Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds

by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

Takasu, an affluent district of country homes in greater Hiroshima.

Katsutoshi did not blink at the scene. Soldiers were always coming and going in Hiroshima, a major port of departure for the war in China.

Before he could look for the source, the train doors opened. He jumped on, and the train rattled toward the city. The coach was quiet. All the way to school and during his race, lap after lap, he kept turning over in his mind the phrase that he had caught in passing. It had to have been garbled, or had he really heard “our victorious assault on Hawaii”?

The next morning, Kinu opened her local Chūgoku Shimbun newspaper to a stream of jubilant headlines from official Japanese news sources throughout the Pacific. “Surprise attacks” had stunned “every direction,” including the “first air raids on Honolulu”; Singapore was “under bombardment,” as well as foreign military bases at Davao, Wake, and Guam. In Shanghai, the British fleet had been “sunk,” while the American one had “surrendered.” Japanese raids were pummeling Hong Kong and the Malay Peninsula. Kinu, trembling, put the newspaper down and waited to confide in her son. The Japanese headlines were accurate; Allied forces were struggling to repel Japan’s lightning attacks and stunning advances. In Washington, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was wheeled into Congress, where he invoked in his inimitable baritone, “a date which will live in infamy.” His entire speech lasted little more than seven minutes. Within an hour, Congress passed a declaration of war, with all but one dissenting vote. On Oahu, where the battleships moored at Pearl Harbor listed, smoldered, and burned, the tally of sailors, soldiers, and civilian deaths would soon surpass 2,400.

HOME WAS AUBURN, A TOWN LATTICED WITH railroad tracks and berry and vegetable farms, a pocket of the White River Valley at the foot of glacial, snow-capped Mount Rainier. Japanese farmers were drawn to the valley, in part because it reminded them of the landscape of Japan, and cloud-swathed, volcanic Rainier of Japan’s most sacred peak, Mount Fuji. The immigrants called Rainier “Tacoma’s Fuji” and lovingly translated the valley’s name into Japanese. Shirakawa. The soft syllables rolled off their tongues, like a whisper with a finger to the lips, for someplace intimate and empyreal.

As tall as his Caucasian friends, Harry had straight bangs, a direct gaze, and oversize ears with elongated lobes. In Japan, this size and shape were esteemed: fukumimi (ears of happiness) augured prosperity and good fortune.

in 1870, five years after the Civil War, former slaves became eligible for citizenship. But Japanese nationals, who had first legally immigrated to Hawaii in 1868, were, like the Chinese, excluded. By the early 1920s, more than twenty-five thousand legal immigrants from Hiroshima lived in the United States, more than from any other area in Japan. Yamaguchi and Kumamoto prefectures sent many immigrants, too. They were all aliens in a foreign land. Although nisei (second-generation) children like Harry and his siblings were citizens because they were born in the United States, their immigrant issei (first-generation) parents continued to be rebuffed. In 1922, the Supreme Court, in Ozawa v. U.S., stated that issei were “aliens ineligible to citizenship.”

Kinu and Katsuji could not envision Victor’s future unless he obtained a proper Japanese education. Racial discrimination toward Americans of Japanese descent was so pervasive that even a nisei who graduated summa cum laude from a university could not find a job.

When Katsuji and Kinu sent their firstborn youngsters five thousand miles from American shores to be immersed in all things Japanese, they were thinking ahead. Nor were they alone. In 1929, almost four thousand nisei Japanese Americans attended elementary and middle schools in Hiroshima prefecture. So common was the practice that the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) Japan Mail shipping line printed farewell postcards with steamship photographs for passengers to fill in their departures. Unlike a daily trek to school, the two-week-long Pacific commute involved homestays with relatives that stretched into years.

To the photographer’s consternation, Harry couldn’t keep a straight face, the accepted Japanese pose.

Once a sleepy castle town, Hiroshima had burgeoned into a modern city during the Sino-Japanese War, when it had served as an embarkation point for China-bound troops in 1894. By 1929, it was the seventh-largest city in Japan, with a population of more than 270,000.

Pedestrians picked their way among soldiers, for, even in peacetime, Hiroshima was a military center.

Streetcars, a technology for which Hiroshima was famous, clanged inches from Frank’s hand.

Legend had it that if, at the time of one’s departure, snow-wreathed Mount Fuji were visible, the passengers would someday return to Japan.

Mary and Victor were now kibei—nisei educated in Japan who had returned to America. Kibei often seemed, by dint of their years abroad, more Japanese than American.

