The Sun Gods (17 page)

Mitsuko nudged Yoshiko, who whispered, “That is Miss Mahon, the principal of Bailey Gatzert school. We read about her in the newspaper. What a wonderful woman.” Yoshiko herself began to weep now for the first time.

That evening, Mitsuko opened the paper to find the photograph of the embarrassed couple with their little son who had been pulled off their bus by the photographer. The caption under the picture read, “Japs good-natured about evacuation.”

Three days later, their own orders to register and evacuate came through, which meant it was time for Mitsuko to stop assuming vaguely that everything would work out with Billy, and to start making plans. First, she had to call Tom to say that she intended to keep his son.

“You'll get no fight from me,” said Tom. “It won't hurt him to go to a government camp for a few weeks, or even a few months. I can't handle him right now. There's too much happening in my life.”

“That is what I heard from Reverend Hanamori. Aren't you ashamed?”

“Ashamed?! You are the one who ought to be—”

Mitsuko hung up rather than listen to more of his ranting, and he did not call back.

So she was nothing more to him than a convenience, a babysitter. As soon as he was ready for Billy, he would come and take him away. Perhaps it was the best she could hope for. All mothers have to lose their sons eventually; she would simply have to live more consciously of the day-to-day joys than most. And who was to say that a just god would not strike—

She must break herself of the habit of hoping for divine intervention.

“Maybe we should dye his hair,” suggested Yoshiko. “It's as straight as Japanese hair, just the wrong color.”

“And what do we do about those blue eyes?” Mitsuko asked skeptically. “Not to mention his platinum eyebrows and white skin!”

“I'm sure if Tom wrote a letter …”

“I refuse to ask him for anything.”

“But as a last resort …”

“Only if worse comes to worst.”

The night wore on, and still no plan took shape. Mitsuko woke early and watched the sun rise. Almost unconsciously, she bowed her head and clapped her hands together as she stood before the kitchen window.

And then it came to her. She hurried into the bedroom and shook Yoshiko.

“Wake up, Yoshiko!”

After struggling to open her eyes, Yoshiko was awake.

“All right,” she said. “What is this amazing plan of yours?”

“We don't have to do anything,” she said. “We don't have to fool anybody. They're already fooling themselves, those arrogant government officials. They see ‘Japs' in every corner. ‘Once a Jap, always a Jap.' If I say I'm Billy's mother, he's a Jap! They want to lock up people with as little as one-sixteenth Japanese blood, don't they?”

“But if you're supposed to be his mother, he should be half Japanese.”

“I'll say he takes after his father. Besides, registration can be done by one representative from the family. Billy doesn't have to be there.”

“But he does have to go with us to the camp.”

“By then, he'll be tagged and registered like everyone else.”

“I don't know,” Yoshiko said.

But Mitsuko was sure it would work.

Instead of registering right away at the Civil Control Station on Monday, they joined the long line at the old Japanese Chamber of Commerce building on Jackson Street for the required typhoid inoculation. The Japanese doctor administering the shots looked up in surprise as Mitsuko shoved Billy's little, white arm in front of him.

“Just do it,” she commanded, and she collected the signed card from the nurse with a triumphant smile.

On the following day, she went alone to the Control Station and came back waving a handful of white tags. “Here,” she said to an incredulous Yoshiko, “from now on we are Family Number 20710.”

19

BILLY WAS ASLEEP
when the Greyhound bus pulled through the gate of the Puyallup fairgrounds. Four months past his fourth birthday, he was now a significant armload. Mitsuko had difficulty squeezing between the rows of seats, and she had to feel her way down the steps of the bus. Her right foot came to rest on something solid, but her left foot plunged into lukewarm, sticky mud, and she began to topple sideways. At the last second she managed to shift her weight to the foot on solid planking, and only the left leg and the edge of her skirt touched the mud. Billy was still sound asleep in her arms.

A young Nisei man with a JACL button helped her pull her foot out of the mud and gestured for her to follow the line.

“I want to wash this off,” she said, looking down at the grayish slime clinging to her foot and ankle.

“You'll have to register first,” he replied. “Just get in line with the rest of your family members.”

“But I registered in Seattle.”

“You'll have to register here now. Please, other people are waiting to get off the bus.”

Pausing every few steps to shake the gray ooze from her foot, Mitsuko followed the planks to the end of the line, above which stretched a cloth banner rippling in the wind: “Welcome to Camp Harmony.” The air was filled with the hum of human voices.

Off to the left, beyond a sign reading “Area A,” stood row after row of tar-papered sheds next to a tall grandstand.

“What could those be for?” she asked Yoshiko, who came tottering up behind her in high-heeled shoes and wearing a black hat of raw silk. “They're a little too high for chicken coops.”

“And they're not big enough for horses or cows. Maybe they're for the sheep and goats at the fair.”

“I don't know. They look new …”

A Japanese woman emerged from the door of a nearby shed carrying a broom.

Mitsuko looked at Yoshiko, who said with a grimace, “They're new, all right. And they're for us.”

