Part 2 When the Emperor Was Divine

They had come for him just after midnight. Three men in suits and ties and black fedoras with FBI badges under their coats. “Grab your toothbrush,” they’d said. This was back in December, right after Pearl Harbor, when they were still living in the white house on the wide street in Berkeley not far from the sea. The Christmas tree was up, and the whole house smelled of pine, and from his window the boy had watched as they led his father out across the lawn in his bathrobe and slippers to the black car that was parked at the curb.

He had never seen his father leave the house without his hat on before. That was what had troubled him most. No hat. And those slippers: battered and faded, with the rubber soles curling up at the edges. If only they had let him put on his shoes then it all might have turned out differently. But there had been no time for shoes.

Grab your toothbrush.

Come on. Come on. You’re coming with us.

5 We just need to ask your husband a few questions.

Into the car, Papa-san.

Later, the boy remembered seeing lights on in the house next door, and faces pressed to the window. One of them was Elizabeth’s, he was sure of it.

Elizabeth Morgana Roosevelt had seen his father taken away in his slippers.

The next morning his sister had wandered through the house looking for the last place their father had sat. Was it the red chair? Or the sofa? The edge of his bed? She had pressed her face to the bedspread and sniffed.

10 “The edge of my bed,” their mother had said.

That evening she had lit a bonfire in the yard and burned all of the letters from Kagoshima. She burned the family photographs and the three silk kimonos she had brought over with her nineteen years ago from Japan. She burned the records of Japanese opera. She ripped up the flag of the red rising sun. She smashed the tea set and the Imari dishes and the framed portrait of the boy’s uncle, who had once been a general in the Emperor’s army. She smashed the abacus and tossed it into the flames. “From now on,” she said, “we’re counting on our fingers.”

The next day, for the first time ever, she sent the boy and his sister to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their lunch pails. “No more rice balls,” she said. “And if anyone asks, you’re Chinese.”

The boy had nodded. “Chinese,” he whispered. “I’m Chinese.”

“And I,” said the girl, “am the Queen of Spain.”

15 “In your dreams,” said the boy.

“In my dreams,” said the girl, “I’m the King.”

In China the men wore their hair in long black pigtails and the ladies hobbled around on tiny broken feet. In China there were people so poor they had to feed their newborn babies to the dogs. In China they ate grass for breakfast and for lunch they ate cats.

And for dinner?

For dinner, in China, they ate dogs.

20 These were a few of the things the boy knew about China.

Later, he saw Chinese, real Chinese — Mr. Lee of Lee’s Grocers and Don Wong who owned the laundry on Shattuck — on the street wearing buttons that said, I AM CHINESE, and CHINESE, PLEASE. Later, a man stopped him on the sidewalk in front of Woolworth’s and said, “Chink or Jap?” and the boy answered, “Chink,” and ran away as fast as he could. Only when he got to the corner did he turn around and shout, “Jap! Jap! I’m a Jap!”

Just to set the record straight.

But by then the man was already gone.

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Later, there were the rules about time: No Japs out after eight p.m.

25 And space: No Japs allowed to travel more than five miles from their homes.

Later, the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park was renamed the Oriental Tea Garden.

Later, the signs that read INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY went up all over town and they packed up their things and they left.

All through October the days were still warm, like summer, but at night the mercury dropped and in the morning the sagebrush was sometimes covered with frost. Twice in one week there were dust storms. The sky turned suddenly gray and then a hot wind came screaming across the desert, churning up everything in its path. From inside the barracks the boy could not see the sun or the moon or even the next row of barracks on the other side of the gravel path. All he could see was dust. The wind rattled the windows and doors and the dust seeped like smoke through the cracks in the roof and at night he slept with a wet handkerchief over his mouth to keep out the smell. In the morning, when he woke, the wet handkerchief was dry and in his mouth there was the gritty taste of chalk.

A dust storm would blow for hours, and sometimes even days, and then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it would stop, and for a few seconds the world was perfectly silent. Then a baby would begin to cry, or a dog would start barking, and from out of nowhere a flock of white birds would mysteriously appear in the sky.

