Caged Eagles (2 page)

I hurried along the path to the dock. Our boat was just one of more than a dozen little fishing vessels tied to the wooden dock. There were another two dozen sitting out in the harbor, already loaded, anchored and waiting for us to join them. It wasn't unusual to see them all bobbing up and down together in our little harbor, except at this time of year. All the fishing boats had been taken in for the winter, their hulls scraped and repainted, fishing nets mended and stored. Then came the order that the fishing boats had to be turned over to the government. Did they really think that somebody would chug their little boat out into the ocean and then lead the Japanese Imperial Navy to the coast? I didn't know what was more stupid, the thought that any of us would help the Japanese, or that they'd need our help to find the coast.

So all the boats had been put back in the water, waiting to be turned over. And now that we had to leave as well, it only made sense to pile our things onto the boats and go to Prince Rupert. If the boats had been turned in before this, then how would we ever have gotten our possessions to the town? We couldn't very well walk to town with our things on our backs.

I looked at the line of waiting boats. While they were all different, they weren't very different. Each was a wooden vessel with a small cabin to shelter the captain and crew — usually one other man. The deck was mostly open to accommodate the gear and nets. Near the back was the hatch, which opened to the hold where the catch was stored.

Most of our deck was covered by an enormous, gray, oilskin tarp. Underneath it was large pile of wood — fuel for the woodstove in the cabin. My father's worst fear was that once we got to Prince Rupert, they'd make us live on the boat for some time, and he wanted to make sure he had enough wood to keep us warm.

I danced between the other people along the length of the dock. A couple of them nodded their heads at me, but nobody said a word. It was an eerie silence. The only sounds were of the wind, the waves washing against the shore, the boats rubbing against the tires lining the dock and our footfalls against the wood.

Shifting my load to one arm, I carefully grabbed hold of a stay and stepped onto our boat. The deck was wet, and I struggled to regain my balance as my feet almost slipped out from under me. Thank goodness the temperature was above freezing or the salty spray thrown up by the winds would have been forming into layers of ice. I'd only ever been on the boat once when it was like that.

It was a late November day when I was only nine or ten years old. A cold front had moved in without warning. Our boat had been in a Prince Rupert shipyard for a refit, and when it was ready, my father had to sail her back to our village to be stored for the winter. Although it was only about four miles through the forest from Prince Rupert to our village, the trip by sea was longer, almost fifteen miles. My father asked if I wanted to come along. Back in those days I wanted to be a fisherman, just like my father, and I never turned down an opportunity to join him aboard. Of course, we weren't fishing that day. The nets were already in the storage shed. I remember how calm the water was when we were in the Prince Rupert harbor. But what had been calm in the harbor changed fast as soon as we hit open water. The waves were tremendous — bigger than I ever remember seeing. When we were in the trough between waves, I could look up through the windows and see the crests of the waves on both sides rising high above the tallest part of the boat.

I wasn't scared, though — at least, not at first. I knew my father knew everything about the sea and he'd never let anything bad happen to me. So we were rocking and rolling and bouncing and bucking. I closed my eyes and imagined we weren't on a boat but were riding a wild bronco. I used to love reading western paperbacks and thinking about what it would be like to be a cowboy, but that was as close as I'd ever come to actually riding a horse.

Of course, everything in the cabin was tied down — that is, everything but me and my father. We were bounced around pretty good. I tried my hardest to hold on to something all the time, but I was thrown right out of my seat by one wave.

The waves were bad, but what was worse was the wind. It screeched and howled and rattled the small windows of the cabin. And with the wind came the spray, and, while there was no danger of the ocean itself freezing, that spray froze solid as soon as it touched anything. Soon the deck, all the windows except the one out the front that was constantly cleared by a hand-cranked wiper, and all the lines were coated with ice. I thought it looked pretty, and I mentioned it to my father. He said there was nothing pretty about something that could kill you. I didn't understand how some pretty ice could kill anything. He then told me that he'd heard of boats that got so caked with ice that they became top-heavy and then “turned turtle” — flipped over.

I can remember that first rush of fear when he said that, and I think he saw it in my face. He told me not to worry, that he'd never let anything like that happen. And I believed him, and I felt better.

After that he turned to me and said, “Take the wheel,” and before I even knew what he was doing, he left the cabin and went out onto the open deck and started to chop away at the ice and throw chunks overboard. He was probably only out there fifteen minutes, but it seemed like forever. And I knew we'd be okay because my father said so, and he was never wrong. At least, that's what I thought back then. Sometimes I wish I was still back then, instead of here and now, loading the boat to leave our home.

I pushed through the door into the cabin. It was crammed full of things, and the tiny space seemed even smaller now. Pots and pans and dishes protruded out of boxes piled against one wall. I knew they'd have to be stowed differently before we left or they'd come tumbling down when we hit the first decent wave. Bedding and clothes were piled against the other side. Three mattresses — my parents', Grandmother's and Midori's — were propped up on their sides. At night, when they were laid flat on the floor, there wouldn't be any space left over to move. I could hardly imagine how the six of us were going to fit in here. I guessed if the waters were calm enough I could go out on deck. Of course, that was a big question mark. How calm would the waters be this time of year?

I looked out through the side window, across the harbor, and tried to see beyond the finger of land that protected it from the open ocean. It was hopeless. Whatever awaited us wouldn't be known until we got out of the harbor … but what did it matter anyway? Rough or calm, we were going out there.

“
Shikata-ga-nai
… it can't be helped,” I thought out loud, and then couldn't help but smile at my grandmother's words escaping from my lips.

