Frances Itani - Requiem

The shacks that were to become our homes were erected on a strip of land that was strewn with old sagebrush and spotted with snow, and that lay between the base of the mountain and the edge of a dirt road that led back towards the bridge—the same bridge over which we’d been driven the day before, and which we were now forbidden to cross. The strip of land was the only available space where we could build. Everything else was slope and mountain and cliff that hung over the Fraser River. In the other direction, the dirt road continued past us and around a curve that led to a deep canyon. If we were to travel in that direction, we were told we would face mountain ranges even higher than the ones we now stood beside. Not that we were permitted to travel; roadblocks were set up in both directions on either side of the camp and guarded by the RCMP, twenty-four hours a day.

I was shivering from cold, and looked across the wide river to the town on the opposite bank. In the daylight, I could see the railway station where our train had been idle for three nights. Smoke was rising from chimneys on the main street of a community that had heat. I saw houses spotted here and there in the hills that spread out from the town. Even in the hills, smoke was visible over the rooftops. It was clear that every bit of warmth on the planet had gathered on the other side of the river.

A meeting was organized, men and women were assembled, skills called out. There were millhands, loggers, mechanics, bookkeepers, stenographers and typists, farmers, fishermen, factory workers, restaurant workers, store clerks, cooks and accountants. When it was discovered that two men were master carpenters, it was agreed that they would supervise construction. Tools would be shared. At the beginning, someone from the Security Commission helped with the ordering of supplies. But after that, we were on our own. There was also a woodcarver among us, and he was put to work alongside the carpenters, but his main job was to help make furniture: tables, benches, shelves, stools and wooden frames for beds. Some wood had already arrived, but several more weeks passed before large quantities of rough green lumber were delivered from a mill in a nearby valley. The men in camp, along with teenage boys—Hiroshi and I were not big enough to be part of this group—sorted materials and sawed rough boards that would enable them to erect the shacks that would become our homes: three tidy rows, twenty shacks per row, each twelve feet wide, utilizing every inch of available flat space.

And shacks they were. For the most part identical. Uninsulated, with open knotholes in the wood. Each had two rooms: a main room that served as kitchen, a second room for sleeping, with a makeshift curtain dividing the two. For a very large family, a small extra bedroom was added on at the back.

But most of us were still living in tents, using kerosene lanterns to ward off the dark. The stove outside our own tent burned wood from early morning to late evening and was used not only for heat, but for boiling water and cooking food. We continued to drag dead branches and twigs and anything else that was combustible out of the woods and down the slopes. Some of the men in camp set to work cutting trees, dragging and sawing logs. Women, too, gathered wood and, during the day, stayed near open fires or inside the tents, where they bundled themselves in coats and blankets. My parents had shared the cost of a small galvanized tub with Uncle Aki and Auntie Aya, and we were able to stand or crouch in the tub and have a bath inside the tent before going to bed.

Keiko’s hands became frostbitten and swollen from the cold, but there was no doctor in camp to examine her, and the puffiness lasted until summer. As for me, I was freezing all the time, both in and out of the tent. Mother gave me an extra sweater to wear, along with a strip of wool, a haramaki , to wrap around my torso so that my kidneys would be covered. And, finally, a long scarf to coil about my neck.

As soon as one shack was finished, a family moved in. The men from families whose shacks were complete then helped the next family to build. Each place had little more than walls, roof and a rough plank floor that snagged the soles of our feet and planted slivers under our skin. There were no doors, no inside plumbing, no electricity. Even without doors, we moved into the shacks because they offered more permanency than the tents. Four long communal outhouses were built at the back of the camp, the outhouse doorways facing the side of the hill.

After our shack was built, Father divided the bedroom by hanging a sheet. Hiroshi and Keiko and I shared the bed on the right, our parents the one on the left, a few inches separating the two. Bed frames were nailed together from raw lumber. Thin mattresses or futons were laid overtop. We had to climb into bed from the end.

Father decided that we would have two small windows at the front, the same as every other shack, but a window in the back as well, in the bedroom. He sawed and banged at the wood and made an opening in the wall, but his measurements were askew and the space for the window ended up being crooked. He made no apologies. No glass had arrived at the camp, so we had to wait. He said he would patch around the edges later. Mother hung cloths over the gaping spaces, and stuffed cracks and knotholes with strips of old newspapers that had been used to wrap the dishes we had brought with us.

At the beginning, there was no fresh water. Drinking water in covered barrels was brought in by truck from outside the camp. Like everything else, the water had to be paid for, though many people had diarrhea after drinking it. When the truck arrived, men and women brought buckets, pots, any containers they could find, and these were filled from the back of the truck. Three old people died of dysentery and typhoid within the first month of our arrival. For a while, during those early weeks, melted snow was used for cooking and drinking. When the snow on the hills disappeared, water from the muddy Fraser was dragged up the steep embankment in buckets, and strained and boiled. Water was the preoccupation of every family, and remained so during all the years we lived in the camp. Eventually, river water was pumped up from the Fraser and filtered and stored in huge wooden tanks that were levelled on boulders, but it would be a long time before the tanks were in place. Mostly, people lugged their own water and stored it in barrels that stood outside their doors. As for heat, empty oil drums were fashioned into makeshift stoves, and these were placed inside the shacks while construction continued.

The next step was to tack tarpaper to the outside of the shacks. Father dug at the winter crust of hardened earth around our new home and tried to loosen sandy dirt that could be shovelled and banked against the outer walls. He did as much as he could to prevent the winds from gusting under the shack and between cracks in the wooden floor.

In the midst of this continuous activity, Hiroshi and Keiko and I watched trucks as they drove in and out of camp. We talked about what lay beyond the mountains, and we tried to imagine the sorts of places from which the trucks had come. Hiroshi was all for talking to the drivers, asking questions, trying to help unload supplies that were too heavy for him. He managed to do some small errands, made himself useful and even earned a five-cent tip every once in a while, from one of the drivers. Sometimes, he was given a local paper by a driver, or a pack of gum. When he was given a paper, he brought it to Father, who read it by lantern light after everyone else had gone to bed.

As for Keiko, she was missing school more and more. Classes had come to a complete halt, except for the few lessons given informally while we had been at Hastings Park. Keiko also missed her friends from our old fishing village. She had made a few new friends, however, and when she wasn’t required to help Mother, she could be seen with the other girls, playing school, going over old lessons they had already completed. Keiko wanted books and workbooks. She wanted a teacher. She wanted school to start up again quickly. But so far, there was no school.