“Mom’s different. She never used to say a word. Now she’s pushy,” Roy said, as they looked around for places to sit in the mess hall. Dinner had always been a family affair in California. They ate together, and no one missed supper unless there was a good reason. But now, as at Santa Anita, the evacuees sat at different tables, the children with their friends, the older people with each other.
“She’s more like Pop,” Tomi replied. “With him gone, she’s in charge.”
“Well, I’m supposed to be in charge. I’m the man now.” Roy spotted a seat next to a girl he had met on the train and started for it.
“You can’t be in charge. Boys your age just care about pretty girls,” Tomi told him.
“What’s wrong with that?” Roy grinned. “Maybe I’ll start up a dance band, and then I’ll have plenty of them falling all over me.”
“But if you play in the band, you won’t be able to dance with them,” Tomi pointed out.
While Roy headed for the vacant seat, Tomi looked around the room and spotted a seat next to a girl she’d seen come out of the barracks just down from where the Itanos lived. She made her way to the table and sat down.
“Hi,” she said, but the girl only nodded and stared at her plate.
“I’m Tomi. If you’ll be my friend, I’ll give you my yummy rice,” Tomi joked.
The girl looked up at Tomi then and giggled, putting her hand over her mouth. “You can’t trick me. I think it’s the worst rice I ever had.”
“Me, too.” Tomi laughed. “You want my hot dog?”
“No.”
The two laughed again. “Tonight we’re going to have Spam tempura,” the girl said. Tempura was a Japanese way of coating seafood or vegetables with a light batter, then deep-frying it.
“That’s a good one! My brother thinks they use flies instead of raisins in the rice pudding,” Tomi said, laughing.
Before long, the two were talking as if they’d known each other their whole lives.
“I’m Ruth Hayashi,” the girl introduced herself. “I’ve seen you. You’re in the building with the yellow curtains.”
“That’s our apartment. I made them out of a skirt.”
“You can sew?”
Tomi nodded. “My mother taught me.”
“She sews too? I bet my mom can’t even thread a needle. We always had somebody who did our sewing for us,” Ruth said.
Tomi couldn’t imagine a woman who didn’t sew. Then she studied Ruth for a moment. The girl was wearing a silk dress and patent-leather shoes. A pearl necklace was around her neck. Tomi asked where Ruth had come from.
“San Francisco. My dad had a company that imported things from Japan—jade, pearls, carved wooden boxes. He had to sell it when we were evacuated. We used to be rich. Now …” Ruth shrugged.
“Nobody’s rich in here,” Tomi said.
“That means Mother can’t hire anyone to do her work. She’s never even swept a floor. Good thing we have a mess hall, because she can’t cook either.”
Tomi had heard about rich Japanese women who sat on silk cushions all day. She’d thought that would be a wonderful life, never having to wash dishes or pick strawberries. But suddenly, she felt sorry for Ruth and her mother. The camp must be awful for them. She and Mom were adjusting to Tallgrass because they had worked hard all their lives. They knew how to clean the apartment and wash clothes. They’d lived on a farm and understood how the wind picked up dirt and blew it into buildings.
Mom had been smart to take slacks and sturdy shoes to wear at Tallgrass. Tomi imaged Ruth’s mother wearing high heels and silk clothes. What would they do when winter came? She’d read about snow in Colorado.
“I could teach you to sew,” Tomi said. “It’s not hard.”
“You could?” Ruth looked down at her fragile dress, which was already torn. “Maybe you could teach me to mend, too.”
Tomi had the beginning of an idea. “Maybe your mom could learn.”
“Oh, Tomi, I couldn’t teach anyone to sew,” Mom said, when Tomi told her about Ruth and her mother.
“You taught me.”
“That was different. You just told me about Mrs. Hayashi being a high lady, and having servants.”
“Not anymore,” Tomi said. “I think they’re just like us. Ruth said Mr. Hayashi sold his business.”
