MATSUE TANIWA IS SIPPING COFFEE at her kitchen table, gazing at the birch tree outside her Thunder Bay home. She runs her weathered, elegant hands through her wiry white hair and thinks about getting a perm. Two great-grandsons are chasing each other in and out of the kitchen, squealing at the top of their lungs when the phone rings.
“Quiet, you two,” Matsue shouts, picking up the receiver.
“Hi, Mom. How are you doing?”
“Stanley! How was your trip?” Matsue asks. Her son is calling from his home in rural Manitoba, so she doesn’t hear from him often.
“I just got back yesterday. Something incredible happened in Chemainus.”
“Oh?” Matsue says.
“You won’t believe this, Mom. I asked some people on the street what they knew about the Japanese community. I explained that I was just a baby when everyone was evacuated and I wanted to find out where I was born. They told me to talk to the people in the murals’ office.”
“The murals’ office?” she asks.
“Well, apparently the town was in a recession after the saw-mill shut down in 1983. Someone came up with an idea to paint the town’s history on the walls of stores and offices.”
“So?” Matsue is puzzled.
“The idea was to attract tourists and it worked. People started coming from all over, and the economy boomed. They’ve been painting murals since then, and lately they’ve been talking about painting one of the Japanese community.”
“Well, isn’t that something,” she says.
“Yeah. Anyways, I introduced myself to the lady in the murals’ office. She showed me a bunch of old pictures. There was one of the baseball team with Dad, Uncle Hitoshi and Uncle Marchi. I recognized them right away. I kind of fell apart seeing it, especially Dad.”
Matsue waits for him to continue.
“I think it was fate, my going there then. I mean, I only went to Chemainus to see where I was born, and I find out that the town wants this mural. Actually, they want one of a fellow who formed a Japanese boy scout troop in Chemainus.”
“That would be Shige,” Matsue says.
“Yeah.” They are going through all these old pictures, trying to find one with him and his troop. They’re having trouble coming up with one that everybody likes.
“Anyways, when the woman in the office found out that I am an artist, she said I should send them my portfolio. If they like my work, there’s a good chance I’ll be painting the mural across the street from where Dad grew up and where you lived in that store.”
Matsue sits down, not knowing what to say.
Stanley is forty-nine years old and a lot like her renegade husband—complex, talented, clever, and good-looking. He was only fourteen when his father died, and younger still when Norey deserted the family. Of all the kids, he needed more answers. Not that it was easy for any of them; it was just that Stanley inherited some wild, restless seed from Norey. For both, it created a frustrated driven destiny that had caused a lot of misery. But life had taught Stanley a few things. He was less likely to blame others now and looked inside himself for solutions. Norey never got so far.
“Well, that’s a real coincidence, isn’t it?” Matsue finally replies. “When will you paint it?”
“I haven’t got the job yet, Mom.”
“No, but you will, won’t you?”
Stanley laughs. “Oh, yes, I will. It’ll be next July, in time for the reunion in August.”
“Reunion?”
“Oh yeah, didn’t I say? Everybody who used to live there is invited back. Maybe you’d rather not go, but think about it, okay? I have to go now, but we’ll talk about it again.”
After hanging up, Matsue shuffles into the living room and eases herself onto the couch. At seventy-four she is finally able to relax and enjoy life. It has been a long time coming. Her children know what she has been through, and her grandchildren have some vague understanding of her past. But her great-grandchildren are too young to take any interest. She thinks it best to let bygones be bygones anyway. Life is too short to stay bitter, and she is proud of the family she has raised.
Matsue leans her head against the back of the couch and stares at the family portrait on the facing wall. She knows how important it is for Stanley to reconcile his past, but Norey brought her nothing but heartache and trouble right from day one. She was twenty, working in a yardgoods store in Steveston when a friend of her father’s introduced them. Her memory of the occasion is as vivid as if it were yesterday.
“Matsue, this is Norimichi.”
“Call me Norey,” the man says with a smile.
“Hello,” Matsue replies, briefly daring to look up. He is very handsome, but much older than her.
“Would you like to go to a show?” Norey asks. “I hear Charlie Chaplin is playing up the street.”
Matsue smiles and nods her head.
“I’ll come back for you when the store closes,” Norey says.
