The Japanese Lover(25)

At an altitude of more than four thousand feet, Topaz was a ghastly makeshift city of identical low buildings like a military base. It was ringed by barbed wire, tall watchtowers, and armed soldiers, and was set in an arid, godforsaken landscape that was lashed by the wind and whirling dust storms. The other -Japanese concentration camps in the West were similar, and placed in -desert areas to discourage any attempt at escape. There was not a single tree or bush to be seen, nothing green in any direction, only rows of gloomy huts stretching to the horizon. Families huddled together, holding hands to avoid getting lost in the confusion. They all needed to use the latrines but had no idea where they were. It took the guards several hours to organize the new arrivals, because they did not understand the instructions either, but they finally assigned all the accommodations.

The Fukuda family defied the dust clouding the air and making it hard to breathe, and found their allotted lodging. Each hut was divided into six units measuring roughly twelve by twenty feet per family, separated by thin partitions of tar paper. There were twelve huts per block, forty-two blocks in total; each of them had a canteen, laundry, showers, and latrines. The camp occupied a vast area, but the eight thousand evacuees had to live in little more than seven thousand square feet. The detainees were soon to discover that the temperature varied between an infernal heat in the summer and several degrees below zero in the winter. In the summer months, as well as the terrible heat, they had to endure the constant onslaught of mosquitoes and dust storms that darkened the sky and scorched their lungs. The wind blew all year round, bringing with it the stench of the sewage that formed a swamp a half mile from the camp.



* * *



Just as they had done at the Tanforan racetrack, the Japanese organized quickly at Topaz. Within a few weeks there were schools, nurseries, sports areas, and a newspaper. They created art from bits of wood, stones, and other material left over from the construction of the camp. They made jewelry from fossilized shells and peach stones, stuffed dolls with rags, and toys with sticks. They started a library with donated books, as well as theater companies and music groups. Ichimei convinced his father that they could grow vegetables in boxes despite the harsh climate and alkaline soil. This encouraged Takao, and soon others were copying him. Several issei decided to start a decorative garden. They dug a hole, filled it with water, and so made a pond that was the delight of the children. With his magic fingers, Ichimei built a wooden yacht that he sailed across the pond; less than four days later there were races of dozens of these small boats. The kitchens in each block were run by the detainees, who performed marvels with dry and canned goods that were brought in from the nearest towns. The following year they would also use the vegetables they managed to harvest, watering them by the spoonful. As Heideko had foreseen, the unusual amounts of fat and sugar they consumed soon led to problems. The lines for the latrines stretched for several blocks; the need was so desperate and anguished that no one waited for darkness to compensate for the lack of privacy. The latrines became blocked with the diarrhea of thousands of patients, and the rudimentary hospital staffed by white personnel and Japanese doctors and nurses could not cope.

Once the pieces of wood for making furniture had run out, and tasks had been assigned to all those who felt impatience gnawing at their entrails, most of the evacuees succumbed to boredom. Days seemed endless in this nightmare city supervised by disinterested guards in their nearby towers and in the distance by the magnificent mountains of Utah. Every day was the same, nothing to do, lines and more lines, waiting for the mail, passing the idle hours playing cards, inventing pointless jobs, repeating the exact same conversations that gradually lost all meaning as the words became threadbare. Ancestral traditions began to disappear, parents and grandparents saw their authority diminish, couples were trapped in a proximity without intimacy, families began to disintegrate. They could not even sit down together for meals, but were forced to eat in the din of the communal mess halls. However much Takao insisted the Fukuda family sit together, his boys preferred to go with others of the same age, and it was hard to restrain Megumi, who had turned into a real beauty, with pink cheeks and flashing eyes. The only ones free from the torments of despair were the little children, who roamed the camp in packs, getting up to mischief and imagining adventures, and saw all this as one long vacation.

Winter arrived early. When the snow began to fall, each family was given a coal-burning stove, which soon became the center of social life, and discarded military clothing was distributed. These faded green uniforms were too large, and were as depressing as the frozen countryside and black huts. The women began to make paper flowers for their dwellings. At night there was no way to prevent the wind, which brought slivers of ice with it, from whistling through the cracks in the huts and lifting the roofs. Like everyone else, the Fukuda family slept in all their clothes, wrapped in the pair of blankets they had been given, curled up together on the camp beds to lend each other warmth and comfort. Months later, when summer came, they would sleep almost naked and wake up covered in a layer of ash-colored sand as fine as talcum powder. Despite all this, they considered themselves fortunate, because they were together. Other families had been split up; first the men had been taken off to what were known as relocation camps, then the women and children sent to another one. In some cases it was two or three years before they were reunited.

The correspondence between Alma and Ichimei suffered right from the start. The letters took weeks to arrive, although the postal service was not to blame so much as the slowness of the Topaz officials, overwhelmed by having to read the hundreds of letters that piled up on their desks every day. Alma’s letters, which in no way put the safety of the United States in danger, were allowed through without a problem, but Ichimei’s were so mutilated by the censorship that she had to guess at the meaning of his sentences between the lines of black ink. His descriptions of barracks, food, latrines, the guards’ behavior, even comments about the weather, were all regarded as suspicious. Advised by others more practiced in the art of deception, Ichimei sprinkled his letters with praise for the Americans and patriotic outbursts until he felt so nauseous he had to stop. Instead he decided to draw. It had been more than usually difficult for him to learn to read and write, and at ten he was still not sure of all the alphabet, which he mixed up without proper regard for spelling, but he had always had a good eye and a steady hand for drawing. His illustrations passed through censorship without a hitch, and so Alma was able to learn about the details of his life at Topaz as if she were looking at photographs.