Allegiance (44 page)

“What will you do if you are released from this camp?”

“I will sabotage American war plants.”

I look at him. He looks back. His breath comes quickly. There is a sheen of
sweat on his face. I move to the culture questions. “For what is the Ise Shrine famous?”

“Ise Jingu is the home of the Sacred Mirror. It is rebuilt of new wood every twenty years.”

“What is the significance of February 11 to Japan?”

“It is
Kigensetsu
, the day when Emperor Jimmu established his capital.”

He is perfect. I give him the last form. “If you sign this, you will lose your status as an American. You will be sent to Japan when the war ends. You will most likely never be allowed to return to the United States. You will lose all the rights and privileges of your citizenship forever.”

He looks me directly in the face, then seizes the paper and scrawls his name. This, too, is the pattern followed by the Hoshidan. But there is a difference. The Hoshidan looked angry. The expression on this man's face is fear.

“Why are you renouncing?” I ask him.

He looks back up at me. “I want to be Japanese.”

I shake my head. “Send in the next one,” I say to the guard at the door.

• • • • 

I have never seen her face. I have never heard her speak. But the carefully curled hair and something about the posture as she stands there in the doorway leaves no doubt in my mind. “Fumiko,” I say. “Please have a seat.”

I ask her to verify her signature on the application, which she does. “What do you think of the emperor of Japan?” I ask.

She does not leap, but she gets to her feet. “The emperor is a living god,” she says slowly.

“Fumiko,” I say. “Your citizenship protects you.”

She says something I cannot hear.

“Your government will protect you,” I say.

There is no answer. I look down at the papers. When I look up again there is a line down her cheek, silver, like the trail of a star. In the silence between us, a song rises in my mind, which I heard her sing through the wire fence.
Thine alabaster cities gleam . . .

“You cannot protect me,” she says. “No one protects us.”

“From who? From the Hoshidan?”

“The emperor is a living god,” she says, more loudly.

“Do you believe Japan will win the war?”

“Yes, and I hope so too.”

I consult my quiz and skip ahead to the question about February 11. “What is the significance of February 27 to Japan?” I ask.

“It is
Kigensetsu
,” says Fumiko promptly. She does not notice I have changed the date. “The day when Emperor Jimmu established his capital.” The words mean nothing to her; she is reciting a formula given by others.

“This is not a voluntary renunciation,” I say. “I will not approve this.”

“You gave us nothing,” says Fumiko. Her voice is louder still. “We have nothing left. What am I to do? If I do not renounce, I will be forced to leave Tule Lake. But I cannot go back to California. Where will I go? Who will give me a job or a place to live? My parents are not Americans. They will be held here and sent back to Japan without me. If the Hoshidan do not kill us all first.”

“You're making a mistake,” I say. “I won't approve it.”

“Give me the paper.” It is almost a shout.

“If you sign this,” I say, “you will lose your status as an American. You will be sent to Japan when the war ends. You will most likely never be allowed to return to the United States. You will lose all the rights and privileges of your citizenship forever.”

“Give me the paper.”

Wordless, I pass it over.
Patriot dream, that sees beyond the years.
She signs, and the voice in my mind goes still. Now there is nothing but silence and the rustle of paper as I add her sheet to the pile. She leaves the room without looking at me.

“No more today,” I say to the guard. “I need to see Director Best.”

• • • • 

“I want to talk to Harry Nakamura,” I tell Best.

His messenger returns alone. “Nakamura says it will take armed guards to make him see you.”

I do not hesitate. “Then send them.”

They bring him in half an hour later, two burly MPs with rifles shouldered.
Harry Nakamura is all in white, his face a hostile mask under the
bozu
haircut. I wave the guards out of the room.

Nakamura's face relaxes. “You understand it is safer for me to come to you this way.”

“Sure,” I say. “Whatever you think is best. Look, I don't understand what's going on here. Why are people so hell-bent on renouncing?”

“They are scared,” he says. “There are rumors everywhere. The camps are closing, we hear. Everyone will be forced to leave. But if we cannot return to California in safety, we have no place to go. America is not opening its arms in welcome. They say if you do not renounce you will be drafted. They say you must renounce if you want to stay with your parents. It seems to offer safety.”

“Who is saying this?”

“The Hoshidan. They say we will be safe if we join them. That is why you see the old women with their gray hair running around in the morning. That is why you see the children.”

“Anyone else?”

“I have heard that some War Department men say the same thing. And the land reclamation agents.”

“The land reclamation agents?”

“For those who are renouncing. They offer compensation for the land. The certificates.”

“Are they War Department? Relocation Authority?”

He shrugs. “I regret that these distinctions escape me. I cannot tell them apart.”

Clearly, I will have to find these men. But in the meantime there is another problem. “The Hoshidan coach people for the hearings, don't they?”

“There is what you could call a College of Renunciation Knowledge. They send some Hoshidan in first to learn the questions. Then everyone else is prepared.”

It must be stopped, but I don't know how. We can change the culture questions, but the Hoshidan will adjust in turn. The questions can hardly be considered dispositive anyway. The pledge of disloyalty the applicants recite means nothing either. As long as they sign the final form, as long as they say they are acting freely, we are bound by law to approve.

“If I get rid of the Hoshidan leaders, will that stop it?”

Nakamura shrugs, his face impassive. “Who can say what will stop this? It will help.”

• • • • 

I go back to my apartment and write a letter on Department of Justice stationery. “Have a typist copy this,” I say to Ray Best. “Post one in every mess hall.”

He looks at it curiously. “From Caswell Harrison, Special Assistant to the Attorney General,” he reads. “To the leaders of the Hoshidan.”

