Silent Honor (34 page)

“Where's Peter?” Her voice sounded stronger.

“I don't know. But we're here. We want you to stay.”

She nodded and closed her eyes again, but then she looked at him again, confused, as though she suddenly remembered who he was, and he was interrupting her from something important. “Where's Toyo?” she asked softly after a while.

“He's here. Do you want to see him?” She nodded, and Tadashi raced to get the baby. One of the nurses questioned him, and he told her what he was doing. It sounded crazy to her, but it couldn't do any harm, since they both had meningitis.

Hiroko was sleeping again when he got back to her, but he shook her gently. And Toyo was making little cooing sounds as he held him. She opened her eyes, looking confused again, and he gently set the baby down next to her, so his face was right next to his mother's. And he recognized her instantly, and made happy little sounds, as Tad kept him from falling. And then, sensing him next to her, she opened her eyes, and saw her baby.

“Toyo,” she said, as her eyes filled with tears, and then she looked up at Tadashi.

“Is he okay?” she whispered, worried about him again, but Tadashi nodded.

“He's fine, now you need to get better. We all need you.”

She smiled then, as though he had said something very foolish, and held Toyo's fingers with her own, and then she rolled over a little bit and kissed him. “I love you,” she said to the baby, and Tadashi wished it had been for him. But all he wanted from her was that she not die. It wasn't too much to ask of her, but it was a lot to ask of God at the moment.

He let the baby stay with her for a while, and when one of the nurses came to get him, Hiroko was awake, and she was talking softly to Tadashi. He sat with her all night, and in the morning, she was still very ill, but her fever had broken. It had been a long, long night, and they had talked of many things, her parents, her brother, Japan, her cousins, California, St. Andrew's, but never Peter. But when he finally left her, he sensed, as the nurses did, that she wouldn't leave them.

“You're going to get a reputation around here as some kind of faith healer if you're not careful, Tadashi Watanabe,” Sandra teased him as he finally left the infirmary. And Reiko made a point of finding him later that day to thank him.

They had had three miracles in their family. All three of them had survived the dread disease that had killed so many in the camp. But a week later, when Hiroko was sitting up in the hospital, with her baby on her lap, she knew that one more miracle to ask would have been too many. Takeo came to see her, after talking about it all the night before with Reiko. It had happened two months earlier anyway, what difference did it make if it waited some more? But somehow it hadn't seemed right to keep it from her any longer. And the circumstances by which he'd heard the news were so unusual, that somehow he felt they were meant to know it.

He had gotten a letter from a Spanish diplomat he had taught with several years earlier at Stanford, when the Spaniard was on sabbatical from the University of Madrid. But the man also knew Hiroko's father, and had met him in Kyoto. And Masao had somehow gotten the news to him that Yuji had been killed in May in New Guinea, and he felt that Hiroko and his cousins should know it, if Don Alfonso could reach them.

She was shocked when she heard the news, and one of the nurses took the baby from her as she cried in her cousin's arms. Yuji had always been so dear to her. When he was little, he had been her baby. It was like losing Toyo. But at least, Tak reminded her as she grieved, she still had her son.

But she was inconsolable as she lay in her bed that night, and when Tadashi saw her, it reminded him of how he had felt when he lost his sister. It was all so senseless.

“I can't imagine not finding him when I go home again,” Hiroko said, and started to cry again, as Toyo slept beside her.

“I feel that way about Mary.” His sister had a Japanese name too, but he had never used it. “Her husband enlisted right afterward. I think he was crazy with grief over losing her and the baby. They had just gotten married before the evacuation.” So much had happened to all of them. And Peter and Ken were still out there, fighting for their country. It was hard enough surviving here, with all the problems, and the disease and the hardships, let alone with an enemy to fight. Thinking about it made her even more frightened. “The hard thing here,” he voiced what they all felt, “is that we don't have a lot of choices.” But as he said it, Hiroko realized one that she hadn't thought of.

