Foundlings, p.9
Foundlings, page 9
Having stopped running for a few minutes now, he began to feel the cold in the December night air, and he rubbed his arms together, wishing he had thought to grab his jacket before running past his father. No matter, he told himself. He would be at Naoki and Taichi’s house soon. It would be warm there, and even if they wouldn’t let him in for fear of the police, they’d at least let him borrow a coat.
A door across the street opened, and a man he didn’t recognized stepped outside, his wife and daughters behind him. Kichiro could hear the woman and girls crying. The father paused at the door, hugged his wife and patted each of the girls on the head. He said something to them, but quietly, so Kichiro could not make out his words. Then he turned his back on his house and headed over toward Tuna Street and the waiting army truck. Farther up the street, he saw the same scene being played out at two other houses.
He shook his head in frustration, but he knew there was nothing that could be done. They were all powerless. It was like the police and the army had a mind control device, like something out of a Planet Stories magazine, and they’d turned it on in Furusato, forcing all the men to submit to their wills.
All but him, he realized.
I’m immune to their powers, he thought. Because I’m an alien. I look like them and I sound like them, but I’m not one of them. I’ll fool them all and save my people.
How ironic, he thought, that he’d finally gotten the idea for a perfect story to use in the next issue of West Coast Science Fictioneer on the night he realized the whole enterprise could not succeed. There would be no more money from helping his brothers fish, and without money there would be no paper or mimeographing or postage. The whole thing had gone up in smoke, as though the Japanese planes had bombed his magazine along with the ships in Hawaii.
He stopped walking and sighed.
There was no point in going to Taichi and Naoki. There was nothing he could do for them. His brothers would be putting on their jackets, too, just like all the other men filing out of their houses now. They would walk down to Tuna Street, probably having a cigarette each and blowing smoke into the night air, trying to joke with each other the way they always did. Then they would round the corner and see the police post set up in the middle of the street, and their forced smiles would fade. They would drop their cigarettes, smash the butts under their heels, and join the queue of fishermen, all waiting patiently to hand their boating licenses over to the police and climb into the back of a truck. No words of warning from a little brother could change any of it.
He turned and headed back toward home, sadness and anger roiling in his head.
At the house behind Tomojo’s, he stopped, looked around, and listened. The street was quiet for the moment. He knew he should just keep moving on. A few more houses and he would be able to sneak between the buildings and climb the stairs to his home; his father would yell, but that would be the worst of it. Still, Kichiro remained immobile.
He wanted to talk to Tomojo. There wasn’t much point to it, of course. Neither boy could do anything for the other, but he at least wanted to see how Tomojo was doing. Mr. Kunishima was a fisherman, after all, and Tomojo’s family must be having a much harder time than the Nakamuras were. Kichiro would still have his father at home in the morning, a father with a business to keep food on the table and the bank from taking their house. Tomojo would have none of that. His friend would be scared, Kichiro knew, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
I should have come here in the first place, Kichiro thought. Tomojo maybe needs me more than my brothers do.
He turned off the street and slipped between two houses. Seconds later, he was at Tomojo’s bedroom window. It was dark inside, and he had to stand on tiptoes to press his face to the glass, his hands cupped around his eyes to try and see anything. There was nothing. He tried tapping on the window, doubting that Tomojo would be lying in his room in the dark so early in the night, especially with everything still going on. Still, it was worth trying. Nothing happened. No one came to the window.
Kichiro thought about going around to the front of the house and just knocking on the door, but the policemen might see him coming out of the shadows, and he didn’t want them questioning him. There was so much suspicion tonight. It would not do to become part of it. He would undermine their mind control rays another time.
He had turned away from Tomojo’s window and was heading toward the backstreet that would allow him to return home unseen. But then a scream from inside Tomojo’s house stopped him. It was a woman, probably Tomojo’s mother. Shouts followed the scream—Tomojo’s older brother maybe, or perhaps Tomojo himself. But shouting at whom? And why had their mother screamed?
Then Kichiro heard a door slam. Turning, he hurried along the space between the houses and stopped at the edge of Tuna Street. The police cars and army trucks were only twenty feet away, all with their headlights blazing to cut through the darkness. As he had imagined, the fishermen of Furusato stood in a line, boating licenses in their hands. Some talked with the men around them, but most remained quiet, dejected, as they shuffled forward to be processed by the police officers.
And running up to them now, a teenage boy—Tomojo, he saw.
Kichiro wanted to run out to him, not just to find out what had happened inside their house but also just to be with his friend again. Though he had been with his parents and sister all afternoon, he realized now that he had also felt alone since Tomojo had left. The same feelings he’d had all day—of wanting things to be as they had been this morning, yesterday, forever, of wanting his life back with no war and no darkened future and no spiking anxiety every time he heard a plane in the distance—all flooded through him again, centering on Tomojo and all the things they wouldn’t be able to do together anymore, not without the specter of war sitting on their shoulders, reminding them that they weren’t little boys anymore.
