Historical

TODAY It’s an almost perfect day. The sun has just come out after a long lazy nap in the clouds. It’s the kind of day when elves and unicorns and faeries can be found. And if you climbed to the very top of the largest oak you’d see a rainbow. It’s the same kind of day that I first met Oliver. I was four, and I hardly remember anything from back then, but that day I clearly remember. I was helping out in my father’s printing shop. I watched in fascination how he set the letters on the press. It was then that Oliver came in. He couldn’t explain why he came by himself here, and he insisted that he wasn’t lost. Soon he went out, and when my father wasn’t looking, I ran out after him. It turned out we both loved exploring and magical creatures, and both of us wondered why the sky was blue. We were friends. Today, we should have been running through the woods, or seeing who could swing the highest and then jump. It’s a wonderful day for that. But we weren’t.   THREE YEARS AGO I’d just turned nine. He was going on ten. I was up in that highest oak, he on the same branch. We were racing to get to the top first, and as usual, we tied. As usual, my dress got torn, although I had promised my mother to be more careful today. On the very last branch, where the leaves teased and tickled our arms, we sat down to take a rest. I took a newspaper out of my pocket, for lately I had taken a liking to the news. It had a stamp printed in the right corner. I started reading. “Taxation without representation is tyranny!” “Parliament Passes Stamp Act.” I waited for his response. He didn’t say anything. I continued reading. “We did not consent to this. Taxation without representation is tyranny!” I especially enjoyed the way the last sentence felt, how the letters bounced with energy on my tongue. Again there was silence. Then he spoke, slowly, a pause between each word. “I think… it’s… only natural that we should pay taxes. After all… we are subjects of King George.” This time I didn’t say anything. This was the opposite of what I was hearing at home. Since my father was a printer, the Stamp Act affected him very much. He had to pay a tax for every paper he printed. None of my family liked it. Why should we pay the Parliament if we couldn’t elect its members? But what worried me more was that this was the first time we didn’t agree on something. I didn’t like this painfully loud silence, so I suggested we look for gnome homes. Neither of us particularly wanted to do that (we were much too old, it was more like something my little sister would do), but it was better than silence, so we did it anyway.   THE NEXT DAY We were walking to the woods just like any other day. It was cloudy, just like any other day. But it was different, different in a way that I didn’t want to think about. I took off my shoes and went into the creek. The water stung. I saw a tadpole, reached down to catch it, but I noticed Oliver wasn’t there. He was sitting on a cool gray rock behind me. I turned to him. “Would you like to catch tadpoles?” He looked at the water. His shoes were still on. “Well, I talked to my father about the Stamp Act.” “And?” “He said that anyone who opposes it is a traitor to Britain.” That my father, and even I, might be traitors wasn’t something I’d wanted to consider. But Oliver’s father is different from mine. His father is a governor, appointed by King George. He’d never approved of us being friends. I didn’t know what to say. Before, I always knew what to say to Oliver. He continued talking. “And… he says he knew something horrid would result from us… mingling. He says that we ought not to be friends anymore.” The water stung even more than before. I’d read books about friends being driven apart, but overnight? No, it couldn’t happen. Never. “Oliver, surely you wouldn’t listen to him?” I looked in his eyes. He seemed as confused as me. “I… have to go home,” he said, softly.   AND THE DAY AFTER THAT Three o’clock. I quickly put down my books, said goodbye to my parents, and then ran out the door. It was only after I got to the hickory tree, where I met Oliver once he came back from his tutor’s house, that I remembered. Oh, I remembered. But I waited anyway. What was the worst that could happen? Sure enough, I saw him coming down the road. He didn’t look at me. “Oliver!” I yelled out. Nothing. “Oliver!” “I’ll never be friends with a traitor!” Down the road he went. Soon he disappeared from sight. I could only see the emptiness, his shadow lingering long after he had left. Two days ago, I disliked the Stamp Act. Now I hated it. One tax and two friends driven apart? I raced away, all alone.   ONE AND A HALF YEARS LATER I was at the harbor with my father. I wasn’t entirely sure why we were there. Earlier, that’s where my father would pick up shipments of ink and paper. But now we were boycotting English goods, instead making our own printing supplies, so why…? Looking back, it seems too odd of a coincidence. I stood there, looking at the ocean, thinking of England on the other side. The breeze observed me for a while. It saw I was far too happy and decided to show me some sadness. So it crept up and blew my newspaper, and I ran for it. It blew off into the harbor, and