“Time to wake up, Billy,” Mitsuko whispered. The boy picked his head up, blinked once or twice, and stretched his feet toward the ground. Mitsuko set him down and took his hand. He looked up at her with a puzzled expression.

“Picnic?” he asked.

“No, funny boy! Were you dreaming about a picnic?”

“It sounds like a picnic,” he said.

The continued hum of voices near and far—the shouts and murmurs of a thousand disconnected conversations all happening beneath the open sky—was reminiscent of nothing so much as the church picnics at Jefferson Park that happened at this time of the year.

“Maybe it is a kind of picnic,” she said. “You know how Timmy and Robert went away to camp last summer and they had so much fun? Well, this is a kind of camp. A kind of big picnic.”

He looked up, smiled, and, with his free hand, took Yoshiko's hand. Together, the three moved ahead a few inches at a time as the line slowly shrank into a dark shed.

“I hafta pee,” announced Billy.

“Can you wait?” asked Mitsuko.

“Okay.”

Standing in line, Billy looked uneasily at the armed guards who walked past them now and then. “Mommy, is this a scary place?” he whispered.

Mitsuko tried to smile for him. “It is not such a nice place,” she said, “but it is not scary.”

“But look,” he said, furtively pointing to a soldier. “Who are they afraid of?”

Mitsuko knelt down and hugged him tightly. “Don't worry,” she said, “Mommy and Aunt Yoshiko are here.” But Billy continued glancing nervously about until something higher up caught his eye.

Mitsuko was horrified to see there an observation post with two guards, a machine gun, and a huge searchlight. The perimeter fence was topped with barbed wire. Was it for keeping hostile whites out or them in?

They had been standing in line for nearly half an hour when they reached the registration desk. Yoshiko, as family head, presented their inoculation cards and filled out forms. Mitsuko asked if there were a place where she could wash her foot, but the tired-looking Nisei woman behind the table told her she would have to wait until they reached their quarters. The same was true of toilets. Billy was dancing in place.

“Only three of you?” asked the woman. “You'll be in Area D.”

Yoshiko looked at Mitsuko with a smile. “Good,” she whispered. “I was hoping we wouldn't be in those Area A chicken coops.”

A Nisei girl in her teens led them out of the registration shack and across a stretch of mud, Mitsuko picking Billy up to keep him from getting too filthy. The girl's shoes were almost as dirty as her own, and everyone else's were, too, some with mud up to the ankles like herself.

They passed through a chain link gate manned by four guards in combat helmets, crossed a paved street, and entered through another guarded gate which bore a small paper sign: “Area D.” The ground was not as muddy; patches of grass held the earth together. But there was no mistaking the purpose of the buildings to which they were being shown: these were stables, and they had obviously been here for years, unlike the new tar-paper chicken coops in Area A.

“Which one is yours?” asked the girl.

“It says here ‘Apartment 3-II-D,'” answered Yoshiko.

She led them to the second row of stables. “Down there on the left,” she said, coming to a stop as if hesitant to proceed any further. “The toilets are over that way,” she added, pointing at them and nodding toward Billy.

“Where can I wash this?” Mitsuko asked, putting Billy down and lifting her foot.

The woman shrugged. “You should have done it in Area A. The showers here are no good.”

“But they told me at the registration desk I would have to wait until I got to my room.”

“They probably didn't realize you were assigned to Area D.”

“Now what am I supposed to do?” she demanded, though she knew it wasn't this young woman's fault.

“I'm sorry,” said the woman. “Ask one of your neighbors when you settle in.” She left them standing there.

They walked down the narrow alley separating the rows of stables and found a door with a black ‘3' stenciled on it. Clumps of grass prevented the door from swinging out easily. Yoshiko gave it a yank, and the flimsy, white boards flew open, fanning toward them the suffocating odor of horse manure.

“
Kusai!”
exclaimed the sisters together. “What a terrible stink.”

“Kusai!” echoed Billy, holding his nose and looking at Mitsuko for the praise he had come to expect whenever he mastered a Japanese word. But this time she was too disgusted to give Billy a glance. She edged toward the opening and peered into the gloom. There were no windows. The only light came from the open door where she stood. The flooring consisted of warped two-by-fours laid directly on the bare earth. The cubicle, no more than ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep, was empty except for a pile of sticks in one corner.

Reaching back for Yoshiko's hand, Mitsuko took one step into their new quarters. Normally, she would have instinctively removed her shoes upon entering any habitation, but there was nothing here to inspire even such well-ingrained impulses. Inside, the smell was overpowering, and she had to make a conscious effort to fight the urge to vomit.

“
Maa, hidoi
,” gasped Yoshiko, holding a hand to her face. “This is terrible.”

“Where are we supposed to sleep?” asked Mitsuko.

“On the cots,” said a gravelly voice from out of the foul-smelling shadows, frightening the two sisters back into the daylight.

“Pee!” shouted Billy, but by the time Mitsuko turned to him, it was too late. A dark stain was spreading downward from his crotch, and Billy started to cry.

“
Ara ara ara
!” cried the gravelly voice. “
O-shikko shichatta
—He did it in his pants.”

