Silver Like Dust (6 page)

Having realized that the voluntary evacuation had not panned out as they’d hoped, the government began formulating alternative plans. On March 2, General John L. DeWitt declared the entire West Coast a military zone. A few weeks later, on March 27, the Five-Mile Curfew was enacted. Although the curfew technically applied to all enemy aliens living in that military zone—that is, the Germans and Italians, along with the Japanese—it was easier to enforce it on the Japanese. They looked different, and so were an easy target, whereas the Germans and Italians blended in with most other
hakujin
.

Essentially, the curfew was a set of rules regulating when and where enemy aliens could go. It restricted them from traveling beyond a five-mile radius of their homes unless they were going to or from their place of employment, or evacuating from the military zone. The curfew also mandated that enemy aliens never leave their homes between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Obaachan’s father, who left for work at the produce market during these forbidden hours, was supposedly safe as long as he could prove he was going to work by showing the appropriate papers. But if, for some reason, he’d seemed suspicious, or if he’d failed to provide sufficient evidence of his shift hours and place of employment, he would’ve been arrested. His family would not have been told where he’d been taken.

Obaachan’s Papa prided himself on being a law-abiding man, though, so he stressed the importance of obeying the rules, even if they seemed unnecessary or unfair. In fact, he never said whether or not he agreed with the laws; he simply emphasized the value of respecting them. “A nation cannot thrive if people decide to create their own rules,” he’d told his children when they were young. “Your mother and I chose to move to this country, and we must be willing to follow its laws.” He and Mama had taken great care to raise their family with this mind-set.

The Five-Mile Curfew, while inconvenient, did not do much to hinder my grandmother’s existence, and it was relatively easy for her and her family to adjust to its demands. Mama, with her heart condition, rarely left the house to begin with. Papa simply had to make sure he had the appropriate paperwork with him on his way to and from work. Obaachan would not have dared to venture out in the dark alone anyway. It was far too dangerous, and she was far too timid to risk being a victim of one of the random assaults on Japanese she kept hearing about on her daytime trips to Little Tokyo.

Shortly after the Five-Mile Curfew was passed, though, a more troubling announcement was made: all people of Japanese ancestry were to go to the police and hand in their guns, swords, and shortwave radios. Whereas most people did not put up much of a fuss regarding the Five-Mile Curfew, at least not those my grandmother knew, this new decree created more of a stir. Back then, listening to the radio was the best way to learn what was going on outside the local area. For Obaachan’s parents, their shortwave radio was a vital connection to the world because it could pick up stations from Japan, which of course featured announcers who spoke their native language. Unable to understand or read much English, her parents depended on the reports they picked up on that radio, their primary means of staying up to date on the world’s news.

However, as soon as Obaachan’s father learned about the order to hand in all weapons and radios, he pulled the plug of his radio from the wall. Without a word of frustration, he wrapped the cord into neat folds and secured it to the back of the radio with a piece of brown twine. He grabbed his fedora hat, the one he wore in the winter months, tucked the radio under his arm, and headed for the police station to turn it in.

Though few Japanese families possessed guns and even fewer owned swords, those who did have a
samurai
sword hanging on a living-room wall were forced to give up something of great sentimental value. Obaachan’s family did not have any—they were not from that social class—but she was still aware of the significance of these swords. In addition to their monetary value,
samurai
swords were family heirlooms. In Japan, the
samurai
always came from the highest social class, and so having a sword to hang on the wall was not only a piece of history but also a status symbol, a reminder of a family’s high social rank in the old land.

A few
Nisei
, or second-generation Japanese, mostly young men educated in American universities, pointed out in
Rafu Shimpo
editorials that as US citizens, they had the right to bear arms according to the Constitution. The government ignored the argument, which did not inspire protests or civil disobedience on the part of Japanese Americans or their neighbors. And things were only going to get worse. By March 30, the option of evacuating voluntarily came to an end; General DeWitt announced that all people of Japanese ancestry were strictly prohibited from leaving the military zone. They were ordered to stay put until “arrangements” were made.

