A Girl Like You (27 page)

“Is he real?” she asks Satomi.

“No, he is a person made up to frighten us. Just make-believe.”

Satomi marvels at how the children lose themselves in make-believe. Their imaginings seem more real to them than their actual lives.

The boys are American heroes, playing capture the flag, fighting to keep the enemy from the Stars and Stripes. The girls play house, feeding pretend meat loaf and ketchup to the cotton stuffed dolls, knitted for them by fine women like Naomi.

In the late afternoons Satomi walks from the orphanage with Cora to Eriko’s, where the child spends an hour or so being spoiled. She plays with the girls in Sewer Alley, hopscotch and kick the can. It’s favoring her, and against the rules, but the supervisors
look the other way. Cora is a special child, after all, a little angel. Who would deny her Satomi’s attention, some time of her own?

“You are only making it harder on yourself,” Eriko says, fussing around the child, pinching her cheeks, pulling her socks up. “Your heart will break when the parting comes.”

“I will write to her, Eriko. And I will visit when I can.”

“It won’t be as easy as you think, Satomi. They have no idea where the children will end up. And even if they did, I’d bet a dollar that there will be a rule prohibiting you from knowing.”

Little Boy. Fat Man.

“Such names,” Eriko says, tears streaming down her face as she bites her lips until they bleed. “To give bombs pet names as though they are family members.”

Satomi shakes her head in disbelief. “Was America ever what we thought it to be?”

“It is the bully of the world,” Naomi says regretfully.

They didn’t need to hear the reports of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the guards—the illegal radios in Manzanar spread the news quicker. But those who heard it by word of mouth thought it so exaggerated as to be more rumor than fact.

How could such a weapon exist? A weapon that could kill a hundred thousand in one go. How could a plane named
Enola Gay
, in honor of the pilot’s mother, house a bomb so big that it could suck up and digest the earth till nothing remained but cinders? What mother would consider such a namesake an honor?

But when Emperor Hirohito’s capitulation speech is put out over the Tannoy, they are convinced. They may never have heard his voice before, but there is no room for doubt.

“It could only be him,” they say.

“Yes. It is a samurai’s voice. Ancient, from the old world. Like your grandfather’s grandfather might sound.”

At first, not knowing the difference between atomic and normal destruction, people liken the devastation to that of Pearl Harbor.

“So the debt is paid,” they say. “The score settled, honor restored.”

Soon, though, the tales of a burning the like of which has never been seen, and of the annihilation of those sad islands where some of Manzanar’s inmates have relatives, takes hold, and the reports become the stuff of Greek tragedy.

“They say it has cracked the earth’s crust and will get us all in the end.”

“There isn’t a soul left, I hear.”

“Even the children have gone.”

“Even the ghosts.”

In the privacy of their barracks some of those who have relatives on the burned up islands quietly sing the Japanese national anthem.

“Only out of respect,” they assure each other. “In memory of Uncle Toru, of cousin Sakamoto.”

Pearl Harbor has been revenged at last. The enemy has been crushed and there is talk of Manzanar closing. Two months pass before the official notice comes—the camp will close in November. Soon they will all be free.

“We need time to work out what it means to us,” Naomi says with a quavering voice. “Just when we are settled, everything must change again.”

“She is afraid to leave,” Eriko says. “We are all a bit afraid, I guess. We don’t even know if we will get our homes and businesses back. It’s going to be a struggle.”

“You are going home, then?” Satomi asks.

“Yes, we are going home.” Eriko pauses, the words seem so strange. “Going home!”

“Haru will be pleased,” Satomi says.

“Yes, he wrote as soon as he heard. He says that we mustn’t let them relocate us away from the West Coast. He’s keen on our rights to choose where we settle.”

“Haru is right,” Naomi says. “Who knows where they will send us this time if we let them? Another Manzanar, perhaps! We have heard the word ‘relocate’ before, I think.”

“You must come with us,” Eriko offers. “I don’t know if we can get our shop back, we only rented it in the first place, but we must try. We left our furniture, even rice in the cupboard, we left everything. It’s possible it’s all still there, I suppose, but I hardly dare hope for it.”

