Near the end of January
, we got a postcard from Papa. It was addressed in care of the Wilsons. Mama brought it home after work.
“Tomi,” she called, “Kimi-chan.”
She was almost too excited to speak. She said Mrs. Wilson had read it to her several times already, but she wanted us to hear for ourselves. She hurried us into the kitchen, and made us sit at the table. “Read it,” she said, handing me the card.
I quickly read the whole thing to myself. The date said it had been sent weeks ago. There was no return address, and the place where it says where it was mailed from in; the postmark was blacked out by a censor.
“Read
,” Mama commanded.
To my family
,
A soldier is writing this for me. To write in Japanese is not allowed. Do not worry about me. The soldier is a good man. I am treated well, and many of my friends are here with me. This is all a mistake that will be corrected soon. Tell Grampa to watch the boat, and tell Tomi to find a job until I come home. Tell Kimi to help Mama. Tell Mama not to worry. Tell Tomi to feed the pigeons, and tell him to help Sanji’s family
.
Nakaji Taro
“He doesn’t even know about his pigeons,” I said.
For a long time the three of us sat silently at the table, each of us touching and studying the card with no return address that Papa had sent. By now he must know, I thought. He must know that the army isn’t even
trying to
straighten out the mistake.
Honor yourself, Tomi, and you honor us all.…
Yes, Papa, yes. But where is the honor now?
Mama got up and covered the window with the blackout blanket, then lit the lamp and went over to the shelves to find something to cook. Our small supply of food was growing smaller. Kimi slid off her chair and went over to help her, just like Papa had said.
Mama smiled at her. “How old you now, Kimi-chan?”
“Five,” Kimi said.
“Five? That much? You almost grown up, already.” Mama shook her head. “Well, if you that old, then it’s time to teach you how to cook rice.”
Kimi beamed and peeked over at me to see if I’d heard.
• • •
Early one morning Billy rapped on our door. He’d been running. It was hot out, and small beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. “Come on, lazy bones, get your stuff … school’s on again.”
It took a moment to sink in. School had been out for almost two months.
“School,”
Billy said. “Remember? Books, homework, Mr. Uncle Ramos? Come on, Dad’s waiting.”
“Mama!” I called, and she poked her head out of the kitchen. “We got school again.…”
Mama gawked at Billy and me a moment, then said, “Go change those clothes.… Kimi can come work with me.… Go.” She shooed me off with her hands, and the faintest smile.
When we got to Billy’s house Mr. Davis was waiting by his car in a suit, leaning against the front fender with his arms crossed. He stood when we walked up to him. “Nice to see you again, Tomi.” He put his hand on my shoulder. His shirt was blinding white in the morning sun, and his shaving lotion smelled good. “I did a little research,” he said. “I found out where they sent your father.…”
I nearly stopped breathing. “Where?” I whispered.
“Crystal City, Texas.”
Crystal … City … Texas. “And Grampa?”
“Don’t know that yet, but I’ll keep trying.” He
paused, then added, “They’ll be okay, Tomi.… I know that’s not much … but …” He shook his head.
“When will they come back?”
“That I can’t answer … I don’t think anyone can right now.”
“But … they didn’t do anything.…”
“I know they didn’t, son.”
Billy stood next to his father, watching me. It was funny how much they looked and acted like each other. Both tall, both concerned.
“I want you to know one thing,” Mr. Davis said. “If you or your mother ever need anything …
anything
… you come to us, okay?”
I nodded.
“Good.” Mr. Davis smiled and tapped the side of my arm. “Let’s go. We don’t want you and Billy to be late on your first day back.”
• • •
Roosevelt was almost like a ghost town. Some of the teachers and half the seniors had quit, and signed up with the army. And not only that, the navy had put barbed wire all around the school grounds because they had been using the buildings as barracks.
Rico thought it looked pretty good that way. “Look like they went fight here,” he said after we’d all met out front like we used to. “But I don’t see no blood spots.”
“Shee, Rico,” Mose said. “How can you say that? Guys died, you know … on those boats. It’s not right to say things like that.… Come on, man.”
Rico kind of frowned, like he knew Mose was right.
