The Japanese Lover(22)

Isaac’s lack of interest in social life and the majority of his family affairs, which he delegated entirely to Lillian, was compensated for by an unbridled passion for botany. He neither smoked nor drank, and did not succumb to any known vices or irresistible temptations; he was wholly unable to appreciate either fine music or fine cuisine, and if Lillian had allowed it, he would have dined on the same coarse bread and poor man’s soup eaten by the unemployed, standing up in the kitchen. A man like him was immune to corruption and vanity. Instead, he showed great intellectual curiosity, a passion for defending his clients with artful legal subterfuges, and a secret weakness for helping the needy. But none of these pleasures could compare to that of gardening. A third of his library was dedicated to botany. His ceremonious friendship with Takao, based on a mutual admiration and respect for nature, became fundamental to his peace of mind, an essential balm for his frustrations with the law. In his garden, Isaac became the humble apprentice of his Japanese master, who revealed secrets of the vegetable kingdom to him that his botanical treatises so often failed to clarify. Lillian adored her husband and looked after him with a young lover’s care, but she never desired him so much as when she caught sight of him from her balcony, working side by side with the gardener. In his overalls, boots, and straw hat, sweating under the glare of the sun or soaked by fine rain, Isaac was rejuvenated, and in Lillian’s eyes once more became the passionate lover who had seduced her at the age of nineteen, or the newlywed who possessed her on the stairs, before they could get as far as their bed.

Two years after Alma came to live at Sea Cliff, Isaac Belasco and Takao Fukuda formed a partnership to set up a nursery for flowers and decorative plants. Their dream was to make it the best in California. The first step was to purchase some parcels of land in Isaac’s name, as a way of getting around the 1913 law that prohibited issei from becoming American citizens, owning land, or buying property. For Fukuda this was a unique opportunity; for Belasco it was a wise investment similar to others he had made at the height of the Depression. He had never been interested in the vagaries of the stock exchange, always preferring to invest in creating jobs. The two men became partners on the understanding that when Charles, Takao’s eldest son, came of age, the Fukudas could buy out Isaac’s share at the then prevailing prices, the nursery would be put into Charles’s name, and their partnership would be dissolved. Because he was born in the United States, Charles was an American citizen. All this was a gentleman’s agreement, sealed with a simple handshake.

The Belascos’ garden remained deaf to the defamatory propaganda campaign against the Japanese, who were accused of unfair competition against American farmers and fishermen, threatening white women’s virtue with their insatiable lust, and corrupting American society by their Oriental, anti-Christian ways. Alma only found out about these slurs two years after she had arrived in San Francisco, when from one day to the next the Fukuda family became the “yellow peril.” By that time she and Ichimei were inseparable friends.



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Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 severely damaged twenty-one ships of the US fleet, leaving a tally of twenty-three hundred dead and more than a thousand wounded, and in less than twenty-four hours completely changed the Americans’ isolationist mentality. President Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and a few days later Hitler and Mussolini, Japan’s allies, declared war on the United States. The entire country was mobilized to fight the war that had been soaking Europe in blood for the past eighteen months. The reaction of widespread terror provoked by Japan’s attack was whipped up by a hysterical media campaign that warned of an imminent invasion on the Pacific Coast by the “yellows.” Hatred toward East Asians, which had already existed for a century, was exacerbated. Japanese who had lived in the country for years, as well as their children and grandchildren, suddenly became suspected of spying and collaborating with the enemy. The roundups and arrests began soon afterward. It was enough for a boat to have a shortwave radio—the only way for fishermen to communicate with the land—for the owner to be taken in. The dynamite used by small farmers to remove trunks and rocks from their crop fields was seen as proof of terrorism. Shotguns, and even kitchen knives and other tools, were impounded; so too were binoculars, cameras, small religious statues, ceremonial kimonos, and documents in another tongue. Two months later, Roosevelt signed the order to evacuate for reasons of military security all persons of Japanese origin from the Pacific coast states—California, Oregon, and Washington, where the “yellow” troops might carry out the feared invasion. Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah were also declared military zones. The US Army was given three weeks to build the necessary shelters.

In March of 1942, San Francisco awoke plastered with warnings that announced the evacuation of the Japanese population. Takao and Heideko did not understand them, but their son Charles explained. First of all, the Japanese could not go outside a radius of five miles from their homes without a special permit and had to obey a nighttime curfew from eight p.m. to six a.m. The authorities began to raid houses and confiscate possessions; they arrested influential men who might incite treason, community leaders, company directors, teachers, pastors, and took them away to undisclosed destinations; their terrified wives and children were left behind. The Japanese had to quickly sell off whatever they owned at knockdown prices, and to close their businesses. They soon discovered that their bank accounts had been frozen; they were ruined. The plant nursery Takao Fukuda and Isaac Belasco had planned together never saw the light of day.