30 The first snows fell, and then melted, and then there was rain. The alkaline earth could not absorb any water and the ground quickly turned to mud. Black puddles stood on the gravel paths and the schools were shut down for repairs.

There was nothing to do now and the days were long and empty. The boy marked them off one by one on the calendar with giant red X’s. He practiced fancy tricks on the yo-yo: Around the World, Walk the Dog, the Turkish Army. He received a letter from his father written on thin lined sheets of paper. Of course we have toothpaste in Lordsburg. How else do you expect us to brush our teeth? His father thanked him for the postcard of the Mormon Tabernacle. He said he was fine. Everything was fine. He was sure they would see each other one day soon. Be good to your mother, he wrote. Be patient. And remember, it’s better to bend than to break.

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Not once did he mention the war.

His father had promised to show him the world. They’d go to Egypt, he’d said, and climb the Pyramids. They’d go to China and take a nice long stroll along that Great Wall. They’d see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Colosseum in Rome and at night, by the light of the stars, they’d glide through Venice in a black wooden gondola.

“The moon above,” he sang, “is yours and mine. . . .”

35 The day after the FBI had come to the house he had found a few strands of his father’s hair in the bathtub. He had put them into an envelope and placed the envelope beneath the loose floorboard under his bed and promised himself that as long as he did not check to make sure that the envelope was still there — no peeking, was his rule — his father would be all right. But lately he had begun waking up every night in the barracks, convinced that the envelope was gone. “I should have taken it with me,” he said to himself. He worried that there were large messy people now living in his old room who played cards night and day and spilled sticky brown drinks all over the floor. He worried that the FBI had returned to the house to search one more time for contraband. We forgot to check under the floorboards. He worried that when he saw his father again after the war his father would be too tired to play catch with him under the trees. He worried that his father would be bald. [. . .]

. . .

Late at night, in the darkness, he could hear his mother praying. “Our father, Who art in heaven . . .”

And in the morning, at sunrise, coming from the other side of the wall, the sound of the man next door chanting. “Kokyo ni taishite keirei.”

Salute to the Imperial Palace.

Now whenever he thought of his father he saw him at sundown, leaning against a fence post in Lordsburg, in the camp for dangerous enemy aliens. “My daddy’s an outlaw,” he whispered. He liked the sound of that word. Outlaw. He pictured his father in cowboy boots and a black Stetson, riding a big beautiful horse named White Frost. Maybe he’d rustled some cattle, or robbed a bank, or held up a stage coach, or — like the Dalton brothers — even a whole entire train, and now he was just doing his time with all of the other men.

40 He’d be thinking these things, and then the image would suddenly float up before him: his father, in his bathrobe and slippers, being led away across the lawn. Into the car, Papa-san.

He’ll be back any day now. Any day.

Just say he went away on a trip.

Keep your mouth shut and don’t say a thing.

Stay inside.

45 Don’t leave the house.

Travel only in the daytime.

Do not converse on the telephone in Japanese.

Do not congregate in one place.

When in town if you meet another Japanese do not greet him in the Japanese manner by bowing.

50 Remember, you’re in America.

Greet him in the American way by shaking his hand. [. . .]

On December 7 it will have been a year since I last saw you, I read your letters every night before I go to bed. So far the winter here has been mild. This morning I woke up at dawn and watched the sun rise. I saw a bald eagle flying toward the mountains. I am in good health and exercise for half an hour after every meal. Please take care of yourself and be helpful to your mother.

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For four days after his arrest they had not known where he was. The phone had not rung — the FBI had cut the wires — and they could not withdraw any money from the bank. “Your account’s been frozen,” the boy’s mother had been told. At dinner she set the table for four, and every night before they went to bed she walked out to the front porch and slipped her house key beneath the potted chrysanthemum. “He’ll know where to look,” she said.

On the fifth day she received a short note in the mail from the immigration detention center in San Francisco. Still awaiting my loyalty hearing. Do not know when my case will be heard, or how much longer I will be here. Eighty-three Japanese have already been sent away on a train. Please come see me as soon possible. She packed a small suitcase full of her husband’s things — clothes, towels, a shaving kit, a spare pair of eyeglasses, nose drops, a bar of Yardley soap, a first-aid book — and took the next train across the bay.

