Learning to See

by Elise Hooper

  Chapter 36

  On a Sunday morning in December 1941, the kind of day when the air is clear, colors vivid, and lines sharp and in focus, the Japanese bombed a port in Hawaii. Overnight we became a nation at war. Everything shifted: an urgency greased all of the gears grinding us along, and the speed of our lives increased. Two months later, Rondal arrived at our doorstep on a dry but cool February afternoon.

  “Oh,” I said by way of greeting as I took in his navy uniform. Its whiteness practically blinded me. In his hands, he held a bouquet of hyacinth. The small blue flowers were a shock of vivid color against the paleness of his freckled hand.

  “I brought these for you, but don’t worry, I asked Ma’s permission before I picked them.”

  I took the flowers and looked down at the cluster, so he wouldn’t see my troubled expression. “Thank you. When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning I’m to report to the recruiting office. Sounds like I’ll be shipped to San Diego for basic training.”

  After all of the time I’d spent with Rondal over the years, hours in the car together as we crisscrossed the state, somehow there still managed to be an awkward silence as he waited for me to say something.

  “Be careful. Shooting with a gun is mighty different from shooting with a camera.”

  The fluidity of how he threw back his head and laughed and his easy smile contrasted with everything inside me that remained tightly wound.

  “Ma said the same thing.”

  “Well, that’s something. It’s not every day we agree.”

  “You two.” He shook his head with a smile. “Your constant bickering doesn’t fool anyone.”

  “Yes, well . . .” I put my fist on my hip, casting about for something to say, something to make him understand how much I would miss him. “Remember that time we were checking into a moldy little cabin down outside of Salinas and the manager fella at the front desk looked at us as if we were crazier than a box of frogs?”

  “Yeah, and you signed us in as ‘Dorothea Lange and fancy man.’”

  I laughed, thinking of the manager’s shocked expression when he reviewed the guest ledger. “Right, well, don’t be a hero. You’ve done plenty of good already, all of our work with those folks in the fields. You were a big part of that, do you understand? Come back with your camera—there’s still much to be done.”

  He smiled at me, softened by my obvious discomfort. “I know, Dorothea, I know. You take care too.” His expression sobered. “Have you heard anything from Dan?”

  “Last week a friend of mine called to say he’s living in a shack on her building’s rooftop in Oakland,” I answered, trying to keep the weariness from my voice. “Paul has pulled a few strings with the draft board and gotten him a spot in the army despite his nearsightedness.”

  Rondal nodded, considering the idea. “Maybe some service will be just what he needs.”

  “Maybe.” That was also Paul’s reasoning and I couldn’t argue. It was just a matter of time before Dan landed himself in some real trouble here at home, so while his shipping off to the military had its own obvious set of dangers, it also offered the opportunity to change. “He will be leaving for Fort Knox next week. He’s not thrilled, but he’s going to try it.”

  Rondal made a sound of agreement, but the way he averted his eyes and ran the toe of his shiny new shoe along the flagstone of the step revealed his doubts. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but really, I’m the last person you should be worrying about. Everything’s going to be fine here.”

  We embraced and I called out goodbye, forcing a cheerfulness that belied the fear running through me. Pulling his car away from the curb, he honked his horn in farewell. I continued waving until he turned a corner at the end of the block and disappeared from view. Except for the buzz of a lawn mower several houses away and the chirping of birds, it was quiet. Given the peacefulness of the afternoon, the idea of war felt very distant. That was all about to change.

  Chapter 37

  Two months later, I walked along the sidewalk toward the Oakland YMCA with Dave Tatsuno, one of Paul’s former students. We moved slowly to accommodate the heavy suitcase he carried. A dry wind swirling down the block caused him to reach up with one hand to press his porkpie hat onto his head. At Woolworth’s, a woman leaving the store pushed the door open and nearly collided with us. A package wrapped in brown paper slid from her arms, but in one fluid motion Dave caught it with his free hand. He straightened, handing it back to her.

  “Dave?” the woman said, taking in the suitcase and looking back and forth at us. She tilted her head in bewilderment. The sun caught her golden curls peeking out from underneath her toque and she smiled. “Now, where are you going?”

  He bowed his head. “I . . .” he started to say before stopping. He pointed at an evacuation notice pinned to the streetlight next to us.

  ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY, BOTH ALIEN AND NON-ALIEN, WILL BE EVACUATED FROM THE AREA BY NOON, APRIL 9, 1942.

  “Oh Dave, not you.” Her eyes darted back and forth, traveling the length of the text on the poster before coming back to rest on him. She rubbed her lips together as if working out something to say, her lipstick leaving blurry red smudges beyond the edge of her mouth. “Not you.”

  “All of us, yes,” Dave said.

  “But . . . but what about the store?”

  He shifted his suitcase to his other hand. “My father sold it. They’re required to register here tomorrow. We don’t know where we’ll be taken.”

  The three of us remained planted on the sidewalk before she mumbled goodbye and hurried away, her eyes trained on the package clutched to her chest.