Billy changed the mood. “Hey, how do you like your gas masks?”
“Shhhh,” Rico said. “Make you look like a monster.”
“That’s for sure,” I said.
Each of us had one slung over his shoulder in an army-colored canvas bag. You had to carry it everywhere you went, even to the bathroom. When you put it on you looked like an ant in a microscope.
“You heard about how they need workers for the pineapple fields?” Rico said. “You can work there on Saturdays and still go to school.”
That’s
what I could do. Yeah. I could sell eggs after school, work in the fields on weekends, and get a job in the summer. I’d give all the money to Mama. “I want to do that,” I said.
Mose and Rico said they did too. I didn’t know if Billy would, or if he even could if he wanted to. He didn’t say anything. I just hoped he wouldn’t have to go back to the mainland. Of all of us Rats, he was the only one who even had a chance to get out.
It was good to be back, sitting on the grass outside the school, even if there was barbed wire all over the place. But I couldn’t help thinking about the battleships in Pearl Harbor, and of all the men who had died there. What about their families? And what about all those innocent people like Papa and Grampa who’d gotten caught up? What about my friends and the boys in Kaka’ako who’d had someone taken away from them—fathers and uncles and grandfathers? A lot had happened … a lot
of bad things. Thinking about it made me sad. For Mama. For Sanji’s wife, and Mari. For everyone.
“Mr. Uncle Ramos was at our house last night,” Rico said. “He’s going to enlist. This summer, after school ends.”
“Really?” I said. That shocked me.
“Going join the navy,” Rico added. “‘The army can rot,’ he said. But he also said that if the army needed him he would think about it.”
Mose looked away and kept to himself. How could you imagine Mr. Ramos in the navy shooting guns? Or getting shot.
The bell rang and we strolled into the building, our gas mask bags bouncing on our hips. “Look,” Rico said, opening his bag. Inside with the gas mask were three Hershey bars, the last of his supply. You didn’t see those things in the store anymore. “Good place to hide ’um, yeah?”
Mose just shook his head, still frowning.
Mr. Ramos sat on his desk rubbing his busted knuckle and waiting for everyone to settle down, which didn’t take long because we were all curious to hear what he was going to say.
“Welcome back … Is everyone here?”
“Tosh Yamada isn’t,” someone said. “He had to take over at his father’s store.”
“And Myra,” a girl added. “She had to get a job too.”
Mr. Ramos’s smile disappeared. He shook his head. “Eighth grade … tst … too young to have to do that. But the world isn’t the same today as it was the last
time we were here.” He moved his eyes from face to face. We all stared back at him.
Silence.
“Tomi, how’s your family?”
“Okay,” I said, and looked down at my hands. I didn’t want to tell the whole world that my father and grandfather had been arrested. When Mr. Ramos didn’t say anything, I peeked up.
“Mose, Rico,” Mr. Ramos finally said. He sounded a little more cheerful. “How you boys doing today?”
“Pretty good,” Rico answered.
“Yeah,” Mose added, sliding down in his chair.
Mr. Ramos turned back to the rest of the class. “What happened here could happen anywhere,” he said. “People have been making war on other people for centuries.”
He paused. “Does anyone have any idea why this happened? Why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor?”
No one raised a hand.
Mr. Ramos let the silence eat at us. Rico finally broke it. “They wanted to sink our ships.”
“That’s true, Rico. But there’s a bigger reason than that. What do you think it might be?”
Rico got into his thinking scowl, then said, “Because they don’t like us?”
Mr. Ramos smiled at that, and the rest of us loosened up a little. My own mood changed with almost every word he said.
“I guess it’s true that the government of Japan doesn’t like us at the moment,” Mr. Ramos said. “But the real reason—the reason at the bottom of all the wars in
the history of human life—is power. It’s like a drug. Some men can’t get enough of it. They want your power and my power and everyone else’s power. They want it all for themselves. Adolf Hitler, who started this thing, is one of those men.”
I didn’t understand. What power?
Mr. Ramos looked us over a moment, then asked Rico, “If you wanted to get into someone else’s class because you thought I was a lousy teacher … could you?”
“I guess so,” Rico said, shrugging.