Chapter 3

O
N MY SECOND TRIP TO
F
LORIDA, A YEAR LATER,
Obaachan announces that to celebrate my twenty-third birthday, she is taking me to a Thai restaurant a few miles south of her house, a place she has been to once and thinks I will like. We are seated on a second level, one that allows a bird’s-eye view of the entire restaurant, and right beside us is a giant saltwater fish tank. Obaachan knows that she will order the Goong Gah Tiem, or garlic shrimp, which is what she had last time, with my uncle Jay. I have more trouble deciding among the many choices and try to read quickly through the detailed descriptions.

“My uncle Kisho used to own a restaurant,” Obaachan says, closing her menu. “A Chinese one, not Japanese. Before the war.”

“Chinese?” I say, a little perplexed. Japanese people are notoriously snooty about their food. Once, my mother discovered a bottle of La Choy in my refrigerator, and reproached me for buying Chinese soy sauce. Japanese people buy Japanese products, she explained, frustrated by my offense. I should know better. A week later, she handed me a new bottle of Kikkoman.

“People liked Chinese food more than Japanese, I guess,” Obaachan continues. “It’s probably still true. You see Chinese restaurants just about everywhere, and even though more and more
hakujin
eat
sushi
nowadays, Japanese restaurants are not as common.”

Obaachan’s father and Uncle Kisho had come to America together, the only members of their family to leave Japan, and they shared a close relationship. Her father was the older of the two, and like many Japanese immigrants at the time, he married the woman his parents had arranged for him. But Uncle Kisho had done things differently. Perhaps the idea of waiting for his picture bride to arrive at a designated American harbor had not appealed to him as it had to Obaachan’s father. Instead, Uncle Kisho saved his money, opened his restaurant, and waited, confident that in time, the perfect woman would come along. Eventually he met Maki, right there in Los Angeles.

When Uncle Kisho met Maki, her life was in shambles. Her first husband had died, and she was left to care for four daughters all alone. “I have no idea how she managed,” Obaachan says, shaking her head. “They didn’t have life insurance policies back then, and I don’t know how she would’ve supported
and
raised a family on her own.” Obaachan seems somewhat hesitant to discuss these relatives, but I’m curious and probe a little. After Maki married Uncle Kisho, all four of her daughters were sent back to Japan to be raised by a relative. (My grandmother does not know why the daughters did not stay in America, but she admits this arrangement seems a little odd.) The eldest committed suicide. (When I press for more information about this young woman, Obaachan offers this: “She was a little bit retarded, I think.” When I ask her what she means by
retarded
, she shrugs. “I don’t know. She was different. Something was different about her.”) Later, when the remaining three were in the United States, the second daughter ran off with a boyfriend, a guy who worked at Uncle Kisho’s restaurant. Uncle Kisho had to track her down and bring her home. Then he arranged a marriage—not to the man she’d run off with, but to another man.

“It was very Japanese, what he did,” Obaachan says, taking her cloth napkin and placing it in her lap. “And it was what any Japanese father would have done back then. You didn’t just run off like that.” Doing so only brought shame to the family. There were customs that you were expected to follow. Proper procedures. Even if a marriage wasn’t formally arranged, there were certain steps that had to lead up to it, like asking a representative to vouch for your respectability and integrity. “Poor Uncle Kisho. He and Aunt Maki had a lot of sadness in life. A lot of disappointment. Right before the evacuation, Kisho sold his restaurant. Probably for a pittance.”

The server, a slim man with shiny black hair, returns to our table to take our order, his hands folded together formally, his face attentive. Obaachan tells him what she wants, and I request the Pad Ga Pow, stir-fried chicken with basil. He smiles, his crooked teeth large and bright, and promises that we will not be disappointed with our decisions. He looks at my grandmother. “Especially you,” he says. “The Goong Gah Tiem is one of our finest dishes.”

