Forgiveness (7 page)

After Japanese school, Mitsue, Mary, and their brothers would walk back home and have dinner with the family. Tomi was an
exceptional cook. She loved to make
Kamaboko
from the fish that Yosuke brought home. Mitsue would help her bone the fish and pound it in a bowl to make the fishcake. She would taste the fish to make sure it was seasoned just so, never using a recipe. She learned from her mother that every dish was a work in progress.

On the weekend they had more school. They were Japanese, after all. They would spend all day Saturday at the Japanese centre and then be back in the same building for church on Sunday morning. Mitsue was baptized there when she was sixteen, along with Miyoko, Sumiko, and Haruko. They had a Baptist minister, a wonderful man named Mr. Harry who drove in with his wife and three children from Kerrisdale. Mr. Harry and his family were the only white people in the entire congregation.

Mitsue and Miyoko graduated to Point Grey Junior High School in the fall of 1932. They were still the only Japanese girls in their grade. They both excelled. By Grade 9, their families had a decision to make: should the girls go on to high school? Yosuke and Tomi had never doubted this. Mitsue and Miyoko went on to Magee Secondary School.

All the other Celtic parents decided against further education for their daughters. Eight years seemed plenty for a Japanese girl in 1932. So while Magee was a much larger school than Mitsue and Miyoko had ever attended, they encountered even fewer Japanese students than before. Gone were the days of hitching a ride on Toru’s bicycle. Her brother had graduated with honours. Mitsue wished he were there. She felt she was about to need him.

She was right.

One morning in November, for the first time, Miyoko was not waiting out front of Mitsue’s door to go to school. Nor the next morning. Nor the next. A family meeting was called. Mitsue walked into the living room, her belly in knots.

“Miyoko is getting the test,” Tomi announced, her eyes squarely on Mitsue. Everyone knew what
the test
was. No further explanation was needed. Tuberculosis was everywhere. If you got it, you were in peril.

Mitsue was frightened. What if she had TB? Could she have passed it on to her family? Tomi took Mitsue for the same test.

Miyoko’s test results came back. She had TB. She was immediately taken to the sanatorium, where nobody could visit. Everyone just waited and hoped—and prayed—for the best. Mitsue knew her timid friend was scared in that big, cold building without relatives or friends. But Mitsue didn’t fret for long; Miyoko died within the week.

Mitsue could not go to her best friend’s funeral. She was waiting for her own test results. She never got to say goodbye. Her test results came back and she was fine. The next day she returned to school—now the only Japanese girl in her grade.

Mitsue felt her loneliness every morning as she opened her front door. It walked with her to the train. It sat beside her in class. Only Toru made her smile.

Toru was eighteen and had graduated from Magee. Yosuke wanted Toru to go on to college straightaway, but Toru didn’t know what to study. So Yosuke took his eldest son out cod fishing for the season so he could earn some money. They could discuss his future on those long nights on the boat.

Only four weeks into the season, Yosuke arrived back home. He sat on the small porch for hours. He was physically unable to go into the house with the news he had. When Tomi opened the door and saw her husband sitting there, she fell to her knees. She knew something was terribly wrong. Yosuke had never come home early before.

Another family meeting was called. Mitsue had never before seen her father shed a tear. He could only utter a few words. Toru was in the hospital. He had fallen ill on the open waters.

The family visited Toru in the hospital. He was pale and drenched in sweat. The relatives lingered, unable to help. Toru died two days later. Nobody knew what had caused his death. He was buried in Mountain View Cemetery on Fraser Street. Nobody spoke at his funeral. There was nothing they could say.

Mitsue tried to be strong. She was the
ne-san.
She cried when she was alone, washing the dishes or getting ready for bed. She cried on the train to school. She cried on the walk home.

No one in the family got over Toru. Time does not heal all.