“You could. You and your mom and dad could talk to the principal and get him to put you in Mrs. Collet’s class, or Mrs. Elbert’s class. That’s power. Power to make a decision about yourself, then make a change if you want to. If you wanted to read a book about Tarzan instead of reading your science book, could you?”
Rico smirked. “Sure … I do it all the time.”
Everyone laughed.
“That’s power too,” Mr. Ramos said passionately, reaching out his open hand and closing it into a fist. “There are all kinds of small things that we never think about that give us a little power … and all those little powers add up to a pretty good amount.”
“Yeah,” Mose added. “Like we could do whatever we want after school, even forget about our homework, if we wanted to.”
“That’s right, Mose,” Mr. Ramos said. “And if you wanted, you could even do
more
homework, so you could go to college, and get a job that you like, one that you choose for yourself. But think about this: What would it feel like if you
couldn’t
do anything you wanted after
school? What if you were forced to keep your mouth shut and work in the cannery from the minute you got out of here until ten o’clock at night? Even if you didn’t want to?”
“I’d hate that.”
“So would I,” said Mr. Ramos. “Not because of the work, but because it wasn’t my
choice
to do that work. So … what is power?”
There was another long period of silence.
“Freedom to make our own choices,” Billy finally said.
“Freedom to make our own choices,” Mr. Ramos repeated slowly. “Our
own
choices … Did you ever consider how valuable that is? Did you ever think that there are people in this world who
don’t
have that freedom? Who have to do what they’re told by people who don’t care about their individual lives?”
He looked us over, letting it sink in. “Well, there are millions of people like that …
millions
who don’t have the freedoms you have, the power over their own lives that you have. How do you think it would feel to be one of them?”
We shuffled around and murmured among ourselves that it would be really lousy.
“None of us would like it,” Mr. Ramos said. “And that’s one of the reasons the human race has wars: people fighting back. People fighting to keep the right to make their own choices, to keep the right to live a free life. Japan thought they could bring us to our knees by bombing our ships, and then they would come in and take our power. But they were wrong. We’re not about to
give anything up so easily.” Mr. Ramos’s fist reminded me of Rico’s cousin Esther. It took some power to save her.
Mr. Ramos slid off the desk. He looked tired, and kind of dreamy. “We’re going to go on in this class just as we’d planned. Boys not much older than you are out there fighting for all of us, and we’re going to help them. We’re going to show them that we have the spirit to go on despite all that we’ve been forced to suffer. And don’t any of you worry,” he said. “We’re going to be okay. All of us.”
I hoped that included Papa and Grampa.
“Okay,” Mr. Ramos said, clapping his hands together. “We’re a little bit off schedule, but we can catch up. As I recall, I’ve had personal interviews with each of you about your projects … except for two students.”
Mose groaned quietly and slid even farther down in his chair.
“You two know who you are,” Mr. Ramos went on. “But in case you forgot, I’ll give you a hint … it was something about a volcano.”
As soon as school let out, Mose was all over Rico. “You stupit … was your idea, so
you
gonna make ’um, not me.”
We walked down to the bus stop with the two of them banging each other with their gas mask bags. But I was thinking about Sanji … and Grampa and Papa … and about the
Taiyo Maru
.
“You guys go ahead,” I said. “I want to walk.”
“Whatchoo mean, walk?” Mose said. “Too far, man.”
“I want to go down by the canal and see if I can find my father’s boat.”
“I thought they sunk it,” Billy said.
“Yeah, but the canal isn’t that deep … maybe I could see part of it.”
Rico shrugged. “Okay, walk then … but we going with you.”
Mose said, “Like Mr. Uncle Ramos told us, we got the power to do whatever we like after school, yeah?”
Rico grinned. “Yeah, we got the power.… We’re the Rats, aren’t we?”
You couldn’t help but love those guys. The Rats …
But it was sad, like being in my room without Grampa. How could anything be the same? We didn’t even have the Kaka’ako Boys to play anymore. “Right now,” I said, “I feel more like a kicked dog than a Rat.”
“Kicked dog?” Rico said, hanging his arm around my neck. “We ugly, but we don’t kick no dogs.”
• • •