“Oh, Eriko, thank you, but I have to go to Angelina. We owned our farm outright and we left money in the bank, crops in our fields. My father would expect me to see that his life’s work has not been stolen away.”

“Then you’ll come? After, when you have done what you have to, then you will come?”

“I can’t, you know that. It would be wrong for me to live in the same house as Haru. He wouldn’t want it, and neither do I.”

“But what will you do, Satomi? Who will look after you?”

“I am near nineteen, Eriko, a woman. I will look after myself.”

The words sound false even to her. What will she do? How will she live? A job somewhere, she supposes, a room of her own. She has longed for a room of her own, for privacy. The thought of it now, though, seems too strange to contemplate.

Tamura had advised her to go east if she had the chance.

“It will be better in the East,” she had said. “The West will never forgive us for the Harbor.”

The order has come from the War Department to demolish Manzanar. In its upheaval it begins to look again as dismal as it did when they had first arrived. Those who opt for relocation are
already being shipped out to government housing projects, their barracks razed the instant they leave. The rats run for cover, the cockroaches scatter as the empty barracks are reduced to piles of lumber. Before the authorities have a chance to gather it up, the wood is snatched. With such a wealth of fuel, stoves blaze in defense against the bitter November air.

Outside the director’s office, piles of papers are stacked high, waiting to be loaded onto trucks and sent off to the War Department.

“So many of them,” Satomi says to Dr. Harper as they walk past on their way to the orphanage. “What are they, do you think?”

“Records of you all, I guess,” he says, retracing his steps and scooping up a bundle, stuffing them into his bag.

“What will happen to them?”

“If I had to bet, I’d say they were on their way to the furnace.”

The hospital wards, save for a bed or two left for emergencies, have closed. Tables and chairs are removed from the mess halls, the new school barracks are dismantled as the children are sent home to help their parents prepare for evacuation.

At the orphanage the children’s things are being packed up too. When Satomi asks where the children are to be sent, one of the wardens shrugs her shoulders.

“Who knows?” she says. “We will be lucky to find places for them anywhere. Nobody wants Japanese children these days.”

“I’m willing to take Cora with me. She will be happy with me.”

“Oh, Satomi, you couldn’t look after her. It will be enough to manage yourself.”

“If I have my parents’ money we could manage, I’m sure.

“I don’t think the superintendent will just give Cora to you simply because you ask. It’s a foolish idea and probably against the law.”

“No harm in asking, though.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, you’re bound to be disappointed.”

She must have hope, though. It’s too hard to think about letting Cora go without a fight. She conjures up a family who might treat her badly, an orphanage where love has to be shared out so that no child ever gets enough. Just the thought of it sickens her.

Knocking on the superintendent’s door, she tells herself that she mustn’t lose her temper. If she can just keep calm, smother her desire to insist, things will go better. Nothing much, she knows, works out when she loses her temper.

“Surely Cora would be better off with me than in an orphanage?” she says reasonably.

“It can’t be done, Satomi. Simple as that,” the superintendent says. “But you needn’t worry about Cora. She will be the first to find a family. Such a sweet, obedient child.”

“But she already knows me. We are like sisters.”

“But not sisters. And there is no guarantee that you will get this money you speak of. How would you manage then?”

“I’ll get a job, of course. We all have to work.”

“Look, Satomi, it’s kind of you, but it is a foolish idea. You will have problems enough of your own. We all will.”

“Cora should be with me, we should be together.” She can’t keep the fury out of her voice.

“Don’t blame me, Satomi. I’m Japanese. I have no authority in this place.”

“Then I’ll go to the director, he won’t refuse me.”

“If you must. Who knows, you may catch him on a good day.”

The director, though, is too busy overseeing the dismantling of the camp to take time to see her. He smiles at her weakly on his way out of the office and directs her to one of his assistants.

“You’ll need to write it all down.” The assistant, busy with writing something himself, hardly looks at her. “Here are paper and pencil. Bring them back when you’ve finished.”

