To the Stars Read online

  “Well,” he said after a long, ominous pause, “the only place they didn’t die is right here in Arkansas. That’s why they put this fence up. To keep them caged in.”

  “Oh,” I said. It was comforting to learn that those sharp barbs on the fence would keep the cawing monsters from attacking us.

  “Okay. I found 6-2-F.” Daddy was back and he had with him two young men who had volunteered to help us. They grabbed all our baggage, big and small, arranging the smaller pieces under their arms. One of the young men even tried to take Mama’s big bag full of goodies, but she insisted on carrying that herself. “It’s heavy, Mrs. Takei,” he persisted. But that bulky cornucopia she never let anyone carry—not even Daddy. Mama brought it all the way from Los Angeles to Arkansas by herself, and she was determined to get it to our new home without help. I wondered what other surprises she had in store for us.

  We tagged along after the struggling ragtag band with Daddy in the lead. It was hot and dusty, and they kicked up a golden cloud of fine Arkansas dirt. The black tar paper, instead of absorbing heat, seemed to radiate shimmering waves of hotness. Thankfully, Barrack 2 wasn’t too far off, and Unit F was the room at the near end of the barrack. Daddy stamped up the three raw-lumber steps in front of 6-2-F and opened the door. The heat that blasted out was enough to almost knock him over. If it was hot outside, it was a roaring furnace inside. Black did indeed absorb heat.

  Daddy asked the young men to set our baggage down outside and thanked them for their help. Then he plunged into the baking-hot room to open the windows. He came staggering back out panting and drenched in perspiration. Half-cooked and florid from the ordeal, he gasped, “Let fresh air get in for a while, and then we’ll go in.” From her goody bag, Mama produced a big white cotton handkerchief and wiped Daddy’s brow.

  When we finally went in, the air was still heavy and warm. The room was a bare sixteen-by-twenty-foot space with raw-wood plank walls, three windows, and a floor of wooden planks. And sitting in one corner like a big, fat practical joke was a solitary piece of furniture—a black potbellied stove. “Don’t touch it,” Daddy warned us kids. “It might still be hot.”

  Mama stood near the door silently appraising the room. She was still carrying her goody bag. “What we sleep on?” she asked.

  “They’re distributing Army cots at the other end of the block,” Daddy said. “I’ll get some people to help me bring them here.”

  Just then, we heard voices and stamping and thumping from the other side of the wood plank wall. It was our next-door neighbors moving in.

  “Holy jeez, it’s hot in here,” a male voice said. Some loud thumping could be heard and then, “Thanks very much.”

  “Anytime. Don’t mention it,” another male voice replied.

  “Yell when you need help,” the first voice said.

  “We hear right through wall,” Mama whispered, distress knitting her brow. “We not have privacy.”

  “Shikata ga nai. It can’t be helped,” Daddy whispered back. “I guess that’s the way it’s going to be.” He went out to bring in our baggage. I couldn’t understand why they were whispering with such concern in their voices. I thought it was fun to be able to listen in on the neighbors talking.

  When Daddy got all our baggage inside, Mama finally set her bulky carryall bag down on top of the pile of suitcases. I had a feeling the moment had arrived. Mama looked at all of us smiling and announced, “I show you something.”

  She reached in and hefted out a heavy rectangular object wrapped in her beige sweater decorated with pretty flowers made of yarn. The object had weight, I noticed, so it probably wasn’t something to eat. It must be something to play with. She carefully unwrapped her sweater from the mystery thing. It had still another layer of wrapping—my sister’s pink baby blanket. This was the heaviest and biggest thing in Mama’s bag. So I knew this had to be the reason she didn’t let anyone else carry it. This treat had to be the best of all the surprises she had produced from that well-worn carryall. She pulled a corner of the baby blanket off to reveal something metallic. It must be a toy for us, I thought.

  The pink cloth slipped off easily to reveal a rectangular, mahogany-colored metal box with a dark blue inset on top with a slot in it. She slipped her fingers into the slot and pulled. Up popped something I had never expected. It was Mama’s portable sewing machine! We were speechless. We stood there looking at it in puzzlement.

