Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 severely damaged twenty-one ships of the US fleet, leaving a tally of twenty-three hundred dead and more than a thousand wounded, and in less than twenty-four hours completely changed the Americans’ isolationist mentality. President Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and a few days later Hitler and Mussolini, Japan’s allies, declared war on the United States. The entire country was mobilized to fight the war that had been soaking Europe in blood for the past eighteen months. The reaction of widespread terror provoked by Japan’s attack was whipped up by a hysterical media campaign that warned of an imminent invasion on the Pacific Coast by the “yellows.” Hatred toward East Asians, which had already existed for a century, was exacerbated. Japanese who had lived in the country for years, as well as their children and grandchildren, suddenly became suspected of spying and collaborating with the enemy. The roundups and arrests began soon afterward. It was enough for a boat to have a shortwave radio—the only way for fishermen to communicate with the land—for the owner to be taken in. The dynamite used by small farmers to remove trunks and rocks from their crop fields was seen as proof of terrorism. Shotguns, and even kitchen knives and other tools, were impounded; so too were binoculars, cameras, small religious statues, ceremonial kimonos, and documents in another tongue. Two months later, Roosevelt signed the order to evacuate for reasons of military security all persons of Japanese origin from the Pacific coast states—California, Oregon, and Washington, where the “yellow” troops might carry out the feared invasion. Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah were also declared military zones. The US Army was given three weeks to build the necessary shelters.
In March of 1942, San Francisco awoke plastered with warnings that announced the evacuation of the Japanese population. Takao and Heideko did not understand them, but their son Charles explained. First of all, the Japanese could not go outside a radius of five miles from their homes without a special permit and had to obey a nighttime curfew from eight p.m. to six a.m. The authorities began to raid houses and confiscate possessions; they arrested influential men who might incite treason, community leaders, company directors, teachers, pastors, and took them away to undisclosed destinations; their terrified wives and children were left behind. The Japanese had to quickly sell off whatever they owned at knockdown prices, and to close their businesses. They soon discovered that their bank accounts had been frozen; they were ruined. The plant nursery Takao Fukuda and Isaac Belasco had planned together never saw the light of day.
By August, more than a hundred and twenty thousand men, women, and children would be evacuated, old people snatched from hospitals, babies from orphanages, and mental patients from asylums. They would be interned in ten concentration camps in isolated areas of the interior, while cities would be left with phantom neighborhoods full of empty homes and desolate streets, where abandoned pets and the confused spirits of the ancestors who had arrived in America with the immigrants wandered aimlessly. The evacuation order was aimed at protecting not only the Pacific coast but also the Japanese themselves, as they could become the victims of misunderstanding by the rest of the population; it was a temporary solution and would be carried out in a humane fashion. This was the official line, but meanwhile the hate speech spread. “A snake is always a snake, wherever it lays its eggs. A Japanese-American born of Japanese parents, brought up in a Japanese tradition, living in an atmosphere transplanted from Japan, inevitably and with only rare exceptions grows up as Japanese and not American. They are all enemies.” It was enough to have a great-grandfather born in Japan to be seen as a snake.
As soon as Isaac Belasco learned of the imminent evacuation, he went to see Takao to offer help and reassure him that his absence would be a short one because the evacuation was unconstitutional, violating the principles of American democracy. His Japanese partner replied with a deep bow. He was profoundly moved by this man’s friendship, because in recent weeks his family had suffered insults, snubs, and even aggression from other whites. Shikata ga nai, what can we do, Takao told him. That was his people’s slogan in times of adversity. When Isaac insisted, Takao asked a special favor of him: to allow him to bury the Fukuda sword in the garden at Sea Cliff. He had managed to hide it from the agents who raided his house, but it wasn’t safe. The sword represented the courage of his forebears and the blood shed for the emperor; it could not run the risk of being dishonored.
That same night the entire Fukuda family, dressed in the white kimonos of the Oomoto religion, went to Sea Cliff, where Isaac and his son, Nathaniel, received them in dark suits and wearing the yarmulkes they used on the rare occasions they attended a synagogue. Ichimei brought his cat in a basket covered in a cloth and handed him to Alma to look after for a while.
“What’s his name?” she asked him.