Chapter 17 Present Day
PRESENT DAY
JULIA
Peggy, the historian for the Fort Missoula Museum, had been kind to spend time with Julia after her shift had ended.
She had drawn a map to the cemetery and the plot where Julia could find his gravestone.
Peggy explained that because Julia’s great-great-grandfather was first generation Japanese American, the government never granted him American citizenship and considered him a non-resident alien.
Subsequent family members born in the United States were made citizens but still considered resident aliens.
These terms made Julia cringe.
In the government’s mind, the Issei were potentially the greatest threat to the U.S. during the war because of their stronger ties and perhaps the most loyalty to the Emperor of Japan. Peggy produced news articles full of paranoid hysteria, demonizing the Issei as spies and saboteurs.
The file on Julia’s great-great-grandfather was quite thin because he died before he could defend himself at the Alien Enemy Hearing Board.
Julia still couldn’t get over the fact that many of the translators were Korean and may have spoken little Japanese.
She couldn’t imagine defending yourself with both hands tied behind your back from a language standpoint—speaking their truth and getting imprisoned because the translations of their words were incorrect.
How frustrating that had to have been. Why didn’t this board have Japanese translators?
I guess in someone’s mind, all Asians are the same.
She’d thanked Peggy and drove to the cemetery.
Julia sat on a bench in the Fort Missoula Post Cemetery at the site of her great-great-grandfather’s headstone.
She held her new journal on her lap. She hated that this sadness would be the first entry, but Doctor Sato encouraged her to let her emotions flow onto the paper, whatever discoveries unfolded.
So, Julia took pen in hand and began to fill the journal. She wrote:
The entire story stinks. I feel numb. NO, I’m angry.
How does the world get to be so f-ed up?
Families just trying to carve out lives for themselves are rounded up like animals and locked away, when their only crime had been being born in Japan.
The media was no help, whipping up hatred against the “Japs” with many disgusting slogans.
Sitting here in this peaceful place, the sun casting golden glows over the mountains, birds singing their evening lullabies, bathed in a warm summer breeze—in this peace-loving liberal college town—it is nearly impossible to picture all these men behind barbed wire and guard towers.
How did I not know this? Do the people of Missoula that drive by here day after day know the darkness that took place here?
To think of my great-great grandmother who watched the FBI men take her husband away, to never see him again.
Did she ever get to sit here and mourn his loss?
She too was imprisoned in a place in Idaho, Minidoka.
What was that like? What were the conditions there like?
I guess it is no surprise that Grandmama was confused.
I know now what I know, and I’m confused.
I wish I knew her name…my great-great grandmother.
How strong she had to have been. Coming to the U.S.
as a picture bride in the early 1900s, carving out a life with a man she had never met until she stepped off the boat.
Surviving who knows what hardships, and then at nearly fifty, arrested with her family, separated from her husband, and sent to the middle of Idaho with only the possessions she could carry.
Doctor Sato thought it would be good for me to understand my maternal lineage. No wonder there are parts of me I don’t understand. I’m not sure I understand any of this.
Julia put her journal down and sighed, fluffy clouds turned pink by the setting sun drifted overhead.
She looked at the small headstone engraved with three Japanese characters, faded with time. “Hiroshi Yamamoto,” she whispered, then lifted her journal and continued writing:
I’m embarrassed that I knew nothing about this. What does that say about me? What a sheltered life I’ve lived. Maybe why I enjoy working in the free medical clinic. Helping people whose life has not been fair…the outcast…the least of these.
All the genes that have been passed down through the generations, could there be any truth to what Doctor Sato had said about emotions passed down through our DNA?
Maybe it’s possible, maybe I’m living proof that fears and trauma cling onto our genetic code somehow.
The trauma that great-great-grandmother went through passed to her child and so forth.
After all, Mom is not so different in personality from Grandmama.
But if bad things are passed down, so would good traits, like kindness and generosity.
My doctor talks about a vortex of bad energy that spins in the world, creating fear and hatred, but it’s counteracted with an opposite vortex of goodness… of love. Is that possible?
