Dear Canada: Hoping for Home

by Kit Pearson

  I’m going to do homework now. Normal homework like Arithmetic and English and then Japanese school homework. Sigh.

  It’s not fair. First I go to regular school all day and then when everyone else goes home and buys an Orange Crush at the store or maybe plays badminton, I have to go to Japanese school until 5:30. And on Saturday morning too!

  Lately Mr. T. has been spending a lot of time talking about being Japanese. He says we are a special race because we have special strength. It comes from your hara, which is a little spot behind your belly button. But he says we are Canadian first, because we were born in Canada.

  So which is it?

  May 13, 1942

  We are packing to leave Vancouver! The prime minister says it is just for now, to keep us safe from people who think we’re bad like real Japanese people.

  Who cares? No more school for me!

  We are going to a town called Kaslo. It is in the Rockies, right beside a lake! I am so excited.

  I am packing all my treasures. I need to take Mackenzie Bear and my parcheesi set and my diary. I also made a special box for Lucky, with a handle and a little window so he can see out.

  May 16, 1942

  Maybe writing it down will help. Heaven knows there’s no one to talk to. Families huddled together, people pretending to sleep. The noises echoing off the roof of this old cattle barn. They’ve put us in livestock buildings on the exhibition grounds, crammed in like sardines, under guard until they decide what to do with us. The dust and the smell are making Mother feel even worse than usual.

  Why didn’t I leave when I had the chance? The evacuation has been going on for months. Why didn’t I go after Auntie and Uncle had their car and their farm confiscated and were shipped off to Greenwood? After Dad and all the other able-bodied men were sent to the work camps? Dad, on a road crew! Dad, who writes haiku and tends his chrysanthemums when he’s not at the bank.

  But Mother just closed her eyes and her ears and pretended nothing was happening.

  I knew things would only get worse. But I was hoping against hope that I could finish high school, and then go east to join Marie and Shig. I thought she was crazy getting married so fast like that, when she’s been dreaming about a church wedding and a long white gown ever since we were kids. But she wanted to get out so badly, and she couldn’t go on her own. I guess Shig’s brother out east will help them get settled.

  It was so strange going back to empty my locker after we got our notice that we had to leave Vancouver. The buzzer rang and everyone disappeared into their classrooms and then it was just me in the hallway. I never realized how wide the halls were, how quiet they could sound. The walk to the office seemed to take forever, and it didn’t even seem real when they took my name off the enrolment list. And just one month away from graduation! When the principal came out and shook my hand, I wanted to scream.

  How will I ever get my diploma now? What about university? What about my life?

  Instead we’re being evacuated to Kaslo, an old silver-mining town in the Kootenays. Mother says we’re lucky, that we’ll be living in real buildings instead of tents or tarpaper shacks like some of the others.

  We were so stupid — that’s what I realize now. What Marie must have realized when she married Shig and moved to Ontario. We thought if we behaved ourselves and stayed quiet, the government would know we weren’t a threat after all. Now we’ve been kicked out of the homes we’ve lived in our entire lives. Kicked out of the cities we were born in.

  Why not persecute the German Canadians, the Italian Canadians?

  We all know why. It’s because Japanese look different. We’re easy to spot. Now they think getting rid of all the Japanese in Canada will solve their problems.

  Prove you’re Canadian by cooperating, the prime minister says. Do what you’re told. Go where we tell you.

  So we do.

  Like sheep. We are good little sheep.

  May 16, 1942

  We are not in Kaslo yet. First a bus brought us to a big barn at Hastings Park. We had to line up to be organized, and we are even sleeping overnight here. There are no rooms, so we sleep in the section where cows used to be. There are just blankets for walls. People are coughing and blowing their noses everywhere and there is one lady who cries a lot.

  I thought it was all right here at first, but Kay says it is disgusting and we are being treated like animals. There are bunk beds and bunches of straw that you stuff into a bag to make your own mattress. It’s lumpy and the straw pokes into your back like needles. I sniffed it to see if maybe a cow had already slept on it, but it’s hard to tell.

  It all happened really fast. The buses came and we had to go and Mother said we couldn’t take Lucky. Even though I made his special box and everything.

  I cried then, but that was the only time.

  The government says each person can only bring a certain amount. Just 150 pounds for grown-ups and 75 pounds for children. And we have to bring food and mattresses and blankets and even our sewing machine. So Mother said I could only bring my diary and tiny treasures like my necklace with the red stone that looks like a real ruby. I had to leave Mackenzie and all my big dolls and games behind.

  I was so mad! Why a sewing machine? Kay says they want us to be able to sew our own clothes and such. She says that means we will not be coming home for a long time.

  Can she be right? I don’t like to think so, but usually she is.

  May 17, 1942

  I have a new friend. Her name is Irene.

  I was in our stall at Hastings and I was feeling sad about Lucky. Our neighbours down the street said they would look after him, but I don’t know. Their kitchen isn’t like ours, with the warm spot behind the stove where he likes to sleep.

  Cats don’t like change. They like things the way they like them.

  I was lying in my bunk next to the blanket between the stalls. I was listening to the coughing and sneezing and the Crying Lady, crying as usual.