With her brother gone, her parents would have no one to take care of them. They had lost their son, and now she owed them something as their daughter. For the first time since the option had been offered to her, she thought seriously about going back to Japan to help them. And she said as much to Tadashi as they sat there. But he looked shocked. He would never have gone back in the midst of the war. But it was not his country.

“But it is mine,” Hiroko said, thinking about it. “I owe them a lot. I can't just leave them there alone,” she said, dunking of what painful choices they all had.

“What about your cousins?”

“I can't help them here. I can't really help anyone.”

“I'm not sure getting killed in a bombing raid in Japan would really help your parents, or your baby,” he said strongly, hoping to dissuade her.

“I'll have to think about it,” she said, and he went back to work, praying that she wouldn't do it. There were so many things to pray for, so many things they all hoped would never happen. It was hard to remember anymore what life had been like when it wasn't filled with grief and betrayal, and terror.

Chapter 16

T
HINGS WERE
hard for all of them in camp after that. All summer, the Young Men's Organization to Serve the Mother Country, the No-No Boys who had refused to sign the loyalty oath in February, made trouble. They intimidated all those who had signed the oath and were still
in
camp, particularly the young men who were just reaching draft age. The No-No's turned up in the dark of night, making threats, and hanging around corners calling people names and generally terrorizing anyone who cared to listen. The term
inn
, or dog, was bandied about by them everywhere, labeling all those who had signed the oath as dogs who didn't deserve to live long enough to join the army. They organized work strikes and stoppages whenever possible, and incited many of the unhappy young people to riot. Those who felt they had been betrayed, and badly used by the land of their birth, and were being offered as cannon fodder now, were easy prey to the No-No Boys, as they cruised the camp looking for trouble.

They beat up those they felt were too cooperative with the administrators of the camp, and held noisy parades designed to impress everyone with how tough they were, and only served to increase the camp's tension. They particularly infuriated the loyals, because the behavior of the No-No Boys only helped to prove to the public that they all belonged in camps, and the newspapers seized on every occasion of disturbance in the camps to make all the internees look bad. And, as a result of the trouble they caused, the anger between the loyals and the No-No Boys constantly mounted, and it reached a fever pitch in September when nine thousand dissidents and “disloyals” from other camps were sent to Tule Lake. Because of the vast number shipped in, six thousand peaceful people had to move out to make room for them, and suddenly families who had survived Tanforan and then Tule Lake were asked to move again, and it caused untold grief as people were forced to leave friends, or even brothers and sisters. Some actually refused to leave, causing yet more problems in the camp, mainly due to their attitudes and overcrowding.

The Tanakas were afraid that they would be asked
to
leave
too
, because none of them were high security, and Takeo and Reiko didn't know if their family could survive another upheaval. They were used to it here, they had made friends, they both had decent jobs in the school and the infirmary. They didn't want to be shipped out to yet another camp even if conditions might have been a little more pleasant than they were at Tule Lake with so many dissidents and troublemakers around them. And in the end, by sheer luck, they weren't sent anywhere. But countless others were, and their life was one of constant good-byes and sorrow.

And once the new “disloyals” arrived, the camp's name was changed to Tule Lake Segregation Center. For purposes of containment and control, the government wanted all the high security risks in one place. The other internees in the camp had known it was coming, but it was even worse than they imagined. Now the camp had three thousand more people than it had been built for. There were well over eighty thousand in residence, and conditions grew noticeably worse. Everything was crowded and the lines for everything were longer than ever. There was never enough food or medicine. And inevitably, it meant more tension.

It was hard for Hiroko to believe they'd been there a year by then. It was an anniversary no one wanted to celebrate, and there was still no end in sight, although the war news kept right on coming. Mussolini was deposed in July, and Italy unconditionally surrendered after Labor Day, but the Germans were still there, as was Peter. He was now fighting in Italy, where the Allies were moving slowly north up the boot of Italy, trying to drive the Germans back to their homeland. There was still fighting in the villages and small towns, it was clearly rough going.

