less-than-flattering name on the street? Who would grab our arms and shake us when we stomped our feet and told them we’d had it, we were leaving them, we were taking the next boat back home? The only reason you married me was to get extra help on the farm .
MORE AND MORE now we began to suspect that there were informers among us. Teruko’s husband, people whispered, had turned in a labor foreman at the apple-drying plant with whom she had once had an affair. Fumino’s husband had been accused of being pro-Axis by a former business partner who was now desperate for cash. (Informers, we had heard, were paid twenty-five dollars a head.) Kuniko’s husband had been denounced as a member of the Black Dragon Society by none other than Kuniko herself. He was about to leave her for his mistress . And Ruriko’s husband? Korean, his neighbors said. Working undercover. Bankrolled by the government to keep an eye on members of the local Buddhist church. I saw him taking down license plate numbers in the parking lot . Several days later he was found badly beaten in a ditch by the side of the road and the next morning he and his family were nowhere to be found. The front door to their house was wide open, their cats had been recently fed, a pot of hot water was still boiling on the stove. And that was that, they were gone. Word of their whereabouts, however, began to reach us within days. They’re down south by the border. They’ve fled to the next state. They’re living in a nice house in the city with a brand-new car and no visible means of support .
SPRING ARRIVED . The almond trees in the orchards began dropping the last of their petals and the cherry trees were just reaching full bloom. Sun poured down through the branches of the orange trees. Sparrows rustled in the grass. A few more of our men disappeared every day. We tried to keep ourselves busy and be grateful for little things. A friendly nod from a neighbor. A hot bowl of rice. A bill paid on time. A child safely put to bed. We woke up early every morning and pulled on our field clothes and we plowed and we planted and we hoed. We dug up weeds in our vineyards. We irrigated our squash and peas. Once a week, on Fridays, we put up our hair and went into town to go shopping, but did not stop to say hello to one another when we met on the street. They’ll think we’re exchanging secrets . We rarely visited each other after dark in J-town because of the curfew. We did not linger long after services at church. Now whenever I speak to someone, I have to ask myself, “Is this someone who will betray me?” Around our younger children, too, we were careful about what we said. Chieko’s husband was turned in as a spy by his eight-year-old son . Some of us even began to wonder about our own husbands: Does he have a secret identity of which I am not aware?
SOON WE WERE hearing stories of entire communities being taken away. More than ninety percent of our men had been removed from a small town of lettuce growers in a valley to our north. More than one hundred of our men had been removed from the defense zone around the airfield. And down south, in a small fishing town of black shanties on the coast, all people of our descent had been rounded up in a day and a night on a blanket warrant without warning. Their logbooks had been confiscated, their sardine boats placed under guard, their fishing nets cut to shreds and tossed back out into the sea. Because the fishermen, it was said, were not really fishermen, but secret officers of the enemy’s imperial navy. They found their uniforms wrapped up in oil paper at the bottom of their bait boxes .
SOME OF US went out and began buying sleeping bags and suitcases for our children, just in case we were next. Others of us went about our work as usual and tried to remain calm. A little more starch on this collar and it’ll be fine, now, don’t you think? Whatever would happen would happen, we told ourselves, it was no use tempting
MORE AND MORE now we began to suspect that there were informers among us. Teruko’s husband, people whispered, had turned in a labor foreman at the apple-drying plant with whom she had once had an affair. Fumino’s husband had been accused of being pro-Axis by a former business partner who was now desperate for cash. (Informers, we had heard, were paid twenty-five dollars a head.) Kuniko’s husband had been denounced as a member of the Black Dragon Society by none other than Kuniko herself. He was about to leave her for his mistress . And Ruriko’s husband? Korean, his neighbors said. Working undercover. Bankrolled by the government to keep an eye on members of the local Buddhist church. I saw him taking down license plate numbers in the parking lot . Several days later he was found badly beaten in a ditch by the side of the road and the next morning he and his family were nowhere to be found. The front door to their house was wide open, their cats had been recently fed, a pot of hot water was still boiling on the stove. And that was that, they were gone. Word of their whereabouts, however, began to reach us within days. They’re down south by the border. They’ve fled to the next state. They’re living in a nice house in the city with a brand-new car and no visible means of support .
SPRING ARRIVED . The almond trees in the orchards began dropping the last of their petals and the cherry trees were just reaching full bloom. Sun poured down through the branches of the orange trees. Sparrows rustled in the grass. A few more of our men disappeared every day. We tried to keep ourselves busy and be grateful for little things. A friendly nod from a neighbor. A hot bowl of rice. A bill paid on time. A child safely put to bed. We woke up early every morning and pulled on our field clothes and we plowed and we planted and we hoed. We dug up weeds in our vineyards. We irrigated our squash and peas. Once a week, on Fridays, we put up our hair and went into town to go shopping, but did not stop to say hello to one another when we met on the street. They’ll think we’re exchanging secrets . We rarely visited each other after dark in J-town because of the curfew. We did not linger long after services at church. Now whenever I speak to someone, I have to ask myself, “Is this someone who will betray me?” Around our younger children, too, we were careful about what we said. Chieko’s husband was turned in as a spy by his eight-year-old son . Some of us even began to wonder about our own husbands: Does he have a secret identity of which I am not aware?
SOON WE WERE hearing stories of entire communities being taken away. More than ninety percent of our men had been removed from a small town of lettuce growers in a valley to our north. More than one hundred of our men had been removed from the defense zone around the airfield. And down south, in a small fishing town of black shanties on the coast, all people of our descent had been rounded up in a day and a night on a blanket warrant without warning. Their logbooks had been confiscated, their sardine boats placed under guard, their fishing nets cut to shreds and tossed back out into the sea. Because the fishermen, it was said, were not really fishermen, but secret officers of the enemy’s imperial navy. They found their uniforms wrapped up in oil paper at the bottom of their bait boxes .
SOME OF US went out and began buying sleeping bags and suitcases for our children, just in case we were next. Others of us went about our work as usual and tried to remain calm. A little more starch on this collar and it’ll be fine, now, don’t you think? Whatever would happen would happen, we told ourselves, it was no use tempting
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