Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (21 page)

IN APRIL
, the war in Europe was over! Victory in Europe, or VE Day, the end of that war was called. Tomi heard the whistle go off at the sugar beet factory in Ellis. Then there were the sounds of firecrackers and car horns. In a few minutes, the school principal rushed into the classroom to announce that Germany had surrendered. The children cheered, and Mrs. Glessner asked them to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then they sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Mrs. Glessner dismissed the class, and the children ran outside. There weren’t many schoolchildren left at Tallgrass. Most of the men at the camp had taken jobs in Denver and moved away. Some had left Colorado for work in other states. Pop refused to get a job, which was
why the Itanos had remained in the camp. Fortunately for Tomi, Mr. Hayashi worked in the camp office, so Ruth had stayed at Tallgrass, too.

Although Helen had hated the camp when she arrived, she chose to stay on after she graduated from high school. She said Mrs. Hayashi was like a grandmother to Carl, and she didn’t want to take him away from her. Besides, if Helen found employment outside the camp, who would look after Carl and Wilson? But Tomi thought Helen was really waiting for Roy to come back. And he would come back. The war was over, and Roy was safe!

Now the children stood near the school, shouting, “The war’s over!” and “We won!” Those who had bikes tied red, white, or blue scarves to the handlebars. Hiro rushed around yelling, “Whatcha know, Joe? Do you know it’s VE Day?” Tomi and Ruth ran home to the Itanos’ apartment, where they found Mom making tea. Mr. and Mrs. Hayashi and Carl were there.

“Did you hear?” Tomi yelled as she came through the door. “The war is over.”

“Only in Europe. There’s still a war in Japan.” Pop said.

“But it will be over there soon,” Mom told him. Mr. and Mrs. Hayashi brought special tea to celebrate. It is
very good tea. It came with them from San Francisco.”

“I saved it for a celebration,” Mrs. Hayashi said. “And what better celebration than that the war is over and we won!”

“Why do we care?” Pop asked. “America still thinks we are the enemy.”

“You’re a spoilsport, Sam. I, for one, am a true blue American,” Mr. Hayashi told him.

“You are just in time,” Mom said to Tomi. She had heated water on the stove. Now she poured it into the china pot and set out her best tea cups. She let the tea steep. Then Mom poured it into the fragile cups and handed them around.

“To American victory,” Mr. Hayashi toasted. He raised his cup. Ruth and Tomi, along with their mothers and Carl, raised their cups, too, and at last, so did Pop.

“Are they going to close the camp now?” Mrs. Hayashi asked.

“Not yet,” Pop told her. “America hasn’t beaten the Japanese. We have to stay here.”

“Nobody has to stay here. There are jobs all over America for us,” Mr. Hayashi said. “You’re just stubborn, Sam.”

“No jobs in California,” Pop told him. “They don’t want us there.”

“There will be jobs soon enough.”

“Not for me,” Pop said.

“No more unhappy words,” Mom told him.

Pop was quiet then, as the others talked about VE Day. Mom fixed more tea. Then the Hayashis went home, and Pop left to sit in the sun with the old men. Tomi fetched a bucket of water, which Mom heated on the stove, and the two washed the teapot and cups.

“I thought Pop would be excited about Victory in Europe,” Tomi said, as she picked up Mom’s delicate cup.

“Sometimes I think he is tired of complaining, but he doesn’t know how to stop. I think he would like to be the old Pop again, but he doesn’t know how.”

Mom started to say more, but Ruth came back into the apartment and asked Tomi to go into Ellis with her. “Father gave me money for ice cream,” she said. So the two walked down the dirt road to Ellis where people were waving flags and blowing toy horns. A band played. A girl handed Tomi a noisemaker and yelled, “We won! We won!” At the drug store, a man was giving away ice cream to everyone. “Here, girls, have some ice cream. It’s VE Day!”
he cried, handing cones to Ruth and Tomi. “Tell everybody at Tallgrass to come in for free ice cream.” Nobody called Ruth and Tomi Japs.

“Maybe Pop’s the only one who remembers we’re still fighting Japan,” Tomi said. “I wish he’d come here to Ellis and see how people are treating us.”

“Will he?” Ruth asked.

“I don’t think so.”

The following day, the children were still too excited to pay attention in class. They talked about the German surrender and how they could all go home now that the war was over.

“But we’re still at war with Japan,” Ruth said in a loud voice.

“What does that mean, Mrs. Glessner?” a boy asked.

“It means that Japan no longer has any allies—friends to help them fight. The American army is beating the Japanese army. So the end of the war in Europe means the war with Japan will be over soon. Then Tallgrass will be closed. You’ll be allowed to go wherever you want to, even
California.”

“Does that mean they’ll let us be Americans?” Ruth asked.

Mrs. Glessner smiled. “You already are. You’ve always been Americans. You are Americans because your parents chose America for you.”

Tomi turned red and looked down. Those were words from her essay. She hoped Mrs. Glessner wouldn’t read it to the class. The contest had been over for a long time, and if she’d won, she’d have heard about it by now. If Mrs. Glessner read the essay, the others would know it was the Tallgrass entry in the contest and that it had lost. Tomi would feel she’d let everyone down.

