Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (2 page)

1942 | CHAPTER TWO

POP
and the
FBI

TOMI
loved their little farmhouse. It was painted yellow, the color of the sun, Tomi’s favorite color. An American flag hung from a pole in the yard. Pop raised it every day, while Tomi, Hiro, and Roy stood beside him. Then he lowered it at night, choosing one of the children to help him fold it. The flag was kept in a carved box next to the front door. Tomi was proud when she saw the red, white, and blue flag flying from its pole in front of the house.

Pop grew strawberries that were even bigger and redder than the ones in Mr. Akron’s store. Pop didn’t own the farm. He had come to America from Japan when he was younger. He told his children since he was born in Japan, he was an
Issei
, or first-generation American. The law said
Issei
couldn’t own land in America. Pop’s real name
was Osamu, but everybody called him Sam. Mom, whose name was Sumiko, was an
Issei
, too. Tomi and her brothers, Hiro and Roy, were born in America. Pop explained that they were
Nisei
, or second-generation Americans.

It didn’t matter that Pop just rented the farm, however. He had worked it since before Tomi was born, and the farm was the only home she’d ever known. Pop rented the land from Mr. Lawrence, who lived a mile away in a big house with white pillars in front. His daughter, Martha, was Tomi’s best friend. They played together all the time in Martha’s big house or in Tomi’s tiny yellow cottage.

Mr. Lawrence’s brand new Ford motor car was parked in front of the Itano house along with a car Tomi didn’t recognize. Mr. Lawrence believed in Ford cars and bought one every two years. He’d encouraged Pop to buy a used Ford truck the year before. Pop had never owned a truck, and he was proud of it. He and Roy washed it every Saturday.

Mr. Lawrence stood on the porch with a man in a suit and hat. The two of them were hidden behind a trumpet vine and didn’t see Tomi and Hiro as they came down the road.

“Sam Itano’s as good an American as I am,” Tomi heard
Mr. Lawrence say. His voice was loud and angry.

“Then why did he buy so much fertilizer? And gasoline, too? I’m betting it’s for the Japanese submarines. They’ve been spotted off the coast.” The second man didn’t look much older than Roy.

“Look around you. This is a farm. You need gasoline to run the equipment. Sam’s a smart farmer. He’s stocking up on gas before it gets scarce. Besides, submarines don’t run on gasoline,” Mr. Lawrence told him.

“That’s beside the point,” the man wearing the suit said.

“Then what is the point?” Mr. Lawrence asked.

“Sam Itano’s a Jap.”

“Around here, we call him a Japanese,” Mr. Lawrence said.

A third man came out of the house. He had Pop’s newspaper in his hand and held it high so the others could see. “Look at this. It’s in Japanese.”

“That’s Sam’s newspaper. Are you saying it’s illegal to read a newspaper written in another language?” Mr. Lawrence asked.

“It is if it’s subversive.”

“What’s subversive?” Hiro asked. His voice carried.

Tomi whispered, “I think it means ‘doing something against the government.’ ”

The men on the porch hadn’t noticed the two children until now. One asked if they were the Itano kids. When Tomi nodded, he asked, “Your dad have a radio?”

Tomi didn’t like the way the man sounded.
Is there something wrong with having a radio?
she wondered. She was about to tell them she didn’t know. But Hiro belted out, “You bet! It’s a Philco, brand-new. We got it for Christmas. It’s swell.”

The two men looked at each other. “And he listens to it, does he? What does he listen to?”

“Oh, everything,” Hiro said, before Tomi could stop him. “He listens to
Blondie
and
Fibber McGee and Molly
. And when he’s not home, Mom listens to
Backstage Wife
and
Our Gal Sunday
. Pop says they’re dumb.”

“They’re soap operas,” Tomi explained.

“I bet he listens to Japanese programs, too, doesn’t he?” one of the men asked.

“There aren’t any Japanese programs on the radio,” Tomi told him.

The two men looked at each other, while Mr. Lawrence muttered, “Ha!”

Pop came out of the house then and motioned for Tomi and Hiro to go to him. Tomi wondered where Mom was; probably working in the strawberry fields. Pop was sweating, and he had a worried look on his face. He jingled the coins in his pocket. He did that when he was nervous. The day Pop arrived in America, he found a silver dollar on the street. It was his lucky coin, and he always carried it. Now he thumped the small coins in his pocket against the big silver dollar.

Tomi asked Pop about the two men, and he whispered, “They’re from the FBI.”

“Wow! The FBI, like in the movies!” Hiro said. “Are you going to help them capture some bad guys, Pop?”

Tomi knew the FBI agents weren’t there to ask for Pop’s help.

One of the men asked Tomi, “Does your father use the radio late at night?”

“Sure, he listens to
One Man’s Family
,” Tomi said.

The agent looked annoyed. “Does he use it to talk to the Japs?”

“Japanese.” Mr. Lawrence reminded him.

Hiro laughed. “Boy, is he dumb. You don’t talk to a radio,” he whispered.

“Keep still, boy,” the agent who’d come out of the house said. He turned to the other man. “You should see what he’s got in there—Japanese books, letters, even a picture of the Emperor. We better take him in.”

Mr. Lawrence stepped between Pop and the men. “On what grounds?” he asked.

“Espionage,” the FBI man said.

“That’s spying,” Tomi told Hiro before he could ask.

Pop glanced from the two agents to Mr. Lawrence. “How can that be? I’m an American.”

“You’re not a citizen, are you?”

“I can’t be. The law doesn’t let
Issei
become citizens,” Pop explained.

“You had a camera. What were you taking pictures of?” The agent was holding Pop’s camera in his hand, the back of it open.