As I watched, a boat rounded the outstretched finger of land and entered the harbor. Who would be coming to the village at this time? Maybe it was a fishing boat from farther up the coast, also heading for Prince Rupert, but forced in by bad seas … no, it wasn't a fishing boat. It was under a good head of steam and quickly crossed the calm of the harbor. It looked like it was going to try to put in at the dock. Whoever it was would need some help getting in.

Carefully I laid down the bedding, making sure that the dolls remained safely hidden within the folds. I hurried out of the cabin, securing the door behind me. I climbed up onto the dock. There was now plenty of space. In the short time I had been on our boat, two other vessels had moved away from the dock. I waved my arms so the captain of the vessel would be able to see I was offering my assistance. Partially I was trying to be helpful, but I was also anxious to hear what the conditions were out on the open ocean.

I still couldn't see who was inside the cabin, but I could clearly tell it was no fishing boat. Who was it? Who would be out there? As the boat came about, positioning itself to come into the opening at the dock, two men came out onto the deck. The flashes of their uniform jackets answered my question; it was the RCMP. They were probably coming to make sure we were following the orders to leave our homes. And I was going to help them dock to do it.

.2.

One of the officers moved to the bow of the vessel while the other strode to the aft. They readied ropes to secure the boat. It looked like it was going to overshoot the space along the dock, and the captain threw it into reverse and gunned the engine noisily to try to draw it back into the opening. The waves pushed the vessel toward the dock while the engine strained to pull it away from the last fishing boat. Just as it looked like they were going to bump together it swung into the spot. The officer in the bow tossed me the line. I grabbed it, pulled hard and then secured it, tying it in place. I looked down, expecting somebody else to have taken the aft line, and realized nobody was there. That was strange. There were so many people here I was surprised that no one else offered to help … I slowly turned around. There were at least a half dozen men from the village who were close at hand — close enough to help; you're always supposed to help other boats — but nobody had made a move. Maybe I shouldn't have given them any help either … I probably wouldn't have if I'd known who it was.

An RCMP officer leapt from the aft of the boat, bridging the small gap of open water, and secured the other end of the boat.

“Thanks a lot, son,” called out a voice. It was the officer from the bow. He climbed onto the dock beside me, while a group of four other police officers exited the cabin.

Maybe I'd helped when I shouldn't have, but at least I'd get to know about the conditions. “What's it like out there?” I asked.

“I've seen worse. Winds weren't bad, waves about five feet. We got tossed, but not much.” He laughed. “A couple of the guys, not used to the ocean, had green faces. I'd hate to be aboard with them if it really got rough.” He paused and looked at me thoughtfully. “I know you,” the officer said.

“What?” I sputtered.

“I know you. You go to school in Prince Rupert … Prince of Wales Public School. Right?”

“Yeah, I do … I mean, I used to,” I answered. We hadn't been allowed to go to school for the last six weeks.

“What's your name?” he asked.

I wondered if he was going to check my registration card, the one that all Japanese over sixteen years of age had to carry. I was fourteen, which meant I didn't have to have one, but because I looked older I'd been asked for one before.

“My name is Tadashi Fukushima. I don't have a card because I'm only fourteen,” I explained before he had a chance to ask me.

“Tadashi, that's right. I thought I recognized you.”

Recognized me from where? I thought.

“You play baseball,” he said.

“Yeah … I do,” I stammered in reply. That certainly wasn't what I'd expected him to say.

“I saw you pitch for your school team last September.”

“You did?” I asked.

“I was there to watch my son, Toby, play.”

“Toby Johnson? You're his father?”

“Yep. He's the oldest of my three boys.”

Of course, I knew Toby, as well as his two younger brothers, Raymond and Kenny. That was no surprise, though, because I knew everybody in the whole school. Toby wasn't really a friend, but he was friendly.

Toby had only been in our school for the past year. He'd once mentioned that his dad was with the RCMP and had been transferred up to Prince Rupert. I knew the RCMP detachment had almost tripled in size in the past year to match all the growth in the town.

It wasn't that many years ago, before all the talk of war, when Prince Rupert only had five thousand people. Now it was home to over twenty thousand. People were flooding into town because there was so much work. The dry dock, railroad yard, oil refinery and all three canneries had all taken on more men.

Then there was all the building being done by the military. There were three bases being built just outside of town. I'd had a job after school, along with my best friend Jed and his mother, at one of the bases, and they were throwing up buildings so fast they could hardly get enough lumber to keep up with the demand.

I'd heard somebody say that war was good for business. And I guess that was true enough, even for us at first. Lots of the men in our village had taken on second jobs, working at the cannery on weekends or with one of the lumber mills, felling trees or working right in the mill. There was more money working in the cannery then there was pulling fish out of the ocean.

Of course, all of that stopped when we were all told we couldn't work anymore. Just after Canada declared war on Japan, all those men whose families were from Japan — no matter how long ago they came to this country — were let go. No jobs in the factories or at the bases or in town or even fishing.

My thoughts were broken as I watched the other police officers climb off the boat and start toward the village.

“We were sent up to see if anybody needed assistance,” the officer, Toby's father, said.

And to make sure we all followed orders, I thought, but didn't say.

“Loading the boats, moving things, making sure the homes are all locked up tightly,” he continued.

“We don't have a lock on our door,” I said.

“You don't?” he asked in surprise.

I shook my head. “Nobody does. I don't think there's a locked door in the whole village.”

It was his turn to shake his head slowly. “Things will be all right. You're pretty isolated up here. I can't see anybody coming around and bothering anything.”

Up until him mentioning the possibility of somebody doing that, I'd never given it any thought whatsoever. It would never have occurred to me that we would need to lock our doors. Every single person in the village knew everybody else, and it wasn't like there were ever any strangers around. Who would watch the village?

“You'll be making patrols up here, right?” I asked hesitantly.