Frank Polizzi - Somewhere in the Stars

“I’m thinking.” From a distance, Nick stared at the rows of identical buildings, neat enough but foreboding in their battleship gray stain. He failed to convince the administrator to reconsider his father’s internment. “Cuginu, go inside, you haven’t seen your uncle. Tell my parents that I’m going to scout around this joint to see what else I can find out.”

“Beni.”

The camp maintained a casual attitude, but Nick sensed there were different stories behind every face, all of them caught up in the war and thrown together. No one stopped him from walking down a treeless, dusty road where he encountered a group of Japanese Americans tending a garden. They were busy in their teamwork, grooming the soil and planting with a definite design in mind. On the surface, it would make a good photo for the newspaper, but Nick saw something else. They were isolated by their race, even though the English he overheard was better than his father’s paesani . Some of them glanced in his direction and their eyes revealed sadness so poignant that Nick turned away for a moment. His curiosity overcame his diffidence, so he approached the man who had continued to follow him with his eyes.

“I don’t mean to bother you… but can I ask you a question?” The man, old enough to be his father, remained silent and dug his spade in the ground. “My father’s Gaetano Spataro. Um, he’s penned up here like you. Well, I was just wondering… how the guards act towards everybody in this place.” The man handed his spade to another gardener and walked away from the group then pivoted, waving him over.

“I prefer speaking privately,” he said, averting his gaze from Nick who looked directly into the man’s eyes. “You have to be careful what you say.”

“I understand. So what’s it like here?”

“The guards treat us okay. I supposed you could say that you can get used to anything. They even let us grow our own vegetables and prepare our food.”

“I can see. That’s why I was curious.”

“This is not a life I ever imagined. My wife and children are American. Born and reared in California. But the U.S. government wouldn’t give me citizenship. Even after 40 years living in the same state.”

“That’s a crummy situation.”

“I put on my stoic mask as if I am in a Kabuki. I try to meditate but that doesn’t help. I drink a lot of homemade sake but that does not help. I want my family back. I want my farm back. I am dying here even though they’re not torturing me to confess something I am not, something I didn’t do, something I don’t believe in.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Even though your father is a prisoner like me, it will always be worse for us. We don’t look like you.”

“Something like Negroes.”

“Yes.” The man looked into Nick’s eyes for the first time.

“I have seen your father at soccer games. Everyone seems to like him, so I see that the apple does not fall far from the tree. I have a son who’s 21. He’s joined the 442nd Infantry Regiment. It was his idea. Made up of all Nisei —Japanese Americans second generation, born in this country. They’ll release Akio soon from Camp Manzanar in eastern California. A so-called Relocation War Center. That is where he is held with the rest of my family.” He looked off in the distance. “But my son will restore the honor of our clan, the Minamoto.” He raised his right fist as a boxer. “He has the blood of the samurai. My great-great grandfather was the last of the noble warrior class in Japan.” He lowered his arm. “They will show America what Japanese Americans are made of.”

“Do you think the authorities will set your family free?”

“I have no reason to think so, but who can predict anything now? So, in the meantime, I rot like vegetables that are not properly taken care of. Your father travels in the same boat with me, for now. You might say Noah’s ark.” He let out a quick laugh. “Go to your father. He must be wondering why you are missing.”

As Nick shook the man’s hand, he thought that their encounter layered another dimension to this internment business. He was ignorant about many things it seemed or maybe just naive. Even so, Papà was still trapped in Missoula and there was nothing he could do about it, which made him anxious to stand in front of his father without a sliver of hope.

Nick walked past the rows of barracks reserved for alien enemies, traipsing through the middle of them. Up close, the washed out buildings squatted on a hardened ground that could have been an outpost on Mars. Nothing green growing between these buildings. Nick came across a group of young Italian men who were chatting in standard Italian on the three-stepped entrance to one of these battle gray structures. From their vantage point, they could view of the mountains fronted by the Bitterroot River which curved around Stevens Island.

One guy with a full head of dirty blond hair called out to Nick as he passed by: “Bella vista ! Camp Bella Vista !” The others laughed. Nick nodded and approached him, speaking in the Italian he learned at the Italian government’s sponsored Dopo Scuola, an after school program shut down at the start of the war. When he mixed in some Sicilian phrases, they looked puzzled, so he switched back to the language of Dante. They had worked on a luxury cruise liner that had been seized in the Panama Canal at the onset of the war. Judging by their carefree attitude, they didn’t seem to mind being there, since they wouldn’t have to fight for Mussolini. Nick thought these Italians were lucky, but they weren’t interested discussing Italian politics in any language—they weren’t taking any chances, which was a sign for Nick to move on.

As Nick passed by the Post Headquarters, he stopped for a moment. He had been in such a rush the first time that he hadn’t notice the Courtroom, so he squinted through a pair of double hung windows. So this is where they had held the ‘Enemy Alien Hearings.’ He winced at the sight of the place where Papà had been denounced, a peculiar sense of self-reproach caught in his gut. Nick argued with himself as if he were a poet composing verse. But he had nothing to do with his father’s incarceration. He even got the lawyer to intercede on his father’s behalf, but it kicked right back at Nick. He had failed his father, at least that’s how he saw it. Gaetano would never have left him to rot here. He had delayed long enough, knowing it would be very difficult to face Papà with no good news.

On the way back to the Visitor Center, Nick recalled his conversation with the young Italian who jested about “Camp Bella Vista.” The view was beautiful but Italians love to joke around. He guessed they were laughing at this crazy world. But for Nick he saw it as a cruel joke on his father, marooned in this miserable place looking out on this free, quintessential American landscape, a daily reminder of what he had been cut off from, the freedom to be with his family taking in the sight of San Francisco Bay and its world famous bridge, setting out on the majestic Pacific ocean and netting the silver-glittering fish that fed the city and his way of life in North Beach con tutta famigghia.

Lucia got out of the car in front of their home without saying a word and the cousins stared out the windshield. It was raining and damp, so they rolled their collars up in the front seat, the compartment filled with smoke and the dank smell of nicotine.

“You want another smoke, Paul?” Nick popped one out half way from the pack. They both lit up again and sat motionless.

“I told you it wouldn’t work, Nick. They don’t care about breakin’ up families.” He took a drag. “Why don’t you come with me to meet my recruiting sergeant? Sez I have some more papers to fill out. Maybe we could stick together through this war, like when we were kids playing on the same baseball team.”