“In Japan, someone like that wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“We’re not in Japan, Mom,” Tomi said. “We’re in America.” She glanced around the room at the crude furniture Roy had made, the tin can lids nailed over the knotholes in the wall, the sheet that screened Roy and Hiro’s cots. “Well, maybe we’re not even in America. We’re in Tallgrass.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
Tomi went to the window and looked out through the yellow curtains. Someone in the barracks across from her had collected rocks and arranged them into a nice display. “You complained about the latrines and the food. You helped women that way. What’s wrong with helping just one learn to sew? I think Pop would want you to.”
“Don’t you tell me what Pop wants,” Mom said quickly. “I’m trying hard enough on my own to do that.”
Tomi turned around and looked at her mom. “I’m sorry.”
Mom sighed. Then she went to the window. “Is that Mrs. Hayashi?” She pointed to a woman in a wrinkled silk dress and high-heeled shoes making her way past the apartment. When Tomi nodded, Mom said, “She looks very tired. And dirty.”
“Ruth says she doesn’t know how to wash clothes, and when she went to the wash room, nobody would help her. Ruth says people don’t mix with her because she used to be rich.”
“That’s not right,” Mom said. She sighed and turned away from the window. “It’s wrong to judge people that way. We were sent to this camp because people who didn’t even know us thought we were bad. I would not want to be like them. You must invite Ruth and her mother for tea.”
“Here?”
“Of course here.” Mom went to the coal stove and removed the teapot and cups, then the tablecloth. They would find scraps of lumber and build a fire, then heat water in a pan on top of the stove. “They will be our first guests,” Mom said.
1943 | CHAPTER SEVEN
POOR MRS. HAYASHI
TOMI was getting used to the camp now that she had been there for more than four months. She missed California, of course. She missed the lush fields, the strawberries still fresh with morning dew that she could pick for breakfast. And most of all, she missed being able to go where she wanted. In California, she could run for blocks, for miles even. But Tallgrass was all dirt streets, and the camp was enclosed by barbed wire. Guards in towers watched the evacuees, even the children. They were afraid to play near the fence, although the guards didn’t threaten them. Sometimes they even gave the children gum and Hershey bars.
There were things she liked about the camp. There were no strawberries to weed and pick and box, no dishes to wash. Housekeeping was only a little dusting and sweeping. Of course, it had to be done two or three times a day, since despite the tin can lids nailed over cracks in the walls, the dirt still blew in. There was the laundry to do, too. Tomi and Mom went to the wash house every week with dirty clothes. They scrubbed clothes in the sinks, then hung them up to dry, hoping the dirt didn’t blow onto their wet clothes. Still, those duties were easy, and Tomi had plenty of time left over to play.
What Tomi liked best was school, which had opened late in the fall of 1942. At first, Japanese men and women volunteered to teach, but after a time, trained teachers were hired from outside. The school wasn’t much at first—tables instead of desks, no textbooks, not even a blackboard. Still, Tomi loved it. Her favorite subject was English. She looked forward to the stories the teacher read at the end of the day, and she liked writing her own stories, too. She kept her handwriting small, filling up each page with as many words as she could, because paper was scarce.
Ruth was in Tomi’s class, and each morning, Tomi and Hiro stopped to p
ick her up on their way to school.
“You’re lucky your dad’s here in the camp,” Tomi told Ruth one day, as Mr. Hayashi waved to them from the doorway of the barracks. “I wish they’d send Pop to Tallgrass.”
“Me, too,” Hiro said, and Tomi realized how much her brother missed their father. He’d been sent away nearly a year before.
“Do they let him write you letters?” Ruth asked. Tomi had told her that Pop was being held in a prison in New Mexico.
“He writes them, but we can’t read them,” Tomi replied. “Somebody blacks out every other word, so most of the time, we don’t know what he’s talking about. I guess he’s okay, but he doesn’t seem very happy. At home, Pop was always having a good time. He made everybody laugh. But not anymore. I think that’s because he misses us.”
“Why is he in prison?” Ruth asked.
