The Sun Gods (19 page)

An occasional companion on excursions with Billy around the compound was Frank Sano, who could thrill the little boy by hoisting him high on his strong shoulders. Like other Nisei, Frank was a dutiful son, and Mitsuko had never heard a harsh word between him and his parents, but he obviously enjoyed both his time away from the old people and the physical games he played with Billy. He missed his daily workouts with the university swim team, he told Mitsuko. As he tossed the gleeful Billy high in the air, he talked in a free, excited way that she had never heard across the partition.

Only one recurring event seemed to be a reminder to Mitsuko of the passage of time: the strain of Sunday mornings, when Yoshiko invariably attempted to lure her back to worship services. The Reverend Hanamori had been allotted part of a shed in Area A for church activities, and each Sunday morning the members of the congregation who had been assigned to Area D would line up with their passes, be counted by the guards, cross the street, be counted again inside the next gate to make sure that no one had escaped during the thirty-foot expedition, then proceed on their own to the makeshift church.

Mitsuko refused to be a part of this or of anything connected with the church. She had been enormously relieved the first Sunday in camp to learn that the religious activities would be held in Area A, where the old reverend was staying. Then, on a Wednesday in mid-July, a message arrived from the reverend asking her to come see him. She liked Reverend Hanamori and had no desire to offend him personally, but if he tried to persuade her to resume her ties with the church, she fully intended to reveal to him the extent of her disillusionment. She left Billy with his big friend Frank and followed the messenger through the gates.

Only when she saw the reverend's benign smile did Mitsuko realize that she had been walking with her hands balled into fists, and she felt the tension go out of her. No, this was not a man who sought to impose his beliefs on others. He welcomed her with the simple joy of his own convictions, and she read in his eyes the grief of having lost her as a beloved child.

“I wanted to tell you about Pastor Tom,” he said, taking her hand, “before you heard it from others.”

A thrill went through her, followed by a pang of horror at her own readiness to believe that she was about to receive news of Tom's death. The reverend's words could have meant almost anything. Did she want Billy for herself so desperately that she was willing to bring down death on the man who had fathered him?

“You know, of course,” continued Reverend Hanamori, “that he used his contacts with the white churches after Pearl Harbor to obtain a new position. Well, now I hear that he has told his new congregation that he is a widower. He tells people that his wife's name was Sarah—”

“Which it was, as if he never had another wife!”

“—and that his son is now staying with his sister in Kansas.”

“Such arrogance! He is so confident his precious white congregation would never have contact with ‘Japs.' To think I believed in him.”

“We all did.” He looked at her tenderly, as if he wished he could bear her burden himself. “Perhaps I shouldn't tell you this,” he added. “It's really just a rumor …”

“But … ?”

“He seems to be involved with a woman—a married woman. The wife of another clergyman.”

Mitsuko hung her head. Her face was burning. Never in her life had she felt so ashamed. How blind she had been.

“Thank you, Reverend,” she said, unable to look at him. “I know this has been difficult for you.”

“If there is anything I can do …”

“No,” she said, raising her eyes at last. “I am too much in your debt already. There is nothing anyone can do.”

She turned and left the shed, knowing it was the last time she would ever cross the threshold of any church.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

Followed closely by Frank, Billy came running to her as she neared the stable. “I can do somersaults!”

“No!” she and Frank cried as Billy was about to put his head down on the soggy earth.

Mitsuko was the first to reach him, snatching him up almost ferociously and hugging him to her. The harder Billy struggled to break free, the more tightly she held him. Hot tears streamed down her face. Frank stood rooted to the ground, his eyes locked on Mitsuko's.

From that day on, whenever Yoshiko would gush about the lucky Baptists visited each week by their Pastor Andrews, Mitsuko would feel all the more disgusted with Tom and with the Christian religion as an illusory castle built on a foundation of empty words. If a man like Tom could spout those words—and apparently believe them himself while he did so—then anyone could spout them, and they amounted to nothing. As long as she was able, she intended to protect Billy from such lies.

She found an ally in Frank, who refused to accompany his parents to Buddhist services. They had always been members of the Seattle Buddhist Church on Main Street, only a few blocks—but several worlds—away from the Japanese Christian Church. Frank had lost all religious belief at the university, he said—“in the twinkling of an eye, as soon as I started to think about such things.”

Mitsuko, however, was not entirely lacking a sense of reverence; in fact it deepened with each day she was allowed to spend with Billy. Who or what it was that “allowed” her this privilege, she did not know, but almost instinctively, she found herself turning to the sun each morning and evening as it came and went. Puyallup, with its low huts huddled against the mire, provided a greater sense of nearness to the fiery lord of the heavens. In the morning, before the hum of voices began for the day, she would slip out of the stable as the sun came up in the east, and she would bow her head to it wordlessly, offering it only the clean slap of her palms.

