Silent Honor (22 page)

“How did you hear that?”

“A friend of mine was in your cousin's class at Stanford,” she said simply. “I'm sorry.” This was the second time she had said that to Hiroko for something she hadn't done, and had nothing to do with, “Do you know where you're going yet?”

“Tanforan Assembly Center. After that, we do not know where.” Anne nodded.

“I brought you this.” She handed the basket to her. It was filled with sturdy delicacies, like good jams, and some cheese, and tins of soup, and meats, things that would sustain them. Hiroko was surprised, when she looked into it, by how many things there were, and how generous Anne had been. She scarcely knew her.

“Thank you.” Hiroko stood holding the basket and looking up at her, wondering again why she had done it.

“I want you to know that I don't believe in what they're doing. ? think it's terrible, and I'm sorry,” she said again, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. The two women looked at each other for a long moment, and Hiroko bowed low to her, to honor her, still holding the basket.

“Thank you, Anne-san.”

“May God be with you,” she whispered, and then turned and ran out of the garden. Hiroko heard a car start, and drive away, and she walked slowly back
into
the house, holding the basket.

Chapter 10

T
HE DAY
they left their house was the darkest any of them had ever experienced and one they would always remember.

The dog was already gone, and the ear, and the house was almost empty. There was an eerie feeling to it now. The new owners were coming by that afternoon to start moving in, and Tak had left the keys with a neighbor.

They had thrown most of their food away, which seemed a waste, and given the rest to Peter.

But the most painful of all was leaving the house they had lived in for nearly eighteen years. Reiko and Tak had bought it when she was expecting Ken. It was the house all of their children had come home to after they'd been born, the house they had all known and loved, and where they had been happy for most of their marriage. Reiko stood looking around her for a last time, thinking of the happy times, and Tak had come to stand with her for a moment and put an arm around her.

“Well be back, Rei,” he said sadly.

“But it'll be someone else's,” she said, as tears streamed down her face.

“We'll buy another house.” But they had lives to live, and obstacles to overcome before they could return to do that. “I promise.”

“I know,” she said, trying to be brave, and as she slowly walked out, holding his hand, she said a small prayer, hoping they would all be home again soon, safe and together.

Peter drove them to the control station with their meager belongings. Everything had been tagged with the tags that had been given to them. Tami wore hers on the button of her sweater. Sally's was on her wrist, and Reiko's, Tak's, and Ken's were on their jackets. And Peter carefully attached Hiroko's to the top button of her sweater. 70917.

Hiroko sat in the car with Anne Spencer's basket on her lap. Reiko had been pleased with the gift and felt sure it would be useful, but no one even thought of it now as they rode along.

The drive to the control station was brief and silent. And as they turned the corner and saw the control station, it looked like pandemonium, as they all stared at the crowds of people, luggage, and buses.

“My God,” Tak said, shocked at what he saw there. “Are they sending all of Palo Alto?”

“It sure looks like it, doesn't it?” Peter said, trying to avoid the hordes of people crossing the street to get there. They were all carrying suitcases and boxes, and trying to hold children's hands, and guide old people across the street. And there were at least a dozen buses waiting for them. It was a total mess, and Tak wasn't looking forward to joining the crowd.

The authorities had said that Peter couldn't drive them to Tanforan. They were not allowed to arrive by private vehicle. They had to go by bus from the control station with the others. But Peter had promised to drive to Tanforan himself after he dropped them off, and try to find them. But first he parked the car. He was going to stay with them as long as he could at the control station.

“What a mess,” Tak said, and reluctantly, they got out of the car with all their belongings and joined the crowd. They were herded instantly into a larger group, and within a few minutes Peter was told he had to leave them. He asked if there was some sort of gathering point where he could meet his friends at Tanforan, but no one seemed to know, and Tak waved at him through the crowd as Peter disappeared, and Hiroko tried to fight off a wave of panic. Suddenly, this was real. They were about to be incarcerated, or relocated, or evacuated, or whatever they wanted to call it. But she was no longer free, he was no longer there, and she could no longer reach out to him anytime she wanted. What if she never saw him again … if he couldn't find them … if … As though sensing her cousin's fears, and everyone else's, Tami started to cry then. She was clutching her doll, which had a tag on it too, and Hiroko held Tami's hand tight so they wouldn't lose her.