What do I do with all of this now?
Julia closed her journal and set it down beside her on the granite bench.
Somehow, this burst of emotion filled her with inspiration to continue her work to become a doctor.
Then what? She did not know. But before she headed back to Seattle and her studies, she decided to drive to Minidoka to see what more she could learn about her great-great-grandmother.
Peggy had shown her the location of the old War Relocation Camp—a six-hour drive.
Julia got up from the bench and looked around. How many other stories were buried here? She turned toward her great-great-grandfather one more time and did something she had never done. She bowed deeply at the waist and said, “Thank you, great-great-grandfather.”
Julia walked through the rows of headstones of fallen soldiers. Maybe it was appropriate that war heroes surrounded her great-great-grandfather. After all, he too had been a casualty of World War II.
Julia squeezed through the wrought iron gate.
The perfect graveyard squeak sent a shiver down her spine.
Not exactly the place she wanted to be alone and glad that some light from the setting sun still illuminated the area.
But a shadow of sadness darkened her mood.
The small cemetery seemed to receive few visitors as even the main path through the acre plot needed weeding.
When she reached her Land Cruiser, she swore.
“A flat tire! Are you kidding me?” she screamed, not caring if she woke up the ghosts, and kicked the front tire.
* * *
Oscar glanced at his phone again. Maps showed the location of the cemetery practically across the street from Big Sky High School, his alma mater.
But he never knew about a graveyard in the area.
He’d only seen the one on the north side of town near the interstate, and worried that Pat had given him wrong information about where the Colonel was buried.
Oscar drove around the new roundabout past the school and turned into the massive city soccer complex.
He shrugged at Buki, but continued to follow the route on the map.
He slowed, going through a parking lot, then across a frontage road, where he saw the sign: ENTERING FORT MISSOULA and another, smaller sign pointing to Fort Missoula Post Cemetery.
He shook his head. “Never knew this was here.”
Buki sat up in the passenger seat and whined softly as they drove through another roundabout and into a parking lot, ready for the next exploration. It surprised Oscar to find a small cemetery enclosed by an old wrought iron fence and surrounded by large open fields.
“Seems to be in the middle of nowhere,” Oscar said to Buki. He’d no sooner said that when bright lights blazed on from softball fields a quarter mile away. Buki barked at the light intrusion. “It’s okay, Buk,” Oscar assured him. “Let’s go.”
Even without the bright blast, the evening sky still retained enough light to find the grave. He looked at his phone again and read the notes he’d taken with Pat. “On the left of the path, near the back. Fourth row from the last. Eleven graves over. Colonel William Hoshed.”
Oscar got out of his Celica with Buki on his heels and looked up at the sky.
Truly a fabulous night in Missoula. Oscar would miss these long summer nights when he moved to California.
He glanced at a blue Toyota Land Cruiser parked on the far side of the parking lot.
The color and the car maker were the same as his, but that’s where the similarities stopped.
That new and decked out SUV would cost over seventy thousand.
With a bit of luck, he could probably sell the Celica for a thousand.
He just hoped it would make the drive to California okay.
As he walked toward the gate of the cemetery, he glanced back at the SUV in envy, and noticed the flat front tire, a set of tools and the spare spread out nearby.
He cautiously made his way to the driver’s side of the vehicle, looked at the tools in wonder, and searched for the owner.
The side windows, heavily tinted, reflected the lights of the softball fields.
If the owner abandoned the car, they must have left to go get help.
The whiz of the electric window made him jump, but it opened only a few inches.
Oscar chuckled, then said, “That scared me. You okay?”
“Bummer of a time and place to get a flat,” a female occupant said through the window.
Oscar looked around. Long shadows from the cemetery reached out like boney fingers.
“Yeah, kind of creepy, isn’t it?” He looked back down at the tools.
“You have help coming?” Then he regretted the question, sounding a little creepy himself.
Must be unnerving for a woman to be stuck in the middle of nowhere…
alone. “I mean, can I help you?” He smiled at the window, trying to look harmless, but worried that his badly sunburned face might make him look like a madman.
