Sand

Who decides right and wrong? Who decides which actions are worth punishment? I do not know. All I know is that one moment I was at home, watching Mother bake and going to school and playing games in the back yard. The next I was on a bus headed to a camp, that’s the only word everyone said when they tried to explain, I heard relocation camp, interment camp, and even concentration camp. I was afraid. I was being forced to move away. I was just seven. What did I know of war, of hate? I’d never been to the desert and then there I was living in Gila River in Arizona. I’d only ever seen Arizona in maps before. My parents tried to take our situation lightly and keep the seriousness of it from me, but I could tell something was wrong. Especially because of my older brother Yoji. He was ten years older than me. He hated the camp and hated the fact that the government decided we weren’t American. As soon as he turned eighteen he enlisted and was taken to France. We never saw him again. My younger sister Ruth was three, thank God and she doesn’t remember the harsh reality we faced. She didn’t remember the sand in her hair or face, or the tension in the air, or the tears of mother’s who lost their sons in a world across the ocean. I couldn’t understand why we were there. why all around me there were people that looked like my siblings, like my father, like Mrs. Yamamoto down the block, who made cookies and lemonade and treated me like a granddaughter, were locked up, under the hot sun, necks craned towards the sky, as if wishing to be free like birds. Later I would hear that Gila River was the least oppressive of these types of camps, but the sadness in the air and the desire to be free was just as strong as anywhere else. There were too many of us too, and the infirmary was kept busy by rattlesnake bites and scorpion stings. There were still fences and men looking at us with suspicion in their eyes. Didn’t they know that father was just as patriotic as all the other men on our block? That Yoji didn’t even feel Japanese? That I was the only third grader in my school to know all the American presidents all the way back to George Washington? However, the fact that we were Americans prisoners in our country wasn’t what bothered me the most. What bothered me was the fact that those who imprisoned us looked like my neighbors and classmate and teachers too. They looked like my best friend Penny, who was my exact same dress size, so we would switch sometimes during recess. They looked like Tyler Mayhew, who I had a crush on, even though he said all girls were nasty and slimy. Boys. They looked like Mr. Penn who ran the corner grocery tore I’d walk to from my house. They looked like my teachers and people I passed in the street. They looked like some of Yoji’s friends, or Ruth’s. I remember the taste of that was much more bitter than sandy water.

This piece was supposed to show the point of view of a girl in the Gila River facility that housed Japanese American being interned during WW2. I picked Gila River because it was more humane but still a camp and in the desert, which therefore includes all the hazards of the land. It is located on Gila River Tribe land and is currently restricted by the Tribe.