Caged Eagles (4 page)

I couldn't even think that term without my stomach starting to churn. Born and raised in Canada … most of us were either Canadian-born or naturalized Canadians, but we were all the same to them; “Once a Jap, always a Jap” — that's what they were saying.

I guess the only difference they mattered to them was the color of our registration cards: pink if you were born in Canada or naturalized, and yellow if you were a Japanese citizen. They must have thought that was pretty smart, yellow for the “yellow peril” from the Far East. Either way, though, regardless of the card's color, it meant the same. Each man and woman over the age of sixteen had to carry around those cards, and on those cards it said ENEMY ALIEN in big letters, and if the police caught you out in public without that card, they could throw you in jail.

Some people had been thrown in jail. Nobody from our village, but I'd heard about some businessmen and writers and people like that down in Vancouver who were locked up the day after Pearl Harbor. And I don't know, maybe they
were
people who would have been dangerous, who would have passed on information to the Japanese army. After all, there were around twenty-two thousand of us in this province, so I guess maybe a few of them would be cheering for Japan, and maybe even helping out a little … maybe.

Rumor was that those people taken prisoner were shipped out to someplace the other side of the mountains and were being kept in some sort of prisoner-of-war camp. If they
were
spies, then the government did the right thing in rounding them up … at least, that's what I'd thought when I first heard about a few men being taken away. Now that we were all being rounded up too, I had some different thoughts in my head.

“There sure are a lot of boats,” Yuri said as she appeared at my shoulder and peered forward out the windscreen.

I nodded my head in agreement. Looking beyond the little convoy of fishing boats, I could easily see the outlines of at least a dozen big supply ships at anchor in the middle of the harbor, waiting their turn to dock and unload. And I knew that because of the shape and size of the harbor, there were probably just as many others at anchor and half as many again at the docks being loaded or unloaded — and it was going on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Men, supplies and equipment. Either being unloaded to supply the growing military bases that ringed Prince Rupert or being loaded after being brought in by rail to be taken by ship to the Queen Charlotte Islands or further north to Alaska.

My eyes scanned the shore. The only things that took up more space in town than the docks were the rail yards. The entire western part of the town's shoreline was dominated by the railroad tracks. There was a big freight yard that must have had twenty or even thirty sets of tracks that came off the main line. There weren't enough men to unload the ships and railroad cars when they arrived, and they were backing up more and more. I shook my head in disbelief. There were some Japanese who'd worked the freight yards before the orders came to fire them. Did they think that stopping all the Japanese-Canadians from working would make things run better?

I walked over to my father's side. “Are we putting in at a dock?” I asked, although I realized as soon as I asked that there wouldn't possibly be space for all the boats to dock.

Without looking at me he shook his head. “At anchor with all the other boats … those from up and down the coast.” He pointed up ahead.

My eyes widened in surprise at the sight. There were fishing boats — hundreds and hundreds of them — at anchor, bobbing up and down on the waves. I had never seen so many fishing boats in one place, not even clustered around the mouth of the Skeena during the salmon run, and it was hard to believe there were that many boats along the whole coast.

My father turned the wheel and brought our boat around, looking for a spot to anchor. He found a patch of open water amidst the clutter of other boats, and I could hear the engine become quieter as he throttled back. He cut the engine even further, took it out of gear and motioned for me to go out. I knew without asking that he wanted me to put out the anchor.

Zipping my jacket and jamming my hat on my head, I went out into the cold air. I moved carefully around the side of the cabin to the bow. Quickly I grabbed the anchor, lowered it over the side. I released the gear on the winch and stepped out of the way as first the chain and then the heavy line paid out of the anchor hatch. Once the anchor reached bottom, I fed out some more line and then signaled to my father. He put the engine in reverse and the boat slowly back up until the anchor set and the line went taut. I went back into the warm cabin.

“I must go ashore,” my father said. His words were so soft that I had to strain to hear them over the noise of the wind and the waves. “I am to be told what is planned for us.”

“Can I come with you?”

He shook his head. “This is only for the head of each family. You have a job.” He paused and I waited wordlessly. “While I am gone you are in charge … in charge of the boat … and those on the boat. Do you understand?”

“Yes … yes, sir.”

He turned his head slightly in my direction and gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. I followed him out of the cabin.

“Your mother is putting on rice. I'll be back before too long.”

I had noticed that a rowboat had been put out from one of the fishing boats. It was moving between vessels like a water taxi, probably picking up men to bring to the town for the meeting. My father raised his hand in greeting as the boat came toward our vessel. It contained three men already, people I knew from our village. As it came alongside our boat, my father nodded to me, then climbed into the rowboat, and it started away. I watched as it stopped at another fishing boat, picking up one more passenger. With the weight of the five men in the small boat, only a few inches of gunwale showed above the water line. I was grateful it was calm in the protected waters. A big wave would have washed right over the edge. The little boat bobbed up and down gently, quickly becoming smaller and smaller as it moved toward the shore. I followed it with my eyes, watching as it disappeared and reappeared from behind other boats, until I saw it put in safely at the dock.

I wished more than almost anything that I could have gone along. The only thing worse than knowing our fate was being decided somewhere on that shore was not being able to be there to hear what was being said. Instead I sat out here, the deck rocking under my feet … waiting … waiting … waiting. My grandmother has often said that the Japanese are the most patient people.

I guess I must be more Canadian than anybody knew.

My attention was caught by the sound of the cabin door opening. I turned to see my sister Midori.

“Tea is made,” she said.

“You know I don't like green tea,” I answered.

“I know,” she said apologetically, “but Mother said I should tell you it's made.”

“What I'd like is a coffee or even a soda.”

