Dash

After quickly eating her oatmeal, Mitsi goes to the fence to run messages. Someone gives her a message for a family, and Mitsi delivers the message, but the person doesn’t give her money. A teen gives her a message and a dime, and by lunch, Mitsi has muddy shoes and 45 cents.

Mrs. Iseri looks through a Sears, Roebuck catalog. She wants a mattress to ward off the fleas. Mitsi flips through the catalog and spots a locket for $3.95. If she runs messages for three hours each day, she could buy the locket in nine days.

At night, it rains, and Mitsi notices Ted sneaking into his bed, smelling like cigarettes. She wonders where he was and is sure he was with Lefty. The rain makes the camp muddier and slows down her message-taking. Frustrated, Mr. Hirari gives her sandals that he makes, getas, that don’t sink in the mud.

After work, Mitsi meets up with Debbie, who wears her new glasses. The girls agree to see the Disney adaptation of Pinocchio (1940) after dinner.

Mitsi’s birthday is today, so she’s 12, and Ted wakes her up with the “Happy Birthday” song—singing that she looks like a “monkey,” and she smells like one too. Pop gives her a treasure box he made from scrap wood. Mom painted the flowers on top, and Obaachan lined it with one of Ted’s old flannel shirts. Debbie gives her candy, and Mitsi shares it with her. Mitsi has a strawberry lollipop, and Debbie has a banana lollipop, but Mitsi’s tongue doesn’t turn red, and Debbie’s tongue doesn’t turn yellow.

Lefty and Ted chase Debbie and Mitsi, and Debbie, aware that they changed the rules last night, bets Lefty a nickel that they can’t get into the off-limits Area D, where there’s a Ferris wheel and racetrack. The soldier guarding the area stops them, but Debbie asks the soldier to check. He returns and says it’s okay. Lefty doesn’t want to pay, but Ted calls him a “welcher,” so Lefty coughs up the money. The girls run around the track, and Debbie remembers coming here with her dad for the state fair.

The girls go to the post office, and Mitsi gets a card from Dash and Mrs. Bowker wishing her a happy birthday. Debbie leaves awkwardly, and Mitsi wonders why. Back with her family, Ted gives her a comic book, and Mom serves store-bought cinnamon rolls with birthday candles (she got a teen outside the gate to buy them).

Mitsi has enough money for a locket, and she writes a letter to Dash: She’s sorry he got stung, and she tells him about Eddie and his “air conditioning” drawing. She also writes a letter to Mrs. Bowker, asking to buy her a locket with money she puts in the letter. At the post office, she spots Lefty near the canteen and thinks he stole chocolate. She confronts him, but Lefty tells her to get lost.

Mom and Pop return from a meeting with upsetting news: The government authorities are moving them to Minidoka, a concentration camp in Idaho. She writes Dash and Mrs. Bowker to let them know, and then they take a hot, uncomfortable train to the new camp. She looks out the window and sees lots of brown, and she writes a letter to Dash on the train.

Mitsi and Debbie “explore” the train, but she eats the roast beef dinner and ice-cream sundae with her family. Debbie returns, and the girls have their “first sleepover” on the train seats. They play I Spy, and then Mitsi asks Debbie about her dad. He’s “someplace else.”

On the train, Mitsi writes Dash another letter. She dreamed that he was sleeping next to him. Debbie also had a bad dream, so they went on a scavenger hunt to find a cure for their “doldrums.”

After three days, the train stops, and Mitsi and the others are in a desert. They take buses to the camp. Their space has five cots (this time, there are mattresses), a stove, a dust-covered floor, and Debbie in the space next to hers.