The Sun Gods (18 page)

Billy thrust out his lower lip when he heard the news, and he refused to touch the food on his plate. Mitsuko found the beans the only thing vaguely edible, and while she hated to waste food, there was nothing she could do but scrape the remainder into a garbage barrel on the way out. They had to wash and store their own tin plates and cups.

Mrs. Sano sent her son Frank over to accompany them to the straw pile. Frank was a clear-eyed young man, tall and well-built as so many of the Niseis were, as if the bent bodies of their prematurely aged parents had absorbed all the hardships they had encountered emigrating to America, passing none on to the children. Frank did have one feature he had inherited from his mother, though: her strong aquiline nose.

The main beneficiary of Frank's strength was Billy. While Mitsuko and Yoshiko stuffed mattress cases, Frank tossed him over and over again into the huge, prickly mountain and he rolled down to the bottom, squealing in delight.

At five o'clock the truck arrived with their suitcases and seabags. Frank helped them unload. Mitsuko wanted to wash before changing into clean clothes, but the showers were still not working, so they made do with the dribble from one spigot.

Dinner was a huge chunk of salted liver, its opaque brownness overlain with a distinctly blue tinge. Mitsuko poked at it; its elastic consistency suggested that it might well bounce, but the stomach's digestive juices would have no effect upon it. There was rice this time—one small ice cream scoop full, and it tasted gritty, as though it had been boiled in muddy water. This and the single canned peach half provided for dessert were all that she, Yoshiko and Billy could eat. Billy had another skimpy cup of the funny-tasting milk.

Several times during the meal, a fat man with long sideburns clanged a large triangle and announced to the assembled throng of perhaps a thousand people that the showers in Area D would not be working tonight. All “residents” were asked to forego a shower. Those who absolutely needed to wash would be escorted to Area A in small groups under armed guard.

After what she and Billy had been through, Mitsuko was determined to get clean, and they reported to the Area D gate carrying towels and a change of clothes. Yoshiko preferred to wait until tomorrow.

The guards lined them up, military style, and marched them through the gate, across the street, and into Area A. Just as they had had to line up for the spigot and for the mess hall, they stood in line now again, waiting for a shower.

Mitsuko had seen the interior of the Area D shower, but the sight of such a facility in actual operation was another matter. As they waited at the door for their turn, Billy pressed up against her, giggling, and yanked on her sleeve. She bent down to hear him whisper, “I can see those ladies'
things
!”

Mitsuko was not sure precisely which “things” he meant, but she decided not to pursue the matter, and when her turn came, she had no choice but to strip down like the rest of them. She could not help wondering if there were male eyes affixed to the other sides of the knot holes in the walls.

“Mommy, let's not take a shower. Let's take a bath,” Billy grumbled when she undressed him and led him to a free shower head. As soon as the water splashed into his face, he began to cry. The temperature of the shower water alternated crazily between scalding hot and freezing cold. Mitsuko hurried to end the ordeal as quickly as possible.

Hanging on hooks in the shower room, their fresh clothes came out soggy, but they were still an improvement over the musky garments they had shed. A soft cotton yukata at the end of the day was always a source of comfort. There was no way to prevent their feet from being flecked with mud on the way back, but even here, surrounded by soldiers and bayonets in the darkness of a chilly night, cleanliness felt good.

“The horse smell seems to be weakening,” said Yoshiko when Mitsuko and Billy walked into the stable to find her huddled on her cot.

“Don't be ridiculous, it's worse than ever,” growled Mitsuko.

“Yuck,” said Billy, holding his nose.

“Maybe we shouldn't have taken showers after all,” said Mitsuko.

By then it was ten o'clock: curfew time, and Mitsuko was only too happy to extinguish their now-functioning light bulb and put an end to this terrible day, though she shuddered to think what kind of dreams she might have, falling asleep with such a stink in her nostrils.

She tucked Billy in and crawled under her quilt, but soon Billy was whimpering and she let him join her on her lumpy straw mattress. The endless moan of nearby voices at last dissolved into silence. Mitsuko was grateful for Billy's added warmth and was beginning to drift off when he said he had to go to the toilet. She dragged herself out of bed, put Billy's shoes on his feet and his jacket over his pajamas. Throwing on her coat, she crept out into the faintly starlit night.

Before they had groped their way past two rows of stables, she saw a few flashlight beams moving through the darkness. Several doors opened, spilling streams of light onto the ground. The number of people moving toward the outhouses was growing, and the silence of the night became filled with voices and slamming doors.

“Hey!” a voice boomed out into the night from on high. “What's going on down there?” and a blinding glare tore through the darkness from the guard tower.

“Get back to your apartments, all of you!” the voice boomed, but instead of turning back, the people around her broke into a run. There was a clatter of metal in the tower, and Mitsuko looked up to see a soldier in combat helmet pivoting a machine gun in the direction of the latrines.

