Etsuko now found herself alone in the apartment, and that night the twenty-by-twenty-five-foot room seemed larger than it ever had—and achingly empty. Etsuko resolved to be brave and curled up on her cot, her back turned to her husband’s empty cot. But her resolve soon crumbled and she began to weep, wishing that this was all a terrible dream she could rouse from and find Taizo beside her, back in their old bedroom overlooking the strawberry fields. Her Buddhist faith told her she had to let go of what was and face what is, but how could she let go of a man who was a part of her, a man she had lain beside and loved for forty years?
She wept as softly as she could, but after five minutes she heard the click of the door opening, the sound of someone padding toward her, then lying down in Taizo’s cot. For an instant she allowed herself the fantasy that it was he, that he had changed his mind and returned to her. But the reality was almost as comforting. She heard her daughter’s voice whispering “Sssh, sshh, it’s all right, Okāsan,” and then Ruth’s body inched over and held Etsuko, comforting her as Etsuko had comforted Ruth as a child. And now Etsuko wept in gratitude for the welcome warmth of her daughter’s arm draped across her, for her gentle assurances, and for the gift that Ruth had always been to her.
Chapter 12
1943–1944
Tule Lake Segregation Center was a two-and-a-half-square-mile city resting on a dry lake bottom; the sandy soil was stubbornly resistant to green growth and yielded little in the way of shade. Unlike the mountainous walls surrounding Manzanar, here there were only low hills, an ancient volcanic crater the internees dubbed Abalone Mountain, and the broken crown of a volcanic butte known as Castle Rock. The camp was secured with a battalion of a thousand military police on a base outside and twenty-eight guard towers with search beacons ablaze at night like the burning eyes of God.
The registration clerk tried to assign Jiro, Nishi, and Taizo to the same apartment, but Taizo insisted on rooming apart from Jiro. He ended up sharing an apartment—filthy and reeking of cigarette smoke—with two bachelors more interested in gambling than housekeeping. The block manager, a man in his thirties named Yamasora, brought Taizo a broom and fresh bed linens. Yamasora, like Taizo, came from Okayama-ken and the two hit it off, chatting about their old home, soon to be Yamasora’s home once more (he was at Tule because he had applied for repatriation to Japan). After Taizo’s corner of the apartment was made more habitable, Yamasora offered him a tour of the camp’s facilities, including the well-stocked canteens, and invited him to dinner. Standing in line at the mess hall, they were strafed by the cold knife’s edge of a wind that set Taizo to shivering so badly that, once inside, it took two cups of hot tea to thaw him.
“Hah! And this is a warm night,” Yamasora told him.
Later, Taizo composed a carefully worded letter to Etsuko:
I find myself in comfortable surroundings. In many ways Tule Lake is superior to Manzanar: there are three well-stocked canteens that sell everything from Hawaiian shirts to fresh shrimp, sashimi, crab, and tuna. There is also excellent daikon grown here at the camp. Housing is still scarce as more “disloyals” arrive each day, but I am assured that when you are given clearance to come to Tule we will be assigned quarters together. I miss you and Dai and Haruo and the children very much, but this war will not last forever and I know that someday soon we shall all be together again.
Less than a week later, a truckload of internee farm workers overturned on the way to the agricultural fields outside camp—killing one man, injuring twenty-eight others. Tempers flared in the “colony”—as internee housing was called by administrators—when it was revealed the truck driver had been an inexperienced minor. Aggravating the tragedy was grievance over the fact that eight hundred farm workers had not been paid back wages. As laborers refused to return to the fields, meetings were called to discuss the matter.
It was resolved to form an organization, Daihyo Sha Kai—“representative body”—to lobby for safer working conditions. One person was elected to this organization from each block; Yamasora was elected from Block 17.
Daihyo Sha Kai then elected a committee of seven to negotiate with the administration—but Tule Lake’s Project Director, Ralph Best, refused to negotiate, fired the striking workers, and shipped in strikebreakers from “loyal” camps to reap the fall harvest. WRA trucks removed thirty-two thousand pounds of food supplies from camp warehouses to the tent city where the “scabs” were quartered. Not only did residents suspect the scabs were getting the best food, the strikebreakers were also earning as much in two days as the striking workers had been paid for a month’s work.
* * *
Ruth and Frank invited Etsuko to live with them until her transfer was approved, but Etsuko, not wishing to be an inconvenience, declined. So one evening Ruth asked Donnie and Peggy, “Would it be all right if Snowball went to live with Grandma for a while so she won’t be lonely for Grandpa? You can go over and play with her anytime.” They readily agreed to help Grandma, who accepted their kind gesture. Snowball, still bursting with energy, amused Etsuko with her antics and kept her company through the long nights. The grandchildren visited every day after school and the sound of their laughter, though occasionally raucous, was infinitely preferable to the haunting silence of one lonely person in a room full of ghosts.
Ruth also took Etsuko along to the baseball games that Frank and the kids enjoyed. The World Series had just ended in St. Louis with the Yankees victorious over the Cardinals 4–3, but at Manzanar there were numerous off-season games to keep the crowds happy. The one thing everyone in Manzanar could agree on was baseball. The camp boasted a hundred men’s teams and fourteen women’s teams; the sport, enthusiastically embraced in all the camps, helped knit together the evacuees’ fractured lives with a thread of community identity, morale, self-esteem, and much-needed normalcy.
Etsuko understood the game but it hardly mattered to her who won, whether it was the Manzaknights vs. the Solon Nine or the Dusty Chicks vs. the Zephyrettes. She was thrilled by the roar of the crowd and delighted in the cheers of her grandchildren. Their joy helped fill the absence in her heart.
Also welcome were letters from Ralph, who was in basic training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and reported on tensions that existed in the 442nd between the Hawaiian-born Nisei and the mainland Nisei:
The Hawaiian Nisei talk island pidgin, which the mainland Nisei don’t understand, and they call the mainlanders “Kotonks”—“the sound you get when you knock the mainlanders’ empty heads together”—and the mainland Nisei in turn call them “Buddhaheads.” First time anyone tried calling me a Kotonk I shot back in pidgin, “Why, boddah you? Like beef?” That shut them up. Since I was born and raised in Hawai'i but lived on the mainland, neither side knows what to make of me. For once the bullies are afraid of picking on me, hah!
While weather still permitted, Ruth arranged picnics along the banks of Bairs Creek, which meandered through the southwestern corner of the camp on its way to the ever-thirsty Los Angeles Aqueduct. Paths wound through a small wooded glade and rustic bridges spanned the creek; here picnickers feasted on everything from yakitori and rice to hot dogs and potato salad.
Taizo was never far from Etsuko’s thoughts, and as they walked the arbored pathways she told Ruth stories she had never shared before, of her childhood in Hōfuna, of her marriage to Taizo: “Our families were neighbors. I knew Taizo’s face across the border of our two farms and long before we reached maturity our families had arranged our marriage. I remember being grateful that our homes were close—unlike some brides, who moved so far away they never saw their families again.”
She laughed. “How naive I was! When Taizo’s father died and his eldest brother inherited the vineyard, I had no idea I would end up moving across an ocean and never see my mother and father again.”