Part 13 (1/2)
”This must be the big, the final, roundup.”
Racially the children are a mixed bunch, some with as little as one-eighth j.a.panese ancestry. The blond ones stand out among their fellows, reminders that even the tiniest trace of j.a.panese blood, no matter how far back in your family, condemns you. Watching those little souls arrive, it's hard for Satomi too not to feel so hated that genocide seems unlikely.
”How can those kids possibly be a threat to anybody?” she fumes, while Haru despairs. He wants to keep faith with his country, but at the sound of the children singing ”G.o.d Bless America” he has to agree with Satomi that it makes no sense.
As the children settle into the Children's Village, the three large tar-papered barracks hastily erected to house them, fears of ma.s.s murder recede and other rumors get a look in. Hope floats around the one that says they are to be allowed home. But after a while hope itself makes them feel foolish. The more you hope for home, the farther away it seems to get.
Resignation is taking over so that even the horror stories of rats in the babies' cots fail to impress. Rats are no strangers in Manzanar, they have outnumbered the human residents from day one. In the company of c.o.c.kroaches the ubiquitous creatures scuttle under the barracks, run across the beds at night. They have to be chased from the dripping water spigots, pulled each morning from the glue traps set on the many mess hall floors.
”Check my bed for me, pleeease,” Satomi begs Haru every evening.
”They won't be there now,” he says. ”They come when it's dark, when you are sleeping.” His voice takes on a ghostly moan. He likes to hear her squeal.
The sc.r.a.ps of good news that come, however small, are welcome and made much of. A post office is to be set up, an occasional movie is to be allowed, and there is an extra sugar ration on its way.
The bad news, though, is always major, always dramatic. Tamura and Eriko fly into a panic when they hear that a congressman, noting the high birth rate in the camps, has proposed that all j.a.panese women of child-bearing age should be sterilized.
”It would ruin our girls' lives.” Tamura can't stop the tears.
”He must be a wicked man,” Eriko wails, her arms tight around the squirming Yumi, who has only just started menstruating.
”No one's taking him seriously,” John Harper, the popular camp doctor, says to Ralph and Satomi as they sit on the ground outside his office. ”Congress is not completely mad.”
”They'll have to shoot me before they try, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,” Satomi says, and Dr. Harper, not for the first time, is shocked at her language, impressed by her pa.s.sion. Since they first met when she came to him with a splinter in her hand that had festered, he has felt a connection with her.
”This will hurt,” he had warned. ”I'm going to have to dig a bit.”
He had laughed when she had cursed at the pain.
”d.a.m.n!”
”Never heard a j.a.panese female swear before,” he said.
Since that time, she and Dr. Harper have shared what Haru thinks of as an unsuitable friends.h.i.+p. Along with Ralph, they debate politics, discuss how the war is going, have conversations that sometimes turn argumentative. They agree that America will win the war and wonder together what life will be like when it is over.
Despite that he represents authority, it is hard, Satomi thinks, not to like Dr. Harper. There's no doubt that he is a good man. He may be ungainly, always dropping things, losing his papers, searching for his spectacles, but none of that counts for anything. Dr. Harper is a man filled with goodness and grace.
”There's a glow in him, don't you think?” she says to Ralph.
”Yes, that's it exactly, Satomi. He's the hail-fellow-well-met sort.”
Now and then, breaking the camp's rules with pleasure in his heart, Dr. Harper gives Satomi his old newspapers. It staves his guilt for a while, and what harm can it do? He never, before Manzanar, thought of himself as a rule breaker, but stupid rules don't deserve to be followed. Rules that say people must be kept in the dark, no papers, no radio, stay ignorant, beg to be broken.
”If you won't go to school, then it's time you went to work,” Haru insists. You should stop bothering the doctor, Satomi.”
”We're friends, Haru. We think alike. He agrees that America has betrayed its j.a.panese citizens. Unlike Dr. Harper, I didn't hear you complaining when they spoke of sterilizing us.”
”There are fools in every government,” he says, more to console himself than to placate her. ”It was never going to happen.”
Their neighbor Mr. Sano, with his usual lack of tact, has an unpopular take on the sterilization threat.
”I can see the sense in it. Just look at the Hamadas,” he declares, referring to the family of nine from the row behind Sewer Alley. ”Mrs. Hamada is pregnant again. The children run wild, disturbing everyone. If they can't control themselves, it should be done for them.”
Tamura and Eriko look at him with mouths open.
”He is blind to his own faults,” Tamura says.
”A disgrace,” says Naomi.
Along with Eriko, Tamura takes a camp job sewing camouflage for the Army. She is paid six dollars a month, which, added to the prisoners' clothing allowance of three dollars and sixty cents, allows her to order little things from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue.
”You shouldn't be working in that drafty old hangar, Mama. It's not good for you. The dust from the cotton isn't giving your cough a chance.”
”But I enjoy it, Satomi. I like the company, and it's fun. And anyway, what would I do all day otherwise? Besides, we need the money. You must have cotton for your dresses, thread and needles for me to sew them with.”
At quiet times they go together to the mess hall and pore over the wonderful things the catalogue has to offer. Flower-printed head scarves, the prettiest shoes, silky nylons with straight dark seams, and pink suspender belts with rubber clasps that look like the teats from babies' bottles. The most popular items are the short white socks that are fas.h.i.+onable among the older girls, who think they look neat with their black oxfords. Satomi, though, prefers in summer to wear her oxfords without socks, and she likes simple skirts, the plain white T-s.h.i.+rts from the boys' section.
”No wonder the girls think you're odd,” Tamura despairs.
Yumi, sparing no one her sulks, refuses to speak to Eriko until she agrees that she can give up the gray socks of the younger children and buy two pairs of the white ones.
”What can I do?” Eriko says. ”She won't even listen to Haru.”
”It's just a phase,” Tamura says.
”Did Satomi go through it?”
”Sometimes, Eriko, it seems like she was born going through it. I can't say that she has ever been an easy child.”
”She's not a child anymore, Tamura. I'd give up hoping, if I were you.”
Eriko is used to hard work and enjoys the company too. She could have taken more pleasure in it if it hadn't been for having to kneel on the cement floor all day, which makes her knees ache.
”You are the only one not working,” Tamura complains to Satomi. ”All you do is read Haru's books and talk to Dr. Harper. No wonder you are bored. Work would console you.”
”I won't do anything here that helps them, Mama. n.o.body should. In any case, I am not bored, I love reading.”
”You could help Haru with his volunteer work,” Tamura persists. ”Anyone can see how much pride he takes in it.”
Haru has found his vocation and is teaching reading to the third-grade children. He coaches the softball team and helps distribute the care packages that come from the Quakers. Tin toys for the children, comics and pencils, and sometimes soft blanket-st.i.tched scarves and hats.
Yumi was hoping for bobby pins, a watch, perhaps; instead she receives a fan made from cedar wood, which she hangs on the wall by her bed. She pretends that it is a silly thing of no use to anyone, but she keeps it free from dust so that it won't lose its scent, and no one but her is allowed to touch it.
Haru, a little embarra.s.sed at the Quakers' charity, takes pleasure at least in the children's joy at receiving the toys. He could have earned eight dollars a month if he had wanted, laying drainage pipes around the camp, but he has his pride.
”It's insulting. Eight dollars! What other Americans would work for that kind of money? They would be paid ten times more.” He may be loyal to America, but like Aaron he is not to be predicted.