The words are hard to find. The director doesn’t know her, doesn’t know Cora; how can she make him understand? She writes of the love they have for each other, of her hope for her parents’ inheritance.
We are like sisters,
she assures him.
Surely whatever the circumstances it is better that sisters should be together.

Her letter is put with others on a desk crowded with papers.

“It’s very important,” she says, noting the piled-high papers, the ones that have carelessly been allowed to slip to the floor. “Make sure that he gets it.”

“Of course. I hardly need you to tell me how to do my job.” He feels she has ordered rather than asked. “I can’t guarantee that the director will have time to answer you.”

But an answer comes a day later in the form of a brief note left for her at the orphanage.

What you request is not possible. It would be against American law for this office to grant you a child that is in the care of the state. You can rest assured that Cora is in good hands. Everything will be done to find all of the children suitable placements.

John Holmes

Assistant to Director Merrit

Eriko says that she shouldn’t blame the director. It takes a special kind of person to break the rules, a hero like Ralph Lazo. Courage is needed, she says, to go against the regulations, to take the human decision.

“Don’t expect humanity to triumph in Manzanar, Satomi. It never has before.”

In Satomi’s distress, old dreams of Tamura disappearing return to plague her sleep.

“You call your mother’s name out in your sleep,” Eriko says. “It is natural, I suppose.”

“I think that Mama and Cora have become one in my dreams.”

“It’s cruel, I know, Satomi, but you must not think of Cora so much. You are an orphan yourself, remember.”

But it’s impossible not to think of Cora, of the child’s dark eyes, her sweet mouth, and her dented innocence. Only she truly understands Cora, no one else will take the time to note her little ways, calm her fears, learn the things that make her laugh. Such a rare little laugh, but so joyful when it spills out of her. Who now will make up stories just for her, tell her that she is pretty, that she is their special girl?

“I will keep in touch with Dr. Harper,” she tells the orphanage superintendent. Will you at least let him know where Cora is? I must be able to keep in touch with her.”

“I’ll do my best, Satomi, but I can’t promise anything. We must hope that she stays in California, at least.”

“That would be better than Alaska, I suppose.”

“Yes, Alaska seems like another country, doesn’t it? I know it’s hard to hear, but you’ll forget her, you know. We all have to think of ourselves in the end.”

Cora isn’t in the general playroom when Satomi calls at the orphanage the next day. She is sitting on her cot bed swinging her legs, her little black shoes polished, her dress starched, a knitted wool bow in her dark hair.

“I’m coming with you,” she tells Satomi, her eyes welling with tears. “When you leave, I’m coming with you.”

“I would take you if I could, Cora, but they won’t allow it. I will find you, though, wherever you go. We will see each other again.”

“You won’t come for me. Nobody comes for me.”

“I will come. When I am settled, Cora, I will come and visit
you. You may have your own family by then, a mother and father to love you.”

Cora’s cries are pitiful, little mewls, muffled sobs.

“We have almost a week left together, Cora. Perhaps they will show a movie, and school is finished, so you can come to Eriko’s and play with your friends in the alley all day, if you like.”

Just a week, she thinks. Seven days left to console Cora, to calm the little girl’s fears, to gather herself.

Only the young are excited. For the rest, the fear of leaving the known is mixed with apprehension for what lies ahead of them. Some of the older ones would choose to stay in Manazar if they could. They have established it out of nothing and want it to live on. Once the majority have left, space will not be a hard thing to come by, and they have had enough of the sadness of looking back, they want the world to forget them now.

“They must go,” Lawson says. “The Supreme Court has ruled the camps illegal. In any case, how would they live? The mess halls won’t be working, or much else, I imagine.”

“So now this place is illegal.” Satomi can’t keep the sneer out of her voice. “Does it ever occur to you, Lawson, that to be American is to be governed by fools?”

“Well, you can vote them out now. That’s progress, ain’t it?”

Dr. Harper tells her that he is relieved beyond imagination that the camp is finally to close.