Allegiance (43 page)

“I know,” I say. We have turned down an unfamiliar hallway. Idly, I wonder where we are headed. “That's where losing
Korematsu
could have helped.”

“Yes,” says Biddle. “I know that. It would have been a great embarrassment for the government, however.”

“So we put their lives at risk to save face?”

Biddle stops for a moment and turns toward me. “So we try to help them in a different way. Politics is the art of the possible, Cash.” He starts walking again. “That was the point of the renunciation program. Segregate out the disloyal, and California will be more welcoming.”

“I remember that.”

“Yes.” He stops again, halfway down the corridor, before the door of the Department mailroom. “You went to Tule Lake to explain renunciation.”

“Yes.”

“You told them what it would mean. Loss of all rights, a boat to Japan after the war.”

“Yes.” I look at the papers in his hand. “Are those the applications?”

“Some of them.” He hands me the roll.

There are probably thirty pages. Each has a name at the top. I scan them quickly; none is familiar. Each of the applicants will receive a hearing before the renunciation is finally approved. That, I suppose, is what he has come to me for. “So what's the problem?”

“This,” says Biddle. He opens the door. Sacks of mail cover the floor. I read the stamps on the bags, two words over and over again.
Tule Lake, Tule Lake, Tule Lake.
“We got five thousand applications,” Biddle says.

“Five thousand?” It is not just too many; it is impossible, absurd. I am trying to think of what I could have done wrong. “How can that be?”

“I don't know,” says Biddle. “I wasn't there.”

“I told them not to.”

Biddle shrugs. “It seems they didn't listen. There are War Department teams out there conducting hearings as we speak.”

“War's in favor of renunciation now?”

“Anything to keep them in the camps, that's War's view. But five thousand is too many. Something's happened. I want you to find out what it is.”

“Okay,” I say. I am still trying to collect myself. This is my fault; it must be my fault. I was the one explaining it to them. But still I cannot think of what I did wrong.

Biddle puts his hand on my shoulder. It is not a pat; he is squeezing hard enough to hurt. “We've done wrong to these people, Cash. Try not to let it get any worse.”

• • • • 

Back in my office, I place a call to Tule Lake director Raymond Best. Best has no idea what's going on. He transfers me to his community analyst, Marvin Opler. It's simple, Opler says. Everyone's gone mad.

“What?”

“They're insane with fear,” he says. “That they'll be killed if they go back home. Everyone knows the camps are going to close, and they've been hearing horror stories about what's happened to the ones released already. If they renounce, they can stay in the camps.”

“Maybe that's not insane.” In California, shadowy figures shoot through windows and mobs burn houses.

“Maybe not,” he agrees. “Maybe some of them would be better off in Japan.” It is a sobering thought. Better off renouncing all the rights and privileges of citizens, better off shipped to a country they have never seen, than back among their fellow Americans. “If the Hoshidan come out and start chanting for their emperor, they really will be killed.”

“So what can we do about it?”

“You need to get renunciations from the Hoshidan,” he says. “So they don't go back to California and set everyone off. And you need to talk the normal people out of it.”

“Oh,” I say. “Sort the loyal from the disloyal. Well, that should be no problem.”

There is a moment of silence. “It might not be as easy as you think.”

“I'm being sarcastic, Marvin. How am I supposed to do that?”

“Well,” he says, “I have an idea, actually.”

AIR PRIORITY ONE
will not do it this time. Biddle gives me a team of Justice Department officers to conduct hearings, too many to fly. We take the train instead. Outside the window, the countryside flickers like a reel of film. It flashes past too fast for sense: office buildings, houses, baseball diamonds, empty fields.

We gather in the dining car. Opler's plan is simple, I tell my team. The militants, the Hoshidan, are the ones who really want to go to Japan. They have been studying Japanese history and culture. We can test the people who are renouncing citizenship by asking them questions about these subjects. Those who do not know the answers may be acting out of hysteria. Or perhaps they have been subjected to some sort of pressure. Whatever the case may be, we will take the Hoshidan as fast as we can and hope the rest calm down when they are gone.

