The bus filled quickly this time, and armed guards boarded it with them. There were only women on the bus with her, and terrifying thoughts entered her mind, but no one approached her. The curtains were let down so they wouldn't see where they were being taken, and the guards took their places, with the guns pointed at them. And then, grinding through the gears, the bus took off toward wherever destiny would take her.
Chapter 13
THE BUS ride from Tanforan was surprisingly brief. Barely half an hour after they'd begun, the bus came to a halt and the guards shepherded them off. Hiroko couldn't imagine where they were, but she was told to take her valise, and to leave the bus with the other women.
And as soon as they stepped off, she saw that they were at the train station at San Bruno. A train Was waiting for them, and other busloads of people were being ushered off at gunpoint. This was serious now. There were no smiles, no kind words, no explanations, and none of the guards looked friendly. No one looked her in the eye as she was shoved onto the train, ahead of dozens of other women. But on the train there were men in other cars, segregated this time, and she noticed that there were more men than women. As she took her seat, on a hard wooden bench, clutching her suitcase with trembling hands, she felt certain that they were taking her back to San Francisco for deportation.
The trains were very old, and had few comforts, and the windows were all boarded up so they couldn't see where they were going. There were whispers and little cries, there were no children this time, and most of the women thought they were going to prison, or to a camp somewhere for execution. Hiroko only sat there with closed eyes, holding the thought of Peter in her mind, trying not to think of dying. She wasn't afraid to die, but she ached at the thought of never seeing him again, never being in his arms, never telling him again how much she loved him. Perhaps, she thought, as the train lurched to life and several women stumbled, perhaps if they could never be together again, it was better to die. And then she thought of something her grandmother had taught her as a little girl. It was gin, the obligation to the dignity of one's name. It was the honor that she now owed her father, to be dignified, and strong and wise, to go willingly to her death, with pride. She thought of on as well, the obligation she had to her country and to her parents. And no matter how frightened she was, or how sad, she vowed silently not to disgrace them.
It grew hot on the train after a while, just from all the people pressed in there. She learned later that there hadn't been enough passenger cars, so they used freight cars to transport the passengers. A few women were sick on the train, but Hiroko was too numb to feel anything. She felt only sorrow as she sat there.
And as night fell, it grew cool again, and still they rode on. Perhaps she would not sail from San Francisco, she realized, but from Washington State or from Los Angeles. She knew that before the war, ships had sailed to Japan from either place. Or perhaps the others were right, and they were simply going to die. Execution was simpler than deportation. The woman next to her cried all night, sobbing for her husband and children. She was a Japanese national, like Hiroko, and she had only been in the States for six months. She and her husband had come here to live with cousins while he worked on a building project. He was an engineer, and they had taken him the day before, just as they had Takeo. And her two small children had been sent earlier with her cousins and their children. Like Reiko, her cousins were nisei.
Hiroko hadn't gone to the bathroom all day, and she was aching to when they finally stopped at midnight. It was dark outside, there were no houses anywhere, and they were shepherded off the train at gunpoint again, and told they could go to the bathroom there. There were no toilets, no trees, no shelter, and there were men watching them. A month before, her own modesty would have caused her to die first, but now she didn't care. Like the others, she did what she had to do. And feeling deeply ashamed, she got back on the train again, and huddled in the corner, still clutching her suitcase. She almost wondered why she even kept it. If she were going to die, she wouldn't need the pair of slacks Reiko had packed for her, or the warm sweaters she had brought, or the photograph of her parents. She had a photograph of Peter too. Takeo had taken it of them just before they had to turn in their cameras as contraband. He was standing next to her, and she was still looking painfully shy in a kimono. It seemed a lifetime ago now, and it was hard to believe that it had been three months since she'd seen him. Harder still to realize that life had ever been normal, that they had lived in homes, and driven cars, gone anywhere, and had friends and jobs, and ideals and dreams. They had nothing now, except the infinitesimally tiny sliver of time that was the present.
She was dozing when the train stopped again. She had no idea what time it was, but the sky was gray when they slid open the freight doors, and the air was freezing when it hit her. She woke suddenly, and they all struggled to their feet. There was shouting outside, and there were more men waving guns at them, and telling them to get off the train, which they all did in a hurry. Hiroko stumbled as she jumped off the train, and another woman steadied her with a small smile. It was like a ray of sunshine in the dark night, a reminder that someone else was there with her.
“God bless you,” the woman whispered to her in perfect English.
“God bless all of us,” someone else added nearby, and with that, the bayonets were pointed at them, and they hurried forward as they were told to.
Hiroko saw the male prisoners again, and in the distance she could see buildings. It was hard to tell what they were, but she heard a man say that they were barracks. And then, carrying their few things, they walked for two miles, with the soldiers beside them. There were no people to be seen, only the soldiers, and plumes of steam flew from their mouths as they walked in the frigid air. It felt like winter, though it was only September.