Mary, who had never lifted a finger in Hiroshima, was deaf to Kinu’s pleas to help in the house. When she complained about her chores, her parents scolded her. “They used to tell me that I was born mouth first, then head.”

All across the West Coast and Hawaii, similar scenes were playing out in homes where thousands of kibei struggled to reacquaint themselves with their families. There was no name for this dysfunction, no support group, no prognosis. Families muddled through the misunderstandings, the frustrated kibei feeling alienated, the baffled nisei siblings discomfited, and the chagrined parents praying that time would heal the heartache.

After Christmas, Kinu began pounding and molding glutinous mochi (rice cakes), symbolizing strength and purity. She set aside most of the cakes for meals, but stacked two large round ones, topping them with a tangerine, to form a kagami mochi decoration, which represented the family’s hope for a fruitful new year. Cutting pine branches and bamboo, Kinu set a shōchikubai (pine-bamboo-plum blossom) arrangement, embodying discipline and endurance, on the front stoop. She placed a small dish of salt at the entrance to symbolize purity, imbuing every tradition with hope. On New Year’s Eve, Kinu served a late supper of boiled soba (buckwheat) noodles to dip in a soy broth. As the family slurped the salty noodles, Kinu stood satisfied: the noodles’ length signified longevity, an appropriate ritual for crossing over into a new year. Surely, she had covered every base, ensuring her family’s safety, prosperity, and welfare.

The Washington Alien Land Law, enacted in 1921 with the issei in mind, prohibited those ineligible for citizenship from buying or leasing land.

By 1925, the number of Japanese farms in the state fell to 246, from 699 five years earlier; total acreage dropped almost two-thirds, from 25,340 to 7,030 acres.

Although he had hakujin (white) clients

There were growing numbers of homeless in Japan, too. The nation had descended into what officials called the “dark valley” of a gripping depression. The overall mood was grim, and the government was beginning to mobilize resources in a lockstep march toward war. The window for hopeful trans-Pacific understanding was closing. By the time a new school year was under way, war would erupt in distant Manchuria. On the evening of September 18, 1931, a group of restive Japanese Imperial Army officers, with the tacit knowledge of their superiors, staged an explosion on the tracks of the South Manchurian Railroad near Mukden, the capital. The railroad was administered by the Japanese government, and the incident provided an excuse for the army to invade Manchuria. The bogus provocation commenced Japan’s “fifteen-year war.” Hiroshima, with its instrumental logistical port, took on a war footing. Katsuji’s deft international exchanges ended abruptly.

And then the Pacific Commercial Bank, the biggest Japanese bank in Seattle, went bankrupt.

Katsuji watched the real estate industry spiral downward. His interest, helping issei buy property or lease land, was virtually obsolete. Yet in Auburn he had been selected the “district chair for real estate brokers supporting President Hoover’s reelection.” Perhaps Katsuji liked the leadership role. Or Hoover appealed to Katsuji because he had signed an immigration bill in 1929 that allotted a maximum one hundred immigrants from Japan annually. It was a paltry number, but still, it was better than nothing, which had been Japan’s humiliating status since Congress passed the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924, which abruptly ended Japanese immigration; in the United States then, there had been no ripple of mass reaction, but in Tokyo massive anti-American riots had erupted.

When the votes were tallied, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had won by a landslide, taking forty-two states, including over 57 percent of the votes in Washington State. Given what Roosevelt would later do to the nation’s ethnic Japanese, including tens of thousands of native-born citizens, Katsuji’s choice may have been prescient. The course of history lay, as yet, unrevealed.

Kinu carried home his remains in a porcelain urn. At forty-one, she walked alone, a resident alien and the sole guardian of five American children during the Great Depression.

Mary agreed with Harry. She had grown fond of Auburn and progressed in school, from second to eleventh grade within four years. Just as important, women in America—with their flapper dresses, lipstick, rouge, and perms—were kicking up their heels, far more liberated than their geta-clopping counterparts in Japan. Having won suffrage in 1920, American women voiced their opinions. Japanese women may have been wearing bolder kimonos, but they were still denied the vote and prevented from living full lives.

Although Japan was already at war with China, the intended target of the drills was the United States, viewed as the greatest threat to Japanese expansionist goals. The instructors ranked America as the Empire’s “number one enemy.” Vaguely aware of global politics, Harry could only hope that circumstances would change. He shrugged. “It was kind of awkward.”

He began organizing dances at his house, which Kinu supervised, and at a room at the girls’ Catholic school, where there was an American advisor. Harry supplied a phonograph, vinyl records, and Frank—his deejay by default. At first shy, soon smiling, the students formed couples. When Frank wound the phonograph and the music spilled forth, they waltzed and foxtrotted in their bobby socks across the straw tatami floor. Outside they kept their distance as formal Japanese youth should, barely making eye contact. Inside, they held hands, pulled close, and swayed to “Blue Moon.”

