“All evacuees must bring the following items upon departure for the Assembly Centers,” they were told. “Bedding and linens—no mattress—toilet articles, extra clothing, and essential personal effects for each family member, the total limited to forty-two pounds per person.”
Everyone received inoculations against diphtheria, smallpox, and, most painfully, typhoid, which made the children howl. Then, after they had settled down, Ruth told them that they would be going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a few days.
“Why?” Donnie wanted to know. “An’ what’s this for?” he asked, holding up the card with his number on it.
“You’re staying on the farm because we’re going on a big adventure and we’ve got to get everything ready! And that card is so you don’t get lost. So you be good and do whatever Grandma and Grandpa tell you to do, all right?”
“They will be just fine,” Etsuko said, lifting Peggy.
The Federal Reserve Bank had been charged with assisting evacuees in the sale or storage of their personal property—in Florin the Community Hall and the gymnasium at the Buddhist Church served as warehouses for the Reserve. All property had to be crated and marked with the family’s name and address. What couldn’t be warehoused was usually sold for a fraction of its value to predatory “used furniture dealers” who knew their victims had no alternative but to sell, and quickly.
The Haradas needed to dispose of the diner’s entire stock—grill, refrigerator, tableware, counter, booths. Anticipating this, the previous week they had placed an ad in the Sacramento Bee: “Diner, Florin, all appliances, sacrifice, evacuees.” Grifters descended on them like carrion birds, offering one or two hundred dollars for ten thousand dollars’ worth of inventory.
“Go to hell!” Frank snapped at them, but for days the opportunists flocked in, offering ten dollars for a new refrigerator or five bucks for a vinyl booth. Frank insisted on selling the diner as a whole, hoping that the buyer would keep it running and continue to employ Vince and the busboys.
Finally, a Sacramento businessman, Carl Clasen, offered a thousand dollars for the entire contents of the diner—and Frank and Ruth reluctantly agreed to take a dime on every dollar they had spent. Clasen promised to keep on Vince and the busboys—then reneged and fired them all the next day.
Frank felt sick inside. With Ruth’s approval he gave Vince a hundred dollars and the busboys fifty apiece to get keep them afloat until they could find jobs, possibly in the suddenly booming defense industry.
Vince looked at the C-note in his hand, then up at Frank. “This—this is bullshit what they’re doing to you,” he said vehemently. “You and the missus—you’re the best goddamn Americans I ever met.” His voice broke, and all he could do was shake their hands. Ruth wanted to cry.
The day before evacuation, Florin’s business district was a ghost town, the windows of Japanese-owned stores boarded up with wooden planks, the street empty but for those rushing to divest themselves of their possessions.
Ruth and Frank were required to sell their car to the Army for the war effort, but members of the Japanese American Citizens League—a.k.a. the JACL—helped them crate up their furniture and move it into the Community Hall. Florin was now divided into four districts, and residents of each would be sent to different temporary “assembly” centers, with no respect to the familial ties so important to the Japanese. “We have to move in with my parents,” Ruth had said upon learning this. “We have to keep the family together.”
Frank had agreed. That left only one problem, and he was waiting for them in their backyard when a cab dropped them off at their empty house. They heard the barks of pleasure at their arrival coming from behind the gate.
“Oh God,” Ruth said under her breath.
“Bastards won’t even let us take our dog.”
“Should we bring him over to the farm, so the kids can say goodbye?”
“I think that will only make things worse,” Frank said. “He’ll be here when we get back—whenever that is.”
They brought Slugger next door to Jim and Helen Russell’s house. The couple was already standing in the doorway, waiting for them.
“You’re going to stay here while we’re gone,” Ruth told the dog, hoping somehow he understood. She hugged him, kissed him on his snout. “You be a good boy for Jim and Helen, okay?” Her voice broke. “We love you, Slugger.”
“He’ll be fine,” Helen said. “He’s crazy about Cathy and Jeff.”
“Thank you so much for doing this.”
“Happy to help,” Jim said. “If Bob Fletcher can look after the Okamoto, Nitta, and Tsukamoto farms, the least we can do is look after a dog.”
“If you ask me,” Helen said, voice quavering, “someday this country is going to regret what it’s doing today. That’s my opinion.”
Jim said lightly, “Don’t look at me, I voted for Wendell Willkie.” They all laughed. “Come on, I’ll drive you over to your parents’ place.”
Helen and Ruth hugged goodbye, then Ruth and Frank got into Jim’s truck. As he backed it out of his driveway onto the street, Ruth looked back and saw Slugger standing there, his head cocked to one side as if puzzled.
Tears in her eyes, she had to force herself to turn away.
When they reached the farm, Jim promised to pick them up the next morning.
Etsuko was waiting for them on the doorstep. “Welcome home, butterfly,” she said with a sadness in her voice that alarmed Ruth.
“What’s wrong, Okāsan?”
Etsuko, sounding shaken, told her, “Jiro received word today. Akira is being deported back to Japan.”
“What!” Ruth cried. “That’s crazy! He’s never even been to Japan.”
“Jiro fears he will be drafted into the Imperial Army. There is no consoling him.”
Still reeling, Ruth and Frank entered the house, as bare as the Haradas’ home. All that was left were a few mattresses to sleep on that night.
Donnie and Peggy rushed in to greet them, confused by all that was going on. “Where’s Slugger?” Donnie asked.
“He’s staying at Jim and Helen’s house until we get back.”
“When do we get back?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Ruth admitted.
“Where are we going?”
Frank said with false cheer, “To a camp, sport. Camps are fun, right?”
“And we’ll all be together,” Ruth assured them, even if it was a lie. “All” of them, she knew, might never be together again.
* * *
On Friday, May 29, Taizo woke before sunrise, washed, put on his business suit, then slipped outside to watch for the last time as the sun rose on what would always be, in his heart, his land—his and Jiro’s. The fields were beautiful at dawn, the sun pulling back night’s blanket on a bed of endless green and ripe red, the morning dew glistening like teardrops on the leaves. Taizo ached to stay here, in this moment, forever, one with the land he had loved and nurtured for almost two decades. But he forced himself to recall what was said, so long ago, after beloved Buddha had died:
Impermanent are all component things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature:
They come into being and pass away,
Release from them is bliss supreme.
Taizo’s mind sought bliss but his heart found only loss.
The Elk Grove train station was busier than anyone had ever seen it at eight-thirty in the morning. Florin’s Japanese had been leaving in daily shifts of five hundred per train; this group was the last to go. A ragged line of people—men in Sunday suits, women in dresses and hats, many openly weeping—was wrapped like a wilted garland around the tiny depot. A wooden ramp was piled high with rolls of bedding, suitcases, boxes, crates, duffel bags—so many lives and livelihoods, now reduced to a mountain of luggage and bundles of linen.