“No?” He looks over at Alex, and surprises him by offering him a cigarette.
Alex holds it between his fingers, not lighting it. The car hits another bump in the road. Alex stares ahead, past the farthest reach of the headlight beams, at the gaping mouth of darkness waiting there. “I didn’t do it because of her. Not really. I did it because…” He pauses, trying to find the words. “It’s like how you had to be at school this past Friday night. Because you wanted to play football.”
“I’m the quarterback,” Frank says defensively. “The team needed me. Why wouldn’t I want to be there?”
“That’s not what I mean. Not exactly.”
Frank opens the window a crack, blows smoke out. “Then what exactly do you mean?”
Alex pauses, sorting out his thoughts. “I just wanted to feel … normal. Like a regular American teen. Not a Jap. Not a nonalien. Just a normal teen boy getting to dance with a pretty girl at a school dance. And tonight was my last chance. One last gasp before we go under.”
He turns to look at Frank. “Because I don’t know when we’ll be back here, Frankie,” he says, his voice cracking slightly. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get to be teenagers again.”
Frank doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes focused forward. After a moment, he flicks the cigarette butt away, and steps harder on the accelerator. Night flies past them, at them. Stars break out overheard, hard and sharp as tacks. Alex thinks of swirling eddies and frothing whitecaps and raging rivers and unknown waterfalls.
Back in the house, Alex expects a scolding from Mother. But she only stares briefly at his clothes, then offers him some leftover soup before retiring for the night. Frank turns in early, too.
Left alone downstairs, Alex stares out the window. He still hopes for a pair of headlights to appear in the driveway. For a car to pull up, Jessica Tanner to emerge in a pretty dress, her hair made up. Just because it’s curfew for you, doesn’t mean we can’t have our own little dance here, she says with a smile.
But of course that never happens. Jessica Tanner never comes. Alex doesn’t sleep a wink; he’s up all night until the dawn sun rises and it is evacuation day, and now nothing will ever happen, everything is too late.
16
MARCH 30, 1942
They wait on the front porch with their luggage neatly piled: six duffel bags fashioned out of a hardy corduroy-like material bought at Montgomery Ward. Dangling off each bag is a label inscribed with MAKI.
“So strange not to have Hero around,” Frank says.
“He’ll be fine with the Marshalls,” Mother says, her voice a bit hollow. “Where’s the truck? It’s late.”
Frank gets up, bored, brushes dirt off his pants. He peers into the mailbox out of habit, not expecting to find anything. “Oh, look,” he says, surprised, pulling out an envelope stuck to the bottom of the mailbox. It’s full of overlapping international postmarks.
Alex stands up immediately, takes the letter. It’s slightly damp, with dirt caked into a corner. “How long has it been sitting in there?”
Frank shrugs. “It was caught on something. Never saw it until just now.”
Usually, Alex tears open Charlie’s letters immediately, devouring them in a minute. But this time he stops himself. He slides the unopened letter into the inner pocket of his jacket. He’ll save it for the trip. Something to look forward to.
A large military truck, covered with a thick green canvas, finally arrives, an hour late.
Two soldiers jump out the back. They’re in full military garb, wearing hard hats, cuffed trousers, and dark-green uniforms with strapped vests. The taller of the two steps forward. “Mrs. Mayumi Maki, Mr. Francis Maki, and Mr. Alex Maki?” The soldier is holding a rifle with a fixed bayonet, sunlight glinting off it.
“Call me Frank.”
The other soldier, examining the piled luggage, glares at him. “Didn’t you read the instructions? It’s supposed to be only what you can carry.”
“And it is,” Frank says. “We can carry all of this.”
The soldier sets down his rifle and starts loading the duffel bags. Alex helps Mother up into the covered back of the truck. She sits on a wooden-slat bench while Frank helps load up. Her eyes wander over the empty porch, the locked front door, the empty backyard.
They push off, the truck kicking up dust. They pass the coop out back, the sheds with peeling paint, the old tire hanging from the tree. This, the last Alex will see of his home for a long time, the last time he’ll smell the strawberries already beginning to bloom and which the Marshalls have promised to help crop. The last time to see their farm, their home.
