Foundlings by Richard Levesque

Author:Richard Levesque [Levesque, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Camarillo, May 1942

“Rats can’t vomit.”

Kichiro looked up from his tray and gave Jimmy Jingles a quizzical look.

“They can’t vomit. Not built for it. If a rat vomits, that means its stomach has ruptured, and it’s gonna die. Did you know that?”

“Shiranai,” Kichiro said. I didn’t know, in Japanese.

He had not spoken English since being taken into custody. It had started out of spite and anger; then it had become habit. The doctors in Arcadia hadn’t known what to do with him, and once they’d determined his physical health, they must have asked the police what should be done with him. Days of back and forth had followed, with Kichiro being carted from hospital to police station to jail and back to hospital again. Every person in authority angered him, even the ones who tried to speak kindly to him and reason with him; others threatened, and it was easy to continue speaking Japanese in their presence, even swearing at them with impunity. The idiots, he had thought.

Finally, at the second hospital he’d been taken to, they brought in a woman who spoke Japanese, a nurse who’d spent time with the Red Cross in Japan and Manchuria before the war had started.

Kichiro hadn’t expected a woman to interrogate him. Men had been easier to stonewall and be disrespectful toward. This woman was older, in her fifties, and she seemed kind and gentle, like his third grade teacher in Furusato. When she asked his name, he felt compelled to answer.

“That can’t be your real name,” she said when he told her. “Dear, you and I both know your parents weren’t Japanese, and they didn’t give you that name.”

“They were,” he said. “Masaru and Mai Nakamura, of Furusato, in Fish Harbor, Terminal Island. I’m Japanese, and I belong with everyone else of Japanese ancestry.”

“You know we can’t do that. Were you…adopted by the Nakamuras? If that’s the case, then this is just as simple as finding you a foster home until things settle down. How old are you, dear? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“I’m old enough to know I’m Japanese,” he said, determined not to give the doctors, the police, or the military any more information about him than they already had. He’d had nothing against the Paxtons, but he didn’t want to be sent back to them, and he certainly didn’t want any other foster family. He wanted to be with his mother and father and Minato, with Tomojo and everyone else he’d grown up with.

“I’m sure you speak English, dear. It would be so much more helpful if you would just talk to the doctors or the police. They’re likely to lock you up as mentally unstable if you keep this up.”

“Mentally unstable? For speaking Japanese? So that’s a crime now? A sign of insanity? I think you people are the ones who are crazy.”

It had been rude, and he’d seen that his outburst had surprised and maybe alarmed the nurse. He had been sorry for it the moment the words passed his

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