Dinner at the Thai restaurant, though not all that extravagant, is an outing my grandmother has likely had to save for. She is not in the most comfortable of financial situations at this point in her life, and she lives frugally and cautiously to ensure that she does not run out of money. Her children take care of her—my uncle paid for her car and my aunt bought the house she lives in—but I believe she accepts these gifts only because she has no choice. She has arrived, as she likes to say, at the age when her children now tell her what to do.

In March of 1942, Obaachan’s father began urging Uncle Kisho to sell the Chinese restaurant while he still could and then move into the house on Pico Street so they could all be together. For some time only three people had been living in the house, Obaachan and her parents, so there was lots of room. When Uncle Kisho and Aunt Maki and her two youngest daughters moved in, that raised the total to seven. Shortly thereafter, Obaachan’s sister, Sachiko, and her husband moved in, too. Eight and a half months pregnant at the time, Sachiko was due with her first child any day.

I can imagine my own father doing the same thing, were he in a similar situation, gathering together what pieces of his family he could, trying to maintain a sense of calm and solidarity during a stressful time. Obaachan’s two brothers were no longer in Los Angeles. By this point, Ren, the one who’d been asked to resign from Fresno Air Force Base, had been drafted by the US Army and had left for basic training in Arkansas, and Jack, Obaachan mentions briefly, was also gone.

“Where was Jack?” I ask.

She looks away and mumbles that she does not remember, which I sense is not entirely true, but when I press her for answers, she reminds me, peering over her glasses and looking at me sternly, that we agreed not to talk much about the siblings. She takes a deep breath, pausing, so that her silence holds its weight with me. “I was telling you about the house,” she says then, shifting my attention to a subject more comfortable for her. “Sure, it was crowded, with nine of us living there,” she says. “But we knew it was temporary. By that time we understood that we would not be in LA for long, and we figured they would send us off by the household. Papa believed that if we were under the same roof, we would have a better chance of getting sent to the same place.”

The server passes, slowing and glancing at our glasses to make sure that we haven’t run out of water, and says the food will be out in just a few minutes. He smiles and continues to a nearby table, again with his hands folded in his official style. He begins to take their order, nodding and repeating each request. Obaachan takes a sip of her water, trying to avoid the ice because it hurts her teeth, and looks at me from across the table. “In other words, if we had to leave our home, we wanted to leave it together.”

In the end, her father was right: families were evacuated by the household. But there was a hitch in his plan that he hadn’t anticipated. Just after Sachiko had her baby, she and her husband announced that they were leaving for Sacramento to be with her husband’s family. Although Obaachan’s father might have been devastated to learn that he would be separated from his daughter and new grandson, he knew that in Japanese families, the husband’s word—even if that husband was a son-in-law—was not to be questioned. He did not oppose their decision.

“I got to meet my little nephew before we were sent away,” Obaachan says, “but then, as soon as my sister recovered, the three of them moved out. They didn’t say much except that their plans had changed. That’s how they ended up in Arkansas during the war,” Obaachan explains. “They went with his family, not ours.”

For the next few years, the only thing that would allow my grandmother to stay in touch with her sister was letters—letters that were, in accordance with military protocol, always opened and read by the authorities before they were delivered. Knowing this, I think I begin to understand a little better the detached relationships my grandmother now shares with her siblings. For some, hardship and separation create a special bond, a closeness that cannot be understood by outsiders. This didn’t happen with my grandmother and her family. Instead, they seem to have drifted apart during the war, and the rift never repaired itself. Although her sister and two brothers are still alive, Obaachan corresponds sparingly with them: Christmas and birthday cards are their only communication. The evacuation splintered the family, much more permanently than they might have imagined back in 1942. Their letters would not be enough to hold them together.

Across every city in the new “military zone,” posters were stapled to telephone poles and taped to store windows. Labeled “Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry,” they applied to anyone with as little as one-sixteenth Japanese blood. These instructions were also listed in the newspapers, and Papa, who could only read Japanese, read them in the
Rafu Shimpo
. Dated April 1, 1942, the instructions stated that everyone would be removed from the designated areas by noon of April 7. Obaachan’s family had six days to pack. The instructions, however, were vague, raising questions that were overwhelming: