Caged Eagles (16 page)

“But I heard that they might make it a full day later … even add the higher grades.”

“I heard that too, but I figure we'll be long gone before they get around to that,” Sam said. “I can think of a lot of better ways to spend my time than in some classroom.”

“Yeah. So what do you want to do today?” I asked.

“We could play baseball.”

“I guess we could.” We'd played baseball every day for the past two weeks. I didn't think I'd ever get tired of playing ball, but somehow … “Any other ideas?”

He smiled. “I had something else in mind.”

“What did you —” I stopped in mid-sentence as I saw Toshio, a foul look on his face, standing right in front of me. Beside him were two other boys — more like men — his age.

Toshio stopped directly in front of me, blocking the path.

“You still here … you not white,” Toshio said, spitting out the word, a smirk on his face.

“White?” Sam asked, turning to me.

“You don't understand,” I said.

“Yellow on the outside … white on the inside. You too!” Toshio said, aiming his words at Sam.

“Me?” Sam questioned and then burst into a big smile. “Did you hear that? I'm white!”

Toshio looked confused by Sam's response.

“Take a hike, Toshio,” I said.

“Hike?” he asked.

“Go away,” I said in Japanese.

“You not tell me what to do. You not boss of Toshio. Toshio stay right here.”

He spread his legs apart and put his hands on his hips, freezing like a statue.

I shrugged. “Suits me. Then we'll go.”

I stepped off the path to go around him but was violently spun around by a hand on my shoulder, and found myself staring into Toshio's face.

Before I could even react, Sam stepped in between us and brushed Toshio's hand off my shoulder.

“Shooo!” Sam said, motioning with his hands like he was trying to scatter some birds.

Toshio looked taken aback. He turned to his two friends and spoke to them in Japanese — he told them that he thought Sam was a monkey. They both laughed. Thank goodness Sam didn't understand any Japanese or he might have been — “The only monkey around here is you … and probably your mother!” Sam yelled.

How did he know what Toshio had said?

“Do you understand me, you stupid monkey-faced boy? Your mother's as ugly as a monkey. Understand?” Sam demanded.

There was no question that Toshio understood. Even if the words hadn't made sense, the tone was undeniable. Toshio moved in toward Sam. They were going to fight. I'd seen Toshio in action and knew how dangerous he could be. I went to move in to do something and one of Toshio's two new buddies — he looked like he was about twenty and bigger than me — stepped in front of me.

“Leave them alone,” he said threateningly.

The second guy stepped forward too and nodded his head in agreement. Unless I was prepared to fight the two of them, Sam was on his own.

Toshio and Sam circled each other, sizing one another up. Sam was holding his arms high, hands folded into fists, like a prize fighter. Toshio was gliding, falling into judo poses … Judo! Sam didn't know!

“Sam, be careful, he knows judo!” I called out.

“Good for him,” Sam yelled back. “Soon he's going to know a beating.”

“Stop!” yelled out a voice in Japanese, and an older man rushed forward.

He was about my grandmother's age. He had been sitting behind one of the tables where the children were being registered for school.

“Stop, right now!” he yelled again, repeating himself in English.

Toshio took a half-step back and lowered his guard as the old man stepped between him and Sam. Sam kept his hands up. The old man turned his head toward Sam and started to question him in Japanese.

“I don't understand Japanese!” Sam snapped back defiantly.

The old man looked slightly confused by Sam's statement, but nodded his head. “You can lower your defenses, there will be no fight.”

Sam lowered his arms, but his fingers remained curled into fists and his facial expression remained angry.

The old man had surprised me. His English was perfect, with not even a trace of accent. Most of the old people, people his age, only spoke halting English, heavily tainted by Japanese accents.

He then turned to Toshio. “There will be no fight.”

Toshio nodded. His eyes were on the ground.

“We didn't start it,” Sam said. “These big tough men,” he said, motioning first to Toshio and then to the other two flanking me, “came over here to pick a fight with us. Really tough, aren't you three? Couldn't you find any girls to fight? Big brave —”

“Silence!” the old man said, cutting Sam off.

I was surprised, and grateful, that Sam listened.

The old man looked at Toshio, then at Sam, then at me and finally at the two men who stood on either side of me. His expression hardened and I could see his eyes flare in anger. I think he'd seen what Sam had pointed out. In rapid-fire Japanese he asked the three why they were here, what business they had and if they had started the fight. They practically tripped over each other answering, apologizing and groveling.

He shook his head. “We have been herded into this park like animals. Many are sleeping in places where animals sleep. Fed like animals. Fenced in and restricted in our movements like animals. And when you fight … you are acting like animals.” He paused. “We are not animals. We are people. We have dignity. Dignity is not
where
you live, but
how
you live. Understand?”

“
Hai
,” Toshio said, nodding his head, and his friends echoed out agreement. All three had their eyes firmly rooted on the ground. I nodded my head in agreement as well.

“And you?” he asked Sam. “Do you have anything more to say?”

“No … no, sir.”

Sam calling him “sir” surprised me. That wasn't like him.

“Good. It is now finished,” the old man said. “Now I have business in the school and then in the city. I suggest you all get on with your business. And remember, acting like animals justifies being placed here. But when we act with dignity we shame those people who have put us here. Dignity. Like Japanese.”

The old man walked into the school.

The crowd that had started to gather at the first signs of trouble had long since dispersed. People had begun to leave as soon as the old man arrived. It wasn't respectful for them to stay and witness what was happening, although I wasn't sure my curiosity would have let me leave if I had been standing on the sidelines watching.

I watched as the old man walked away. There were now very few children remaining to be registered. In typical, efficient Japanese style, the seemingly impossible task was nearly complete. Turning back around I was happy to see that Toshio and the other two were walking away and were already at a safe distance.

“I didn't recognize him at first,” Sam said.

“Who?”

“The old man. Do you know who he is?” Sam asked.

I shook my head. “I was thinking maybe the principal of the school.”

Sam laughed. “He's a lot more than that. That was Mr.

Wakabayashi.”

I shrugged. The name didn't mean anything to me.

“I heard he owns half of the Japanese businesses in Vancouver.”

I shrugged. “Are there a lot of them?”

Sam shook his head, and his expression showed disbelief. “There's a stretch of stores and buildings along Powell Street from Main all the way to Campbell. Most of the businesses are Japanese, and he owns half of them. Even my father calls him ‘sir.' Funny, I was surprised to see him here.”

“Why?” I asked.

“First off, I figured he lived right in Vancouver, and they aren't making the Japanese in Vancouver leave their homes yet.”

“Good thing. They couldn't fit everybody into this park,” I said. “But maybe he doesn't live in Vancouver.”

“Maybe, but even if he doesn't, I just figured that somebody as rich and powerful as him wouldn't have to come here.” He paused. “I guess the color of his skin is more important than the color of his money. You eaten yet?” Sam asked.

I shook my head.

“Me neither. Let's get some grub.”

“Sure, let's …” I let the sentence trail off as I realized that Toshio and his friends were walking ahead of us on the path to the mess hall.

“Don't worry about them,” Sam said, reading my mind. “I could tell that they recognized Mr. Wakabayashi too. There won't be a problem. Besides, if he does decide to start something, I'll take care of it.”

“I'm glad you're so confident.”

“I would have cleaned his clock. Let's go.”

“Don't be so sure of that,” I said as we started to walk, trailing behind them at what I hoped was a safe distance.

“You've never seen Toshio fight.”

“You've never seen me fight either,” Sam said.

“You talk a good fight, I'll give you that much.”

“I can do more than talk. You get good at what you do often,” Sam said.

“What do you mean?”

“I was about the only Japanese kid in my whole neighborhood. Besides me and my sister, there were only two other Japanese kids in my school and they were both girls.”

“Yeah?”