And in August, Admiral Yamamoto's plane was shot down by the Americans. He had masterminded Pearl Harbor, and it was a huge loss for the Japanese. They had printed it in the camp newspaper, and every-one had cheered when they read it. But even that didn't convince the camp authorities that they were real Americans and not Japanese sympathizers. The interned Japanese had few allies. So far, the only high-level officials who had officially told the President that they thought the internment camps were scandalous were Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Attorney General Francis Biddle. But in spite of that, no one had made a single official move to free them.

The problems at Tule Lake only worsened as time went on: tempers were short, conditions were poor, and the disloyals did everything they could to agitate and exacerbate the problems.

And in October, the strikes began in earnest. The No-No Boys did all they could to convince everyone not to go to their jobs, or do anything to cooperate with the administration. Many of the older internees didn't want to get involved, but eventually it became too dangerous to defy the No-No Boys, and within weeks, the camp was crippled.

In November, the army finally took control of the entire camp at Tule Lake, and brought troops in to subdue them, and force them to go back to work. By then, five thousand people had demonstrated, and there were constant work strikes. A few of the administrators refused to allow their areas to come to a complete standstill, among them the Caucasian head of the infirmary. He refused to let his staff join the angry demonstrators. He needed them too badly, to care for the camp's sick and dying. But when the demonstrators became aware of his resistance, they stormed the infirmary and beat him until they almost killed him. His staff and co-workers, all of them Japanese, did all they could to protect him, and several of them were injured too in the process. It was an infamous incident, and martial law was finally declared in the camp on November thirteenth. There were no activities, no clubs, no dances, no kids hanging around anywhere. There was silence.

There was a curfew, and there were soldiers everywhere, enforcing the rules, and arresting anyone who didn't comply, or even looked ominous or unruly. There was a general work strike, and many of the old people were afraid to go out. The disloyals, as they were still officially called, were far too numerous in the camp, and had certainly made more than their fair share of trouble. And the rest of the camp was furious at them. The loyals had signed their oaths, they had sent off their sons to the army and the navy and the air force. There were stars in almost every window, and many had already died in the service of their country. And these other young people who were so angry at being there, that they now refused to acknowledge loyalty to anyone, were making everyone's lives a living hell. And the loyals felt they had no right to.

Their spirits reached an all-time low on Thanksgiving, when there was nothing to eat in the camp except baloney. And finally, the tides began to turn, as the loyals began to lose their tempers and physically threaten the No-No Boys. They'd had enough. The intimidation and the outrage and the violence had all gone too far, and for a time, the entire camp seemed to tremble on the brink of revolution.

But gradually, in December, things settled down and everyone's mood began to lighten. There were still a vast number of casualties in the infirmary, from fights and demonstrations. Tadashi and Hiroko and their co-workers were still shaken by the events of the night the infirmary had been stormed and the head of the hospital beaten by the No-No Boys. Tadashi had saved Hiroko and two other nurses from injury that night by shoving them into a closet and blocking the door. It was hours before he'd let them come out, and they had teased Tad about it afterward, but he wasn't going to let them get hurt. He'd have killed someone first, especially for Hiroko.

In fact, he had come toe-to-toe with one of Sally's friends that night, a boy named Jiro, whom her entire family disapproved of.

He was eighteen years old and a bright, good-looking boy from a respectable family, but since coming to the camps he had developed all the earmarks of a tough, unfeeling street kid. He had refused to sign the loyalty oath, although he was American born, and he was one of the most vocal of the young No-No's. He liked to march his battalion of No-No's in parade past Sally's house, and show off how tough they were, much to Takeo's horror and outrage. He had long since forbidden Sally to have anything to do with him, although the Tanakas knew and liked his parents. They had admitted that they could do nothing to control Jiro. But he and Sally had met through friends, and now and then they would sit and talk, and she was always impressed by how intelligent Jiro was, and how much sense he made when he wasn't marching, or shouting insults at one of the loyals, or fighting. He was a bright, witty boy but he behaved and looked like a juvenile delinquent.