I look around at the faces. Twelve men, good people. I have picked them carefully. Justice lawyers I trust, Miller and some FBI agents he recommended in case things get rough. They look at me attentively. “Just the real ones,” says Miller. “Sure.” He cracks his smile, makes a quiet remark to the agent next to him, and everyone at his table breaks out in laughter.

Waiters bring us food. The team is swapping jokes, looking out the windows, ordering more beers. My men in easy camaraderie. The buildings of the East are gone now, vanished behind us like the works of a lost civilization.
All around are stubble fields. The sky is clear blue and endless, a space that is the end of space. Dinner ends, and still I sit by the window with a glass of Scotch, telling myself it will work. Marvin Opler knows these people; he knows how to identify the truly disloyal. My men are careful, smart. Farther west we cross rivers, and the setting sun skims with us, an orange reflection in the water, until it crashes into the black land and is lost.

“Come on,” Miller says. “You're going to need your sleep.”

I climb into a bunk and lie there, clutching a rough wool blanket, listening to the thrum of the wheels. Even the Hoshidan should not have been put in this position. If they are enemies now, they are enemies of our own making. But they are the problem, and if we take some, we may save the rest. We can sacrifice a few to save a greater number.

That is what I tell myself as the dark land slides by.

• • • • 

The world sleeps, but we hurtle on. The coal burns, the iron wheels turn. A day, a night, another day. And finally we are disembarking at Klamath Falls. We drive into Tule Lake, a procession of black government cars through the gray plain, under the gray sky. Shouts of “
Wash-Sho
” rise about us as we enter. I kick at the frozen ground and shiver. Tule Lake in December is quite different from the place I visited in August. It is bitter cold, for one thing. The wind blows thin and empty, like the sky, like the high plains around us. Castle Rock spots the horizon with hues of the rising sun.

The people have changed, too. Everywhere now I see the
bozu
haircut on men, military short, and pigtails on the women. Everywhere are the white uniforms of the Hoshidan. They are louder in the morning; there are more of them, marching and drilling, chanting and blowing bugles. I stand outside my apartment and look through the fence to the firebreak. There are women in the columns of white, and children. I wait until the exercises have finished and listen for singing. I hear nothing.

The walk from my apartment to the mess hall is an ordeal. I pity the detainees who have to go several blocks to the latrine. In the administration building where I will interview renunciants, a pot-bellied stove blazes. Someone has nailed the lids of coffee cans over the knotholes in the pine wall. I stuff
newspaper in the cracks and gaps that remain. I can still see my breath. From the wall above my desk, Franklin Roosevelt, unaffected, beams down his genial smile.

One by one the renunciants file through. At the beginning, they are all Hoshidan. In they come, with their shaved heads, their white clothes and headbands. I show them their application forms, ask them to verify the signature. I ask them if they understand what they are doing and whether they are renouncing of their own free will. I remind them that they are surrendering something of great value. I ask them my questions about Japanese history and culture. And I give them a final paper to sign. In a few weeks, or whenever the Department completes the processing, they will receive a form letter from Francis Biddle.
Your application for renunciation has been approved by the Attorney General. You are no longer a citizen of the United States of America, nor are you entitled to any of the rights and privileges of such citizenship.

The interviews go fast. They respond curtly to my questions. “Why do you want to renounce?” I ask.

“I want to be Japanese,” say the Nisei.

“I am Japanese,” say the Kibei. “Japanese in my face and my hair and my heart.”

I could not talk them out of it if I wanted to; there is no conversation to be had with these people. I process twenty-five the first day.

The second morning, after the bugles and the chants, I hear
Un Bel Di
soaring through the barracks. At first it is just the soprano, a single floating voice. Then I hear violins underneath, a stirring of brass, the distant boom of drums. A full orchestral accompaniment.

