Weedflower (21 page)

Most amazingly, the government was now calling on young men to sign up for a special draft for an all-
Nisei
combat team of about five thousand men. Bull was literally first in line to sign up. And a couple of days after Bull signed up, Ichiro shocked them all by announcing that he would sign up as well. He said he was doing it for Sumiko and Tak-Tak.

“For us?” Sumiko said.

“I’m gonna kill some Nazis and get you out of here faster,” Ichiro bragged. “I’m gonna get twenty medals and marry the prettiest girl I can find.”

Sumiko didn’t know how Frank could stand knowing that his brothers were fighting. The thought of someone shooting at Bull or Ichiro made her sick. And even though it made her sick, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. At night she lay in bed and listened to the sound of their breathing and tried to imagine this room without that sound. How quiet and empty the room would bel How small their family was getting!

Some of the men who’d joined the army got married before they left. Ichiro thought about marrying one of the girls he dated, but he couldn’t decide which one, so then he figured that if he couldn’t decide, maybe it was a sign that he shouldn’t get married.

Some nights Sumiko felt too sad to be inside listening to everyone breathe. Tak-Tak’s nose was often stuffed, and Sumiko hated to listen to him struggle for breath. She imagined his lungs brown from dust. And Auntie was so depressed about Bull and Ichiro leaving that she cried for hours at night. Sumiko thought there was nothing in the world sadder than listening to someone cry for hours. It was even worse than your own tears.

So Sumiko would wrap herself in a blanket and
take her chair outside to sit in the desert. The dry winds often kept the world around her in constant motion. One night two huge white clouds stretched out on either side of the moon. It looked like a giant moth; with the moon as the moth’s body and the clouds as glowing wings. The beautiful white moth took up half the sky.

Sumiko remembered what Frank had said about your ancestors watching you; and she thought maybe the moth in the sky might be her mother watching her. She wished she could ask Frank about it. She wished she had a telephone. She didn’t know his phone number, though, or even if he had a phone. She had never actually used a telephone, but it looked easy enough.

The wings of the moth began to spread across the sky.

If that was her mother in the sky, what was it that her mother wanted to tell her?

She remembered the summer nights when she’d slept out here and looked at the stars. She’d tried to go back in time, first to before her birth and then to when her parents were getting married, with her mother in the kimono that Jiichan said had made her look like a flower. And then she would go back before that to when Jiichan had come on the boat from Japan. And then she would skip way back to the time of the samurai. And then she would fall asleep.

Now her mind went back to before she was born and her parents had first fallen in love. Jiichan had once said that he had never seen anything like it, the way they loved each other. Sumiko liked to imagine it. She knew what they looked like because of the photograph that used to sit on the dining-room bureau. Even now she could picture them easily. So she realized it didn’t matter that the photograph had been burned, because she could see it clearly in her head. And that was what Sumiko was thinking of when she fell asleep in the chair.

30

T
HE FIELDS HAD GROWN BARE OVER THE WINTER
.

The
Poston Chronicle
said that in the spring the internees from Poston would plant twenty acres of cantaloupes, ten acres of tomatoes, five acres of squash, five acres of chard, three acres of cucumbers, ten acres of Hubbard squash, twelve acres of daikon, twelve acres of beans, two acres of okra, ten acres of corn, four acres of eggplant, and twenty acres of sweet potatoes. The camp took up seventy-one thousand acres, and the great majority of
Nikkei
were farmers. And they were not even growing enough to feed themselves. Still, it was a start.

After Bull and Joseph met, Sumiko walked
through the brush nearby every day, but Frank never showed up. At first she thought he was just really busy cutting wood. But when day after day he never showed up, she started to feel angry and betrayed. He’d probably been using her just so Joseph could meet Bull. That would mean he hadn’t been her friend after all!

Every time she visited the empty brush fields, she walked dejectedly back. Camp had started to seem different lately, not so permanent anymore. More and more young men were joining the army, and a couple of people on her block had actually decided to leave camp for outside jobs in a candy factory.

Sumiko generally didn’t give much thought to the government’s attempts to get them out of the camps because so few people were leaving. The departures were more of a trickle than a stream. One man who’d left camp for a while came back and warned couples with babies to be careful about where they went if they left camp. He said that some whites were still so angry about Pearl Harbor, they wanted to kill Japanese babies.

Sumiko asked Mr. Moto if he still planned to stay, and he said, “Yes, oh, yes. I’m too tired out from everything that’s happened. I don’t have the strength to go through all that now.”

Sumiko knew that without Uncle, Jiichan, or one of her sons, Auntie would never leave camp.
Plus, Auntie, whose previous life had been work and only work, enjoyed her sewing club. So Sumiko was shocked—actually, truly shocked—when Auntie sat everybody down one day and announced that she had gotten permission for them to leave camp.

“I’ve found a job in a sewing factory near Chicago.”

“But, Auntie!” was all Sumiko could think of to say at first. “Auntie, we’re safe here!” she added.

“We have to leave at some point. Now is best.”

“Why is now best? We should wait for the end of the war! What about my garden? I’m going to win first prize this year.”

Bull said gently, “Sumiko, what if the war lasts ten years?”

“Bull, they’ll put us right back in here if Japan bombs Hawaii again.”

