Allegiance (28 page)

“Who are those people?”

“The Hoshidan. Our militants. They want to go back to Japan to fight for their divine emperor. But at least with them you know where you stand.” He swallows as though an unpleasant taste has entered his mouth and looks off to where the girl is singing.

“Who's she?” I prompt.

“Oh, that's Fumiko. Nice girl. She came here with her family from Sacramento. When she heard she was going to Tule Lake she ordered a bathing suit from the Sears catalog.” He waves a hand at the dust around us. “As Bogart would say, she was misinformed.”

I smile at the reference. “She's quite a singer.”

Best nods. “She opens the baseball games here. She was a featured soprano with the Sacramento Junior College Symphony. They had her sing the national anthem—ours—before their December 7 concert. Then this, actually. You know it?”

“Yes,” I say. “
Madame Butterfly
was originally a story by a Philadelphian, you know. John Luther Long.” Best looks at me curiously. “We keep track of each other,” I say.

“Huh,” says Best. “As a matter of fact, some of the Quakers who visited got her a scholarship to the Curtis Institute there.”

“So what's she doing still at Tule Lake?”

“She's a no-no,” says Best. “It complicates things.” Fumiko is reaching the end of the aria. “
Tienti la tua paura
,” she sings, “
io con sicura fede l'aspetto
.” Her voice rises, clear in the empty sky.
You may hold on to your fears; I, with perfect faith, I will wait.

“She answered no on the questionnaire? Why would she do that?”

Best shrugs. “Who knows? Come on, I've got you meeting with some block managers.”

• • • • 

I eat breakfast in the mess hall: eggs that are shaken from powder but still seem half-cooked, a slab of Spam. I am getting my taste of army life. Best stations me in one of the administrative buildings, also stocked with blond wood Sears Roebuck furniture and a portrait of Roosevelt. The block managers come to see me, passing through a gate in the fence separating the administrative section of the camp from the sixty-four detainee blocks called the Colony. Each block contains fourteen barracks and roughly 250 detainees. Some of the managers are hostile, some polite. I say the same thing to all of them. “American citizenship gives you rights. To renounce citizenship is to surrender those rights. No one should renounce unless he wants to go to Japan and live there as a Japanese.”

Responses differ. Most greet my statement with anger and disbelief. “We are Japanese to you anyway,” says Tom Kurihara. “I was at Minidoka when the army came through. One of your colonels, recruiting. Do you know what he said to the boys who volunteered? That he was proud that they had chosen to fight for America and against their country.”

“One colonel does not reflect the views of the United States government,” I say. “I am speaking to you as a representative of the Department of Justice.”

“What rights do we have here?” asks Ransaku Takei. “Three hundred of us are in the stockade. Hungry, with no food. Sick, with no medicine. Those are Americans. What are their rights? No charges, no trial. I ask any question, the administrators say, ‘All detainees receive excellent medical care.' My workers have cleaned blood and hair off those walls; they have picked up pieces of baseball bats. Even in the camp our conditions are worse than a federal prison.”

“I will talk to Director Best about the stockade,” I say.

“The Relocation Authority officials tell me renunciation is wise,” says Harry Nakamura. “They seem to think it is a good idea.”

That is not government policy, and it pricks my interest. Perhaps it is incompetence; perhaps it is something else.

“Who is saying that? What are their names?”

He shrugs. “I cannot give you names. It is the men who talk to us. They come and go.”

“I have no idea why they would say that,” I tell him. “You will be sent to Japan if you renounce. A beaten Japan.”

Harry nods. “Not everyone believes that is what the future holds.”

“People who are listening to Radio Tokyo on their shortwaves? America will win this war, you can be sure of it.”

“Even so,” says Harry. “You must understand the minds of the people who live here. We Nisei were proud of our citizenship. The Issei mocked us for it. America, with its rights and its liberties. ‘You are no different from us,' they said. ‘Your skin is what matters.' And now we are worse off. If we were Japanese we might be in an internment camp, with international monitors. We would have the Spanish acting for us. But because we are Americans, we have no one to help us. We have nothing.”