“I have something to tell you, something that will make you proud,” Mrs. Glessner said. “I was going to announce it yesterday, but we were all too busy celebrating Victory in Europe.” She paused, then continued. “Most of you wrote essays about ‘Why I Am an American.’ They were very good, but the best of them was Tomi Itano’s. That was why I entered it in the state contest.”

Mrs. Glessner paused and smiled at Tomi, while Tomi slunk lower in her seat. This was awful. Now the whole class would know she was a loser.

“The state judges thought it was the best, too, because they awarded it
first prize
!”

Tomi stared at Mrs. Glessner in surprise. “I won?” she mouthed. She sat up straight.

“Yes, you won,” Mrs. Glessner said.

“My essay won?” Tomi couldn’t believe it.

Mrs. Glessner nodded.

“First place?”

“First place. Your essay was the best one in the whole state.”

“But I’m Japanese,” Tomi said.

“What does that have to do with being an American?” her teacher asked.

Tomi was too stunned to say anything more, but Ruth wasn’t. “Hooray for Tomi!” Ruth yelled, and the students clapped.

“Read your essay,” a boy said.

“Yeah, Tomi, read it,” another student added.

Tomi blushed. She didn’t want to stand up in front of the class and read her words. “I don’t have it. Mrs. Glessner sent it in,” she said.

“I sent in the copy you rewrote. What about the original? Don’t you have it?” the teacher asked.

“Oh, I guess I still do,” Tomi replied.

“You don’t have to read it in class,” Mrs. Glessner said, and Tomi breathed a sigh of relief. “Instead, you can read it at the VE celebration in the camp this afternoon.”

Tomi slunk back in her chair. That was terrible. She’d have to stand up before the whole camp. But that wasn’t what frightened her most. She’d have to read it in front of Pop.

1945 | CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

WHY I AM
an
AMERICAN

“WE’RE
wearing our best clothes to the VE Day celebration,” Mom said when Tomi went back to the apartment. Mom had put on a white kimono with big pink flowers on it. “Hurry, Tomi. We don’t want to be late.”

“Is Pop going?” Tomi asked. Pop didn’t attend many camp events, and Tomi hoped he would stay home.

“Of course, he is. This is a big day.”

Tomi glanced at her father, who was wearing his suit and a tie. He stood looking out the window, holding his hat. “I don’t know why I should go. I’d rather stay here,” he said.

“It’s not a big deal,” Tomi said, hoping she could talk her father out of it.

“It’s a very big deal,” Mom told her. “We won the war
in Europe.”

Hiro burst into the room then and yelled, “Tomi won some essay contest about being an American. She beat everybody in the state! The whole school’s talking about it.”

Mom turned to Tomi in surprise. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Why didn’t you tell us?”

Tomi shrugged.

“She’s going to read it at the celebration,” Hiro continued. Tomi sent him a fierce look to shut him up, but he only grinned at her.

“Then we will be very happy,” Mom told her. “Now, Sam, that is a good reason to go to the celebration. You would shame your daughter if you stayed home. I won’t let you.”

“Won’t let me? You sound like an American woman telling her husband what to do.”

“I am an American woman,” Mom told him.

“Bah,” Pop said.

Tomi sat down on her bed, thinking she might say she had a stomach ache and had to stay in the apartment, but she knew Mom wouldn’t let her get away with that.

“Hurry up. Put on your red dress,” Mom said, removing
the dress from a nail on the wall. Tomi went behind the curtain that divided the room and changed into the dress as slowly as she could. “It’s too small. I look awful. Everybody will laugh at me,” she said. Indeed, the dress came above her knees, and it pulled across her waist. “I’ve had this since we lived in California.”

“Then we will buy you a new one when we go back there,” Mom said. “Other girls are wearing tight dresses, too. Come along.”

Tomi dragged her feet as the four of them walked to the big open space in camp where meetings were held. Mom took Tomi’s arm to pull her along and whispered, “Don’t be nervous. Remember what a hard time I had standing in front of the quilt class the first time? Now I don’t mind it at all.”

But Tomi wasn’t worried about getting up in front of people. She was worried about what Pop would say when he heard her essay. She glanced up at one of the towers and realized there were no longer any guards. Was that because of VE Day or had they disappeared a long time ago? She was so used to the towers that she hadn’t noticed.

As soon as they reached the crowd, Tomi went off in search of Ruth. Maybe it would start raining or the stage
would cave in before it was her turn to speak. Then she wouldn’t have to read her essay. The essay had been a bad idea, a terrible idea. Pop would be furious.

The victory ceremony started only minutes after the Itanos arrived, and Tomi knew nothing could stop her now from having to read the essay. There were prayers and speeches. A band played “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” and then the national anthem, as people sang. The ceremony lasted a long time, and Tomi hoped she’d been forgotten. But then a man announced, “We have a special surprise. Just this week, one of our students, Tomi Itano, won a state contest with her essay, ‘Why I Am an American.’ Now Tomi’s going to read it to us.”

People clapped as Tomi slowly made her way to the stage. Her hands were sweaty, and her knees shook. As she climbed the steps, she looked around for Mom and Pop. At first she couldn’t find them, but then she saw them right in the front! Now there was no way Pop wouldn’t hear her words. Tomi took a deep breath. There was nothing she could do about it.
Shikata ga nai
, she thought; it can’t be helped. So she might as well get it over with. She unfolded the essay she had kept in her book and began in a small voice, “ ‘Why I Am an American’ …”