“The main mess hall is back there in the grandstand, by the by. There are three dinner shifts, the first starts at four-thirty. Expect a wait.” More barracks were being assembled in the infield. Ben led the Watanabes to the far end of the track. “Over there, that’s one of our nursery schools—I see you’ve got little ones, ma’am, if you need some time alone to do housework, the preschool’s open every morning from nine to eleven. Oh, and if you’re partial to washing in hot water, I’d get to the showers early, by six A.M.”
They veered off the dirt road, through a grove of eucalyptus trees that ringed the track, toward one of many long, green-roofed buildings, noticeably older than the other barracks. “There it is,” Ben said cheerily. “Barrack 9.”
Barrack 9 was only partly occupied, but the barrack opposite it held a full complement of evacuees. All of its doors were propped open and the residents were outside their apartments, sitting in handmade chairs or working in victory gardens. The carefully tended flowers, pretty window boxes, and leafy vegetable patches lent it color and a homey touch, and many doors bore whimsical names like “The Bel-Air Arms” and “Ritz Apartments.” But there was no mistaking—at least not to a farm family—what the original purpose of the buildings were.
“These are stables,” Taizo said in astonishment and dismay.
“Yeah,” Ben allowed, “the first evacuees got most of the new housing. This is what’s left. But we’ve all got to pitch in for the war effort, right?”
Stunned, the Watanabes walked down to the far end of “Barrack” 9. Some wag had painted on the exterior wall: SEABISCUIT SLEPT HERE.
“Heh.” It was the best even Ralph could manage.
Ben opened the door and led the way inside.
As soon as Ruth entered, she choked at the smell of horse manure, which explained why all the neighbors had their doors open.
The “apartment” was nearly dark, the sunlight barely sifting through two grimy windows on either side of the door. Ben reached up to switch on the single bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling.
Illumination did not beautify the interior. The original horse stall had been divided into two rooms, each about ten feet by twenty feet. A pair of Dutch doors, gnawed over with teeth marks, marked the point at which the original equine tenant’s accommodations had ended; the front room, once intended for fodder, had been extended to create more space. The ceiling sloped down from a height of twelve feet in the rear to seven in the front, but the partitions between the one-room “apartments” didn’t extend all the way to the ceiling—so one could easily hear, from the other apartments in the barrack, the tinny blare of radios and the susurrus of people murmuring, talking, or just rustling back and forth.
“Oh my,” Etsuko said softly, running her hand along a wall. It had received a slapdash whitewashing, creating a chalk-white frieze of spiderwebs, horse hairs, bits of hay, and insects, all shellacked to the wall in bas-relief. The floorboards were covered with linoleum of indeterminate color beneath a two-inch layer of dust and wood shavings—but there were places where the original manure-stained boards were exposed, and still pungent.
Ruth felt the bile rising in her throat and struggled to keep it down.
The only furnishings in either room were half a dozen Army cots, their steel frames and bedsprings spray-painted yellow, folded up against the wall. The only light fixtures were the bare bulbs, one to a room, dangling on their cords from the ceiling.
“Where are the mattresses?” Jiro asked Ben.
“Oh, just go to the mattress department—one of those big buildings we passed on the way here. When the block manager makes his rounds, he’ll get you some cleaning supplies to spruce up the place. And there’s plenty of scrap lumber around, enough to build tables, stools, whatever furniture you want.”
The family stood there, silently aghast, until Frank finally thanked Ben for his help and the young man jauntily went on his way.
Donnie wrinkled his nose and said in a small voice, “Mama, it smells bad in here.”
Etsuko began to weep.
Ruth wrapped her arms around her children and told them, “Don’t worry, we’ll clean this up and get rid of that nasty smell, I promise.”
Taizo went to Etsuko and let her bury her face in his chest as she wept. “It will be all right, Okāsan,” he said with a gentle reassurance he did not truly feel. “We will gaman, and all will be right in the end.”
Gaman was a word rooted in Buddhism that meant “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.” Ruth had heard her father use it often after they moved to California. And now, after they had endured so much already, here they were, once more forced to gaman.
There was a tap on the open door. Ruth turned to see an Issei woman standing on the threshold, holding two brooms and a dustpan in her hand. “Konnichiwa,” she greeted them. “Welcome to Tanforan. I thought you might wish to borrow these. We did not have any when we first moved in.”
Etsuko quickly recovered herself and smiled. “Thank you, that is so kind of you. That is exactly what we need.”
The neighbor introduced herself as Shizuko Kikuchi. She was tiny even for a Japanese woman, but radiated strength and composure. After Etsuko introduced herself and her family, Shizuko gazed into Etsuko’s eyes—did she notice the redness around them?—and quietly assured her, “You and your family will be fine. If you need anything else, do not hesitate to ask.”
She bowed and left, but with this simple act of grace Shizuko seemed to bequeath a part of her strength and calm to the Watanabe clan. Etsuko began sweeping with a welcome purpose, as Nishi took the other broom in hand.
The men went to the “mattress department,” which turned out to be a stable filled with bales of hay where they were given empty mattress tickings and told they could fill them with as much as straw as they needed. Someone would sew up the tickings for them once they were full.
Taizo looked down at the empty ticking in his hand and the shame he had been trying to hide from his family cut like a tantō blade to his heart. But he had no choice but to provide for his family as best he could, and gaman.
Peggy and Donnie needed to go the bathroom, so Ruth took them to the nearest latrine—a small, tar-papered building, men’s on one side, women’s on the other. Unwilling to let Donnie go into the men’s room alone, she took them both into the ladies’ room, which, to Ruth’s shock, was equipped with communal toilets lined up in two rows, back to back, with no partitions or curtains between them. Afterward she lifted the kids up to wash their hands in a long tin “sink”—like a feeding trough—that ran the length of a wall. Halfway through washing Ruth noticed a handmade sign, written in Japanese, that had been taped onto the mirror above the trough. Ruth’s Japanese was a bit rusty because her parents spoke more English these days, especially around Donnie and Peggy, but she had no trouble reading:
PLEASE DO NOT EMPTY BEDPANS INTO THE SINK!
Ruth blanched and quickly scooted the kids outside, where she said cheerily, “Let’s have some fun and go for a walk!”
These were just the words to nudge Donnie out of his stupor: “I wanna see the racetrack again!” Ruth lifted Peggy and followed her son through the thicket of eucalyptus trees. The track was still crowded with pedestrians making way for the occasional Army supply truck. Inside the track’s oval, young men were playing baseball, which captivated Donnie; they watched the game a while, then wandered down to listen to the Tanforan Band practice “America the Beautiful.” Once again, everyone around them was smiling, as if they were taking in the county fair. Ruth wondered if they had been issued regulation smiles from the Army and hers had yet to be requisitioned. Or maybe, she admitted, they were just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Ruth and the kids returned to their barrack to find the door and windows open, the floor dust-free, and the linoleum revealed to be an odd reddish mahogany in color. Etsuko told her, “The house manager came by with Army blankets. Tomorrow he’ll bring us mops, soap, and buckets so we can wash the windows and give the walls and floor a good scrubbing.”
“If there’s still horse poop on the floorboards under the linoleum,” Ruth said, “that might not help much.”
“Then maybe it will help a little,” her mother replied stubbornly.