American Girl
By Tony Talbot
Copyright 2011 Tony Talbot
Smashwords Edition
Licence Notes
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Brian Kamens at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, Washington State for the information about Bainbridge Island and Washington State evacuations.
Thanks to Char for posting it to me!
Thanks also to the researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington State for help in researching the Terminal Island evacuations.
Thanks to Jenny Pratt for the wonderful cover art!
http://www.jenny-pratt.co.uk
Dedicated to my Wife,
as always
with my life and my heart.
Authors Note
The characters in this story are fictional.
The things that happened to them are not.
Chapter 1: May 1942
The soldiers came for us last night.
It was Papa's fault of course; if he'd done what Mama wanted and the Government ordered and registered, we would have evacuated with everyone else two weeks ago. But I can't blame him for standing up to them, not after the way they treated us when they took my radio.
I heard him arguing with Mama about the evacuation order last week when I was supposed to be asleep, their muffled voices carrying up the stairs.
"I'm a good citizen, they can't do this to us. We've committed no crime. We're good people."
Mama mumbled something and Papa replied. "The government, what do they know? They're a bunch of fools who try to tell us what to do. Not me."
A long mumble from Mama.
"Go into hiding? Where would we go? I'm not hiding from them. And those stories you heard are only rumours, anyway."
Short mumble.
"Yes, I'm worried about them too. If it were just us, that would be different. But I came here to give them a better life. What does it tell them about this country if we run away?"
Then, last night: the expected, dreaded, battering knocks on the door. I was halfway up the stairs to bed and froze, my head swivelling slowly towards the entrance hall. I watched Papa’s legs and shoes come out of the parlour, hesitate, then walk towards the back door. Then the legs and boots of men as they shoved their way inside. Shouting, yelling, Papa backing away. Wooden rifle stocks appeared in my sight and then I saw the uniforms.
There were men from the army in our home.
Mama pushed past me down the stairs, my brother at her heels, cowering. One of the soldiers spotted us petrified and shouted at us not to move. I expected his rifle to come up and to start shooting, but the worst thing he aimed was a stubby finger.
Another soldier climbed the stairs two at a time towards us as more men in uniform poured into our home, moving towards the kitchen and the back yard.
The man who came through the door first seemed to be in charge. He barked questions to Papa, how many people live here, are we the legal owners of this property and the store, a dozen more. Papa nodded or murmured short answers, for once being smart enough to remain quiet, his eyes tracking the stream of soldiers who poured past him.
The soldier on the stairs ushered us backwards, upstairs. I tried to shove him away to reach Papa, but he held me back easily. Mama laid a hand on my shoulder and we retreated.
"You have five minutes. Take only what you can carry! Only what you can carry!"
The man who pushed us upstairs shouted it, over and over. In my case, only what you can carry turned out to be two suitcases that tried to rip my arms from their sockets when I lifted them. Mama tore clothes from her wardrobe and shoved them into a suitcase, then did the same for my brother who had slipped into a glassy-eyed stare, his fingers in his mouth. I don't think Mama knew she was crying.
The soldier jostled us downstairs and out of the store. I was glad it was the middle of the night; with the two coats I was wearing, I'd be sweating like a fried pig by the time we reached the end of the street.
When I looked back towards the store, Papa had recovered himself enough to argue with one of the soldiers, waving his arms at the store and his precious car. Small silver glinted in his hand, and I realised he didn't want to hand over his keys. The soldier had a pistol at his belt, and when he undid the holster flap Papa caught the obvious movement. He handed over the keys with shaking fingers and no other argument.
There were army trucks parked at both ends of the street, and there seemed to be soldiers everywhere. We were quickly surrounded by men with guns and frog-marched down the street.
I didn't expect so many people to come and watch.
People I thought were neighbours and friends catcalled us as we marched. Some of them spat and shouted, calling us the filth of the world and worse. Karl, my sweet, devoted Karl, looked at me in disgust and hawked phlegm at my feet.
As they hauled us aboard the army truck, I realised Papa wasn't with us. Soldiers were bundling him into another truck and I leapt down from the tailgate, screaming at the indifferent faceless men, mindless machines that only looked through me while I shouted at them, Where are you taking him, why isn't he coming with us?
The soldiers hauled me back into the truck with no effort and slammed the tailgate shut in my face. I watched them drop the canvas flap on Papa's truck and wondered if I'd ever see him again.
As our truck bounced away, I saw the flag of my country, my country, hanging from homes and businesses, schools and offices. That red and white, repeated and repeated. The flags fluttered and hung limp, danced in the night wind and waved us on our way. I loved that flag and I loved the country behind that flag even more.
Now that country had thrown us from our home in the middle of the night and treated us like the worst vermin. The country I loved was sending us to a...a...prison camp.
I was ashamed to be American.
Chapter 2: A place called Pearl Harbor
December 7, 1941
Mary Tanaka was a block from home when the trouble started.
It wasn't surprising she hadn't noticed the man leave the house ahead of her. For a start, there was Kenny chattering without a pause about his Sunday school class beside her. And she was thinking about the beautiful new radio she'd been presented with this morning for her sixteenth birthday, all while she was hurrying home so they could climb into her father's car and drive across the bridge to Bremerton, then take the ferry across Puget Sound to Seattle, a shopping trip at Nordstroms for her, and a -
"Damn lousy backstabbin Jap."
The man pushed against her to punctuate his sentence. Mary stumbled into Kenny, who had fallen suddenly silent. She looked up into a glowering face and pulled Kenny closer to her.
"Wh-what?"
His breath was heavy with alcohol. He shoved her and she stumbled back, too startled to run.
"Just heard it on the radio. Stuffed us up good over there, huh? Proud of your country, huh? Well, maybe we ain't beat yet, huh? Huh?"
Each huh came with another push. Mary staggered back, fighting to keep her feet, looking desperately around for someone to help them, but the street around her was empty. She clenched Kenny's hand in a death grip, terrified to release him.