She feels uneasy after they leave. She likes the boyfriend she has now, but she doesn’t know how to say no to this strange man. Her mother, Tazu, has already told her that the go-between was going to introduce her to someone more suitable.
“But what about my boyfriend?” Matsue had asked her mother. “I really like him. Maybe he’ll ask me to marry him.”
Tazu was firm: “If you marry Norimichi and things don’t work out, you can always come back to us. But if you go marry the guy you like and anything happens, don’t come back to us crying.”
Matsue is afraid to go against her mother’s will. She is expected to obey her parents and always has. Besides, maybe they are right. Parents know what is best for their children.
A fisherman’s daughter, Matsue worked hard throughout her adolescence. She went fishing with her father and did the bulk of the housework from age twelve on. They were poor, but almost everyone was. Her childhood was crowded with happy memories of Steveston, crabbing and fishing with other kids. After grade school, she worked in farm labour pools, which she hated, and in fish canneries, which she liked. Once she worked in a North Vancouver cannery, earning seven cents for each tray of cans she filled with salmon. She lived in a dormitory with other working girls, and it turned out to be great fun. At nineteen, she worked as a domestic for a high class family in Vancouver, just to get away from home. In between her various jobs, she went to dressmaking school. When she got the job in the yardgoods store, she was ready to come home for good. Now she is about to marry a strange man and move to Vancouver Island. She shivers at the thought.
On April 4, 1937, three months after her twenty-first birthday, Matsue Hikida marries Norimichi Taniwa in the Shinto-Buddhist church in Steveston. She is wearing a white satin gown with a six-foot train and carries a full bouquet of red roses and forget-me-nots. Her fair skin glows in the candlelight as she and her thirty-year-old groom sip sake to consecrate the marriage. In his black tuxedo, Norey bears the fine-grained good looks of a movie star. They take a splendid picture.
After the ceremony, the wedding party boards a tugboat. Matsue’s bridesmaids carry her train as she parades down the wharf and steps onto the deck of the tug. Luckily, it is a fine sunny day with only a gentle breeze. To protect her dress and hair, she stays below for the journey across the Strait of Georgia. Everyone else squeezes in too—her parents, the go-between, bridesmaids, flower girls, Norey’s best man, and Norey. The knot in her stomach feels thick and gnarled like the tug’s bow line. She is especially nervous about meeting her in-laws for the first time. They will be waiting for her arrival in Chemainus, where they are holding the reception. Thinking about it, Matsue feels faint.
Norey loves an audience and entertains everyone with stories. She begins to relax. But when the captain pulls up to the Chemainus government wharf and shoves the gear in reverse to dock, her insides go into reverse too. As she steps onto the wharf and looks up, her worst fears are confirmed. Scores of people stretch the length of the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of Norey’s bride.
She holds her bouquet as if it were her lifeline, trying un-successfully to stop shaking. The bridesmaids pick up her train and, with Norey at her side, they walk the gauntlet of curious strangers to the community hall. It is the most unnerving fif-teen minutes of her life, but Norey is in his element.
Matsue regains some composure as she climbs the steps to the reception hall where her in-laws are waiting. She knows they may treat her like a slave, as is often the case for women who marry the oldest son, but they welcome her kindly. She sighs with relief as she enters the hall, thinking the worst is over.
More than ten years earlier, Matsue’s father-in-law, Risaburo, talked the other community leaders into raising funds for this hall. It hadn’t taken much to convince them that the town needed a proper Japanese language school, as well as a place for community functions. In addition to judo tournaments, community musicals, and funerals, Risaburo reasoned that the hall could host wedding receptions too. Men like Harunobu Higashi, with his reputation for violent-tempered binges, worked alongside men like Chiyoki Yoshida, a gentle man renowned for his skills as a craftsman carpenter. The community pooled its resources to build a hall that celebrated Canada’s Diamond Jubilee in 1927, providing a focus for activity from then on.
Sitting quietly after her gruelling entry to Chemainus, Matsue knows none of the history of the community hall or its occupants. Hers is not the first wedding party here, but the reception is typical of the others: men drink sake, get happy, and sing; women visit friends and neighbours. Matsue perches on the edge of her chair, bewildered and unsure where to turn. Norey is drinking with his father and friends. He hardly seems to know she is there.