But Kichiro stayed put. As it had many times over the last four years, the memory of Miss Baxter’s visit came back to him, her warning about the complications that would arise if people began asking questions about the white boy among the Japanese. Most people would look the other way. But some would ask about adoptions and forms and legal rights. Yesterday, the policemen and soldiers on Tuna Street might have been the kind who wouldn’t think twice about Kichiro’s presence among the fishermen. But that had been before the planes and the bombs and the talk of saboteurs, before fences went up around Little Tokyo. Tonight, they would ask questions he couldn’t answer. And tomorrow…
Tomojo was pointing frantically back toward his house, and when he turned, Kichiro could see tears streaming down his friend’s cheeks. The policeman he spoke with nodded and called to one of his fellows. They both spoke with Tomojo for a few seconds, and then Tomojo was pointing in a different direction, across the street and into the darkness. Kichiro saw one of the policemen nod, and then Tomojo was off, bolting down the street in the direction Kichiro should have been heading, too, toward Nakamura Market. Kichiro waited a moment, just long enough to see the two policemen begin their approach to Tomojo’s house. Then he slunk back into the dark, turned, and ran.
A few houses down, he turned again, ran between the buildings again, and was at the foot of the stairs that led up to his own home. Nakamura Market was beside him, Tuna Street in front. And there was no sign of Tomojo. Down the street, there was some commotion as two other policemen were coming out of the Kunishimas’ house. He looked up, wondering if Tomojo had run upstairs, trying to find him. He had no idea why his friend would be looking for him in the midst of all the panic going on around his house, but Kichiro could also think of no other reason Tomojo could have had for running in this direction along Tuna Street.
He was about to risk calling out for Tomojo, hoping to be heard while remaining quiet enough not to draw the attention of the policemen. But then he heard a noise, a knocking. It came from across the street, and upstairs.
Glancing once more toward the policemen down the street, Kichiro crossed in front of his father’s store, knowing the darkness would conceal him completely now. Still, he moved as quickly and quietly as he could. A little farther and he looked up across the street, barely able to make out a person on the landing in front of Dr. Yamamoto’s office. There was a light on inside, and then he saw more light on the landing as the doctor opened his door. Tomojo stood there for just a second, and then the doctor let him in.
Kichiro ran across the street and took the stairs two at a time. When he reached the landing, he was about to knock, but the door opened immediately.
Dr. Yamamoto stood before him, disheveled but gathering himself together, his leather doctor’s bag in his hand. Tomojo stood behind the doctor, no more tears on his face but a look of panic in his eyes. Both his friend and the doctor looked at Kichiro in total surprise.
“Not at your house, too?” the doctor blurted.
“No,” Kichiro said without really understanding Dr. Yamamoto’s question.
“Out of the way, then.”
The doctor pushed past him, not bothering to look back and see if Tomojo followed or even if he closed the door to the office. Dumbfounded, Kichiro watched the doctor descend the stairs. Then he looked at Tomojo, who was rushing out as well.
“What happened?” Kichiro said.
Tomojo stopped, two steps down from the landing. Hurt, Kichiro realized that his friend had been ready to follow the doctor without saying a word or even acknowledging Kichiro’s presence.
“It’s Sayuri,” Tomojo said.
Kichiro pictured Tomojo’s younger sister, cute Sayuri who used to play with paper dolls and annoy them but who lately had grown quiet and distant. Kichiro could not think of the last time he’d seen her.
“They arrested my father,” his friend went on. “And Sayuri…Sayuri cut her wrists.”
Tomojo did not wait for him to say anything, just turned and chased after Dr. Yamamoto.
Kichiro stood on the landing and watched his friend go. Seconds later, Tomojo was in the street and out of sight. For the first time in several minutes, Kichiro noticed the cold. He rubbed his hands together and began descending. When he reached the street, he crossed slowly, not caring if the police or anyone else saw him.
Chapter Six
Newport Beach, October 2013
“So, what do you want with my grandmother?” the tattoo artist asked.
Derek knew her name was Michelle Wilson, but in the tattoo world she used “Yuki Kamikaze” as her moniker. It was her shop they sat in, clean and brightly lit, with Japanese flags on the walls—the old style flags signifying the rising sun, not the more staid red spot on the flag he was used to seeing—and posters showing barely clad men and women covered with outrageous tattoos.
“I just need to ask her some questions about some people she might have known back in the ‘40s.”
“During internment?”
“Maybe, but I’m more interested in before.”
“My grandmother doesn’t talk about the internment, Mr. Chandler.”
Derek nodded. He had run up against the gatekeeper, the first real resistance—other than the stony silence of unwritten history—that he’d met since the day he had first seen the manuscript back in August.
