Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (7 page)

“Do they let him write you letters?” Ruth asked. Tomi had told her that Pop was being held in a prison in New Mexico.

“He writes them, but we can’t read them,” Tomi replied. “Somebody blacks out every other word, so most of the time, we don’t know what he’s talking about. I guess he’s okay, but he doesn’t seem very happy. At home, Pop was always having a good time. He made everybody laugh. But not anymore. I think that’s because he misses us.”

“Why is he in prison?” Ruth asked.

Tomi shrugged. “We don’t know. The government hasn’t filed any charges against him. It seems like he’s being held there just because he’s Japanese.”

“It must be hard for your mom.”

“She tries to hide her feelings, but I’ve seen her cry when she thinks I’m not watching,” Tomi said. “It’s not fair.”

Ruth agreed. Then she added, “It’s not fair my brother
died, either.”

At that, Tomi stopped and stared at her friend. “You had a brother? You never told me about him.”

“I miss him as much as you do your dad. His name was Ben. Father doesn’t want me to talk about him, so I never do. It makes Mother sad.”

“What happened?”

Ruth scraped the toe of her shoe in the dirt and looked away. “He had a sickness. I don’t know what it was. He had it a long time. We could have hired a nurse, but Mother said she wanted to take care of him. So that’s what she did all day and sometimes all night.” When Ruth saw Tomi staring at her, she added, “Mother isn’t lazy. I mean, she can’t cook or sew or clean, but she spent all of her time with Ben. She gave up parties and helping at the store and everything else to be with him.” Ruth looked down at the dirt and kicked at a rock. “Father said Ben lived as long as he did because Mother took such good care of him.”

“How old was he?”

“Younger than me. Ben was four when he died. That was last year. He was sick for two years. Without Ben, it’s like there’s a hole in our lives.” Ruth blinked as she started down the street toward school. “Don’t mention him to
Mother. She’ll cry. Like I said, we don’t ever talk about him. That’s why I never told you.”

Tomi remembered then that she had gone into the Hayashis’ apartment one day and saw Mrs. Hayashi holding a toy dog. It was on wheels and there was a string to pull it back and forth. Mrs. Hayashi had been rolling the wheels across her hand, but she put the toy behind her back when she saw Tomi. Tomi thought it was odd that Mrs. Hayashi had brought one of Ruth’s baby toys to the camp, but now she realized the toy dog had belonged to Ben. Mrs. Hayashi wouldn’t leave it behind, even though it had taken up precious space in her suitcase. Tomi wondered if Mrs. Hayashi had brought other things that had been Ben’s.

“Maybe your mom will have another brother for you one day, or a sister,” Tomi said.

Ruth shrugged. “I wish. Mother just sits in the room all day holding Ben’s things. Everybody thinks she’s unhappy because Father sold his business and we’re living in the camp. But it’s really because she misses Ben.” She took Tomi’s hand. “Come on. We have to hurry. Remember, the Boy Scouts are going to come to our class today.”

Tomi tried to think about the visitors to the school
then, but her mind kept slipping back to Ruth’s mother. Tomi’s father had gone away, and she missed him more than anything in the world. But she knew he would come back one day. Poor Mrs. Hayashi. Ben would never return.

1943 | CHAPTER EIGHT

MAKING FRIENDS
with the
ENEMY

THE
Boy Scouts from Ellis arrived just after class started. Their scoutmaster had visited the Tallgrass school the week before to make the arrangements for the scouts to attend class and eat lunch. His wife, Mrs. Glessner, was Tomi’s teacher, which was why the scouts were visiting Tomi’s class. She’d heard Mr. Glessner tell his wife that maybe if the children got to know each other, they’d realize they weren’t that different. He’d said they would develop a tolerance the adults didn’t have. Tomi asked Roy what “tolerance” meant, and he told her it meant respect and understanding. That made Tomi think about Mrs. Malkin, her Girl Scout leader at home. Mrs. Malkin didn’t have tolerance.

The Boy Scouts marched into the room that morning
and lined up against the wall. They were older than Tomi. Some wore their scout shirts. Others were dressed in regular clothes, and Tomi wondered if maybe they couldn’t afford to buy uniforms. She hadn’t thought about the Caucasians in Ellis being poor. Some of them might be as poor as the people in the camp.

Tomi and the other students stood politely as their guests entered the room, and several of the Japanese boys offered their seats on the benches to the visitors. But the scouts seemed embarrassed and stayed where they were, a few putting a foot against the wall to steady themselves.

“I think there is room on the benches for everyone if you crowd together,” Mrs. Glessner said. The students sat back down and pushed to the middle of the benches, while the scouts found seats at the end. The two groups took quick glances at each other.

“Today, our history lesson is about the war in Europe,” Mrs. Glessner said. “Who can tell me why we declared war on Germany?”

“Because the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, and we don’t like them. They’re our enemy,” a Boy Scout muttered. Another scout snickered.