  “You brought that!” Daddy gaped, dumbfounded.

  “I not want to leave it behind,” she said simply. “And children going to be needing new clothes.” There was a long silence.

  Finally, Daddy said in a low whisper, “You knew this was forbidden.”

  “I know,” she answered. “But children be needing new clothes.”

  Daddy stared at the contraband we now had before us. Then suddenly, an astonishing thing happened. Daddy burst out laughing. Laughing out loud. The sound erupted from the bottom of his stomach, rising up through him and shaking his whole body. He shook so much, it looked as if he was trying to throw off some invisible thing that had been clinging onto his body for a long time. He held onto the sewing machine and laughed and laughed. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he choked out to Mama, “And you knew this was forbidden.” Mama, politely covering her mouth, joined in his laughing. We giggled, too, because they looked so funny.

  We hadn’t laughed together like that in a long time. I didn’t really understand then the full resonance of all that laughter filling the small, bare room on the first day of our arrival at Rohwer. I do remember, though, that to us kids that sewing machine of Mama’s was the biggest, heaviest, and most crushing disappointment of all the wonderful goodies she pulled out of her old, worn-out bag.

  * * *

  Setting up our new life in Rohwer immediately became a full-time occupation for both Daddy and Mama.

  Mama began the daunting work of making a home for us out of that rough-hewn single room. With her portable sewing machine, she ran up window curtains made from government surplus fabrics. Using strips of rag, she braided together colorful foot mats that she placed by the steel Army cots that were distributed to us. She brought in interesting tree branches and tall weed stalks and artfully arranged them in painted coffee cans. And, of course, there were the never-ending tasks of the washing and mending and the hundred other necessary chores that three young children required. But because the mess hall crew provided the meals, cooking was the only thing she didn’t do for us. To Mama, however, this was not a relief, but another deprivation of a precious personal responsibility—a cherished family charge taken from her life. Another loss.

  Almost as if to make up for it, she went about creating new tasks for herself with fierce determination. I remember Mama was always busy doing something. Certainly, the curtains, foot mats, and rustic plant arrangements were expressions of love for her family. But I can’t help wondering now if they weren’t, like her sewing machine, her own private statement of defiance against our circumstances. The government may have taken her home and placed her family in this raw single room in a tar-paper barrack, and it may have taken her freedom and put us in this barbed wire enclosure. But it could not take her family from her nor her ability to care for us. Not as long as she could sew and braid and create beauty out of fallen branches and dried wild foliage.

  Daddy, too, was confronting the challenges of our new life. He scoured the campground for scrap lumber and loose nails left by the construction workers and made shelves for storage and little stools for us kids to sit on. But more importantly, Daddy, who on our journey to Rohwer seemed tortured by personal anguish and the uncertainty of his family’s future, here in camp came to grips with the blunt certainty and the necessity of a shared existence with a great number of people confronting common difficulties. From the outset, he threw himself into helping other families move in, carrying luggage, distributing beds, and volunteering for whatever brigade was being organized. And as Daddy worked to help settle people,
he became more acquainted with the varying needs and personal histories of the folks who were thrown together in Block 6.

  There was tiny, sparrowlike Mrs. Takahashi, with four children, whose husband had been arrested and taken away by the FBI solely because he was a Buddhist minister. And there was Mrs. Yasuda, with two children and an elderly mother, whose husband was taken by federal officials because he was a Japanese language schoolteacher. Both were separated from husbands, who had been taken without trials or even formal charges—their only crime being that they occupied positions of high visibility in the Japanese community.

  Then there were Mr. and Mrs. Mamiya in the barrack facing ours. She was a tall, white-haired Caucasian lady, whom Mr. Mamiya was always fretting over because she was so sickly. He said she worried herself ill out of self-consciousness as the only white person in our block.

  And there was an elderly couple from Lodi, California, whose only son refused to be interned, citing his constitutional rights, and thus was arrested and separately incarcerated.

