Authors: Earlene Fowler
“We can do this another time, if you like,” I said.
She waved my hand away. “No, I’d like to finish. The meeting can start without me.” She was silent for a moment, as if she’d lost her place in her memories.
“What happened the day after Pearl Harbor?” I prompted.
“My parents were Issei. Do you know what that means?”
“They were born in Japan.”
“Right. But my older brother, Kazuo, and I were Nisei—American-bom—so therefore citizens. We were lucky. My father was a very shrewd businessman. He’d put all his bank accounts in our names. Two days after Pearl Harbor, they froze all the bank accounts of the Issei. Many farmers couldn’t pay their workers and so their crops went unharvested. They couldn’t even draw out money to buy food.”
“Your father must have been a very smart man.”
She tilted her head; her dark eyes held a hint of anger. “Too smart, maybe.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He was very active in the Japanese community. Many times when I was a girl we had delegations from Japan stay with us to learn from my father how he ran his store, Yamaoka’s Groceries. My father, Yoshimi Yamaoka was very important in San Celina County. He knew all the big farmers in the area and he would take these men from Japan out to the farms to see how they worked. The men used to bring me beautiful dolls in glass cases dressed in hand-stitched kimonos made of real silk in the most amazing yellows and reds and blues.”
“He must have been very respected in the community.”
“He was,” she said softly. “They arrested him the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed.”
“Who did?”
She stood up and straightened her nubby skirt, signaling that the interview was coming to a close. “An old friend of my father’s, the county sheriff, came with three deputies. They all had guns. By order of the FBI, my father was arrested by men he’d eaten breakfast with.” She looked at her hands. “Because of his involvement in the community and because of his contacts in Japan, he was considered a so-called risk to national security. They took him to North Dakota to a camp. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. We didn’t know where they’d taken him until the end of the war. A couple of months later, in February, my mother and I were sent to an assembly camp at a racetrack in Southern California. Then later to a camp in Poston, Arizona. When we boarded the bus, there were soldiers standing guard with rifles. In Japanese, I kept asking my mother what did we do, why were we being sent to jail. She just cried, jerked my shoulder and told me to speak English.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “Some people were good to the Japanese and we were especially fortunate. My mother sold our store to a Caucasian friend. After the war, he sold it back to us for the same price he paid. Not everyone was that lucky, though. Many, especially those who leased their land or their stores, lost everything.” She smiled at me. “Now, I really must go before I am drawn and quartered by my department head.”
I turned off the tape recorder and put it back into my purse. “Thank you for your time. When I write this up, I’ll drop it by for your approval. If there’s anything else you’d like to add, we can do it then. Also, if you wouldn’t mind, are there any pictures of your family that you’d consider letting us use in the book?”
“I’ll look through my mother’s albums,” she said, locking the door behind us.
As she started to walk away, I thought of something. “Do you think any of the other members of your family would talk to me? I mean, if any of them are still living around here.”
“My mother might. She’s lived with me since my father died ten years ago. And my brother ...” She paused and swallowed hard. “My brother was ten years older than me. He came with us to the camp and later that year the Army came and asked for volunteers. He became a part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Most people don’t know this, but they were the most honored combat unit in the war. He was killed in Italy in 1944.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“My father was never the same,” she said quietly. “When the war was over and we reclaimed our store, he worked just as hard, but it wasn’t the same. For a Japanese man to lose his only son ...” Her face drew in with sadness. “My father loved me very much, but I wasn’t a son. You understand?”
I nodded, thinking maybe I did, a little. Though the Ramsey name was carried on through my father’s nephews, his line stopped with me. Even if Jack and I would have had a son, he wouldn’t have been a Ramsey. I often wondered if that bothered my father. “Can I ask you one last thing?”
“Certainly.”
“The person who bought your store and then sold it back to you. I’d like to interview him or his relatives. It would make a nice sidebar to your story. Would you mind telling me his name?”
She shook her head slightly, a quizzical look on her face. “I guess there’s no reason why you would know.”
“Know what?”
“Mr. O’Hara. Brady O’Hara, poor old soul. He was the man who saved my family’s store.”