But it doesn’t seem real, this farewell. None of it does. In the back of his mind, he still believes he’ll be back later: later that day, later that week, later that month. It cannot be that they are being taken away. It cannot be that they can be wrenched away from their very own land and house when they have done absolutely nothing wrong. It cannot be that his motherland can be this cold-blooded, that she can be this ruthless to the bastard child he once only suspected he was but now at last knows he must be.
* * *
The army truck makes another stop along the way. The Tanaka family in a wealthier part of town. Their father—a successful businessman in the burgeoning grocery industry—was taken away months ago.
Mrs. Tanaka greets them with a tense nod, bowing as she climbs into the truck. The two Tanaka girls, twelve and ten, sit closely on either side of her. Like everyone else, the girls are wearing brown identification tags that hang off their coats like department-store price tags.
The truck heaves forward. The Tanaka girls, wearing thick overcoats, blink in synchrony. They seem bewildered. The older girl gazes out at the passing homes. She is looking for something. Or someone.
She stares at one house in particular as it slowly drifts by, a tall house with a steep, gabled roof. Scattered in the front yard are overturned bikes and crate scooters and Shirley Temple dolls and Red Ryder BB guns. Unlike the neighboring homes, all the curtains of this house are still drawn like eyelids clenched shut. As they pass, the older girl swivels her head, watching intently for any sign of movement within: a curtain drawn, a window opened, a door swung open. But nothing moves; no one comes running out. She softly bites her lower lip and when she closes her eyes, Alex sees a single tear slip out.
A few minutes before eleven, the truck slows on the south side of Eagle Harbor, stopping at the rear of a convoy of empty army trucks. A large crowd is gathered at the opposite end. More than two hundred Issei and Nisei, the young and the old, stand and sit in orderly fashion, as quiet as attendees at a funeral. Only the children make noise as they scamper around, too young to understand the enormity of the situation.
“Looks like we’re one of the last to arrive,” the soldier says. “Come on, let’s hurry.” A handful of other soldiers, identically uniformed, walk over to help out. They quickly unload the luggage.
They walk, Frank and Alex on either side of Mother. Mrs. Tanaka, clutching the hands of her girls, stumbles forward in a daze. The sunlight is muted behind a thin veil of clouds. A southerly breeze carries the rank smell of Murden Cove that comes at low tide when the mud flats and silt-covered banks are exposed.
No one speaks. Aside from the thump of boots, it’s quiet. The usually busy Eagledale Pier is otherwise deserted.
What it actually feels like—and this thought strikes Alex like a hard slap to the face—is Bainbridge Island has turned its back on them. Closed its eyes, pretending not to see. Soon this disagreeable task will be done with, and they can wash their hands of this unpleasant affair and return, humming right along, to normalcy. The island cleansed.
“Are you all right, Mother?” Frank asks. “Are we walking too fast?”
She shakes her head ambiguously, her lips thinning.
Overhead, faintly, the shriek of a heron. Or perhaps the squawk of a bald eagle.
“What did you expect?” Frank says to Alex. “A big send-off?” He stares straight
ahead. “Nope. To them, we’re already gone.”
They reach the waiting group of evacuees and drop their luggage. Everyone is dressed in their best clothing. Fedora hats and dark suits and double-breasted peacoats, knee-length coats with fur collars, dresses with crocheted collars, cashmere sweaters, hosiery, silk stockings, bobby socks, buckskin shoes, black oxfords. As if they’re heading out for a night on the town, catching a show in downtown Seattle.
It’s the dangling brown ID tag attached to their clothing that gives it away. These tags, with their names and ID numbers scrawled in, are identical to the tags on their luggage. As if they are no different from cargo to be shipped.
A quick head count is made. Minutes pass. A uniformed officer walks out with a bullhorn. Speaking with the same East Coast accent as the other soldiers, he announces that everyone has been accounted for and the time has come to board the ferry. Walk in a straight line, he instructs, two abreast and no more. Soldiers are not to aid in carrying bags. Young children may be carried. Do not stop. Do not talk. Keep walking.
