Clark and Division Read online

  Of all the regions, Chicago was the promised land. It was the second-largest city in the US, full of factories and manufacturers that needed laborers. In camp we were shown a series of promotional black-and-white films about the merits of the city, “Hello, Chicago.” Rose’s eyes widened when she saw the skyscrapers and the river cutting through downtown, the hakujin and black women wearing hats and high heels as they crossed the busy streets. That scene frightened me, as I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by hakujin people and boulevards. Somehow I had gotten used to the searing wind cutting through the haunting Owens Valley and the landscape of jagged mountains surrounding our barracks, the home for 10,000 Japanese Americans.

  In June 1943 the War Relocation Authority recruited Rose to be among the early Nisei to go to Chicago. Responding to an official invitation, she attended an informational meeting and returned to our barrack with a resettlement pamphlet, which she tossed on top of her bedspread. I grabbed it and studied every instruction on how to best assimilate into mainstream life.

  “Don’t bunch up in numbers more than three,” the resettlement literature stated.

  There are four of us, I thought. Would that make us one too many? “I guess they don’t want the Japanese to be too conspicuous.”

  “They want us to be invisible,” Rose said and laughed. “That’s plain impossible.”

  If we could not help but be seen, we had to be the best Nisei specimens, the ones with broad white smiles and spotless suits and dresses. I understood the resettlement agency’s strategy. If I were working for the government, I would send hundreds of Rose Itos out into the wide plains of the Midwest or the villages of New England. If anyone could convince a suspicious public that we Japanese were patriotic Americans, it would be my older sister. Judging from the shine on her face, I knew that she had accepted the call.

  I have replayed the day that she left Manzanar in September 1943 over and over in my mind, as if I’d remember some new details if I thought about it enough. I’d cried because I didn’t want to be separated from Rose. Everyone made fun of me for being overly weepy at twenty years of age. I wasn’t known to say much of anything, but sometimes emotions welled up inside of me and escaped before I could shut that door.

  “Take care of Mom and Papa,” she said, gripping her tan suitcase. The dust swirled around her—on anyone else it would have looked gross and dirty, but Rose looked like an angel covered in gold dust. She was wearing her favorite dress, white polka dots on dark blue, and a hat on her perfectly styled hair.

  I nodded and swore that I would, not realizing how tough that would really be. I handed a farewell gift to her that I had been working on ever since she had announced that she had been approved to leave. It was a diary covered in some wood that I had salvaged from a box that once held toilets. From the old Issei who did woodworking in camp, I had received a bit of sandpaper and stain. He also used a drill to make three holes on the two wooden panels, which I threaded with an old shoelace to keep the notepaper together. On the cover I had burned in the name Rose as well as the image of the flower.

  “Oh, Aki, it’s beautiful,” she said. “Not sure if I’ll write anything in it—you know me.” Noting my crestfallen response, she tried to assuage my feelings. “Ah, but I adore it, I really do. I’m going to stick it in my pocketbook so it’ll be with me the entire train ride.”

  She got on a bus with some Nisei men assigned to a sugar-beet farm a few states away. She waved furiously at us and at first I wouldn’t lift my head to really say goodbye. I was afraid if I did, I’d wail and never stop. But finally when the bus began to move, I looked up. Rose’s face was already fixed toward where she was going next.

  “I’m going to be in Chicago soon, too,” Roy announced as he delivered mail to our barrack around Christmas 1943. He had been voted our block manager and distributing the mail was probably the best part of his job. We never got much mail, but since Rose left, we received postcards from her. This one was of Chicago’s Moving Stairs, an escalator to the newly built subway. Another one was of the Mark Twain Hotel, located at 111 West Division, the corner of Clark Street. The hotel was apparently walking distance from the apartment that she shared with two other Nisei girls. She had gotten a job with a famous candy company that made these chocolate logs covered with peanuts and caramel. I pictured her enveloped in sweetness as she filed papers or whatever she did as an office clerk. On this postcard she wrote that she’d been searching for a unit for our whole family for when we were to be reunited in Chicago.