“You have rights,” I say. “There are cases going on in the courts right now. Tell people that if they throw away their citizenship, they throw away rights.”

“The idea of these rights makes life perhaps more difficult,” Harry says softly. “To tell us we are enemies and lock us up, that we can understand. To tell us we are still Americans, to arrest us for refusing the draft, to make our children each day salute the flag and pledge allegiance to their jailers—it is perhaps this that people cannot bear. Renouncing citizenship could seem a relief.”

“They can't make your children recite the Pledge.” I say it without thinking.

“What do you mean?”

Immediately I regret raising the issue. But now there is no choice. I explain about the Pledge of Allegiance case. The fixed star of our constitutional constellation, as Justice Jackson wrote—no official can force a confession of faith.

Harry is silent for a long moment. You cannot really see the stars in
Washington, it occurs to me, not as they are above this camp; you cannot pick out the constellations that burn in this sky. “So that is what the Supreme Court has done for us,” he says at last. “To protect our rights. I see. You sent us here by the thousands because we refused your oath. But the children need not recite the Pledge. Liberty and justice for all.”

I say nothing. Harry nods and continues. “We are viewed with suspicion because we do not act as your culture thinks appropriate. I am in that position now. I know that I should laugh at what you have told me. You will forgive me if I find myself incapable.”

“Laugh or cry, I guess,” I say uncomfortably. “I can tell you this, though. There is no advantage to renouncing. You gain nothing, unless you are truly loyal to Japan.”

“Ah,” says Harry. “Let me show you something.” He rises from the table and crosses to the door. I follow him outside to the fence in the firebreak.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Wait,” says Harry. In the guard towers, flags flutter in the breeze, colors crisp against the deep blue sky. Looking down I see tiny shells studding the black sand of the firebreak. Harry follows my gaze. “Girls string them into necklaces,” he says. “Very pretty.” After some minutes a squad of white-clad Hoshidan passes by on the other side. When they see us, they begin to bark. “
Inu
,” they shout. “
Inu
.” “It means dog,” Harry says calmly. “Collaborator. They call me
inu
because I talk to you, because I talk to the administrators. If I renounce I prove my loyalty to them.”

“And if you don't?”

“They were not bold at first,” he says. “Many joined the Hoshidan because they thought they could avoid the draft. They dared to wrestle with Boy Scouts who raised the flag, that was all. Now there are more of them and they dare more. Some men are beaten. The general manager of the co-op was killed. They are growing in power. This is the price of our American rights.”

“I'll talk to the director,” I say. “But I want you to tell the people in your block that renunciation is a mistake.”

Harry gives me a small bow. “I will convey the words of the most esteemed Department of Justice.”

• • • • 

“Why do you let the Hoshidan do this?” I ask Ray Best.

“They're mostly harmless,” he says. “And Tule Lake is supposed to be a segregation center for disloyals. If we didn't let them blow off steam with the marching, it might get worse. We have to handle these people carefully. An MP shot a truck driver a while back and we were afraid the place would explode.”

“But they're beating other detainees,” I say. “I heard they just killed one.”

Best nods. “That's true. And we'd like to do something about it. But the men who've been beaten don't cooperate. We can't prove anything.”

“What about the stockade?” I think I am changing the subject; Best does not.

“Oh, we've tried that,” he says. “We put the leaders in there, we thought. But it's impossible to know if we've got the right guys. We've had near-riots over the stockade, and hunger strikes too. And the Spanish complain about the Issei and then we catch hell from Washington. I don't think it's worth the trouble.”

“So you're going to let them out?”

Something in my tone must strike Best as odd, for he looks at me sharply. “Their ACLU lawyer was here a couple of days before you. We sent him off, but he'll be back. He's threatening to file habeas petitions. We can't defend it in front of a judge. We're going to have to tear it down pretty soon.”