Abby heard a long, distant call, somewhere out there in the night. A trumpeting call, like a bugle or maybe it was only the wind. Snow whirled past the cabin window in an endless parade of white, and the wind moaned as it blew around the corner of their house. There had been blizzards like this last March, but this year was different. Abby didn’t feel content inside, as Mama sewed and Papa whittled in the flickering light of the fire, as their old draft horse James slept peacefully in the barn. This year something inside her felt unsettled as she looked out at the wild blur of snowflakes. There was something bigger and better she could be doing. Something more important than knitting stockings, more interesting than sitting inside on these long, long winter evenings. It was because of the Pony Express, of course. Ever since that exciting day last April, when the first delivery boy in that amazing new mail system had come galloping into the station, Abby had known that she wanted to be one of those fearless Pony Express riders. That sunny day Papa and Abby had ridden James to one of the stations, where the station keeper and the stock tender kept food and fresh horses for the boys who rode the Pony Express. James plodded along so slowly that the trip took them nearly an hour. There were only two small log cabins there, alone in the middle of the prairie. One was a stable for the horses; the other served as a storeroom and a place for the men to stay. Abby noticed that the windows were small squares of grease paper instead of glass. Soon Abby saw the Pony Express boy, charging across the prairie Two wagons were parked in the shadow of the stable; they had been used to bring supplies from the city of St. Joseph. “This whole thing was one man’s invention,” Papa told Abby. “Mr. William Russell decided that the western territories needed a system that would get the mail to them faster than stagecoach, and so he organized the Pony Express and invested just about all the money he had in it. The man’s probably hoping for a government grant eventually, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave it to him. Supposedly these ponies can get the latest news from St. Joseph to Sacramento in ten days.” Abby shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed at the sky, the long, waving grass, the emptiness in every direction. But it didn’t really feel empty or deserted. It felt as if the land had flattened itself down to make way, and the two little station buildings were the only things brave enough to stay where they were, waiting for whoever was coming. “I bet the Pony Express will get the mail through faster than that someday,” she said. “All the riders have to do is travel a little bit faster!” Suddenly a rider’s bugle had echoed across the prairie, warning of his approach. The station keeper, a big, important-looking man with a big, important-looking mustache, hustled Abby and Papa out of the way as he brought out a restless mustang pony, already saddled and prepared for the rider. Soon Abby saw the Pony Express boy, charging across the prairie on his horse, stirring up a tiny cloud of dust. Papa bent down close to Abby’s ear, his beard tickling her neck. “That rider’s name is Johnny Fry,” he whispered. “He’s the first boy to ever travel for the Pony Express. Today he has ridden all the way from St. Joseph.” When Johnny Fry got to the station he leaped off his horse, threw the saddlebag full of mail onto the new mustang, jumped up to the mustang’s back, and rode away again, toward far-off Sacramento. It all happened so fast that for a moment Abby was stunned. “That’s all you get to see,” the station keeper had grunted, as he removed the tired horse’s saddle and led the horse into the stable. “You people just think the Pony Express is a whole heap of cowboys and Indians, don’t you? Well, you’re not going to see any Indians here.” But Abby had seen enough to decide that she loved it. Now she shivered in excitement as she pressed her nose against the frosty glass of the cabin window. She could be a rider for the Pony Express! She had ridden lots of horses before. What a wild, adventurous, wonderful life to lead! She would ride through the prairies and mountains and deserts of the West, just her and her faithful pony. She would have a hero’s welcome wherever she went! And if the war over slavery really broke out, she would carry secret messages for their new president, Abraham Lincoln, to help him make the United States into one country again. Abby examined her reflection in the window. Curling red hair, a little bit bushy; long, but she could gather it into a bun and tuck it under a cowboy hat if she wanted to, out of the way. Hers was a tall, skinny figure; she would certainly be light enough for the horses to carry her long distances. She was only fourteen, but lots of boys that age were working for the Pony Express, and earning over one hundred dollars a month, too! She wasn’t afraid of a snowstorm, she thought defiantly. If only she had been born a boy. “You neglect your knitting, Abby,” Mama reminded quietly. Abby jumped and quickly picked up the long needles in her lap. “Ah, let her daydream,” Papa said, winking at her. “She has enough days of snow ahead to finish my socks.” Abby smiled into her lap and then looked up again. “Papa,” she asked carefully, “do you think California will secede along with the southern states? And will the Pony Express become a mail carrier for the South, then?” Papa kept whittling. “Ah, President Lincoln will set