A few months earlier, Norey helped Risaburo build a confectionary store on the northwest corner of Oak and Croft Streets. Although he works hard as a millwright in the sawmill across the street, Norey gambles his paycheque away. Risaburo thought a wife and a store might keep his eldest son occupied during his off-work hours, away from Chinatown and out of debt.
To keep peace with his parents, Norey agrees to the plan. Then his friend Hitoshi offers to bring his pool table from Okada camp and set it up in the back of the store. Following a soak in the communal bath at the end of his shift, Norey goes home to supper and a night of pool with his friends. Circumstances always seem to turn to his advantage.
Matsue gradually feels her way into the community and makes friends with neighbours. She often surveys her world from the upstairs window, trying to fit this piece of her life into place. The sawmill whistle echoes across Horseshoe Bay every morning, noon and night. She has been told that activity in the harbour has dropped off dramatically since the Depression, but sometimes she catches glimpses of Penelakut and Chemainus Native stevedores at work. The population in Kawahara’s camp has declined too. Norey tells her that the bunkhouse housed sixty sawmill workers at one time. Only a handful of bachelors are left. The streets are quiet, except that children going to and from school show up like clockwork.
Some days she studies the indigo silhouette of the island where the Indians go to school. Occasionally, she sees them pile onto the ferry at the Chemainus wharf, identifying with the slump in their demeanour as they leave. It is more than loneliness; it is a disquieting fear of having lost something critical en route to a stranger’s world.
A month after the wedding, Matsue becomes violently ill. She is pregnant and can’t look at food, let alone cook or eat it. She tries carrying on as usual, cooking for her husband and fixing sandwiches for customers in the store. But the sight and smell of food sends her retching to the back room. She is losing weight and miserable. Norey agrees to send her home for a while.
Matsue stays with her parents in Steveston for two months. Her mother sits by her bed in the morning, telling stories of her childhood on a rice farm near Kyoto. Matsue gradually gains strength and goes out for long walks by the sea with old friends. The worst of the morning sickness subsides, and she says goodbye to her parents again.
In February 1938, she gives birth to a girl. Her labour is not complicated, but the nurse orders Matsue to stay in bed for a week after Susie is born. Matsue watches the Indian women get up and walk around the same day they have their babies.
“Why can’t I walk around?” Matsue asks.
The nurse tucks in her sheet and smiles. “Indians are different,” she says. “They are just like animals. That’s why they can do that and we can’t.”
Matsue mulls this over. It’s true that the Indians are strong. They live in the bush and paddle to town in big canoes. Maybe the nurse is right. The Indian mothers are long gone by the time she is discharged two weeks later.
Everyone pampers Susie at home, especially Risaburo. He cradles his granddaughter while Matsue prepares supper. Every so often, she stalks over to peek at Susie. Her eyes shine like Orion in a winter sky. Risaburo rocks back and forth, whispering haiku in her ear in the falling light.
A year and a half passes. Risaburo gets lost mushroom picking one fall day in 1939, and everything takes a turn for the worse. Norey’s search party finds him the next day, shivering with cold. Not long after, he goes back to Japan. Susie misses her walks with her grandfather. Risaburo was like a magnet to every kid in the neighbourhood. She loved it when they all came rushing towards her, clinging to her carriage until they skirted under the wharf to the rocky beach.
Kenny follows Susie in April 1940, and then Stanley arrives in September 1941. When Kenny is old enough to walk, Susie grabs his hand and waltzes off to the beach where she went with her grandfather. She remembers the thrill of having his undivided attention as they explored the tideline. Now she shows Kenny the miniature crabs scrambling for cover under the over-turned rocks. Matsue minds the store and waits for them to saunter into view, all wet and mucky but still hand in hand.
Matsue and Norey are relatively happy together. She doesn’t have time to be lonely any more, what with laundry, knitting, sewing, cooking, minding the children, and tending the store. Occasionally, Norey goes gambling in Chinatown, but most nights he comes home after work and plays pool, giving her a break from the store if not the children. In the summer he plays baseball after work, bringing his buddies back for a soda pop and a game of pool. Matsue enjoys the baseball season too. It is an outing for her and the children, who love being in the midst of the roaring crowd. Besides, Norey works hard providing for the family. She does not begrudge him his fun.