“There's none of either on board,” Midori said.

“No surprise there. If I wanted a good cup of coffee, the only place I could get one would be up at the base.”

There was always a big urn of coffee on in the mess hall at the military base. And since I'd often worked right there in the kitchen, a steaming-hot cup of strong, black coffee was never more than a few feet away. I closed my eyes and I could almost smell it.

“Do you miss working at the base?” Midori asked.

Her question surprised me. Nobody talked much about what had happened to us, including me having to stop working at the base.

I shrugged. “The work wasn't that hard … so, sure, I guess I miss it.”

“And Jed.”

“Jed?” I asked.

“You miss him too, right?”

“I just saw him,” I said, being careful not to say just how recently we'd been together. It had been only ten hours earlier. In the middle of the night.

Jed and I had met at a spot between our two villages. From there, under cover of darkness, we'd snuck by the guards and gone to the base. We were there because of the base's mascot, Eddie the eagle. He was a full-grown bald eagle who had been found injured in the forest and been brought back to the base months earlier. He lived chained to the flagpole in the center of the parade ground. He was cared for — a vet looked at his injuries, and he was fed and everything, mostly by Jed and his mother, and sometimes by me — but he was still a prisoner. So Jed and I had snuck onto the base to where Eddie sat on his little house. We cut him loose and then watched as he flew away. We hoped his injuries had healed enough to let him survive in the wild. Either way, though, free to live or die in the wild was better than alive and chained to a flagpole.

“But you're going to miss him,” she continued.

“Of course, I'll miss him,” I said abruptly. Why was she trying to make this harder?

“Do you think Jed will miss you?” she asked.

“What do you think?” I snapped.

“I guess Jed will miss lots of things.”

“What has he got to miss?” I demanded. “It's not like he had to give up his home or school, or leave his village, or …” I looked at Midori and suddenly remembered her feelings about Jed. “And I'm sure he'll miss other people as well.”

Her expression brightened noticeably. Of course, Midori had known Jed all her life, and she'd always liked him. But over the last year or so it had been increasingly obvious that more than just liking him, she had a crush on Jed. She was always laughing at his jokes — and they weren't even very funny — or asking about him, or hanging around us. It had gotten embarrassing for both me and Jed. He liked her — the way he liked my whole family — but there was no way he was going to be serious about some kid who was three years younger.

“Are you going to write letters to him?” Midori asked.

“Yeah … why?” I asked hesitantly. I hoped she wasn't going to ask to write to him too. I wondered what Jed would think about that … but, even worse, I knew what our father would think.

Father had also noticed the way Midori had been acting toward Jed and put his foot down. He was like all the Japanese. He didn't believe that people should marry outside of their kind. Japanese should marry Japanese, whites should marry other whites, and Indians other Indians.

“When you write to him —”

“I'll say ‘hi' from you,” I interrupted, hoping that would be enough to make her happy.

“I guess that would be okay,” she said quietly.

“Did you say there was rice?” I asked, trying to change the subject to something safer.

She nodded.

“Good, I'm hungry. Let's go inside and eat.”

I looked up at the sound of the cabin door opening and was surprised to see my father. I'd been so lost in my studies that I hadn't seen or heard him come back on board. Despite the fact that I hadn't been in school for almost two months, the school work hadn't stopped. Most of the parents in my village had insisted that school work and studying had to continue even if there wasn't school.

My father squatted down at the small table we had used for our meal earlier. Without having to be asked, my mother immediately set before him a steaming bowl of rice.

I closed my books and glanced at my watch. He'd been gone for less than two hours. Did that mean the meeting hadn't taken place, or that it was short and pleasant, or that they didn't really have any answers to give as to where we were going? But of course I couldn't just ask. It wouldn't be respectful to question my father. I'd have to wait. “Be patient,” I heard in my mind, my grandmother's words and voice inside my head.

I studied my father, looking for some sort of telltale sign. He sat expressionless, sipping his tea. I wasn't surprised. I would have been shocked if his expression ever revealed anything. It never did betray his feelings or emotions. He always looked the same — calm, serious and determined. It wasn't that he couldn't laugh, or scowl or get angry. It just wasn't his way to show his feelings on the outside. Yet, while he could keep his feelings off his face, you could occasionally look into his eyes and see his emotions leaking out.

I looked hard. His eyes were closed! What did that mean?

I turned my gaze to my mother. She too was staring at my father. And off to her side stood my grandmother, also watching him, as was Midori. Only Yuri wasn't studying our father. She was lying on her bedding, snuggled down under the covers. I knew that one or both arms were tightly hugging those dolls. I couldn't help but smile at our shared secret.

“Vancouver,” my father said quietly.

“What?” I asked, almost not sure if I'd even heard him speak.

He opened his eyes but didn't look at me, instead staring straight ahead. “We are going to Vancouver.”

“When? When are we going?” I questioned.

“Tomorrow.”

“But we won't have time … will we be able to even take all of our stuff?” I was thinking about the limited space on a train. “And what about our boat?”

My father raised a hand to silence me. “It will not be taken out of the water. We are traveling to Vancouver on board our boat.”

“But that's over eight hundred miles!” I exclaimed.

“And there are some stretches where we'd have to leave the coast and travel across open waters. And what about the weather and the ocean? It could get rough, really rough. I don't think it's very —”

I stopped in mid-sentence as my father spun his head toward me and caught me in his gaze. This time I had no trouble reading his emotions and his wishes; he wanted me to close my mouth. I looked down at the floor.

“All the fishing boats will travel together,” my father began. “We will be escorted by a naval ship … it will be towing the boats.”

“Towing. I guess that'll be good,” I acknowledged.