  There were people from many different communities up and down California and a few from Hawaii. There were farmers from Fresno and fishermen from San Pedro, professionals from Los Angeles and shopkeepers from Stockton. There were old immigrants and old Nisei, American-borns. There were young immigrants and many young Nisei and even Sansei, third-generation Americans. We were so diverse. All so different. And yet, we were the same. We were all Japanese Americans and we were all in Block 6 at Rohwer. That was our common denominator. Daddy felt keenly the need for this diverse group somehow to be able to live together. We had to forge a community.

  But problems and complaints were inevitable, and they immediately started cropping up. The women objected to the lack of privacy in their lavatory facility. It was a long, open row of toilet seats and nothing else. Partitions to ensure some semblance of privacy were needed.

  Beef brains had been served at one of the first meals in the mess hall. It was a delicacy unknown and unpalatable to most Japanese tastes. A request had to be made to the camp administrator for meals appropriate to the Japanese palate.

  The need for someone to work on these problems and be a representative of the people with the camp administration was evident. Daddy’s name was put forth as the block manager, and he was elected.

  Although Daddy didn’t particularly think of himself as a leader, under these circumstances he was uniquely equipped to serve in that capacity. He was fluent in Japanese and English and so was able to communicate with the Japanese-speaking immigrant group as well as the English-speaking American-born generation. His age also bridged the gap. Daddy was thirty-nine—right in between the elders in their fifties or sixties, thus old enough to have some credibility with them, and the young American-born Nisei group, which was composed mostly of people in their teens and early twenties. Most of all, he felt acutely the needs of those with whom he shared a common circumstance. He willingly accepted the urgency of serving. As block manager, his role became a combination of mayor of the block, liaison with the camp administration, arbitrator of disputes within the block, and—to some—even a marriage counselor.

  * * *

  While Daddy and Mama were consumed with starting up our new life in camp, Henry and I had a brand-new world to explore. The camp itself was boring in its geometric symmetry and rigid uniformity. But the areas near the barbed wire fence became a place of never-ending discoveries.

  We were city kids, and although we had seen butterflies back in Los Angeles, never had we seen such large and colorful ones as those that flitted along the barbed wire fence. But these were dumb butterflies. If I quietly approached one resting on the wire and then moved swiftly, I could snatch it up with two fingers before it knew what happened. They were beautiful but dumb. Catching them was too easy. I threw them back up into the air, and as they gratefully fluttered away, I would find beautiful powder patterns left on my fingers.

  The more interesting of the flying exotica were the dragonflies. These crimson or electric blue animated torpedoes, buzzing and darting about the fence, would alight briefly on the wire as if to tease us by showing off their bright luminescent tails in full stationary glory. And they would reveal their wings to be, not really invisible blurs, but actually strong transparent propellers shimmering with changing iridescent colors. I had to catch these creatures. But even before I could get close enough to snatch one of them by its stilled wings, it would dart off, mocking me triumphantly in its fancy zigzag flight pattern.

  One day, when Henry and I were playing near the fence, two big boys, brothers who lived on the other side of the mess hall, came up to us. I knew that the older one, about thirteen, was named Ford and his chubby brother, a few years younger, was Chevy. I had heard Daddy pointing them out to Mama during lunch in the mess hall and telling her that their daddy named them after cars because he bought those cars the year each boy was born. Daddy thought that their daddy must have been very proud of his cars.

  “Hey, kid, you want to learn a magic word?” It was Ford talking to me.

  “What kind of magic?” I asked.

  “You can have power over the guards in the tower.”

  “Power over those soldiers with rifles? Really?” It did sound like something awesome. “Okay,” I said, somewhat tentatively. A decision like this was not to be rushed into rashly. “What’s the magic word?”

  Ford started to explain. His brother, Chevy, the one with the round, dumpy face, hung back and giggled for some unknown reason.

  “With this magic word,” Ford began, “you can get the soldiers to give you anything you want. First, you shout at them all the goodies you want. Then you yell out the magic word real loud. And if you say the word right, then they’ll give you everything you shouted at them.” This sounded simple enough, I thought. But I was becoming aware of something else—Ford had a crazy kid brother. While Ford was telling me about the magic word, Chevy covered his mouth like some loony, stupidly trying to suppress his giggles.

