Back home, she decided not to mention what she had seen. Ralph dropped by to tell the family that Satoru had gotten him a job with the Manzanar Free Press as a copy boy. “Eighty percent of the people here work,” he said. “Only sixteen bucks a month, but that buys a lot of gum and cigarettes. There’s even an agricultural project south of the camp—farmlands where we grow our own food.” Horace decided on the spot to apply for a job on the farm crew. Taizo felt a stirring of hope and excitement for the first time since evacuation, and he surprised Horace by announcing he, too, would apply. “Why not?” he asked. “I am a farmer; why not farm here?”
Only Jiro had no interest in work, intending to occupy himself by writing to his daughters and to anyone in Japan who might know of Akira’s whereabouts. “I am sixty-four years old. I consider myself reborn,” he declared airily, referring to the tradition of kanreki, when a man reaches the age of sixty-one and is “reborn” into another cycle of life.
Taizo shook his head in evident disgust. “Some of us,” he said coldly, “are not afraid of a hard day’s work.” He and Horace left to sign up.
At which point Nishi—displaying a moxie quite uncharacteristic for her—dropped her husband’s dirty laundry into his lap and countered, “Reborn man may change his own diapers.”
Jiro looked down at the wrinkled underwear in his lap—and then roared with laughter.
Even more surprisingly, he got up and took it to the laundry shed.
Nishi, watching him leave, actually seemed saddened by this.
“His spirit is broken,” she said softly. “He loved to work. He loved our son. They are both gone from his life now.”
And for the first time any of them had seen, Nishi began to weep. Etsuko folded her arms around her and let her mourn her missing child.
* * *
Manzanar was always intended to be self-supporting, with the desert adjacent to the camp cleared of sagebrush and leveled for farmland. The fierce wind had carved out sand dunes worthy of the Kalahari; internee crews did the hauling of sand and leveling by hand. They also reconditioned eight miles of irrigation ditches dug back in the 1900s, with water to be drawn from mountain streams flowing down from the heights of the Sierra Nevada. The soil was light and sandy, so fertilizers were required to make the land arable again. As water flowed into the arid soil, the land drank it in like someone abandoned for dead in the desert. In May a late planting was done, and now, in late September, Horace and Taizo—part of an internee crew of men in denims and wide-brimmed hats, carrying bentō lunches and canteens of water—walked through the camp’s south gate, past the barbed wire, to reap the fall harvest.
Fanning out from the base of majestic Mount Williamson were 120 acres of cultivated farmland as green and fertile as any Taizo had ever seen: fields of lettuce, red ripe tomatoes, and small yellow peppers; radishes for pickled daikon; rows of tall cornstalks; the uri melons that had tasted so good at dinner; and the dark green rinds of kabocha, Japanese winter squash.
The crew was entirely Nisei, with a handful of Issei. Taizo was frankly amazed that they had been let out of camp without Army supervision. As they crossed Bairs Creek toward the farm fields, Taizo said as much to the foreman, a farmer from Fresno, who laughed: “Wasn’t always like this. Up until June we had five hakujin foremen overseeing us. Knuckleheads didn’t know a goddamn thing about farming.”
“What happened in June?” Horace asked.
“A hundred of us quit in protest. That got the Army’s attention, and now the only hakujin in the Agriculture Section are the farm superintendent and his assistant, who know enough about farming to let us go do our jobs.”
“And they are not afraid we will run away?” Taizo asked.
“We convinced them that no Japanese would dishonor himself by running away after committing to do a job. They decided to trust us.”
“Most honorable of them,” Taizo said wryly.
“Careful,” the foreman joked, “saying anything good about the administration can get you branded an inu.”
“A dog?” Horace said, puzzled.
“A spy. FBI informant.”
“Do such informants actually exist?” Taizo asked.
“How do you think the Feds knew who to arrest after Pearl Harbor? They had help.” He let it go at that and Taizo did not inquire further.
Horace and Taizo were assigned to harvest the daikon, which had to be picked before the ground froze. The foreman continued, “Up here it can drop to twenty-two below zero by the first of October, and drop fast. Use the small trowels to check the roots, and don’t forget to drink plenty of water—it’ll be over ninety degrees by noon.”
Taizo had done this so often that he had no need for the small trowel. With his fingers he gently scraped away soil around the radish’s leaves, enough to expose the roots: they were at least an inch long, ready to be harvested. He grabbed the plant by the leaves, wiggled it a little to gently loosen it from the soil, then pulled. Taizo smiled at the fine white tuber, placed it in a wooden crate, and moved on to the next one.
He worked his way down the row, only occasionally finding a root too small to be harvested. He was surprised by how quickly he worked up a sweat in this dry heat, but paid it no mind. He paused and gazed up at the soaring peaks of the Sierra—at the “purple majesty” of these American titans—and paradoxically felt almost as if he were back in Japan.
“Hey, Pop, slow down and stop showing me up, huh?”
Taizo wiped perspiration from his brow and glanced back at Horace’s teasing smile. Taizo was truly happy for the first time since he left Florin, but as the hours wore on he was bothered by brief but painful cramps in his calves and thighs—muscles twitching as if they were the strings of a shamisen being plucked. At first he thought he was simply out of shape, but by the end of the day the spasms had spread to his shoulders, something he had never experienced even when shouldering a heavy wooden yoke. After one particularly painful cramp he could not stop himself from grunting; the foreman heard this and approached him.
“Watanabe-san, are you all right?”
“Yes, fine,” Taizo lied. “Just a little cramp. I must have pulled a muscle.”
“Where does it hurt?”
Embarrassed that he had betrayed his discomfort, Taizo told him.
“That’s all, just cramps? No dizziness, fatigue…?”
“No, no.”
The foreman nodded. “Heat cramps,” he said, without undue concern. “Working in this broiling sun can bring them on.”
“I have been drinking water, as you told us to—”
“Dr. Goto says it’s got something to do with not enough sodium. Go home, rest in a cool place if you can find it. Maybe drink some water mixed with salt. If you’re not better by tomorrow, go to the hospital.”
“And if I am better?”
“Get some salt pills to bring to work and I’ll see you at six.”
Taizo was relieved that the cramps were something ordinary and common. Trying not to limp, he made his way back to the camp’s south gate.
At home, Etsuko mixed a tablespoon of salt with a quart of water and poured her husband a glass. Taizo took a swallow and tried not to blanch.
“Is it that bad?” Etsuko asked.
“Not quite as bad as the carp’s blood I was given for pneumonia when I was twelve.” But he drank two full glasses, then lay down on his cot. “I think I will rest here for a while. Go to dinner without me.”
“I will bring something back for you.”
“If they have more uri,” he said, “that would not be amiss.”
Etsuko said worriedly, “Perhaps you should wait a day or two before going back to work…”
“I shall be fine, Okāsan.”
He closed his eyes. Within minutes he was asleep.
And he was right: the next morning he felt strong and refreshed, free from cramps. Horace went to the dispensary to get his father some salt pills, and together they headed back to work.
* * *
After dropping off the children at nursery school, Ruth made the long walk to the post office in Block 1 to pick up the family’s mail. Standing in line behind a Nisei woman about her age, Ruth watched as a military policeman inspected a package the woman was picking up. Ruth squirmed a little as she recognized its contents: several bright orange tins of Sheik Condoms. Satisfied there was no illegal contraband in the package, the MP handed it to the woman.
As she turned, the woman saw Ruth staring at the open package. “I—I’m sorry,” Ruth said, blushing in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to—”