Whenever the community stages plays at the hall, Norey is sure to be involved. He is a born actor, thriving on drama in real life as well. Onstage he gives his own children such a fright that they run crying to their mother. Afraid of the zealous old man with wild grey hair who rants through his marauding act, they don’t recognize him. But to the adults, it is quintessential Norey, his enigmatic character on dazzling dis-play.
He underestimates his own need for stability, however. When the humdrum events of their lives are catapulted sky-ward, real-life rage begins to consume him.
The day after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, Norey comes home from work to find Matsue changing Stanley’s diaper.
“Where’s my supper?” he demands.
“It’s on the stove, Norey,” she says. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“You better be,” he yells, pounding his fist on the wall. “I want my food on the table when I come home.”
Matsue pins Stanley’s diaper into place as quickly as she can. He is ten weeks old and a real little wriggler. Norey is tapping his fingers angrily on the table when she walks into the kitchen. She lays Stanley on his blanket and serves her husband’s dinner without a word. Norey has always been demanding, but never threatening.
Matsue has no idea where Pearl Harbor is and doesn’t really understand what all the fuss is about. After all, they were born and raised in Canada, albeit with strong Japanese influences. As far as she is concerned, they are just ordinary, quiet people minding their own business.
But when the RCMP escort Otoji Okinobu out of Gihei Kawahara’s bunkhouse, she begins to fear more than her hus-band. They arrive without warning for the fifty-one-year-old labourer on December 8, 1941. He isn’t given much time to gather any personal effects but manages to sign a cheque over to Tomoki Kawabe. As secretary of the jijikai—the association that looks after affairs in the Japanese community—Otoji clears out the jijikai account for his colleague to give to the Canadian Red Cross.
The police never find any evidence of espionage, but everyone knows he is a vocal, ardent supporter of Japan. Otoji accepts his fate without protest and vanishes. After the RCMP take him to the lock-up in Vancouver’s immigration building, he goes to Petawawa and Angler, the only two POW camps in Canada. A year later he is released to work for a logging company in northern Ontario. No one in Chemainus ever hears from him again.
Like most of her peers, Matsue does not know Mr. Okinobu well. But the news of his apprehension frightens her just the same. She wonders who will be next, and nearly faints when the Mounties show up at the store one day. She forgot they were coming for their radios and hunting rifles. Norey hadn’t. He hid a small radio under his mattress so he could follow the news. When she goes to bed at night, Matsue finds him listening to muffled broadcasts under the sheets.
Norey continues working at the mill for awhile, but the Mounties force them to close the store. Matsue learns that all Japanese-born men are being shipped to road camps and immediately thinks of her father in Steveston. But she has no quick way of communicating and waits months before she learns of his whereabouts. Next comes the news that they will be evacuated, and she begins to pack their belongings.
When she learns that they can only take one piece of luggage each, Matsue throws up her hands in disbelief. She can’t possibly fit enough diapers and clothes into a few suitcases. She consults a neighbour and learns that the sawmill company store is selling canvas duffle bags, which hold a lot more than an average suitcase. The cash register is ringing constantly when she gets there, Stanley perched on her hip. After grab-bing two duffle bags, she joins the line-up. An old man in front of her is shaking his head back and forth, whispering shikataga-nai under his breath.
Norey boards up the windows the week before they are supposed to leave. But the ship is delayed a month, so Matsue struggles on in their upstairs living quarters without daylight. Thankfully, Susie and Kenny play hide-and-seek among the cartons piled up everywhere. Their antics and laughter help her stay sane, just as meeting their needs forces her to keep depression at bay.
One day in March she hears Norey arguing with someone downstairs. “Who was that?” she asks later.
“It was the driver from Nanaimo Bottling Works trying to collect thirty-eight dollars I owe them for stock,” Norey says.
“Did you pay him?” Matsue asks, worried that they might not have enough money for food with Norey not working.
“I told him I’d pay him half if he’d settle the account. He phoned his boss in Nanaimo, but the idiot said no. His boss told him that I was trying to take advantage of the situation. What a joke! I gave him five bucks and four dollars’ worth of pop and told him to get lost.”