  Then someone stuck a note between the blankets and this is what it said.

  Hello. My name is Irene. What’s yours?

  So I wrote a note back and now we are friends. We go up and down the stalls and look at feet under the blankets and make up funny stories about them. Some people don’t even have blankets to hang for walls, and they have to use coats and skirts instead.

  Irene has been here for two whole months. She says when she came they didn’t even have walls around the toilets! She says living in the cow stalls is better than living in the pig section, which smells even more because cows eat grass but pigs eat anything, so their poo stinks worse.

  Irene is going to Kaslo too! She lives on Vancouver Island. Her father was taken away just like Dad, and after that all the Japanese families on the island were sent here to Hastings. Irene says they wanted to get rid of all the island people first because a lot of them are fishermen. The government is afraid they might take messages out to Japanese submarines and sneak enemy soldiers into Canada in the dead of night. That’s why they took their boats away, too.

  Irene says the Mounties told her mother they could go home after three months, so don’t bother to bring too much.

  So I told her about our sewing machine and how Mother dug up all her peony plants in the garden and gave them to a lady from church.

  Irene got real quiet then.

  May 17, 1942

  We had so little time to get ready, to decide what to take, what to leave. And there was Mother, out in the rain, digging up her peonies! Instead of organizing all our things. She thinks we can just lock our belongings in a room to keep them safe! Uncle said it will be a long time before we’ll be allowed to come back and that we should leave our belongings with neighbours we trust, but Mother doesn’t want people poking into our things.

  I watched her digging in the rain, and that’s when I saw. Her apron all wet and plastered to her stomach.

  She’s pregnant. That explains the morning sickness, her tiredness, her moods. Oh, I can’t
believe it. She’s forty-two! And now we’re on our way to a camp and who knows what kind of conditions.

  I wonder if Marie knew and didn’t tell me. If that’s why she was so anxious to leave Vancouver. Marrying Shig so fast like that. Not just to avoid the camps. To get out of becoming chief nursemaid and bottle washer for Mother and a screaming infant. And babysitter for impossible Amy.

  Amy. Never lends a hand, needs to be reminded to carry her own bag. She’s worse than a toddler.

  Look at her. Running around with her little chatterbox friend. The Gruesome Twosome. Scribbling in their diaries, writing their silly notes.

  It’s as if she thinks it’s fun to sleep in a cattle barn. Eat bologna sandwiches in a crowded dining hall with thousands of strangers.

  It’s all just a game to her, a big adventure.

  May 19, 1942

  We’re on a train now. Going to Kaslo. We had to line up and wait for a long time. It’s all Japanese people here, but mostly mothers and kids and old men. I miss Dad. The Crying Lady is also on the train. Too bad.

  The seats on the train are hard so Irene and I put pillowcases filled with clothes on top to make cushions. But when Kay saw she got really mad. She said inside all the clothes are fragile items like Mother’s tea set, and that we will crack them.

  When she yelled we jumped off our seats right away but then we looked down and we could see our bum marks on the pillows. We looked at each other and started laughing our heads off and Kay looked like she was going to slug me.

  Irene says Kay is prissy and bossy and that’s probably why she doesn’t have a boyfriend. She says when Kay gets mad she gets two little straight black lines between her eyes. It makes her look like a witch.

  So now we call her the Wicked Witch. But just behind her back.

  May 20, 1942

  The train trip lasted forever. Then we came to a place beside the water and we had to wait some more. But now we are on a SHIP! It is three storeys high with a cabin on top for the captain and a smokestack behind it. Roy S. says it is not a real ship. He says the Titanic was a ship and it had four smokestacks.

  I don’t care. This is fancy like a ship, even if there are a lot of us crowded on it. Some rooms have carpets and red velvet curtains.

  The lake we are on is called Kootenay Lake and it is very skinny. You can stand at the railing and watch the trees and the mountains slide by on both sides. Kay came and we watched the lake together for a bit. I remembered a story she used to read me when I was little, about a boy named Momotaro who floats down a river in a giant peach and is adopted by a kind old couple who live in the mountains.

  Kay said that peach could float down this lake all the way to the Columbia River, and from there all the way to the Pacific Ocean. I said could you float all the way from here to Japan and she said you could and we had a little chat about that and it was nice.

  When I told Irene she said, “It’s just like the Wicked Witch to turn everything into a geography lesson.”

  There is a poster on the ship that says we must be careful of SNEAK THIEVES. We must sleep with our valuables under our pillows, which I would do, except we didn’t bring pillows.

  Kay found one of my private notes to Irene and she says my handwriting is atrocious. She underlined all my spelling mistakes and wrote ATROCIOUS PENMANSHIP in the margin. She is cross because I have started making my es like backwards 3s, the way Irene does. I think it looks cute but Kay says es should look like little loops and writing should slant forward, not go up and down.

  Kay’s handwriting is perfect. She has a certificate that says so from the MacLean Method of Handwriting. She is very artistic. Even when she wraps presents or ties a hair bow it looks different. Better than when other people do it. Irene says that means she must be weak in other things but I don’t know. She’s a champion public speaker too and last year she won a big contest. The trophy was HUGE. Bigger than the one Dad won for his chrysanthemums. He pretended he didn’t notice, but he did.

