“No—Akira, Tamiko, and their children are all happy in Hōfuna, as are Nishi and I. And Japan is becoming something it has never been before: a democracy. I always admired America for its democratic principles, even though those principles were not extended to me.”
“But the McCarran Act changed all that,” Ralph pointed out. “You could be an American citizen now, just like Grandma Etsuko.”
“I am glad America is living up to its ideals,” Jiro said, “but I am happy being a citizen of Japan at a time when that means more than it ever has.”
The Harada house was bursting with family on this Sunday afternoon. As Jiro held court in the living room, Frank and Ruth were preparing a supper of nori soup, beef sukiyaki, rice, green bean shiraae, and mochi. Peggy, now seventeen, was playing softball in the street with her teenage cousins; in the dining room, Etsuko doted on Ralph and Carol’s newborn daughter, Susan. At the other end of that table, nineteen-year-old Donnie—or Don, as he now preferred to be called—was quizzing his Grandma Rachel about her travels: “So you finally got to see the Great Barrier Reef?”
“Yes, and on the way I stopped at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, where my father made port as a sailor. But the highlight was Australia. I took a tour of the Great Reef on a glass bottom boat—it was so beautiful!”
Don said enviously, “I would love to see that someday.”
“How was your freshman year? Have you decided on a major yet?”
“Yeah, I think so. I had this great biology professor who talked about the similarities between plants and animals. I thought about what you said in Hawai'i about how the land, sea, air, living things, how it’s all interconnected. So I’m thinking about a major in biological science.”
“Don, can you help me set the table?” Ruth asked her son.
“Sure. We’ll talk more later, tūtū, okay?”
Rachel felt privileged to have been included in this gathering. The Watanabes all knew she had leprosy, but if they harbored any cultural fear of the disease they did not betray it and graciously accepted her as part of the family. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was what life with Kenji’s family might have been like, had they both not had Hansen’s disease and been ostracized by his relations. But then, had they not been sent to Kalaupapa, she and Kenji might never have even met, much less married, on O'ahu.
Before dinner began, Jiro rose, held up his third glass of sake, and declared in a tone both sober and tipsy: “Thank you all for this warm welcome back to your shores. But there is one who could not sit among us today, and I must honor his memory. To Taizo—my brother, my family, my friend.”
Ruth would have preferred not to be reminded of an absence that still stung, even today—but, like everyone else, raised her glass in honor of her otōsan.
* * *
As dusk fell, the teenagers gathered around the television set, watching The Jack Benny Program, followed by Steve Allen’s comedy-variety show. In the backyard, the adults stood or sat in lawn chairs to drink—beer, wine, or sake—or to smoke or make small talk. Etsuko sat at the far end of the yard chatting with Stanley and his family; Frank stood with Ruth’s other brothers, talking sports; and Ruth, Jiro, and Nishi were chatting near the kids’ old swing set, now rusting in place. Jiro was on his fifth glass of sake and even more voluble—and sentimental—than at supper.
“Ahhh, Dai,” he sighed, “I would give my left arm to have your father here today.”
“I know, Ojisan. That was a lovely toast.”
But Jiro’s rush of sudden guilt could not be quelled. “I failed him at Tule Lake as I had failed him too many times before.”
“Uncle, I’m sure that isn’t—”
“On my honor, Dai, I wish it had been me they had taken away that day, me they had put in that stockade—”
“What?” Ruth said with a gasp.
“Jiro! Be quiet!” Nishi said, poking him in the side.
“What do you mean, taken away? What … stockade?”
“Five weeks they left him in that hellhole! Cold blustery winds by day, freezing temperatures at night—it should have been me, not Taizo…”
“When he is drunk,” Nishi said urgently, “he makes up nonsense—”
No—whatever her uncle was talking about, Ruth had the chill instinct that it was far from nonsense. She thought of Etsuko and felt a flush of panic, but was relieved to see her mother sitting at the opposite end of the yard, laughing with Stanley, apparently not having heard any of this.
Before Jiro could compound his mistake, Ruth quickly took him by the arm. “Uncle, come, let’s go for a walk,” she said, pulling him away.
“No, no,” he drunkenly resisted, “I must tell you, I must apologize—”
She yanked on his arm hard enough to make him wince. She half whispered, half hissed, “You’re so damn eager to lose that arm? I’ll take it off for you if you don’t shut up and come with me!”
Ruth walked Jiro and Nishi down the block until they were far enough from the Harada home for no one there to hear.
“All right, Ojisan,” Ruth said, “what do you mean, my father was ‘taken away’? He was arrested?”
Jiro nodded.
“Your father did not want you or your mother to know,” Nishi said.
“My mother’s not going to know. But I have to know what I’m protecting her from. Why was he arrested?”
Jiro’s response was to start sobbing again, so it fell to Nishi to tell Ruth the truth: how Taizo had been arrested trying to help a friend; how he was beaten, interrogated, thrown into a flimsy tent and left there for seven weeks in the bitter cold; and how he was removed only when he fell ill with pneumonia.
“They killed him,” Jiro spat out between sobs. “Bastards!”
Ruth was stunned; overwhelmed. It was bad enough that her father had died at Tule Lake, but now to learn that it hadn’t been just a random event, an act of God, but the direct result of brutal mistreatment …
She told Nishi, “Take him to Taketa’s Coffee Shop and pour as much coffee into him as it takes to sober him up.”
Nishi nodded. “I am so sorry, Dai. You were never supposed to know.”
And I wish to God I didn’t, Ruth thought. She walked back home and into the backyard as casually as she could manage.
Frank came up to her. “There you are. Where are Jiro and Nishi?”
“Jiro had a little too much to drink. Nishi took him to get some fresh air.”
Ruth hurried inside, into the empty kitchen. She braced her arms against the sink, her rage growing like a fast-moving wildfire. She went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. After a few swallows she began to relax a bit. After five minutes she had finished the bottle and felt composed enough to go back outside and socialize with her guests. Things will be fine, she told herself. Her mother would never know. Never.
Within the hour the party began to break up, just as Jiro and Nishi returned. Jiro’s face looked ashen, as if he might have thrown up along the way, but he was sober. He and Nishi were staying with Horace in Florin, and before they left, Jiro found Ruth and privately, respectfully, bowed to her.
“My apologies, Dai,” he said. “For everything.”
She nodded and tried to smile.
That night, once she and Frank were alone in their bedroom, she closed the door and locked it—something she never did—and Frank knew at once something was wrong. “What is it, hon?”
She didn’t reply, just held onto him and wept without words, wept for her father and the tortures he had gone through—the old wound of his death, barely healed, now torn open again, bleeding rage and grief and sorrow.
* * *