An Inevitable Confrontation

 An overall layout of the Manzanar internment camp.

December 29, 1942

As the crook of December wears on, we find ourselves a year from the blossomings if Pearl Harbor. Yet, I now find it difficult to believe that the bombing occurred in a time so far away, for it seems like yesterday we waved good-bye to the fishermen harbored at Long Island.

Yet, the December Riot brought a sense to the distance we have encompassed since that time, for it marked an anniversary for those who had been brewing concoctions to facilitate the final revenge.

On December 5, after Fred Tayama of the JACL (the Japanese American Citizens League) was reportedly beaten by six unidentified men, a young cook who had participated in the incident unjustly entered arrest after proclaiming a Caucasian had plundered sugar and meat from Manzanar warehouses to sell on the black market.

The riot did not prove to be on the scale I had expected. Although my parents prohibited me to witness the excitement, tension kissed the air the morning before the emotions accumulated between then and Pearl Harbor combusted into flames. Like a bubble, we only withhold a limited capacity for what we could consume, and sooner or later, the strifes will corrupt into violence.

The mob swarmed the blocks that night, and like a shadow, it rose and fell with the phases of the moon. By midnight, noise became an assault too weak for persuasion. The men began to thirst for blood.

An army captain soon deterred the mob as they purged onward with their "inu" chant. When the men did not abide the officer's final warning, gunshots fired into the night,

I listened to the bells that continued to ring along the sound of whistling bullets. Their chimes echoed through noon the next morning.

Some disputes cannot be settled by the shedding of blood, for they only create a hunger for more.

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As Christmas came to a close, the government issued a Loyalty Oath to all Japanese men seventeen or older. The outcomes become predictable; if you doubted your allegiance to the United States, you would be shipped back to Japan. If you agreed to serve the army at any given time, you would drafted into the infantry.

This often seemed like the rebound after the December Riot, a renewal of feuds all alike. For the Oath became an inevitable factor of life; whether you answered or not, you would either be corralled to Japan, the infantry, or relocation.

While Papa often attended the meetings that discussed the best approach toward the Loyalty Oath, his "inu" background forced him to linger on the unforgiving sidelines. After every rendezvous, the songs of his native country would swell our constrained barrack, and he would be lost in a distant nostalgia; immersed in the memories of a more beautiful childhood.