We Are Not Free: Chapters 10–12

Tonight, they fed us canned peaches at dinner, which was a treat, but Stan thinks they’re just trying to make up for the hubbub on Monday, when the head of the War Relocation Authority was here.

Mary, Stan, Tommy, and I walk four abreast, our breaths puffing in the chill air, while Aiko traipses ahead, belting out the words to “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”

For a second, I think they’re going to leave me; I think they would be right to leave me, but then they take me by the hands, and they drag me after them into the firebreak, away, away, with the sounds of clubs on bodies, the muffled, fleshy impacts, fading quickly into the dark.

Inside, the eggs were cracked, the mottled shells laced with fractures.

I admire her for her bravery, and for her ferocity. Mary is the kind of person who acts, heedless of danger.

People shriek and scatter as noxious white smoke hisses from the canister.

RESIDENTS ARE CONFINED TO THEIR BARRACKS. ONLY ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL ARE TO REPORT TO WORK. SCHOOL IS CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. ALL OUTDOOR GATHERINGS ARE PROHIBITED.

Stan writes that he is in the stockade, the 250-by-350-square-foot area beyond the motor pool at the southwestern edge of camp.

Sporadic lights shine through the windows as Mother, Kimi, and I pull on our coats and boots.

“They say he’s one of the instigators of the incident at the director’s house, but—”

I love her laugh. It’s loud and brash, and I don’t get to hear it often—I don’t think anybody does—but now it fills the barrack, following me as I bow again and step out into the night.

“Some of the guys jumped me. They wanted everyone to have the same haircut. Solidarity in baldness, I guess.”

“If I say I will do something, then I do it. Acting in a forthright and honest manner is the only way to retain one’s dignity.”

I think about the men being arrested and the men being released; the bullpen and the interrogations; and the letters we receive or the letters we don’t. I think about the unpredictability of it, the dreadful whimsy, as if our lives are no longer governed by sense or patterns, and so we cannot rely on anything, not on food, or warmth, or security, or freedom.

...needs to subjugate others so I can feel better about myself.

Who can fathom the perverse inner thoughts of a guy like Swinson?

Who can fathom the perverse inner thoughts of a guy like Swinson?

I sat with Minnow at the kitchen table, doing math problems long into the night while the rest of the house dreamed—nothing but the scratching of the pencil and the dogged certainty of algebra.

Steadfast, reliable. That’s the kind of guy you taught me to be.

The memory: you, coming home with dirt in the lines of your palms. You, and the smell of loam. I think of the times you brought Shig and me to work with you, of us pulling weeds from the hedges.

I was Mas Ito, and every time they needed someone for kitchen patrol, for latrine duty, for any of the unsavory jobs they give to army grunts, it was me.

But this will be the first time the entire 442nd Regimental Combat Team (three infantry battalions, the field artillery battalion, all our supporting companies) will be fighting together.

But this will be the first time the entire 442nd Regimental Combat Team (three infantry battalions, the field artillery battalion, all our supporting companies) will be fighting together.

I know you were cremated, but how could an urn really hold you, I mean, all of you? Your dreams, your loyalties, the future you should have had with us? Or were you somewhere else, somewhere like an ocean current, or a wind, unseen, billowing in the fabric of an American flag?

I had to watch them parade across the screen in their fake eyelids, butchering both of my languages every time they opened their mouths. The sounds in the theater: the actors’ tongues heavy as axes, the rapt silence of the audience absorbing every hateful scene...

Without even thinking about it, I stepped aside, Leonard stepped aside, and I wondered at how we’d been trained to do this, to recede, to shrink, so that Caucasians can have more space.

Lucky boy, his furlough came through. He’s going back to Utah.

I told him to write to the WRA field office in Chicago to set himself up, but he says he’s going to stay in one of the hostels they have for Japanese-Americans and get the lay of the land for a while.

We’re going to clean the equipment, send out for new uniforms, crate the guns, the jeeps, the mortars.

The refreshments arranged around the wedding cake like acolytes.

In the commotion, Twitchy parades to the back of the room where you’re standing with Yum-yum and presents you a flower with a flourish and a bow.

It’s a bruised white carnation, its petals creased, its blossom swinging precariously from a broken stem.

Jimmy Dorsey croons “Bésame Mucho” from the speakers, and you wonder if, whenever you all hear it again, wherever you are, when Twitchy’s in some little French hamlet or Shig pops open his suitcases in a dank Chicago hostel, you’ll still be bound together.

You dance under the bare bulb, hips swaying, limbs like liquid. You feel undulant. You feel powerful.

You are together, and this moment is fleeting, and this moment is endless.