“You can stay at home with me for a few months.” Reiko smiled at her, heartbroken at what the girls had done to her. It was an experience no one should have had, and Hiroko was so gentle and kind that the idea of anyone abusing her turned Reiko's stomach.
We're very sorry,” the administrators said again, and a little while later Hiroko went upstairs to pack her things with Reiko. Some had been stolen, most had been destroyed. The red paint had splashed everywhere; it was still in her hair, despite both nurses' efforts. It would take weeks to get it out. They'd even had to get it off her eyelashes and eyebrows.
Reiko took her bag to the car, while Hiroko stripped her bed and folded her blankets. And as she did, she suddenly sensed a presence behind her, and turned in terror. Maybe this time they would attack her. But the only person she saw standing there, looking hesitant, was Anne Spencer. Hiroko said not a word to her, she just stood there and waited, sure that the tall, aristocratic blonde had come to gloat, or maybe even to hurt her. And yet there was a look of sorrow in Anne's eyes, and they filled with tears as she held a hand out to Hiroko.
“I came to say good-bye,” she said in a whisper to her. “I'm sorry about what they did to you. I heard about it last night.” She could still see some of the paint in her hair and around her eyes, and she felt desperately sorry for her. She hadn't wanted to room with her, but she had never wanted anything like this to happen. And she had lain awake all night, thinking about it, after someone told her. It was a sick thing to do and she wanted Hiroko to know how she felt about it. She was outraged. Anne knew she'd had a right to be upset over being asked to room with her. But in her mind, that was different. She felt adamant that no one had a right to do this to another human being. And Japanese or not, Hiroko was very decent. Anne knew it from all she'd seen of her, and in her own way, respected her for it. She didn't want to be her friend or her roommate—she was still convinced that simply because Hiroko was Japanese, she was somehow beneath her. In her world, Japanese were nannies and gardeners and servants. But no matter what else she felt, Anne didn't wish her any harm either. And she felt terrible about everything the other girls had done to her.
“Will you go back to Japan?” Anne was suddenly curious about her. It was too late now, but at least she had wanted to say good-bye, and tell her she was sorry. She wanted her to know that she wasn't part of the attack that had been perpetrated on her by the others.
“My father wishes me to stay here, and I cannot go back anyway. There are no ships now.” She was trapped here, with people who hated her as much as those who had vandalized her room, and even ones like Anne Spencer, who openly shunned her. Hiroko didn't comprehend the depths of Anne's sympathy now, nor did she trust her. Yet she sensed something straightforward and honest about her.
“Good luck,” Anne said sadly, standing there for a moment, and then she disappeared. And as Hiroko walked slowly downstairs, she thought about her. She had had such high hopes for St. Andrew's. And on her way out, she saw Sharon too. She looked straight at Hiroko as though she'd never seen lier before, and then turned on her heel and walked down the hall, laughing with a group of girls, telling them all about the day she had spent with Greer Garson.
Several of the deans shook Hiroko's hand when she left, but none of the girls said anything. And despite the polite words, there was no doubt in Hiroko's mind. She had disgraced her family. She had failed them.
She slipped into the backseat of the car quietly, with her head bowed, and without knowing why, she glanced back as they drove away. The last face she saw at St. Andrew's was Anne Spencer's, watching her from an upstairs window.
Chapter 9
FOR THE next several weeks, Hiroko flew around the Tanakas' house like a whirlwind. Reiko was busy at the hospital, and Hiroko did everything for her. She cooked, she cleaned, she watched Tami in the afternoons. She even helped the little girl make a whole new set of drapes and bedspreads for her dollhouse. And when Reiko came home in the afternoons that she worked, she found everything immaculate and in order.
“It's embarrassing,” she said to Tak. “I haven't cleaned house in three weeks. I feel like a lady of leisure.”
“I think she's trying to make it up to us for having to leave St. Andrew's. I'm not sure she really understands that it wasn't her fault,” he said sadly. “In her mind, this has been a great loss of honor. She came here to go to school, to honor her father, and now she can't. To her, the reason for that is unimportant. She's paying penance.” She said nothing about what had happened, once she left St. Andrew's, and Tak had warned the children not to annoy her about it. She felt terrible and she was trying to make the best of a difficult situation.