“Are you all right?” she asked an old woman, who looked ill. And then she realized from the blank stare that she didn't speak English, and she asked her in Japanese, and the woman only nodded, fighting for breath. She explained that she had two sons in the army in Japan, but she had a son here who was a doctor. He had already gone to Manzanar the week before, but for some reason they hadn't taken her with him. She didn't look well, but she didn't complain, and Hiroko gently took her suitcase and carried it for her.
They reached a large building finally. It had taken them an hour and a half to get there. Some of the women were foolishly wearing high heels, some were old, and none of them could walk very quickly. The men had passed them quite a while before, a long column of them, being marched at a rapid pace by young soldiers. And only a few of the old ones straggled behind, with the bayonets firmly pointed at them.
But there was no sign of the men as the women were ushered into the building and told that they had been brought there for interrogation. For whatever reason, they had been designated as “higher risk,” and they were going to be kept there until their future status could be determined. The speech the lieutenant made was brief and dry, and they were led away to cells, their suitcases labeled with their numbers and taken from them. And Hiroko was shocked when she was handed prison garb, and told to take her clothes off.
There was no privacy once again, she simply had to change her clothes while the soldiers watched them. And again she was mortified, as she crouched low and put on the ugly pajamas that they gave them. They were far too big for her, and she looked like a little girl as they walked her to a cell with two other women.
There were three steel cots in the room, with straw mattresses, and in the corner an open toilet. It was a stockade that was being used for them. And Hiroko stood and looked out the window in despair, as the sun came up. It was hard to believe she would ever have a life again, or be free, or that she would ever see Peter. And when she turned away from the window, she saw that the other two women were crying. She said nothing to them; she quietly sat down on her own bed and looked toward the mountains she could see outside. She had no idea where they were, or where they would go from here, if
anywhere. This was her fate now.
For the next three weeks they were given three small meals a day. The food was poor, but it was fresh at least, and none of them had the ravaging stomach problems they had had at Tanforan. Hiroko felt better too, and she slept a lot, and wove the straw from her mattress into mats. Without even thinking, she had started making tatami. Now and then when she found scraps of paper, she made little birds. And once, when one of the other women had found some thread, they had hung Hiroko's little origami birds from it at the window. It was October by then, and they had no news, of their own fate or of the others. Hiroko had heard of several suicides among the men. The women seemed to accept their fate more willingly, and most of them seemed to have no idea why they had been put in prison. And then, finally, Hiroko was called for interrogation.
They wanted to know about her brother in Japan, if she had heard from him, if he had gotten messages to her since the war began, and what she knew of his position in the air force. It was easy to answer them. She had no idea where he was, or what he did. And her only message about him had been from her father via the consulate immediately after Pearl Harbor was struck, when all he said was for her to stay and continue to go to school, and he had mentioned that Yuji was in the air force. But more than that she did not know. She told them Yuji's name, and age, and hoped that they would not cause him any trouble. But it was impossible for her even to imagine how they could do that. The two nations were at war, and a young boy in the air force of Japan was hardly accessible to them.
They asked her about her father, what he had taught at the university, and if he had had radical ideas, or was involved with the government in any way. And she smiled quietly as she answered. Her father was a dreamer, filled with new ideas that most of the time seemed far too advanced even for his colleagues. But he was no radical, no political force. She described him as a gentle man, fascinated by history, both modern and ancient, which was a fairly accurate portrayal of her father.
Then they pressed her about Takeo and what she knew of him, his activities, his associations, his politics, and she assured them that as far as she knew, he was only a teacher, and a good person. He was devoted to his family, and she had never heard him express any disloyalty to the United States. And she made a point of saying that he had always wished he could become a citizen, and actually felt as though he were one.
And then, finally, after several days of questioning, as she knew they would, they came to Peter. Her only fear was that someone might have heard or seen the brief ceremony by the Buddhist priest at Tanforan. She knew that even that symbolic religious ceremony, not recognized by the state, would have gotten him into trouble.
She said that they were friends, that she knew him because he was Tak's assistant, but she gave them nothing more than that, and they did not ask her. They wanted to know if she had heard from him, and they knew she had. They had kept careful records of his letters, and she admitted easily that he had written to her, but all of his letters had been censored. And when they asked, she said that when she had last heard from him he had left Fort Dix, New Jersey, and was in England, serving under General Eisenhower. But she hadn't heard from him since, and she wasn't even sure that she would now.
“Do you wish to go back to Japan?” they asked, writing down what she said. She was being interrogated by two young officers, and more than once they conferred with each other out of her hearing. But she answered them honestly, and without artifice, looking at them squarely.
“My father wishes me to stay in America,” she said softly, wondering again if they would send her back to Japan, or simply shoot her. She didn't care anymore, as long as she didn't dishonor the family, or hurt Peter by something she said. She was very careful.
“Why does he want you to stay here?” they asked pointedly, suddenly very interested by what she said. They were getting to the real meat now.
“He sent a message to my cousin that he thought it was safer, and he wanted me to continue my education.”
“Where were you doing that?” They looked surprised, as though they thought she'd been a maid somewhere, or a farmer. But she was used to that.
“I was at St. Andrew's College,” she said, and they wrote it down.
