Emily Mitchell - Viral - Stories

Now he comes to where Karl is sitting.

“Mr. Takagawa,” he says. “Would you walk outside with me?”

They go slowly, making a circuit around the building. Mr. Sasaki takes cigarettes from the breast pocket of his coat and offers one to Karl who accepts it. He is not afraid of Keo Sasaki, he tells himself.

At last Mr. Sasaki says: “I heard something and I want to find out from you if it is true.”

“What did you hear?” Karl asks. He knows the answer perfectly well, but to admit that would be to confirm the suspicion.

“You are going to refuse to swear your allegiance to our country.” He takes a pull on his cigarette and exhales smoke.

“The way I answer those questions is no one’s business but mine,” Karl says.

Mr. Sasaki sighs. “I wish,” he says, “that were true. I wish none of us had to answer any of these questions. We wouldn’t be here at all. We’d be at home. Your father would be running his store, I would be running mine.

“Unfortunately, we are at war. Normal considerations have to be suspended. Think about this for a minute. We have said to the authorities here and to the War Relocation Office that we shouldn’t be imprisoned because we are loyal Americans. How will it look if, when they ask us, some of our young men refuse to pledge their loyalty?

“Don’t you want to be allowed to leave this place? Think about the welfare of your people.”

Karl feels the anger tighten in his face. “My people aren’t only Japanese,” he says. “I act in solidarity with anyone who tries to do what is right when other people try to convince them to do what is easy.”

Mr. Sasaki stops walking. “Is that really what you think?” he says, wearily. “Have you looked around? I don’t see very many of your non-Japanese brothers in this camp. I didn’t see them protesting when we were sent away last year. On the contrary, I saw them lining up to buy your father’s stock for nothing and live in your vacated apartment.”

His voice has risen in anger, but now he resumes walking at his slow, meditative pace. “I understand you are a man of principle,” he says. “Just remember that I am not the only one who knows what you mean to do. Other people might not be so tolerant, you know. People get angry, get frustrated and then who can say what could occur? I dislike the idea of anyone being hurt.”

Mr. Sasaki drops the butt of his cigarette onto the frozen ground where it rolls and makes a black dash on the frost. Then he turns and walks away without another word.

Karl goes back to the mess hall to finish eating. No one asks him what Keo Sasaki said. Leigh takes May to get ready for bed and he stays at the table talking and smoking with a few men in the light and warmth.

As he is walking back to Building No. 147 he notices that he is being followed. There are three figures, maybe four walking behind him. Karl walks faster and so do they. He turns left down one of the rows of cabins. They turn left, too.

He stops and turns to face them. Now he counts five in all.

“What do you want?” he says loudly, hoping that people in the surrounding buildings will hear.

“Are you Karl Takagawa?” one figure asks.

“Yes,” he says. He stands up straight. “What do you want?”

The one who spoke approaches and Karl recognizes him, a skinny kid with slicked-back hair, though he does not know his name.

“We wanted to tell you,” the young man says, “that we are going to answer no . We’ve decided. Why should we go into the army now? We have to stand up for ourselves.”

Karl looks around at the others for the first time. They are all nodding and in the near-dark he can see that they are smiling. He laughs out loud with relief and claps the slick-haired leader on the back.

“Well done,” he says. “Well done. That’s great. We’ll show them.”

But later, when Karl tells Leigh what Mr. Sasaki said to him, she sits down abruptly on their bed like someone has let go of the strings that were holding her upright.

“He’s just a trumped-up old windbag,” Karl says. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Leigh says, “I heard that if you say no you might get sent away. To another camp. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you heard about it, too?”

“Yes. I heard about it.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” He does not reply to this. Leigh looks away from him, and he can tell that she is trying not to cry.

That night Karl cannot sleep. Eventually he gets out of bed and feels his way across the room. By touch he finds his coat and cigarettes. He opens the door and steps outside. The only lights are the arc lamps on the guard towers and over the main gate.

He sits on the front stoop and smokes. After a minute, he hears the door creak open behind him. May is standing there.

“I can’t sleep,” she says. “I want to sit with you.”

“All right, just for a minute.” He opens one side of his coat and she curls against him.

“Daddy, why won’t Doreen play with me?” May asks.

Oh, dear. Doreen is Keo Sasaki’s niece. How can he explain this mess in terms a six-year-old can understand?

“Well,” he starts, “Do you think that you should do what is right even if other people don’t like it?”

“Yes,” May says.

“So I made a decision that some people don’t like.”

“I see,” May says. Her voice is sleepy. “I wish that Doreen would stop being mean to me.”

“She will,” he says, hoping he sounds like he is sure.

• • •

The next day, the last before the forms are due, everyone is subdued.

When Karl comes back to change his shirt before supper, he finds Leigh sitting on the front steps of Building No. 147 looking distraught.

“I can’t find May. She didn’t come back from school with the other kids.”

He can tell that she’s imagining the worst: an accident or some harm visited on May because of Karl. He goes to Leigh and takes her hand.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “She can’t be far. You stay in case she comes back here. I’ll go and find her.”

He searches among the cabins. He calls May’s name. He asks any children he meets if they’ve seen her. He knocks on the doors of the cabins where her playmates’ families sleep. No one has seen her.

It is already beginning to get darker and colder. What if she has fallen and hurt herself? What if she is hiding, scared because of something the other children said or did?

Some of the people he asks come out to help him search. Hana Sumiyoshi puts on her husband’s big overcoat since she does not have one of her own. Helen Nakamura, who works in the mess hall where they eat. The guys from his work detail, even the ex-plumber. Some of the children May plays with after school, some adults he doesn’t know. Soon there is a big group of them hunting through the cabins altogether.

• • •

It feels like some kind of parade, some kind of celebration, all of them out with flashlights and hurricane lamps that shine gold in the gathering blue-gray dark. Still there is no sign of May.

Finally, a little boy tells him that he saw a girl and a boy going toward the main gate of the camp a short while before. Karl sets off in that direction.

As he comes in sight of the gate, he notices that both the sentries have left their posts, which is strange. He keeps going toward the edge of the camp, looking for some sign of the children. Then he sees where the sentries have gone. They are over where the little stream runs along the boundary fence, standing among the gray skeletons of bushes on its banks. It is almost completely dark now, but they are illuminated by the arc lamps that shine along the boundary fence to prevent escapes: two white men in mud-colored uniforms, long wool coats, wool hats under their helmets.