  “Well, what’s the magic word?” I asked.

  “Remember, you’ve got to say it right, or it won’t work,” Ford emphasized.

  “Okay, I’ll say it right. What is it?” I demanded.

  “All right, here it is,” Ford said. He began pronouncing the words very slowly and deliberately. “Sakana beach.”

  “Sakana beach?” I was puzzled. What’s so magical about sakana beach? I thought to myself. Sakana means “fish”—so, fish beach. What’s magical about that?

  “Remember, you have to say it right,” Ford said.

  “Well, how do I have to say sakana beach?” I asked.

  “You have to say it real fast, and you have to say it real loud. It’s real important you say it fast.”

  By now, Chevy was convulsing uncontrollably in a silent fit, his arms wrapped tightly around his shaking body, struggling to contain the giggles about to burst from him. That nitwit brother was getting on my nerves. “Okay, so I shout at the guard all the things I want, and then I yell ‘sakana beach’ real fast, right?” It sounded so easy.

  I told Henry to stay where he was, and I started toward the guard tower. “Get bubble gum,” Henry yelled to me.

  “Remember,” Ford emphasized again, “if you don’t say it right, then the guards get real mad and they might start shooting. So if you don’t say it right, you better run like hell.”

  They might start shooting? Why did he add that part after I started out? That’s a whole different story. But it was too late. I was on my way. I wasn’t a coward. I kept walking toward the guard tower.

  The guards were just changing shifts, and the one who had been up in the tower had come down. Both guards were on the ground chatting. I approached them and stopped about fifty yards away. I yelled out, “Bubble gum!” That was for Henry. The guards glanced at me startled, then smiled. I took a few more steps and shouted, “Popsicle!” That was something I remembered from Los Angeles that we didn’t have in camp. The guards just smiled and shrugged thei
r shoulders. A few more tentative steps and I shouted, “Tricycle!” Nothing. They were now ignoring me. I thought I had better not get too greedy.

  I took a couple more steps toward the chatting guards, then a deep breath, and shouted at the top of my voice as fast as I could, “Sakana beach!” They turned to me, stunned. I waited. How were they going to produce bubble gum, Popsicles, and a tricycle, I wondered. But they just stood there glowering at me. Maybe I didn’t say it quite right. I took another breath and yelled out even louder and faster, “Sakana beach.”

  “Why you little rascal,” growled one soldier. And he started to bend down to pick up a pebble. It wasn’t going well. I hadn’t said the magic words right. Maybe I could undo the mistake by saying it a bit slower. But just as I got out my third—and as it turned out, my final—“sakana beach,” the guard flung a pebble at me. I turned and ran as fast as I could.

  Behind me I could hear the other guard call out, “You little snot!” Another pebble skittered past me. They were really mad! This was a disaster. They could start shooting at me with their rifles next. I grabbed Henry’s hand, and we ran as fast as our legs could carry us. From the corner of my eyes, I saw Ford and Chevy hiding behind a barrack. They were rolling in hysterics, laughing their heads off.

  Back home, I asked Mama what was so magical about “sakana beach.” She couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. “Sakana” mean ‘fish,’ ” she said. “And ‘beach’ mean kaigan. No magic. Just Japanese and English all mixed up.” We knew that. She was no help.

  That night we told Daddy the whole story and asked if he could solve the riddle of sakana beach. He sat there repeating it at varying speeds over and over. Sakana beach fast. Sakana beach medium, and Sakana beach slowly. Finally, he stopped and smiled. He said it again, “Sakana beach,” and started to chuckle. Sakana beach, he told me, sounds like very bad words in English that he didn’t want us using—and certainly not shouted at the guards. He said Ford and Chevy Nakayama were bad boys for teaching me those words, and he did not want us playing with them anymore. Good, I thought. I didn’t like those crazy brothers anyway. But the power of the words “sakana beach” remained a mystery to me. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that sakana beach, said in just the right way, sounds like “son of a bitch.”