Manzanar was laid out in a grid pattern of thirty-six blocks, each clearly enumerated; finding their assigned barrack was not difficult. Each block contained fourteen barracks plus a mess hall, recreation hall, latrines, and laundries. The blocks were widely spaced with large open areas every four blocks that served as firebreaks in an arid environment packed with combustible timber. The monotony of the grid pattern and the drab tar-paper construction was occasionally relieved by colorful “pleasure parks”—green spaces alongside barracks or mess halls where residents had dug koi ponds, planted trees, and decorated with fragments of clear quartz, red amethyst, and silver-gray hematite foraged from the surrounding mountains.
Ruth was surprised to see scores of children in the streets, shooting marbles or tossing softballs back and forth. To the children, it seemed, Manzanar was an adventure, a giant sandbox to play in. Ruth couldn’t help but smile at their energy and innocence, while Peggy, Donnie, Jack, and Will were excited to see so many potential playmates.
Ralph found his quarters in Block 20, Barrack 2, Apartment 1, which he was to share with five other bachelors. One of them, Satoru Kamikawa, was also from Florin, and wrote for the Manzanar Free Press. He and Ralph hit it off immediately, and Ralph told his family he would catch up with them after they were settled in.
They went on to their new home: Block 31, Barrack 3, Apartments 1–3. There was a construction crew of Nisei men working on Barrack 5, and Frank asked them whether these buildings were new construction.
“Not new,” the foreman said, “but a helluva lot better. These shacks were put up in a hurry—no insulation, no flooring other than wood planks. We’ve been putting in drywall and Celotex lining, laying down linoleum…”
“You a contractor by trade?” Frank asked.
The man laughed. “I’ve got a degree in history from USC. The WRA trained us. It’s up to you to decide how well.”
Each “apartment”—a single room—was twenty by twenty-five feet, furnished with the requisite single light bulb dangling from the ceiling, four steel cots fitted with mattress covers (to be filled later with hay), two brown Army blankets per person, and a large Coleman oil heater. The walls and ceiling had been newly lined with plasterboard and buttressed with Sheetrock, and the linoleum floor was a cheerful red.
“Compared to the horse stalls,” Horace’s wife, Rose, observed, “this is like something out of Good Housekeeping.”
“Are we gonna live here, Mommy?” Donnie asked.
“Yes we are, sweetie. You like it?” Ruth asked.
“Yeah. It doesn’t smell like poop.”
They all laughed, then heard, from behind them, the voice of another child: “Hi!”
Ruth turned to see a grinning boy, maybe twelve years old, standing in the open doorway of their apartment.
“Well, hi,” she said, “who are you?”
“Akio,” he answered, but before he could say anything more, the boy’s mother—a dignified-looking woman wearing round eyeglasses—appeared beside him in the doorway. She bowed to the new arrivals. “My apologies for my son’s intrusion into your privacy.”
“If this place is anything like Tanforan,” Ruth said, “I’m not sure there’s much privacy to intrude on.”
The woman laughed and introduced herself as Teru Arikawa; she and her family lived in Barrack 4, opposite them. She invited her new neighbors over for tea and rice cakes, where they met her husband, Takeyoshi; sons Akio, Burns, and Robert; and their two daughters, Alice and Helen. In addition there were two framed photos of sons James and Frank, who were both serving in the United States Army.
“I thought the Army wasn’t accepting Nisei,” Ruth said, confused. “Aren’t we all classified as … enemy aliens?”
“Frank joined before the war and James enlisted after Pearl Harbor, before the ban went into effect,” Takeyoshi said proudly. “They cannot go into combat, but they are still serving their country, at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.”
Ruth took in their neat and comfortable apartments and asked, “This is lovely. How long have you all been here?”
“Since June,” Teru said. “Oh, you should have seen it then! There were holes in the walls, in the floor, in the ceiling—the wind blew right through them. At night, even with the heater on, it was freezing cold.”
“Below freezing,” her husband corrected. “We had to go to bed with our clothes and coats on. And in the morning we woke up with sand all over our blankets, our faces, in our mouths … you are lucky to have come now.”
The families exchanged stories of their internment and of their roots in Japan until a panel truck drove up with the Watanabes’ furniture and other household items. “Thank you so much for the tea and rice cakes,” Etsuko told Teru. “We are fortunate to have such gracious neighbors.”
“As are we,” Teru said with a small bow.
* * *
Ruth, Frank, Donnie, and Peggy settled into the first apartment; Horace, Rose, Jack, and Will into the second; and Taizo, Etsuko, Jiro, and Nishi into the third. Taizo was unhappy at having to share a room with Jiro, but there was simply no alternative arrangement. His family knew only that there had been a falling out between them and that Taizo blamed Jiro for their being here. Ruth could hardly blame her father; his fraternal devotion had cost him dearly.
They hung up window curtains, nailed shelves to the walls; tapestries and silk scarves softened the drab edges of the barrack. At five o’clock the family was summoned to dinner by mess hall bells that pealed three times a day. The meal was decent enough—fish, rice, and uri, a yellow Japanese melon—and that night the oil heater kept them mostly warm. But to be safe, Etsuko ordered some heavier blankets from the Sears, Roebuck catalog.
After breakfast Frank applied for a job at their mess hall while Ruth, Peggy, and Donnie braved another dust storm—handkerchiefs held over their mouths to avoid breathing in the sand—to enroll in one of the camp’s eighteen nursery schools. It was bright and airy, with simple homemade furniture. Most girls wore summer dresses and the boys overalls, but several boys were in short pants—understandable in this heat—and Ruth made note to sew Donnie a pair. “You two be good, okay? I’ll see you this afternoon.”
The dust storm had passed and as she walked back along B Street, Ruth felt mildly encouraged. At least the accommodations here were an improvement over Tanforan. Then, as she neared the intersection with Eighth Street, she heard voices raised in argument.
About a block away a trash truck was idling near the curb, manned by three bellicose men—she would later learn they were Kibei: born in America but educated in Japan—shouting at two Nisei men nearby.
“Do not believe the lies the hakujin feed you!” one Kibei yelled. “The Americans are being beaten at Guadalcanal! They have no more warplanes left, no aircraft carriers!”
“Ah, bullshit,” the first Nisei shot back.
“You are fools,” another man on the truck shouted, “throwing your lot in with the hakujin! When Japan wins this war, they will kill traitors like you!”
As if this wasn’t alarming enough, Ruth now noticed that the garbage truck was flying two flags: a black pirate flag, of all things, replete with a white skull-and-crossbones, and another banner proclaiming, in Japanese, MANZANAR BLACK DRAGON ASSOCIATION.
“Screw you and Tojo too!” the second Nisei spat out, as he and his friend turned and walked away.
This inflamed the Kibei, who gunned the engine. The truck lurched forward, nearly sideswiping the two Nisei, who reared back just in time.
The truck came roaring down the street, oblivious, it seemed, to Ruth. She jumped back as it barreled through the intersection, honking its horn.
She leaned against a barrack wall, her heart hammering, not knowing whether to scream or to laugh. A garbage truck flying the Jolly Roger? Really? And yet there were other people on the street who seemed to take no undue notice of the truck. What just happened here?