55 “Was he still wearing his slippers?” the boy asked her when she returned.

She said that he was. And his bathrobe, too. She said that he had not showered or shaved for days. Then she smiled. “He looked like a hobo,” she said.

That night she had set the table for three.

In the morning she had sent all of the boy’s father’s suits to the cleaners except for one: the blue pin-striped suit he had worn on his last Sunday at home. The blue suit was to remain on the hanger in the closet. “He asked me to leave it there, for you to remember him by.”

But whenever the boy thought of his father on his last Sunday at home he did not remember the blue suit. He remembered the white flannel robe. The slippers. His father’s hatless silhouette framed in the back window of the car. The head stiff and unmoving. Staring straight ahead. Straight ahead and into the night as the car drove off slowly into the darkness. Not looking back. Not even once. Just to see if he was there.

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60 Christmas day. Gray skies. A bitter cold. In the mess halls there were pine trees decorated with stars cut out of tin cans and on radios throughout the barracks Bing Crosby was singing “White Christmas.” Turkey was served for supper, and candy and gifts from the Quakers and the American Friends Service were distributed to the children in every block. The boy received a small red Swiss Army knife from a Mrs. Ida Little of Akron, Ohio. May the Lord look down upon you always, she had written. He sent her a prompt thank you note and carried the knife with him in his pocket wherever he went. Sometimes, when he was running, he could hear it clacking against his lucky blue stone from the sea and for a moment he felt very happy. His pockets were filled with good things.

The winter seemed to last forever. There were outbreaks of flu and diarrhea and frequent shortages of coal. They had been assigned only two army blankets per person and at night the boy often fell asleep shivering. His hands were red and chapped from the cold. His throat was always sore. His sister left the barracks early in the morning and did not return until long after dark. She was always in a rush now. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold. “Where are you going?” “Out.” She ate all her meals with her friends. Never with the boy or his mother. She smoked cigarettes. He could smell them in her hair. One day he saw her standing in line at the mess hall in her Panama hat and she hardly seemed to recognize him at all. [. . .]

“When I first met your father I wanted to be with him all the time.”

“I know what you mean.”

“If I was away from him for even five minutes, I’d start to miss him. I’d think, He’s never coming back. I’ll never see him again. But after a while I stopped being so afraid. Things change.”

65 “I guess so.”

“The night of his arrest, he asked me to go get him a glass of water. We’d just gone to bed and I was so tired. I was exhausted. So I told him to go get it himself. ‘Next time I will,’ he said, and then he rolled over and went right to sleep. Later, as they were taking him away, all I could think was, Now he’ll always be thirsty.”

“They probably gave him a drink at the station.”

“I should have brought it to him.”

“You didn’t know.”

70 “Even now, in my dreams, he’s still searching for water.” [. . .]

In the morning she woke burning with fever. Their mother brought her a tin cup filled with water and told her to drink but the girl refused. She said she wasn’t thirsty. “Nothing’s passing through these lips,” she said. She pulled back the blanket and began to pick at a scab on her knee. The boy grabbed her wrist and said, “Don’t.” She turned away and looked out the window. A woman in a pink bathrobe walked by carrying a chamberpot toward the latrines. “Where are we?” the girl asked. “What happened to all the trees? What country is this anyway?” She said she’d seen their father walking alone by the side of the road. “He was coming to take us away.” She looked down at her watch and asked how it had gotten to be so late. “It’s six o’clock,” she said. “He should have been here by now.”

In February a team of army recruiters arrived looking for volunteers, and the loyalty questionnaire was given to every man and woman over the age of seventeen.

Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?

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The man next door answered no and was sent away along with his wife and his wife’s mother to join the other disloyals at Tule Lake. The following year they were repatriated to Japan on the U.S.S. Gripsholm.

75 Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power or organization?

“What allegiance?” asked the boy’s mother. She said she had nothing to forswear. She’d been in America for almost twenty years now. But she did not want to cause any trouble —“The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”— or be labeled disloyal. She did not want to be sent back to Japan. “There’s no future for us there. We’re here. Your father’s here. The most important thing is that we stay together.”

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She answered yes.

They stayed.

Loyalty. Disloyalty. Allegiance. Obedience.

