Silver Like Dust (26 page)

Obaachan was of course interested, and Ojichan immediately began to investigate the details of the factory. When my grandmother tells me this story, I sense that she and my grandfather saw the possibility of moving, and starting from scratch, as a simple decision, something they did not have to ponder too much, and certainly not something to be viewed with any suspicion. And yet my own instinct is to question the motives of the factory owner, Mr. Charles F. Seabrook. Clearly, he had much to gain in offering a way out of prison—the only way out, really, at that time—to young Japanese Americans like my grandparents. How trusting they must have been, how desperate to take on any risk, if that risk would allow them to get out of Heart Mountain. But what life lay ahead for them? Might it be worse, more demanding, more crowded, more suffocating, than their square-mile existence in Wyoming? Was Mr. Seabrook an honest man, or might he cheat them, as the minister had done with the rent money? And what about Obaachan’s parents? What about Mama? I’m sure these questions might have crossed my grandparents’ minds, but the desire to leave and start over must have overpowered their doubts and concerns.

“What’s the name of the place again?” Obaachan’s Papa asked my grandfather, taking a puff on the cigarette he had just rolled. He tapped it lightly on the edge of the porch steps, letting the ashes fall to the dry dirt and the crust of old snow.

“Seabrook Farms. They grow and package frozen foods,” Ojichan told him in Japanese. “From what I understand, it’s a pretty big operation.” I imagine my grandfather would’ve tried his best to sound confident in this conversation—he would’ve wanted to sound like he knew what he was doing when he explained his plans to move to Obaachan’s father. Of course, there was no way he could really know what type of life awaited them on the other side of the country, and my greatgrandfather was aware of that. Plus, my grandfather, with his knack for storytelling, might have taken the liberty of filling in any missing details.

“And where is it located?”

“New Jersey. It’s far, I know, all the way on the East Coast. But they provide housing, and there will be a job for me.”

Obaachan’s Papa said nothing for a moment, but his shoulders sagged a little bit as he looked off toward the mountain, high above the plain, the peak white with snow. Watching his daughter, son-in-law, and new grandson leave would be difficult, but he had never been one to meddle in his children’s affairs, especially after they were married. When his oldest child, Obaachan’s sister, Sachiko, had announced that she would be going to prison with her husband’s family, not hers, Papa hadn’t uttered a word of protest. Despite any worries he might have had, Papa knew, as my grandparents did, that an opportunity to leave and start a free life might not come again for some time—if ever. He sighed and took another puff. “This is a good opportunity for you. It’s a chance to get out of here, to really start life together.”

By the fall of 1944, the tide of the war had clearly turned in favor of the Allies, and my family would have at least had some reason to hope that it might end soon. In Europe, on June 6, over 160,000 Allied troops had landed on the French coastline and had begun fighting on the beaches of Normandy. By August, Paris, occupied for four years by the Germans, had been liberated. In October, Athens was liberated. That same month, General Erwin Rommel, the infamous “Desert Fox,” who had tormented the British in Northern Africa, committed suicide.

The Allies found success in the Pacific theatre as well. American forces won the island of Saipan, strategically important to both the Allies and the Japanese, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. A vicious and bloody battle, this loss was especially terrible for Japan, with only one thousand of their thirty thousand troops surviving it. Especially shocking for American troops invading Saipan, however, was the large number of Japanese civilians who, petrified of capture and ill treatment at the hands of American troops (a result of vehement propaganda on the part of the Japanese government), committed suicide. After this event, the Japanese government began encouraging all its citizens to follow suit. Military policy had always been death before surrender—but after the loss at Saipan, it became civilian policy, too.

Still, despite the possibility of the war ending sometime in the near future, my grandparents decided to take the opportunity to leave Heart Mountain. And so, quite suddenly, the two of them were packing up the few belongings they had accumulated during their nearly three-year stay at Heart Mountain—the herringbone suit Obaachan had worn on her wedding day, the calico maternity smocks she had sewn, the crocheted baby blanket from the Philadelphia Quakers, the barely used ice skates ordered from the Montgomery Ward catalog, my grandfather’s tall leather boots, and a handful of other items—and preparing to leave their small room in Block 17.

