Taizo could only listen in disbelief.
“There are still many white farmers here in Florin,” Jiro pointed out, “and most of them have no problem with us. They only go to your Anti-Japanese League meetings because you intimidate them into coming. They fear the league will do damage to their ranches and farms.”
Anti-Japanese League? Taizo tried not to show his alarm.
“You got a smart mouth, Watanabe,” Dreesen snapped. “Just like those fifty-eight Jap bastards who got rode out of Turlock on a rail.”
“Is that why you are here, Sheriff?” Jiro asked. “To ‘ride’ us out of town? Because you will not find us so easily ridden.”
Dreesen spat out more tobacco juice and smiled. “Actually, I came here to help you, Watanabe-san.”
Jiro laughed. “We do not need your help.”
“Mr. Ochida says otherwise. Good man. I lease forty acres to his son—they make money, I make money, I keep the land. The way things used to be. Anyways, Mr. Ochida says you’re in debt to the tune of five thousand dollars.”
Jiro said nothing. Dreesen took a step closer. “I’m willing to buy your whole spread, including the house, for six thousand dollars. Hell, that’ll give you enough of a grubstake to go back to Japan if you want.”
“I do not wish to return to Japan. Why are you making this offer?”
“So’s I can get another hundred acres outta the hands of Japs like you and back into the hands of white Christian men, where it belongs.”
Barely concealing his contempt, Jiro said, “I am not interested.”
“Then you’re a goddamn fool. You Japs are damn good farmers, I give you that—but even the best of you couldn’t get out from under that kind of debt. And you ain’t the best Jap farmer ’round here by a long shot. Sixty-five hundred, top dollar.”
“How do you put it? ‘No deal.’”
Dreesen looked at him stonily for a moment, then just shrugged.
“No skin off my nose if the bank forecloses on this place,” he said. “Least then it’ll be goin’ back to the white man. But if you change your mind, I’d prefer to be that white man.” He turned to Taizo, nodded, and said with fine-tuned sarcasm, “Welcome to California, Taizo-san.”
As Dreesen walked away, Taizo saw that Jiro’s hands were trembling with rage and—fear?
“‘Anti-Japanese League’?” Taizo said.
“Yes. They meet in Redmen’s Hall. But they are hardly the only ones who hate us. There is the Oriental Exclusion League, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, the Anti-Asiatic League…”
“Have they ever done what you said? Damage someone’s property?”
“Not here, not yet. But in Turlock a mob of several hundred white men—with the help of the local police—did round up fifty-eight nihonjin workers, forced them onto a train, and told them never to return.”
“They hate us because we buy farms? And make a success of it?”
“Yes. And because they hate and fear the country we come from. They lust for a war between Japan and America. So Dreesen tells Collier’s Weekly and the Sacramento Bee that we have ‘taken over’ Florin and Walnut Grove and we will take over all the farmland in all of California unless we are stopped. And these articles keep stoked the fires of war.”
Taizo felt as frightened as he did incredulous.
“I encountered little prejudice against Japanese in Hawai'i,” he said. “We were a part of the community.”
“You are no longer in Hawai'i, Taizo. For which I must apologize again.” He started back to the house. “No need to tell the family about this.”
Taizo nodded dully. He felt unmoored, and afraid. He had dragged his family across an ocean to a failing farm in a land of race hatreds. He only prayed that he could keep his children protected from men such as Dreesen and from the bigotry and malice that made their cold hearts beat.
* * *
In September Horace enrolled at Elk Grove Union High School—Elk Grove being the next nearest town to Florin. Ruth, Stanley, and Ralph were to attend Florin Grammar School. On the first day of class the three of them—guided by several neighbor children, white and Japanese—traipsed through vineyards to Pritchett and McNie Roads, cutting behind Redmen’s Hall on Florin Road, then crossed the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. They passed the Florin Basket Factory, Morita’s Barber Shop, and Nakayama’s Shoe Repair before arriving at the schoolhouse on McComber Road. It was a U-shaped, green stucco building with a tar-paper roof, and inside the corridors were filled with students both Caucasian and Japanese. Ruth, excited and eager to make new friends, made her way to the second-grade classroom only to be told by a teacher to report to the first-grade homeroom. “I’ve already been to first grade,” Ruth objected, but the teacher was adamant. She marched her into the first-grade room, where Ruth reluctantly took an empty desk next to a friendly Nisei girl, who said, “Hi, you new?”
Ruth nodded. “Just moved here.”
“From where?”
“Hawai'i.”
“Wow, I never met anyone from Hawai'i before! I’m Chieko Yamoto, my friends call me Cricket.”
“Ruth Watanabe.”
“How old are you?”
“Seven.”
“Me too. I should be in second grade, but at the end of last year the principal demoted every Japanese student up to fifth grade, on account of our English wasn’t good enough and we needed a year to make up.”
“That’s what they did to me,” Ruth said, “even though I took first grade already in Honolulu!”
“Your English sounds good to me.”
“So does yours.”
A white girl in front of them turned in her seat and introduced herself to Ruth as Phyllis. “Yeah—goofy, isn’t it?” she said, then to Ruth: “You’re from Hawai'i? Can you do the hula?”
“No.”
“You ever been to Waikīkī Beach?”
“Oh sure. Lots of times.”
“Yeah? What’s it—”
Just then the teacher entered and quieted the room: “Settle down now, class. I’m Mrs. Jenkins. I teach first grade.”
“We know,” Cricket called out. “We were here last year!”
The students laughed. Mrs. Jenkins smiled a nervous, ill-at-ease little smile. “Yes. Well. Before I take the roll, I need you to listen carefully.” Looking as if she would rather not be doing this, she said: “Will all the non-Japanese students please stand up, take your schoolbooks, and line up at the door.”
There were puzzled murmurs from everyone in the room.
“Class, please do as I tell you,” Mrs. Jenkins said, more emphatically.
The white girl, Phyllis, turned to Ruth and Cricket, shrugged, and joined in as the white students obediently got up and formed a line at the door. Another teacher entered the classroom and asked, “Are they ready?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Jenkins replied, voice quavering a bit.
“Good. Students, follow me.”
As the teacher led them out of the room, Cricket leaned over to Ruth and whispered, “That’s Miss Thomas. She’s nasty. If she catches you speaking Japanese in class, she’ll make you stay after school.”
This was all baffling. Mrs. Jenkins tried to distract the Nisei students by asking them to open their English primers. This worked until they heard the sounds of students gathering on the lawn—at which point all of the remaining pupils rushed to the windows to look out, over Mrs. Jenkins’ objections.
Ruth saw dozens of white children standing in a line that wrapped around the building, while teachers passed out little American flags on sticks to each one. Then, after roll had been taken, the teachers proceeded to march them away from the school, westward down Florin Road.
“Where are they taking them?” Ruth asked.
“They’ll be fine, class, they’ll be going to school somewhere else, that’s all. Now, let’s all get back to our—”
“Why?” Ruth asked.
“Why what?”
“Why are they going to another school and we’re not?”
Her patience exhausted, Mrs. Jenkins declared, “Back to your seats, everyone, this minute!”
Ruth took one last look at her new friend Phyllis, disappearing down Florin Road, and wondered if she would ever see her again. She hadn’t even gotten to tell her what Waikīkī Beach was like.
Chapter 5
1923–1930