Tomi shrugged. “We don’t know. The government hasn’t filed any charges against him. It seems like he’s being held there just because he’s Japanese.”
“It must be hard for your mom.”
“She tries to hide her feelings, but I’ve seen her cry when she thinks I’m not watching,” Tomi said. “It’s not fair.”
Ruth agreed. Then she added, “It’s not fair my brother died, either.”
At that, Tomi stopped and stared at her friend. “You had a brother? You never told me about him.”
“I miss him as much as you do your dad. His name was Ben. Father doesn’t want me to talk about him, so I never do. It makes Mother sad.”
“What happened?”
Ruth scraped the toe of her shoe in the dirt and looked away. “He had a sickness. I don’t know what it was. He had it a long time. We could have hired a nurse, but Mother said she wanted to take care of him. So that’s what she did all day and sometimes all night.” When Ruth saw Tomi staring at her, she added, “Mother isn’t lazy. I mean, she can’t cook or sew or clean, but she spent all of her time with Ben. She gave up parties and helping at the store and everything else to be with him.” Ruth looked down at the dirt and kicked at a rock. “Father said Ben lived as long as he did because Mother took such good care of him.”
“How old was he?”
“Younger than me. Ben was four when he died. That was last year. He was sick for two years. Without Ben, it’s like there’s a hole in our lives.” Ruth blinked as she started down the street toward school. “Don’t mention him to Mother. She’ll cry. Like I said, we don’t ever talk about him. That’s why I never told you.”
Tomi remembered then that she had gone into the Hayashis’ apartment one day and saw Mrs. Hayashi holding a toy dog. It was on wheels and there was a string to pull it back and forth. Mrs. Hayashi had been rolling the wheels across her hand, but she put the toy behind her back when she saw Tomi. Tomi thought it was odd that Mrs. Hayashi had brought one of Ruth’s baby toys to the camp, but now she realized the toy dog had belonged to Ben. Mrs. Hayashi wouldn’t leave it behind, even though it had taken up precious space in her suitcase. Tomi wondered if Mrs. Hayashi had brought other things that had been Ben’s.
“Maybe your mom will have another brother for you one day, or a sister,” Tomi said.
Ruth shrugged. “I wish. Mother just sits in the room all day holding Ben’s things. Everybody thinks she’s unhappy because Father sold his business and we’re living in the camp. But it’s really because she misses Ben.” She took Tomi’s hand. “Come on. We have to hurry. Remember, the Boy Scouts are going to come to our class today.”
Tomi tried to think about the visitors to the school then, but her mind kept slipping back to Ruth’s mother. Tomi’s father had gone away, and she missed him more than anything in the world. But she knew he would come back one day. Poor Mrs. Hayashi. Ben would never return.
1943 | CHAPTER EIGHT
MAKING FRIENDS with the ENEMY
THE Boy Scouts from Ellis arrived just after class started. Their scoutmaster had visited the Tallgrass school the week before to make the arrangements for the scouts to attend class and eat lunch. His wife, Mrs. Glessner, was Tomi’s teacher, which was why the scouts were visiting Tomi’s class. She’d heard Mr. Glessner tell his wife that maybe if the children got to know each other, they’d realize they weren’t that different. He’d said they would develop a tolerance the adults didn’t have. Tomi asked Roy what “tolerance” meant, and he told her it meant respect and understanding. That made Tomi think about Mrs. Malkin, her Girl Scout leader at home. Mrs. Malkin didn’t have tolerance.
The Boy Scouts marched into the room that morning and lined up against the wall. They were older than Tomi. Some wore their scout shirts. Others were dressed in regular clothes, and Tomi wondered if maybe they couldn’t afford to buy uniforms. She hadn’t thought about the Caucasians in Ellis being poor. Some of them might be as poor as the people in the camp.
Tomi and the other students stood politely as their guests entered the room, and several of the Japanese boys offered their seats on the benches to the visitors. But the scouts seemed embarrassed and stayed where they were, a few putting a foot against the wall to steady themselves.