  Not you, I thought. Exactly who did everyone think the evacuation signs were intended for? Did people even stop to think that it was their neighbors being forced to leave? Shopkeepers, teachers, college students, doctors, churchgoers, schoolchildren. These were not dangerous people, they were regular people, just like the rest of us. When Dave had come to the house two days ago to tell Paul and me of his upcoming evacuation, I asked if he and his family would consider hiding. He stared at me. “Where would we go? There’s no hiding that my parents came from Japan.” Just thinking about that moment made my face burn in embarrassment. One-sixteenth Japanese ancestry; that’s all it took to find your life turned upside down. I shifted my camera bag to my other shoulder. How many people of German and Italian ancestry were darting past us, keeping their eyes away from Dave’s suitcase? My own German parentage smoldered in my chest as I walked alongside him. But at any moment I could walk away, head home, and do whatever I chose without fear of my neighbors eyeing me with suspicion.

  We rounded the corner. The YMCA loomed in front of us, a line of dark heads snaking out the front door and down the sidewalk. Our gait slowed. Young mothers bounced infants on their hips, rocking back and forth. Clusters of teenage boys eyed the crowd, jeering each other, elbowing and jostling, their darting eyes contradicting the confidence their laughter projected. Old men and women sat on scuffed leather suitcases and dented steamer trunks. Dressed in dark, clean dresses and suits, everyone appeared to be in their Sunday best on their way to church.

  I accompanied Dave to the end of the line. A young girl, perhaps four years old, turned to face us, her hand clutched in her mother’s. She stared at me, eyeing my camera bag inquisitively until her mother gave a small tug on the girl’s hand. Reluctantly, she turned away. I left Dave to check in with the officials running the site.

  At the doors of the granite building, a soldier directed people to various lines, his expression as indifferent as if he were parking cars. After I showed him my credentials, he waved me inside where a War Relocation Authority official stood next to the check-in desk, a clipboard clasped in front of his chest. I introduced myself.

  “See how peaceful this is?” he asked. “The Japs understand this is for their own safety.”

  I stared, shocked by the baldness of his lying. Then
I did the only thing I could think of. I raised my camera and started photographing the long lines of old people waiting to enter the building, the limp American flag hanging next to the registration table, the troubled face of a woman as she fastened a newly issued identification tag to the baby in her arms. My photographs would have to tell the real story.

  TWO WEEKS EARLIER, when the WRA offered me the job over the telephone, I took it without question. Paul and I thought the whole evacuation business smelled rotten, but taking the government’s offer to document it gave me the chance to see what was happening; more important, I could show others what was happening. I figured I would shoot the whole event in narrative strands; follow a few individuals and families along their journey from preparation to registration to relocation. This felt logical and manageable. Unfortunately, things didn’t go according to plan. Nothing prepared me for the job. I was like the lady on the street who saw Dave and said, Oh no, not you. I didn’t think it through. What would it mean to photograph people being told they had to leave their homes? What would it mean to photograph people being told their loyalty was in doubt? These were questions I should have considered. Instead I jumped in completely unprepared for what I would find. The government, the very institution intended to protect us and enable us to pursue our happiness and independence, was behind all of this. My work in the thirties had made me believe I could no longer be surprised by the cruelty of indifference, but I was wrong.

  Chapter 38

  A mid a swarm of schoolchildren, I walked toward Raphael Weill Public School in San Francisco’s Japantown followed by Christina Page. With Rondal serving in the navy, I’d needed a new assistant and Christina’s mother, Gert Clausen, one of my earliest clients and dearest friends, had been quick to suggest her daughter, a recent graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Newly married to rising photographer Homer Page, Christina was eager to learn everything she could about my work.

  Ahead of us, the cream-colored stucco school glowed against the bright blue sky. High voices chirped around us and playful shrieks and laughter surged from the playground, bouncing off the walls of the surrounding buildings. I searched the faces of the parents watching the procession, looking for some sign of concern, a sense of danger or worry, but their expressions gave nothing away. The mothers wrapped themselves tighter in their sweaters or buttoned up their lightweight wool jackets against the cool spring breeze—it was the middle of April—and drifted away from the school’s entrance. Christina and I proceeded inside.

  Within the space of two weeks, this school would become an assembly center to process the neighborhood’s residents of Japanese ancestry and relocate them. Before everything turned upside down for these families, I wanted to see the children experiencing their regular school day. During morning announcements in the courtyard, all of the children gathered around a cluster of their peers, one of whom held a flag. Many of the students were clearly from Japanese families, but not all. Some were blond, some redheaded, some dark-skinned, some freckled and pale. No matter what their coloring, they all beamed with gap-toothed smiles. The students raised their right hands to their hearts and began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I raised my Rolleiflex and looked into the viewfinder as goose bumps rose on my arms as I heard all of the voices raised in unison to promise their allegiance to a nation that was questioning the loyalty of many of them.

  I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America,

  And to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God

  Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  I’d heard the pledge thousands of times before, but it was there, listening to those children, that I truly listened and compared what they were saying to what was about to happen. That promise, so oft-repeated as to have become rote in my life, sounded different. It made me consider the magnitude of what we took for granted every day in our country. The government expected us to be loyal citizens, but didn’t it owe its citizens loyalty in return?