Their departure, I imagine, must have brought a strange blend of emotions. On one hand, they would have been elated to leave. My grandmother would have looked forward to escaping that
shikataganai
attitude that saturated the camp. At the same time, she must have understood that leaving would also involve saying goodbye to Mama, whose health had steadily deteriorated since their arrival. She would’ve understood that she was risking not seeing her mother again. And she must have feared the unknown. While their life at Heart Mountain was undesirable, at least they knew what to expect. In New Jersey, they would not have the support of family and friends. There, for the first time, Obaachan and Ojichan would really be alone.

On their final morning in Block 17, Obaachan swept the dust out of the small apartment with the worn yellow broom she had used every day for over two years. Their suitcases and bundles were already outside. Ojichan stood in the corner watching, holding Charles. Mama, by this point too weak to get out of bed, remained in her room across the street. Solemnly, my grandparents said their goodbyes to Obaachan’s parents. They loaded their belongings onto the bus, and drove off.

The bus took them—there were about twenty people in all, mostly younger folks like my grandparents—to Billings, Montana. There, my grandmother recalls going to a restaurant for dinner and ordering a steak. Ojichan insisted on some small gesture of celebration. It would have been the first time in years that they could actually choose what to eat, rather than eating what the servers in the mess hall piled on their plates. It would have been the first time my grandparents shared a meal together at a restaurant as well. Without a doubt, however, there would have been some stares from the
hakujin
folks who lived in Billings. While Montanans might have been accustomed to seeing work crews of Japanese prisoners in the sugar-beet fields, they would not have felt too comfortable seeing them walking their streets or eating at their tables.

After a night in Billings, my grandparents caught a train to Chicago, where they stayed overnight in a hostel that was run by Japanese people. (Only those Japanese living on the West Coast had been evacuated; those who lived inland or on the East Coast were not sent to prison camps during the war. Still, although they were permitted to stay in their homes, I imagine they faced their own struggles outside the barbed wire.) The next morning, my grandparents took another train to Philadelphia, where a bus from Seabrook Farms was waiting for them. As they boarded that bus in Pennsylvania, and as Obaachan observed the anxious faces of the few other families who had come with them on their long journey, the reality sank in: Heart Mountain was now two thousand miles behind them.

On my parents’ back porch, my father finishes the last sip of his beer, folds over the corner of a page to mark his reading spot, and stands up. He checks the white bucket hanging from the pergola and fingers the skinny tomato plant hanging upside down from it. He shakes his head.

“People at work say this is the best way to grow tomatoes,” he says. “I thought I’d give it a try, but as you can see, it’s not very impressive.” His other tomatoes, planted in his garden, are staked to support the bulging red fruit. The bucket tomato has not even blossomed.

He needs to pick the Hungarian Wax in the garden, he tells me. As usual, there are hundreds of those hot yellow peppers, and they’ll need to be pickled and canned or stuffed with meat and frozen because there are too many to eat fresh. “Mom’s going to have her hands full.” He squeezes my shoulder as he walks past. “Things will work out with your Obaachan,” he says. “It’s not your place to worry about it.”

Chapter 14

A
FEW WEEKS AFTER
I
LEARN ABOUT THE FAMILY’S PLANS
to relocate Obaachan, my mother decides to attend her fortieth high school reunion—her first ever—and she asks if I would like to join her on her trip back to South Jersey, to the small village near Seabrook Farms where she grew up. “There’s a museum in Seabrook,” she says, hoping to convince me to make the five-hour trek with her. “It has information about the factory where Obaachan and Ojichan both worked. Photos and other things that people have donated. Maybe even some artifacts. Plus you can see where all of us lived. The house, and where I went to school, and where your grandparents were after they left Heart Mountain.”