Harry thought he had a handle on maintaining his equilibrium, but life became more challenging and fraught from 1936, with a failed coup d’état by young army officers directed toward senior government officials. The cabinet was in turmoil, the army’s heavy hand stretching more deeply into the government and society each year. Regimentation and intolerance increased.

One day, Harry was on a streetcar with a few Sanyō pals, in uniform, speaking English so that the other riders would not eavesdrop. They had been told at school not to speak English in public, but it hadn’t posed a problem thus far. Out of the blue, a kempeitai (military police) officer in uniform, who was also a passenger, yelled to the conductor to stop. The kempeitai, regarded as thought police, generally terrified the public. The streetcar screeched to a halt and the officer ordered Harry and his friends off at once. “Are you Japanese?” he screamed after they had lined up, standing at attention. “Hai, yes, we are Japanese,” the boys answered. “What language were you speaking?” he bellowed. “English.” “Were you practicing in Englis...

In an age when a woman was considered a hatachi baba (old maid at twenty), Mary had reached a ripe nineteen.

Kinu was cheered when Harry joined a largely all-nisei powerhouse basketball team as a second-string guard. The nisei were, on average, a few years older, given that they lagged behind academically because of their time abroad. They towered by as much as six inches over the Japanese players, who were only about 5ʹ3ʺ, on account of diet and age. At 5ʹ7ʺ, Harry was among the tallest. The nisei team played a fast-break game, running more than their Japanese counterparts and dominating the court. Wherever they played, they were the talk of the town. They looked Japanese but spoke something else, shouting loudly and gesturing while running the length of the court, so different from the quiet, composed Japanese players. They ultimately competed against college teams, won the Hiroshima prefectural tournament, traveled to the neighboring island of Shikoku, and advanced to the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, where they represented southern Japan. There the spectacular winning streak came to an end.

On the night of July 7, 1937, Japanese and Chinese forces near the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing clashed, the two sides firing on one another. War between China and Japan, simmering since Japan’s 1931 incursion into Manchuria, erupted.

Kinu was forced to volunteer because her house was spacious. She was offered a small food allowance to defray her costs and was expected to comply. So it was that the widow and mother of five American children became hostess to soldiers in the Imperial Army and Navy. Kinu cooked for three to five additional, hungry young men on the days she had boarders, filled their baths, and jammed her own family on the second floor. There they huddled, sharing futons so that the strangers could luxuriate below. No one complained. Citizens were expected to do their part. Kinu did worry, though, about the ships of returning soldiers, many prostrate with contagious dysentery from China’s putrefying trenches.

WHEN BEIJING FELL TO JAPAN IN AUGUST 1937, a parallel exodus out of Hiroshima was taking place. While Japanese men were boarding Imperial Navy ships for China, nisei were clambering on Japan Mail steamers for the United States. A Nikkei Club member Ruth Yamada wrote, “It was just a short while since I got acquainted with you but I think I have found a friend in you.” By the time that Harry received her post, she was en route home. These friendships forged in a foreign culture at war were affectionate and intense, tinged by the knowledge that they would be short-lived.

When the Japanese navy sunk the USS Panay gunboat, moored on the Yangtze River outside Nanking, in December 1937, American and Japanese relations deteriorated.

It was rumored that the toilet accounted for one-third of the cost of the house. While the rest of the neighborhood listened for the familiar clop of horse-drawn carts collecting night soil before dawn, Kinu had a septic tank placed behind a wall in the backyard.

As Kinu planted roots in Hiroshima, Harry prepared to leave. He wanted to look like his American pals, not a close-cropped Japanese soldier, so he began growing his hair. He asked his mother to petition the school for permission to deviate from its regulations on hair length. He wrote friends about his imminent departure, including the trustee of his father’s estate, W. A. McLean. He attended rousing farewell parties. And, on March 3, 1938, he strode across the auditorium, bowed to the principal, and accepted his high school diploma. Harry was among the youngest nisei in Sanyō’s graduating class. Harry had kept his end of the bargain. Now his mother was obligated to keep hers. Kinu struggled to keep her sadness at bay. Not only would she lose Harry but also Victor, who had been drafted into the regular army. He was bound for China in six months. When Kinu peered at the dense crowds lining the streets to bid farewell to soldiers, she couldn’t help but notice that the patriotic audience was hardly jubilant. The schoolchildren assigned to wave flags had no choice. Mothers were admonished not to cry. They bowed to convention. It was, the government repeated, an honor to be called to military service.

