by Reiss duPlessis

“One day, my neighborhood will go up in value and my house will be worth lots of money.” She had no doubt. She was not prone to doubt about anything she considered worth her time and thought. She took great pride in her ability to “cut away the fat and get to the meat.” She loved discussion that became debate and was not one to lose gracefully. She was not one to lose.

She lived happily alone when widowed after 65 years of marriage in her decaying hill-top castle. The changes in the neighborhood did not deter her. Her slower reflexes behind the wheel of her aging car did not stow her regular runs to the discount stores. The removal of one cancerous lung after 50 years of smoking, did not end  her daily forays into the world... her world that was west of downtown Los Angeles and east of Hollywood. It was her neighborhood, her domain. It had everything she wanted or needed, only minutes from her hilltop.  She was the mistress of her manor and her world was good.

One day, however, worried about her safety, her failing health and her ability to maneuver the bustling city streets, her daughters, forced the issue she dreaded most, she had to sell the house and move with them to San Diego. Life as she designed and lived it was over. She, weeks before she died, said to me, “Even the grass down here in Sad Diego does not grow the way it does in my neighborhood. I hate it!”

Yesterday, I drove by her house on the hill. The decades of brush was gone, the house was surrounded by scaffolding and it was smiling down on the streets below telling the world, I am here, I am still beautiful and after my makeover by the make-up artists of carpentry, painting and landscaping, you will again see me as my mistress did. When is she coming home? 

An Atheist Prays

I sit and the tears stream down my fifty-four-year-old face. I chastise myself because they fall for convoluted reasons. Not only because my younger brother, Gary, one of the twins, has died, but I weep because our ninety-five year old mother must bear the weight of his death. She, through all the grief that has befallen her, must now deal with the loss of her youngest son.
“Ma, I’m so sorry, but it’s not your fault. You tried to help him. You tried to make him stop drinking,” I say in a futile attempt to ease her sorrow.
“I know, T.J., but it doesn’t make it easier. Your sister, Helen and Larry are heartbroken too. I told him he had to quit drinking. I told him it would kill him if he didn’t stop. Even his twin brother begged him, but those bottles of vodka were more powerful than all of our love and pestering could ever be,” replies Ma through her tears.
I feel as if my heart has been torn from my chest over the pain her words evoke. She has watched our family grow with a passel of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. In her long life, she has already buried her parents, her husband, two of her children, and numerous grandchildren. I try to understand how she can withstand this new torment. Her tears and sorrow will have to weather one more storm and I will have to weep my own tears for my brother’s loss and her pain.
Growing up, she told us that all of life’s trials make us stronger, but for Ma, at her age, I know that this death will add no new strength to her life. There will be no lesson to be learned from this sorrow. It will have only one purpose and that will be one more blow to her already frail body. There are no words that can lighten this load, no magic remedy from a lifetime of having to watch death, nothing that will help her in this hour of pain.
I understand my tears are not only for the death of my brother, but for the collective grief of one more family loss. I thought I had protected myself by conceiving my own rules of life’s meaning. I have my own spiritual caretakers of birth and death, with me caught in the middle. This trinity makes all the decisions for my time on earth with birth having shuttled me into existence, death awaiting to supply the verdict of when I take my final breath, and me, a mere folly for the other two’s whims. I feel I have no control, but either do they. I find succor in understanding the powers of life and death and knowing I am a mere pawn in this strange chess game. It still does little to counter the loss or the sorrow I feel.
It is only my mother’s sadness that is taken into account, only the burden of grief she must bare. And for this, I have no remedy. Even my trinity will not ease her pain. So, for the first time in many years, I consider praying to the God she so strongly believes in to console her at this time. That He, in her belief of His omnipotence and glory, will give her some relief and tread this path with her.
And I ask this, for her, in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Timothy Glasby

DILLON MYER and THE REAL CONCENTRATION CAMPS with a subplot:
How my sister unwittingly influenced the closure of these concentration camps
The book is: “Keeper of Concentration Camps-Dillon S. Myer and American Racism” by Richard Drinnon, Professor for History at Bucknell University. I had always believed that Myer, who was in charge of the relocation camps, had the welfare of the Japanese in mind in making his decisions. The treatment of some as described in this book required me to reassess who Myer really was. This is my attempt to mesh this with my personal experience. Was Myer a good guy or not?

Many of the camp troublemakers as defined by the camp directors were removed from the ten relocation camps and placed in detention in Moab, Utah, and Leupp, Arizona, old abandoned CCC camps of the depression years, the REAL CONCENTRATION CAMPS. Drinnon believes that Myer condoned, if not instigated, the opening of these camps in order to keep the ten relocation camps free of these troublemakers. They included the Manzanar Sixteen, the Gila Thirteen, the Manzanar Ten, the Tule Fifteen, the Tule Five, and the Topaz Eleven as they were called plus some additional unaffiliated individuals from the other five camps. Without due process some were there with only minor infractions of the rules of the camps and at the whim of the camp directors. The case histories of these internees written by Francis S. Frederick indicate that they were mistreated in these camps illegally (Food deprivation and individual isolation).
If Myer had the interest of the Japanese (as Americans) in mind, he should have made some effort to utilize legal means to detain troublemakers in these penal colonies. The severity of the illegal treatment of these Japanese was uncalled for.

Let me divert from this story and examine my sister Jean’s experience and how, I believe, she may have unwittingly changed history….We were internees in the Gila River Relocation Camp. Because of her culinary skills she was hired by the Caucasian Mess Hall staff to help them feed the hired Caucasians that ran the camp. In the process she met Bob Spencer. Bob was doing research in camp for UC Berkeley about how the Nisei and Issei were doing while incarcerated. Bob fell in love with Jean and would come to our barrack to see her. Bob, my sisters, my friends and I played Monopoly some evenings. Later Bob would talk to me, a 19-year old Nisei, and try to educate me about life in general. My camp journal has this: “In the evenings Bob Spencer came over and we had long discussions on different things….” Bob was a very knowledgeable guy and it is too bad that notes were not taken on our discussions. I was afraid of writing what he said for fear of causing him problems if someone confiscated my journal. He talked freely and disparagingly about how the government ran the camps. Bob was a very open person but had difficulty getting research information from the Nisei.