Proud of your country? But...my country is America.
Stuffed us up good over there? What?
"I...I don't...don't understand what you're talking about."
The man sneered. "Course ya don't. Innocent as a little lamb, you are. Filthy nip, livin right here on Manette, right next to Bremerton. Prob'ly told ya yella friends when the boats was in."
From the corner of her eye, she saw a blue figure and waved her free arm to get his attention, too terrified to slide her eyes away from the man looming over her to see if it was a cop. The blue shape saw her, hurried over and dropped a meaty hand on the shoulder of the drunk.
"Problem here sir?"
The man turned red eyes on the cop. "I was just explainin to the Jap - ," he spat the word - "that we ain't beat yet. Kickin us while we wasn't lookin just makes us madder."
Somehow, the cop had managed to ease himself between Mary and the drunk during this peculiar speech. "Ohh, sure ya were. Threatenin' a young lady and her little brother is all I see. Why don't you keep goin' in the other direction like a good lad?" He favoured the man with a smile and touched the nightstick at his waist.
The man considered the cop and the nightstick for a drunken minute before giving up and staggering away, muttering and throwing black looks back at the three of them. They watched him disappear down the block.
The cop sighed and turned back to Mary. "Now then, miss...?"
She tried a few attempts to find her voice before she located a squeak. "Uh, Tanaka. Mary Tanaka." A squeeze of her hand made her look down. "And Ken'ichi."
"I don't think it's safe for you to be out at the minute, Miss Tanaka. Not with what's happened." He nodded his head in the direction the drunk had disappeared. "And he won't be the only one today. Where do you live?"
She pointed to the general store down the block.
The cop's eyes lit up. "Oh, that Tanaka. Tell you what I'll do, Miss Tanaka." She barely heard the voice beside her, but the cop looked down at Kenny and smiled.
"Sorry...Miss and Mister Tanaka. Tell you what I'll do, I'll walk with you that last block. How's that sound?"
Mary could have hugged him with relief but settled for a brisk nod. The three of them fell into step. Some of her composure returned as she followed the solid blue shape of the cop for the short distance home. She hardly noticed his eyes scanning the people around them, his head snapping to one side when he caught a movement from the corner of his eye. Instead, she struggled to untangle the angry man's words. Maybe he'd been drunk or something...he certainly smelled as if he'd been drinking.
Kicking us while we were down? Proud of my country?
What did that mean? Did he think she was from Japan?
The drunk wouldn't know she was born in America and had never been to Japan, but she doubted he would even care; the colour of her hair and the almond shape of her eyes were enough for him, enough for a lot of people. It was true that things hadn't been going well with America and Japan because of the war with Germany, but was something more going on?
Mary was already home and the cop walking away from her before she could pull herself together enough to ask what he'd meant when he said it's not safe for you to be out.
***
She slammed the store door shut behind her and closed her eyes, sucking in a deep breath. Her nose twitched with the usual mixture of aromas from the shelves, the strong menthol odour of Vicks vapour rub and the more subtle smells of the cigarettes and tobacco her father Shiro kept behind the cash register. The cash register that she just now realised didn't have either of her parents perched on the rickety stool beside it.
"Papa-san? Mama-san?"
The empty store stared back at her and didn't reply. Unconcerned, Kenny detached from her hand and headed for the candy next to the cash register, seeking out any he might have missed from yesterday's delivery.
Only watching him from the corner of her eye, Mary went to the trap door to the basement and tried to heave it open. "Kenny put those back and help me lift this." She didn't bother to call out when they'd lifted the trap; the darkness told her no one was down there.
She looked towards the front of the store. The neat sign her father hung there still said Closed, so on the other side...
She tried to reconstruct what must have happened: Her parents had closed the store while she and Kenny were at Sunday school, but they hadn't taken a few seconds to lock up and didn't care if anyone came in and stole something while they were gone. Moving without thinking, she flipped over the sign, reached up, threw the bolt across the top of the door and turned again to the empty store.
What is going on here?
She grabbed Kenny's hand and hurried to the back of the store, through the door to their living quarters. She sighed in relief. Her mother Natsuko was in the little hallway, her back to Mary. She was still dressed in her church dress, the bright floral print Mary only saw once a week. On the end table beside the telephone, her best hat lay with the mesh that covered her face crumpled and crushed.
"Mama-san, there was a -"
Natsuko spun towards her. The phone was tight against her ear and her fingers clenched and twisted around the cord. "Mary! Uh...I'm on the telephone. Go and talk to your father."
Mary blinked a few times at the unusual harshness of her voice. "But there was a -"
"Not now, Mary."
Hunched on his knees over the radio in the tiny parlour with his eyes closed, Shiro was searching for something on the radio, his hand clenched to the tuning dial as he hunted for slightly better reception. He didn’t seem to care that the immaculate creases in his Sunday suit were chaotically warping and folding.
The radio was the big cabinet-sized one he used to listen to his beloved Beethoven on long-playing vinyl records. Mary had rarely seen the radio in use in the daytime. Papa only turned it on at night when they were all relaxing.
"Papa-san -"
A burst of static. "Shhh! Mary, I'm listening."
Mary tried again, louder. "Papa-san, a man -"
"Mary Tanaka, please!"
He blew out an exasperated breath and rose from beside the radio. His eyes were wide and worried. "Take Kenichi-chan and go and see Ganaha-san. Go and help him in the shop for a little while or something. Please."
He pushed her towards the door without taking his attention from the radio, not paying any attention to her story about the drunk and the policeman. Instead, she found herself talking to a closed parlour door.
She looked down the hall again, but her mother was still on the phone, twisting the cord between her fingers, her eyes wide and her face blanched white. When she saw Mary staring, she turned away.
Kenny had caught their mood and looked up at Mary with solemn eyes. "What do we do now? Is Ichiro-san all right? What's happening?"
