We Are Not Free

“If she could, I bet Yum-yum would tear down the whole city with her music. But by the end, it’s soft again, and her face doesn’t betray any of the violence and turmoil inside her. Standing, she walks into my arms, and I hold her until the truck comes to take her piano away. She doesn’t cry. And I get it, finally. Gaman.”

Shig, like Frankie, is filled with anger when his community receives the exclusion order. He can’t understand the unfair treatment or how the adults can bear this crisis without any resistance. However, when he sees his girlfriend face the loss of her beloved piano, he finally understands the meaning of gaman, and he uses what he learned in a silent protest as he boards the bus with his family a few days later.

“But I don’t want to be Amy Oishi anymore. Amy Oishi is compliant. Her mother is sick and her father is a prisoner and they’ve left her alone to care for her shrinking family. Amy Oishi is trapped. I don’t want to be her. I want to be different. I need to be different. I can’t be the same girl I was on the outside. If that girl is in a detention center, an American citizen imprisoned without trial or even charges, then the world doesn’t make sense. But if I’m someone else, then it’s easier to accept that the world now operates by different rules. Up is down. Wrong is right. Captivity is freedom.”

A lot of unwanted responsibility has been placed on Yum-yum’s shoulders, and she openly resents this. Her father is absent because he was taken by the FBI, but he still encourages her to be an obedient daughter, though he doesn’t know everything that is happening. She resents him and his expectations; she needs someone to be angry with, and the government is too big and too anonymous. She hates what is happening and is frightened, and she now accepts that she needn’t be as obedient as she once attempted: “I can’t be the same girl I was on the outside.”

“I do see where we are. I see the sewer pipes breaking every week. I see the dust coming in through the cracks in the barracks. I see the armed soldiers in their guard towers. But unlike that oaf Frankie, I choose to see the good where he chooses to see only the bad. Being an optimist does not make me stupid.”

Each character sees their circumstances differently, as Bette Nakano’s chapter vividly illustrates. Bette sees—and chooses to see—romance and adventure all around her despite the barbed wire fences and desert landscape. Even when confronted by Frankie whose outrage persists months into their incarceration, Bette keeps her optimism, which is not a denial of suffering but a form of resilience and even rebellion.

“Mas is in front of the crowd talking all kinds of nonsense. He’s got to fight for democracy everywhere, he’s got to oppose tyranny wherever he finds it, bullshit like that. Tell you the truth, I stop listening after the first few minutes because all I can think is, Tyranny is locking us up. Tyranny is taking our freedom. Tyranny is right here. Tyranny is American.”

Frankie is the angriest one among his friends. He wanted to fight for his country after Pearl Harbor, but the recruiters rejected him because of his race. To now have recruiters come to the incarceration camp seems insulting, but to have Mas advocating for recruitment seems an even bigger insult. Frankie’s anger is justified, yet he constructively channels his anger by enlisting. Mas’s support of enlisting is courageous. This is another example of the theme of gaman; each man is persevering.

“It was only six minutes, but I still remember how good it felt to hold all that money and how fucking scary it was to know it could all be taken away. Ten years later, and it happened anyway: We lost the store. We lost our freedom. Sometimes, it feels like we’re losing even more than that.”

Injustice thematically pervades the novel. In Stan’s chapter, he sees injustice in the belongings taken from his family—but he also sees opportunity. He chooses to apply to college even though he is certain that his race will preclude acceptance anywhere. He fears losing everything before he even has it, and this continues as a theme in his chapter; he does lose his chance at college because of the shooting of Mr. Uyeda and his decision to answer “no” to both important questions on the questionnaire.

“Turns out, Shig couldn’t answer ‘No’ and ‘Yeah’ even if he wanted to. The following day, the Topaz Times announces that Questions 27 and 28 must be answered the same. A ‘No’ to one is a ‘No’ to both, no room for exceptions or explanations. You’re loyal and a true American patriot, or you’re not and you’re a filthy goddamn traitor! Go back to Japan if you don’t like it!”

The recruitment questionnaire has Stan in a predicament. He and his friends learn about two questions that test the loyalty of the questionnaire-taker, and they have all discussed what they will answer. However, they learn the strict expectations, and it causes tension in the camp. The questions carry the theme of injustice and racism.

“I know it’s stupid, but for a long time, I was sure Mas Ito was a superhero in disguise. I mean, just look at him, there in the doorway: broad shoulders, big chest, more muscles than I know the names of. He looks like Superman. Put a cape on him, and I’m telling you, he’d be able to fly.”

Many of the friends view Mas as the group’s parental figure. He’s the one they all go to when they need something, and Mas is the one who encourages them all to remain in school and study hard. Aiko sees Mas as a superhero because she is the youngest of the group, but her idea of him is not much different from the others. It isn’t until Mas’s chapter that Chee shows just how human he is.

