If he finds out I didn’t take the bus directly after school, he’ll yell at me for sure.
I’m on the outskirts of Japantown when I pass a store I know almost as well as any place in the neighborhood, a grocery owned by Stan Katsumoto’s family. They get fruits and vegetables from their cousins in Sacramento, and if we aren’t forced to evacuate, in a couple of months they’ll have the best peaches in the city: soft, sweet as candy, with juices that run down your chin. Once, when we were younger, all of us stuffed ourselves on the bruised fruit Mr. Katsumoto couldn’t sell. Shig ate so much, he threw it all up again and smiled the whole time, saying it tasted as good coming up as it did going down.
Looking at it now, I kind of feel sick. In addition to the words GROCERY and FRUITS & VEGETABLES, there’s a new sign. Over the door on a big white board are the words I AM AN AMERICAN. One of the windows is busted and covered up with plywood.
* * *
After Pearl Harbor, it seemed like ketos—white people—were jumping everyone with black hair and brown eyes. It got so out of hand that Chinese guys started pinning badges to their lapels declaring I AM CHINESE, just so the ketos would leave them alone.
Before Christmas, Life magazine published an article called “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese.” I guess it was supposed to tell ketos which of us to attack, but if you ask me, it wasn’t very helpful, because American citizens are still getting jumped all the time, like when the ketos cornered Tommy Harano behind the YMCA. They shoved him around and called him dirty words like “Jap” and “Nip.” They said the only good Jap was a dead Jap. They said they were going to do their country a favor and get rid of him right then.
It was lucky Mr. Tanaka, who works at the YMCA, came out for a smoke, because he chased off the ketos and sat with Tommy until he stopped shaking.
That’s why Mas doesn’t want me or Shig to act out at all. We can’t call attention to ourselves in any way.
Except some of the guys, like Shig’s best buddy, Twitchy Hashimoto, you can’t help but pay attention to. Twitchy’s the best-looking guy in our group, the kind of handsome that makes everybody, even ketos, stop and stare. He’s tall and slim, with straight white teeth that belong in a toothpaste ad. Of all the guys, I like drawing Twitchy best (even though it’s hard because he’s constantly moving, running around or playing with that butterfly knife he stole off a Filipino guy, though he had to turn that in because it was considered contraband) because when he moves, you can see every shadow in his forearms, his shoulders, his back.
* * *
I’m almost two blocks from Webster Street, the unofficial border of the neighborhood, when I realize I’ve got four white guys following me.
I think of running for it, but I’m afraid I’ll look guilty if I run, and I’m not guilty of anything but being born with this face, so I just lengthen my stride and try to act natural, or as natural as I can when I’m being tailed by a bunch of guys I’m sure want to jump me, but I only get another ten yards by the time the ketos catch up to me.
Think, Minnow. If I’d run for it, maybe I would’ve already made it to Japantown, where there’s always someone hanging around. Maybe I would’ve found Shig and Twitchy or Stan Katsumoto. Maybe they would’ve stopped whatever’s about to happen.
I swallow, hard. I’m not as small as Tommy Harano, but I’m smaller than Mas and Shig were when they were fourteen, and the ketos outnumber me four to one.
I look around for help and see some guys on the opposite corner—they have black hair and brown eyes like me, but they’re wearing big round buttons that say I AM CHINESE.
They catch me staring. I wonder if I should call to them, but my mouth’s so dry, I think if I open it, the only thing that’ll come out is dust.
While I hesitate, they turn and run the other direction. From behind, they look just like Japanese guys. They could be from my neighborhood. They could be my friends or cousins or brothers.
But they’re not.
I back up, clutching my sketchbook, as the ketos surround me.
“Whatcha got there, Jap?”
The word is hard, like a wet palm striking me on the cheek.
I’m so dazed by it, I don’t answer, and the guy grabs my sketchpad. I lunge forward, but he’s taller than me, and he snatches it out of my reach while the other boys laugh.
The first guy has a gap in his front teeth and a leather jacket that looks brand-new. He riffles through the pages, and I know he’s seeing my friends, my family, my Ocean Beach, my cemeteries, my Japantown chimneys, my many studies of the Golden Gate Bridge, my city, the city that I love.
Rrrrrip. He tears a drawing from the spine, and I cringe. The sketchbook was a present from Dad, before he died.
“You spying on us, Jap?” the gap-toothed guy says, shoving the sketch in my face. “You gonna send these back to the emperor?”
I look at the drawing—it’s of the bridge—and the only thing I can think is that I didn’t get the perspective right. The tower looks flimsy and out of proportion, like it wouldn’t be able to hold up to the weight of all its promises.
Before I can answer, he pulls the bridge back again and draws a knife on me. The blade’s over four inches—if he were Japanese, it’d be contraband.
For some reason, I start laughing.
“You think that’s funny?” he says, advancing on me. “I’ll show you funny.”
I stop laughing as the other ketos grab me from behind.
I try to fight them, but the next thing I know, I’m flat on my back and the sidewalk’s cold under me. The first guy’s on top of me, sneering, and I’m struggling to breathe.
I’m still fighting, or at least I think I am, but suddenly he rears back and then there’s three bright blossoms of pain in the right side of my face. For a second, I see blood-red suns against the white San Francisco sky, feel the thin sliver of a knife against my cheek.
“Wanna see what real Americans do to Jap spies?” the gap-toothed guy growls.
I AM AN AMERICAN
I’m seeing Mr. Katsumoto’s sign again. I want to write it everywhere: on my forehead—I AM AN AMERICAN—on the white sky—I AM AN AMERICAN—on the windows of Sutro Baths—I AM AN AMERICAN.
But that won’t make them see me. That won’t stop them from killing me, if they can.
The only good Jap is a dead Jap.
I start bucking and screaming. I shout for Shig, Mas, Twitchy, Stan, Frankie Fujita—
Then the first guy punches me again, and my head lolls to the side. In the gutter, my sketchpad lies face-down, pages wrinkled beneath it.
I can see bits and pieces of my rumpled drawings—a view of the bridge from the Presidio on the north edge of the city, Mas in his football uniform, the Dutch windmills along the shoreline, Twitchy running down Buchanan Street at midnight, going so fast I drew him blurry, like a spirit you see only as you’re turning a corner, and when you look again, he’s gone.
* * *
Ten days ago, President Roosevelt established the War Relocation Authority, a federal agency that’s supposed to be in charge of figuring out how to get us out of military zones where the government doesn’t want us. We just don’t know which of us they’ll move. Or how it’s going to happen. Or when.