Tatemae seikatsu (a life of appearances) had nothing to do with real emotions. The battle cry “Die for your country” uttered in public did not begin to address a parent’s haunting fear of heartbreak.

Victor wouldn’t say what happened, but the family later learned that he was regularly beaten because he was nisei. The abuse became more brazen. “They hit him right in front of the family,” Harry recalled. In a military notorious for brutality toward its own for the sake of training, being nisei invited punches.

On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria, annexing it one day later. Japan, too, embroiled in China and governed at home by the military, girded for war. On April 1, the government enacted the National Mobilization Act, taking control of industry, capital, labor, goods, and materials. Over time, this law would permit the tentacles of government to invade almost every aspect of people’s lives.

On the day of his departure, his family accompanied him to Hiroshima Station, where they posed for a photograph in the glare of the midday sun. Aunt Kiyo had brought Harry’s young cousins Toshinao and Kimiko. Everyone was dressed Japanese-style, except for Harry. The boys wore their military-style school uniforms, the women classic striped kimonos; five-year-old Kimiko a smock. Harry, dapper in a three-piece suit, held a fedora and smiled. Kinu appeared drawn; a lock of hair escaped her bun. Frank, who had undergone a growth spurt and reached his big brother’s shoulders, stood close to Harry. Their sleeves touched. Normally buoyed by his big brother, Frank appeared solemn. Each person, caught up in the moment, had no inkling that this was the last time this group would ever be together. When eighteen-year-old Harry climbed the steps to the coach and disappeared inside, Frank blinked back tears. At thirteen, he was the same age Harry had been when they had moved to Hiroshima. For five years, since their father’s death, Frank had viewed Harry as both a father and brother. Never more so than now.

The Great Depression further winnowed opportunities. In 1938, the sputtering recovery and visionary New Deal faltered. That year more than four million lost their jobs, and the stock market slumped. The nisei were considered less desirable than ever. They beat a retreat to West Coast Japantowns, bustling working-class districts bursting with underemployed overachievers. There, too, trudged Harry.

PACIFIC NORTHWEST CLOUD COVER AND THE DAMP chill gave way the farther south Harry traveled. In September 1938 he disembarked to brilliant sunshine and T-shirt temperatures. Los Angeles hummed with people, activity, and ambition. Its population, surpassing more than a million, made it the fifth-largest metropolis in the United States. Priding itself in innovation, Los Angeles had hosted a summer Olympiad at its recently enlarged Coliseum, introduced traffic lights along its handsome boulevards, opened an experimental television station, and converted a bean field into its first drive-in movie theater. While Harry, initially befuddled by his reliably poor sense of direction, was getting the lay of the land, Charlie Chaplin was at home in Beverly Hills, penning his satirical screenplay for The Great Dictator.

Across the street from Three Star Produce sat Walt Disney Studios. Animators working on Bambi required live animals to serve as models for their drawings, and the lot took on the appearance of a zoo. Every day Harry carried over buckets of trimmings—discarded leaves, vegetable skins, and bruised chunks—for the critters, about to be immortalized as Disney’s eternal and irreverent cartoon characters. The Disney Studios sent him a Christmas card signed by Walt Disney in his tidy, looping hand. It was one of the few personal greetings that Harry would receive in Los Angeles.

In September, the same month that Harry set foot in Los Angeles, the League of Nations officially termed Japan an aggressor and recommended support of the Chinese government.

In autumn 1938, when eighteen-year-old Harry was hauling trimmings to the Disney menagerie, fourteen-year-old Frank was finishing his final year of elementary school in Hiroshima. His Japanese was virtually flawless. Proud of Frank’s prowess, Kinu encouraged him to take the rigorous exam for the Hiroshima First Middle School, one of the most prestigious all-boy middle and high schools in the city. When Frank passed the test, Kinu rejoiced.

In early April 1939, Frank was officially inducted into Icchū. The portrait of the serious, mustached, spectacled emperor consecrated the auditorium, supervising his faithful subjects. Regarded as a living god descended from the sun goddess, the ruler was never referred to by his name, Hirohito, but rather as “His Majesty the Emperor.” It didn’t matter that he was a small, homely man with a weak chin and questionable political authority; to even privately entertain such thoughts was high treason. No citizen outside the cabinet had ever heard the god called the “Sacred Crane” speak.

Batakusai was a figurative description for Westerners, who, stereotypically, relished butter and a dairy-rich cuisine. As a pejorative, it carried an unctuous connotation, as if foreigners oozed grease from their pores.