The Japanese Lover(32)

Ichimei’s passion for gardening, inculcated by his father, became even more intense at Topaz. From the outset, many of the evacuees who had earned a living in agriculture before the war set themselves to grow vegetables, undeterred by the desolate landscape and harsh climate. They watered by hand, counting each drop, and in summer protected the plants with paper tents, and with bonfires in the depths of winter. Thanks to their care, they managed to get the grudging desert to produce vegetables and fruit. There was never any lack of food in the canteens—the evacuees could fill their plates and come back for more—but without the determination of the gardeners they would have had only canned food to eat. Nothing healthy grows in a tin, they used to say. Ichimei attended the school classes and spent the rest of the time in the vegetable plots. He was soon known by the nickname “Green Fingers,” because everything he touched germinated and grew. At night, after lining up twice for food, once for his father and a second time for himself, he would carefully bind the storybooks and school texts sent by distant teachers for the little nisei. He was a polite, thoughtful boy, who could spend hours in one spot, staring at the purple mountains against the clear blue sky, lost in his own thoughts and emotions. It was said of him that he had a monk’s vocation, and that in Japan he would have been a novice in a Zen monastery. Although the Oomoto faith discouraged proselytizing, Takao surreptitiously preached his religion to Heideko and his children, but Ichimei was the only one who practiced it with fervor, because it fit in with his character and with the concept of life that he had had since childhood. He followed Oomoto with his father and an issei couple from another hut. There were Buddhist and several Christian services in the camp, but they were the only ones devoted to Oomoto. Heideko accompanied them occasionally, but without any great conviction; Charles and James had never been interested in their father’s beliefs, while Megumi, to Takao’s horror and Heideko’s astonishment, converted to Christianity. She put this down to a premonitory dream she had in which Jesus appeared to her.

“How do you know it was Jesus?” a furious Takao demanded to know.

“Who else goes around wearing a crown of thorns?” she replied. She had to go to religion classes given by the Presbyterian pastor, followed by a short private confirmation ceremony attended only by Ichimei, out of curiosity, and Boyd, profoundly moved by this proof of her love. Naturally the pastor surmised that her conversion owed more to the guard than to Christianity, but he did not object. He gave them his blessing, wondering in which corner of the universe this couple would be able to find shelter.





ARIZONA


In December 1944, a few days before the Supreme Court unanimously declared that no American citizens, whatever their cultural background, could be detained without reason, the Topaz military commander, escorted by two soldiers, handed Heideko Fukuda a flag folded into a triangle and pinned a purple ribbon with a medal on Takao’s chest, while the funereal lament from a trumpet tightened the throats of the hundreds of people gathered around the family to honor Charles Fukuda, who had died in combat. Heideko, Megumi, and Ichimei wept, but Takao’s expression was indecipherable. Over the years spent in the concentration camp his face had stiffened into an impassive, proud mask, but his hunched-over bearing and stubborn silence bore witness to the broken man he had become. At fifty-two, nothing was left of his capacity for pleasure at the sight of a plant growing, of his gentle sense of humor, his enthusiasm to create a future for his children, the soft tenderness he had once shared with Heideko. The heroic sacrifice made by Charles, the eldest son who was meant to support the family when he no longer could, was the final blow. Charles had perished in Italy, like hundreds of other Japanese-Americans in the 442nd Infantry Regiment, which became known as the Purple Heart Battalion due to the extraordinary number of medals for valor it had been awarded. That regiment, made up entirely of nisei, was the most decorated in US military history, but this would never be any kind of consolation for the Fukudas.

After Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945, the process of closing the concentration camps began. The Fukuda family received twenty-five dollars and train tickets to a city in central Arizona. As with all the other evacuees, they would never publicly refer to those years of humiliation when their loyalty and patriotism had been called into question; life without honor was worth little. Shikata ga nai. They were not allowed to return to San Francisco, where they had nothing to go back to anyway. Takao had lost the right to rent the plots he used to cultivate, as well as his house; there was nothing left of his savings or of the money Isaac Belasco had given him when they were evacuated. He had a constant wheezing in his chest, coughed incessantly, and was wracked with back pains. He felt incapable of resuming work in the fields, the only job available to someone in his condition. To judge by his chilly attitude, his family’s precarious position mattered little to him; sadness had frozen into indifference. Although the issei could finally acquire citizenship, not even that could lift Takao out of his despair. For thirty years he had wanted to have the same rights as an American, and now that he had the chance, all he wanted to do was to return to Japan, his vanquished homeland. When Heideko tried to get him to accompany her to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, she ended up going on her own, because her husband’s only reply was to curse the United States.

Yet again, Megumi was forced to postpone her decision to study medicine and her desire to get married, but Boyd, who was transferred to Los Angeles, did not forget her for a moment. The laws prohibiting marriage and cohabitation between races had been abolished in most states, but a relationship like theirs was still considered scandalous; neither of them would have dared tell their parents they had been together for more than three years. For Takao Fukuda it would have been a catastrophe; he would never have accepted that his daughter was with a white, especially not one who had patrolled the barbed-wire fences of his Utah prison. He would be forced to repudiate her and thus lose her as well. He had already lost Charles in the war and seen James deported to Japan, from where he did not expect any more news of him. Boyd Anderson’s parents had earned their living with a dairy farm until they were ruined in the thirties and ended up managing a cemetery. They were scrupulously honest, very religious, and tolerant over racial matters, but their son was not going to mention Megumi to them until she had accepted a wedding ring.