“I’d like to give you some books,” he continued. “I know you like to sing, so I’m including a music book along with others on math, English, and social studies. Then he leaned across the table toward me, so close I caught a whiff of aftershave lotion just like Papa’s.
“I want you to promise me that you’ll not neglect your studies.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Owens. It’s so nice of you to be concerned about me, when you don’t even know me. I’ll never forget your kindness.”
I wanted to do something, but couldn’t think what. Then I blurted, “Do you mind signing the books?”
“Of course,” he said. Then in tall, slanted words that filled half the blank page in front of the books, he wrote, “I wish you the best of luck and success in the future, Marie. Sincerely, Cecil Owens May 2, 1942.”
* * *
The local Elks Club served as the headquarters for the registration of Japanese American families in preparation for our entrance into the camp. The government officials assigned numbers to each family. We received labels with that number which we would dangle from buttonholes on what we wore. It was also painted on every loose item we had. Suitcases, folding chairs, boxes were all identified with numbers. Instead of Marie Mitsui, as far as the government was concerned, I was now a number.
Our luggage was limited to what we each could carry. The government also issued a list of items we were required to take. My father made a box out of wood that he said he would use to make furniture at the camp. He and Mama would carry that, and Brian and I would each carry a suitcase. The list also included pots, pans, and dishes, so everyone in our extended family brought mess kits. They were oblong, shallow metal containers that had a collapsible handle which secured the lid. The lid became a plate. Within were various utensils and smaller plates. We also purchased metal cups and canteens. All of this took up precious space and weight. We had already pared our belongings down when we left San Francisco. Now we had to throw away even more to make room for compact kitchenware.
“I’m taking my princess coat, no matter what! I don’t care if I have to leave everything else!” I told Brian. It was bulky and really left little room for anything else in the suitcase I was to carry. If I packed my coat, I would have to pare down to one dress. Other dresses, sweaters, my bed linen, towels would not be able to make the journey with me.
“You can’t remove those things from your suitcase,” Mama said.
“Don’t worry about it, Marie. You can always wear it,” suggested Brian.
“It’s 90 degrees!”
“Well, do you want your coat or not?”
“Whatever you don’t take, we can put in the basement of the house,” Grandpa assured us. “We’ll board it up, so it will be safe until we return.” Was he kidding? I was taking my coat with me. Otherwise I’d never see it again. What made Grandpa think we’d ever come back? We didn’t even know anything about where we would be tomorrow, much less “when we came back.” Talking about “coming back” was just crazy talk. I was only nine, but even I knew that.
We took four folding chairs. Between the chairs and the mess kits, pillows, blankets, and sheets, we barely had space for a few items of clothing.
CHAPTER 9
“Don’t Fence Me In”
BING CROSBY
On May 5, everyone from our neighborhood, including my uncle and family from down the street, and my uncle from French Camp, assembled in front of my grandparents’ hotel, because of its central location and large parking area. We all waited for the bus that would take us to our new home. The large stiff pieces of paper identifying us by number were attached to our clothing like price tags we had forgotten to remove. Our suitcases, boxes, packages, and trunks had matching tags or were boldly emblazoned with family numbers.
Finally, the wait was over. The bus arrived. But immediately behind it was a group of soldiers with knife-tipped rifles. The tall men with black bands on their arms with the letters “MP” imprinted in white approached us. Everyone stood frozen. No one said a word.
Then one of the soldiers spoke.
“We’re here to see that you get on the bus. I have a list of your numbers, so when I read yours, come forward with your baggage.” It was a slow process as people checked their labels when a number was called.
Brian leaned over to me and whispered,
“I prefer the FBI. They don’t come at you with bayoneted rifles!”
“I’m scared,” I said. “Do they intend to spear us or shoot us, if we get out of line?”
“Just don’t get out of line, unless you want to find out!” Brian said.
