Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (3 page)

“Invade means ‘land here,’ ” Tomi explained to Hiro.

“I already know that,” he said.

“These people think we’re loyal to Japan instead of America,” Mom continued.

“But can’t they see our flag?” Hiro asked. “And don’t they know we say the Pledge of Allegiance and Pop decorated his truck with red, white, and blue crepe paper for the Fourth of July parade?”

Mom looked down. “They say it doesn’t matter, that we’re only trying to trick them into believing we’re loyal.”

“Why would they take Pop?” Hiro asked.

Mom shook her head. “This is war. People are scared.”

“They’re scared of
us
?” Tomi looked at her brother, then at her mother, who wasn’t much taller than Hiro. Tomi glanced at her reflection in the mirror across from the table. How could anyone be afraid of
her
?

“
Shikata ga nai
,” Mom said. That was her favorite expression. Of course, it was a Japanese expression, but there was no reason it couldn’t be used in America. It meant “It cannot be helped.”

1942 | CHAPTER THREE

THE END
of
SCOUTING

ROY
burst through the door and threw his clarinet case onto a chair. Tomi’s brother was in the school orchestra, and he and four other boys had their own band called the Jivin’ Five. They played at school and church dances. “I ran into Mr. Lawrence down the road. He told me the FBI arrested Pop. What happened?”

“They think he’s a spy,” Hiro replied.

“They think we’re all spies,” Tomi added.

“For growing strawberries?”

“For being Japanese,” Mom said.

Roy sat down and put his head in his hands. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Last week, a woman asked about hiring the Jivin’ Five to play for a party, but she said she didn’t want me there.” The other members of
the band were Caucasians.

“Jivin’ Four doesn’t sound like much,” Tomi said.

“I guess we just have to wait until people figure out we’re not the enemy.”

But some people insisted the Itanos
were
the enemy.

A few days later, Tomi went to her friend Mary Jane Malkin’s house for her weekly Girl Scout meeting. Tomi loved scouting. The members of her troop were her best friends. They had come to the Itano place in the fall to work on their merit badges for gardening. Pop had showed them how he planted the strawberries and cared for them. He’d let the scouts have a piece of land for their own garden. All the girls had gotten their gardening badges. Tomi had been the first. She worked hard to earn badges and had more than anyone else in her troop. And she’d sold more Girl Scout Cookies than any of the other scouts, too. Tomi liked to think up projects for her troop, and when war was declared, she’d suggested they learn to knit and make socks for the soldiers. All the girls went to the Itano house to learn knitting from Mom, who was good
at knitting and sewing. Tomi wanted Mom to be a scout leader, but Mom was too shy.

Tomi was proud of her green uniform and yellow scarf. She ironed it every week so that it was fresh for the after-school meeting. She and Martha always walked to the Malkin house together on Girl Scout days.

As they reached the porch, Mrs. Malkin came outside and stood in front of the screen door, blocking their way. Mary Jane was beside her. “Go on in, Martha,” she said.

Martha paused a moment, looking at Tomi, but Mrs. Malkin opened the door. “I told you to go inside, Martha.”

Martha glanced at Tomi and did as she was told, but she stood just inside the screen. Tomi started to follow, but Mrs. Malkin put her hand on the door and held it closed. “I’m sorry, Tomi, but you’re not welcome here anymore.”

Tomi didn’t understand. She tried to recall if she had done something wrong. Maybe she’d forgotten to wear her uniform or she’d failed to complete the work for a merit badge, but those things wouldn’t have kept her from attending a meeting. She turned to Mary Jane, who was standing next to her mother, but her friend wouldn’t look at her. Instead, Mary Jane rubbed the toe of her shoe back and forth on the porch floor.

“Why? What did I do?” Tomi asked.

Mrs. Malkin looked uncomfortable then. “It’s best that you not be a scout anymore. I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry to Tomi.

“Why? Why can’t I be a scout anymore?”

“This is an American troop.”

Tomi looked at Mrs. Malkin. “I’m an American. I was born right here in California, before you moved here from Ohio.”

“We don’t allow Japs in this house,” Tomi heard Mr. Malkin say. She’d never liked him much. He expected Pop to give him a discount on strawberries, and whenever the scouts had a family potluck, he took more than his share of Mom’s Japanese food.