In the spring of that year, Mitsue started teaching Sunday school at the Celtic centre. This was a godsend for her. It delivered her from her constant sadness. The children and the bible stories soothed her and brought peace into her heart. Every Sunday, she would teach five little girls and one boy. They would begin at 9 a.m., when the preacher was with the adults in the room next door. They’d have singalongs and then read from the Bible. Mitsue came to love those children, and they her. Those six children were like candles that illuminated Mitsue through the darkness cast by Toru’s death.

Mitsue emerged from her pain at that certain age when boys were starting to come around. Pat was her eldest brother now, and he ran around with a crew of Celtic boys. He and Mitsue would go out driving in his Model T Ford. Mitsue would bring Sumiko and Haruko, wishing Miyoko were there too. Pat kept that old car going against all odds. He was as good a mechanic as he was a fisherman. They’d drive to the beach and spend the day by the water. Mitsue would swim if the weather was warm. She loved the way the water felt, always cool and refreshing. Looking out into the distance, she’d think of her father and always whisper a prayer for his safety. Fishing was such a dangerous way to make a living.

After high school, Mitsue attended dressmaking school. When she was twenty, she finished her classes and started looking for a job. Since she wasn’t married, she would give some money to her parents and have some spending money too. She looked around Little Tokyo for dressmaking work, and at first she didn’t have much luck. But there was one storefront that had a Help Wanted sign in Japanese and English, so she went in. The store was right in the shadow of Granville Bridge. The woman who owned it was very nice and not much older than Mitsue. Her name was Mrs. Yamamoto. Mitsue
showed her some of the work she had done in school and Mrs. Yamamoto hired her on the spot. Mitsue was to start every morning at eight-thirty and work until a little after five.

Mrs. Yamamoto was very kind to Mitsue, almost like a sister. She missed her own family in Japan. She had an older brother in British Columbia but he was off logging on Vancouver Island and they hardly ever saw each other. Mrs. Yamamoto had been educated in Japan and English was still difficult for her, making it hard to help the
hakujin
customers. She liked that Mitsue enjoyed all aspects of her work. She loved to sew. She could make patterns quickly and had fun with the wide selection of cloth and prints that Mrs. Yamamoto stocked. Unlike in dressmaking school, which had offered limited fabrics, here Mitsue could make dresses of all sorts, and when there was extra material Mrs. Yamamoto would let her take it home to sew something for herself. Mitsue made all her own clothes, as well as clothes for her sisters and mother. It was a labour of love.

Every night when she got off the streetcar at Brennan Street, one of Pat’s friends would be waiting for her. She and her escort would walk the two miles home. With each trip, her escort would build up the confidence to propose marriage. The first man to do so was Takatsugi, whom everyone just called Tak, a nice-looking man and a very close friend of Pat’s. Tak had been Mitsue’s neighbour for most of her life. Of all Pat’s friends, he was the one she was the most fond of.

One night Mitsue worked late at the dress shop. She didn’t arrive at Brennan Street until well after 8. Tak had been waiting there for over two hours. As soon as he saw Mitsue, he approached her and blurted out that he wanted to marry her. Mitsue did not hesitate; she turned him down. They kept walking. Tak was quiet at first and then he started to cry. They walked six blocks with him in tears.

He said over and over, “Why, why, why? Why not?”

Mitsue tried to comfort him. “It’s just strange for me, Tak. You’re like a brother. I’m sorry, but I have to say no.”

One down. Three to go.

Next Motoharu proposed. Then Minoru. Finally Ichiro. That was every one of Pat’s close friends. They all asked her the exact same way—walking home on Brennan Street, just a little after six o’clock.

After each proposal, Mitsue would go home and tell Pat. He would always shake his head and say the same thing: he was sorry and he would speak to them all again.

But it didn’t matter what Pat said to them. He could not deter his friends. Almost weekly, Mitsue would receive a renewed proposal. The boys would not give up. They asked over and over.

Everyone has that “one that got away.” Mitsue had four. The men in her life were attracted to her beauty, to be sure. It was a particular kind of beauty. You could see your whole life in it.