Since I’ve never been to my mother’s hometown, the place where my grandparents began life after their years in a Wyoming concentration camp, I can’t resist the opportunity. I agree to go along. On Black Friday, the two of us are crossing the eastern half of the state, driving through swarms of traffic in Harrisburg and Lancaster. (I insist we avoid Philadelphia and instead we veer south through Delaware and must cross a long bridge over the Chesapeake. As we cross it, however, that inherited fear of bridges takes hold, and I regret my decision.) I grip the wheel, knuckles white, palms clammy.

“South Jersey is very pretty,” my mother tells me as we drive, looking straight ahead. “You know New Jersey is called the Garden State, don’t you? It’s all farms.”

I remind her that things might be different, that life might have changed in the last forty years, and that she shouldn’t expect everything to be as it was when she left. Since I’ve recently been to northern New Jersey, I have a suspicion that my mother’s expectations may be off. She doesn’t believe me, though, and feels sure that her beloved Garden State will be little changed since the fifties.

After four hours of driving, at last we cross into New Jersey. Immediately, I’m struck by the long, wide fields, the endless rows of soybeans, the giant irrigation systems stretching across the countryside, the absence of highways. “See,” my mother says, looking out the window, taking in the farms that have not altered in decades.

I have one distinct memory from my grandparents’ life in New Jersey, and the memory is not from Seabrook, but from Ocean City, where they initially moved after retiring. In their small condo in Ocean City, Obaachan, Ojichan, my mom, brother, and I cluster at the kitchen table, watching President Reagan on their small, jittery television. I remember that their condominium complex was dark brown on the outside, and that we could walk to the beach, but I don’t remember being at the beach or what anything looked like inside their home. I’m not even sure how many times I was there, although I do remember traveling a good bit as a girl, and there are plenty of photographs capturing moments from this era. My mother hauled us kids all over the place back then. My father, who worked various shifts at the time, rarely went along, but Mom was always determined to see her family and therefore made it happen. She didn’t believe in eating fast food, and still doesn’t, so instead she packed loads of snacks—almonds, raisins, apples, crackers, yogurt—and tucked us into her old mauve Volkswagen Rabbit. She sang songs and had a policy that she would stop at as many ice-cream parlors along the way as we wanted. I could never eat more than one cone of soft serve, so the little green Dairy-Freez along 522 in Orbisonia, about forty-five minutes from our home, was the only place I ever got my ice cream. My mother and brother always tapped out after two. Still, to us children, the sheer idea of unlimited ice cream was thrilling.

Later, when my grandparents moved to Florida, she would drive us there as well, right after school ended, in June, for our annual two-week visit. (I suspect my mother decided to drive, instead of fly, to save money. Even today, when she doesn’t really need to worry about money, she only buys things on sale and will travel across town to save a few cents on gas.) On our trips to Florida, we tried to make it to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on the first day, and then we finished the trip to Melbourne on the second day. “Look through the AAA book for me, honey,” my mother would say, “and find the page where they list hotels in Rocky Mount.” I was in middle school then, and had recently learned how to read maps in Mr. Cousins’s social studies class. Even more than the maps, though, I enjoyed finding the page and making my recommendations about hotels. I was always sure to give her the phone numbers of the places with swimming pools first, knowing how hot the June weather in North Carolina was. On one of our gas stops, my mom would use a pay phone. My brother and I didn’t mind the trip too much because we always stopped at the outlet mall in North Carolina, where we could pick out a new pair of Nikes, plus we were permitted to play Nintendo GameBoy in the car. (At home, the GameBoy was always hidden somewhere, and we were not allowed to play with it—my parents disapproved of sedentary childhoods—so its annual appearance was a treat.)

I recall, though, that my mother grew nervous sometimes in the South, especially in those sleepy little towns deep in Georgia, where the drawls were thick and heavy, and where the locals would sit in front of the gas stations, watching as my mother pumped gas. “Lock the doors,” she whispered through the crack in the window when she went in to pay for the fuel. I sensed her unease, and it made me uneasy. By that age, maybe eleven or twelve, I’d witnessed my mother’s fiery temper and intrepid behavior enough to believe that she was almost fearless. So what was it that made her afraid? “Things still happen to people down here,” she said when I asked. “We’re not
hakujin
.”