Norey kicks a box on the floor, swearing. Stanley wakes up wailing. Matsue holds her head in her hands and presses as hard as she possibly can.
On April 19, she scrounges through her kitchen and manages to bake a cake for Kenny’s second birthday. He claps his palms together and giggles with delight at the candles. Susie blows them out for him with one huge puff and gives him a finger full of icing. She is three-and-a-half, not oblivious to the stress at home but excited about going on a boat ride in two days.
Susie and Kenny walk to the steamship holding hands on April 21. It is a beautiful spring day, with the scent of lilacs in the air. Down on the docks, Matsue cradles Stanley while Norey heaves the duffle bags on top of the growing pile. Norey sees Shige Yoshida by the ship’s gangplank and squeezes his way towards him. Matsue can see Shige waving his arms about, pointing here and there. Virtually everyone is vying for his attention.
Almost seven months old, Stanley is getting heavy in her arms. Eyes wide, he is fascinated with the hub-bub. She nuzzles his cheek and looks up to see her fifty-four-year-old mother-in-law carrying bags of diapers down the dock. Hitoshi is following her, juggling three suitcases. Shizuka’s sister has her nephew Richard in her arms, plus her own three children in tow. Shizuka follows, holding tight to the railing, pale as a frayed bedsheet. Matsue turns to call Norey over to help them, but all she can see is an ocean of black hair, bobbing up and down like apples in a barrel of water. Voices shout over the tops of heads. A few hakujin kids search for school buddies in the chaos. Kenny and Susie cling to her skirt and she breaks down, joining the collective wail of women of all ages.
At twenty-six, Matsue leaves Chemainus the same way she arrived five years earlier: inside a boat, facing the unknown without choice in the matter. Life as she knows it will never be the same, but she proves herself a survivor. The indignity of Hastings Park and the difficulties of internment camp life aside, it is Norey who is nearly her undoing. Whatever shenanigans he might have been up to in Chemainus, he always came home and provided for her and the children. His wrath changes all that. Powerless to wrestle with the authorities, he abuses Matsue emotionally, a subconscious salve perhaps to his own humiliation and pain.
During their years in Lemon Creek, rumours abound that he is unfaithful to her. When he isn’t home by midnight one summer night, she summons the courage to confront him at the shack where others have seen him. Matsue runs the long streets, a fleeting shadow in the black, balmy night. Pausing to catch her breath in front of the hut, she searches for a glimpse of her husband. The lights are on, but no one moves inside. Pulling her sweater tight across her shoulders, she tiptoes toward the door. Matsue raises her hand to knock, but nerve fails her. She knows he is there; she knows he will deny it tomorrow. Hurt follows her back to her bed, where she lies listening to the darkness between her and her sleeping children.
Despite her husband’s philandering, Matsue bears three more of his children in Lemon Creek. Norma is three, Norman is one, and Raymond is still a baby when they leave the internment camp for Long Lac, Ontario in 1946. The family survives two winters in the northern bush without electricity or hot running water. In 1948, Norey injures himself on the job and leaves to look for other work. That summer the family moves again. A few weeks after they arrive in Fort William, Matsue has her seventh and last child, a boy named Wayne. Two years later, Norey walks out of their lives, leaving her to feed, house, and clothe the children on her own.
She finds a job in a Chinese restaurant, earning eighty dol-lars a month. Seven nights a week, she washes up the supper dishes and stokes the stove with wood and coal before heading off to work. Her neighbours check on her family while she puts in her hours at the restaurant, falling into bed after her shift ends at two a.m. All too soon, she is up again to get the children ready for school.
Over the years, she finds other jobs and manages to get a day off every week. In the summer, she takes her children on picnics and meets new friends. Life isn’t easy, but it isn’t hell any more either.
In 1955, Matsue learns her forty-eight-year-old husband is dying of stomach cancer in a Vancouver hospital. Unable to afford to take her children to see him before he dies, she tries to help them understand. One night news of his death awaits her when she gets home from work. Widowed at thirty-nine, she collapses in a heap, pounding the floor in one mixed-up rush of grief and anger.
The next morning, she dons her waitress uniform and walks to work in the rain.