She showed the man through the house, telling him what the Itanos had paid for the sofa, the beds, the kitchen table.

  “I’ll give you five dollars for all of it,” the man said.

  “Five dollars?” Mom shrieked. “The sofa cost twenty-five, and it’s only two years old.”

  The man shrugged. “It’s better than nothing, lady.”

  Roy, who’d heard the man, was angry. “For five dollars, I’d burn it all up,” he said.

  “Seven dollars then. That’s my final offer.”

  “Get out,” Roy said, pointing to the door.

  “Suit yourself,” the man said and left.

  Other people came to the Itano house after that, hoping to buy things cheaply. Their offers weren’t much higher, but Mom knew she had to take what she could get. And so she sold the sofa for five dollars, the beds for two dollars each, the kitchen table and chairs for a dollar. The kitchen curtains went for ten cents, and Mom sold her silk scarves for a nickel.

  The highest offer for her washing machine was twenty-five cents, and Mom refused it. The washing machine was her pride. It had a wringer—two rolls operated by a crank that squeezed the water out of the clothes after they’d been washed.

  “Maybe you better take the quarter for the machine,” Roy told Mom the day before they were to leave.

  “No!” Mom said. “Nobody gets my washing machine for a quarter.” She went out to the shed and brought back Pop’s hammer. “I’ll smash it before I sell it for twenty-five cents.” Mom raised the hammer and broke one of the rollers. Then she hit the crank until it fell off. Roy began to laugh and took the hammer from her. He smashed the inside of the machine. When he was finished he handed the hammer to Tomi, who dented the sides, then turned the hammer over to Hiro. He chipped away at the enamel. When they were finished, the washing machine looked as if it had fallen off a truck.

  Mom stood back, her hands over her mouth, as if she were ashamed of what they’d done. But then she began to laugh, maybe the first time she’d laughed since Pop had been taken away by the FBI a few weeks before. “There, that will show them.”

  She didn’t say who them was, but Tomi knew. Them was all those people out there who thought the Itano family was their enemy. None of them were going to use Mom’s washing machine.

  1942 | CHAPTER FOUR

  A HORSE-STALL HOTEL

  EARLY one morning, Mr. Lawrence picked up the Itanos in his truck, which used to be Sam’s. Mom had sold it to him for a hundred dollars, five times what the used-car lot had offered her. The Itanos had been told to report to a church in town. With their heavy suitcases, they would have had trouble walking all that distance if Mr. Lawrence hadn’t offered to drive them.

  Mom wore pants. Tomi had never seen her wear slacks before. The clothing and bedding they were
taking with them had been crammed into the suitcases. In addition, Mom carried a shopping bag with her teapot and cups, both the everyday cups and her good ones. She was taking them with her because “it would never be home without them,” she said, as she wrapped them in pillowcases and underwear to keep them from breaking.

  “Martha wanted to come, but I told her it would be too crowded,” Mr. Lawrence said, as he helped Tomi into the bed of the truck. Tomi was glad Martha wasn’t there. She would have been embarrassed if her friend had seen her and her family looking like this. Hiro and Roy climbed up beside Tomi, and Mr. Lawrence handed up the bags. Then he opened the truck door for Mom. She glanced back at the house, as if she might not ever see it again. She was proud of that house, and she and Tomi had scrubbed it until it shone, because that’s the way Japanese did things, Mom said. Being Americans, she told Tomi, didn’t mean they had to forget their Japanese values. “If Mr. Lawrence finds someone to rent it, I would be shamed if the house was dirty. It is like when migratory birds leave a lake. They move smoothly and do not make the water murky. We will not leave this house murky.”

  “There’s a box of lunch on the seat there,” Mr. Lawrence told her. “Mrs. Lawrence was afraid they might forget to feed you on the bus.”

  Mom’s voice was quiet when she said her thanks. Then she asked, “You’ll tell Sam where we are, won’t you? When he comes back, you’ll say we wanted to wait for him, but we couldn’t wait any longer, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will, Sumiko,” Mr. Lawrence replied, as if he hadn’t reassured her a dozen times already.