House of Ghosts (29 page)

“Amazing machines,” Paul said in awe of the B-17. The Flying Fortress was the next generation heavy bomber that replaced the B-24 Liberator as the main air weapon against Nazi Germany. A B-17 carried a crew of ten, 14 machine guns,
6,000 pounds of bombs, and enough fuel for a maximum range of 2,880 miles.

“You’re pretty…” The roar of the massive four engines powering the B-17s drowned out Cochrane as they flew over the truck.

“Didn’t catch what you were saying,” Paul yelled over the continuing roar.

The last plane in the group passed. “I said you guys are lucky being allowed to fly the prettiest girls in the air,” Cochrane yelled.

The squadron circled the base and prepared to repeat the exercise. Cochrane blew the horn three times as he approached the base’s main gate. Stepping out of a guardhouse, an MP waved the truck through. Cochrane smashed the accelerator, passed the command post, making a hard left turn. Catcalls from the rear of the truck brought a grin to his face.

Cochrane slammed on the breaks as they drew even with the mess hall. He yelled out of the window, “End of the line. Tips would be appreciated.”

A chorus of “Fuck you and your mother” was returned. Cochrane waited for the customary rap on the tailgate to signal everyone was off. He made a series of right turns between the clapboard barracks and returned to the command center. Sticking out his hand, he said, “Sorry I won’t be around to see you get a ship. My group is getting ready to shove off to England.”

Paul shook hands. “Take care of yourself.” He wondered what was in store for the happy-go-lucky sergeant. The air campaign based out of England was at a critical point. Losses were so high that the average life span of a B-17 and crew was fifty-five days. If one did the math, only an ominous conclusion could be extrapolated—every 180 days the entire Eighth Air Force would need to be replaced if the losses continued.

Paul stepped down from the truck. Cochrane honked the horn and drove away, spewing a cloud of dirt. Paul looked down at his black service brogues which bore little resemblance to the spitshine applied in Chicago. He wiped them off with the back of his pant leg and left his duffle outside of the command center door.

He straightened his tie. With his hand on the doorknob, Paul took a deep breath and entered to find the back of an enlisted man hunched over a typewriter. The barebones office consisted of one G.I. standard issue metal desk, a bank of file cabinets, two black phones, and a wood bench. “Lieutenant Paul Rothstein. I’d like to see the base commander.” The more than ample figure didn’t answer. “It’s customary to stand and salute an officer!”

“Hold your fucking shirt on! Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Paul didn’t have to see the man’s face—Vinnie Sapienza. “I don’t believe it.”

Vinnie moved around the desk to deliver a bear hug. “I’m glad to see another
human being that speaks the same language. Take a seat, Colonel Thompson is exchanging pleasantries with one of the pilots.”

It wasn’t difficult to catch the tenor of the conversation taking place in the colonel’s office. A paper-thin wall separating the commander from the outside world was like a shade on an open window. “I don’t give a good God damn. You’re in the God damn army, not fucking Princeton. Get your papers from the sergeant and get the hell off this base.”

“Colonel, I…”

“Now,” Thompson ordered.

Paul did a double take as Clark Johnson came through the door. Paul expected to see dejection, but instead, the America First front man was grinning as though he had just won a date with Betty Grable. Vinnie held up an envelope between two of his sausage size fingers.

“Thank you sergeant,” Johnson said as he snatched the envelope. Still ruddy-faced but twenty pounds thinner, he glanced at Paul for a second. “Do me a favor and call me a cab.” He let out a belly laugh as he flipped the door closed with his shoe.

The wall shook with Thompson slamming his door closed. Paul didn’t let on that he recognized Johnson. “Pretty happy for a guy who just got chewed out.”

Sapienza plopped down in a chair behind the battered desk. “That guy has been nothing but a pain in the ass since he got here, bitching and moaning that he was born to be a fighter jockey not a bomber pilot. Christmas came early, he got his wish.”