Tomi felt the hair on her neck rise. The remark didn’t
have anything to do with tolerance. Mr. Glessner was standing in the front of the room and said, “Dennis—”

But Mrs. Glessner interrupted. “That’s not right. We declared war on the Japanese because they bombed Pearl Harbor, which is part of the United States, and the Germans are allies of the Japanese. ‘Allies’ means partners or friends. But that’s not the only reason we went to war with Germany.” She turned to Dennis. “And in this classroom, we use the word ‘Japanese.’ Calling someone a ‘Jap’ is as offensive as calling you a ‘Kraut’ because your father came from Germany.”

“Hey, I’m an American,” Dennis said.

“So are these students. We’re all Americans here. Now, who can answer the question?” When no one answered, Mrs. Glessner looked around the room. “Tomi, can you tell us why we Americans declared war on Germany?” She emphasized the word “we.”

Tomi felt her face turn red, and she looked down at the table. Why did Mrs. Glessner have to call on her? She wasn’t the smartest one in the class. And she didn’t like people looking at her. Maybe it was because she had written a story in class once about being an American. She glanced at Dennis to make sure he was listening, then said,
“
We Americans
went to war against Germany because Germany invaded other countries.
We Americans
are defending our friends.”

“Very good,” Mrs. Glessner said, then asked another question, but Tomi wasn’t listening. Instead, she was watching Dennis, who had dropped his head until it almost reached the table.

Later, as she left the classroom to go to the dining hall for lunch, Tomi overheard Mrs. Glessner tell her husband, “I suppose I shouldn’t have talked about the war. Maybe that was too much for the kids.”

Mr. Glessner said, “Perhaps it was a good thing to get it all out in the open. After all, the camp is starting to issue daily passes so the Japanese kids can go into town. If the town kids can learn the children in the camp are just people, not enemies, they won’t take them on. If we can stop just one bully, then it’s worth it.”

The evacuees were supposed to eat at the dining hall closest to their barracks, but there was a good deal of trying out the different mess halls to find which served the
best food. The word would get out that a chef at another mess hall served Japanese food or had fish or fresh vegetables, and people would try the meals there. Although the cooks could do just so much with the food that was sent to the camp, they still competed with each other to see who could draw the biggest crowds.

Because the students didn’t have much time for lunch, however, they usually ate at the dining hall closest to the school. The food there wasn’t very good. That day there was a main dish of canned vegetables, bread, and rice with canned peaches poured over it.

Tomi was used to the food and didn’t pay attention to it. She and Ruth found places at a table and sat down with their plates. As she picked up her fork, Tomi spotted that boy Dennis glancing around the dining hall. She nudged Ruth and asked if they should invite him to sit with them.

“He’s looking for a place with white people. He wouldn’t want to sit with us,” Ruth said.

But Tomi caught Dennis’s eye and waved and pointed to the seat next to her.

Dennis looked uncertain, but there were few other vacant places, so he put his plate on the table and sat down beside Tomi.

“You don’t like us very much,” she said.

Dennis shrugged. “You’re Japs—
Japanese
,” he corrected himself. “My dad thinks you ought to be shipped back to Japan.”

“I’ve never been to Japan. Have you, Ruth?” Ruth shook her head. “I can’t even speak Japanese,” Tomi added. Then she asked slyly, “Can you speak German?”

“Sure. That’s what we speak at home …” Dennis’s voice trailed off, and he looked at Tomi as if she’d pulled a fast one.

“Do you think you should go back to Germany? After all, America’s fighting the Germans.”

“No way,” he said. “I’m a one-hundred-percent American.”

“Me too.”

“But you don’t look like one.”

“What do Americans look like?” Tomi asked.

“Like …” Dennis made a helpless gesture. “Like me, I guess.”

“Like Germans?”

“Well, we didn’t get rounded up and sent to a camp.”

“So we did because we don’t look like you?”

Dennis shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re confusing me.”

Tomi nodded. “I think everything about this camp is confusing.”

Dennis looked down at the food on his plate. “The lunch doesn’t look very good.”

“It isn’t,” Ruth told him.

Dennis took a bit of the rice and made a face. “Who would put canned peaches on rice?”

“Somebody who doesn’t have to eat it,” Tomi told him.

Dennis laughed for the first time. Then he looked around the room at the people crowded about the tables. “This isn’t much of a place. My dad read in the newspaper that you were eating steak and apple pie every day. The paper said you were living high on the hog and we were paying for it. It said the American government gave you all the sugar you wanted, while we don’t get it because we’re rationed. My mom can’t even make jam, because the government lets her buy only a little bit of sugar.”

Tomi laughed. “Look around. How much sugar do you see?”

“We haven’t had dessert yet.”

“That’s what the rice and canned peaches are supposed to be.”

Dennis made a face. “Okay, so you don’t eat so good,
but what about your houses?”

“Barracks, you mean,” Ruth said.

“Yeah. I guess you’ve got silk sheets and big carpets and radios.”

“We don’t even have linoleum floors, just wood,” Tomi told him. “And they wouldn’t let us bring radios with us. Or cameras. I guess somebody’s afraid we’ll take pictures of Ellis and send them to the Japanese government.”

Dennis frowned. “Why would they care about Ellis? They’re not dumb enough to bomb Ellis, are they?” Then he realized Tomi was teasing him, and he laughed again. In a minute, Ruth and Tomi joined him. After he stopped, Dennis said, “Hey, you’re all right.”