Frank and Ruth were renting a two-bedroom house close to downtown Florin, in a neighborhood home to both white and Nisei families. As Ruth pulled into their driveway, their amiable next-door neighbor, Jim Russell—a salaried manager at the Florin Fruit Growers Association—was draping strings of Christmas lights from his eaves while his two young kids chased each other around the front yard, dueling with water pistols.
As Ruth got out of the car, Jim waved and unexpectedly broke into song: “On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me—” And he held up a tangled snarl of wires and lights.
Ruth laughed. “Frank’s getting that for Christmas too.”
Donnie had nodded off in the backseat but awoke upon hearing the enthusiastic barking of their dog, Slugger. Ruth let the kids out of the car, then opened the gate in the fence, and watched with amusement as their sixty-pound black Labrador—as tall as Donnie and twice as heavy—leaped happily up and down while knowing enough not to tackle him to the ground.
“Okay, everybody inside!” Ruth gave Donnie a quick bath and tucked him into bed. Peggy was already fast asleep in her crib. Slugger was stretched out between them, a sentinel guarding them as he did every night. She gazed at her children’s sleeping faces, still marveling that they were hers—that she now had a husband, a son, a daughter, a home of her own. Things that once had seemed so out of reach, now safely in her embrace.
* * *
As Etsuko finished dressing for church, Taizo, in his Sunday suit, looked out their bedroom window at the lush acres of green surrounding them, the house rising like an island on a placid inland sea. Two very different cycles of life coexisted in those fields, and this past week had been spent carefully tending each: pruning and weeding the slow-growing grapevines, whose life was counted in years, not months; and cutting back the strawberry plants’ prolific runners that, left unchecked, would propagate new plants like weeds, leeching water and strength from the mother plants. It was a delicate balance, but if you maintained it correctly, the land flourished and repaid your stewardship richly. Taizo’s heart swelled with pride: this was his land not by deed but by deeds, by right of the labor and love he put into it.
After church services, Taizo drove the truck to Ruth and Frank’s house. He noted a car carrying several young white men coming from the opposite direction; as they passed the men glowered at them and one yelled:
“Goddamn Japs!”
The words, dripping in vitriol, hung in the air like an electrical charge after a lightning strike. Such overt racism was rare in Florin these days; even the elementary school had been reintegrated two years ago.
“Hooligans from Sacramento,” Taizo said dismissively.
But when they entered the Haradas’ home, Ruth and Frank’s ashen faces shook Taizo even more than the racial epithet.
“Papa,” Ruth said, “there’s bad news. It just came over the radio. Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor.”
Etsuko gasped. Taizo was incredulous: “Pearl Harbor? In Honolulu?”
Frank gestured for them to sit down in front of the console radio in the living room. “Where are the children?” Etsuko asked Ruth.
“Peggy’s napping and Donnie’s in the backyard playing with Slugger. I asked him to stay out there while we talked with Grandma and Grandpa.”
The four of them sat listening as the CBS program The World Today brought the latest news from its correspondent in Washington, D.C.:
“… attack was apparently made on all naval and military activities on the principal island of O’ahu. A Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor naturally would mean war…”
Taizo sat, disbelieving, as the correspondent went on to report that Japanese warplanes were also bombing Manila in the Philippines and the Japanese Navy was invading Thailand. Taizo was not naive; he had read about Japan’s brutal aggression in China and the South Pacific. But this was almost unimaginable. The country of his birth attacking not just his adopted home but the islands that had welcomed him with aloha and opportunity.
Yet just as frightening to him were the words of the young white men who had passed them on the road.
“This is bad,” he said gravely. “For us. For the Issei.”
“What do you mean, Papa?” Ruth asked.
“Not for the Nisei. You and Frank, your children, you are American citizens. But Okāsan and I—we are Japanese nationals. We are the enemy.”
“Papa, that’s ridiculous. You’re a farmer, not a soldier.”
“The government could deport us as—what is the word? Aliens.”
“I think we could all use a stiff drink,” Frank suggested. “Why don’t I get us some sake while we—”
Taizo stood up suddenly. “No. No. We need to go home. Okāsan?”
Etsuko did not understand, but stood. Taizo made a small bow to his daughter and her husband. “Give our regrets to the children.”
Taizo was silent on the drive home, where they found Jiro and the rest of the family—all but Stanley, who had taken an engineering job in Portland, Oregon—gathered around their own radio. Latest reports from Honolulu said bombs were falling not just on military targets but in parts of the city as well.
Etsuko began to cry, thinking of distant friends on Kukui Street and the kind Franciscan sisters at Kapi'olani Home.
Taizo declared, “We must burn everything Japanese in the house. What we cannot burn, we must bury.”
Jiro said, “I was thinking the same thing.”
“But Pop,” Ralph said, “is that really—”
“Moyashi nasai!” Taizo snapped back: Burn it!
The urgency in his voice silenced and propelled them into action. Horace and Ralph went into the fields to dig a deep hole while Jiro and Akira prepared a bonfire in the backyard. Rose took the children and kept them occupied as Nishi and Tamiko collected anything that hinted at loyalty, or even affection, for their native land: from blatantly suspicious items like an antique ceremonial sword to Japanese books, musical records, even origami “good luck” paper cranes. Tatami mats were rolled up; the Japanese scroll in the tokonoma alcove taken down; porcelain teacups, tableware, jars, no matter how beautiful or cherished, were gathered up.
Horace and Ralph used spades to break through the layer of hardpan, digging a three-foot-deep hole in an irrigation ditch far from the house. Soon they were tossing in century-old family heirlooms. Even the small stone marker from Mayonaka’s gravesite was interred.
With the bonfire ready, the tatami were thrown onto the pyre, the colorful straw mats quickly consumed by the flames. The tokonoma scroll incinerated instantly, as did the paper cranes, each barely making the fire flare. A beautiful bamboo basket used for flower arranging hissed and crackled as it died. The bonsai plants that Jiro had lovingly cultivated for twenty years were chopped into kindling and fed to the fire. Etsuko wept as she threw in family photos and a sheaf of letters, in kanji, from her mother in Japan.
Once the ashes had cooled, they were scattered across the fields. The blackened dirt in the backyard was turned over to leave no trace.
Exhausted, they shared a solemn supper. In the quiet normalcy of evening, Taizo began to wonder whether they had acted too precipitously.
Then, a little after seven o’clock, Jiro answered a loud rapping at the door, and three hakujin men in dark business suits introduced themselves as agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Taizo’s heart pounded, but he stood, ready to join his brother for whatever fate awaited them.
One of the FBI agents asked, “Is Akira Watanabe here?”
Jiro and Taizo were taken aback. “Akira?” Jiro said. “My son?”
“You’re Jiro Watanabe?” the agent said.
“Yes.”
“Where is your son?”
Hearing his name, Akira came to the door. “I’m Akira Watanabe.”
“Mr. Watanabe, you are a dual citizen of Japan and the United States?”
Akira replied politely, “Yes, but not by choice. The Japanese government grants all children of Japanese nationals the right of citizenship.”
“And did you make a wire transfer of funds to the Japanese government in April of 1939?”
Akira appeared baffled a moment, then said with a laugh, “Oh, that. Yes, I paid them money or else they would have drafted me into their army!”
“So you admit you gave money to Japan’s armed forces?”