9
ON THE WAY back to my truck, Mariko Thompson’s words rang through my mind in a jumbled cacophony. I’d done some reading on what had happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II, but this was the first time I’d heard a personal story. I tried to imagine the confusion Mariko must have felt as a little girl, the fear of her parents, the unspoken anger at a country so willing to use the youth and patriotism of their son while at the same time tearing their family apart: And all simply because of the color of their skin, the shape of their eyes. Why weren’t we taught this in school? Even my American History classes in college seemed to have skipped over the story of the Japanese-Americans. Then there was the revelation about Mr. O’Hara. To say I was surprised at his kindness and generosity would be an understatement. It certainly didn’t fit the cranky old man I’d encountered at Oak Terrace. But then again, people weren’t always what they seemed. I’d lived long enough to know that.
As I walked past the Snak Shak, the toasty scent of corn dogs and fried tacos ruffled my taste buds. According to Daffy’s brazen little fingers, it was a little past one o’clock. Guilt about the way I didn’t answer the phone when Gabe tried to call back last night started to prick at my conscience. Mahi’s Fish Taco, one of his favorite restaurants, was on the way back to town, so I decided a conciliatory lunch was the mature, grownup thing to do. Someone had to be adult in this relationship, I told myself, deliberately ignoring the memory of my juvenile refusal to answer the phone last night.
Old Woody station wagons, topless Jeeps and rust-eaten Toyota Land Cruisers equipped with an imaginative array of homemade surfboard carriers crowded the parking lot of the bright aqua and white wood-frame building. Mahi’s was a popular eatery with most of the Central Coast’s surfers, body builders and health food fanatics. As always, I looked a bit out of place in my jeans and boots among the baggy jams, salt-crusted topsiders and Pirate Surf tee shirts of the regular customers, but this was Gabe’s favorite food, and I knew he wouldn’t turn it down no matter how mad he was at me.
A blond guy wearing a crew cut and a lime-green “Surf the World” tee shirt packed two orders of char-broiled fish tacos, Peruvian rice and spicy black beans to go while I talked with the owner, Joe Miyamoto. Part Hispanic and part Japanese, he was a short, thick-chested man with a laugh you felt down to your heels. Every time we ate here, he had another half-breed joke for Gabe, each one more outrageous than the last.
“Chief Big Shot too busy to leave the office, huh?” He threw in extra containers of their extra-hot jalapeno chile salsa.
“You know how it is. Crime never sleeps.”
“Well, tell him I caught that wahoo just for him ’cause I knew it was his favorite.” Joe spent half his time on his family’s fishing boat catching the
pescado de hoy
listed on the blackboard every morning.
“Joe, you know as well as I do that he doesn’t let
anyone
slide on their parking tickets.”
He laughed. “Hey, it doesn’t hurt to butter up the law when you can. Why do you think I keep this around?” He handed me a can of Welch’s Grape soda. “What does he see in that stuff?”
“Beats me,” I said, handing him my money. “I think it’s all those electrical storms they have in the Midwest. Short-circuited his brain.”
I couldn’t decide if my luck was good or bad when I drove into the police department’s parking lot and his Corvette was in its space. I looked at his personalized license plate—68 VET. It had a triple meaning—the year of the car, the year he graduated high school midterm, the year he went to Vietnam. Layers of meaning. Seemingly straightforward on top, more complex as you delved into it. A lot like its owner.
“What are you doing up here?” I asked Miguel, another of Elvia’s six younger brothers. He sat behind the front counter filling an old gray stapler. Gabe had recently instituted a new policy under which none of the patrol officers worked the front desk unless they were injured. A waste of good training, he’d said.
Miguel slammed the stapler shut and shoved it aside. “Hurt my knee last week trying to handcuff some stupid-ass drunk college twerp. I’ll be back out in a few days.”
“Head honcho around?” I asked.
His broad chest inflated and he let out a sharp breath, narrowing his dark-chocolate eyes at me. “Oh, he’s around all right. What I want to know is what you did to him and whatever it is, cut it out before the whole force goes on strike.”