A frazzled old woman was standing in doorway number four. She wore baggy cotton
mompe
trousers like the ones used by farmers in Japan. Mitsuko saw her looking back and forth between Billy and herself, the birdlike swiftness of her movements matched by the curve of her nose.

“What's a little blondie like that doing here?” she said.

“It's all right, Billy,” Mitsuko said. “It's not your fault. Stop crying. — Where are the bathrooms?”

“You mean the outhouses,” the woman cackled. “Too late for blondie, though.”

“Don't these apartments have any plumbing?” asked Yoshiko.

“Apartments? That's what the administration calls them,” growled the old woman. “Horses don't need plumbing.”

She explained that the public facilities such as the outhouses, the showers and the mess hall were behind this block of stables, and Mitsuko hurried down the grassy path with the sniffling Billy. Five large outhouses built of new lumber were lined up in a row. Mitsuko tentatively opened one to find a long bench with six holes cut into it. There were no partitions between the holes, and, despite the shed's newness, it already smelled like an outhouse.

Billy swore that he had nothing more to do. Mitsuko congratulated herself on having stuffed an extra pair of underpants for him in her coat pocket, but now she at least wanted to wash him off before changing him; he would have to keep his present outer pants until the truck arrived with their suitcases. She peeked into the women's bath shed and was appalled to see that it was just one big rectangle with a row of shower heads sticking out of the wall. There were no partitions. The floor, at least, was concrete, and not the ubiquitous mud. The only other washing facilities were outside: three-foot pipes sticking out of the ground with spigots on the end of them. She would be able to sponge him down and rinse the caked mud from her own foot.

She stripped Billy from the waist down and held his underpants beneath the spigot, thinking she could rinse them out and use them as a washcloth to wipe him down with before putting his clean underwear on, but when she turned the handle, only a few brownish drops came out, staining the white cloth.

This was too much! She looked around for someone to scream at, but the area was deserted. All she could do was have Billy put on his fresh underpants and the stained pants. The mud on her foot would have to wait.

Back at their stall, she plunged into the stink to find Yoshiko and the woman from stall four struggling with the objects she had seen lying in the corner. They were camp cots, explained the woman, who introduced herself as Mrs. Sano. She and her husband, both in their middle sixties, were here with their twenty-year-old son, Frank, who had been a student at the University of Washington until the evacuation.

The cots were a confusing combination of canvas and wood, and Mitsuko was grateful they had Mrs. Sano's experience to rely on for unfolding them and making them stay extended.

“Next you have to fill your mattresses,” explained Mrs. Sano. “Did you see that big mound of straw by the outhouses? You take these bags and fill them up with that.”

“And that's what we sleep on?” asked Yoshiko.

“If you can sleep,” said Mrs. Sano, smoothing back her unkempt black-and-gray hair. The smell from her armpits was strong enough to rival the invasive odor of manure.

“I'll be next door if you need me,” she said, walking toward the door. She turned right in the rectangle of light, and the rafters above them grew brighter as Mrs. Sano's door opened. Now Mitsuko realized why the woman's hoarse voice had sounded as though it was coming from their own cubicle. The partition between their box and the Sanos' did not go all the way to the ceiling. She could hear every little sound as Mrs. Sano moved about on her side of the partition.

Mitsuko sank down on the opened camp cot, staring at her new home. The cubicle had been whitewashed in obvious haste. Clinging to the walls were the ghostly white corpses of horse flies and strands of straw and cobwebs. From the middle beam hung a bare light bulb on a cord.

“It doesn't work,” said Yoshiko when she saw Mitsuko looking at the light. “I tried it already.”

“Why did they have to rush us out here like this if the place wasn't even ready?” Mitsuko protested. “There's no water, no electricity. They haven't even—”

Suddenly from the direction of the outhouses came a clanging sound.

“Lunch time!” called Mrs. Sano.

“I want hot dogs!” piped up Billy gleefully. “Can I have hot dogs, Mommy?”

How could he think of food, Mitsuko wondered, when the choking stink of manure had her ready to throw up? But at least this would be a chance to get away from the smell for a while.

The three of them followed Mrs. Sano toward the mess hall. Rounding the corner, Mitsuko saw that water was now dribbling from the spigot which earlier had given her only brown goo, and at least thirty people were standing in line waiting to rinse their hands. The other spigots were not working.

They took their place in line for water, then lined up again for entrance to the mess hall, another slapped-together shed with tar-paper siding. The place seemed to vibrate from the voices within. As they entered the hot, roaring space, each of them was handed a stamped tin plate with dividers, and they walked with these past a steam table. Into one section of the dish were piled lima beans, and next to those, kidney beans. These were soon joined by a moldy slice of bread, on top of which sat two slices of grayish salami. Each adult was handed a cup of yellow coffee, and Billy received a cup of milk.

The sullen workers made some perfunctory comments to them, none of which was audible above the drone of voices and the clashing of silverware against the metal plates.

As soon as they found a place at a wooden bench, Billy gulped down his milk.

“It tastes funny,” he squeaked at the top of his voice, but he said he wanted more.

Mitsuko tried to break into the line for another cup of milk, but she was told there would be no seconds.