They had talked about Hiroko applying to Stanford, but Tak seriously doubted that they'd be willing to accept an alien at this point. They had been incredibly kind to Tak, but Hiroko didn't want to risk embarrassment, to herself or to him, by applying. So instead, she made herself useful to everyone in the family. And the main task she seemed to have set herself was to become as American as she could. He hadn't seen her in a kimono in almost two months, she never bowed or called him “san” anymore, and whenever she had a minute, she read, or listened to the radio, and she had seriously begun to improve her English.
Peter spent considerable time with her too, and he had been devastated for her over what had happened at St. Andrew's, but he saw the change in her too. Though at first she seemed filled with shame, she also seemed determined not to let it defeat her.
But the news still wasn't good. The Japanese had invaded the Dutch East Indies two days before she left school, and two weeks after that, the state Personnel Board voted to bar all Japanese from applying for, or keeping, civil service jobs. Things were definitely not improving. And Tak was hearing things he didn't like at Stanford. There was a certain amount of unrest these days about his being the head of the department.
But no one was prepared for the army declaring “restricted areas” all up and down the West Coast, and putting a curfew on “enemy aliens.” And Takeo was even more shocked when they were told they could only travel back and forth to their place of employment, and stay within a five-mile radius of their residence. Anything farther than that would require a special permit.
“It's like being in a ghetto,” he said darkly to Peter when they heard about it. And at home, when he told his family, Sally was horrified. To her it meant she couldn't even go to a late movie.
“It means a lot more than that,” Tak said to his wife later that night when they were alone in their bedroom. But neither of them were prepared when the head of the university apologized deeply to him, but said that Peter was being made head of the department, and Takeo would have to become his assistant. It meant a considerable cut in pay, but a loss of prestige as well—not that Takeo begrudged it to Peter, but it was just more of the same thing. Little by little, all their privileges and rights were being chipped away. And it was only a week after that when the hospital told Reiko they wouldn't need her. Too many patients had complained about being cared for by an enemy alien, no matter how talented a nurse she was, or how gentle with her patients.
“I guess we're lucky they don't make us wear stars, like the Jews in Germany,” Takeo said bitterly to Peter over lunch one day, in the office Takeo had relinquished to him, but which still felt like his. It was a painful situation. “But in our case we don't need to. They can see who we are, or at least they think they can. To them, we all look the same, issei, nisei, sansei. What's the difference?” In his case, he had been born in Japan, which made him issei. But his children, having been born in the States, were nisei. And their children would be sansei. The only real “enemy alien,” if you could even call her that on a pure technicality, was Hiroko, because she'd been trapped here.
In fact, a new term had emerged, a truly confusing one. Japanese were being referred to as aliens and non-aliens. The non-aliens were actually American citizens, people of Japanese descent who had been born in the United States. The ni
sei. But both groups were being lumped together, because they were Japanese. Non-aliens somehow made them sound a lot less friendly. Reiko was actually no longer a citizen, she was a non-alien, a variation of the enemy, and someone not to be trusted.
“I feel like a doctor with a fascinating disease,” Takeo said to Peter thoughtfully. “I have this constant urge to put the diseased cells under the microscope and study them, while I'm dying.” He had no illusions that things weren't going from bad to worse. The question was, how bad would they get? And none of the answers so far were very reassuring.
“You won't die of this, Tak.” Peter tried to comfort him, but he still felt guilty over having his friend and recent boss's job and his office. But at least Tak hadn't gotten fired; many others had. And Peter was grateful that he hadn't.
On Valentine's Day, one newspaper printed an editorial urging the evacuation of all Japanese, regardless of their citizenship status. Singapore fell to the Japanese the next day. And the day after that, the Joint Immigration Committee agreed with the editorial, urging the removal of all Japanese, as the FBI continued to make mass arrests, hoping to catch Japanese spies in California. But thus far, not a single person had been charged or indicted for acts of treason.