They pick up their suitcases. They walk two abreast, each carrying their own suitcase. Leaving without fuss, without tears, as if they weren’t being torn from this island they had sunk deep roots into, figuratively and literally; as if they weren’t leaving behind three million pounds of strawberry; as if they weren’t leaving empty desks and chairs in their classrooms and roster spots on varsity sports teams. They walk in silence, dutifully and without protest; with a quiet dignity, they tell themselves, but this is a lie and maybe they know it, because this silence is really nothing but the shock and shame of the dispossessed.
Be the leaping frog, Alex thinks to himself. Do something. Say something. But he cannot.
* * *
And then.
As they round the bend and walk toward the serpentine wall of the ferry landing, something in the air changes. The faint stink of Murden Cove is replaced by the scent of recently cut cedar. But it’s more than the smell that changes.
Alex looks up. He hears a low murmur coming from around the bend. Those in the front are walking faster, their backs straightening, their strides longer and faster. Alex sees some of their arms rise, their hands waving back and forth.
Those in the back, curious now, walk faster.
“What’s going on?” Mother asks, but neither Frank nor Alex answer. Laughter sounds from up ahead, squeals of delight. Some children race ahead, and it’s only as Alex approaches the bend that he sees.
People. Scores of them.
They’re standing on sidewalks behind a barricade. For a moment he thinks another Japanese American community—possibly from Terminal Island or Vashon—has been brought here to join the Bainbridge Island group. A collection point before shipping them all off together to who knows where.
But these people are white. With blond and brown and auburn hair, and blue and green and brown eyes. Bainbridge Island friends and neighbors standing on tired legs, having waited for hours, now smiling, now waving. They’ve come out in droves to bid them farewell and good luck and Godspeed.
“Yo, Frank, yo, over here!” Frank’s head whips around faster than Alex has ever seen it turn. It’s Preston Wilcox, a senior in high school and one of Frank’s closer friends. Frank does a “no way!” face and walks over to the sidewalk, grinning ear to ear.
“What are you doing here?” Frank says, play-punching his friend in the chest. “You’re supposed to be in school.”
“Had to say goodbye, bro.”
“Any excuse to cut class, eh?” Frank says. Two others run over. They talk, joking, smiling. When a soldier slowly ambles toward them, Frank gives them quick hugs, and breaks off.
They walk on. Every once in a while someone will call out for one of the evacuees, and there will be laughter, and hugs, and tears. Whenever Frank hears a friend yell out his name, he’ll wave back and say something witty, his face beaming, his magnetic charisma rolling off his square shoulders.
Halfway down the street, Alex elbows his brother lightly. “Look. It’s Principal Dennis.”
Frank doesn’t waste a second. He walks over to the sidewalk, taking his hat off and holding it against his chest. “Principal Dennis?”
“Frank Maki. Good to see you.”
Frank pauses. “I want to thank you. For letting my friends cut school to see me—to see all of us—off. It means a lot.”
Principal Roy Dennis grips Frank’s shoulder. “It’s the least I could do. Because this is a terrible injustice, and we’ll never live it down as a community, as a nation. It’ll be a blight on us. I’m so very sorry.”
“You needn’t be, sir,” Frank says, shaking the principal’s hand. The moment is broken up by a group of boys, maybe a half dozen, running over, all of them wearing varsity football jackets.
“Here’s the lughead!”
“Oh, the chumps are here,” Frank jokes back, smiling broadly. “How the heck did you guys blow the game? Didn’t I leave you with a big enough lead? Don’t say you don’t need me.”
“It’s the lousy replacement quarterback, he’s to blame,” someone jokes, and Alex is surprised to see that it’s Ernest Schwinn. The replacement quarterback.
There’s laughter, more joking. Then someone shoves a varsity jacket in front of Frank.
“Eight, that’s your number, right, Frank?”
Frank is stunned. He swallows hard, his eyes welling up. “Fellas…”
“Just take it, Captain.”
He looks at his teammates for a long moment, then puts the jacket on. A perfect fit. He runs his fingers over the team emblem, over the embroidered lettering of the school.