“Tommy’s in the foreground, smiling like he never smiles when he’s with the family, because here, no one expects him to be something he isn’t. Here, he’s accepted just as he is.”

Aiko is an observer. She sees things about the people around her that others might miss. With her brother, Tommy, Aiko sees Tommy has two families, the one he was born into and the one he chose. Aiko sees which one he feels safer with and happier around, but Tommy takes longer to figure it out for himself.

“‘That horrible man! I’m so sorry, Yuki—’ I cut her off. ‘Stop crying, Miss Jenkins.’ Like I’m the adult and she’s the kid. Like I’m scolding her for something she should’ve known. Because shouldn’t she have known? ‘Let’s just get back to camp, okay?’ I try to soften my voice, like she’s the one who needs protecting, even though she’s the one who’s older. And white.”

After attempting to buy ice cream for the softball team, Yuki and her coach walk back to the bus. Yuki finds herself comforting her coach in an act that is almost as backwards as the racism she just experienced. The whole episode is a reality check for Yuki, forcing her to grow up within minutes. She realizes her life will not fit her dreams—because of racism and injustice, because people like her coach will not stand up for her against people like the ice cream counter clerk. Moreover, in some odd way, it is her job to make those around her feel better about the injustices she faces.

“Why won’t anyone admit they were wrong? Why won’t they just call this what it is? Why does everyone keep lying? They said we were citizens. They said we were ‘dangerous.’ They told us they were being considerate of our needs. They said it was an ‘evacuation’ and a ‘migration,’ not an incarceration. They said the camps were full of opportunity. They said they weren’t violating our rights.”

Mary Katsumoto is coming of age in the camps, and she resents her parents’ choices that forced her to move from her friends at Topaz City to Tule Lake. Mary knows the change took place because her parents answered “No-No” to the important questionnaire questions. She expresses her anger by throwing rocks at the windows of the administration building in Tule Lake as these thoughts go through her head.

“I freeze again. I can’t help it. I remember this feeling, this sense that everything around me is thin, and sharp, and brittle, and if I make a move, if I make any move, something is going to crack, someone is going to crack, someone is going to get hurt.”

Kiyoshi is new to the friend group. He came from Gila River, another camp. He tells Mary his family came to Tule Lake to escape his abusive stepfather. As Kiyoshi becomes a familiar face in the novel, Chee slowly reveals an odd behavior: he freezes in moments of stress. The reason is revealed to be that his stepfather was violent toward him. Kiyoshi brings to the novel another reality of life—violence in the home—and Chee explores his character development by showing him overcoming the related fear and behavior.

“You move, or you do not move; you freeze, or you act; it doesn’t matter. You are too dangerous anyway, too yellow, too slow, too stupid, too weak anyway. You are arrested anyway. You are beaten anyway. So I move.”

Kiyoshi sees the injustice in the stockade at Tule Lake, and he recognizes that no matter what they do, nothing matters. However, he watched Mr. Morimoto stand up for a couple of prisoners and keep his word in cleaning the latrine even though the lieutenant in charge did not keep his side of the bargain they struck. Therefore, when the lieutenant threatens to punish Mr. Morimoto unfairly for his actions, Kiyoshi stands up for him even though he knows it could mean he will be punished as well. Kiyoshi overcomes his fear that isn’t just about the stockade but also about his abusive stepfather.

“I think a lot about your flag, the one you flew every morning before you left for work. Those red and white stripes rippling over our steps. When I think about home, I think about that flag as much as I think about the building, or the street, or the city. The way you folded it every night before sundown, that starred triangle in your arms. I think of you when I carry the flag, when I put on my uniform. Not a thread out of place.”

As Mas writes this letter to his late father, he reveals one of the reasons he chose to join the military despite the injustice the United States government has shown him and his family: His father, before his death, was a patriot who was proud to fly the American flag every day, and this instilled in his son the same patriotism. Mas wants to make his father proud, and he believes this is what his father would want him to do.

“Is that what I’m fighting for, Dad? Minnow’s right to decide what he’ll become? His right to tell the truth? To say something without fearing for his safety? I thought I knew why I was here, why I volunteered: to prove we deserved freedom, liberty, and justice, like everybody else. But only a few, a Caucasian few, have ever had those things.”

Still writing his letter to his father, Mas reveals his doubts that he and those like him will ever live in a world without racist persecution. Through these letters, which are tinged with a sense of futility and desperation, Chee shows the reader that Mas is not a superhero, but a young man no less afraid and angry than anyone. Mas wanted to go to war but is now reconsidering; he worries that no matter what he does, he cannot make the world a better place for his little brother.

“Dear Dad, if I die out there, they’ll give Ma an American flag just like yours. My very own triangle of stars. But I don’t know if I’m going to want that, when the time comes. I don’t know if I want it now.”