We all boarded the bus, and it took us the short distance from the hotel to the San Joaquin Fairgrounds. We came to a halt in front of a huge structure, which was the entrance to the camp. There were armed MPs as we boarded the bus, as we got off the bus, and as we entered the camp. There were MPs everywhere. The army must have thought we were very dangerous people to guard us with so many soldiers.
We soon discovered that the entrance to the camp was also the exit to life as we had known it: roller skates, car rides, stores, telephones, trips to the beach . . .
In the administration building there were stations set up to check our baggage for “forbidden objects” (guns, knives, etc.). They also gave us our room assignments and other instructions. It also served as a “shooting gallery” where we received our vaccinations and typhoid shots.
“You’ll have to take off your coat for your shot, little girl,” said a nurse. “Actually, why in the world are you wearing a coat in this heat?”
“It’s my favorite coat, and there wasn’t room in the luggage.”
“Of course.”
Many became ill after receiving their shots. Mama was one of them. She ran a fever and became bedridden. It was hot, we hadn’t unpacked, and Mama was sick.
Fortunately, Grandma was assigned the room next to ours, so she was able to help us get settled and nurse Mama.
A chemical was also put in the water that made many others ill. This resulted in long lines at the bathrooms. Some people figured out that if they let the water stand in a pot for a while before drinking it, the chemical in the water disappeared. That’s what we did.
We were assigned to one room in a six-room gable-roofed barrack. Block 6 Barrack 108 Apartment D. My new address was 6-108-D, Stockton Assembly Center, War Relocation Authority, Stockton, California. But it really wasn’t an apartment like ones in San Francisco. Those had bathrooms and kitchens. A camp “apartment” was just one room. Furthermore, I don’t think the builders finished their work. The walls that separated the apartments ran only part way up, stopping at the point where the roof began to slope. Basically all of us in the barrack were in one large room separated only by partitions, pretending they were walls.
The doors were level with the ground outside and opened out, so the dirt in front of the door had to be cleared constantly. The floors were made of material used to pave roads. When we walked on the grit that slipped easily into our apartments from the dusty outdoors, our footsteps were accompanied by a sound resembling the rasp of sandpaper on a woodworking project. I could hear a constant din of shoe scraping against floor as others shuffled around in their rooms. A thin coat of dust settled on everything, including the inside of my mouth. I could feel the grinding of fine bits of sand when I brought my teeth together.
It was summer in hot, humid Stockton, so the room was always like a stuffy oven.
“Lights out” was at nine p.m. I would lie in bed and watch the shadows disappear from the ceiling, one by one, as the lights went out in the rest of the barrack the closer we got to zero hour. Everyone whispered, but private conversations were impossible. The tunnel formed by the open space above our rooms permitted sounds to travel freely into the rooms below.
The woman in the next room woke us each morning as she retched into a pail, and the sound and smell of her discomfort wafted over the wall.
“Mrs. Sato has ‘morning
sickness,’” Mama said.
“‘Morning sickness’? Mornings make her sick?” I asked.
“She’s pregnant. She’s going to have a baby. Some women get sick when they’re pregnant,” she said.
Mrs. Sato sounded miserable. I don’t think I would ever want to be pregnant, I thought.
Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Robert lived in a room of similar size to ours on the other side. It was built for four people, so they had to share it with a bachelor. It was very crowded in there. My other uncles and their families were assigned housing remote from us. It was a challenge locating them. But thanks to Uncle Robert, we found them.
Uncle Robert was almost a dentist. He had been a student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in San Francisco when the war began. Although it was the next to last year for him, he wasn’t allowed to finish. He had to leave like everyone else. Here he drove a watering truck around the camp to help settle the ever-present dust. Everyone looked forward to his drive down the space between the barracks. The truck had an enormous tank with a hole-riddled rod from which he released a long, cooling fountain of water. The spray pulled the dust out of the air and removed the heat from the ground. His visit was the highlight of the day.