Paul raised an eyebrow, knowing that it took heavyweight pull to get a transfer. He changed the subject. “When did they get the idea of hiring a gorilla to do the paperwork? And they say that the army is not creative,” Paul cracked. “How in the world did you end up in this place?”

Vinnie looked surprised. “I thought you knew I was in. I guess your brother kept it a secret. I got into a little jam and was given a choice, jail or this. I chose the latter, and told Jake that I wasn’t going to be around for a couple of deals that were on the fire. It was your brother who fixed it up.”

“And who fixed this up?” Paul asked.

Vinnie leaned back in the chair and put his boots on the desk. “A few bucks in the right place do a lot of good. Six months ago, when an opening came up for clerk, a guy boosted me for it. I hit it off with the old man, got my stripes and the rest is history.”

Paul sat down on the bench opposite Sapienza. “I heard this base was a shithole, but it exceeds the warning.”

“If you think this is bad now, you should’ve seen it when I got here. There were no barracks, just tents. We had more guys than we had space. The weather goes from broiling in the summer to arctic in the winter. When it’s not raining, the dust is blowing. The line mechanics have one fucking time maintaining the planes. That’s the idea, give us as much trouble as possible in training, and maybe when the real thing comes along we will be ready.”

“What do you mean
we
?” Paul asked. “I thought you’d be staying here for the entire war?”

“Listen Mr. Joe College, just because I was once connected to a bunch of unsavory types don’t make me a wimp no-fight-Quaker,” Vinnie said indignantly. “I want to kill those Nazi bastards as much as you do. As long as we are on the subject of Nazi bastards, how is your wife’s cousin, that crazy German broad Minnah?”

“Jake didn’t forget to tell you that I was married. Minnah hasn’t gotten over the loss of her family. It’s a sure bet they’re dead.”

Vinnie straightened papers in a file box on the desk. “As an officer you can bring your wife out here if you want, but finding a place to stay is the big problem. The local hotel only has forty rooms and at times has people sleeping on the floor. I’ll check things out and see what can be done.”

Paul thought of the woman with the baby sitting on her suitcase. “Sarah and I discussed her coming out, but we decided it would be wiser for her to remain in New York.” He motioned toward the colonel’s office with his thumb. “What about the colonel?”

Vinnie pulled himself to his feet. “I’ll get you back here when he’s cooled off. I have a bunk reserved in your name. Come on, I’ll get you situated.”

PRESTON HIT THE BUTTON ON THE ALARM CLOCK, rolled off the white sweatered knockout from the office at Santa Anita Park, and sat on the edge of the bed. He reached for the lamp on the night table. The Westclock read 4:30. Bette Warnock pulled the sheet over her ample breasts. “Do you really think you can?” she asked in her smoky voice.

Bette was part of his west coast routine—tour the relocation camps and take some rest and relaxation with the Hollywood hopeful. “Absolutely,” Preston said as he put on his shorts. “I’ll get things arranged for a screen test at Twentieth Century.” Whispering sweet-somethings of his father’s Tinseltown contacts oiled the path to room 612 in the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel.

“When will you be back, Captain Swedge?”

Preston adjusted the silver bars on his shirt collar. Promotion to captain came with a price in John McCloy’s world where Marine island hopping in the Pacific, the Eighth Air Forces horrific losses over Germany, and the battle for North Africa never pushed Japanese-American relocation off his desk. Relocation was Preston’s baby. “Probably next week. I’ve got to be going.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said, closing her eyes.

Preston took a final glance at Bette. She was like the other dreamers, they were always waiting.

Preston massaged the kink in his neck after five hours behind the wheel of the 1940 Ford coupe. Two hundred miles on U.S. Highway 395 didn’t seem to go on forever when Sgt. Billy Shawn was driving. With this leg of the trip off the record, Preston rented a car, leaving the loquacious G.I. at the motor pool. Easing off the accelerator of the flathead V8, he checked the speedometer, slowing to 25 mph as he entered the town of Pine Valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Turning west off 395 onto a narrow country lane, Preston weaved around a series of foot deep ruts. Signs posted on both sides of the road cautioned the area ahead was “Restricted.” Manzanar Relocation Center was one of fifteen permanent bases in California, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, and Arkansas segregating Japanese-Americans.