“I couldn’t get the stupid lug nuts loosened.”
“Why don’t you let me give it a try? If you’d feel better, you can stay in the car…safe from the zombies.” He laughed.
Buki jumped on his hind legs, trying to see who had been speaking.
“That’s a cute dog.”
“Oh thanks. His name is Buki,” Oscar reached down and scratched the dog’s head. “You like dogs?”
“I think so. I just never grew up with one. My father never wanted one.”
The electric motor whirled the window down another six inches. The face of a beautiful Asian woman appeared, but Oscar couldn’t help laugh. Somewhere in the process of changing the tire, she’d wiped a black mark across her upper lip, giving her the appearance of sporting a hardy mustache.
The woman frowned, but then tilted her head to look in the side mirror.
“Oh my. Who’s scaring who? I look like Groucho Marx.”
They both laughed.
“Well, Groucho, stay right there and let me see if I can change this tire,” Oscar clowned in his best Groucho impersonation, flicking an imaginary cigar.
* * *
Oscar stood in front of William T Hoshed’s headstone, illuminated by the light from his phone’s flashlight.
At least the woman gave him the opportunity to explain that he was searching for his great-grandfather’s grave and not some weirdo that frequents cemeteries at night.
He thought about returning in the morning, but he had too much to prepare for the move to California.
Besides, he was already here, but walking through the cemetery after dark certainly made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.
Recalling his encounter with the woman with the flat tire took his mind off the spooky walk.
For sure the lug nuts on the Land Cruiser had been hard to remove, but he wasn’t about to let them win.
He’d replaced the flat tire with the spare, secured it in place, and removed the jack. She had picked up a nail in the tire.
From the driver’s seat, the woman had trusted him enough to pop open the rear hatch where he’d placed the flat and the tools.
Unfortunately, when Oscar had his back turned, Buki uncharacteristically jumped into the woman’s SUV, flew over the back seat, and made himself at home in the front passenger seat with a full body wag, searching out the windshield as if he was prepared to accompany the woman on her next voyage.
“Buki!” Oscar had scolded. “I’m so sorry,” he apologized to the woman, worried that the dog had tracked dirt on the pristine leather. “Buki, get over here!”
The woman had laughed when Buki gave Oscar a side-eyed glance, gave her a quick kiss on the neck, and spun a dance in the seat.
“My dog just abandoned me,” Oscar had chuckled and added, “I think he wants to go with you…I think he likes your Cruiser.” He had smiled, seeing that she took it all in stride. She’d given Buki a healthy head rub, and the dog gave her another kiss on her neck.
“You are such a cutie pie. You can come with me anytime,” the woman encouraged the dog.
Once Oscar had coaxed Buki from the vehicle, the woman begged Oscar to take some cash, but he refused. It felt good to do something nice for someone after all he’d been through in the last twenty-four hours. Especially someone so pretty.
“Oh, well,” Oscar sighed after the woman had gone. “More beautiful fishes in ocean,” he’d reminded Buki in Doctor Jō’s accent.
Oscar knelt in front of the gravestone and read:
WILLIAM T HOSHED
COLONEL US ARMY
WORLD WAR II
JAN 20 1925 - DEC 2 2005
brONZE STAR - PURPLE HEART
Hard to grieve for someone he didn’t even know about until this morning. Still, it brought an ache to his heart to know more. After all, this brave man represented his heritage. “Thank you, sir,” he said and stood.
He scanned the shadows and decided he’d spent enough time in a cemetery for one night.
As he walked to the gate, he wondered about the girl in the Land Cruiser.
Why was she here? He kicked himself that he didn’t even ask her name.
He noticed her Washington State license plate when he put the spare in the back.
Would he ever feel like dating again? Trusting again?
Doubtful. Besides, he’d never see her again, anyway.
Oscar reached his car and saw a piece of paper under his windshield wiper fluttering in the breeze. He grabbed the paper. She had written a note with a large heart drawn around it that read:
Thank you for
your kindness!
Julia