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I opened the door and followed her and Dog out. “And a purse?” “Gotta have somewhere to put my gun.”
“I remember asking my father why it is they did not put all the Germans and Italians in camps, and he said it was because the Japanese looked different. I asked him if we looked different.” He turned to look at me. “He said—indeed we do.”
“Executive Order 9066, one of the most atrocious violations of civil rights in the country’s history, certainly that of the twentieth century.” “It was supposed to be an anti-espionage act, taking all the people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast and placing them in these inland relocation camps.” “Not just people of Japanese ancestry but American citizens.” The Bear glanced at me. “Six days’ notice to decide what you could carry with you for the rest of your life and what you had to simply sell or leave on the sidewalk, untold amounts of goods and assets were seized or left behind.”
“But these weren’t concentration camps like what the Nazis had, were they?” “No, there wasn’t any slave labor or systematic extermination of a people…But over one thousand six hundred people were killed due to inadequate health care and environmental stress, and some were actually shot.”
“I had a friend who was one of the guards over at Heart Mountain. He came up 4-F because of his asthma, so he volunteered to go over there.” “Did he say what it was like?” “Hard, he said it was hard on the internees in that they were used to a temperate climate and hadn’t even had time to bring the kind of clothes they would need for a Wyoming winter.”
“You some kind of smart-ass?” I glanced at the Bear. “Am I some kind of smart-ass?” Henry shrugged between bites. “No, he is a genuine smart-ass.” His gaze stayed on the Cheyenne Nation. “And what’re you?” I pointed at my friend with a bite of ham impaled on my fork. “He’s more of smart-ass-in-training, but he’s working on it.”
“Like I said, my friend here is kind of a smart-ass in training, but as a badass I’d have to say he’s a fully graduated, real deal.”
“A Selective Service–resistance kind of thing—I mean, imagine these poor bastards. Many of them American citizens, American born, scooped up by the FBI all along the West Coast, forced to sell anything they couldn’t carry and thrown into what they called relocation centers in horse stalls before they got shipped off to the ass end of nowhere. Then, to make things even worse, they designate all the able-bodied individuals as 4C, “enemy aliens,” then listed them as 4-F, “disabled and unfit for military service,” because—who the hell knows why—and then, as a final insult, call on them to
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“I was born in Hawaii, and they didn’t intern us.”
“You do not know what it is like to be a minority; to always be outnumbered.”
I whirled on him. “You think I don’t know that? You don’t think that it crosses my mind as I’m punching buttons on a jukebox that it might be the last time in my life that I’ll be doing it?” “The USOs have jukeboxes.”
“The Japanese government simply denied it, but after they were threatened with the Soviets, they conceded the information to the supreme commander of the Allied forces and the man responsible for rebuilding Japan during the occupation. He secretly granted immunity to all of the physicians involved with Unit 731 to garner the research information and keep it out of the hands of the Chinese, and more importantly the Russians.” “Douglas MacArthur?”
“I’m trying to keep her out of this.” She took another bite and chewed. “Why?” “She’s in the running for AG.” That got her to stop chewing. “Your daughter, attorney general for the state of Wyoming?” “Let me emphasize the phrase, in the running.” “Shit, we’ll be able to get away with a lot more than we did with Joe Meyer.”