“I’ll wear it with pride,” he says, all choked up.
“You’ll wear it after you pay us back. That jacket cost us an arm and a leg, you dolt.”
Frank laughs, then turns around before they can see the tears in his eyes.
They are everywhere, small groups of people breaking off to say goodbye. Smiling, squealing, dabbing at tears, lots of You’ve been great friendses and See ya laters and Come back soons.
They reach the wooden ferry dock. Now it is just the evacuees, and the soldiers, of course. Their boots clocking on the gangplanks, hollow drumbeats. The gentle tide of the sound lapping against the wooden beams of the dock. The waters sparkling in fractals of reflected light.
By now the soldiers are doing what they were specifically instructed not to do. They are helping out. They are carrying suitcases and duffel bags and belongings wrapped in tablecloths. They are carrying in their arms small children whose mothers, their husbands long whisked away, are burdened down with luggage. Many of the soldiers, themselves far from their New Jersey homes, gaze off into the distance, eyes damp. In front of Alex, a soldier walks with a rifle slung over his back while holding the hand of a toddler. That’s America for you, Alex thinks. An absurd contradiction.
By eleven twenty, all have boarded the Kelohken. The gangplank is raised with a loud clang, and the ferry pulls away from the pier, churning the waters. Almost all of the 227 evacuees stay on the deck. They wave and shout their last goodbyes across the waters. Soon enough, as the ferry leaves Eagle Harbor and crosses into the sound, the inland voices wane and the people grow smaller until they, and the island, are gone.
17
MARCH 30–APRIL 1, 1942
The ferry crosses Puget Sound and enters the dock in Seattle. The evacuees might as well have crossed an ocean. Here on Colman Dock the throng of onlookers on an overpass shake their fists and spit down on the group. Scruffy men armed with shotguns shout, “You Nips go back to Japan!”
The evacuees enter an old Pullman train, glad to be away from the leering onlookers. Seating is assigned by family, and crammed. The children, most riding a train for the first time, are excited; but even this initial wave quickly gives way to restlessness. To placate them, grandparents unwrap candy they’d meant to give on the second or third day (or the fifth or seventh, for they still haven’t a clue how long the jo
urney will be).
Teenagers swivel their heads about like submarine periscopes, looking to see where their friends are seated, and are disappointed to find themselves alone, or elated when they find the pretty girl they never worked up the nerve to speak to is sitting across the aisle and now they are thinking with stupid optimism that this train trip could be the luckiest thing to happen to them.
What will we do about food? the parents wonder as the train takes off. An unlucky few are seated in facing bays of four or six seats, and already territorial struggles over legroom and suitcase storage have, politely for now, begun. Where will I put my dentures at night? What happens if we get sick? Will they give out blankets at night when the temperature drops? Where is the toilet? Where are we going?
* * *
Dusk arrives. Soldiers walk down the aisle. “Close the shades.” At first, no one complies. The soldiers must be joking—why pull the shades down at night? “Just do it,” a soldier gruffly orders.
By eight o’clock, most evacuees have fallen asleep, exhausted by the long day. The train has traveled only a few dozen miles inland, crawling at a snail’s pace. Stop and go, stop and go, the axles groaning, the couplings straining, stopping on side rails to let pass other trains carrying war materials and supplies. “The Victory Trains come first,” someone intones.
Only a single portable gas lamp, hanging in the center of each train car, illuminates the interior. The faint light falls like a disease on the ghostly, slumbering occupants. Children lie sprawled over their parents, feet dangling into the aisle. Those still awake sit with heads hanging, the constant rocking motion and lack of fresh air making them nauseous. A few play cards in the weak light, the usual rummy or Goofspiel.
An old man screams out in his sleep, a garbled mix of both English and Japanese. An elderly woman coughs over and over, unable to extricate the ball of phlegm stuck in her throat. A newborn in the row behind Alex whimpers, becomes hysterical. Then the faint sound of a mother cooing, followed by the rustling of clothes. Then wet sucking sounds. A few minutes later, a small burp.
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