On February nineteenth, Executive Order 9066 was signed by the President, in effect giving the military the power to designate areas from which “any and all persons” could be excluded. In effect, it allowed the military to ask the Japanese to leave any area from which they wished them excluded. It was a document of profound importance. And Public Law 77-503 made it a federal offense to refuse to leave a military area when ordered to do so. Failure to obey was a crime punishable by a term in prison.
Some thought these laws would change very little in practice, but others, like Tak and Peter, feared that this was only the first roll of the drums, and the real terror would come later. They already had curfews, limitations, needed special permits to go anywhere, were being referred to as aliens no matter what their history, and now the army had the power to exclude them. And in the ensuing days, the Japanese were asked to evacuate voluntarily, to sell their homes and businesses, and move elsewhere.
To make matters worse, there was finally a real attack on the coast, when a Japanese submarine fired at a Santa Barbara oil field on February twenty-third. There were no deaths or casualties, but the hysteria it caused was the final straw, and exactly what General De Witt needed. The proof was there now. The country was under attack by the Japanese, and every man, woman, and child of Japanese origin was under suspicion.
But even the few who chose to move away voluntarily did not find warm receptions elsewhere. Governors of other states were in an uproar as they began to trickle in. But most of the Japanese in California chose to stay there. They had homes, and businesses, and lives, and nobody wanted to move away for voluntary exclusion.
It was like a rising tide of despair in those days, as Takeo listened to the news, and discussed it with Reiko. She was panicked at the idea of having to move anywhere “voluntarily.” She had lived in California all her life, and so had their children. They had never been farther away than Los Angeles. The prospect of going east, or to the Midwest, or anywhere else, upset her deeply.
“Tak, I just don't want to.” They'd heard several tales of people who had tried to move away, but been met by such ferocious opposition wherever they went that they came right back to San Francisco. “I'm not going.”
He didn't want to tell her that one day she might have to. But he and Peter discussed it constantly. What if they were simply told to leave the state? Much of the hysteria was caused by there being so many Japanese along the coastline. And the prevailing thought was that if they were farther away, they would create less of a danger.
In late March, armed soldiers descended on Japanese communities in the state of Washington, and gave them six days to sell their homes and businesses and report to a local fairground, and they were held incarcerated there, pending “relocation.” But no one knew “to where” yet. The army was talking about setting up camps for them, but no one knew where, or if it was really true. It was all gossip and rumor. And the entire Japanese community was stunned into terrified silence.
“Do you think it could happen here?” Reiko asked her husband in bed that night. It seemed incredible, if what they'd heard was true. She still wasn't sure she believed it. But eventually photographs in the newspapers confirmed it. There were images of children standing next to suitcases, with tags attached to buttons on their coats, old people, women crying, and proud locals standing next to signs that said JAPS, GET OUT! WE DON'T WANT YOU! It was a nightmare.
“I don't know,” Tak said, wishing he had the courage to he to her, but he didn't. “I think so, Rei. I think we have to be prepared for anything.” But no one ever is in life, and they were no different.
In spite of what they heard, they went about their lives as usual. The children went to school, and Reiko and Hiroko cleaned the house. Takeo went to school and pretended to work for Peter. And Ken spent time with his girlfriend after he did his chores. But no matter how ominous world events were, it was hard to believe that their lives would ever unravel.
Peter spent a lot of time with Hiroko that spring. She had applied herself to studying in every spare moment she had, so as not to let her father down completely. She was reading everything she could about politics, and art, and American history, and always in English. Her English had improved considerably, and she had grown up somewhat. Her experience at St. Andrew's had hurt her a great deal, but it had also taught her something. She had never heard from any of the girls again, nor the school, except for a formal letter telling her that they were sorry that she had withdrawn, but accepted her reasons. She had been given incompletes in everything, and academically her time, and her father's money, had been wasted. She was sensitive to that too, and planned one day to repay him for the time lost, and make restitution. She tried to explain it to Peter once or twice, and he was intrigued by her thinking. She had every intention of making up for the shame of not finishing the year at school, but in her heart of hearts, she considered it an enormous failure.
