“What’s done is done,” Ruth said, realizing only after she’d said it that she was echoing her parents’ words in similar times of grief and helplessness.
None of the adults asked them what had happened; they could clearly see the shame and distress in Frank’s eyes. Peggy saw it too but had no qualms about asking, “Daddy, what’s wrong?”
He managed a smile and ruffled her hair. “Nothing, sweetie.” He turned to Horace. “You want to take the wheel for a while?”
“Sure.”
They drove out of the business district and down Florin Road. Soon farmland was rolling past on both sides, but the scenery was only slightly more encouraging than what they’d seen downtown. Some of the land—like the Yamada, Tanaka, and Tamohara farms, which had been left in the care of Jerry and Vivian Kara, and the Okamoto, Nitta, and Tsukamoto farms, looked after by Bob Fletcher—were flourishing, their fields lush with trellises of green grapevines and acres of green strawberry plants.
But here, too, there had been arson, writing its black signature on the land: the charred remains of farmhouses, only brick chimneys and cement foundations still standing. The fields were ashen shadows of themselves.
Sadder still were the farms—presumably left in someone’s care—that had seemingly been abandoned and left to die.
As Horace turned up French Road, toward what used to be the Watanabe farm, Ruth began to feel the same queasiness that Frank had at the diner. The car pulled into the driveway, parked, and the Watanabes got out to survey what had once been their home, their green inland sea. The structures were still standing but the grounds had been looted of anything of value: tractor, tools, animals, even the wooden posts of the corral. The fields were filled not with ripening fruit but with thickets of weeds and the dried tendrils of grapevines clinging to rotting trellises. Even the buried family heirlooms had been unearthed and stolen.
Etsuko’s eyes filled with tears. Perhaps, she thought, it is better that Taizo did not live to see this; it would have broken his heart.
“But … wasn’t Dreesen planning on working this?” Frank said.
“He did not want the farm,” Etsuko said bitterly. “He only wanted us not to have it. To keep it out of Japanese hands.”
They stood staring into this wasteland, this embodiment of Dreesen’s hate reaching out to torment them, unfettered by the constraints of death.
At last, Horace spoke up. “I … think I’d like to drop by Bob Fletcher’s place. See if he could use some help on one of the farms he’s looking after.”
Etsuko turned from the empty shell of the home she had loved, walking with quiet determination back to the car. “I have seen enough here.”
* * *
Bob Fletcher was delighted to see the Watanabes again and told Horace that he could indeed use his help harvesting the Tsukamoto farm: “Al and Mary have been living in Kalamazoo, Michigan, you know, but they’re planning on coming back here this summer. I’ve got migrant workers from Oklahoma working their farm and the others, but I could always use an extra hand with the harvest. And if you need a place to stay, I don’t think Mary and Al would mind if I put you up in their house until they got back.”
After they’d thanked Bob for his generosity, Frank drove to the Tsukamoto farm, dropping off Horace, Rose, Jack, Will, and their luggage. Then Frank, Ruth, Etsuko, Peggy, and Donnie headed back into town to check on the belongings they had left in the Florin Community Hall. Members of the JACL were there to help them locate their things, and everything was accounted for and undamaged—not that they had anywhere to take it.
They left the Community Hall and were halfway to their car when they heard a familiar voice:
“Ruth! Ruth!”
Ruth turned and saw, across the street, her old friend Chieko—“Cricket”—her always-expressive face full of delight.
Ruth felt the same joy. Cricket ran across the street and the two women embraced. “Oh, Ruth, it’s so good to see you! Welcome home!”
“It’s so good to see you too.” This was truly the only decent thing to happen today. “I heard you were sent to Rohwer.”
“Oh yeah, that was fun. Marooned in the middle of a swamp. Mosquitoes the size of crows, I swear! But we made it back okay, give or take a few pints of blood, and I even got my old job back at the post office.”
“You remember my mother, and Frank and the kids…”
“Oh my gosh, look how big they are! Hi, Donnie, Peggy, remember me?”
“No,” the kids said, in indifferent unison.
Cricket laughed. “That’s okay, you were little guppies then. Not big fish like you are now.” She turned back to Ruth. “I saw what happened to your old place, I’m so sorry. Do you have somewhere to stay?”
“No, we just arrived.”
“Then you’re staying with us,” Cricket decided. “We’ve got plenty of room. Oh, what a beautiful cat!” She poked her finger into Snowball’s carrying crate; Snowball hissed. “I know, honey, you don’t like it in there, do you? Well, we’ve got plenty of room for you to roam around, you’ll love it!”
“Cricket, we don’t want to impose—” Ruth began.
“Oh, for gosh sakes, you’re not. Stay with us however long you need to get your bearings. That is all, I am not taking no for an answer! I’m almost done at the post office—I work first shift, so I can pick up Abby from school at three. Meet me at my folks’ place, it’s still standing and we’re all living there!”
She raced back across the street and into the post office building.
“I am glad some things remain the same,” Etsuko said with a smile.
* * *
Cricket, her husband, Mitch, and their daughter, Abby, lived along with Cricket’s widowed father in the family farmhouse off Gerber Road, which had been conscientiously looked after by George Feil. Though Cricket’s otōsan, Nobu, was the same age as Taizo would have been, he did not hesitate to join his hired migrant workers in preparing the fields for harvesting. Etsuko watched him work from her bedroom window and wanted to cry. She was not comforted by the lush fields and familiar terrain surrounding it; in truth, she did not enjoy being there. But Cricket and her family were so generous and kind that she would have died rather than betray her feelings in any way.
Frank spent his time looking for jobs at cafes, lunch counters, or diners anywhere from Florin to Walnut Grove, but few Japanese restaurants had reopened yet and the hakujin eateries were still wary of hiring “Japs.”
Meanwhile, half a world away, Soviet troops launched their final assault on Berlin, Mussolini was executed by Italian partisans, and on April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker before Allied troops could capture him. Each evening the two families would gather around the big console radio to hear the good news from Europe—culminating, on May 7, with the German army’s unconditional surrender to Allied forces. The next day America and the world celebrated V-E Day, the end of war in Europe.
But in the wake of the Nazi defeat, new horrors unlike any the world had ever seen were exposed: the Nazi extermination camps, where six million Jews were starved, tortured, and gassed to death. Pfc 1st class Ralph Watanabe—whose field artillery battalion was attached to the U.S. 4th Division—was outside the city of Dachau when he and his unit liberated a satellite slave labor camp, Kaufering IV Hurlach. As Ralph wrote his sister: