Newcastle, California * September 23, 1943
When he arrives back at the boardinghouse, Bonner finds a bundle of brown parchment tied up with string waiting for him on the entry hall table: miscellaneous documents forwarded over from the sheriff’s office. Deputy Henderson likely dropped them off and Rosalind left them here. Bonner recognizes the hand of Sheriff Whitcomb in the thoughtful delivery, too—the sheriff’s not-so-subtle way of suggesting Bonner work the case from some location other than Whitcomb’s office from here on out.
Bonner takes the bundle upstairs, unwraps it, and begins laying out each item on the bed. The majority of the documents are items sent from the Yamadas’ barracks in the Tule Lake Relocation Center. There are keepsakes, letters, and other documents. There are photographs, too, of the Yamada family throughout the years. And a photograph that includes Louis and Harry, along with all the members of the barnstorming act from the time when it was still “Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus.”
Bonner sets the image apart from the others and stares intently at it. He picks out Harry on the far left, standing next to Louis. Next is Ava . . . and then the two men he guessed were the circus’s original pilots, Buzz and Hutch. Earl Shaw is in the shot, too, standing on the far right, dressed in a colorful red-and-black suit, as though he were the ringleader of a more traditional circus. In the photo, Earl has one arm around his wife, Cleo, the other angled in the air as though to showcase the two biplanes parked behind them. Bonner can read CASTOR painted in gold lettering on one plane, and POLLUX on the other. While everyone in the photograph is smiling, it seems to Bonner that there is a suggestion in their expressions and postures signifying a shared dislike of Earl, which lends the photograph a slightly amusing air.
After staring at the photograph for several minutes, Bonner slips it back into a file folder and returns his attention to the other photographs and documents. He reaches for the folder that contains all the Yamadas’ official records: birth certificates, internment papers . . . death certificates, too.
As Bonner looks these over, contemplating all the tragedy the Yamada family has had to endure, he begins to reconsider the possibility that the crash was an act of suicide after all. There were plenty of reasons Kenichi and Harry would be tempted to die by their own hands. Perhaps Louis’s strange, abrupt reaction—as though something had clicked in his brain—and the faint traces of guilt Bonner was sure he’d detected in Louis’s demeanor were merely the grief any man feels upon discovering his friend has chosen death over life. Could that be the truth of the matter all along? Throughout the entire investigation, Bonner had been so focused on Louis Thorn—Was he capable of murder? Did he ever really intend to return that land? What sort of people were the Thorns, anyway?—that Bonner neglected to really delve into the Yamadas’ experience and whether or not it would make sense for Kenichi and Harry to have a role in the crash after all.
Bonner realizes he didn’t want to know that much about the Yamadas’ time in the camps because he did not want to have to imagine their struggle or dwell on their pain.
Now, looking at one document, letter, and photograph at a time, Bonner allows himself to let it all in: the Yamadas’ lives in internment; the hardship, humiliation, and grief they had to put up with; the reasons Harry and Kenichi might have decided on death during those last moments, soaring high in the air.