The toilets and showers were in a building located in the middle of our block, which was a cluster of barracks. Several toilets lined a wall in the washroom. There were no doors. A long metal tub with six faucets draining into it was our wash basin, and they lined the other wall. The showers were in a separate area. There were several of those and they, too, were unpartitioned.
I felt uncomfortable seeing others shower—all ages, sizes, and shapes. So I often bathed in the middle of the afternoon when no one else was around. If I heard anyone else in the shower when I entered, I left. Between trying to make time in the afternoon and finding others in the showers when I did, I didn’t shower as often as I should have.
* * *
We didn’t need to pack pots and pans or mess kits. All our food was prepared for us in mess halls. These were large buildings in the middle of each block and with enough space to feed just one-third of the block at one time. There were three calls for meals, announced by the striking of metal rods, triangles, or gongs. For about two hours the metallic sound of varying pitches reverberated throughout the camp. We learned to identify our particular sound. The third “bell” was ours. We stood in line in the hot summer sun and slowly inched our way into the hall. Although we had to wait until others finished their meals to make room for us, we didn’t feel as rushed, since we were last.
“I’m glad we have last bell,” said Brian. “We can have seconds.”
We picked up plates at the end of a counter. As we pushed them along, servers plopped dollops of stewed meat of some sort, along with creamed corn and rice. Breakfast was fried potatoes and runny oatmeal, at first. Then little boxes of individually wrapped cereal appeared. Kellogg’s Shredded Wheat was my favorite. I would carefully peel back the cardboard and waxed paper and pour milk directly into the box.
We sat at tables with attached benches. At first, my mother tried to find places at the ends of the benches, because sitting between people was a challenge. The challenge was to climb into the space between the bench and table without kicking neighbors in an attempt to not reveal her underwear. Finding a place to sit became less complicated when she figured out a “lady-like” way to sit. She placed her right knee on the bench as a turning point, pushing it toward her other leg as much as possible. Then she pivoted her right calf to the inside of the bench and lowered her foot onto the floor. Next, she would face the table and lean on it. Finally, she would rest her left knee on the bench, then rotate that calf under her other leg. With both feet where she wanted, she would smooth her skirt and sit down. That was too much trouble for me. I would climb up on the bench and slide down. Until I caught a sliver.
We rarely ate as a family. Mama and I ate together. But I don’t know when Papa ate, because he was always off somewhere working on community activity projects. Since Papa had experience with theater and had organized shows and such before the war, he was recruited to help out. People tapped into his background to help them set up programs to entertain everyone in camp. Brian ate with us at first, but soon ate with his friends, and we rarely saw him.
* * *
Brian and I spent the first couple of days exploring the camp. The top of the grandstand provided us with a bird’s eye view of our new surroundings. It was an enormous place built around a race track. Some barracks were confined within its circle. Others spilled outside its perimeter. But most of the camp was cloaked under cover of trees, so we couldn’t really tell what was out there. We decided to find out.
We discovered that our boundary was set by a continuous cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. It was a barrier that separated us from the rest of America as well as the rest of Stockton. Every few yards, there was a guard tower with soldiers, their bayonets glistening in the sun. We walked under the canopy of trees up to the fence to look out. Beyond it was a busy street. Life seemed unchanged for those on the other side. It seemed they drove down the road going to wherever they were going and doing normal things, like we had been doing days earlier. There was a war being fought somewhere, but it was impossible to know that by looking out. It felt like those of us who were on this side of the fence were the only ones whose lives were affected by it.
“Do you think those people out there notice us? I wonder what they think we’re doing in here?” I said.
Before Brian could say anything, a deep voice bellowed from somewhere above us,
“Hey! What’re you kids doing down there? Get away from that fence!”
Brian and I craned our necks to see where the voice was coming from. We discovered we were standing a few yards away from a guard tower! Every few yards, it turns out, there was a guard tower with soldiers, their bayonets glistening in the sun.