“My strawberry plants. And my children. You’d see if you hadn’t exposed the film.”

“Oh yeah?” The man took out a pair of handcuffs and motioned for Pop to put his wrists together in front of his waist. As the men led him to their car, Pop wouldn’t look back at Tomi and Hiro. It was hard for Tomi to look at him, too.

“You kids tell your mother I’ll be back later to explain what’s going on,” Mr. Lawrence said. Then he turned to Pop. “Don’t worry, Sam. This isn’t right. I’ll get a lawyer for you. He’ll prove you’re a good American and shouldn’t be arrested.”

“Don’t bother,” one of the FBI men said. “It won’t do him any good.” Then he turned to Tomi and Hiro and said, “You kids, you tell your mother you’re not to go more than five miles from here. And there’s a curfew. That means you’re not to be out after dark.”

Mom had been working with the strawberry plants and hadn’t known what had just happened. After all, people were always stopping by to buy strawberries. Pop always talked to them, because Mom was shy around strangers. As soon as Mr. Lawrence drove off, Tomi and Hiro ran to her, careful not to step on the strawberry plants.

“The FBI took Pop away. They put handcuffs on him,” Hiro called to her.

“What?” Mom had been stooped over the plants, and she looked up, then rose slowly.

“They called him un-American,” Tomi said. “I’m scared, but Mr. Lawrence said not to worry, that he’d get a lawyer to help Pop.”

Mom put her hands over her face and stood that way for a long time. “I told him to get rid of those letters, those newspapers,” she said to herself. She took her children’s hands, and they walked back to the house.

When they went inside, Mom gasped at the mess the FBI agents had left. She always kept the house tidy. But now, drawers were pulled out in the bedroom and clothes dumped onto the floor. Dishes and canned goods had been taken from kitchen shelves and set on the table. The back of the radio had been pried off. Pop’s letters from
Jiji
and
Baba
in Japan were scattered about. “Oh,” Mom said, and sat down in a chair.

Tomi offered to put things away, but her mother said no. “We’ll burn all this. I told your father to do that, but he said that everything would be all right.”

Tomi and Hiro gathered up the papers that had been thrown onto the floor and put them into the stove. Mom picked up the picture of the Japanese emperor and placed it on top of the papers. Then she went into her bedroom and took down a wall scroll with a picture of a Japanese
mountain on it and added it. Finally, she went to the closet for her best kimono. It was a beautiful turquoise silk dress she wore on special occasions. She shoved it into the stove. She cried when she lit a match and watched the silk catch fire. “We have to get rid of everything Japanese so that we can show we aren’t aiding the enemy,” she said.

“What about my doll?” Tomi asked. Her grandparents had sent her a Japanese doll with long black hair and bangs just like Tomi’s. Her name was Janice. Tomi was too old to play with dolls, but she loved Janice too much to give her up.

Mom shook her head. “Surely, they can’t object to a doll.”

Tomi and Hiro sat beside their mother and watched as the fire burned. “I don’t understand,” Hiro said at last. “What did Pop do?”

“Nothing,” Mom replied. “He didn’t do anything. It’s because he’s Japanese.”

“No he’s not. He’s an American,” Hiro insisted.

Mom nodded, and then she asked Tomi to fix tea.

Tomi filled the kettle with water and placed it on the stove. She let the water boil, then set it aside a minute to cool before she poured it over the tea leaves in the teapot.
The finest tea, Tomi knew, required hot, not boiling, water. After letting the tea steep, she poured it into blue-and-white china cups, each with a different design. Tomi picked up her mother’s cup and handed it to her, wondering if they would have to get rid of the tea set.

Mom carried the tea to the table, and Tomi and Hiro sat down on either side of her. Hiro gulped his drink, but Tomi held her cup in her hand, letting the warmth rise and fill her nose with the sweet smell of tea.

“As you know, your father came to America from Japan when he was eighteen years old,” Mom began. Tomi and Hiro had heard that story many times, but Mom always started at the beginning, and so she repeated how Pop had come to the United States because he thought there were more opportunities here for a boy like him. Pop got a job on a farm, laboring long hours at back-breaking work. He believed that was the way to get ahead. He saved his money and rented a few acres of farmland, where he grew strawberries.

The farm was successful. So he sent to Japan for a “picture bride.” Picture brides were Japanese girls who wanted to marry Japanese men living in America. They sent their photographs to what was called a marriage broker. Pop
chose Sumiko. She wasn’t the prettiest of the girls whose pictures he studied, but she looked like the sweetest. Sam thought she would be a worker, too. So he paid her way to America, and they were married.

They were a good match. Sam and Sumiko cared about each other just as much as any American couple who had married for love. Many times, Tomi had seen her father take the picture bride photograph out of his wallet and smile at it.

“Your pop wanted us all to be Americans. That’s why we speak English at home and wear American clothes. America’s made up of people from all over the world,” Mom said. She reminded Tomi and Hiro that the immigrants were Americans now, but they hadn’t forgotten their foreign cultures. That was why the Mexicans in California ate tortillas and chili and sang beautiful songs in Spanish and the Germans held a harvest festival where they served beer and bratwurst. The Japanese weren’t any different. Mom fixed spaghetti and tuna fish casseroles along with Japanese food and dressed just like other women in California, wearing a kimono only on special occasions.

Tomi knew all that, and she squiggled in her chair, wishing her mother would get on with it.

Finally, Mom did. “Everything was all right until Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor last December and America declared war on Japan. Some Caucasians—white people—think we’re spies just because we came from Japan. They believe we’ll help the Japanese invade America.”