She squeezed his hand to reassure him. Something was going on, but she would have to wait to find out what it was. "I don't know, Kenny. We'll go and visit with Ganaha-san. Maybe he'll know what's happening."
***
For as far back as Mary could remember, Mr Ganaha had always run the fruit and vegetable shop next door. Their morning ritual would involve her throwing open her bedroom window, and he would already be down on the street, his fruit stand laid out in a shifting colour bar of red-yellow-green. He would wave up at her, sometimes throwing her up an apple.
She couldn't imagine him doing anything else but being a grocer, but he must have done something once: from the stump of one wrist, a metal hook emerged in place of a hand, or sometimes a crude pair of metal fingers. He never talked about his missing hand, and Mary was too polite to ask.
Kenny had decided from an early age that he was a retired pirate, and when Mr Ganaha heard this, he had discovered an old eye patch, and would wear it sometimes when he knew he would be seeing Kenny. Then he would suddenly clap a hand to his eye and pull it off, as though he'd forgotten he was wearing it. It never failed to make Kenny, usually so sober, laugh aloud.
Mr Ganaha popped up from behind a display of bananas when the bell above his shop-door tinkled. There was no eye patch or hook today, just a stump of wrinkled pink wrist. Mary and Kenny bowed from the waist.
"Konnichiwa, Ganaha-San." Good afternoon, Mr Ganaha.
He emerged from behind the counter and looked them over. Kenny had red-rimmed eyes and Mary was breathing too quickly.
"Ganaha-san, umm...." Her parents tried to speak English as much as they could, and she had to pause to translate to Japanese. Mr Ganaha didn't speak much English.
"Gomen kudasai." I apologise for disturbing you.
She waved her hands, her eyes blurring. "There was an angry man, and a policeman, and Mama-san and Papa-san wouldn't listen to what I had to say, and the policeman said we shouldn't be outside -" She stopped when she realised she was babbling like a little girl and heaved in an unsteady breath.
Mr Ganaha placed a warm and solid hand on her shoulder. "Shikkari suru, Mary-san." Be strong.
Mary took another breath and tried again, remembering her On, her duty to be respectful in front of her elders. "Honourable Ganaha-san, there was a drunken man who called me...called me." She shook her head in dismay and looked at her feet.
He nodded his head as though he understood. "Already it starts then, uh?"
"What starts? What is going on?"
For a reply, he opened the door to his shop and motioned them both outside.
"Walk with me, Mary-san."
***
Their walk took them down to the torpid grey waters of Puget Sound. Mary had the impression Mr Ganaha wanted to start talking before he reached the shoreline, but he remained quiet, his eyes intent on the ground. She imagined hostile eyes on the back of her neck, making the hairs prickle, but no one interrupted their walk.
They reached the waterline and Mr Ganaha leaned against a railing, tapping his fingers against the metal and making it ring with hollow flat clonks. Kenny sat on the cement at their feet and entwined himself around the railing, resting his arms and his head on the bottom bar, staring down at the water lapping between his shoes. Mary was too distracted to tell him to come off the cold cement before he froze.
Mr Ganaha shifted his gaze to the right and Mary stared with him, her eyes not registering for a few seconds what she was seeing.
Across the water, the Bremerton naval yard was alive with activity. Men covered the docks like ants, rushing out of one building door only to hurry into another. They scurried on and off the ships docked in the port, swarming on the decks like insects over dropped fruit. Black and white smoke poured from funnels of the boats standing out in Puget Sound, and the water at their sterns churned and writhed with seething foam. At their centre was an aircraft carrier, a solid wall of grey. Smaller motor boats zipped and darted from the shore and between the bigger boats, smashing through the waves without slowing.
A navy cruiser raced past them, heading out to sea. Dense smoke rolled back from its funnel, and sailors in blue and white raced over its upper decks. Waves gathered at the bow and crashed against the foredeck and grey superstructure without effect. The big guns on the bow tilted down towards them and two massive black bores stared at Mary for a moment before they swivelled away. She shuddered, chilled by their dead gaze.
It came to her then, in an instant. She knew what had happened. She knew when she asked Mr Ganaha if she was right, it would make it real, make it permanent, make everything around her change. And she knew she had to ask.
"Honourable Ganaha-san...have we been...I mean, did Germany...attack us?"
He shook his head, his face mournful and his gaze on the creamy white wake that the cruiser had left behind. "No, Mary-San. Much worse, much worse. Japan attacked us. They attacked Hawaii this morning."
Her brain circled the words a few times before it could land. Japan attacked us! Japan! Where was it? Hawaii...
"Was it a place -"
Three fighter planes screamed overhead in a V formation from behind them, appearing as if they were only feet overhead. She ducked and reached for Kenny, grabbing the railing tighter, feeling it vibrate from the immense noise of their propeller engines. She watched them shrink to dots before she could speak again.
"Was it a place called Pearl Harbor?"
Ganaha gave a slow nod. "Near Honolulu, yes."
Honolulu. Her mother on the phone, the cord twisting in her fingers, Kenny's innocent question as they stood in the hall earlier, her father's fingers twisting the dial on the radio.
Ichiro.
Without being aware she'd started to run, she dragged Kenny to his feet, not caring if she pulled his arm from his socket, not caring for anything at all but sprinting for home, sprinting for news of her brother.
Chapter 3: Many American lives have been lost
December 8
Before her alarm clock could ring, Mary silenced it with a push of her hand. She'd watched the hands crawl through the night and into the morning while she'd waited for a sleep that never arrived. She lay in bed for a few minutes longer and replayed the events of the night over again for the hundredth time.
Her parents had both still been up and moving at midnight, when she'd given in and dragged herself to bed. By then, the news and the casualty reports from Hawaii and The Philippines had settled down, the reporters only repeating themselves and asking each other questions they didn't know the answers to.