Billy would be with her in the evenings, and she loved it when he would stand beside her, sharing in this moment of humility as the day came to an end. For these little ceremonies with him, she felt, words were entirely appropriate, and she taught him to say, “
Kyoh mo ichinichi arigatoh
—I give thanks for yet another day.” Never did he ask who it was they were thanking. Had he asked her, she might have told him it was the sun. Yet it was not the sun, not exactly. It was the day, it was the wonder of being, it was the two of them standing here together beneath the sky's red glow. The very fact that he did not ask her about it seemed to confirm her conviction that he knew exactly what it meant and that he would cherish the truth of these moments in his heart forever.

20

“HOW CAN BILLY SLEEP
with the wind howling like this?”

Mitsuko could barely hear Yoshiko above the roar. She looked down at the sand-flecked handkerchief covering Billy's face. Nearly twenty-four hours since their jubilant departure from Camp Harmony, the smiles and the exclamations of “freedom” were gone, having been replaced by the air of grim endurance that had become so familiar after three months in Puyallup. At least the Army promised there would be no more barbed wire.

The guards let them keep the shades open during the daylight part of the trip from Washington to Idaho, but the sandstorm had darkened the world outside the train. Inside, the people and bundles and wooden seats were coated with a fine, silty powder.

The train continued to creep through the storm until it pulled into Shoshone, where they were herded onto buses for the last fifty miles to Minidoka. In the short dash between train and bus, Mitsuko felt her eyes burning, and her mouth seemed to be filling up with gritty grains of the streaming sand. The wind stripped the handkerchief from Billy's face, but still he did not wake.

Buffeted by the abrasive gusts, the buses crawled through the yellow-gray cloud.

“They couldn't drown us in the mud,” Goro said. “Now they're trying to strip our skin off. Even Missoula was better than this.”

The bus droned on through the storm for two hours or more. Then, suddenly, almost mysteriously, the wind let up and the air emptied itself out. The bus shuddered and groaned and began to pick up speed.

The sight of the desert reminded Mitsuko of a slice of moldy bread half-buried in balls of dust she had found long ago the first time she cleaned under Billy's crib. The wrinkled, gray land stretched off into the distance. Rolling through the sunbaked desert, the bus grew unbearably hot, and windows which before could not be shut tightly enough, now could not be opened wide enough. The wind tore inside in pursuit of moisture.

A commotion started among the people at the front of the bus; something had been sighted up ahead. Mitsuko leaned from her window and saw low, dark buildings, a tall brick smokestack, and a water tank glinting in the sun. As they drew closer, she could make out tar-paper-covered sheds like the ones at Puyallup. Sighs and groans filled the bus as it passed through a barbed wire fence that seemed to stretch for miles on either side.

“At least they don't have any guard towers here,” a young man's voice piped up, but half-hearted grunts were the only response.

When the bus stopped, she lifted Billy. There was a large sweat stain where he was nestled against her. Moving to the front of the bus, she recalled her muddy arrival at Puyallup. Before she stepped off the bus, she checked the condition of the ground. It looked dry, but her foot sank into the soft sand, and she lost her balance. Billy slipped from her hands, and she cried out as she fell. Coming down on all fours, she saw Billy land squarely on his own two feet. The boy looked around, blinked for a moment, and then he laughed at Mitsuko on the ground.

“Mommy's crawling!” he said, as if he had just happened by there while Mitsuko played in the sand.

Goro helped her to her feet, and with Yoshiko they followed the line of disembarking passengers. The August sun beat down on them as they waited in line to register. All exposed skin seemed to be sizzling under its rays. Mitsuko heard a buzzing inside her skull until, at last, they crept in under the roof of the registration shed.

A pudgy, young Nisei man took their names and asked what seemed like a thousand questions. Mitsuko didn't mind. In fact, the more the better—anything that would delay their going back out into that sun! Finally, the young man handed Goro an instruction sheet and a sketch map of the compound. He said they would have to find their own way to Block 39, Barrack 10, where they were to live in Apartment E.

“Look at the size of this place!” Goro said as they stepped out of the administration building onto the broad, flat stretch of glaring yellow sand. Inspecting the map, he said, “Let's see, we're here, in the middle of the camp, and Block 39 is way down here.” He showed them on the map how the road ran eastward and then turned sharply south. Their block would be nearly at the bottom of the road, on the east side—a long walk without shelter from the burning sun.

The camp was built in the shape of a large crescent following the bend of an irrigation canal. As they kicked up little dust clouds with every step, Goro pointed toward the canal far off to the right. “Listen!” he said, “You can hear the water flowing.”