I know you have pressured residents of this camp to assert loyalty to Japan. This camp is part of America and the people here are Americans. Coercing them into asserting loyalty to Japan is treason. It will stop. By order of the Department of Justice.

The next morning, the bugles are unmistakably louder. When I look out my window I see that the drills have moved along the firebreak to a spot directly across the fence from my apartment. “You should consider it an honor,” Ray Best says. “They've never done that for a visitor before.”

The Army trucks I have requested arrive that day. We have approved renunciation by 171 Hoshidan now, and we load them in, bound for the Santa Fe internment camp. There is a spectacular farewell. Thousands of detainees line the road as the trucks pull out. They shout “
Banzai!
” and raise their arms in the air, palms down.

“We have elected a new slate of officers,” a Hoshidan tells me in his interview that afternoon. “We will not stop. We will never stop.”

I end my hearings when the first man with long hair comes in, leaps to his feet, and proclaims the emperor a living god. I call Francis Biddle instead. “The people here are terrified,” I say. “They don't know what to expect. They're willing to do anything to be safe, and they're making a terrible mistake.”

“What would you have me do, Cash?”

“Give me a promise that no one loyal will be forced to leave Tule Lake. Give me a proclamation I can put up in the mess halls under your name.”

In the silence that follows I imagine Biddle examining his fingernails. “I can't give that kind of a blanket guarantee,” he says.

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Do what we planned,” he says. “Take the Hoshidan, discourage the others. Felix says that the decisions will be coming down Monday. You only have a few days left.”

“I can't do it,” I tell him. “Not with the system I'm using now. I can't just go through the applications. I need the authority to send out whomever I want.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are loyal Americans here,” I say, “and I'm going to protect them. I need to be able to send anyone I want out to the internment camps.”

“Internment camps are for enemy aliens,” Biddle says. “You can't send anyone there unless they renounce.”

“But anyone who renounces?”

“Them you can take,” says Biddle. “It's a mess, Cash. We all know that. Do what you think is best. Be as reasonable as you can.”

• • • • 

“Send some MPs to get the Hoshidan membership list,” I tell Ray Best. They offer it willingly, and we call them for hearings one after the other. They line up in white outside my office, and for a lunatic moment I am seeing the girls of Merion in their debutante gowns. There is no question of choosing this time, though, no worry about who to pick for that first dance across the polished floor. This time we take them all.

It is a long line of Army trucks that assembles behind the gates the next morning. There are almost seven hundred Hoshidan inside. The farewell ceremony is weaker, I think, the shouts fainter. Of course, there are a thousand voices missing from the chorus now. The test will be tomorrow.

The bugles wake me from sleep at five-thirty, as usual. I stumble to my window and raise the blind. The firebreak is filled with figures in white. More of them are children; renunciation is limited to those eighteen and older. More
of them are women; we have removed only men. But I do not think, all in all, that their numbers are any less. I send the military police for Harry Nakamura.

“You have not removed the leaders,” he says.

“I've sent out the whole membership.”

“There are people who want others to renounce. They do not renounce themselves. They may not be obvious in their actions, but they are effective.”

“Tell me who.”

Nakamura's face is expressionless. “Then I would be an
inu
indeed.”

“You would be helping me protect Americans,” I say.

“And what would I be doing to the men whose names I gave you?”

“No more than they deserve.”

He shrugs. “Perhaps. Even so, I cannot do it.”

• • • • 

Nakamura has his principles, I think, like creases in paper. But I need action. There is one day left before the cases come down, and I have achieved nothing. “Who would be encouraging renunciation?” I ask Marvin Opler. “Not the Hoshidan, but people trying to push the others into it?”

He scratches at his beard. “Hard to say. I have some guesses, of course.”

“Could you make me a list?”

“What for?”

“I'm going to send them out to Santa Fe.”

Opler frowns. “How are you going to do that?

“Get them to renounce their citizenship.”

“But they don't want to.”

“Well, I'll persuade them.”

A troubled expression crosses Opler's face. He takes off his glasses and polishes them on his sleeve. “How?”

“Leave that to me. Can you make a list?”

“I guess so.” He hesitates a moment. “The ones I'm not sure about . . . you want them on or off?”

I am not hesitating, but I pause before responding, just to make sure he hears me. “I want them on.”

• • • • 

Opler comes back in a few hours. He has 150 names, a daunting number. Too many, certainly, for my team of twelve. “I need more men,” I tell Ray Best.

“If the Relocation Authority wants to help,” he says, “you can have them.”

“No, I want your MPs. I want some soldiers.”

Best's expression suggests that he's never seen me before. He shakes his head. “No way. You're not taking my soldiers into the colony.”

“Why not?”

“One, this isn't a military problem. And two, the place would explode.”

“And what's going to happen if I go in there without them?”

A short laugh. “I don't know. I'm not advising you to do it.”

“Well, I'm doing it. You can help me, or you can explain to Francis Biddle why you didn't.”

“Francis Biddle?” Best curls his lip. “I don't work for Justice.”

“Fine,” I say. “I'll take the Relocation Authority men.”

“Okay,” says Best. He picks at his teeth with a matchstick. “Well, you should probably go start talking to them, then.”

I go back to my apartment and sit down with Miller, looking at Opler's list—150 names. I have four agents, and maybe three lawyers bold enough to come with me. Miller screws up his face. “We can do it,” he says.

“Really?”

“Sure. I can get you some local FBI, some Relocation Authority guys.”

“Enough?”

“Won't need that many. We go in at night, do it quietly, no one knows what's going on. It'll take a while, but we can pull it off.”

“Okay,” I say. “It's got to be tonight.”

“Sure.” Miller nods. “I'll get on it.”

Afternoon is fading into evening when he returns.