“So you don't think I had practice fighting?”

“Why would …” I had an uneasy feeling that I knew why.

“Jap, gook, fish-breath … heck, I even got called a chink. Stupid idiot didn't even know enough to throw the right insults at me — he thought I was Chinese. When I started school I learned to fight. Older kids, bigger kids, more than one of them … I didn't care. I fought them all.”

“Every day?”

“Every day in the beginning. Then every week, then every so often. The last few years I only seemed to have to fight when some new kid came to the school. I'd lay a beating on him and then everything would be okay.”

“That would be hard … not having any friends.”

“What are you talking about? I had lots of friends. Lots. It's just that none of them were Japanese!” He shook his head. “Funny … out there I used to get in fights because I was Japanese and here, when I'm surrounded by Japanese, some guy wants to pick a fight with me because I'm not Japanese enough — or I guess because
you
aren't Japanese enough.”

“He's just stupid.”

“I figured that part out, but why does he think you think you're white?”

“Because of my friends. I hang out with Japanese too, but lots of my friends, like my best friend, aren't Japanese.”

“Big deal;
all
my friends are white.”

“Jed's only part white. His mother is Tsimshian.”

“Tsimshian?”

“Native Indian.” Then in a flash I remembered something that had struck me as strange. “You said you didn't speak any Japanese, so how did you know what Toshio was saying?”

“I don't speak any Japanese, but I do understand some of it. Besides, even if I didn't understand the words, I would have known he wasn't asking if we wanted an ice cream.”

“But you knew exactly what he called you.”

“Called me?” Sam asked.

“You know, calling you a monkey,” I explained.

“I thought he was talking about
you
. Maybe I still should give him a smack in the head. Idiot!” he screamed at Toshio, up ahead of us on the path.

“Don't start anything!” I said, trying to quiet him down, relieved that Toshio hadn't turned around. He and his friends were some distance away and maybe he didn't hear him, or didn't understand the taunt.

“I'd like to show him who's a monkey! Monkey boy!” he yelled.

There was no response from up ahead. I had to do something to distract him.

“How can you understand Japanese but not speak it?” I asked.

“I used to know how to speak it. Up until the time I went to the first form, that was all I spoke,” Sam explained.

“And what happened?”

“What happened was that kids made fun of me. And once I understood enough English to understand what they were saying, then I started fighting.”

“But what's that got to do with not speaking Japanese?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. It just didn't make sense to speak a language that nobody understood, so I just stopped speaking it.”

“What about at home, with your parents or your family?”

“They didn't say anything about it. They just spoke to me in English from then on.”

“And what about your grandparents or other relatives?” I knew that a lot of the older people had almost no English.

“All my grandparents have been dead since before I can remember, and we don't hardly have any relatives. Both my parents are only children … well, I guess my father did have a brother, but he died when they were kids. The only relatives we have are some cousins my mother has, and they live way up in Kamloops, so we hardly ever see them anyway.”

I thought of all my relatives, some of whom lived in our village. And then there were the people I'd known all my life, people who had actually come from the same village in Japan as my grandparents, who weren't family, but were more than just neighbors. Sam didn't have any of that. He had friends, but friends weren't enough. Friends!

That reminded me that I'd been putting off writing that letter to Jed like I'd promised. I'd started to write him a half-dozen times. But each time, I got no more than a few lines in and the letter ended up in the trash. It wasn't that I didn't know what to tell him; I didn't know how to say it. How could I describe what was happening to us? Regardless of how hard it was, I'd have to do more than just try.

.13.

Sam and I shuffled along with the lineup, waiting our turn to get breakfast. I looked ahead, hoping for something different, but was certain it would be the same as always: toast with butter and jam, cold cereal, coffee and apple juice. And, of course, oatmeal, or what passed for oatmeal, a thin, bad-tasting gruel that was not very filling. And while I had to admit that there was always lots of it, it was never any different, and never any better. And worse yet, never Japanese.