Learning to See

by Elise Hooper

  “Today’s light is good,” Christina said.

  I grunted in assent. Humidity, unusual for the Bay Area, gave the morning a golden-hued opaque haze. Already my blouse stuck to my back. A dull but steady headache started behind my eyes. The flash of telephone poles blurred by my window every few beats.

  “Everything all right?” Christina asked.

  “My lack of coffee is killing me.”

  She let out a sympathetic groan, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see her glancing at me.

  “Really, it’s nothing,” I said. “The last thing I want to do is stop working and sit at home feeling sorry for myself.”

  She nodded and refocused her gaze on the highway. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire appeared beside us, separating the road from the rolling brown landscape in the distance. It led us to Tanforan. Before its conversion to a resettlement center, it had been a horse racetrack. At one point, the place probably felt festive. Colorful pennants must have flapped in the breeze, people filled the place with their laughter, and the salty smell of popcorn would have hovered across the grounds. But now it looked lifeless, everything a dusty brown blur. We slowed before entering the main gate. Waved through by soldiers, we parked and entered the former clubhouse, where a harried-looking woman directed us to the office of the camp director.

  A man with a grim expression nodded after our introduction. “I’m Colonel Beasley. Now, ladies, do you understand the rules for this job while you’re under my command?” As he began to run through the litany of prohibited items and behavior, I stared at him. His square face nagged at my memory. I examined him, and his expression shifted into irritation. “Do you have any questions?”

  “No, I’m well versed in what the censors will cut,” I answered, waving off the question.

  “If I find your work requires too much censoring, you will not be allowed to return.”

  “Now hold on. It’s my understanding that I’m under command from the WRA, not the army. It’s not within your command to prevent us from coming here.”

  A vein pulsed at the man’s temple. “While you’re on this site, you’re under my jurisdiction. That means my rules. The rules are: no photos of guns, barbed wire, and fences.” He spoke while coming around the desk to stand directly in front of me. I could smell the Juicy Fruit gum in his mouth and see the freckles dotting his skin like tiny splatters of mud. Both the gray stubble of his crew cut and his square bulldog jowls gave me the sense he was liable to bite if I disagreed with him again.

  Looking into his pigeon-gray eyes without blinking, I gave my steadiest gaze. “All right.”

  “Good. I assume we will have no further disagreements.”

  “One can hope.”

  He gave me a severe stare, but then gesturing ahead, herded us from his office and disappeared down a hallway.

  Christina, white-faced, clutched my arm. “Why did you have to rile him up?”

  “A man like that? He was born riled up. Never mind him. He’s just a big bully.”

  “I’ll say, but still. He could make our lives mighty difficult.”

  I snorted. “I don’t report to him.” I paused for a moment, irritated, a sense of missed connection drifting just beyond my reach. “I swear, I know him from somewhere, but can’t figure out where.”

  We left the administrative building through the back entrance. Above us, the American flag’s red, white, and blue had been dulled to a sepia tone by dust. “Ugh, this is depressing,” I said, looking beyond the paddock at the row of barracks spread out in lines within the middle of the horse track. We walked toward them. More appeared in the backstretch.

  As we neared them, the stench of manure hit us.

  “Good God, are they going to live in horse stalls?”

  Christina gasped. “I promise, I’ll never complain about the size of my apartment again,” she murmured as we neared the row of squat wooden boxes.

  I stepped through a doorway. Two tiny rooms took shape as my eyes adjusted to the dark. I had to pass through one to reach the deeper, tiny interior room. No windows, no lights. Dust lay thick as moss over everything and a fetid stink overcame me. “This is not right,” I said, gagging. “How are people supposed to live here?”

  She shook her head. I backed out of the stall, gulping fresh air from outside. Christina pulled a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket to wear around her face, covering her nose.

  “No. Take that off. We cannot disrespect the people who will be living here by doing that,” I said, walking the row of stalls. “Let’s see . . .” I tried to determine the direction of the light in the haze overhead. “Set the tripod here.” I scratched a line in the dirt with my heel.