  Overhead, the flag snapped in the wind. I thought of the phone call we had received the previous week from Fort Knox. Dan was in the stocks for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I’d hung up the phone disgusted by his lack of patriotism, but in the courtyard of Raphael Weill Public School, I didn’t know what to think. What did it mean to be loyal? Was doubting the government unpatriotic?

  What had happened to the promise of our nation being indivisible?

  CHRISTINA AND I spent most of April bouncing around the Bay Area, photographing the process of people’s lives being taken apart. Job by job. Neighborhood by neighborhood. Home by home. Possession by possession. In Florin, we photographed a fifty-seven-year-old woman picking a final harvest of strawberries in the small field she leased. Her son had been furloughed from Camp Leonard Wood in Missouri so he could help her prepare to leave. I was glad to hide my face behind my Rolleiflex when I took a portrait of him in his smartly pressed army uniform standing next to his mother, a basket of strawberries in her hands. She had arrived in California from Japan in 1905 and was widowed seven years later. Although not an American citizen, her six children were. Two of her sons were serving voluntarily in the U.S. Army. She could lose both boys fighting for America yet she and her four daughters were scheduled to be evacuated in five days. How was her loyalty questionable?

  AFTER A LONG day at a berry farm in Centerville, Christina offered me her arm as we trudged to the car. “Why did you take a photo of him?” she whispered, looking back at the white man in faded overalls leaning against the railing of the Tatanakes’ front porch, watching us leave. Every time the man had nodded his head on the tour that Mr. Tatanake provided for the new owner, I felt ill. It left me cold to think of all the men I’d seen ten years earlier arriving beaten down from tough times in Texas and Kansas—these same men were now buying Japanese-owned farms and barely paying a dime for them. My, my, how times changed. As Paul said when I left that morning, “Now the oppressed joins with the oppressor.”

  I tightened my grip on Christina’s arm. “He’s getting pretty lucky from this whole thing. Why, I’ll bet he’s doing a little jig on the inside. All of these farmers taking over these places for a song—they sicken me.”

  In the car Christina tapped her thumbs together at the top of the steering wheel as she drove. “I think I have an appointment tomorrow in San Francisco. Maybe it would be good for you to spend the day reviewing negatives.”

  I glanced over at her in surprise. What was she talking about? We had already discussed going to Tanforan Assembly Center to photograph the arrival of the first evacuees.

  “What time’s your appointment? We could make the trip to San Bruno in the afternoon. It shouldn’t take us too long to get there.”

  Christina paused and digested this, noncommittal.

  I looked over at her. Indecision was unlike her. Aware that I was watching, she squared her shoulders. Her unblinking eyes remained on the road, her shoulders hunched. I thought of an image from this morning. Before we left, I had run upstairs to get my sun hat and left Paul and Christina talking in the kitchen. When I returned, the two had been huddled in quiet conversation. Both pulled back when I entered the room, neither one looking at me.

  “Does this appointment have anything to do with a conversation you just had with Paul?”

  A mottled flush blazed across her cheeks.

  I pressed on. “He doesn’t want me to go to Tanforan, does he?”

  “Oh Dorothea,” she said. “He’s just worried about you. And I am too. I know you’ve been having more of those stomach pains. I can tell from the way your face gets so white, even though it’s sweltering hot. We’ve been working such long days. A day off could be a good thing.”

  My back stiffened. It was true. Most days we left in the early hours before dawn and often arrived home long after dinner, but this was important. Each time I photographed the face of an evacuee, proud and unflinching, a little piece inside me dissolved. How could
we let this happen?

  “Paul should worry about something else. I’m fine.”

  “Don’t be so stubborn. Why, he thinks the sun and moon revolve around you.”

  I shook my head. Dan had gone AWOL from Fort Knox the day before. I needed Tanforan to distract me. The last thing I wanted to do was sit around waiting at home for more news about him. The heat rose off the pavement in shimmering waves, making me dizzy and almost drowsy. I tucked a strand of hair under my bandanna and turned away from the windshield to rub my hand against the side of my stomach, trying to massage the ache throbbing inside. “Do you have an appointment tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’re going to Tanforan.”

  PAIN AWAKENED ME early the following day. In the morning’s gray light, I stretched to my right side, breathing in and out quietly, willing the wrenching in my gut to dissipate. Paul stirred but continued to sleep. After several minutes, the pain subsided enough that I could roll over to rise from the bed and creep to the bathroom to wash and dress. Minutes later I was in the kitchen fixing myself a plate of toast. After a few gulps of hot tea, I tossed the rest in the sink, resentful at being forced to give up coffee because of my stomach pains. I’d visited plenty of doctors over the last several years, but none of them had any answers to manage the ulcers that plagued me.

  About thirty minutes later, I crossed the Bay Bridge and pulled alongside the pale pink Victorian façade of Christina’s apartment in Cow Hollow to find her already outside waiting for me. She was dependable, that girl. I slid over to the passenger seat so she could drive us to San Bruno. We planned to arrive early, before the busloads of evacuees did, so we could get some establishing shots of the camp and its facilities.