In addition to the continuous low rush of water, there was the familiar sound of human voices. Again they would be living with that constant background murmur.

“Those are pretty houses over there,” said Yoshiko, squinting in the sun. She gestured toward a handful of new-looking bungalows painted green and blue and yellow. “Maybe all the buildings here will look like that when they're finished.”

“I'm sure they will,” said Goro encouragingly. But then he consulted his map again and said, “I'm afraid not. That's staff housing. No ‘Japs' in there.”

Cloth bundles and suitcases dangling from their hands, they continued eastward down the dusty road. The afternoon sun was lower in the sky, and it had begun to cool a little.

“Well, well,” Goro remarked as they passed a large excavation on the right just before the first block of barracks. “This is going to be an amphitheater.”

“Maybe it won't be so bad here after all,” said Yoshiko, but no one answered her.

They passed row after row of indistinguishable tar-papered barracks arranged in blocks separated by a thirty-foot-wide bulldozer scrape. Each block was composed of two rows of six barracks, between which stood two much larger buildings. Goro told them the rectangular building at the center of each block was the block's mess hall, and the H-shaped building behind it housed the laundry and latrine facilities. At the side of each block were “recreation halls.” Goro said, “We can spend the war playing ping pong.”

After they had passed four blocks, the road curved to the right. The building on the left side of the curve was labeled “Fire Station.” On the right was an open field dotted with clumps of dusty grass. They followed the road past five more blocks on the right-hand side and a few others on the left interrupted by open spaces, coming at last to Block 39 on the left. Barracks 1 through 11 faced the road. Their apartment was in a barrack next to the latrines.

“At least it doesn't actually face the toilets,” remarked Yoshiko hopefully as they traversed the hundred-foot length of their barrack searching for Apartment E.

Mitsuko said to Billy, “Can you find E for us?”

Billy scampered on ahead, squeaking “A …B …C … D …E!”

“E” was near the center of the long building. Goro motioned Billy inside, but he seemed hesitant to go in alone. All of them hesitated when they came together in front of the crude plank door.

“I don't know, I'm afraid,” Yoshiko said. “This is where we're going to live for—who knows how long? They might keep us here forever.”

“Don't be silly,” said Goro. “Puyallup was an ‘assembly center,' but this is a ‘relocation camp.'”

“Don't tell me you believe the government is going to ‘relocate' us somewhere nicer. Maybe if we were Nisei, but not dangerous enemy aliens like us,” Mitsuko said. She reached out and gave the door a shove. It creaked open, and the four of them took a step forward to the threshold.

Another empty wooden box. It was larger than the Puyallup box—perhaps twenty feet deep and a little less from side to side. There were no inner walls, just bare two-by-four studs showing the green lumber of the siding and, through cracks and knotholes, the outside tar paper tacked to that. The wood was new at least, but the floor was covered by lines of fine sand which had obviously seeped in from cracks in the ceiling during the storm. Little mounds of the stuff had piled up in corners and under the window sill. The only furniture inside were four army cots and an iron potbelly stove.

“There's a window!” Yoshiko exclaimed.

Mitsuko said, “Compared with our old stable, this is almost luxurious. What do you think, Billy?”

“It smells good,” he said, twitching his nose.

“Listen to this,” Goro said, reading from the instruction sheet he had received with the map. “‘Residents are advised not to nail up shelves until construction personnel arrive to install plasterboard walls.' Plasterboard! I had almost forgotten that such luxuries exist! ‘Scrap lumber will be available for residents who wish to make furniture, and a committee has been organized to supervise its distribution. Approximately 400,000 board feet of lumber is now available. Hence, there will be no necessity for hoarding or pilfering.' I'm going to turn this place into a decorator's dream!”

The sisters smiled at each other. This was the first sign of life that Goro had shown since his release from Missoula.

“There's more,” he continued. “‘You are now in Minidoka, Idaho. Here we say Dining Hall and not Mess Hall; Safety Council, not Internal Police; Residents, not Evacuees; and last but not least, Mental Climate, not Morale.”

“Wonderful,” groaned Mitsuko. “Why don't they just call the place ‘Miami, Florida'?”

“It's true,” Goro said. “Ever since Pearl Harbor, they have been doing strange things with words. They call us ‘aliens,' which we are, but the poor Nisei they call ‘non-aliens.' I was always disappointed I could not become an American citizen, but when I heard that strange phrase, I was not so sure. I would rather be a Japanese than a non-alien.”

“Goro!” exclaimed his wife, “Don't let anyone hear you saying such things!”

“Don't worry,” he answered. “Here, the walls go all the way up to the ceiling.”

“No more Sano snoring concerts!”

Billy perked up at that. “I want to play with Frank!” he demanded. Mitsuko promised him they would look for Frank as soon as they had settled in.