  While Christina set up the equipment, I explored until reaching another low building marked WOMEN. When I ducked my head to enter, a row of holes cut into a long board lined the far wall. A communal latrine. The whitewash stuck to my finger pad when I reached out to touch it, but even the smell of new paint couldn’t cover the reek. The hastiness of the operation showed in the clumps of hay and dirt, dead spiders and flies, all stuck under the paint. I closed my eyes. The ache in my skull had increased from dull to pounding. The plank floor warped and bent in the putrid fug of the place. I staggered outside to join Christina. One look at my face, and she said nothing—simply handed me my camera. With every image I took, I gave thanks no one had arrived yet. How was I supposed to look people in the eyes in this place? My own presence made me complicit in their betrayal. Shame filled me.

  After working in silence for a while, I glanced at my watch. Nine o’clock. We packed the equipment and hiked toward the main gate to set up for when the buses arrived. Within minutes, a convoy of trucks groaned into the yard. Exhaust and dust smudged the air. Soldiers pulled luggage off truck beds—trunks, suitcases, crates, duffel bags, a dented empty birdcage—and heaped everything into a pile next to the racetrack. A brief interlude of quiet stilled the action before a low rumble echoed through the grounds.

  “Was that thunder?” Christina asked.

  One by one, plump raindrops splattered the dust surrounding us before turning into a downpour. Christina scooped up the camera bags and scurried to the cover offered by the empty grandstand. I trailed her and took a position beside her in front of a crudely hewn wooden bench. I shivered despite the heat. Beyond the shelter of the overhang, the rain pounded, transforming the ground into a churning sea of mud. And then, the rain ended.

  “Oh,” Christina gasped, pointing toward the racetrack. There lay the luggage, lumpy and wilting in the mud, surrounded by puddles, steaming in the sudden sun, soaked and possibly ruined. Over the last month, we had sat in people’s living rooms, watching them sift through their households, vetting their possessions for their most important items. Family photographs of generations past. Gossamer silk kimonos. Fine linens. The few things they could bring into the unknown. The experience had been heartbreaking. Now it all lay in a sodden mess.

  Christina and I picked our path through the puddles back to where more buses would be arriving. Colonel Beasley marched from the administrative building and moved toward a pair of soldiers at the roundabout. I hurried over to him.

  “Colonel, all of the luggage. It’s soaked.”

  “Although I run operations, I have no control over the weather,” he said with a smug grin. Two nearby soldiers guffawed.

  “I understand your limitations,” I shot back, inwardly pleased to see his face redden. “Now are these people expected to lug everything to the horse stalls on their own? Have you not seen who is about to arrive? Women, children, and the elderly? Surely you don’t intend for them to carry it all.”

  “They’ll be fine.”

  “But your men could help.”

  “My soldiers are not bellhops.”

  I snorted. “No one will be mistaken into thinking this a fine hotel.”

  His nostrils flared. “The evacuees received instructions to bring only as much as they can carry.” His voice was lost in
the roar of buses pulling through the front gate and he turned away from me, yelling over his shoulder, “Now don’t pester my soldiers. They’re needed to maintain peace and order.”

  Did he believe a bunch of women and old people planned to stage an insurrection? I glared at the back of his head, disgusted by his indifference, and pushed some loose hairs out of my face. The glimmer of my silver bangle caught my eye. And that’s when I remembered. Beasley. How could I not have connected that sickeningly sweet smell of Juicy Fruit chewing gum to him? Twenty years ago, I’d met him on a desolate stretch of yard outside the Tuba City Indian School in Arizona. My spine stiffened at the memory. The same man who’d cataloged the benefits of incarcerating Navajo children to civilize them had been promoted to imprisoning another innocent group of people.

  Soldiers swarmed the buses. Evacuees trickled out, bewildered and stunned. Positioned beyond the buses, a row of soldiers stood, rifles out, bayonets at the ready. I got closer and angled my camera to follow a young mother past the soldiers. She carried a baby and led her two small children by the hand. I bent over to frame the shot, but my viewfinder darkened. Confused, I looked up from my camera. A soldier stood in my way, obscuring the shot. “No photographs of soldiers with weapons,” he snarled, not yielding from his spot.

