Frances Itani - Requiem

“If you could have seen the boats at the Annieville Dyke,” he said. “So many boats.” He leaned against the table as if the strength had been sucked out of him, his voice a mixture of anger and disbelief. He was speaking Japanese. The two languages flip in my mind at the recollection. Until my understanding of Japanese kicks in, I always believe I’ve forgotten the language, though it was essentially my first—no English school having been provided in the inland camp to which we were removed, at least not at the beginning. Until the internees themselves built a school, and volunteers from the camp became our teachers.

“Ghost boats,” Father continued. “The navy men didn’t care if one boat rubbed another, or if windows were smashed, or if the boats bashed one another in the storm.”

Of course, the boats were not returned. They were quickly auctioned off after the government allowed, in their orders, the insertion of the clause, without the owners’ consent . A prudent look to the future, ensuring that no one would be coming back, that there would be nothing to come back to.

We also learned, some time later, that several Japanese fishermen sank their boats instead of giving them up. And Father found out about the death of one of his friends—a man whose boat had been boarded while he was on his way to New Westminster to turn it in. The man’s throat had been slit and he was found on his drifting vessel, blood spattered on the floor, walls and ceiling of the cabin. He lived for a short time after being brought to hospital in Vancouver, but he wasn’t able to say who had done it, who had cut the hole in his throat. He died, but the truth of his murder was never uncovered, the murderer never found.

Only weeks after the boats were turned in, we were rounded up by the RCMP. It was the year of the horse, the early winter of 1942. The mail boat, the Princess Maquinna , sailed into the bay to collect us. In the early morning, uniformed men made their way from house to house, banging at doors, giving warning. We were given two hours to pack. We were told to take with us only what we could carry.

And now, I have recollections of running behind Mother, my short legs tiring as I dragged and bumped a cloth bundle over uneven ground, all the while struggling to keep the pleat of her navy blue coat in my line of vision. Everyone was responsible for carrying something when we left, even the youngest. My bundle contained the heavy rice pot and shamoji , the wooden rice paddle, with several kitchen towels padded around both pot and lid.

My feet, arms, legs, nerves and tendons still remember the jarring and clanging of the pot, which must have separated from its lid while being dragged. How I hated that rice pot. My skin remembers the cruel curve of the lid as it clipped the side of first one leg and then the other, no matter how often I switched the bundle back and forth, no matter how I adjusted my gait or broke into a half run, always keeping the pleat of Mother’s coat before me, so threatened was I by the possibility that both she and the pleat would disappear into the unforgiving mist.

No paper given up by the archives has ever documented that.

I never lost my animosity towards the rice pot, though it fed me through several more years of childhood. Later, Okuma-san had a smaller and different sort of pot, one I liked better because it evoked no memories of banging into the sides of my legs.

My ears have memory, too. They remember the harsh sound of Father’s orders barked from the doorway of our house while we were packing. Father’s mouth opened and closed and his shouts filled the kitchen, whereupon all other sound and movement ceased. No, not all sound, because I remember now that our neighbour Missisu—the childish word we used for Mrs., omitting her surname, which I never learned—was playing piano next door. The piece was Beethoven’s Minuet in G. Notes that had been marching through the air in a deliberate and playful way began to slow, and then snagged on a distortion of mist that blurred the space between our side-by-side houses. I was well acquainted with the music, though I did not then know its name, nor did I know it was a minuet. But something happened while I was listening, something that had never happened before. I began to see milky-white colours in the air around me. A blur of waves undulated close to my body, and I was afraid I would lose my balance. I stood still while my ears listened to the notes, and in some primitive way, I understood that I was seeing sound. Sound that rippled and flowed visibly, next to my skin. And though I batted my hands in front of my face, several moments passed before the milkiness in the air went away.

Once more, I was conscious of rhythm, of music. I could also hear the emphatic tick of the grandfather clock that loomed in a dark corner of our living room. The room was shadowed by a thickness of trees on the hill that rose up behind our house and overlooked the bay, which curved in from the sea and was surrounded by mountains on three sides. The music went on, mixing and blending with the ticking of the clock. Some years later, after learning from Okuma-san what the music was called, I joined the two sounds and named it, privately, affectionately, Grandfather Minuet.

But on that particular morning, each time the kitchen door opened and shut, Missisu’s notes from next door alternated between swelling in the midst of Father’s shouts and then shrinking and pulling back. Notes that were loud and visible suddenly dimmed, as if their true intention was to accompany the listener to the depths of some unnamed darkness that, long ago, Beethoven had foreseen.

I had already heard the piece countless times while playing outside or while creating pictures as I sat on the boardwalk that linked the eight houses along the edge of the bay. Even then, though I hadn’t yet started school, I was trying to draw, as any child does, using whatever was at hand: pencil on cardboard salvaged from the inside of cereal boxes or scraps of rough mill paper that sometimes came in on the supply boat. But never had I heard the music played the way it was that day. Missisu gave piano lessons to both Japanese and Caucasian children in our tiny fishing village, and inevitably, at some stage of learning, each student was asked to struggle through the minuet. On this memorable morning, it was Missisu herself who was playing.

But her fingers lifted off the keys before the piece was finished. That is what I remember. I was startled by the abrupt cessation of sound, and I was compelled to bring the melody to its end, silently, in my head. I was still standing in my parents’ kitchen when I realized that tears were running down my cheeks, tears I did not let my brother and sister see; nor did I understand why I was weeping.

Now, in my mind’s eye, I see a tableau vivant: Mother, Hiroshi, Keiko, frozen by Father’s shouts. Mother looks up and in Father’s direction. He is a full head taller than she. Two curls, one on either side of her forehead, seem to be stuck to her temples. And then—I am the onlooker inside this memory—Father, who has been coming in and out of the kitchen, turns and stomps down the outdoor steps. The dark rim of the bay is momentarily visible beyond his shoulders. Noises silenced by his anger start up again as if no interruption has taken place. Mother’s slippered feet cross the room. Dishes rattle. Rice bowls, cutlery, pots, pans have been sorted on the kitchen table. What to bring? What to leave behind? The willow basket is bursting with clothes and bedding. Food for the journey is sealed in waxed paper: boiled eggs; rice balls wrapped in dark seaweed called nori ; Mother’s cucumber pickles, tsukemono . Along with chopsticks, ohashi , enough for everyone. All tucked in around the top of Mother’s basket.