“I’m not going unless Sumiko goes,” said Tak-Tak, throwing his arms around his sister.

Everybody looked at her. “Why can’t Tak-Tak and I stay with Uncle Kenzo? He’s as much my relative as you are!”

Everybody was surprised, and Auntie looked hurt. Sumiko hadn’t seen Uncle Kenzo since his birthday, when Auntie had made her visit him. Sumiko tried to keep her expression firm.

Finally Auntie said, “Don’t be silly,” and she left it at that.

Later Sachi told Sumiko, “I wouldn’t go if I were
you. The
hakujin
will hang your brother from a tree.”

The scary thing was that it was easy for Sumiko to picture her little brother hanging from a tree.

All throughout camp the no-no commotion continued. One afternoon Sumiko was pulling weeds from the garden when dozens of No-No Boys marched past her waving Japanese flags and shouting. One of them called out to her, “Join us, little girl!” and the men around him laughed as they all marched on. She got up and watched them as they rounded the corner and then proceeded up the long side of camp. A part of her did want to join them.

The government moved her people around like they were animals. And yet as Sumiko walked through camp she was struck by how familiar it all seemed, while her old life on the farm seemed unreal. When camp was dry, the inescapable dust seemed familiar; and when camp was wet, the inescapable mud seemed familiar.

When she got home, she found some neighbors shouting at each other.

“The government wants to tell us where we can live or not live once we get outside!” one shouted. “I’m staying right here!”

Another man shouted back, “Look, we need to move out to prove to them we can be trusted outside.”

“Why do we have to prove anything to them?” the other man screamed.

The first man grew suddenly solemn as he said, “Because we have no choice.”

Sumiko had read a letter that Mr. Moto’s nephew had written him from outside. The nephew said that he and other
Nikkei
didn’t like to be seen together in public—
hakujin
got nervous when they saw Japanese in groups. Sumiko got a new letter also. Auntie must have written Jiichan that Sumiko wanted to stay in camp, because the latest letter she received from him exhorted her to leave:
I know nobody care about old man opinion, but I say you leave camp
.

The grown-ups could debate all they wanted.
She
would find a way to stay. It wasn’t so bad here anymore. There were parties and dances and movies and free meals. And she had her garden and three friends. Trees and flowers grew on every block. Together the Japanese had made the desert bloom. Even the white men thought so. Even the Indians thought so. Everybody thought so.

Bull started sleeping outside although the weather was still cool at night. He wanted to be alone all the time now. Sumiko would stand at the door and see his big form rising and falling on the cot as he breathed. She tried to imagine what kind of girl he would marry someday. No doubt a hardworking one. He would probably end up in an arranged marriage. He would love his wife, though, because that’s the way he was.

For some reason, watching him out there one night; Sumiko thought of the canoe he and Ichiro had built when Bull was fourteen and Ichiro eighteen. They’d built it for her seventh birthday, when she was still crying all the time about her parents’ death. They’d painted the canoe blue, and when it rained hard and the long, sloping road nearby flooded, her cousins took her and baby Tak-Tak out in the boat and they drifted downhill for miles, surrounded by soaking flower farms. Sumiko remembered that Bull smiled as he saw her laughing and that she’d known right then she still had a family.

31

T
HE LAST OF THE
N
O
-N
O
B
OYS WERE SHIPPED TO
T
ULE
Lake, while some yes-yes families were transferred from Tule Lake to Poston. The camp changed after that. There were no more beatings. There were fewer arguments. All anybody thought of were the men who’d volunteered for the army. Waiting for Bull and Ichiro to leave for basic training was worse even than the waiting after Pearl Harbor.

Dozens of young men were shipping out soon. On many nights all across camp you could hear the goodbye parties or see the future soldiers with their girlfriends or wives crying in their arms.

Auntie scarcely paid attention to Sumiko. One
day Sumiko decided to take the bus to Camp One to visit her Uncle Kenzo and ask him whether she and Tak-Tak could live with his family.

Looking at her camp from the bus, she was impressed and proud of how beautiful it had become. There were a couple of white administration types on the bus, and they were impressed too.

“I never saw such beautiful gardens,” said one.

Camp One was so big and had changed so much since Sumiko’s last visit that she nearly got lost. But she found Uncle Kenzo’s place again. He was sitting with some men, playing poker. As she hadn’t visited since his birthday, he was surprised to see her. He certainly didn’t look particularly happy at the sight.

“What is it, Sumiko?” he said. He didn’t even set his cards down.

“Can I talk to you?”

“We’re in the middle of a hand.”

The other men stirred. “Are we playing cards or not?” one man said.

Sumiko decided to ask Uncle Kenzo her question right then and there. “Can my brother and I live with you? Auntie is going to leave camp for a job.”

Uncle Kenzo frowned and finally set down his cards.

Sumiko quickly lied, “She says it’s okay with her if it’s okay with you.”

He picked up his cards again. “The kids are going crazy in these camps. Go with your auntie, where you belong.”

The other men chuckled. Sumiko felt pretty stupid as she walked out the door. On the bus ride home she felt like she was an orphan after all.

Instead of going to her barrack, Sumiko headed for the brush where she’d met with Frank and just sat outside until the sun set and she was too thirsty to stay out any longer.