was of a trim little being with bright eyes. I listened as she walked about—she took very feminine, short, shuffling steps and I decided that she was pigeon-toed. When husband and wife worked together in one of the rooms and talked their Japanese talk, I would hear her laugh, probably at something of Langley’s newly acquired on one of his nightly rambles. Her laughter was lovely, the melodic trill of a young girl. Every time I heard it, there in our cavernous house, images of a sun-filled meadow flashed in my mind, and if I looked hard enough I could see us, Mrs. Hoshiyama and me, as a kimonoed couple in a wood-block print having a picnic under a cherry blossom tree.When the three of us were together in the evening and the formality of our daytime relationship was suspended, I felt that it was only my deep respect for Mr. Hoshiyama that prevented me from stealing his wife. On such gentle fantasies do men like me survive.
ONE NIGHT, WITH LANGLEY out for the evening, the bell rang and there was at the same time a peremptory knock on the door. It was quite late. Two men who said they were from the FBI were standing there. I felt their badges. They were polite and though they were already in the door they asked if they could come in. They were there to take the Hoshiyamas into custody. I was stunned. I demanded to know why. What is this about, I said. Has the couple done something illegal? Not that we know, said one of the men. Have they broken the law in any way? Not that we know, said the other. You will have to give me a good reason why this is happening, I said, they work for me. They are my employees. These are simple hard-working people, I said. They have served me well and honestly and had come to me, furthermore, with excellent references.
Of course I was an idiot about all of this, but I could think of no other way to forestall what was happening than by bringing up anything I could to break through the intolerable stubbornness of these FBIs, who were uncommunicative and impervious to reason. You come here in the night to take people away as if this is some police state? I wanted them to feel ashamed ofthemselves, which was of course impossible. When men like this are carrying out government policies they are hard-shelled and cannot even be insulted. They are doing something that might seem momentous and horrifying to the people they have come for but is mere routine for them.
They did say one thing by way of justification: that they had gone to the couple’s Brooklyn domicile only to learn that the Hoshiyamas had fled. And as a result some effort was required to trace them. At this I flew into a fury. These people were not running away, I said. For their own safety they had to leave their home. They were being physically threatened. Did they even know you were looking for them? And now you are finding something guilty about the fact that they came here to avoid getting their heads bashed in?
I don’t remember how long I carried on this way but at some point Mr. Hoshiyama was touching my arm in a mute appeal for restraint. The Hoshiyamas were born fatalists. It was as if they and the FBI men seemed to understand one another so as to make me and everything I said irrelevant. They did not themselves protest, nor cry nor bemoan the situation. After a while Mrs. Hoshiyama came down the stairs with two valises, all they were allowed to bring with them. The couple put on their hats and coats—it was the winter of the first year of the war—the FBI men opened the door and a cold wind blew in from the park. Mr. Hoshiyama mumbled his gratitude and said they would write when and if they could and Mrs. Hoshiyama took my hands and kissed them, and they were gone.
——
WHEN LANGLEY CAME home later that night and heard what had happened he was furious. Of course he knew what it was all about having read in his newspapers of the roundup of thousands of Japanese-American citizens for internment in concentration camps. Though I
ONE NIGHT, WITH LANGLEY out for the evening, the bell rang and there was at the same time a peremptory knock on the door. It was quite late. Two men who said they were from the FBI were standing there. I felt their badges. They were polite and though they were already in the door they asked if they could come in. They were there to take the Hoshiyamas into custody. I was stunned. I demanded to know why. What is this about, I said. Has the couple done something illegal? Not that we know, said one of the men. Have they broken the law in any way? Not that we know, said the other. You will have to give me a good reason why this is happening, I said, they work for me. They are my employees. These are simple hard-working people, I said. They have served me well and honestly and had come to me, furthermore, with excellent references.
Of course I was an idiot about all of this, but I could think of no other way to forestall what was happening than by bringing up anything I could to break through the intolerable stubbornness of these FBIs, who were uncommunicative and impervious to reason. You come here in the night to take people away as if this is some police state? I wanted them to feel ashamed ofthemselves, which was of course impossible. When men like this are carrying out government policies they are hard-shelled and cannot even be insulted. They are doing something that might seem momentous and horrifying to the people they have come for but is mere routine for them.
They did say one thing by way of justification: that they had gone to the couple’s Brooklyn domicile only to learn that the Hoshiyamas had fled. And as a result some effort was required to trace them. At this I flew into a fury. These people were not running away, I said. For their own safety they had to leave their home. They were being physically threatened. Did they even know you were looking for them? And now you are finding something guilty about the fact that they came here to avoid getting their heads bashed in?
I don’t remember how long I carried on this way but at some point Mr. Hoshiyama was touching my arm in a mute appeal for restraint. The Hoshiyamas were born fatalists. It was as if they and the FBI men seemed to understand one another so as to make me and everything I said irrelevant. They did not themselves protest, nor cry nor bemoan the situation. After a while Mrs. Hoshiyama came down the stairs with two valises, all they were allowed to bring with them. The couple put on their hats and coats—it was the winter of the first year of the war—the FBI men opened the door and a cold wind blew in from the park. Mr. Hoshiyama mumbled his gratitude and said they would write when and if they could and Mrs. Hoshiyama took my hands and kissed them, and they were gone.
——
WHEN LANGLEY CAME home later that night and heard what had happened he was furious. Of course he knew what it was all about having read in his newspapers of the roundup of thousands of Japanese-American citizens for internment in concentration camps. Though I
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