  “You’re not supposed to read our mail,” I scolded Roy in jest.

  “It’s a postcard. I can’t help but read it,” he said.

  “Has Rose been writing to you, too?”

  Roy’s face reddened, and I couldn’t figure out if it was because Rose hadn’t corresponded with him or perhaps because she had.

  He didn’t answer my question. “I gotta get out of here,” he said, adjusting his mailbag. “A guy can die too early in this place.”

  Within a month, in January 1944, he had gone to Chicago. Eager to follow both him and Rose, I prepared our leave clearance papers, revisiting questions that didn’t make much sense. Like would we foreswear any allegiance to the Japanese emperor— Who said that we bowed down to him in the first place? If you didn’t answer the questions in a particular way, you would be labeled “disloyal” and forced into another exodus, this time to a harsher camp close to the Oregon state border. More than ever, we wanted to get out of Manzanar into the free zone.

  As Rose had been the one who always handled our official family’s English-language government paperwork, that responsibility now fell on me. I felt myself withering under the pressure. I kept crossing out certain answers and reread the simplest questions multiple times. Whenever I gave my parents instructions on what we needed to do next, they would gaze at me dumbfounded as if they couldn’t quite recognize me. “And, Pop, no staying out late at night,” I warned my father. We couldn’t afford any kind of setback.

  A week before we were due to leave, I noticed my father up in the middle of the night, slipping on his worn-out shoes.

  “Where are you going?” I sat up in my bed but he was out the door before I could stop him. I lay down, unable to fall back to sleep, listening to the short and sharp breaths my mother inhaled in her slumber, as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room.

  Around dawn, our barrack shook with the arrival of two men—a drunken Pop with his arm around the shoulder of our local camp policeman, Hickey Hayashi. Mom immediately got to her feet and together they hauled him to his bed, where he collapsed in a drunken stupor.

  “You know that he’s not supposed to have this, Ito-san.” Hickey produced a pint-size glass container that I knew Pop stored his bootleg sake in.

  My stomach fell. Could this criminal incident mean the end of early release for us? I was ready to get on my knees and beg for mercy when Mom stepped in. Using an elevated Japanese reserved for addressing kings, Mom apologized profusely while standing in front of Hickey in her nightgown. From underneath their bed, she retrieved a pair of new shoes for Pop that we had ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalog for our move to Chicago. Those shoes were supposed to replace his holey ones that he was wearing right now, on top of his bedsheets. Mom offered them in exchange for the camp policeman’s silence.

  Hickey shook his head. “No, Ito-san, no need for that.”

  “This is a token of our appreciation. We’ve benefited from your service to us over these months.”

  After three rounds of this back and forth, Hickey relented and departed with Pop’s new shoes. A week later, we were on our way to Chicago.

  We traveled by train. It was so strange to be on a train after being restricted to a square mile in the middle of Owens Valley for so long. After months of living in a concentration camp, I felt that our lives had been compressed in one of those snow globes and the
world as we had once known it may have been a figment of our imagination. But no, here we were, with the glorious mountain ranges of Colorado and then the flatness of Nebraska passing by our windows.

  We were close to the Iowa border when I got sick. A twisting pain grabbed my insides and it took all my strength to pretend that it wasn’t there.

  “Aki-chan, I told you not to eat that sweet that your mess-hall friend made,” my mother said, noticing my discomfort.

  Hisako had pressed the koge, burnt rice, with a sprinkle of sugar—a most precious commodity—as a special treat for our long trip. Mom thought it was disgusting, but I was touched by the gift.

  Finally I was able to make my way to the restroom. It was quite embarrassing as, by that time, sweat was dripping from the sides of my face and my legs were shaking. While I was in the ladies’ room, I almost blacked out. I thought I heard my sister’s voice in my ear, Take care of Mom and Papa, not as a memory, but as a new directive. I am, I thought, annoyed that my family’s low expectations of me would seep into my subconscious.