“Didn’t you hear me? Get away from that fence! You kids shouldn’t be out here!”
Brian grabbed my hand and pulled me along as he ran.
“Come on, Marie. Let’s get out of here!” I stumbled trying to keep up with him. He reached down and pulled me up. Soon we were out of sight of the guard.
“I don’t know what others think about us,” Brian said as he tried to catch his breath. “But one thing I know for sure. We may not be wearing clothes with black and white stripes, but we’re in prison!”
CHAPTER 10
“Sleepy Lagoon”
HARRY JAMES AND HIS ORCHESTRA
Most evenings, after dinner, folks gathered outside their apartments. People brought their chairs outside to escape the heat trapped in their rooms. Some sat on benches crudely hammered together, while others stretched out on lawn chairs they had managed to squeeze into their luggage. The sun dropped behind the barracks and the ground, dampened moments earlier by Uncle Robert’s watering truck, smelled fresh and cool. Strains from the song “Sleepy Lagoon” rippled in the air from 6-108-F, a couple of doors down. The clear, sweet voice of Harry James’s trumpet surrounded us.
The soft blare started with the bubbly sound of a gentle brook, and gradually erupted into a dazzling fountain of notes. Marsha, the teenager in 6-108-F, had packed her record player and one record. She may have had other records, but “Sleepy Lagoon” was all we ever heard. Mama said Marsha was “lovesick,” whatever that meant. Grandma and Grandpa, pregnant Mrs. Sato, Marsha and her parents, Papa, Mama, and Brian all sat outside fanning themselves and chatted. But Mrs. Uyeda and her sister, Mrs. Uyeda, sisters who were married to brothers, dominated the scene. They charmed everyone with their soft laughter and colorful Japanese dialect. I understood little of what they said, but the lilt and rhythm of their words were pleasant and soothing. They made everyone feel comfortable and at ease. Evenings in front of our apartment made me feel transported to another place—cool, beautiful, and dreamlike. It was my favorite time of day.
* * *
My cousin, Jean, lived in th
e next block. She was fifteen and knew a lot of important things that no one else would tell me. I could ask her anything and she would patiently explain. She was the one who told me what our mailing address was at Stockton Assembly Center, and what she thought was going to happen next.
“The government is preparing camps for us in other states,” she said, “We don’t know exactly where as yet, nor when we’re expected to move. One thing is for certain. We’re not going to be here very long.”
“When you find out where we’re going, will you let me know?” I asked.
“You’ll be the first,” she said.
On my way to her apartment one day, I heard a familiar voice calling me.
“Shizu! Shizu! Sing me a song!” I looked among the people clustered in the shade of a huge umbrella of a tree outside the apartments. There were unshaven men in their undershirts clustered around makeshift tables made of random pieces of wood with uneven legs to accommodate the roots of the tree. Wisps of smoke from each man joined a bluish cloud trapped in the space between the tree branches and their heads.
“Shizu! Over here!” the voice repeated.
And there he was, sitting by himself, just beyond the others. It was the card-playing Bull-Durham-smoking man from Grandpa’s hotel that had called to me before! It was Mr. Nakano! He was sitting next to a bowl filled with small twisted, squashed tubes placed on an orange crate. On it was also a board smeared with an amazing mix of colors, and he was dabbing at it with a brush. He managed a broad smile with a cigarette clenched between his brown teeth. His bare, bronze head, sprinkled with bits of black and white snips of hair like salt and pepper, glistened with sweat. The stubble continued down his face, increasing as it continued to his chin. His overalls and sleeveless undershirt were streaked with colors in a random pattern. As he watched me walk toward him, he set his board down, picked up a round wooden fan, and poked at it with his brush. As I got closer, I noticed a strong, sweet, oily, strangely familiar smell in the air. I sniffed deeply to fill my head so I could examine it. Then I remembered! It reminded me of Joey lying in his bed with a box on his ankle.
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