Aunt Rei was looking grim. And Ken was looking for his girlfriend Peggy while Tak kept urging them to stay close together. They were handed some papers eventually, told to put their things on the bus, and loaded in without further explanation. They spent an hour sitting there after that, and it was almost noon, and they were sweltering as the buses finally left for Tanforan. The ride took only half an hour.

But when they got to Tanforan, the chaos was even greater. There were lines of people for as far as you could see, thousands of them, old people with large tags, infirm people sitting on benches, stacks of suitcases, boxes of food, children crying. For as far as the eye could see there was humanity. There was a tent where they were preparing food, and not far from it was a long line of open toilets.

The entire experience was one Hiroko knew she would never forget. It had rained the day before, and they were up to their ankles in mud, as they stood in a long line, among what must have been over
six
thousand people. And as she looked at them, she gave up any hope of seeing Peter.

“He'll never find us,” she said glumly.

“Maybe not,” Tak said, looking around in horror. His new wing tip shoes had just been destroyed by the mud that almost reached his ankles. And Sally was saying that she had to go to the bathroom but would rather die than go in an open toilet. Hiroko and her mother had already promised to hold a blanket up for her, but she refused even to try it. But Hiroko and Reiko both knew that sooner or later they'd all have to use the open toilet, no matter how distasteful.

They were in line for three hours, and Anne's food basket came in very handy. None of them could leave the admissions lines to get in the food lines, and Tami was whining terribly as they stood in the mud, and perched on their suitcases when they got too tired.

When they reached the head of their admission line, they were each given throat exams, and the skin on their hands and arms was examined too, though even Reiko had no idea what they were doing. And then they were all surprised when they were given vaccinations by other “inmates.” Reiko wasn't even sure they were nurses. They were just civilians helping out. And she noticed that the people in the cooking tent looked like volunteers too. They were wearing the oddest assortment of costumes. Brown suits, and blue coats, and little hats with pretty feathers. She asked if there was an infirmary, and someone waved vaguely in a distant direction and told her that there was one.

“Maybe they need some help,” Reiko said softly to Tak, but who knew how long they'd be there. And by the time they got in the next line, their arms were all sore from the vaccinations, and poor Tami was so exhausted she said she felt like throwing up. But Hiroko was holding her hand, and smoothing her hair back and telling her a story about a wood elf and a little fairy, and after a while, Tami just held her doll and stopped crying, as she listened.

Ken was feeling better too. He had just spotted his girlfriend, which was an absolute miracle in a crowd that size. But there was still no sign of Peter. It was four o'clock in the afternoon by then, and they had been there for hours, and they still hadn't been assigned their quarters.

They stood on that line for hours, and even though they saw people lining up for dinner, they couldn't leave their line again. And finally they were given a number and told where to look for their quarters. They were in 22P, and they picked up their suitcases and headed in the direction they'd been told to go. They were almost home, for the moment. They still hadn't been told how long they would be there, or where they were going after that. And the long lines of stalls were extremely confusing. They went around and around for a while, and finally Ken saw their number. All it was was a horse stall. It had once housed a thoroughbred, but now it stood empty. It was barely big enough for a horse, let alone a family of six people. It was open to the air, and it had a half door that had been enough to keep the horse in. And when they looked inside, they saw that it had been whitewashed but not cleaned. It was filled with manure and debris and straw, and the stench was overwhelming.

This time it was too much for Reiko. She leaned over and piteously retched whatever she had eaten since that morning.

“Oh, God, Tak,” she said, more miserable than she had ever been. “I can't do this.”

