Later, the parents of the Japanese students learned that their white classmates had been led across the railroad tracks to the Florin Community Hall, where they would attend classes for a few weeks until a new red-brick, two-story school building could be completed for them. They were shocked and anguished at this latest indignity. Issei—Japanese nationals—were already prohibited by law from ever becoming American citizens; the Alien Land Laws forbade them from owning land in their own names; and now their children were being treated as inferiors, undesirables, unworthy of studying alongside their white neighbors. The only consolation was that the Japanese and hakujin—white—children were, in fact, neighbors. Although segregated during the school day, the Nisei continued to play as they always had with their white friends—fielding softball teams on vacant land or sharing chocolate cones at Kato’s Ice Cream Parlor. If the school board’s goal had been to separate the races socially, it failed miserably.
Despite all this, Etsuko liked living in Florin. It was a close-knit, rural community not unlike the one she and Taizo had grown up in. Their closest neighbors—the Nobusos, the Kishabas, the Nakamuras, and the Isas—were hardworking, generous people. So were the people she and Taizo met at the Florin Buddhist Church. During one of the first services they attended, Reverend Tsuda quoted Buddha’s words: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” This was wise advice, and Taizo and Etsuko sought to heed it by casting aside their setsubō—longing—for their old life and embracing this, the only life they had.
Surely the finest exemplar of this was their own daughter. Ruth was flourishing like a transplanted flower in the fertile soil of Florin, whether picking handfuls of juicy wild blackberries or patiently watching an orange-and-black monarch butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. Cricket, her ebullient new friend, eagerly showed her all the best and muddiest places to play. But Ruth never tired of the playground of their farm, whether she was feeding and watering the horses, Bucky and Blackie, milking the cow, or collecting eggs from the henhouse as she greeted each chicken personally: “Konnichiwa, Isabel. What do you have for us today? Oooh, what a big egg! Good girl!”
As her years in Florin piled up like eggs in a basket, they crowded out most of her memories of Hawai'i, including the four years she had spent at Kapi'olani Home. She still went to bed hugging her stuffed cow, and though it remained a source of comfort, she no longer remembered who gave it to her.
But there was one reminder of those days and Ruth thought of it each time she looked in a mirror or heard the voices around her at dinnertime: she neither looked nor sounded quite like the rest of her family. Yes, her eyes were the same, but her skin was slightly darker, her nose a bit wider, her whole face a little broader than anyone else’s. That word, hapa, still stung, like a wasp in the fields. It wasn’t until her tenth birthday—her actual birthday, February 8—when she could articulate her feelings that she asked Etsuko, “Okāsan? Why did my—Hawaiian mother give me up?” In a small voice: “Didn’t she love me?”
“Oh, butterfly,” Etsuko said, “I am sure she did. But she had no choice.”
“Why not?”
“You are not old enough to understand, little one. But I am certain that she would have kept you if she had been able. Do not judge her for that.”
“Did you know her?”
“No. But I know what is in a mother’s heart, and I am sure she loved you.” She took Ruth’s hands in hers and squeezed them. “And wherever she is, I am sure she would be happy to know that you have a mother and a father and brothers who love you more than you can know.”
Ruth smiled, mollified by her mother’s assurances—for now.
* * *
For nearly seven years Taizo had done his best to trim the farm’s expenses while increasing its yield. He succeeded in making the mortgage payments in full and on time, and slowly their bank ledger ceased bleeding money. Taizo still felt shame and anger for allowing himself to be duped into giving up everything they had in Hawai'i for this cruel lie. But at least their credit was now good and they were taking in more money than they were losing, even in the midst of the financial recession that had begun that year.
All of that progress came to an end on October 29, 1929.
The stock market crash was an earthquake felt first in New York City, but it wasn’t long before its temblors radiated across the continent and shook the foundations of everything Taizo had been building. Public uncertainty about the economy reduced consumption, and food prices plummeted into a financial chasm.
Bank foundations were rattled too, as depositors demanded to withdraw their money, only to be faced with long lines and empty hands. Then, unthinkably, banks across the nation began to collapse into insolvency—financial sinkholes swallowing up the life savings of tens of thousands of working-class people. The banks that were still standing, desperate for cash, called in all their loans.
Sumitomo Bank in Sacramento called in the balance of Jiro’s loan—$4,500—due immediately, or face foreclosure.
Panicked, Taizo and Jiro first sought an advance on their strawberry harvest from Mr. Nojiri, who distributed their berries through Nojiri and Company. He was a kind, generous man, always willing to help out a farmer when he could, but this went beyond his financial auspices.
They hastily tried to put together a tanomoshi—a kind of collective loan cooperative dating back to samurai days—but their neighbors, though sympathetic, were also struggling to stay afloat in the tidal wake of the crash.
Taizo and Jiro, desperate to spare their wives and children the specter of potential homelessness, kept their own counsel. Together they walked down to Elder Creek, a small stream lazing through lush woods of Douglas fir and spreading oak trees. The sheltering canopy of leaves and the whispering rush of the water afforded some privacy as well as a moment of needed serenity, reminding them both of their boyhoods in Hōfuna.
It did not take long for them to decide that there was only one man in Florin with the funds to purchase their debt, and that was Joseph Dreesen.
“He did offer us sixty-five hundred dollars for the land,” Taizo noted.
“Seven years ago. He will not offer us that much again. Not in these times,” Jiro noted. “And even if he were to offer us enough to pay off the debt, what then? Where do we go? What do we do?”
Taizo considered a moment, then suggested, “What if we … offer to sell him most of the land but hold back ten or twenty acres for ourselves to farm? To support our family, nothing more?”
“An interesting idea,” Jiro allowed.
“Our only idea.”
“True enough.”
“And if he says no?”
Jiro sighed. “I worked as an itinerant laborer as a young man. I am not so old that I cannot do so again.”
“Nor I, if we are even fortunate enough to find work. But condemning our children to such a life … that would break my heart.”
Jiro nodded. He watched as a steelhead trout swam just below the surface of the creek, tail flicking as it followed the current.
“Like that fish, we can only go where the stream takes us,” he said.
Taizo nodded, not happy to be reduced to a metaphoric fish.
The next day they met Dreesen in his rustic office in back of the Florin Feed & Supply Company. His hair was a little grayer, but his face and arms were still as tanned as an old leather hide, and he greeted them from behind his walnut desk with characteristic bluntness.
“Watanabe-san.” He smiled like a wolf that had scented its prey. “Mr. Ochida told me you tried to put together some kind of Jap loan association. I figured it wouldn’t be long before you came crawling back.”