The reason I feel Bob and Jean were close is that as part of the Caucasian Mess Hall duties Jean was allowed to accompany Bob outside of camp on occasion to do some shopping for the Mess Hall. No Nisei had that privilege that early in our camp life. Years later Jean told me Bob wanted to marry her. Jean had told him no for she felt he was intellectually beyond her. Jean was in awe of Bob but not in love.
Among the people who were on the camp Caucasian staff was a young couple, Francis S. Frederick, mentioned earlier, and wife Jane. Frank was an assistant chief of internal security at Gila Rivers. Frank became a close friend of Bob and the two would exchange information of the Nisei doings in camp. Frank needed this information for his reports and Bob needed what Frank knew for his research. This exchange of information about the Nisei colored his periodic reports to Washington. Bob kept Frank’s stories, which became valuable research material. At the time it was the only route by which these stories of illegal treatment of Kibei/Nisei reached the outside world.
Bob eventually became very close to many Nisei with Jean’s help. He conveyed many positive things about the Nisei to Frank. When Frank was later transferred to work in the afore-mentioned concentration camp in Moab, Utah, as head of internal security, he continued to correspond with Bob, who kept reporting about the Nisei at Gila Rivers. Frank wrote to Bob of the mistreatment of the troublemakers at his camp.
As Frank continued to report to Washington about the problems at Moab and what he learned at Leupp, it is my feeling that he slanted some things about the Nisei sympathetically based on his education of the Nisei by Bob Spencer. His periodic reports were sent to Washington and found its way outside of the departments that were connected to Dillon Myer.
When Myer was apprised of Frank’s reports, he became concerned about the exposure of the illegal activities of these camps. Fearing unfavorable disclosure, he abruptly closed these camps and transferred the individuals to stockades within the legitimateTule Lake Relocation Camp.
Prior to the closure Frank had applied for deferment from military service to continue working in the camps. His request was never acted upon and he was inducted into the Army with the military police force. It was believed that this was one way that Myer got rid of a “snitch” in his midst.
Hearing and reading these stories, I indirectly credit my sister Jean for the closure of these camps. Her friendship of Bob Spencer, who was a friend of and who had influence on Frank, resulted in the reports about Moab and Leupp and the illegal treatment of the people there.
What was my sister Jean’s opinion of my story? She refused to talk about her relationship with Bob and absolutely demanded that I not write about this because she felt that their relation had been special and personal. (Jean and Bob are no longer living.)
Years ago I talked to a research person about my camp, Gila Rivers. He had interviewed Bob Spencer, who had mentioned a Nisei girl. He called her “Prairie Flower” to mask her identity. He had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her. He learned her name was Jean Yamasaki. This researcher finds no evidence about my speculation.
As for Myer, even with this disclosure of his wrong doings, it is difficult for me to condemn him totally. Myer used all means at his disposal to keep peace at the ten relocation camps. Gila Rivers Relocation Camp was peaceful while I was there that one year. My experience with inmates could be extrapolated to the type of troublemakers that were at Moab and Leupp.
The question remains: Did Myer’s incarceration of these troublemakers away from the main camps take away their bad influence on many Nisei? In the end were the Nisei in camp better off as a result of isolating these troublemakers? The intimidation of these lawless troublemakers, while I was in camp, had me struggling when I had to decide that America was for me in spite of being incarcerated. It is my opinion that more Nisei would have had their bright future aborted had Myers not acted to isolate these troublemakers. I, therefore, believe Myer to be, on balance, a good guy.

By Reiss

I think Puccini showed me a perfect ending in La Boheme. Well, maybe the directors who staged the opera did it. Most of us who know and love the opera, remember the first time we experienced the final moment when Rodolfo realizes Mimi is dead, gives out that perfectly timed, perfectly placed, perfectly written operatic singing of one word, “Mimi!” as he falls, sobbing, onto her lifeless body, those final somber sounds floating from the orchestra as the curtain drops, ever so slowly, on the tragic scene.

Now, if I could only think of a story, a moment, or a scene to do that for our readers, but Puccini is dead, Mimi is dead, Pavarotti is dead and I certainly can’t sing that final Mimi as he did onto paper so why bother?

The end.

The rat-faced, middle-aged, scruffy little man driving a beat up old 1947 Ford sedan with four bald tires is a pain in the neck and puts my patience to the test.

Every Sunday morning when I am busy waiting on cash customers at the one-island, two-pump gas station where I work part time he pulls up to the air hose and demands that I replace the air his worn out tires lost during the week. He never buys gasoline.

After six weeks of this routine, I ask him, “What do I have to do to get some of your gasoline business?”

“Oh, I buy at the cut-rate station on the other side of town. They’re two cents cheaper than you.”

“Then why don’t you have them put air in your tires?”

“They don’t have no air.”

After this confrontation I am certain I will never see him again.

But next Sunday, just as I am busy waiting on regular customers, he pulls in and parks at the air hose.

I ignore him.

“Hey, you!” he shouts, “How about a little service!”

“Just a minute, sir. I’ll be right with you.”

I trot over and quickly put air in his four leaky tires.

Without a word of thanks, he pulls out of the station and drives about a half block down the street.

Suddenly, we are startled to hear four loud explosions followed by the clanging sound of steel wheel rims rolling on concrete pavement.

Patience has its limits.