My father, Yoshizo, was born in Salt Lake
City, Utah, and was 26 at the time of my birth. My mother, Sachie,
was born in Portland, Ore., and was 23 when she stepped out of Apt.
1 of Building 2 in Block 20, crossed the sandy walkway, hanging
onto my father’s arm on her way to Manzanar Hospital —
a tarpaper barrack that had been converted into a hospital.
Sagebrush and sand devils kicked about by the constant desert wind
blew across her pathway.
Mama said she almost died giving birth to me.
That she didn’t was likely the result of the patient skill
and care of her doctor.
I think about that young woman, her own
mother and family across the ocean in Japan, which was engaged then
in a terrible war with the United States. Six years earlier,
Grandmother Aono had put her bright-eyed 17-year-old daughter on a
ship to return to the United States, believing that her child would
be safe and would have a good future in this country. Grandmother
Aono wouldn’t know about her child’s experiences until
years later, after the war ended, after the atomic bombs had been
dropped.
I think about giving birth in a hostile
country, in a hostile environment, without the comfort of a husband
— fathers were not allowed in delivery rooms in those days.
What does a young woman, with a 3-year-old son waiting back in the
barracks, fear when the contractions become so strong that the body
feels as if it will be rent in two? And what does a young woman
think when there is little comfort and not enough medication to
keep the labor pains at bay and the labor continues for 12, 15, 20
hours?
I think about that young woman, my mother.
When I flew to California to be with my
daughter Tomo and granddaughter Malia Sachie, I felt that my mother
would have wanted her own mother to be with her during childbirth.
Yet there were other mothers and grandmothers in the camp, and they
tried to help Sachie as she recovered from the long labor and as
she sought to start breastfeeding her new daughter. But the milk
didn’t flow easily at first, and so Sachie had to bargain
with other mothers to get enough milk for the new infant.
When I was with Malia, I became the official
diaper-changer by choice. I would sing to her during the changing.
Sometimes the changing would take more than 15 minutes because
Malia became so relaxed — I started referring to “two- and
three-diaper-change” changes. But she was always clean and fresh
by the end of the process, and we would have exchanged smiles and
engaged in grandmother/granddaughter small talk.
I wondered how my mother kept me clean
— which she would have done meticulously — because the
latrines and washing areas were in buildings separate from the
barracks. And what happened at night, when I would wake, like
newborns everywhere, soiled and hungry, when the mess halls were
also in buildings separate from the barrack apartments in Manzanar
Relocation Center?
Did Mama have to cross the sandy walkways in
the moonlight to get water to clean me? Did Mama have to dodge the
sagebrush blowing about to get to the mess hall to find more milk?
I looked at little Malia in her bassinet and
admired the new crib in her sunlit second-floor bedroom with cool
breezes coming in the window, and I thought of my mother as she
tried to make a soft place for me to sleep as I squirmed and
squalled, hungry and fretful. I imagined Mama moving as close to
the rough wooden wall as she could, tucking me in next to her on
the cot, a protective arm gently cradling me. There I would fall
asleep each night for the first nine months of my life —
secure and fiercely loved, warmed, and protected by a young mother
whose dark eyes and dark hair were reflected in her newborn infant.
How did she manage, and why did I ever doubt
that she loved me?
This article appears in May 5-11, 2005.
