On 8 December 1941, Chidori ran across the frost-covered horse pasture towards the barn where I was changing the oil in my father’s truck. She wore a charcoal-coloured coat, and against the backdrop of the bare maple and birch trees, the grey sky and the snowflakes that fell, the scene was reminiscent of a photograph – as if all colour had drained from the world. Her hair was blowing wild. I hadn’t seen her look that frantic since the time she ran to get me after my father had had an accident on Massey’s boat. He’d gotten caught up in the rigging and had been thrown overboard. Neither Massey nor my father knew how to swim, so he would have definitely drowned if Chidori hadn’t been at the dock the day it happened. The way my father told the story was that she dove in, dragged him to safety, and then took off running to get me before he even had a chance to thank her.
I wiped the grease from my hands with a rag and met her at the barn door. ‘What’s wrong?’
She bent over with her palms propped on her thighs to catch her breath. ‘Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii yesterday. Canada is officially declaring war with Japan. And the United States is finally going to join the war now too.’
‘I know. I heard on the radio. Don’t worry, the Japanese fighters can’t reach us here. It’s too far for the airplanes to fly. And it will be a big help to the effort once all the American troops show up.’
‘You don’t understand.’ She shook her head and sucked back another deep breath. ‘They took Uncle Massey.’
‘Took him? What are you talking about? Who took him? Where?’
Hearing her distress, my father, who had been up in the loft fixing a hole in the barn roof, climbed down the rungs of the ladder as she continued, ‘Constable Stuart showed up at our house in the middle of the night with three men who he deputized on the spot – men who have all worked for my father at some point. My father was out in the greenhouses, stoking the wood stove, when he heard the raucous. The men kicked down the door of Massey’s cabin, dragged him out of bed and shoved him into the back of a car. They arrested him.’ Her gaze flitted back and forth between us, hoping at least one of us would know what to do.
‘Arrested him for what?’ my father asked.
‘We assume for being born in Japan. My father and Tosh asked repeatedly why he was being detained, but nobody would answer them. Maybe it’s because Massey knows so much about politics and they fear he is a dissident. Or the government has started repatriating anyone born in Japan.’
Pop removed his beat-up felt fedora and leaned against the truck. ‘Massey has lived in Canada for over forty years. That can’t be the reason.’
Chidori clutched my father’s arm in desperation. ‘Mr Pierce, you could ask Constable Stuart what the reason is. He’ll talk to you.’
‘He’s not going to tell me anything he hasn’t already told your father.’
‘Yes, he will.’ She clasped her hands together in a prayer position to plead for his assistance. ‘Please. They’ll listen to you because you’re like them.’
Both my father and I were taken back by her comment. Pop ran his hand through his hair and frowned as he considered the situation. My father was a kind, decent, patient and hardworking man, but he didn’t have the wealth, education or social standing of Chidori’s father or Massey. The idea that my father’s skin colour would somehow make him more influential with the officials than her father was preposterous. But, admittedly, probably true.
Chidori started to cry. ‘They took Michiko and her family too. Kenji is beside himself. I don’t know what to do.’
My father and I exchanged a concerned glance as I stretched my arm across her shoulder to pull her safely to my side.
‘They’re going to take the rest of us soon.’ She pressed her hands to her mouth as if she couldn’t bear the words she spoke.
‘Everything will be fine.’ I kissed the top of her head. ‘It’s going to be okay. I promise.’ I hoped my reassurance sounded convincing because the truth was, I really wasn’t sure.
Massey’s arrest was the initial blow to the chin that left us all staggering in confusion. The wallops that followed – like a set of waves – battered, bloodied and bruised us while we were still reeling. On 15 December, eight days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, representatives from the Canadian government showed up on Mayne Island to seize Massey’s boat. I was at the dock when the officers arrived. A skinny man in uniform approached the Issei Sun, so I hopped on board and stood with my hands on my hips. ‘May I help you?’ I asked him.