“Yip!” The sharp, insistent yapping of my dog Urashima drew me sluggishly upright the day the summons came. “Yip!” “Betty,” my mother called to me from the kitchen, “quiet your dog, please!” “Yip!” I responded with an unpromising grunt, flipping the page of my book. I was engrossed in Gone With the Wind, reading it for the seventh time, and resented any distractions. “Yip!” “Betty Okubo, that means now!” I slowly sat up, dragging my feet like a run-down windup toy as I walked to the door. Pulling Ura’s collar with one hand and groping for the mail with the other, I nodded a quick apology to the postman in case my dog had disturbed him. He gave me a glare that could crush stone and hurried down the sidewalk, as if our house was liable to explode at any moment. Letting go of my terrier, I groped through the closet for the mail: a brand new Sears-Roebuck catalogue, the monthly electric bill, a notice that my library books were hereby overdue—and a printed envelope addressed to “The Okubo family.” Sucking in my breath, I opened it and prayed fervently that it didn’t hold bad news. But no notice of death, doom, or despair fell out, only a typewritten slip addressed “To whom it may concern.” I nodded a quick apology to the postman in case my dog had disturbed him I ran through the house with the force of a full elephant stampede, screaming, “Mama! Mama!” “What?” my mother asked in a tired voice as I frantically waved the paper in her face. She seized it from me and began to read, then sat down quickly as a look of shock crossed her face. “They don’t understand,” she murmured. “They will never understand.” “What is it?” I asked eagerly. Wordlessly, she passed the paper to me. I read it slowly, carefully, drinking in every dire word like forbidden fruit. 1 May 1942 To whom it may concern: All Americans of Japanese descent in Military Zone 41 must report for internment between the dates of May 1 and June 1. Please be at the First Methodist Church of Newark on May 7. You will be moved from there to an internment camp. Bring only as much as you can carry. Tardiness will not be tolerated. In a flash, everything made sense: the cold looks people had given me in the six months since Pearl Harbor; the fear in my mother’s eyes when I ventured out alone at night; the suspicious glares I received when others discussed the war; what being in “Military Zone 41” really meant, other than the fact that we were prohibited from leaving. My parents had tried to make excuses for the government: it was wartime, after all; it wasn’t just us, it was Italians and Germans as well; even though we weren’t spies, others might be. They had refused to move away before it was too late. “They just won’t understand,” Mama muttered again. I nodded in silent agreement. We were as American as the O’Neils, who lived next door, or the Smiths, who owned the local grocery. We celebrated the Fourth of July and had a picture of George Washington in our dining room. But our last name was Okubo, our hair was black and straight, and our eyes were slanted, and so we had to go. “It’s not fair!” I burst out. “We’re as American as they are!” Mama had come over from Japan when she was eight. Dad was Nisei, born here. I’d never heard of Hirohito until I saw his name in a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle. And yet we were being ordered away, just because our ancestors were Japanese. “No, it’s not fair,” Mama agreed, “but neither is life.” I scowled. My parents made me go to school the next few days, although I didn’t want to. The allures of packing won out over the drab calls to learn the history, geography, and language of a country that no longer wanted me. “Who knows when you’ll see another school,” was my father’s only comment on the topic. “Enjoy this while you can.” Every school day began with the Lord’s Prayer, the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and the Pledge of Allegiance. I stood dutifully with my hand over my heart for the latter, but balked at the words “with liberty and justice for all.” I had just received a painful example of American liberty and justice. With that thought in mind, I closed my mouth on the last phrase. Never, I swore to myself, never again would I say those six stalwart words. Never again would I believe in liberty and justice for all. I gave tearful farewells to my friends and Ura, who had to stay behind. A less sorrowful good-bye was given to my school, which I was not overly mournful about deserting. Then, toting our three suitcases apiece, my family boarded the bus together, not knowing where we were traveling or what would happen when we reached our destination. The bus was deathly quiet except for the cries of a few babies and the mumbling of old women in Japanese. I propped Anne of Green Gables on my knee and began to read, trying to lose myself in the story as we traveled along a narrow road through a windswept desert. The camp appeared suddenly before me, its barbed-wire fences a stark reminder of our coming imprisonment. “Barbed wire, Hana?” my father asked my mother nervously. “I don’t like the look of this.” None of us did. For the first time in years, I accepted my father’s hand as we stepped off the bus. The first thing I saw was tar-paper barracks lined up in rows, as far as the eye could see. The second thing I saw was a girl about my age running breathlessly toward the slowing bus. Her black hair lay sleekly down her back and her dark eyes sparkled as she skidded to a