“Bad mood, huh?”
“The worst.” He buzzed the swinging door to unlock it and let me into the office area. “Do something, Benni. Before there’s a mutiny.”
“You know, I am not the only thing in his life that could cause a bad mood.”
Miguel gave a mocking snort. “I have a girlfriend. Nothin’ messes with our minds like you women.”
“Turn blue,” I said cheerfully, reverting to one of our childhood insults.
“I mean it,” he called after me. “They’re cutting the plank out in Maintenance right now.”
It took me a few minutes to dig up the nerve to knock on the heavy wood door bearing the brass nameplate AARON DAVIDSON, CHIEF OF POLICE. Another reminder of the tenuousness of my relationship with Gabe. Would they offer him a permanent job now that it was practically certain Aaron would resign? Would he take it? Did I really want him to?
When silence answered my second knock, I opened the door. The room was cool and empty and so quiet the sound of the city’s maintenance yard filtered through the large picture window on the north wall. I walked across the plush brown carpet and set the two white lunch sacks on the corner of his desk. The papers spread across the polished oak executive desk told me he’d only stepped away for a moment; otherwise they’d be neatly filed away. Studying someone’s workspace when they aren’t around reveals a lot about a person, though this office didn’t tell me anything about Gabe I didn’t already know—organized, quiet, calm, but with an electric undercurrent of activity, of things getting done quickly, properly. It still looked as if he were visiting though, something that vaguely troubled me. The decor in this room had become familiar to me in the last few months: the surrealistic cactus painting behind his desk, the brass Star of David paperweight, the picture of Aaron’s wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Esther, on the oak credenza behind the tall black leather executive chair. But nothing said “Gabriel Ortiz,” even though he’d worked here almost six months. After a minute or so of honest resistance to temptation, I riffled through the papers on his desk, my heart a pulsating drumbeat in my ears. Most of them were scientific jargon that didn’t mean squat to me, but one page was as clear as a mama cow’s bawl on branding day. It was a faxed copy of a Delta County, Colorado, Sheriffs criminal record on Clayton O’Hara. He’d been arrested three times in 1988 for DUI, twice in 1990 for simple assault, and twice in 1992, both times for aggravated assault, battery and resisting arrest. In each case the charges were dropped or reduced with sentence suspended. It didn’t take a dummy to see he’d apparently never learned to control that temper of his and that someone, probably his father, had quite a bit of influence in Delta County.
I carefully slipped the fax back where I found it and was standing by the window observing the workers in the maintenance yard when the door opened.
We contemplated each other warily for a moment, neither of us knowing exactly what to say. I broke the silence.
“I brought you lunch.”
“So I see.” He sat down in his chair, his face blank, his eyes steely and unwavering and lobbed the ball back into my court.
I walked over and stood next to his desk. “Look, I’m sorry I hung up on you last night. That was rude.”
“Yes, it was.”
“But I don’t like you calling my grandmother when you don’t like something I do.”
“I wouldn’t if you’d listen to me and stay out of this investigation.” He leaned back in his chair, a critical, cool look on his face. “I’m only thinking of your safety.”
I crossed my arms and stared back. In my opinion, my safety wasn’t the only topic of debate here. Anger flickered between us like static electricity, but this time I wasn’t going to be the one to give in.
“Look,” he finally said. “I’m having a real bad day and I’d rather not get into this now. Why don’t we just deal with it later?”
“We’re going to have to deal with it someday,” I pointed out. “One way or another.”
“I’m starved,” he said, opening one of the bags. The smoky aroma of broiled fish and warm corn tortillas filled the room. “This looks great.” He opened the other bag, pulled out the sweating can of grape soda, and grinned.
“I don’t see how you can stand that stuff,” I said, annoyed but secretly relieved. Deep down, I wanted to avoid the conflict as much as he did.
“Well, it’s not as good as Nehi, but it’ll do.” He stripped off his navy suit coat, loosened his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt.
We talked about inconsequential things as we ate—how he was going to fix the clutch on my truck, my interviews for the Historical Society, our plans to visit Aaron and Rachel the day after tomorrow.