“Yes, you can, Rei. You have to,” he said softly. Their children were staring at them, looking to them for direction. “You sit down with the girls. Hiroko will get you some water. And Ken and I will find a couple of shovels and get it cleaned out. Maybe you should line up for some food with the kids. You can bring us some.” But the last thing she wanted was to stand in line for dinner, and the children weren't hungry either. Instead, they sat down, as he had told them to, on their suitcases, and they dug into Anne's basket again. It had proven to be a godsend.

Reiko was still looking pale by then, but a little better. They were sitting some distance from the stall, and Hiroko had found large burlap feed sacks, which she and Sally were filling with straw to use as mattresses once the stalls were cleared out. But the best Ken and Tak had been able to find were two old coffee cans, and they were emptying the manure in agonizingly small quantities when Peter arrived, looking hot and disheveled. But he looked like a vision when Hiroko saw him. She ran to him and put her arms around him, unable to believe that he had really found them.

“I've been at the administration building since noon,” he said wearily. “I practically had to sell my soul to get in here. They can't seem to understand why anyone would want to visit. They did everything they could to stop me.” He kissed her gently, relieved beyond words to have found them at all. He had looked systematically along practically every row of stalls, and on every food line, and as he glanced over her shoulder he saw what Tak and Ken were doing. “That looks like fun,” he said wryly, and Tak looked up at him and grinned. He hadn't totally lost his sense of humor, and seeing Peter had done wonders for all of them. They didn't feel so totally deserted.

“Don't knock it till you try it.”

“That's a deal,” Peter said, dropping his jacket on a pile of straw that Hiroko was using to fill the feed sacks. He rolled up his sleeves, and sacrificing his favorite shoes, marched into the manure to work alongside Ken and Tak. They had found another coffee can, and within a few minutes he was as filthy as they were. It was an enormous job, and the stall looked as though it hadn't been cleaned in years, and it probably hadn't.

“No wonder the horse left,” Peter grumbled as he dumped another can of manure out. It was like emptying the ocean with a teacup. “This place is a mess.”

“Nice, huh?” Tak said, and Ken said nothing. He hated being here, hated what it meant, and what they had done to him. He would have given anything at that moment to get even with the people who had inflicted this horror on them.

“I wish I could say I'd seen worse,” Peter quipped, as they worked side by side, getting filthier by the minute and getting nowhere. “But actually I don't think I have.”

“Wait till you get to Europe with Uncle Sam. They'll probably have you doing jobs just like this.”

“At least I'm getting in a little early practice.”

Long after it had gotten dark, Reiko and the girls were lying on the straw mattresses Hiroko had made, and the three men were still working. Eventually Hiroko went to get them steaming cups of tea, and brought it to them, and offered to help the men, but they all declined. It was just too rotten a job for a woman.

“Do you have to leave at any particular time?” Tak asked Peter as they took a break, but he only shrugged as he smiled over at Hiroko.

“They didn't say anything. I'll just stay till they throw me out, I guess.” And a few minutes later, they went back to work. They finished cleaning the stall at two o'clock in the morning. Ken hosed it down, and Peter helped them scrub the walls. The manure was gone, and they had gotten down to some fairly clean-looking mud, which they also hosed down with water.

“You may need to let it dry for a couple of days,” Peter said thoughtfully. “Just hope it doesn't rain again.” But once it was dry, they would put straw down on it, and then put their mattresses on it. All they could do for now was sit outside on the straw bags Hiroko had made them. Ken sat down on one of them, exhausted, and Takeo joined him. And Peter let himself down slowly on the one where Hiroko was sitting. She had waited up for them, and she had wanted to be with Peter. Reiko and the two girls were already sleeping. “This doesn't look like it's going to be much of a place,” he said to her quietly. His whole body was aching. And the others had worked just as hard as he had.

“It looks awful,” Hiroko confirmed to him. She couldn't imagine staying there, or being there at all, let alone spending the day they just had, cleaning two feet of manure out of a horse stall. “Thank you for everything you did. Poor Uncle Tak,” she whispered. He looked exhausted.