She spent the afternoon tending to family but around four o’clock heard that Harry Ueno had been returned from Independence, was now in the jail inside the Manzanar police station, and the Committee of Five was trying to secure his release. There was to be another meeting at Mess Hall 22 at six P.M. This information came from a neighbor, not Ralph, whom Ruth imagined was at the Free Press reporting what he’d seen to his editor.
At seven o’clock there was a knock on their door and Ruth, assuming it was Ralph, opened it in relief—only to find that her visitor was Koji Ono, the forty-something Issei who served as their block manager, one of the internee-elected representatives on the advisory council to the WRA.
“Mrs. Harada, there’s a phone call for you in my office.” There was no apartment-to-apartment telephone service at Manzanar, just service between offices. “It’s Dr. Goto. Sounds important.”
“Dr. Goto?” She was at first perplexed, then worried.
She and Koji hurried to his office—it was already near freezing outside—and she picked up the phone. “This is Ruth Harada.”
“Mrs. Harada, James Goto.” He sounded breathless, quite at odds with his usually calm bedside manner. “Am I correct in recalling that one of your brothers works for the Manzanar Free Press?”
She felt a chill of premonition. “Yes. Ralph.”
“There was a—well, frankly, a mob here, just a few minutes ago,” he said. “They wanted to kill Frank Tayama. We hid him and when they couldn’t find him, they broke into two groups—one going to the jail to free Harry Ueno and the other, I heard them say, bent on killing staff members on the Free Press.”
“What?”
“They had a list, a ‘death list’—God knows who all could be on it. I wanted to warn you, tell your brother to hide, just in case.”
Ruth was nearly hyperventilating but managed to stammer, “Thank—thank you, Doctor. I’m so grateful you called.”
“Good luck. We’re all going to need some tonight.” He hung up.
Ruth thanked Koji and hurried back to the apartment. The kids were asleep and Frank, sedated by the codeine, was not remotely conscious. She could hear, in the distance, the sound of people running in the street, and knew there was only one thing she could do. She grabbed one of the heavy Navy peacoats that had been distributed to every household in Manzanar, put on a wool cap, and went next door to her parents’ quarters. “Okāsan, would you look after Frank and the children while I run an errand?”
“Right now?” Etsuko asked.
“What kind of errand?” Taizo asked.
“I won’t be long,” she said, ignoring the question. “Don’t worry.”
She tried to keep the fear out of her voice and rushed out.
It was a cold, moonless night as Ruth headed south on C Street. There was a light wind at her back but at least the sand and pebbles it stirred up weren’t flying directly into her face. It wasn’t long before she was in Block 20, knocking urgently on the door to Barrack 2, Apartment 1, the bachelors’ quarters. “Ralph? Are you in there?”
The door opened. Ralph’s friend and roommate Satoru Kamikawa stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Harada, hello. I’m afraid Ralph’s not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Probably still covering the demonstration. He and I were at the meeting in Block 22 when it broke into two groups, one headed for the police station to free Ueno, the other to the hospital to—”
“To kill Fred Tayama, I know. Dr. Goto says the mob couldn’t find Tayama and were going after staff members of the Free Press.”
“Yes, we heard Joe Kurihara’s ‘death list’ at the mess hall meeting. But I’m sure Ralph’s not on the list, Mrs. Harada. I might be, but not him.”
“Not yet, maybe.”
“We get these death threats at the Free Press all the time. Whenever Chiye writes a pro-American editorial someone threatens to kill her.”
“Forgive me if I’m not as blasé about it as you,” Ruth said, irritated. “Is Ralph at the police station?”
“Yes, he wanted to see it through.”
“And you didn’t?”
Satoru admitted, “No. Things were starting to look pretty bad. I tried to talk Ralph into coming back with me, but … your brother is a very determined young man.”
“Yes,” Ruth said, “and I’m going to kick his determined head in if somebody already hasn’t. Thank you.”
She turned and wended her way through Block 20 to B Street, where she turned right. She heard increasing noise and commotion ahead of her, and the probing of searchlights from on high made her feel like a criminal on the lam. She pulled her cap lower over her ears against the chill, then turned on Third Street until she reached A Street. She turned right, then stopped short, her heartbeat skipping like a stone across water.
There were at least five hundred people gathered in front of the police station; like her, most were bundled up in Navy peacoats. Cautiously she made her way around the back of the crowd. The protestors were separated from the police station by a buffer zone of about a hundred military police armed with machine guns, rifles, and shotguns; but the soldiers were significantly outnumbered by the protestors.
One man was standing on the roof of a parked car, declaring in a loud angry voice: “We will kill all the dogs in Manzanar, starting with the biggest dog, Tayama! Then George Hayakama and Tom Imai and the rest of the stooges on the camp police force! And those Communist dogs at the Free Press, Chiye Mori, Tad Uyeno, James Oda—”
Those last names quick-froze Ruth’s blood more than the biting cold. Her gaze swept across the building that ran parallel to the police station—where she saw, in a window, a familiar pair of eyes peeking out between curtains.
Her heart skipped again, this time with relief.
Slowly she made her way toward First Street, trying not to attract any undue attention; fortunately the crowd was focused on the speaker atop the car. She glanced up the street. Hanging from the very first door on the right was the sign: DEPARTMENT OF REPORTS / FREE PRESS.
She backed up, reached the door; it was locked. She waited until there was a burst of applause from the crowd to the oratory, then rapped as quietly as she could on the clapboard door. When no response came, she waited for more covering crowd noise, then rapped again and whispered as loudly as she dared, “Ralph! For God’s sake, it’s me, Ruth! Open up.”
The door quickly opened, Ruth rushed in, and a surprised Ralph locked the door behind her.
“Sis! What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered back. “The protesters are out to kill Free Press staff, and here you are in the first place they’ll look!”
“Oh hell, I’m not on any death lists,” Ralph assured her. “I’m strictly small fry. The big fish went into hiding after the afternoon rally.”
“You’re taking a hell of a chance!”
“It’s my job. Satoru and I were here this afternoon, watching the crowds, and no one thought to look for us here.”
“Ralph, please come back to our barrack, you’ll be safer—”
“Sis, I’m a newsman. Somebody has to report what’s happening.”
“And you seriously think the administration will let you print that?”
“Maybe not. But I’ll still try.” He nodded to the side window. “C’mon, I think that looney tune on the car has finally stopped talking.”
Ruth reluctantly followed him to the window. From outside now came the sounds of—voices raised in song? In Japanese? Ruth understood the words—Kimigayo wa, chiyo ni yachiyo ni, “May your reign continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations”—but Ralph had to identify it for her as “Kimigayo,” the Japanese national anthem.
“What’s going on inside the police station?” Ruth asked.
“The Committee of Five went in a while ago. They brokered the deal to get Ueno back to Manzanar, but now the crowd wants him released. And they want inus killed. I think the committee’s lost control of the mob.”