Caged Eagles (15 page)

“I guess I'm one of them.” He paused. “'Course, I don't know many of either type. My laundry man is Chinese, and I get my fresh vegetables from a truck that sits at the side of the road on Saturday mornings … I think he's a Jap … he's gone now … and then there's my gardener. He's Japanese. You look a lot like him,” he said, pointing at me.

“He does look a little bit Japanese,” Sam agreed.

“Now me, I look Chinese.”

The man nodded his head. Actually, Sam did look less Japanese than I did. It wasn't his features, his nose or eyes or skin color, because they were as Japanese as mine, but more the way he walked and the expression on his face.

“You have a beautiful garden,” I said, wanting to change the subject. His garden was filled with flowers.

“Thank you,” he beamed. “It's my pride and joy.

Although I have to tell you, it's usually even nicer than this, but since my gardener has been taken away I've been hard pressed to maintain it.” He shook his head slowly. “It made no sense to have him leave.”

“You mean you don't think they should have locked up all those Japanese?” I asked. Maybe it was more than just the people up in Prince Rupert who thought it was wrong.

“He was old, a few years my senior, and a fine gentleman. The man was a gardener, not a spy.” He shrugged. “But I guess the government didn't have much choice.”

“I don't know about that,” I stated. “Maybe they could have just —”

“The government did the right thing,” Sam said, interrupting me. “Everybody knows some of those Japs are nothing but spies.”

Sam's words so shocked me that I didn't know what to say.

“Maybe you boys should get yourselves those badges,” the old man said.

“What badges?” I asked.

“You must have seen them. I've seen a lot of you Chinese wearing them on your shirts. You know those badges. They say ‘I Am Chinese' or something like that.”

“Oh,
those
things. We both have one. We wear them sometimes — all our family does. We call them buttons, not badges. But we forgot to bring them today,” Sam said. “Thanks for the drink, mister, we better get going.”

“Take care, boys.”

We traveled a few houses down the street in silence.

“Why were you saying things about the Japanese being spies?” I asked angrily.

“I had to say something to cover for you. Why didn't you just wave a big Japanese flag in front of him, so he could call the authorities on us?”

“I was just —”

“Being stupid,” Sam interrupted. “Don't get caught defending the Japanese. We're Chinese, remember, and the Chinese don't even like the Japanese, so why would they defend them? Especially now with the war on and the Japanese invading China.”

I had to admit that he was right about that. I didn't really know many Chinese people — there were only a couple of families in Prince Rupert — but I'd heard the things my parents and grandmother said sometimes about Chinese people, and they weren't very flattering. My grandmother, who hardly ever had a bad word to say about anybody, called the Chinese “dogs.” And I guess if we felt that way about them, they wouldn't think much better of us.

“I can't believe he thought we were Chinese,” I said.

“Why wouldn't he? All Asians look more or less the same to whites. Heck, they all look pretty much the same to me!” He paused. “But the old guy gave me an idea. We've got to get ourselves a couple of those buttons.”

“You're kidding.”

“We can slap those on our shirts and then we can go just about anywhere in the whole city.”

“We can't just pretend we're Chinese.”

He shrugged. “It worked with the old man.”

“But that doesn't mean we can fool other people.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, can you speak Chinese?”

“Of course not, but so what? I can't speak Japanese either.”

“Well, what if that old man had asked us to say something in Chinese?” I asked.

“I can't think of any reason in the entire world why he would do that,” Sam said. “But I could just mumble something in a sing-song voice.”

“But that wouldn't work if we bumped into somebody who really is Chinese and wanted to talk to us.

I don't think they'd be fooled by our pretending to speak Chinese.”

“We could pretend we're Chinese who just don't speak Chinese.”

“Not a word? Nobody's that stupid.”

“Maybe you have a point. Then we'll stay away from Chinatown, and if we do see any other people anywhere who look like they might be Chinese, we'll take off quick and avoid them. Doesn't that all make sense?”

It did, and that scared me. “I guess it could work … if you actually had a couple of those buttons.”

“Leave that to me,” Sam said. “I'll figure it out.”

I had the urge to argue with him, but somehow I thought that if anybody could arrange it, it would be Sam.

“Maybe we should head back,” I suggested.

“I think you're right. Let's get back to the park. We can come out longer the next time … after I get the buttons.”

.12.

I hurried out of the washroom. The lineup was getting bigger each morning, but that was only to be expected as the population of the park grew each day — the pool was getting deeper. I heard that they were now putting families in the old pig stalls. I'd heard they were smaller and smelled even worse than the cattle stalls. I couldn't imagine that.

I looked at my watch. It was almost eight o'clock. If I didn't hurry there wouldn't be much left to eat for breakfast. I'd agreed to meet Sam at eight-thirty, so if I hurried I could eat and get there on time. He was usually late, but I was still going to try and be on time.

As I turned into the stall I wasn't surprised to see both my sisters all dressed up. My family had washed and gone for breakfast before I'd even risen. My grandmother was carefully combing Yuri's hair while my mother helped put a clip in Midori's.

“There, you are both ready for your first day of school,” my mother said.

I shook my head in disbelief. “I still can't believe that they went ahead and set up a school.”

“School is important,” my mother said.

I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised. I'd heard talk from the first day we arrived in Hastings Park that people were worried about their children “losing their year” at school. How crazy was that? People were forced out of their houses, had to sleep in cattle stalls, had virtually no idea where we'd all be heading, and they were worried about their children not getting a proper education. How Japanese.

“Blackboards have been found, paper, pencils. Even chairs and desks have been found and placed in a building.”