  Anyway, she says my writing is not up to standard and that she would never allow it if she was the teacher.

  Later

  There is this boy on the ship. Maybe I have mentioned him. Roy S. His ears are quite big. Irene calls him Dumbo. He wears a cowboy hat and he says things like “man alive” and “no guff.” He calls everyone “pardner” — “All right then, pard.” “You got it, pard.” He says “chow” instead of “food.”

  Roy likes to draw but he just draws the same thing over and over. Robots. He says in the future robots will do everything, like sweep the floor and mow the lawn and wash the clothes. He always talks about his dogs back on his berry farm. Grouch and Skipper.

  Lots of us left our pets behind, but we don’t keep talking about it.

  Anyway, Roy has this box that he carries around everywhere. It looks like a regular biscuit tin but it rattles in a funny way. He has secret papers in the box, too, and a Brownie camera. We saw him take it out once and show the other boys.

  Irene says he will be arrested if the Mounties find out he has a camera. Japanese aren’t allowed to have cameras or radios.

  We call the biscuit tin his spy kit. We are going to watch him closely.

  May 20, 1942

  We’re on the S.S. Nasookin, the sternwheeler that will take us the final leg of our journey, up the lake to Kaslo. The smell of the coal-fired engine is strong and the drone of the engine and the hissing of the boilers have given me an awful headache.

  Mother sits huddled in a corner feeling ill. At least she’s not constantly weeping like the woman Amy calls the Crying Lady. On the other side of the saloon deck a woman is knitting socks. To send to the soldiers fighting in Europe, she says. To prove we are good Canadians in spite of what our own government is doing to us.

  Some of the women are already meeting to make plans for our lives in Kaslo. We haven’t even arrived and they are busy chattering away about how this is the beginning of the beginning. Shikata-ga-nai, they say. It can’t be helped. We must make the best of things.

  They’re worried the children should not miss any school, that they must be kept occupied once we arrive. It seems the government is too busy moving all of us around to be bothered with things like education. There are too many children to attend the local schools, and there are no real teachers among us. So someone had the bright idea that those who have graduated high school can teach the little ones.

  They have pulled me into the group, even though right now I should be at home studying for my exams and getting ready to go to UBC.

  They are buzzing like bees, so excited. They’re already planning concerts and excursions and activities. When we don’t even have a schoolroom! No desks, no blackboards, no books.

  I can’t wait to see the look on Amy’s face when she finds out she’s not really on summer holiday after all. And that I might be her new teacher!

  May 21, 1942

  We’re in Kaslo. Waiting. That’s what I am doing now. Sitting on the dock with our suitcases and bags and boxes. Most people don’t even have real suitcases. Just boxes tied together with rope, and flour sacks and pillowcases stuffed with clothes.

  Mother is feeling sick again so Kay took her to find a bathroom. She says watch our things and don’t dare run off with my “little friend” for even a second. She means Irene.

  Now we are all just waiting for someone to tell us where to go next.

  This is what Kaslo looks like. There is a bay on one side and a park and a little beach for swimming. And we passed a little creek with a bubbly waterfall coming right into the lake! Irene says she made a kingdom beside the creek behind her house and that we can do the same thing here when we find the perfect spot. I can’t wait!

  All around are mountains. Not real mountains like around Vancouver, but more like big hills, with trees and little patches of rock and they slide right into the lake, except for a flat part that sticks out and that’s where they put Kaslo.

  They call Kaslo a ghost town but there are real peop
le already living here. I can see a girl with fluffy golden hair standing on the edge of the park. I pretend I don’t see her and she is pretending not to see me too. She has a big ribbon in her curly hair. I love curly hair. When Kay was still nice she sometimes put rag curlers in my hair for me. But it was lumpy to sleep on and the next day the curl only lasted until lunchtime.

  The buildings here look a little shabby but we haven’t seen the hotel yet. Because that’s where we are going to live. In a hotel!

  I have never been in a hotel, but there is a big one in Vancouver and Irene says all the sinks have gold faucets and there are fancy chandeliers everywhere. She says her uncle stayed in a hotel in Hawaii when he came from Japan. In Hawaii hotels you can have fresh pineapple juice whenever you want and in the restaurant they fold the napkins to look like fans and there are orchids growing everywhere. Irene says orchids are the most expensive flowers in the world, and every night when the maid comes in to turn down your sheets she puts one on your pillow. That’s so you will have sweet dreams.

  A little later

  Something bad just happened. Roy S. was sitting with his family on the dock. He climbed up onto a pile of trunks and suitcases even though his mother told him not to. He sat up there and looked at me like he was the king of the castle.

  Then he got out his spy kit. And when he tried to open it the top stuck and he yanked it and everything fell out. Robot drawings and his Brownie camera and about a million marbles. Ai-yai-yai! They all spilled! Rolled down and off the dock and plop into the water.

  He tried to catch them and fell off the suitcases and skinned his knee. Then he cried and his mother grabbed his arm and yelled at him. “Stop that. Boys don’t cry,” she said. She shook him a bit when she said it.