Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [96]
Joey and the band came out of the canteen hut into a riot: internee coal workers demanding better wages had been fired. Docility exploded into rage, the air filled with flying bricks and insults. Mortified, Joey realised that while he and the band had been rehearsing a concert of American music inside the hut, men had been marching to a different beat outside.
Autumn ushered in a bitter season: dishes of Thanksgiving dinner lying untouched – ‘Thanksgiving? For what?’ Japanese festivals were celebrated without joy; Christmas an uneasy mixture of coloured lanterns and carol-singing. Santa Claus figures made of cheese and sticky rice, and decorated trees that looked neither Japanese nor altogether American. A bleak New Year.
*
Joey was on his bed, eyes closed, open book on his chest, when Ichir threw open the door.
‘Are you asleep?’
‘I’m deep in the Mexican pueblo with Ruth Benedict.’
‘Tell her to get screwed.’
‘Ichi, they’re so Japanese. The culture of restraint—’
‘The whole camp’s buzzing.’ A baffled shake of the head.
‘There’s a loyalty questionnaire. I just read it. It’s garbage. Joey, these guys are nuts. They want us to swear loyalty? To a country that’s put us behind barbed wire. Does that make sense?’
‘They’re always paranoid—’
‘There are two special questions that need a yes to get you through. They want everyone to renounce Japanese citizenship. Who do they think they’re kidding? Some of the old people, that’s the only citizenship they have, the government never would allow them to become US citizens. It’s lose–lose: if they sign they’ll be stateless.
‘And they have to agree to renounce allegiance to the Emperor. People are totally bewildered, scared: it’s like they’ve been supporting the Emperor till now. Like when did you stop beating your wife. The old ones are in tears. All over camp, you can hear them crying. They’re lost, Joey, we’re all lost. What the fuck is going to become of us?’
Without waiting for an answer he slammed out of the hut. Joey got up and watched him walking away fast, shoulders hunched, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head from side to side, like a dog shaking off water.
Joey suspected this would turn out to be one of those camp myths, but it was genuine: ‘The loyalty questionnaire must be completed by all internees over 17 years of age.’ Men and women ranging from the resentful to the bewildered, some not even able to read English, were confronted by a long list of questions that must be answered, signed and witnessed without delay.
*
The admin office door was open but Joey waited outside, watching the slightly overweight lieutenant studying papers. Finally he looked up and indicated with a slow blink that he was available. He waited, jaws moving, gum shifting from side to side. Silently Joey dropped his documents on the desk. The lieutenant squinted at the papers, drew them towards him with the flat of his hand and glanced at them with a glazed, almost exhausted look. He glanced up, then back at the papers.
‘Okaay . . .’
Joey recognised the tone, a familiar symptom of suspicion. At the filing cabinet the lieutenant checked the papers against documents in a folder. The sight of an apparently all-American internee threw him. The officer found himself on the back foot and didn’t like the position.
He sat down across the desk, the swivel chair squeaking under heavy buttocks, and handed Joey a questionnaire, one of a pile stacked in a wire tray. Taking his time Joey studied each page carefully. He sensed the lieutenant’s growing impatience, the chair squeaking as he moved, his leg jiggling, fingers tapping the desktop as Joey read his way to the last page.
‘How d’you respond?’
‘For a start the questionnaire