In Spanish, Manzanar means apple orchard. The area called Owens Valley, once green with orchards and alfalfa fields, turned into an inhabitable desert when water was diverted south to Los Angeles in the 1920s. Six thousand acres became home to ten thousand inmates.

Preston cleared through the security outpost and headed for Manzanar’s developed central portion, covering an area, approximately five-hundred and forty acres, where eight watchtowers with machine guns and a five-strand barbed wire fence kept the Japanese in and the hostile local population out.

Preston parked the coupe, buttoned his topcoat and put on his fleece lined leather gloves. He forced the door open against a vicious wind. Despite a bright morning sun, the wind made twenty degrees feel like zero. Three inches of fresh snow crunched under his feet as he made his way to the main administration building. The sky over the camp was punctuated with plumes of gray smoke rising from tin chimneys affixed to barracks roofs. Oil burning stoves were the only source of warmth for the residents of “permanent” housing constructed of quarter-inch boards and tar paper nailed to the roof and walls with batten boards.

Preston knocked the snow off his shoes against the railing of the three step landing. His unexpected appearance snapped the heads of the clerical staff. “Captain Swedge,” a matronly clerk said, confused. “Mr. Merritt isn’t on the post. He’s due back in an hour.” Ralph P. Merrit was the fifth civilian director of the camp under the War Relocation Authority.

Preston placed his hands on a wood rail that divided visitors from staff. He produced an
I don’t give a damn smile
. “Thomas Shikiro. Where can I find him?”

The clerk trundled to a wall of file cabinets. “Chikiro. First name Thomas,” she said, thumbing through 3x5 cards. “I don’t have a Thomas Chikiro.”

“Shikiro. S-H-I-K-I-R-O,” Preston fumed. “He came in three weeks ago.”

“My mistake. I thought the last name begins with a C.” She moved to the end of the alphabet. “Here it is. Block thirty-six, building A. Check the block’s kitchen, Mr. Shikiro is working as a cook. I’ll call for an escort.”

“Not necessary. I need a Jeep,” Preston replied.

“There are four parked behind the building,” she said. “Take your pick of the litter.”

Preston turned on his heels and proceeded down a short hall to a rear exit. He
chose the lone Jeep with a canvass top. After three cranks, the Willy’s belched to life. Preston managed to get the transmission into first gear.

Oiled roads divided the central portion of the relocation center into sixty-seven blocks, including thirty-six residential blocks, two staff housing blocks, an administrative block, two warehouse blocks, a garage block, and a hospital block.

Preston drove north, avoiding faces behind single pane windows. Each barrack was divided into six, sixteen by twenty feet units. With six to eight people assigned to a unit, the population per block averaged two hundred fifty.

The Jeep weaved between trucks in the industrial center. Male and female workers were loading goods produced in the garment, cabinet, and mattress factories for the camp’s consumption.

Preston pulled parallel to building A of block 36. Two elderly males, braving the wind, ceased their conversation at the sight of the officer without an MP guard. “Where’s the kitchen?” Preston asked.

Without replying the inmates continued walking. Preston learned a few words of Japanese, the one that he caught wasn’t complimentary—
Gaijin
. He circled the block, finding a collection of garbage cans in an alley. Preston parked the Jeep.

Two young females wearing white aprons disappeared from an open door with Preston’s approach. The air was thick with the smell of boiling fish and cabbage. He cupped his gloves around his nose, took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Each block had its own kitchen and commissary. Oil drum size pots boiled on a commercial ten burner stove producing a haze at the ceiling. “Let’s go people,” Tommy Shikiro said, clapping his hands twice. A crew of ten picked up the pace. Piles of peeled carrots, onions, and potatoes were on two wood tables. Twenty chickens lay boned and quartered. “We’ve got two-hundred fifty for lunch.” He picked up a large ladle, moving toward the stove.