It is coming from my side of the fence, I realize. I track the sound to an administration building and open the door.

The Community Center looks empty. I see only a phonograph playing on a table in one corner. Motion catches my eye: a man sitting in one of the chairs, slouched in a wool greatcoat. He looks up at the sound of the door and turns away again when he sees me.

“I'm Cash Harrison,” I say. “With the Department of Justice.”

He turns his head back but doesn't rise. “I'm Jerry Katz. With the Tule Lake Symphony.”

“Oh,” I say. “I guess it's not performing anymore?”

“No,” he says. “It's not.”

I process thirty-two applications that day. All Hoshidan, all seething with silent hostility. After dinner I sit with Director Ray Best over a glass of Scotch. “What's happening here?” I ask.

“They're deciding whose side they're on,” he says. “Japan's, it turns out. Fancy that.”

“I hear there's no more symphony.”

“There's no more anything Western, really. The school teaches calligraphy, Japanese, and flower arranging. Instead of the Pledge of Allegiance, they start the day with a bow to the East and a salute to the emperor.”

“Are you kidding me?” I cannot understand why he is so calm. “Those are little children. American children. They're saluting a foreign enemy. Why don't you do something about it?”

“They're all going back to Japan in the end,” he says. “They need to prepare themselves to live there.”

I remember Marvin Opler. “Your community analyst's son is in that school.”

“Not anymore,” says Best. “Don't be silly.” He gestures out the window. “The Nisei teenagers, I feel a little bad for them. They're American, culturally. You see the lights on in the high school? That's a dance.”

Across the fence I see the building he indicates. I can hear music, now that I am listening for it. “Turn off your radio,” I say. With the room quiet, the distant tune is clear. It is “Don't Fence Me In.”

Best's face wrinkles in recognition. “It's number one in the country,” he says. “What can we do?” He joins me at the window and takes a drink of Scotch. “Woody Ichihashi and the Downbeats,” he says. “They're not half bad.”

We stand in silence for a moment, listening. Through the windows of the building I can see shapes moving, couples holding hands. The music changes to
I'll Be Seeing You
, the litany of old familiar places. I think about that night at Merion with Suzanne, the leaves blowing across the great lawn, the kids dancing under the flags, lovely in limbs and eyes. It seems unimaginably distant now, though the trail away is made of tiny steps. Some big ones, too. Ralph Hays is dead, who looked so fine in his Navy blues, and Billy Fitch the
pilot, and Bill's dad, who opened his wrists in his car when he heard the plane was down.

The music stops. There is a crowd of white-clad figures outside the high school, some on the porch and some entering. “It's the Hoshidan,” I say.

Best nods. “They don't approve.” Men in white are taking the kids outside. Some struggle. A Hoshidan slaps a zoot-suited teen across the face.

“What are you going to do?”

“What can we do?”

“Stop them.”

“With what? Their police force disbanded. You want me to send my soldiers in to protect a swing band? That would turn ugly fast.”

I shake my head. “This is a mess.”

Best laughs. “You got that right. If you've got any suggestions, let me have 'em.”

“We can take out the leaders,” I say. “That's what I'm here for. We get them to renounce and we take them out of here. Truck them to the internment camp in Santa Fe.”

“And you think that'll fix things?”

“It's a start,” I say. “We'll see what happens after that.”

The morning bugling the next day seems louder. I can see large numbers of children, old men, old women lined up in the cold. Their breath rises in columns and blends to fade united in the sky; their voices ring out to the distant mountains. “
Wash-Sho!
”

I have two more Hoshidan that day, then a woman in pigtails, then a man with longer hair. I start on the loyalty questions. “What do you think of the emperor of Japan?” I ask.

He leaps to his feet. “The emperor is a living god,” he shouts. It is what all the Hoshidan have done, and the woman too, but it suits him less well. I go on.

“Do you believe Japan will win the war?”

“Yes, and I hope so too.”