Mrs. Hsiu leaned back over her threshold and closed the door before Mariko could say or ask anything else.
She walked slowly back to the vegetable and herb shop, sensing an alarming numbness creeping over her bones. When she got home, she didn’t tell her parents about Patricia’s family, though she wanted to. She slept fitfully that night, waking every few hours to ponder why Patricia’s family had left Little Tokyo so quietly and abruptly, and if she should tell her parents they had done so. Would it be breaking her promise to Mrs. Hsiu if she told her mother and father that they left, but not where they went? Did Lupe and Sharon know Patricia was gone?
The next morning, the ninth of December, Mariko awoke hoping against hope that her father would let her go to school. But she had overslept after having tossed and turned during the night. It was already after eight o’clock in the morning; school had already started. She got out of bed, dressed quickly, and went into the kitchen. Her parents and siblings were eating a quiet breakfast and sipping tea. Her mother greeted her but the mood around the breakfast table was somber. She opened her mouth to ask why she had been allowed to sleep in when there was a knock at the door to the residence from the street-level entrance. It was a loud knock, followed by a command that Kenji Inoue open his door to federal agents.
Mariko’s mother looked at her father with alarm.
“I’m sure it’s just a formality,” Mariko’s father said to her. Mariko’s parents, like mine, had been compelled two years earlier to register as alien nationals. Kenji Inoue was on a list just like my father had been on a list. As Kenji Inoue rose from his seat, he turned to his children. “Everyone just stay right here. Stay at the table.” He turned to the fifteen-year-old twins, Tomeo and Kaminari. “Everyone stays here.”
Tomeo nodded slowly, as though he heard what his father had said—the words were intelligible—but they did not make sense to him. Kaminari looked from one parent to the other in concern but said nothing.
The twins and Mariko listened as their father descended the stairs, shouting to whomever was standing on the other side of it, in perfect English, that he was coming. They heard him open the door. They heard a man ask if he was Kenji Inoue. They heard the front door close. Then they heard nothing for several long minutes. Then the door opened again, and Mariko heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, not the soft patter of her barefoot father.
Three men who looked very much like the men in suits and hats that Mariko had seen the previous day entered the apartment. Mariko’s mother and sister both cried out in alarm. Tomeo shot to his feet, and one of the men strode over to him and pushed him back down. Another held up a badge and announced to Chiyo that they were federal agents. Kenji was under arrest as an enemy alien and the rest of the family would in short order be taken to a relocation center pursuant to Executive Order 9066.
Mariko didn’t know what those words meant. While two of the men searched the apartment and the third one stood watch over them, Mariko asked her mother in Japanese what Executive Order 9066 was. Chiyo just shook her head as she cried into her napkin. Tomeo told her in English to be quiet. Mariko would find out many months later that Executive Order 9066 is what authorized the removal of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans just like her to detention camps.
The two men who had conducted the search left the apartment with papers and photographs, bank statements and business receipts, the lease agreement for the shop and apartment, letters from family members in Japan, and Kenji’s hori hori, a Japanese digging knife that he’d had since he was a boy. They even took the flashlight from under the kitchen sink lest it be used as a signaling device.
The third man, who had stood watch, told Chiyo that she had less than two weeks to get herself and her children ready to leave for the relocation center.
“Relocation center?” Chiyo said, having finally found her voice.
“You are arresting us?” Kaminari asked, incredulous.
“You are going to be detained,” the man said. “Not just you. All Japanese Americans.”
“Why? What for?” Tomeo said. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“It is for the protection of everyone, including you. You will be allowed to bring only what you can carry.” The federal agent turned to Mariko. “No toys. Only what you absolutely need.”
He turned back to Chiyo. “You will be notified where your husband is when it’s been decided if he is to face any charges.”
“My husband has done nothing wrong,” Chiyo shouted angrily, fully in charge of her voice again.
The man, unfazed by her tone, gazed about the kitchen and living room for a moment, and when he looked again at Chiyo his face looked sad, like he was not happy about the situation himself. “You’d be wise to sell all this,” he said, as though somehow he knew there would be looters and squatters within days of the emptying of Little Tokyo, as though he knew whatever the people of Little Tokyo did not sell or take with them would not be here when and if they ever came back for it.
The man turned to leave, and Mariko said quietly to his back, “I’m not a child who plays with toys,” but he didn’t hear her.
When he was gone, Mariko, her siblings, and her mother sat in dazed silence for several seconds.
“Can they do this?” Kaminari said.
“They are doing it!” Tomeo growled, and Mariko was astonished that he used that tone with his twin. He had used it with Mariko now and then, but never Kaminari.
After the FBI agents left, neighbors started to come by the apartment, and then the shop, which Tomeo and Kaminari opened by midmorning at their mother’s request. While Chiyo spent the afternoon conferring with the Inoues’ closest friends about what she should do on Kenji’s behalf, Mariko looked for an opportunity to slip away. She needed to talk to Sharon and Lupe.
She needed to talk to Charles.
What she wanted to do most was sneak into the school and look inside her locker. Whatever note he had dropped inside it late Friday afternoon was still there. But there was no way to enter unnoticed, in broad daylight no less, a building teeming with faculty and students. She must instead go to Sharon’s house after school—she lived closer to Little Tokyo than Lupe—and tell her what had happened and ask her to give a note to Charles on her behalf. If Mariko had known where Charles lived, she would’ve stolen away to his house and stayed hidden in some bushes or behind a tree or wall until she saw him walking home, and then she would’ve told him face-to-face that she still wanted him as her boyfriend. She didn’t think he was the type to turn his back on her just because she was Japanese. She didn’t think he was . . .
Alone in the apartment, Mariko went to her parents’ room and pulled out a piece of her mother’s stationery from the little writing desk by the closet. She chose a fountain pen and wrote a quick note before her mother could return and find her there, and ask her what she was doing.
Dear Charles:
I just want you to know that I am very sad about what happened Sunday in Hawaii. We are all terribly sad. I’m not going to be allowed to come back to school. My family and I and everyone else in Little Tokyo are going to be taken to a relocation center somewhere. It’s not safe for us here, we’ve been told. I don’t know how long I will be gone. I wanted you to know why I haven’t been in school, why I haven’t answered your last note. I am sure you wrote one.
I still want to be your girlfriend.
Very much.
I hope you still want to be my boyfriend.
I wish I could see you before we go. I don’t know where they are taking us. But I will not forget you. I promise.
Mariko Inoue
She said nothing about her father’s arrest. She didn’t want him to know about that. She didn’t want anyone to know about that.
At a little after three, while her siblings and mother were still busy, Mariko crept away. The streets of Little Tokyo were abuzz with activity. Little conversations were happening outside every storefront, every public building, every restaurant, every home. Worried, angry, fearful faces were everywhere. Most of her neighbors paid her no mind at all as she walked past them; they were too distracted by the posters that had been plastered all over the community, with mandates that all of them would be evacuated out of Little Tokyo, that they were to pack only what they could fit into a suitcase, and that they were advised to sell what they owned.