“Don't shoot! We're just going to the toilet.”

The huge searchlight swung toward her now, and she held up her hands to block the glare. Billy screamed and grabbed her leg.

“All right,” shouted the guard. “Make it fast!”

Mitsuko ran ahead as quickly as she could with Billy, who was wailing. As they stood in line, waiting, Billy said through his tears, “I don't like this place, Mommy. Let's go back to America.”

The next morning at breakfast, Mitsuko heard that half the camp had been stricken with food poisoning in the night. Perhaps it had been the blue liver.

Mrs. Sano helped Mitsuko and Yoshiko with the rigors of camp life, although it was also Mrs. Sano—along with her husband—who made sleep nearly impossible with their symphonic snoring. The four-foot gap between the top of the partition and the ceiling let in every guttural note. Usually, they would alternate, but sometimes they would breathe in perfect unison, arriving at simultaneous crescendos that could shame the Seattle Symphony for sheer power. Lying awake, the sisters went from frustration to anger to uncontrollable laughter when Mitsuko suggested that Frank could not possibly be sleeping through the racket: he must be standing over his parents, baton in hand, conducting.

A week after the move to Puyallup, a messenger arrived from the administration building with a telegram for Yoshiko. It was from the Justice Department detention camp in Montana where her husband was being held. Yoshiko said she was afraid to open it.

“I can't, Mitsuko. What if Goro's dead?”

“Don't be foolish,” Mitsuko said, snatching the envelope from her sister, but she could not keep her hands from trembling as she tore it open. The telegram said that Goro Nomura was being released on parole and would be joining his wife in Puyallup tomorrow.

“On parole?” asked Mitsuko. “Isn't that what they do with prisoners?”

“Yes, but so what? He's coming here!”

The messenger came to their room again the next day to announce that Goro had arrived and was now in the administration building. Yoshiko ran out to the Area D gate, but the guards would not let her pass until the messenger caught up with her and escorted her through. Mitsuko tried to follow with Billy, but they were held back. They stayed there waiting for nearly half an hour until Yoshiko returned with a gaunt man in shirt sleeves whose appearance frightened Billy and whom even Mitsuko felt she would not have recognized had they passed on the street.

Goro reported that he had been treated well in the detention camp but that the combination of tedium and bad food had caused him to lose nearly thirty pounds. Distinctly overweight before, he was now almost painful to look at, the waistband of his pants rippling with excess cloth and the end of his belt dangling down.

Goro told the story of his removal to Missoula on an ancient train with hard wooden seats, the cars from Seattle being added to a train that had started its journey in Los Angeles and moved up the coast, growing with its load of “dangerous” enemy aliens, the oldest of whom was eighty-four. They had been forced to keep the blinds drawn and were under constant armed guard. Once they got to Missoula, they were placed in Army-style barracks, thirty to a room, in two rows of cots, and given all sorts of demeaning tasks to do, from cleaning out the latrines to waiting on tables.

With each revelation, Mrs. Sano would pipe up from next door, “
Maa, taihen datta deshoh
—oh, how terrible!” until Mitsuko finally brought her around and introduced her to Goro. After a while, Yoshiko's fidgeting made it clear that Mitsuko should escort the garrulous old woman elsewhere, and it occurred to Mitsuko that she had best vacate the premises herself. Fortunately, Mr. Sano and Frank were out as usual, which made it a relatively easy matter for her to drag Mrs. Sano and Billy off on a hunt for lumber scraps with which furniture could be fashioned for the new inmate.

As the weeks wore on, Mitsuko became increasingly uncomfortable living in such close quarters with a married couple, even if they were her middle-aged sister and brother-in-law. She spent virtually all her time with Billy, carving new wooden toys for him, watching him romp in the mud with other children his age, nursing him through measles and chicken pox when those epidemics tore through the camp, sewing an Uncle Sam costume for him to wear in the July Fourth kiddies' costume parade, and going through the predictable round of meals, showers, trips to the outhouse, and bedtime reading and singing.

At bedtime, Billy would sing the lullaby he learned from Mitsuko: “
Odoma Bon-giri Bon-giri, Bon kara sakya orando
…,” his pronunciation and his feeling for the melody as pure as any Japanese child's, although the words were only pleasant sounds devoid of meaning for him. His favorite book was
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
. Once, when they were strolling by the camp fence, Billy said, “I wish I had a goose to ride on like Nils.”

“Would you fly away without me?” Mitsuko asked.

“I mean a great big goose for both of us.”

The predictability of life in the camp made time almost irrelevant, and Mitsuko felt a strange joy in relinquishing her soul entirely to her little blond son. Although she knew that Tom could end their idyll whenever he wished, she immersed herself in the present moment with Billy, a seemingly endless succession of present moments that had the feel of eternity. The ever-present hum of voices in the camp contributed to this sense of immersion in something endless.