  When I returned to our seats, most of my makeup was on my handkerchief, as I’d cleansed my face with some cold water. Pop had already fallen asleep, the brim of his hat lowered over his eyes. Sticking out from the band was the edge of the paper, now completely yellowed, that listed the location of our earthly belongings in Los Angeles.

  “I wonder if Rose will meet us at the station,” Mom said. We hadn’t heard from Rose for a couple of weeks. I had sent her a telegram with our Chicago arrival date, but didn’t receive a response back. We weren’t worried at the time. It wasn’t like she could call us in camp. Mom suspected Rose was lovesick about some young man in the city. On the train, we saw Nisei GIs, handsome in their pressed uniforms, and I imagined that someone like that had captured Rose’s heart.

  As we got closer to our destination, I could tell Pop was getting excited. He was sitting straight up as the train lurched back and forth; he kept looking out the window and back toward the passengers leaving and entering. Oh, to see the flash of Rose’s smile, that in itself would be enough for me.

  When we finally arrived at Union Station, Pop was the first out the door with his one suitcase. The train station was so huge and grand, with majestic white-colored marble walls. A huge war bonds poster was on display below the clock while the flags of military allies—the United States, Great Britain, France, and Australia—hung down by the vertical beams. In the center of the station was a USO desk to serve all the soldiers who were on leave and needed instructions on the best accommodations and recreation.

  As we stumbled into this mass of humanity, we saw a group of Japanese Americans walking toward us. I recognized one of our former Nisei camp leaders, Ed Tamura. Ed had hightailed out of Manzanar as soon as he could. His face was round and smooth; if he had to shave every day, I would be surprised. Then I spotted Roy and his slicked-back hair, drooping a bit in the May heat.

  I first felt embarrassed that there was this welcome party for us. We were simply the Itos, a former Los Angeles produce manager, his wife and younger daughter. I searched the group for my sister. But there was no bright smile, lipstick applied perfectly in spite of the humidity.

  “Something’s happened.” I could barely hear Mr. Tamura’s voice over the hubbub in the building.

  Roy couldn’t look at us. “There was an accident at the subway station last night,” he said.

  Before he could declare, “She’s dead,” I knew. I had felt it in my bones when I was getting sick on the train. Rose had departed this earth, as dramatically as only she could have done.

  Chapter 3

  None of us got any sleep that night, even though we were already exhausted from our long bus and train journey from Manzanar. We didn’t touch our suitcases, which Mrs. Tamura and Roy had placed in front of the fireplace of our one-bedroom apartment. We should have opened up the windows to let the night air cool the bedroom, but we didn’t have energy for that. Still in our street clothes, we lay on beds side by side, my parents in one and me in the other, exactly like in camp. Even though I was by myself, I stayed on the right side, careful not to cross over to where Rose was supposed to be. Was she really gone forever?

  The next day I prepared to go to the coroner’s office to see Rose’s body. We didn’t have to; Roy had already identified her for the authorities. But I wanted to see her. Not that I needed to be convinced that Rose was dead, but as long as her body remained aboveground, I didn’t want her to be alone. And since I was going, my father decided that he should, too.

  No one had witnessed exactly what had happened, only that someone had been run over at the Clark and Division subway station. The police had reached the scene fifteen minutes after the subway was stopped. The police had found Rose’s pocketbook down on the tracks. The contents were intact but the handle had been torn off by the incoming train.

  My father and I were practically sleepwalking as we got into a taxi. I wasn’t aware of my environs until we walked into the morgue. The smell was wretched, both sour and chemical at the same time. A sheet covered Rose’s body, which was probably naked and broken. The sheet was pulled up to her chin, but the top of her shoulder was exposed, revealing that her arm had been severed. Pop also noticed how brutally mangled Rose’s body was and crumpled to the floor. I didn’t pull him up. We both were in shock.