‘We have the authority to seize the seiner owned by Masaru Setoguchi.’
‘It belongs to me. Massey sold it to me.’
The officer held out his hand. ‘Show me the bill of sale, please.’
‘I don’t have one. It was a verbal agreement.’
‘That won’t do.’
‘Well, it’s going to have to. Fishing is my family’s livelihood. You can’t take something that belongs to someone else.’
‘Actually, I can.’ He held up a poster with the orders that granted him the authority. ‘Vacate the vessel or be arrested.’
I sat down on the cold storage hatch and shrugged defiantly. ‘Arrest me.’
He sighed and pushed his cap back on his head. He obviously wasn’t in the mood to get into an altercation – especially not with someone twenty pounds heavier than he was. Instead, he called Constable Stuart over.
Constable Stuart rested his hands on the railing. ‘Come on, Hayden. They don’t want any trouble. They have to confiscate the vessel by official orders from the government. You can plead your case at the courthouse in Vancouver and maybe buy it back.’
‘Stealing something and selling it back to the rightful owner is bull, and you know it. You’re going to have to arrest me. I’m not leaving.’
Chidori ran up the dock as Constable Stuart and the skinny officer boarded the Issei Sun. They grabbed one of my elbows each. I struggled to free myself and it turned into a wrestling match as they tried to clamp handcuffs around my wrists. Once they triggered my temper, I became impossible to hold down without aggressive force. A knee crushed against my chest. A palm slammed against my throat and locked my head down on the deck. Both officers breathed heavily as I continued to thrash.
‘Hayden, stop resisting,’ Chidori gasped. She boarded the boat and dropped to her knees next to my face. ‘Stop fighting. It’s not worth it. I don’t want you to go to prison. Control your temper. Please. Let it go.’
Her eyes filled with tears, so I stopped struggling and let Constable Stuart lift me to my feet. He torqued my right arm behind my back. ‘I don’t want to arrest you, Hayden, but sure as heck I will if you don’t leave quietly.’
It wasn’t fair that they were stealing Massey’s property, but I wasn’t prepared to abandon Chidori over it. Her hand slid around mine and I let her pull me away from the officers. We climbed off the vessel and she tugged me up the dock towards the Springwater Lodge.
The navy officials roped the entire fleet of Japanese-Canadian-owned fishing boats from all the Gulf Islands together, then towed them in a pontoon towards the mainland. All of the Mayne Island fishermen stood on the dock, watching. Their expressions were flat and didn’t change as the fleet disappeared. I couldn’t muster the same stoicism.
‘Maybe I’ll be able to buy her back.’
Chidori sighed, heavy with doubt, then walked away.
Ten days later, I returned from a trip to Vancouver and ran straight to Chidori’s house from the boat dock. I could see her through the glass in the back greenhouse, stoking the stove to protect the plants from the chill. I paused in front of Massey’s cabin and held up my lantern to the window. Everything was exactly as it had been the day he had been pulled from his bed. The blanket was still strewn on the floor and the desk chair was toppled. I didn’t understand why they had left it that way. Maybe they simply hadn’t gone into the quarters since that day. Or maybe they wanted to keep the stark reminder of his last moments in his home. It bothered me to let the marks of the scuffle remain, so I pushed the door open, righted the chair, and made the bed. I didn’t really know why I had to fix it, I just did.
Chidori didn’t hear me sneak up behind her in the greenhouse. ‘Merry Christmas,’ I whispered in her ear and tickled her waist.
She spun around. ‘Oh my goodness, you startled me.’
‘Sorry.’ I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close so our noses touched. ‘I couldn’t wait to bring by your Christmas gift.’
‘Oh, Hayden, I’m so glad you’re home, but I don’t feel much like celebrating Christmas this year. I don’t think I’ll have the desire to celebrate again until the war is over.’
‘Well, I do feel like celebrating.’
‘Why? Did you convince the officials in Vancouver to sell the Issei Sun back to you?’