“I think there is room on the benches for everyone if you crowd together,” Mrs. Glessner said. The students sat back down and pushed to the middle of the benches, while the scouts found seats at the end. The two groups took quick glances at each other.
“Today, our history lesson is about the war in Europe,” Mrs. Glessner said. “Who can tell me why we declared war on Germany?”
“Because the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, and we don’t like them. They’re our enemy,” a Boy Scout muttered. Another scout snickered.
Tomi felt the hair on her neck rise. The remark didn’t have anything to do with tolerance. Mr. Glessner was standing in the front of the room and said, “Dennis—”
But Mrs. Glessner interrupted. “That’s not right. We declared war on the Japanese because they bombed Pearl Harbor, which is part of the United States, and the Germans are allies of the Japanese. ‘Allies’ means partners or friends. But that’s not the only reason we went to war with Germany.” She turned to Dennis. “And in this classroom, we use the word ‘Japanese.’ Calling someone a ‘Jap’ is as offensive as calling you a ‘Kraut’ because your father came from Germany.”
“Hey, I’m an American,” Dennis said.
“So are these students. We’re all Americans here. Now, who can answer the question?” When no one answered, Mrs. Glessner looked around the room. “Tomi, can you tell us why we Americans declared war on Germany?” She emphasized the word “we.”
Tomi felt her face turn red, and she looked down at the table. Why did Mrs. Glessner have to call on her? She wasn’t the smartest one in the class. And she didn’t like people looking at her. Maybe it was because she had written a story in class once about being an American. She glanced at Dennis to make sure he was listening, then said, “We Americans went to war against Germany because Germany invaded other countries. We Americans are defending our friends.”
“Very good,” Mrs. Glessner said, then asked another question, but Tomi wasn’t listening. Instead, she was watching Dennis, who had dropped his head until it almost reached the table.
Later, as she left the classroom to go to the dining hall for lunch, Tomi overheard Mrs. Glessner tell her husband, “I suppose I shouldn’t have talked about the war. Maybe that was too much for the kids.”
Mr. Glessner said, “Perhaps it was a good thing to get it all out in the open. After all, the camp is starting to issue daily passes so the Japanese kids can go into town. If the town kids can learn the children in the camp are just people, not enemies, they won’t take them on. If we can stop just one bully, then it’s worth it.”
The evacuees were supposed to eat at the dining hall closest to their barracks, but there was a good deal of trying out the different mess halls to find which served the best food. The word would get out that a chef at another mess hall served Japanese food or had fish or fresh vegetables, and people would try the
meals there. Although the cooks could do just so much with the food that was sent to the camp, they still competed with each other to see who could draw the biggest crowds.
Because the students didn’t have much time for lunch, however, they usually ate at the dining hall closest to the school. The food there wasn’t very good. That day there was a main dish of canned vegetables, bread, and rice with canned peaches poured over it.
Tomi was used to the food and didn’t pay attention to it. She and Ruth found places at a table and sat down with their plates. As she picked up her fork, Tomi spotted that boy Dennis glancing around the dining hall. She nudged Ruth and asked if they should invite him to sit with them.
“He’s looking for a place with white people. He wouldn’t want to sit with us,” Ruth said.
But Tomi caught Dennis’s eye and waved and pointed to the seat next to her.
Dennis looked uncertain, but there were few other vacant places, so he put his plate on the table and sat down beside Tomi.
“You don’t like us very much,” she said.
Dennis shrugged. “You’re Japs—Japanese,” he corrected himself. “My dad thinks you ought to be shipped back to Japan.”
“I’ve never been to Japan. Have you, Ruth?” Ruth shook her head. “I can’t even speak Japanese,” Tomi added. Then she asked slyly, “Can you speak German?”
“Sure. That’s what we speak at home …” Dennis’s voice trailed off, and he looked at Tomi as if she’d pulled a fast one.
“Do you think you should go back to Germany? After all, America’s fighting the Germans.”
“No way,” he said. “I’m a one-hundred-percent American.”
Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky Page 4