Mas’s determination to prove himself a brave soldier (as seen in Frankie’s chapter where he talked about fighting tyranny and spreading democracy) has changed during his time in boot camp. Mas has seen a part of America he earlier tried to deny, but now he questions whether fighting in the war will matter in the long run. In his letter to his father, he shows that has a firm answer: that fighting in the war is not worth it. He no longer wants to die for his country, and it seems he no longer feels so patriotic.

“Shig isn’t done packing yet, but you’re all done watching him, so Yuki cranks up Mas’s Silvertone radio, filling the barrack with sound. It floods over Mas’s unused dresser, spilling across the floor, pooling in Shig’s open suitcases. You wonder if Mas knew, if that’s why he lugged that damn radio all the way to camp, if he turned up the volume when there were no words left to say, if that’s how he kept everyone together all these years.”

Written in the second person from Keiko’s perspective, this quote poetically describes the music flowing into the room as Keiko tries to distance herself from the events around her. Twitchy is home on leave before shipping out to Europe and the war. Keiko has fallen in love, but she doesn’t want it. Now, however, she recognizes how the music pulls all her friends together and creates a lasting bond. The moment distantly foreshadows Twitchy’s death and other imminent hardship.

“You allow yourself to want. You want him with you. You want him to stay. You want the earth to stop turning. You want tomorrow to never come. You want and you want and you want, and no amount of wanting will return the moments you have lost and the people you have loved, but you have not lost so many pieces of yourself that you don’t want to give away one more.”

Keiko lost both her parents when they were taken away by the FBI just after Pearl Harbor. From that moment, she has refused to allow anyone close to her—until now. Keiko knows that Twitchy is leaving for the war, and she knows he may not come home, but for this moment she lets him in and returns his affection. She doesn’t allow fear to keep her from this momentary happiness.

“You know what’s funny? If a white guy abandons his post, he’s a coward. It’s a shame. But he’s just one guy. But if a Nisei did that? Hell, it wouldn’t just reflect on him, would it? Nah, we’d all be cowards.”

Twitchy points out the double standard between white soldiers and Japanese American soldiers while in Italy with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Just as Mas told them all before boot camp, they have to work harder and be better to prove themselves to their superiors. Double standards are a fixture in racism (and any other social oppression), and Chee’s novel illustrates those pernicious effects’ infiltration of the armed forces.

“‘Banzai!’ The cry echoes around me. So Japanese and so American at once, this one cry in this one moment, this last cry, this last moment. ‘Banzai!’”

“Banzai” is a Japanese battle cry that the friends used jokingly as children, and now Twitchy hears on the battlefield. Twitchy’s unit uses the word to motivate themselves as they run into a losing fight. This quote also connects to the previous chapter in which Keiko tries to live in a moment because she knows Twitchy is going to war and may not return. Moments after this quote, Twitchy takes a fatal bullet and dies, just as Keiko fears.

“I close my eyes, and I think I can hear us, all of us, running. The Topaz roads are turning into pavement, the barracks are turning into San Francisco apartment buildings, the desert air is turning wet and salty, and we’re running, running, running until we hit the ocean, that roaring blue expanse, all of us, running into the waves. Laughing.”

Twitchy’s final thoughts are of his friends and of returning home to San Francisco. This quote shows how important his friends are to Twitchy, but it also touches on the idea of home and how, after fighting a terrible war, his mind takes him back there as though it is some sort of heaven—a thought foreshadowed earlier

“Because he knows. Minnow knows. He knows the way her skin aches. He knows the way she wakes, choking, in the middle of the night, remembering Twitchy is dead. And it is a relief to be known. To be seen. To be not-alone.”

Minnow confesses he loved Twitchy, and Keiko cries because she feels she now has someone with whom she can share her grief. While all other members of their friend group grieve, Keiko grieves uniquely because of her intimate relationship with Twitchy. Knowing that Minnow felt the same way allows Keiko to feel less alone. Keiko has been alone for a long time, but she let Twitchy in only to have him die. Minnow’s love for Twitchy allows her to continue opening herself despite her deep grief. This particular character growth is important for both Keiko and Minnow.

“It all seems so far away now: the war, the evacuation, Tanforan, Topaz, the loyalty questionnaire, the way everyone left, one after another, drifting away like ash on the wind until no one remained but me.”

Minnow’s words reflect isolation and disorientation. Things have changed, and everyone has moved on, leaving him feeling unmoored. His return to San Francisco is not as happy as he expected. After three years, he is unsure how to feel about it all. Not only does he feel disconnected from his home and his friends, but, as this passage details, he feels estranged from his own past.

“Is that what life is like? People coming together and drifting apart, coming together and drifting apart, over and over until there’s no one left?”

Minnow observes people at a concert and tries to process the past three years’ injustice and racism. This thought—of how people need a common interest to come together and how easy it is for people to drift apart when that common interest is gone—shows Minnow is confronting a deep grief and sense of futility. However, the thought is also on a path toward seeing that life is an ebb and flow.