“What about teachers?” I asked.

“Some of the women in the camp are teachers at the Japanese schools. They have volunteered to school children,” my mother explained.

I'd heard about the Japanese schools. In Vancouver there were dozens of them. Places where kids of Japanese descent used to go on Saturdays to learn Japanese and about Japan.

“And some of the high school students are to assist them,” my mother added.

“But we're only going to be here a few weeks,” I noted.

“A few weeks that won't be wasted. At least, for the younger children,” my mother said.

I tried not to smile, because of course I knew what she meant — the school had been set up only for those in the seventh form or lower. Just another reason to be grateful for being in eighth grade. Going to school was about the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

“Could you bring your sisters to school?” my mother asked.

“We don't need him to —” Midori stopped in midsentence when she saw the look in my mother's eyes.

“What building are they using?” I asked.

“I can show you,” Midori said. “It's not far from the front gate. They call the building the Forum.”

I knew which one she meant. It was big, and strange shaped. Unfortunately, it was in the completely opposite direction of where I was going — the mess hall.

“Come on, let's go now,” I said. My stomach was already grumbling and I wanted to drop them off as soon as possible.

Both girls picked up a small bundle of books that they had been working on since we left Prince Rupert.

They said goodbye to my mother and grandmother and we headed down the aisle and toward the big barn door. At almost every stall we passed, there were also children being readied for school. Hair was being combed, faces were being given a last scrub with a washcloth, as children, books in hand, stood waiting in good clothing, standing with their friends or playmates. They were chatting together, laughing, playing, smiling, all excited. Their mothers also clustered together at the entrances to their stalls and talked to their neighbors. I caught little snippets of conversation as I passed. They were talking about the school, and the weather and clothing, and … all the sorts of things mothers talked about in our village as the children started off for school.

I stopped and Midori and Yuri kept walking, unaware that I had stopped. I looked all around at the scene being played out before me. If I looked at just the people, and not the place, we could have been in our village. Everybody seemed so cheerful, happy, excited. The children were skipping and playing. The mothers smiling and talking. Even the men being gone didn't seem out of place — they could just be out early working the fishing boats. If only it all wasn't being played out in a barn, cattle stalls covered with bedspreads. I closed my eyes and just listened. Soft voices, high-pitched laughter, the scuffling of feet — “Tadashi!”

My eyes popped open. Midori was standing thirty feet in front of me, hands on her hips, Yuri at her side, looking very annoyed. That was just like our usual walks to school as well. I started walking again.

“What were you doing?” Midori demanded.

“Waiting for Jed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing … just joking. Come on.”

That's what I would have been doing if we were heading to school from our village. As the girls hurried off, I would have stopped at the entrance to Jed's village and waited for him — he was always late, just like Sam. I guess they did have some things in common.

We moved along with the mothers and their children. We were just another part of an unofficial parade heading to the school. Yuri took my hand as we walked. Actually, I walked and she skipped along beside me. She and Midori held an animated discussion, hoping that they'd like their classmates and wondering if the teacher was going to be strict. I didn't say anything, but I knew she would be. After all, she was going to be Japanese. Not that I'd ever had a Japanese teacher — all the teachers in our school were white — but I just knew.

Soon the trickle of people f lowing from our building joined into a bigger stream moving along the main path. As we passed each new building another trickle of children joined in. The stream was becoming a river. There were hundreds of kids going to school.

I hadn't thought about just how many children were in this camp. When we'd first arrived at the park, I was told there were over fifteen hundred people. That number had been dwarfed over the past week as more and more people arrived daily. I'd heard that there were now closer to three thousand. I didn't really know. I just knew the lineups were much longer at the mess, and even once you got your food it was hard to find a place to sit.

Along with the extra people came extra things. A small store was now housed just inside the main gate.

It sold cold pop and candy and gum. Sam now only needed to get his newspapers from the outside, as these still weren't for sale to Japanese. A small infirmary, a place where people who were sick could go, had been set up in one of the buildings. Two of the interned Japanese were doctors and some of the women were experienced as either nurses or midwives, and they'd been assisting those needing help.

We stopped right outside the building that was now the school. It was large. Hopefully, large enough to hold all these kids. Outside the building were a number of tables. Behind each table sat two or three women. Over their heads were large hand-drawn signs in both English and Japanese to show students where to register for the different forms.

“Midori, you go over —”

“I know,” she snapped. “I
can
read.”

She walked off and took her place in a line with other kids her age. I walked Yuri over a couple of tables to take a place in the proper line.

All the kids seemed so excited and happy. For a split second I felt like maybe I was missing out on things. I usually did like school — at least, my old school.

“Hey, Tadashi!”

I turned around and saw Sam, his little sister Keiko — he called her Kay — in tow. They weaved through the crowd, waving, a big smile on Sam's face. As always, he was chewing gum a mile a minute. I waved back. They came over to us and we exchanged greetings.

Yuri let go of my hand and took Kay's hand instead, pulling her into line beside her. They were the same age, and would be in the same grade. They'd gotten to know each other through me and Sam, and had played together a few times before. Like Sam, Kay spoke almost no Japanese.

We shuffled forward with the crowd, Sam and I making small talk, and the girls giggling and playing. Finally we reached the front and provided the necessary information — name, age, grade, school — for them to be put in the proper class. The girls, still holding hands, waved to us and were led away by one of the teachers, disappearing into the building.

“I can't believe how happy my sister was about going to school,” I said as we walked away.

“Mine too. Kay was just upset that it was only half a day long.”