“Don’t be difficult, Tomi. That’s the way things are,” Mrs. Malkin told her.

“That’s not fair,” Martha said through the screen. “Tomi can’t help who she is. She’s the best scout in the whole troop. You can’t ask her to leave.”

Mrs. Malkin looked back at Martha. “Be still. This does not concern you, Martha. You’re too young to understand.”

“I do so understand. Maybe I don’t want to be a scout
if Tomi can’t. Come on, Tomi, let’s go home.”

Tomi shook her head. If Martha quit, that would only make things worse. Tomi heard the other scouts whispering behind the door and knew they would blame Tomi. They would tell everyone at school that Martha’s leaving was Tomi’s fault. “No, you stay,” Tomi whispered. She turned quickly, so that no one would see the tears in her eyes. She wished she were so small she could disappear. She wouldn’t run, though. Instead, she forced herself to walk at a normal pace until she turned the corner and was out of sight. Then when no one could see her, Tomi broke into a run and didn’t stop until she reached home. There she ripped off her yellow Girl Scout scarf and threw it into the stove.

The next week on Girl Scout day, Tomi wore a regular dress. Mom didn’t ask why. She knew.

Although Mr. Lawrence talked to a lawyer, there wasn’t anything that could be done about Pop. The lawyer explained that the government had passed wartime laws that allowed it to keep men in prison when they were only
suspected
of being spies. There didn’t have to be proof.

A few weeks after Pop was taken away, Mom received a letter from him, saying he had been sent to New Mexico. There were no details, because most of the letter was blacked out. There wasn’t even a return address, so Mom couldn’t write him—or visit him. But they couldn’t have done that anyway, because they had been told they couldn’t go more than five miles from their home. And they weren’t allowed to be out after dark, either.

By then, the government was asking all Japanese living on the West Coast to move away from the ocean—to Montana and Colorado and Kansas, where they would be too far away to contact the Japanese enemy. Mom refused. How would Pop ever find them if they left California? she asked. Besides, they couldn’t just walk away from the farm Pop had worked so hard to make successful. Roy volunteered to quit school so that he could take Pop’s place with the strawberries, but Mom wouldn’t let him. “Pop wants you to finish high school, because he didn’t have that opportunity in Japan,” she told him.

Even if Roy had quit school, it wouldn’t have made a difference, because in February, just two months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, the government issued
Executive Order 9066. The order allowed the government to round up all Japanese people living on the West Coast and send them to ten “relocation camps” in California, the mountain states, and Arkansas. Roy scoffed at that. “Relocation, heck! They’re sending us to prison.”

In April, the government notified the Itanos that they had just two weeks to get ready to move. They would be allowed to take with them only what would fit into their suitcases. That meant just clothes and underwear, a tablecloth, a little bedding, maybe a few personal items such as photographs. There wouldn’t be time to harvest the crop. Mom was frantic. “Who’ll take care of the strawberries?” she asked Mr. Lawrence. “They’ll die.”

“I’ll find someone. Don’t you worry about that, Mrs. Itano,” he said.

“But what about our things? We can take so little. What will happen to our furniture, my china, the refrigerator?”

Mr. Lawrence thought that over. “If I can’t find anybody to rent the place, I don’t have any way to protect the
house after you leave, and who knows how long you’ll be away. I’m afraid anything you leave behind could be stolen. You’d better sell what you can. There are men out there who will buy everything.”

Later that day, Mrs. Lawrence came to the Itano house with Martha and said, “I can store some of your things, your china and silver, at our place. I wish there was room for the big items, but there isn’t.”

Tomi helped pack up the dishes and plates Mom had brought from Japan, the silverware Pop had bought her for her birthday, and the Philco radio, which Roy had fixed after the FBI men tore it apart. The government men had told them they weren’t to take any radios with them. Or cameras or flashlights either.

As Martha and Mrs. Lawrence got into their car with the boxes, Tomi came out of the house holding Janice, the doll her
Baba
had sent her from Japan. Mom had said there wasn’t room in the suitcase for the doll, and it had to be left behind. “Will you take care of Janice for me, Martha?” Tomi asked. When they were younger, the two girls had played dolls together, Martha with her blonde doll that looked like the movie star Shirley Temple and Tomi with the Japanese doll.