After a hurried dinner, Natsuko tried again to get through to Honolulu. While she waited on the phone, Mary put Kenny to bed. Shiro came into the bedroom carrying a heavy blanket and pinned it over the window, absently brushing away a model plane Kenny had hung from the ceiling.
Kenny watched him from beneath his bedcovers with wide eyes. "Why do we need those?"
Mary stumbled over the reply. "It's a blackout curtain. We...uh, we don't want any light getting out and the enemy knowing where we are."
Kenny's voice went up an octave. "You mean we might get bombed?"
Shiro gestured with his eyes for Mary to leave them. She pulled the door shut and listened.
"Papa-san, will we get bombed?"
"No, Kenichi-chan, we won't get bombed. We won't let anything happen to you, I promise."
"But what's happening? Is Ichiro-san all right on Hononunu?"
"You need to get some sleep, and tomorrow we'll see what's going on, huh?"
"But Papa-san-"
"No buts, Ken'ichi. Sleep now."
"Ohhhkayyy. Mary-san never got to go to the big store for her birthday. That's - " (a large yawn), " - really too bad."
"Yes, it is. But I know Mary-san understands why we couldn't take her today."
"It wasn't much of a birthday was it? There was that nasty man called us those...names and then Ganaha-san...said...about...Hononunu...and...Ichiro-san..." His voice slowed and dropped as he laboured over his sentence.
Mary hurried to her room and buried her face in a pillow so her father wouldn’t hear her tortured sobbing.
***
At ten o'clock, Natsuko still hadn't managed to get through to Honolulu. When Shiro offered to take the phone, she flicked him away with a harsh No. He settled for bringing her a cup of coffee and a chair from the kitchen and sliding it under her. She reached out a hand and he squeezed it, giving her a hesitant smile.
For the next few hours, Mary and her father had sat in the parlour and listened through the static as the reports from Hawaii and The Pacific tumbled in. Byakko jumped onto Mary's lap and demanded immediate attention. Mary ran her fingers through her thick white fur without thinking, soothed by her loud purring.
Shiro cupped a lit match to the bowl of his pipe and sucked, clouds of thick smoke enveloping his head. A few times, he pulled the pipe from his mouth to speak, but then only shook his head and said nothing. Instead, they waited in silence, Mary's attention split between her mother in the hall and the news from the radio. She found her eyes drawn repeatedly to the picture at the corner of the mantle place above the fire: Ichiro in full uniform on the day he'd graduated from military academy, saluting and grinning back at her in a frozen smile.
When Mary finally shooed Byakko off her lap and went to bed yawning, Natsuko was still sitting upright and stiff, the phone fixed to her ear and the coffee untouched and forgotten. Mary kissed her chilled cheek goodnight without disturbing her.
She flicked off her bedroom light and leaned out of her window. Not a house on the street was showing a light. Even Bremerton off to her right was a blacked-out bulk, the boats in the Sound indistinct shadowy shapes. Puget Sound itself was a slow mass of breathing grey water, shot through with silver highlights of the reflected stars and the sliver of the moon. As though determined to fight the darkness below, the Milky Way was an unchallenged brilliant speckled white scar across the sky. She pulled the window closed and tacked up her blackout blind.
Sometime while she and Kenny were out this morning, Shiro had moved her radio upstairs from the dining room sideboard where she'd discovered it this morning. She smiled while her fingers ran over the polished dark wood. Then she turned one of the black Bakelite dials on the front, watching the clear plastic tuner rotate from one end of the dial to the other. Behind the tuner was a picture of a smoking mountain, with the word ETNA underneath.
She'd wanted a radio for years, but her father always told her they were too expensive. Mary turned on the set and waited for it to warm up. She twisted the tuner through bursts of static and voices, snatches of music. She heard the word Honolulu Radio in a hole in the noise and eased the dial back. A ukulele crept from the speakers. Although the tune was upbeat, her mood turned it to a soft and melancholy sound, the singing lonely and heart breaking. She lay on the bed and carried herself away with the music, her eyes drifting closed.
She was having a nightmare where a huge man with red eyes chased her and Kenny along an endless empty street, shouting Jap and Nip, when a familiar ringing sound joined the shouting.
Startled awake by the phone, she looked at her clock. Two AM. She crept from her room and sat at the top of the stairs, watching her parent's shadows on the wall downstairs and listening to Natsuko’s side of a conversation.
"Ichiro-san! We've been trying -"
"Okay, yes."
"I understand."
"Oh God, but you're not hurt are you?"
A shadow on the wall moved and Shiro's voice took over.
"How are you, son?"
"Yes, we're all right. It's been a little hard on Mary-san and Kenichi-chan though."
"Yes, all right. We understand. Until tomorrow night, then. Shikkari suru." Be strong.
Mary heard the phone drop back onto its cradle.
"Shikata ga ni, husband."
"Shikkari suru, wife."
She watched their shadows move together and become one, and then the terrible sound of her mother, crying, crying.
***
Taking a deep breath to prepare for what she might see, Mary pulled herself out of bed and reached for her glasses. She tugged back her curtains, threw open her window and leaned out.
As he was every morning, Mr Ganaha was already at his fruit and vegetable stand. He waved up at her as though nothing had changed, a flash of silver from his hook glinting into her eyes, but she didn’t wave back.
Down the block, a square of white curtain still filled Karl's bedroom window. She wondered if he'd now notice the yellow of her skin and the angle of her eyes at the bus stop this morning. Whether everything she'd worked on for the past few months would vanish.
She looked south across Puget Sound. Mount Rainer still loomed on the horizon, silent and motionless. She shook her head, puzzled. How can it look the same? It didn't seem right that something as big as yesterday should have made no changes to the world around her.