“Where is it?”

Best points. “Not much to see,” he says. Over toward the edge of the colony there is another fence, and behind it a beaverboard wall. Farther still, and hidden from view, I can surmise a building by the flags that rise above it. “You see it's right by the barracks. Women used to come over and hang on that fence weeping and holding out their hands. They could see inside; that's why we had to put up the wall.”

“Ah,” I say. “Of course.”

• • • • 

I wake the next day to the bugles of the Hoshidan. I keep the blinds drawn this time, listening to their chants while I dress. Then there is silence, then Fumiko's voice. I step outside and she is standing by the fence again, looking
into the desert. She sings a different song this morning, of skies and mountains, of dreams that see beyond the years.

I walk to my side of the fence, as close as I can come but still yards away. Her voice reaches up a yearning interval, seeking a higher register, and the song takes form within me. I can feel it move, wings beating against the cage of my bones. Fumiko casts back her head and the music pours from her. It is an aria now, a ladder into the sky, where all is blue and open and the endlessness is not desert but freedom. Her hands open and close at her sides; at first I think she is clenching her fists, but as I watch I understand the gesture is an opening, a release. She is offering something, or letting it go: a promise, a hope, a vow. “With perfect faith,” she sings, “I will wait.” And then she stops and there is only emptiness, only silence. It takes me a moment to remember where I am.

Fumiko turns her head; for the first time, she notices me. Her gaze drops to the ground; her shoulders tighten. My first thought is to clap, and I raise my hands, but something stops me. Instead, I reach out and take hold of the fence; I stand there with my palms against the wire, and she gives a nod that is half a bow and walks quickly away.

That day I visit the stockade. It is a camp within the camp, another barbed-wire fence, more guard towers, a single gate. The inmates regard me listlessly. Sixteen are on a hunger strike, Best tells me. If they die it will be a public relations headache.

For three more days I meet with block managers. The Hoshidan wake me each morning and I dress, waiting for Fumiko. I do not go outside anymore. I do not want her to see me watching; I do not want to feel her eyes on me. Instead I look through the window until she has finished. Then it is breakfast in the mess hall and a day of meetings. In the evenings I eat dinner with Best or other administrators, while Franklin Roosevelt smiles down from the wall. “What have you told the detainees about renunciation?” I ask Best.

“Nothing,” he says.

“What?”

“Justice said not to. Apparently we made a mess of it last time.”

“So you're telling me your men haven't been discussing it at all?”

“Yeah,” says Best. “Why, do you want us to?”

“No. It's just that someone else told me something different.”

“Could be War Department guys,” Best says. “The detainees can't always tell us apart.”

“Could be,” I say. He finishes and excuses himself, but I stay at the table drinking coffee. In bed that night I cannot sleep, and it is not just the caffeine. Discovery thrills through me. Here are the enemy's traces, their fingerprints. I have picked up the trail again. And it seems my initial guess was right. Whatever is going on is indeed connected to the Japanese. But what could these men want? Getting more Japanese to renounce—what does that achieve? It will strengthen the government's hand in litigation, I suppose. It is tangible proof of disloyalty. But it seems an awfully small gain.

The next day I widen my net. Best has little contact with the detainees. Others have more. I go table to table in the mess hall; I seek out the Relocation Authority workers integrated into the detainee community. Ruth Fischer teaches in the high school. “Rumors,” she says. “But they're not very open with me. First couple of years it was different, but not now. Maybe the younger ones.”

Marvin Opler is Ray Best's community analyst, an anthropologist detailed to the Relocation Authority. “Yes, I've heard about renunciation,” he says. He has enrolled his son in the Japanese nursery school. “The kids talk about the certificates.”

“Certificates?”

“The ones they're given if they renounce.”

I frown. “There are no certificates.”

Opler nods his head in contradiction. “I've seen them. In the apartments.”

“What do they look like?”