‘No, unfortunately that didn’t work out as I’d hoped. They’ve impounded over a thousand confiscated boats in Annieville and my request to buy it back could take months. It’s a shame because they have them moored together where the low tide will damage the hulls. They’ll be lucky if half of them don’t end up sunk before the paper work is done. But I don’t want that to ruin my favourite time of year. We deserve a positive moment during this dark time, don’t you think?’
After a hesitation she reluctantly agreed. ‘We should honour Christ’s birthday. You’re right.’
I handed her the new journal with a floral-print cover that my sister had helped me pick out when I was in Vancouver. ‘It’s not the Issei Sun, but you’ll probably get more use out of a journal than you would a fishing vessel.’
‘Thank you.’ Chidori ran her hand over the cover. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She reached into her pocket and placed something light and flat on the palm of my hand. A small portrait photograph of her looking over her shoulder at the camera. Her hair was pinned up with a peony tucked behind her ear. ‘I didn’t have a chance to buy a frame for it,’ she apologized.
‘I don’t need a frame. I’m going to keep it right here.’ I slid it into my left chest pocket and tapped it lightly. ‘Close your eyes,’ I whispered as I pushed her sleeve up her arm. She peeked with one eye, which made me chuckle. ‘No peeking.’ I wrapped the gold charm bracelet around her wrist and kissed her below her ear. ‘Okay. Open your eyes.’
She beamed and held her hand up to examine the charms that sparkled against her skin. ‘Oh, the tiny bird is so darling.’
‘I picked that one because Chidori means one thousand birds.’
Her head tilted to the side with a surprised curiosity as her smile stretched even bigger. ‘How did you remember that? I told you years ago.’
‘I remember everything about you.’
She kissed me appreciatively, then examined the other charms. One was a tiny heart and one was a seal pup. ‘Thank you, Hayden. This is beautiful and incredibly thoughtful. You should have saved your money, though, in case the sawmill shuts down.’
‘If it brings you joy, there is nothing I’d rather spend my money on.’ I rearranged some bags of seed into a seat, tugged her hand, and coaxed her to sit on my lap. ‘I left blank spaces because I want to fill them with other charms over time.’
‘I love that idea. I’m never going to take it off.’ She sighed, wrought with worry, and her body weight sunk to rest against my chest. ‘While you were gone, they issued a curfew on people of Japanese descent. Constable Stuart came by and told us we can’t go out between dusk and dawn.’
‘I know. When Pop and I were in Vancouver we heard that the Japanese-Canadian students at the University of British Columbia can’t even be on the campus after dark, which means they can’t use the library in the evening or attend football practice and things like that. There’s talk that the Japanese Canadians who are supposed to graduate this spring won’t be granted their degrees.’
Her eyes blinked with a profound slowness as the unfairness and the implication that her studies would be put on hold indefinitely sunk in. She exhaled and squeezed my hand. ‘Hayden, we need to prepare for the inevitability that they are going to force my family into a work camp in the interior of the province. You and I are going to be separated.’
‘There has to be a way to prevent it.’
‘You won’t be able to stop them.’ She sat up with her eyebrows creased together and desperation in her voice. ‘If you fight. They’ll arrest you.’
‘They can’t send innocent people to work camps.’
‘They took Uncle Massey.’ She sprung to her feet and swung her arm to point angrily at the door, or maybe at the world. ‘He’s innocent. He has a right to a trial by jury of his peers, but how do they propose to provide that basic civil right if he committed no crime? The only thing he did wrong was to be born in Japan and arrive here when he was two years old. If he’s not at one of those work camps, or in prison, then it means they sent him back to Japan, and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.’
I stood and cradled her cheeks in my palms. I wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay and the war would be over soon, but I didn’t believe it enough any more to say it. I sighed and pulled her to my chest. I didn’t know what to say. The only thing that came to mind was, ‘We are strong enough to survive whatever happens.’