As she studied the mountain, black specks appeared near it. They grew into the shapes of a dozen fighter planes that swooped and dived towards Bremerton. Then she noticed the bright white flare of welding torches at work in the shipyards, throwing off fountains of yellow sparks. Long steel grey fingers of anti-aircraft machine guns now pointed at the sky from the docks. And the morning ferry from Bremerton had to weave its way across Puget Sound through navy-grey warships, with more long fingers pointing at the sky from decks that swarmed with sailors.
No, she decided. It doesn't look the same. It doesn't look the same at all.
A knock on the bedroom door startled her.
"Mary? Are you ready for school yet?"
"Nearly, mama-san." She pulled herself back from the window, grabbed her schoolbooks and stuffed them into her cloth backpack.
"Can I...can I come for a minute?"
Mary opened the door to see a red-eyed face peering back at her. "Sure."
Natsuko perched on the edge of Mary's bed, running the flat of her hand over the rough fabric of her top sheet. "Close the door so Kenichi won't eavesdrop, huh? Then come and sit beside me for a moment."
Mary's heart stuttered. Something has happened to Ichiro, she thought, but then dismissed it. He’d been on the phone last night after all, so he must be safe.
Unless...something else had happened?
"Is Ichiro...?" Mary's voice broke and she tried again. "Is Ichiro all right?"
Natsuko pulled Mary's hand between hers and smiled. "Oh, yes, yes. Ichiro is fine. I didn't mean to worry you about that."
She inhaled and her hands tightened their grip. "After yesterday, we're not sure how much things are going to change for us...since Papa-san and I aren't American."
Mary nodded. America had passed immigration laws before Mary was born which meant that neither of her parents could ever become American citizens. They even had a name for them in Japanese: Her parents were Issei, Japanese immigrants who came to America. Mary and Kenny were Nisei, both born in America and automatically citizens.
"Well," her mother continued, "The government might decide they're going to repatriate us to Japan, and we'd have to go. So of course, you would have to come with us...unless we could find some way for you and Kenichi to stay here."
"No! If you and Papa have to go back to Japan, then we're going too." Mary shook her head, determined.
"You say that now, but in the time it takes for the government to sort things out, you might find a nice American boy and want to settle down. And there's college and a career to think about." She smiled and brushed back a lock of hair from Mary's forehead.
"What about my On? Who's going to look after you when you get older? That's my career as well."
"Maybe Kenichi can take care of us. Or maybe even Ichiro will do it. All this could take a long time to sort out."
Mary considered the immediate years ahead of her with new significance. "You really think it might take them that long to...to repatriate us?"
Natsuko shrugged. "I don't even know if they're going to repatriate us. I think the government has something big planned. This morning we heard on the radio that they have seized all Japanese business assets."
Mary's eyebrows rose. "What does that mean? We don't have any money?"
Her mother squeezed her shoulder. "We're not sure how much money the government will give back to us. But they can't expect us to starve after all, can they?"
The speed of what was happening stunned Mary, the changes too quick to take in. War with Japan, no money, repatriation...what was next?
"I know you well enough that you won’t tell Kenichi-chan any of these things. He does worry so much about such little things."
"Maybe he's right to."
Natsuko considered that for a moment before she nodded. "Maybe he is. But until we know more about what's going on, we shouldn't worry him too much. All right?"
"Yes, Mama-san."
***
"Good morning Karl."
Karl Engel looked up at Mary and then away again before he blushed. "Uh, morning."
It had been a major achievement, getting him to say that much. For months, she'd known he'd wanted to ask her out and had been too shy to do it.
Whenever he came into the store with Mrs Engel, he would stare at her while trying not to look like he was staring. If she returned his gaze, he would blush like one of Ganaha-san’s red apples and would appear fascinated by something else in the store. Anything else in the store.
When Mary thought about it, she realised it was probably inevitable he'd like her. They were the only two on their block who attended Bremerton High School. Neither of them had much in common with their classmates. Most of them had parents who worked in the naval yard or were in the navy. Their teachers often threw them together by default, pairing them together in the few lessons they shared.
It was one of those lessons a few months ago that Mary suddenly noticed Karl, really noticed him. She took a long hard look at him, working alongside her (and making him blush to the roots of his blond hair) and realised something that seemed obvious, but only after she'd seen it: I like him. I like him a lot.
Since then, she'd tried to dig away at his shyness, trying to excavate the real Karl buried underneath. She'd had a few successes, a few small victories. He adored Kenny, so as a way to get him talking she'd convinced him that Kenny could teach him basic Japanese.
Although he hadn't asked her out yet, she could understand his hesitation. She was only sixteen by a day after all, and if she turned him down (not that she would), he would have one less friend. It was a lot of pressure, but Mary was patient. Neither of them were going anywhere for a while.
She remembered her conversation that morning with Natsuko and amended her thought: She didn't think they were going anywhere.
Her parents would no doubt frown over her behaviour. They would no doubt say she was leading him on and being fast with him. She couldn't see it like that. He was a good friend and...well, if he became something more, weren't her parents young once too?
You have to start somewhere or get nowhere, she told herself.
Karl looked down at Kenny, attached - as usual - to Mary's hand.
"Hi Kenny...uh, konee-shee-waa."
Kenny gave him a sober look. "It's Konee-CHE-waa, but domo arigato."
Karl glanced up at Mary who mouthed thank you.
"Oh. Right. Thank you, too. I'll keep trying to learn Japanese. Kon-ee-che-wa, mmm."
The bus for grade school pulled up and Mary settled Kenny aboard. He moaned at her good-naturedly about being able to manage this himself.
"Not until you're nine, young man."
"Now you're starting to sound like Mama-san."
"That's because I'm her proxy while she's at home."
"What's a proxy?"
She glanced back over her shoulder. "Look it up when you get to school."
He grinned at her from the bus window and waved as it pulled away in a cloud of diesel. Then Mary and Karl were alone, the silence stretching thin between them.
"Pretty...uh, pretty bad yesterday, huh?"