  I clenched my teeth. More dazed evacuees filed past us, flimsy manila tags flapping from their jacket buttons. Each person wore an assigned number. A new identity. The numbers indicated which barracks to report to and which stall each family would live in. Soldiers grasped at the tags as they would a dog’s collar, shouting instructions, pointing directions. Men were herded toward a makeshift infirmary located in the former ticket building. A soldier handed each woman a broom, bucket, and mop so she could clean her own living quarters. Everyone received a mattress tick bag and was directed toward a sodden pile of hay to fill it.

  Women and children drifted toward the luggage, despair and pain registering on the faces of all who approached the waterlogged cargo. They gingerly lifted suitcases from the mud. Rivulets of water streamed off everything. A little boy raised a cardboard box from a puddle and the bottom gave way, spilling china bowls to the ground, yet each piece lodged into the mud and nothing smashed. A small blessing.

  WEEKS PASSED. STOCKTON, Sacramento, Santa Anita, Turlock, San Bruno. Each relocation center provided its own definition of deprivation and tedium. The main activity for evacuees consisted of waiting in lines. People waited for the latrine, the laundry, the showers, the mail—everything. Meals were the worst. Each mess hall offered several mealtimes. The first serving of supper started as early as three o’clock in the afternoon. Inmates on mess duty ladled weenies, beans, potatoes, and a few leaves of wilted spinach out of dented garbage pails serving as large tureens. With the scramble to find seating a constant challenge, families rarely sat together at the long, narrow tables. Children roamed throughout the camps in packs. Men sat in doorways, eyes blank. Women spent their days washing and mending clothes, and sweeping dust and grime from the crowded stalls. Dull eyes and languid movement revealed loneliness, yet no one was ever alone.

  Beyond the walls and barbed wire, life moved on. Outside of Tanforan, trucks rumbled up Highway 101. Former neighbors of the interned commuted to their jobs. A whole new industry sprang up in the shipyards of Richmond. Children packed into classrooms to learn the geography of battles in places like the Coral Sea, Wake Island, and Midway. A palpable sense of being abandoned permeated the camps, yet government officials had not forgotten about those interned there. Not yet.

  Chapter 39

  We meet again,” Colonel Beasley said when Christina and I entered the lobby at his new posting in Manzanar.

  “Lucky us.” I sighed, pulling a thermos out of one of my bags to take a long swill. The July heat was unbearable. Within minutes of arriving in the camp, my skin, eyes, and throat ached from dryness.

  We had driven hours to the camp, located deep in the remote Owens Valley in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. A sharp hot wind blew through the newly constructed wide avenues, sending tar paper flapping in the breeze off the sides of the barracks dotting the barren landscape. And wind wasn’t the only discomfort. Dust rode along with it, covering surfaces, making hair gritty, even lodging its way in between teeth.

  Beasley cleared his throat. Hopefully the dust pained him too. “The old rules of Tanforan still apply, but now you will not take any photographs of the guard towers either. Absolutely no machine guns. Stay away from the edges of the camp. No photographs of any sort of resistance either.”

  The mention of resistance made me look up from my thermos. “Have you had any trouble?”

  “Of course not. These Japs are very docile. You saw how easy assembly was.”

  I kept my face blank. It was true. Mostly true, at least. The interned understood there was nowhere to go. There was no escaping the army’s lists of suspects.

  “Don’t take any photographs that make our soldiers resemble Gestapo or anything connected to the Nazis. And nothing that could send a message back to the Japs that they have people here lying in wait to aid them.”

  “The orphans in the Children’s Village look particularly menacing,” I murmured, bending over to glance through my camera bag on the floor.

  Beasley folded his arms across his chest. “You’ve been looking quite peaked lately. I’m sure the WRA can send Mr. Albers back here to photograph if you’re not up to the task.”

  “I’m fine. I’d like to get to work.”