She had planted a lovely garden that spring, and kept the house immaculate. When she could get the ingredients, she sometimes made traditional Japanese dishes for them. Though the children hated Japanese food, Takeo and Peter loved it. She used all the arts and skills she had learned from her grandmother, and enjoyed teaching Peter as much as she could about her culture. He was increasingly fascinated by it, and even more so by the gentle, capable woman she was becoming. But she was careful to learn his ways too, and she enjoyed discussing his work with him, and the things he taught at the university. They would sit for hours, lost in conversation.
“What do you suppose you're going to do?” Takeo asked him quietly one day in April. It was obvious that Peter was deeply in love with her, but in the present circumstances, and perhaps even after that, there was very little they could do about it. It was not at all like his situation, at the same stage, with Reiko. They had gotten married within six months, but there was no hope of Hiroko being able to marry Peter in California.
“I don't know,” Peter said honestly. He had thought of asking her to go out of state with him and get married, but he wasn't at all sure she'd do it. Her father's approval was very important to her, and he knew nothing about Peter. She couldn't even write to her father now, and at times he knew she was still very homesick for her parents. “I wanted to go to Japan to meet her father this summer, and talk to him, to see if he's as modern in his thinking as you all seem to think. But those plans went out the window with Pearl Harbor.”
“It could be years before this is over,” Tak said sadly.
“She'll never agree to get married without her parents' knowledge and approval,” Peter said pensively.
And he was joining the army in June. The Selective Service had agreed to wait until then, so he could finish the term, particularly now that he was the head of t
he department. But beyond that, he had no special powers. And he didn't like leaving her without some kind of protection, although of course she had the Tanakas. Even without the war, he wanted to many her anyway. But she kept insisting that they had to wait for the approval of her father. “You don't think they'll ever evacuate anyone here, do you, Tak?” They had all followed closely what had just gone on in Seattle. It was a different state, though not a different army.
“I don't know what to think anymore. I think anything is possible. This whole country's going crazy, about the Japanese anyway. And in some ways, I can't blame them. We're at war with Japan, they have every reason to be suspicious of aliens. What I can't understand though is how they can pretend that American-born citizens are suddenly aliens. That's what's crazy.” And all the Japanese boys who had volunteered had either wound up in kitchens or been sent home. None of them were being assigned to fighting units. The country had an immeasurable distrust for the loyalty of the nisei, and for the moment, nothing could persuade them to see anything differently. “I wish I had the answers. I guess if I really thought they'd evacuate us, I'd be packing my bags for New Hampshire. But I keep thinking it's all going to settle down, we'll all get our jobs back”—he smiled at his young friend without malice—”and they'll say they're sorry. But there's a part of me that knows I'm being stupid.”
“I don't think you're stupid. It makes sense. The other stuff certainly doesn't,” Peter answered, and all he could think about now was Hiroko. He wanted to marry her, to shield her from all this, from the fear and the prejudice and the uncertainty. But even just taking her out to dinner, or a movie, he couldn't protect her. There was always the fear that someone would come up to them, and spit at her, or say something, or shout an obscenity at her. It had happened to them, and to others. It had happened to her at the grocery store just that week, and Tak had told her to patronize only nisei stores, so she wouldn't have a problem. When Peter heard, he told her how worried he was about leaving her when he joined the army. And this time he brought up the subject of marriage, but for her it was impossible until she was in contact with her family again, and even then, they might not agree to it. But the thought of her marrying anyone else almost killed him. He hated the thought of leaving her, of not seeing her face, or her shining black hair, or her lithe, graceful movements, She always seemed to flit around him like a hummingbird, bringing him things, making him tea, smiling at him, telling him a funny story about Tami. She loved the little girl, and children generally, and more and more Peter found himself dreaming of having a life with her, and having her bear his children. He wanted to be with her, for eternity, and no executive order could change that.
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