Papa had assured us in his letter that the family camp had everything we needed: schools, a hospital, a chapel, community centers, a market, a barbershop and hair salon, laundry facilities, a library, a post office, and even a sewing room where Mommi could take in little jobs and earn money.
The internment camp did in fact look a little like a tiny town as we drove down Central Avenue, the only street that was paved. There were little bungalow-like houses and larger structures that looked like government-type buildings, useful but not attractive. Everything was painted shades of brown or dull white or not painted at all and just covered in tar paper. People of all ages were out and about on foot and on bicycles, some clearly Japanese, others probably German like us. Some looked up at us and nodded or waved; others gave us but a glance, as though they’d seen our bus before, many times. Any peek of the horizon between buildings as we drove offered a view of the barbed fence and sometimes a watchtower.
Some of the buildings looked new and others looked weathered and worn. I asked Papa what this place had been before, and he told me migratory farm workers had lived in some of the houses before the war. To repurpose the site to be an internment camp, five hundred additional houses had been built. Strange little cottages called Victory Huts had gone up, too, as well as the schools, the hospital, and other buildings to outfit the camp as a place where the interned could comfortably live. It had been open less than a year and about two thousand internees were already there. It could hold up to four thousand.
Within minutes of entering the camp our bus was pulling up to a squat white building, and there I saw the first bit of color. Red and white petunias, semiwilted from the day’s triple-digit heat, had been planted in neat rows along the front of the building and under a wooden sign that read Community Center. The German families—there were seven of us—were told to get our things and proceed into the building; the Japanese families would be taken to a center just like this one on the other side of the camp. Inside, the bags and small cases we’d brought with us on the train were searched, and then our identification tags were checked. Paperwork was signed and stamped at long tables.
Then the seven German families were met by a large man with a full gray mustache. He told us his name was Ivan and that he was an internee just like us. He and his wife and teenage son had been at the camp since March. Ivan’s German accent was thicker than Papa’s even though he’d been in America as long as my parents had. He said he was originally from Düsseldorf. I had no idea where that was. He took us to a smaller room where smiling women gave us cookies and lemonade, and then we were asked to take a seat at one of the sets of tables and chairs.
Someone from the office of the director of the camp would be along shortly to welcome us and explain the rules. Until he arrived, Ivan would be sharing what we needed to know right off the bat. After supper at a central mess hall, we would be taken to temporary barracks for our first night. Pajamas and toothbrushes would be provided. In the morning, after breakfast, we’d get our housing assignments. Our luggage would be delivered to our new quarters.
The interior of the camp, we were told, was not segregated. Japanese, German, and even Italian families had free access to all the camp amenities, and in some instances lived next to each other if there was a housing need. There were a fair number of Japanese internees from Peru, who’d been surrendered to the United States as a goodwill measure. Many of these families spoke Spanish. An attempt had been made early on to keep some semblance of ethnic demarcation in the neighborhoods, but that proved impossible to maintain as families came and went. Everyone was expected to get along with one another; animosities would not be tolerated. This was one of the rules the man from the director’s office would also be emphasizing.
Nearly all the adults at the camp had jobs of some kind. Everyone was encouraged to find something that they were good at doing and then do it. Having an occupation made the time go by faster and it gave one a sense of purpose. No internee was compelled to work against his or her will, as that went against the guidelines of the Geneva Convention, Ivan said. Those who wanted to work could earn a dime an hour and up to four dollars per week in camp currency. He held up some. It looked to me like board-game money. This same scrip would also be given to us in monthly allotments to buy groceries and sundries at the camp market.
The school-age children would be expected to be enrolled in one of the camp schools; classes would start at the end of August. There were three schools, one for Japanese-speaking students and one for German—both staffed by internees—and one for English-speaking students, called the Federal School, staffed by teachers supplied by the state of Texas. There was no need for Papa and Mommi to consult with each other over which one I would attend, but I could tell some of the other teens in the room were bilingual. A boy who looked to be high school age was sitting behind us and I heard him whisper something in German to his father. I heard him say the word Amerikanisch. The man whispered back to his son in a huff, “Nein! Nein! Nein!”
“Bitte?” the boy pleaded.
“Nein!” said his father.
Ivan then told us that for the community’s mutual enlightenment and enjoyment, internees printed four camp newspapers: the Crystal City Times in English, the Jiji Kai in Japanese, Los Andes in Spanish, and Das Lager in German. For our recreation there was a Japanese sumo wrestling ring and a German beer garden. Inside this very community center was a café called the Vaterland. A swimming pool was being built. Carefully chosen Hollywood movies were shown every Saturday night. Polka was on Sunday nights. Bingo on Tuesday nights. The Federal High School would have football games and dances once classes started up again.
“And who does the high school football team play?” I asked Papa, and he shrugged.
“One more thing,” Ivan said. “And this is important. Don’t leave your shoes outside at night. If you do, make sure you shake them out in the morning. There are scorpions, fire ants, and black widow spiders in Texas. And don’t put your hand inside a hole or crevice or rock pile or anything like that. There are rattlesnakes here and tarantulas. A tarantula bite won’t kill you, but a rattlesnake bite could.”
All of us just stared at Ivan, openmouthed. Just when we thought there was a veneer of normalcy here, he had to tell us that no, there was nothing normal about any of this. I had never seen any of these animals before; I only knew they were dangerous, malicious, capable of inflicting great pain, and, at least with the rattlesnake, capable of killing. I felt my pulse quicken, and I wanted to run outside and jump back on that bus.
As I imagined doing this very thing, a man in a suit entered the room and Ivan greeted him. The man was Papa’s age perhaps, with a receding hairline and black horn-rimmed spectacles. He worked in the director’s office of this community and it was his pleasure to welcome us to Crystal City and his duty to remind us that this camp was administered under the Alien Enemy Control Unit, run by the Department of Justice and administered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We were free to work, go to school, and enjoy music, the camp theater, the camp’s vegetable gardens and orange grove, and the swimming pool we’d have soon, but we were not free to leave. The guards outside the gate were fully armed and the perimeter was under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. We were free to send two letters per week to the outside world and receive as many as were sent to us in return, but all mail would be censored. Insubordination, insurrection, fighting among members of the camp population, would not be tolerated. Roll call was to be taken twice a day. We were to muster outside our quarters for this accounting, and it was mandatory.
“This may not be the life you want right now,” the man said. “But it will be what you make of it.”
He then told us that anyone with questions or suggestions was welcome to visit the administrative offices anytime. He told us to enjoy our dinner, to rest well tonight, and for everyone to do their part to live in peace.
We ate a meal of stewed chicken and noodles at long tables in a mess hall filled with other new detainees and those who didn’t have kitchens in their quarters. There was vanilla pudding for dessert. The sun was setting as we walked to the temporary barracks. From somewhere beyond the perimeter lights, which shone as bright as the sun, I heard a coyote yip. It sounded as if it were laughing at us.
The pajamas we were given were clean but scratchy. We brushed our teeth with the toothbrushes they gave us and washed our faces with plain soap and water at a communal latrine. No one said anything to one another. We were tired. We were stunned. We were captives.