  “I’m assigning Private Vance to watch over you today.” A young man stepped forward, a small piece of tissue clinging to his neck from where he must have nicked himself shaving. When Beasley spotted it, his jaw tightened in annoyance. “Report back to me at sixteen hundred hours.”

  I turned to Christina, rolling my eyes, and didn’t even glance at our new handler. We picked up our bags and marched out of the building, eager to be away from Beasley. Outside, wind swirled thick clouds of dust through the long straightaways between the buildings. We stopped in the shade of the mess hall to pull my Rolleiflex out of a bag.

  “Here’s a patriotic composition your boss will love,” I said to Vance, raising my camera to focus the viewfinder toward the low-lying boxes of barracks. A flagpole stood in the middle of the buildings, a funnel of sandstorm blurring the background. The high Sierras reared up behind the barracks, jagged and imposing. This shot would follow all of the rules and find no objection with the censors. The image looked unassuming at first, but it showed the place as it really was: lonely and depressing, marked by extreme temperatures and misery. Prison-like. After snapping a few shots, I lowered my Rolleiflex and looked around. “Now, where’s the new infirmary?”

  Private Vance pointed down an avenue empty of people. Christina and I set off. The pain in my side had returned, pulsing sharply with every step. I took another drink from my thermos, hoping water would help. Christina watched me. The pain had started coming more often and lasting longer. I was almost certain Paul had said something to her about keeping an eye on me. I swallowed, putting the thermos away. With my bag fastened shut, I looked around. Several large rocks clustered around the entry of one of the barracks. Closer scrutiny revealed it to be a rock garden framing a small stone path leading to the steps into the building.

  “Wait.” I squatted with my camera to try to get a close-up of the succulents planted in the dust. An old man emerged from the doorway. “Your garden is beautiful,” I said, nodding and smiling.

  He bobbed his head in thanks and continued to watch us.

  “Did you get a permit for this?” Private Vance demanded of the internee.

  The old man frowned in response.

  “You need a permit for all gardens.” Vance spoke louder, but the old man looked at him without any change in expression. Vance tried again, “A permit.” But the wind carried his voice away.

  “Let’s go, you can worry about his permit later. I want to get to that infirmary.” I started walking aga
in.

  Vance let out an exasperated huff but followed us. “You can’t take any photos of anyone ill. No one in bed either. Just portraits of healthy people.”

  The desire to hit him with my camera bag almost got the better of me, but I gripped my strap tighter and kept going.

  AT THE END of the day, as Christina and I staggered toward my car parked behind the administrative building, a soldier called after us, ordering us to come back inside. In the stuffy warren of offices, we found Colonel Beasley, red-faced, pacing in front of his receptionist’s desk. He gestured at a pile of negatives lying in a heap on the woman’s desk. “You’re supposed to turn in all of your negatives at the end of each day.”

  “I did. I gave today’s film and plates to Private Vance to be inspected by the censors.”

  “Yes, well, I heard you visited the infirmary. Where are those images?”

  “I only took a few, but they should be in there.” I stepped closer to the pile and picked up the envelope of my negatives and tilted it upside down. Out slid several more. I tried to tamp down my triumph.

  Beasley’s face darkened to purple as he stared at the missing work. His secretary pulled back in her seat as if expecting him to combust on the spot. The three soldiers in the room lowered their eyes to the ground.

  His left eye twitched. “Place them all in the order in which you took them.”

  I complied. When I finished, I stood up and nodded at him. “You’re welcome. Now, may we leave for the day?”

  Beasley nodded.

  “Ladies, you will need this.” The receptionist ducked her head toward a drawer of her desk, opened it, and handed us the distributor cap to my car. When I looked at her questioningly, she explained, “We remove these from all civilian automobiles so none of the evacuees may escape.”

  I stretched out my hand for it, staring at the piece of my car, and Christina pulled on my sleeve to hustle me out the door. Out in the parking lot, I pulled my arm from her hand and waved the distributor cap overhead. “Can you believe this nonsense? Can you believe some soldier came out here after we arrived and took this? Why, we were trapped there too, unable to go unless we had their permission. Just wait until I tell Paul about this. I’m going to make sure the press knows what’s happening here.”