“But do you want to go back?” They sounded as if they would have shipped her back to Japan if she wanted, but she didn't. They were offering to send those back to Japan who wanted to go, and letting those who had citizenship give it up and go back to Japan, even if they'd never been there. The War Relocation Authority, or WRA, was also offering to find war work in factories in the East, but most people were too afraid to agree to be sent away to unknown locations, to work in factories where they were frightened they'd be tormented. It was almost easier to stay in the camps, with people they knew, or to whom they were related.
“I wish to stay here,” she said quietly. “I do not wish to return to Japan,” she said firmly.
“Why?” They pressed, still suspicious of her, even though the men kidded among themselves about how pretty she was. She had a luminous quality about her, and there was a sense of peace that would have touched them deeply, if they had let it.
“I want to help my cousins if I can.” She also wanted to stay in the States because of Peter, but she didn't say so. But she did say that she loved America, which was true. She did now, for a number of reasons, in spite of the relocation. And she never lost sight of the fact that her father wanted her to stay there, so she had to. She could not disobey him.
Eventually, they went back to asking questions about Peter again, and wanted to know why he had come to see them so often at Tanforan. They had marked down every one of his visits, how often he was there, how long he stayed. What they didn't know, fortunately, was what he had done with Hiroko while he'd been there. But the FBI had asked him plenty of questions, both at the camp and when he went into the army. Apparently, they'd been satisfied at his end, and Hiroko gave them almost the same answers.
“He was trying to finish my cousin's work before he left for the army. He had many papers to correct, many things to do. He was the head of his department at Stanford, and my cousin had been the head before …before …” They knew what she meant, and nodded. “So he had many things to teach him.”
“Was he there to see you as well?” She didn't deny it, but gave them no further information either.
“Perhaps. But we had very little time together, he had much work to do with my cousin.”
They nodded and went back to it again, and again, and again during that week, asking her if she was loyal to the United States, or to Japan. She said she had no political views, she was only very sad that the two countries were fighting. For her, there was no real division of loyalties. She loved her country, but she loved her family here as well, and as a woman she had no choices to make, no army to serve in.
She met all their questions quietly and calmly, with simple, direct answers. And a week after they had begun, they put a tag on her again, gave her back her clothes, and handed her her suitcase. She had no idea where she was going, if she had passed or failed, or what she had done, if this meant deportation, or execution. Surely, nothing anymore ever meant freedom. She was simply moving on to the next stage, and leaving the place she was in. She said a brief good-bye to the women who had shared her cell with her, wished them luck, and was led outside wearing her own clothes. She looked deathly pale, but she was not quite as thin as she had been a month before. She had been in prison for a month, and had had no news whatsoever of her cousins.
They walked her outside, with half a dozen other women, and a large group of men, and she heard someone refer to them as the “loyals,” whatever that was, and then they were marched along in the freezing cold, down a long, narrow road to a group of dilapidated barracks. It appeared to be a separate camp from the one she'd been in, or perhaps it was the same one, but there was a good distance between the two. This time, as they entered the barbed wire and she saw the guards watching them from towers, s
he also saw activity and children. She heard them playing somewhere, and saw people walking arm in arm on the dirt road between the buildings. There was more of a look of real life to this, and normal activity. It was more like Tanforan, and there were twice as many people. But this seemed more orderly, and as Hiroko glanced around, relieved to see people smiling again, and children nearby, one of the guards handed her a piece of paper with her number on it, and the additional number of her building. She was in 14C this time, and she had no idea of who she would live with.
“It's down the third row to your right, next to the school building,” the guard said pleasantly, and suddenly she wondered if she had passed some test, and passed to a different level. Perhaps they weren't going to send her back, or shoot her. She saw the other women smiling too; it was such a relief after what they'd been through. The men seemed to be taking the change more seriously, and were talking quietly amongst themselves, asking each other questions to which no one had the answers. Everything was a mystery here, from one moment to the next, just as it had been for all of them ever since Pearl Harbor.
She left the others and walked down the road he'd pointed to, without a guard, without any companion. It was the first time she'd been alone for over a month, and it felt wonderful, just walking along, not having to talk to anyone, or answer any questions. She knew the guards in the tower were watching her, and there was barbed wire all around them, but in the context of how they'd lived for the past six months, this was freedom.
She found the building easily, once she realized which barracks the school was in. There were long rows of bleak buildings, with numbers indicating “apartments,” as they were called, where whole families lived, no matter how large, but there were little signs on the door, and wind chimes people had made beside them. They were in closed rooms, not in horse stalls like in Tanforan, and as she walked along, she saw a sign that said WELCOME TO TULE LAKE, and for the first time in a month, she knew the name of where she was, not that it made a difference. And yet, it did; in a way, she felt almost human again. And she smiled as she saw a little girl sitting on a step, holding a doll. The child was wearing a knit hat and a heavy sweater, but she sat dejectedly, looking at the ground and humming to herself. She looked so sad, it touched Hiroko's heart as she approached. Then Hiroko let out a little gasp as the child looked up at her. It was Tami.
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