The number of threads he’d been following since his visit to Marjorie Beemer’s science fiction archive had been a bit overwhelming, and Derek had barely been able to get his work done at school. Fortunately, the administration had seen fit to give him a light schedule for his first semester at Channel Islands, a decision he’d been most grateful for after realizing he was going to have to make the adjustment without Lacey. Now that he had the mystery of Kichiro Nakamura’s manuscript to flesh out, however, he saw the easier than normal workload as an even greater boon than he’d imagined. There were mornings he walked into class having to wing it completely, with no idea of how he was going to fill the time with his students, sometimes with no idea of what they’d even read to prepare for the day. He always managed to pull it off; and if anyone felt his teaching wasn’t what it ought to be, or if they noticed his unkempt hair or the circles under his eyes, Derek was sure they interpreted all of his shortcomings as the results of his grief. Though they knew he had changed the focus of his research, neither his tenure review committee nor Martha Jones would have guessed he was spending all of his time chasing down the lost writer of “The Conversion of Takeshi Suzuki, Cadet Third Class,” rather than preparing lectures or grading papers.
While his professional life might have been suffering some, his mental and emotional state had begun looking up. He still grieved and did still imagine seeing Lacey, though he managed not to talk to her as much. If he did, it was to ask her a question about his research, and she usually just smiled and faded away when he looked right at her.
The small collection of documents he had brought to Marjorie Beemer’s home had grown into a pile, dozens of pages printed from the Internet and stacked in the condo he and Lacey were supposed to have shared; she would have hated the disarray, he knew. His laptop was similarly cluttered with census files, documents from the internment of Japanese after Pearl Harbor, draft records, war records, birth and death certificates, immigration forms, and more, all of it aimed at giving him a better picture of Kichiro Nakamura and Charlie Drummond, whom he was convinced were the same person…but was the lost writer Japanese or White? That was the thing that plagued him, kept him awake at night, kept his fingers on the keyboard when they should have been holding the textbooks his students used.
It hadn’t been hard to learn about the village of Furusato, to find pictures of the businesses and the fishing boats, to learn about the fate the town and its people suffered after Pearl Harbor. It also hadn’t been difficult to follow the Nakamura family through the years, as he uncovered military records, deeds, and death certificates. The California Death Index had been particularly helpful, as had the fact that the family had stayed in California after they were released from the prison camp where they spent the war years. But none of the background and none of the threads led him any closer to Kichiro Nakamura. The name was nowhere in the rolls of internees, nowhere in military records; it showed up nowhere but in the 1930 census. And Charlie Drummond was even harder to pin down. Derek had a few leads he was still following, but he didn’t hold out much hope.
His working theory was that Kichiro/Charlie never made it to internment because he was mentally ill, that he was confined to the state hospital in Camarillo before the war broke out and was left there during the internment. Derek guessed that the boy had suffered from multiple personality disorder, accounting for the “Charlie Drummond” reference on the 1940 census, a mistake made by whomever had reported to the census taker. Committed to the mental hospital, Kichiro was never shipped out to Manzanar or one of the other concentration camps the way the rest of the Nakamuras were. After the war, he may have remained a patient. Perhaps he had died in the hospital.
The most frustrating part to Derek was that he felt certain Martha Jones had been right about the documents that would have answered his questions with finality: the records from the California State Mental Hospital. If the documents still existed, they would positively identify Kichiro, giving his home address and accurate birthday, most likely identifying him by ethnicity and other physical characteristics. The hospital records would say what had been wrong with the boy and if he was cured and released. If he’d been transferred to another facility, that would at least be another concrete lead Derek could follow, but he didn’t have concrete leads. If hospital documents from the 1940s had survived up into the 1990s when the place was shut down, they might not have been stored or transferred to an archive somewhere. Why keep old patient records? It wasn’t like the documents were a matter of public record or needed for historical insight. If they had been, Derek had found no reference. Most likely, the hard evidence he needed had been shredded or incinerated or sent to a landfill a long time ago.
So he did his best following other leads. For now, the most concrete of those was the fishing village of Furusato. Derek had been very pleased a week ago to discover a group called The Terminal Islanders, a social organization of former residents of Fish Harbor dedicated to preserving the memory of the village they had affectionately nicknamed Furusato—Home Sweet Home in Japanese. It hadn’t been hard to find a contact number, and soon he’d been on the phone with Kaito Yoshido, an old man with a sharp memory who, unfortunately, hadn’t known the Nakamuras at all.
“I can put you in touch with some of the others,” he said, his voice creaky. “Maybe they know who you mean. My family never used Nakamura Market.”
Derek gave the old man his email. Mr. Yoshido promised to spread the word among his group’s members and assured him someone would get back to him soon.
Before they hung up, Derek said, “There’s one other name I’m interested in if you have a moment.”
“Sure,” the old man said. Derek could hear the smile coming through the phone.
“Sayuri Kunishima. Does that name ring a bell?”
“Sayuri Kunishima…” Mr. Yoshido mused. “No…no.”
Derek had allowed himself to be hopeful. Now his hope faded.
Then the old man said, “Unless…maybe you mean Sayuri Nishio. Sayuri wasn’t that common a name on the island. I remember Katashi Nishio’s wife was named Sayuri. The name means ‘small lily’ in Japanese. Did you know that?”
“No. This…Sayuri Nishio,” he had written the name down as soon as Mr. Yoshido had said it. “You think her maiden name might have been Kunishima?”