80 “Words,” she said, “it’s all just words.” [. . .]

On a warm evening in April a man was shot dead by the barbed-wire fence. The guard who was on duty said the man had been trying to escape. He’d called out to him four times, the guard said, but the man had ignored him. Friends of the dead man said he had simply been taking his dog for a walk. He might not have heard the guard, they said, because he was hard of hearing. Or because of the wind. One man who had gone to the scene of the accident right after the shooting had noticed a rare and unusual flower on the other side of the fence. It was his belief that his friend had been reaching out to pick the flower when the shot had been fired.

At the funeral there were nearly two thousand people. The casket was strewn with hundreds of crepe-paper flowers. Hymns were sung. The body was blessed. Years later the boy would recall standing beside his mother at the service, wondering just what kind of flower it was the man had seen.

A rose? A tulip? A daffodil?

And if he had plucked it. Then what?

85 He imagined exploding ships, clouds of black smoke, hundreds of B-29s falling down in flames from the sky. One false move, pal, and you’re dead. [. . .]

Summer was a long hot dream. Every morning, as soon as the sun rose, the temperature began to soar. By noon the floors were sagging. The sky was bleached white from the heat and the wind was hot and dry. Yellow dust devils whirled across the sand. The black roofs baked in the sun. The air shimmered.

The boy tossed pebbles into the coal bucket. He peered into other people’s windows. He drew pictures of airplanes and tanks with his favorite stick in the sand. He traced out an SOS in huge letters across the firebreak but before anyone could read what he had written he wiped the letters away.

555

Late at night he lay awake on top of the sheets longing for ice, a section of orange, a stone, something, anything, to suck on, to quench his thirst. It was June now. Or maybe it was July. It was August. The calendar had fallen from the wall. The tin clock had stopped ticking. Its gears were clotted with dust and would not turn. His sister was sound asleep on her cot and his mother lay dreaming behind the white curtain. He lifted a hand to his mouth. There was a loose molar there, on top, way in back. He liked to touch it. To rock it back and forth in its socket. The motion soothed him. Sometimes he’d taste blood and then he’d swallow. Salty, he’d think to himself, like the sea. In the distance he could hear trains passing in the night. The pounding of hooves on the sand. The faint tinkle of a tin bell.

He’d close his eyes. That’s him, he’d think. He’s on his way.

90 He could come back on a horse. On a bike. In a train. On a plane. In the same unmarked car that had once taken him away. He could be wearing a blue pin-striped suit. A red silk kimono. A grass skirt. A cowboy hat. A halo. A dark gray fedora with a leaf tucked up under the brim. Maybe he’d touch it — the leaf — and then he’d raise his hand slowly into the air, as though he were Jesus, or the man with the withered arm, or even General Douglas MacArthur. “I have returned,” he’d say. Then his eyes would light up and he’d reach down into his pocket and pull out a single white pearl. “I found this by the side of the road,” he’d say. “Any idea whose it might be?”

It could happen like that.

Or maybe the boy would be lying in bed one night and he’d hear a knock, a soft tap. “Who is it?” he’d say. “It’s me.” He’d open the door and see his father standing there in his white flannel bathrobe all covered with dust. “It’s a long walk from Lordsburg,” his father would say. Then they would shake hands, or maybe they’d even hug.

“Did you get my letters?” he’d ask his father.

“You bet I did. I read every single one of them. I got that leaf, too. I thought of you all the time.”

95 “I thought of you too,” the boy would say.

He’d bring his father a glass of water and they would sit down side by side on the cot. Outside the window the moon would be bright and round. The wind would be blowing. He’d rest his head on his father’s shoulder and smell the dust and the sweat and the faint smell of Burma Shave and everything would be very nice. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he’d notice his father’s big toe sticking out through a hole in his slipper. “Papa,” he’d say.

“What is it?”

“You forgot to put on your shoes.”

His father would look down at his feet and he’d shake his head with surprise. “Son of a gun,” he’d say. “Would you look at that.” Then he’d just shrug. He’d lean back on the cot and make himself comfortable. He’d pull out his pipe. A box of matches. He’d smile. “Now tell me what I missed,” he’d say. “Tell me everything.”