She kicked the kerb, looking at her feet. "You have no idea."
"Isn't your brother in. In Hawaii?"
"Yeah, but he's fine. I heard Mama-san and Papa-san talking to him last night."
"That's good, then, huh? I guess."
She held eye contact with him, making him blush. "Karl, can I ask you something?"
"Um, sure, if you want."
"I want an honest answer, all right? I really need to know this."
"Okay. What?"
"Honest answer?"
He dragged a finger across his chest. "Cross my heart."
"Do I look different to you today than I did yesterday?"
"Different?"
She ran a hand through her black hair and pushed her fingers beneath her glasses, sliding them beneath the angle of her eyes. "Do I look Japanese to you and not American?" She looked at the almond skin on the back of her hand. "Do you look at me and think I'm planning to blow something up?"
Karl looked away, blushing again. "It wasn't you who flew the planes over Hawaii yesterday. You look as beaut - you look the same to me."
He thinks I'm beautiful, she thought. She leaned in close to him and kissed him on the cheek before he could dart back out of reach. "Domo arigato."
His hand rubbed where her lips had kissed and she noticed with pride that he couldn't take his eyes from her for the rest of the morning.
***
Mary was in the cafeteria when Principal Murphy's voice came over the tannoy system, announcing President Roosevelt was about to make a speech. Lucy Sato stopped talking mid-sentence and Mary's jaw couldn't chew her sandwich.
Sitting beside her, Karl's fork froze halfway to his mouth. The silence was total enough that Mary heard the plop as the food dropped back to his plate. The three hundred teenagers around her turned as one towards the square tannoy box high on the wall.
Her eyes turned to meet Karl's stare, then moved on to Lucy's, seeing the same terrible expectation she knew was in her own expression. From the tannoy there was a hiss of static, then dead air. The President began to speak, quiet and calm.
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States...was deliberately attacked by...the Empire of Japan. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage...very many American lives have been lost. I have directed that all measures be taken for our defence. I ask Congress declare that since...yesterday, a state of war has existed between the United States...and Japan.
She felt heads and eyes turn towards her and Lucy, the only Japanese in the cafeteria, the only Japanese in the school.
She looked at Lucy again, looking at her black hair and the almond shape of her eyes, trying to see her as they did, trying to see her as the enemy.
She shivered.
***
When the school bus dropped Kenny off at the end of the day, Mary noticed his eyes were red. She took him by the hand and walked slowly, easing her way into asking him what had happened.
"So, how was school today Kenny?"
He mumbled a reply, his head down.
She stopped walking and sat on a wall, lifting him up beside her. "That good, huh?"
His dangling feet waved slowly backwards and forwards, his heels pounding the wall. She waited.
"Some big kids came by at lunchtime and called me names and then they made airplane noises and started poking me with their fingers like they were shooting at me, and when I told them Ichiro-san was in Honolulu as well, they asked me if it was because he'd been shot down. I started crying and then Miss Lewis took me to the library to let me calm down."
He looked up at her, miserable and confused. "Papa-san wouldn't tell me last night about Ichiro-san. I know something is wrong, I know it is, and that's why Papa-san wouldn't talk to me. No one ever tells me anything, you all treat me like I'm a baby when I'm nearly nine now."
She reached an arm around him and pulled him to her, trying to still his crying. Once, she'd picked up an injured sparrow, and in her hand she'd felt the terror in its rapid breathing, the frailty of its bones.
So delicate, she thought, so delicate.
"Listen to me, Ken'ichi Tanaka. Papa-san didn't tell you about Ichiro because he didn't know if he was all right. But I heard him and Mama-san talking to Ichiro after you'd fallen asleep and he is fine." She squeezed him for emphasis. "Got it?"
He wiped his nose with a sleeve and nodded his head. She lifted him down from the wall and walked with him, thinking about his outburst.
"I'll talk to Papa-san tonight, and ask him to tell you more about what's going on. But if he doesn't tell you something, it's because he's worried about upsetting you, or he simply doesn't know. Okay?"
"Okay. Please don’t tell Papa-san I was crying. He'll say I've brought haji on our family."
"I won't tell him you were crying, don't worry about that, and I don't think you brought shame to our family by crying. But I promise I'll talk to him later."
Kenny's mood lifted. "Oh, while I was in the library at lunchtime I got out a dictionary and looked up a proxy. So you're like Mama-san when she isn't there?"
She nodded and he chewed his lip. "I guess that's all right. I don't mind that much, even though I am nearly nine now."
Mary could do nothing to hold back her laughter.
***
She threw her school bag at the sofa and followed it down, closing her eyes and puffing out a long breath. Byakko climbed onto her lap and Mary ran a finger between her ears. A weight settled next to her and she opened her eyes and smiled weakly at Shiro. When she told him about her conversation with Kenny on the way home, he only nodded, considering her words.
He scanned her face. "And how was your day at school?"
She wondered if he could read her moods as easily as she could read Kenny's red-rimmed eyes. "They played The President's speech at lunchtime. It's war then." She shrugged her shoulders and pulled her fingers down Byakko's spine, making her back arch.
"Well, we knew that was going to happen."
"After the speech, there were a couple of keto jerks who kept yelling long live the Emperor whenever they walked past me."
Shiro frowned. A keto was a distasteful word for a Caucasian. "Mary, please...show some respect. Remember your On reflects your whole family. And what exactly is a jerk?"
She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "I'm sorry, Papa-san. I wasn't being very respectful of them. But they weren't being very respectful of me, either. And a jerk is someone who acts like a stupid fool."
"Oh...I haven't heard that one before."
She studied her fingers. "Everyone else was okay though. They all went out of their way to tell me they knew it wasn't anything I’d done. It somehow made it worse."
Shiro scratched his cheek. "How so?"
"Well, if I wasn't any different, why did they feel like they had to come and tell me I wasn't any different? They didn't tell anyone else. That doesn't make sense, does it? I'm confused."