  I felt my whole body stiffening. Was that my sister’s face? All her beauty—the pink blush in her cheeks, the fullness of her lips, the playfulness in her eyes—was gone. Now this face I knew so well resembled animal hide stretched over a human skull. Even her black hair, always immaculately styled, seemed to have lost its sheen. Her beauty mark was still visible on her right cheek, confirming that this body had once been inhabited by the soul of Rose Mutsuko Ito.

  I couldn’t move, even as Pop lurched to his feet and stumbled out of the room.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, but the coroner’s voice finally broke through the noise of the revolving fan. He asked me if I had had enough, and I nodded. He covered Rose’s face with the sheet.

  “May I talk to you, Miss Ito?” He led me to his office. Piles of manila folders loomed on the floor and on a desk in the middle of the room.

  He directed me to a squeaky wooden chair with wheels, which rolled a few inches away from his desk when I sat. Nothing was stable or level in my life, even the floor of this government office.

  He picked up a manila folder and licked his index finger to turn the pages of a form, but then got right to the point. “Your sister had an abortion. It was recent. Perhaps a couple of weeks ago.” His blue eyes were the color of marbles that a neighbor in Tropico had played with.

  “You have made a mistake,” I said. My declaration surprised even me. I usually would not tell any authority figure, especially a hakujin man, that he was wrong. Why was he mentioning an unspeakable criminal procedure like an abortion when my sister was dead? “A train ran over her.”

  “The evidence of an abortion is undisputable. I have to put it in my report. But it was not the cause of death, which was definitely suicide.”

  That he could pronounce that Rose had taken her own life so definitively without even knowing her was unbelievable. I wanted to shout in his face, My sister didn’t kill herself. Not on the day before we were coming to Chicago.

  The coroner looked at me silently, and I knew what he was communicating. She had taken her own life because we were coming—probably out of shame for her situation.

  “Rose wouldn’t do that.” In my mind I had made the declaration at the top of my lungs, but the words from my mouth were barely audible.

  “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this,” he said. I could tell that there was no convincing him otherwise.

  “I’d like her things.” I didn’t want the coroner’s office to hang on to anything that was Rose’s.

  “The police have the contents of
her purse.”

  “Her dress—”

  “We had to cut it off of her. There was a lot of blood.”

  “I want her dress.”

  “They have that, too.”

  I stared at him. Was he telling the truth? I couldn’t tell. “I need the address of the police station.”

  The station was located at 113 West Chicago Avenue—I made him write it for me on a slip of paper. After he did so, he stood up. “Well,” he said, “we’ll send the body to the mortuary as soon as we hear from them.”

  Pop was waiting for me in front of the building, his hat flopped over his swollen eyes. It was obvious that we would never be the same again.

  We took a taxi back from Ogden Avenue. I had to give the driver a big chunk of the money in my purse. The apartment Rose had secured for us on LaSalle was in a building with more than a hundred units, and the one vacancy was on the top floor. Mr. Tamura had apologized over and over for that when he’d let us in the day before. “Housing has been such a challenge with so many being released from camp.” But there were two rooms: a bedroom and dining room—a luxury when most people were living in studios, sometimes six to a room.

  I had to jiggle the key in the lock to get the door open. The air was warm and stuffy. My and Pop’s suitcases were still in front of the fireplace. Roy, who had said that he’d be over after his work, sat alone at the table, which was made of wood, maybe walnut. Our beds and two chairs were the only other pieces of furniture. On the table were a couple of cans of beer, an open newspaper, three ration books and some brochures that Mr. Tamura had left for us. We didn’t have a full kitchen, merely a kitchenette with a sink, hot plate and a refrigerator that was in need of a block of ice. It wasn’t much, but it was more than we had in camp.

  I didn’t bother to say hello to Roy. What was the point? “Where’s my mother?”

  “She went to bed. The doctor gave her something to make her sleep.”