Once the pieces of wood for making furniture had run out, and tasks had been assigned to all those who felt impatience gnawing at their entrails, most of the evacuees succumbed to boredom. Days seemed endless in this nightmare city supervised by disinterested guards in their nearby towers and in the distance by the magnificent mountains of Utah. Every day was the same, nothing to do, lines and more lines, waiting for the mail, passing the idle hours playing cards, inventing pointless jobs, repeating the exact same conversations that gradually lost all meaning as the words became threadbare. Ancestral traditions began to disappear, parents and grandparents saw their authority diminish, couples were trapped in a proximity without intimacy, families began to disintegrate. They could not even sit down together for meals, but were forced to eat in the din of the communal mess halls. However much Takao insisted the Fukuda family sit together, his boys preferred to go with others of the same age, and it was hard to restrain Megumi, who had turned into a real beauty, with pink cheeks and flashing eyes. The only ones free from the torments of despair were the little children, who roamed the camp in packs, getting up to mischief and imagining adventures, and saw all this as one long vacation.
Winter arrived early. When the snow began to fall, each family was given a coal-burning stove, which soon became the center of social life, and discarded military clothing was distributed. These faded green uniforms were too large, and were as depressing as the frozen countryside and black huts. The women began to make paper flowers for their dwellings. At night there was no way to prevent the wind, which brought slivers of ice with it, from whistling through the cracks in the huts and lifting the roofs. Like everyone else, the Fukuda family slept in all their clothes, wrapped in the pair of blankets they had been given, curled up together on the camp beds to lend each other warmth and comfort. Months later, when summer came, they would sleep almost naked and wake up covered in a layer of ash-colored sand as fine as talcum powder. Despite all this, they considered themselves fortunate, because they were together. Other families had been split up; first the men had been taken off to what were known as relocation camps, then the women and children sent to another one. In some cases it was two or three years before they were reunited.
The correspondence between Alma and Ichimei suffered right from the start. The letters took weeks to arrive, although the postal service was not to blame so much as the slowness of the Topaz officials, overwhelmed by having to read the hundreds of letters that piled up on their desks every day. Alma’s letters, which in no way put the safety of the United States in danger, were allowed through without a problem, but Ichimei’s were so mutilated by the censorship that she had to guess at the meaning of his sentences between the lines of black ink. His descriptions of barracks, food, latrines, the guards’ behavior, even comments about the weather, were all regarded as suspicious. Advised by others more practiced in the art of deception, Ichimei sprinkled his letters with praise for the Americans and patriotic outbursts until he felt so nauseous he had to stop. Instead he decided to draw. It had been more than usually difficult for him to learn to read and write, and at ten he was still not sure of all the alphabet, which he mixed up without proper regard for spelling, but he had always had a good eye and a steady hand for drawing. His illustrations passed through censorship without a hitch, and so Alma was able to learn about the details of his life at Topaz as if she were looking at photographs.
December 3, 1986
Yesterday when we talked about Topaz I didn’t mention the most important thing, Alma: not everything was negative. We had parties, sports, art. We ate turkey at Thanksgiving and decorated the barracks for Christmas. People sent us parcels with candy, toys, and books. My mother was always busy with new plans; everyone respected her, even the whites. Megumi was in love and overjoyed with her work at the hospital. I painted, planted the vegetable garden, mended broken things. The classes were so short and easy that even I got good grades. I used to play almost all day long; there were lots of children and hundreds of stray dogs, all of them the same, short legged and with wiry hair. The ones who suffered most were my father and James.
After the war, the people from the camps spread throughout the country. The youngsters became independent; the idea of living isolated in a poor imitation of Japan was finished. We integrated into America.
I think of you. When we meet I’ll make you tea and we’ll talk again.
Ichi
IRINA, ALMA, AND LENNY