She closed her eyes again and laid her head back on the sofa. "I think I know how you felt when you first came to America. For the first time today, I felt like an outsider."
He patted her knee. "There will always be those who can't see past our skin, Mary-san. And there will always be those who never see it at all. Shikata ga ni. It can't be helped."
***
They didn't pull down the blackout shade, but instead waited in the gathering dark of the parlour. The only light was a weak yellow glow from Shiro's big radio, sketching them in sepia and shadow while they waited to hear The President's speech again.
Mary kept her voice soft and her attention on her fingers stroking Byakko’s spine. "At school today, I heard Thomas Carter say that his father didn't come last night. He spent all night at Bremerton. A few others said their fathers were packing. I think they're already mobilising the navy. Lucy Sato said -"
She halted and looked at Kenny, then continued.
"Lucy told me that some government men came to her apartment block last night and arrested a neighbour of hers."
Kenny stirred in his chair in the corner. "Do you think they'll arrest us as well?"
Shiro shrugged. "How could they? We've committed no crimes and broken no laws."
The silence between them was thick with unspoken words of war. Kenny moved from his chair and squeezed under Natsuko's arm.
"Did you manage to get through on the telephone to Amuro-san?" Mary asked.
Natsuko stroked Kenny's hair and shook her head. "I think the lines to Japan are dead, or maybe the government closed them."
"Maybe you can write him."
Natsuko looked surprised. "Do you think they will let me do that? Isn't that like collaborating with an enemy?"
"He's your brother, how can he be an enemy?"
"Hush, The President is starting to speak." Shiro said, turning up the volume on the radio.
Mary listened again, hearing the quietness of the speech, the solid determination under the composed words. If it had been her, she would have screamed it with all the breath in her lungs.
Here's a man, she thought, who Japan just slapped in the face, and yet he's still flat calm. What does that say about him?
Shiro flicked a switch and the radio faded to silence. He moved from his chair to the sofa beside Natsuko, squeezing her hand. He reached around Kenny and pulled them both close. Mary looked away from them, out of the window into the darkness. The President's speech rolled around in her head.
Since yesterday, a state of war has existed between the United States...and Japan.
She jumped when the phone rang. Natsuko dug herself out from beneath Kenny and scurried into the hall. Shiro rose from the sofa and pulled down the blackout blind while Mary turned on the lights. The three of them stared at each other, holding their breath until they heard the magic word from Natsuko.
Ichiro.
They rushed for the hall at the same time, but Natsuko waved them back.
"Yes, Ichiro-san, we're all here. We're all...we're all fine. I said we're. All. Fine."
There was a long silence.
"What does that mean?"
"They can do that? So you won't be able to fight?"
"Oh...he said he'd do that for you? That's good."
Reaching hands grasped for the phone, and Natsuko relented. She turned the phone over to Shiro, who spoke for a few moments before he handed it over to Kenny and then Mary.
"Hello, Ichiro-san."
"Hi, sis. How's everyone holding up?" Hearing his voice brought a smile to her face for the first time that day.
"Okay, I guess. We've just heard The President make his speech again."
"Yeah, yeah, I heard that earlier. That’s stirred things up around here even more, as you can imagine. Hey, don't think I forgot your birthday. I've got your -"
Mary heard another voice and Ichiro's voice faded out. She pictured him, wherever he was, turning to a man behind him. "Yeah, hang on Abe, I'll be finished in a minute. Listen sis, I need to talk to Pops again, can you put him back on?"
She wanted to beg him to stay and talk to her for hours. She wanted to talk to him about Karl, about Japan, repatriation, the war. Instead, she turned the phone to her father without another word.
She crept back into the parlour and curled herself back into her chair, trying not to listen to the others talking to her brother half a world away, safe and alive while so many others were dead or dying.
Chapter 4: I am an American
December 22
"I, umm, I saw your window was smashed again this morning."
"Yeah."
“What happened?”
Mary told Karl that around three in the morning, a car pulled up outside the store. The man in the car hurled a brick at the store window, the sound of breaking glass violent and loud against the quiet of the night. She'd leapt from bed and raced to her bedroom window, but all she saw was a shape diving back into a car and racing away.
Kenny had been hysterical for hours, convinced they had been bombed. It had taken most of the night to get him calmed, even after he'd seen they were all right. Natsuko stayed with him while Shiro and Mary went downstairs to sweep up the glass.
This morning they were all tired and short-tempered, so despite the freezing cold, Mary took herself off for a walk. She'd found herself outside the Engels and on an impulse rang their doorbell and asked Karl if he wanted to come with her.
Mary looked at her feet as they walked and stifled a yawn. "I barely got any sleep last night with Kenny. It's costing Papa a fortune to replace the glass every time. When the police arrived, they didn't even try to ask us what happened."
They made their way to the waterfront, where the wind blowing from the water turned the cold too intense for walking. They huddled on a bench inside an open shelter, looking out at the sluggish waters of Puget Sound, breath pluming from them like the smoke of sleeping dragons.
"I saw the, uh, sign...the banner Mr Ganaha put outside his window. It didn't help, I guess."
Mr Ganaha had a sign-writing friend to make him a banner in large letters. It read I AM AN AMERICAN.
She shook her head. "No, it didn't help. They're still smashing his windows as well."
"I wish I knew who it was, so I could make them stop."
"I know you do."
He coughed and fidgeted. "Some of, uh, some of my friends at Bremerton said I shouldn't be seen with you. Like I'm...mixing with the enemy."
Her head snapped towards him. "What did you say to that?"
"I'm here aren't I? It doesn't matter what they think. To me it doesn't matter."
"Why is it everyone suddenly hates me?" She didn't register his comment of I don't.