Then, on a sunny spring morning, a clean-cut, well-dressed man stepped into the dress shop. His name was Hideo Sakamoto. Mitsue was expecting him. Earlier that day, Mrs. Yamamoto had told her that a schoolmate from Kumamoto prefecture in Japan would be coming by for a visit.

When the man walked into the shop, he bowed and spoke warmly to Mrs. Yamamoto. It was clear they were good friends. He was a nice-looking man with an easy, honest smile. He was polite and well-mannered, even though he was in the lumber industry. The men in that field gambled and smoked and lived away from women, so most were too rough for Mitsue’s liking. Hideo was different—he was almost gentle. He was also well educated. Mitsue could tell that right away. He even came in with a book under his arm. Mitsue liked that.

Hideo worked in a paper mill, so he wasn’t around Vancouver much. He had to take a boat to get to the mill and it took some time, so he would only come in to Vancouver when he had a day off, and he didn’t get too many. Hideo’s parents operated a rooming house in Japantown, so he would stay with them as much as he could. His visits became more frequent after he met Mitsue.

The next time Hideo came to town, after cleaning himself up
at his parents’ he went straight to the store. He had asked Mrs. Yamamoto beforehand if he could take Mitsue for a walk. She had agreed, even though there was lots of work to be done.

Hideo and Mitsue went for a walk around the Granville Island Bridge. They didn’t go far—Mitsue was thinking about the work that was waiting—but it was long enough. They walked a little closer than two strangers might. Mitsue could see that Hideo’s hands were clean and his hair was recently cut. He wore a suit and a new white shirt, a blue-striped tie, and suspenders. His clothes were freshly pressed. But it was his warm, honest smile that she liked the best. As they rounded the corner to the dress shop, Hideo told Mitsue that he would be back in a few weeks and would like to see her again. Mitsue said that would be nice.

She spent the next two weeks hoping time would go a little faster. The days finally passed. Hideo came into the store around closing time. They walked around Hastings Street. It was a busy summer day and all the shops and restaurants were open. A photographer took a picture of them walking side by side and Hideo bought it. They stopped for a soda on Hastings Street. It was July 12, 1941: their first date.

It is clear in every picture of the two of them why my grandma was drawn to my grandpa: he simply adored her. He put her on a
pedestal the height of Mount Fuji. He absolutely beamed walking down the street with her.

Hideo’s easy smile did not betray Vancouver’s political climate. The deep-seated racism that led to the 1907 riots had not dissipated. On the contrary; as Japanese fishermen continued to prosper, the resentment only grew. The perpetrators of hate had altered their tactics. The pen was proving mightier than the sword.

The news in the paper was all bad—but it seemed far away from Mitsue and her life. She was just working and waiting for Hideo to visit. She longed for their walks. When he was in town, he’d take the train home with her to Celtic—much to the dismay of Tak, Minoru, Motoharu, and Ichiro.

Hideo had been born in Canada, but his parents sent him to Japan in 1920, when he was six. He grew up on the family farm in Kumamoto prefecture. He knew his grandparents better than his parents. He didn’t get to know his father until he came back to Canada when he was seventeen. His father was always working in the lumber mill. His mother would travel to Japan every other year to see how her son was progressing.

Hideo always retained his thick Japanese accent. Mitsue would come to feel that it held him back in life. He had a sharp intellect-and read voraciously—history, geography, politics, and ecology, and he had a particular fascination with health. He read health and diet books well before they were popular. Every morning, he ate one carrot, two tomatoes, and a bowl of rice. The carrot, he thought, would keep him away from the doctors. (When my grandpa was ninety-two, I took him to his family physician in Medicine Hat for treatment for gout. The doctor sat down and just stared at him. He was in awe. He had not seen his ninety-two-year-old patient in over a decade. He turned to me and cautioned: “Kid, with genes like this, you’d better be stashing money away somewhere.”)