Farewell to Manzanar by JEANNE HOUSTON

Author:JEANNE HOUSTON
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1983-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

One of our leaders on those excursions was a pretty young woman named Lois, about twenty-five at the time, who wore long braids, full skirts, and peasant blouses. She was a Quaker, like so many of the Caucasians who came in to teach and do volunteer work. She also had a crush on a tall, very handsome and popular Nisei boy who sometimes sang and danced in the talent shows. His name was Isao. In order to find a little free time together, Lois and Isao arranged an overnight camping trip for all the girls in our class. We took jars for water, potatoes to roast, and army blankets and hiked up Bale's Creek one Friday afternoon to a nice little knoU at the base of the mountains.

All the girls were tittering and giggling at the way Isao and Lois held hands and looked at each other. They built us a big driftwood fire that night, and told us ghost stories until they figured we had all dozed oflE. Then they disappeared for a while into the sagebrush. I was still awake and heard their careful footsteps snapping twigs. I thought how hard it would be to walk around out there without a flashlight. It was years later that I remembered and understood what that outing must have been for them. At the time I had my own escape to keep me occupied. In truth, I barely noticed their departure. This was the first overnight camping trip I'd ever made. For me it was enough to be outside the barracks for a night, outside the square mile of wire, next to a crackling blaze and looking at stars so thick and so close to the ground I could have reached up and scooped out an armful.

If I had been told, the next morning, that I could stay outside the fence as long as I wanted, that I was free to go, it would have sent me sprinting for the compound. Lovely as they were to look at, the Sierras were frightening to think about, an icy barricade. If you took off in the opposite direction and made it past the Inyos, you'd hit Death Valley, while to the south there loomed a range of brown, sculpted hills everyone said

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