Silver Like Dust (29 page)

Authors: Kimi Cunningham Grant

“Ever since you started asking me about all of this, the war, Heart Mountain,” Obaachan says, folding her napkin and placing it on the table, “I’ve been trying to think about why this happened to me. I could have died from spinal meningitis when I was eight. Another time, when Papa took me with him to buy
sashimi
, I was almost hit by a car. Two times in my childhood, I came very close to dying. But I didn’t. So now I’m asking myself
why
. Why did I live?”

She forms this question carefully, frowning at the way the words feel on her lips, as though the idea has not occurred to her until recently. I ask her if she has come up with an answer, and she frowns, shrugs just a little. “I think maybe I survived because I was supposed to raise my four children, you know, be a good mother,” she says slowly. All four of them grew up to be good, hardworking people, and she is proud of them. “I guess I’m still figuring it out,” she adds. “But I believe everyone has a purpose,” Obaachan continues. “I believe that, and I always have.” She pauses again. “The answer will come to me,” she says quietly, with confidence, looking out over the garden, at the tall bird-of-paradise arcing at the entrance, at the full, red hibiscus waving in the breeze, vibrant.

Bibliography

Conrat, Maisie & Richard.
Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans.
Los Angeles, CA: California Historical Society, 1972.

Daniels, Roger.
Concentration Camps: North America
. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, Inc., 1981.

—.
Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II
. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1972.

—.
Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II.
Revised ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.

DeWitt, John L.
Final Report: Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942
. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943.

Fugita, Stephen S. & Fernandez, Marilyn.
Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incarceration
. Seattle: Washington University Press, 2004.

Hong Kingston, Maxine. “No Name Woman.”
The Best American Essays of the Twentieth Century
. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates & Robert Atwan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

Ishigo, Estelle.
Lone Heart Mountain
. Los Angeles, CA: Anderson, Ritchie & Simon, 1972.

Kashima, Tetsuden
. Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003.

Komoda, Shusui & Pointner, Horst.
Ikebana: Spirit and Technique
. Dorset, England: Blandford Press, Ltd., 1976.

Lagnado, Lucette.
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit.
New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

Mackey, Mike.
Heart Mountain: Life in Wyoming’s Concentration Camp
. Powell, Wyoming: Western History Publications, 2000.

Meyer, Dillon S.
Uprooted Americans: The Japanese Americans and the War Relocation Authority during World War II.
Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1971.

Spicer, Edward H., Hansen, Asael T., Luomala, Katherine, & Opler, Marvin K.
Impounded People: Japanese-Americans in the Relocation Centers
. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1969.

Spiegelman, Art.
Maus I
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

U.S. Department of the Interior.
Wartime Exile: The Exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast
. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Wakatski, Jeanne.
Farewell to Manzanar
. New York: Bantam, 1973.

Additional Bibliographic Notes

For a timeline of the internment of the Japanese Americans, along with useful links to the various executive orders related to their internment, I used this site:

http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/timeline.html

I am grateful to independent historian Mike Mackey, who never seemed to tire of my emailed questions about Heart Mountain. His essay “A Brief History of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and the Japanese American Experience” was especially useful in developing a stronger sense of everyday life at Heart Mountain. It also features some interesting photographs from the camp. It’s available at:

http://chem.nwc.cc.wy.us/HMDP/history.htm

All of my information about Pomona before 1942 was found at:

http://www.fairplex.com/fp/AboutUs/History/1920s.asp

I found much of my information on the progress of the war at:

http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/

For my details on the Battle of Guadalcanal, I used this website:

http://www.guadalcanal.com/battleofguadalcanal.html

All of my information about the deportation of Canadian and Latin American Japanese is from:

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce3m.htm

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