"Everywhere I look, I see nothing but hate. All the newspapers are full of stories about how evil we are. Papa had his Life magazine delivered today. Inside there's an article on how to tell the Japs from the Chinese. That's what it calls us. Japs. I'm not even Japanese anymore, I'm a Nip or a Jap or a Tojo. It doesn't matter to them that I've never been closer to Japan than they have."
Karl shrugged. "Uh, well the bullying will stop while we're off for Christmas. That's something, I guess?"
"What's it going to be like when I go back though? Lucy Sato told me her parents might not let her come back."
Mary thought about the last fortnight at school. Someone had written nip go home across her locker on the last Friday of term, but that was just the latest insult. Between classes, in the hustle and noise of the corridor, she'd been hearing jap, nip, tojo, just loud enough for her to catch. When she spun round to challenge the speaker, she got nothing back but innocent looks.
Sometimes she didn't know if she'd actually imagined it, or if it really was there. If Lucy hadn't said she was hearing the same thing, Mary would have thought she was merely paranoid. The teachers could do nothing without someone to pin it on.
Worse, she got the impression most of them didn't care.
"Sorry, I shouldn't bother you with all this. You shouldn't get dragged into this."
"I like to think I can do something, uh, to help, you know."
She leaned across the gap between them and kissed the white-cold skin of his cheek. "You do. Having someone to talk to like this is great."
"What about Lucy? Don't you talk to her?"
Mary blew out a breath and it condensed around her like a steam train arriving at a station. "It's not really the same. I've never had the urge to do this with Lucy."
She grabbed his hand and draped it over her shoulder, sliding along the bench until she was snuggled beside him. She looked up at him and pecked his cheek again.
Karl blushed scarlet and wriggled beside her, but he didn't move away. "Ohmygosh."
She giggled and then turned serious again. "Remember I told you that Ichiro had been made a four-see after the attack on Pearl Harbor?"
"Uh, yeah, something like that. He couldn't fight. Was that it?"
"That's it. It meant they thought he was an enemy alien. Can you believe that? It's not bad enough him being an enemy, they have to say it like he was from another planet."
Karl's hand on her shoulder drifted towards the tiny curl of hair that had escaped from beneath her hat and stroked it.
"Anyway, yesterday we got a telephone call from him. He said all the Japanese in his unit are back to a-one again. He can fight."
"Does he...want to fight?"
She pulled back, letting him see her frown. "Of course he does. He asked his commander to get him reinstated. What a strange thing to say, why wouldn't he want to fight the Japanese?"
"Because...he is one. Maybe that's why the army said he, uh, couldn't."
"What are you saying?"
"Have you got any relatives in Japan?"
"Well, of course."
"Well...well, say, what would happen if Ichiro fought the Japanese, and he had to shoot, uh, your cousin or something? Would he do it?"
She sat up straight, now more than just chilled by the cold air. "Oh...that's silly, that would never happen. Could it? I hadn't thought of that. Or what if Kyan-san had to shoot..." She stumbled over the thought.
Karl pulled his arm back from around her shoulder and rose from the bench. He strode towards the railing that overlooked the water and Mary was beside him a moment later, staring across Puget Sound as hard as he was at the battleship that was steaming towards them.
Despite the cold, a crowd began to form round them. She heard whispers behind her that gave the battleship that was struggling past them a name and told her where it had come from.
...USS Tennessee...
...fifty dead...
...I had a brother on board...
...I heard seventy dead...
...survived Pearl Harbor...
Around the battleship, a fleet of tiny ships had formed an impromptu escort, following her as she limped towards Bremerton.
How the battleship had stayed afloat as it crossed the Pacific amazed Mary. The superstructure was a patchwork of blackened and dull-bronzed metal where fires must have swept the decks. She saw holes big enough for her to climb through, their edges like the curled back petals of some monstrous metal flower, ragged and wickedly sharp. Despite the damage, the battleship moved with a steady speed, and the guns that covered the decks looked unbowed and unbroken, still ready to launch revenge skyward.
Sailors had lined up along the deck, and moving as one, they lifted their arms in salute to the ships around them. The boat sirens around the battleship whooped and wailed across Puget Sound, the sound bouncing and echoing.
She gripped Karl's arm and felt how rigid the muscles were. He must be gripping the railing hard enough to snap it, she thought.
"Karl? Are you all right?"
Under his breath she heard, "It wasn't right. I want to fight them, the Japs that did this, all the Japs-"
Then remembering where he was and who he was talking to, her turned to her, opened his mouth to say something, closed it, opened it.
He spun away from her outstretched hand and vanished into the crowd.
Chapter 5: There should be a law
December 23
"...Course I ain't sayin it's right. I bet there's some good Japs livin here. But how do ya tell the good ones from the bad ones? The only way to be safe is to ship em all back. And if the ship got sunk on the way, well, good riddance to em, huh?"
The fat man elbowed Shiro in the ribs and laughed. Natsuko sat stiff upright opposite them, staring out the tram window, her lips pursed tight. Mary clenched her jaw and studied her fingernails. She was glad Kenny was helping Mr Ganaha so he didn’t have to hear this.
The fat man continued, inexorable and unstoppable. He'd hadn't stopped telling them about the Japanese yellow peril since he'd boarded the tram at the Seattle ferry terminal and thumped himself into the seat beside Shiro, trapping him and jabbing his elbow out from time to time to make sure he was still listening.
"You Chinese is all right though." Elbow jab. "Hard workin, not like them lazy Japs. Never met a Chinese I didn't like. Elbow jab.
"If you ask me, I'd shoot the god-damn lot of em and -"
"This is our stop, Shiro." Natsuko's lips barely moved.
Shiro squeezed past the fat man and leapt from the tram, Mary and Natsuko right behind him.
He wiped a hand across his forehead and felt his bruised ribs. "I thought that would never end."
Natsuko blinked to clear her tears, her breath starting to hitch. Shiro squeezed her hand. "It's all right, dearest. Shikata ga ni. It can't be helped."