April 12, 1942.

The train door slides open to reveal a succession of dark heads in different styles– short, bunched-up, slicked down, dead-bone straight. But dark nevertheless. 

A boy stands among them. He is young at eleven years of age; the worn faces standing firm around him are not. But the little bundle cradled in his arms, with eyes that know nothing of the world, is true innocence.

When the boy’s feet cross the threshold into a garden of oppression, he swears he’ll protect her. His imouto. This is a vow he makes to uphold the entire time they’re encased in this humiliation to his people, and forever after.

May 12th, 1945.

Sliver 1.

The drive is long, lengthened by the appalling condition of the gravel path. Barbed fence shimmers into view. 

I slam on the brakes. 

  The Heart Mountain Relocation Center hums with strange, enclosed life even in the sunglow hours of dawn. A government official receives me, his smile frigid as the temperature of his handshake.

“First day?” 

I nod. 

“Well.” The official unclenches my hand. “I do hope you enjoy gazing out at an endless field of near-identical buildings. Because if not–” his expression drops a handful of degrees– “you’ll find your time here to be very, very dull.”

He is trying to be humorous, to lift my spirits– but I am here for important purposes. We both know this is not by any means a laughing matter.

There is a post to be upheld, a watchtower to man. 

I stride past the door in the fence, patterned with threadlike iron, and feel a strange need to brace myself as I tread toward the new role I will be made to uphold for likely years to come.

My first shift spans little less than three hours. The wooden tower is unassuming: thin supporting beams, a short ladder to climb up and down.  There is not much to do while I’m on duty except to stare at the hundreds of rectangular barracks that fill the camp. 

What is within my capacity, however, is to think. 

Lively, as a method of providing an accurate description of Heart Mountain, is a stretch.

But so is dullness, gray as death and cremated ashes. 

Prisoners scurry about, twisting through narrow alleys, rattling off unintelligible chatter– it’s graceful, however, the sound of their unique tongue.

I turn my head to the sky. Orange skirts across chromatic-pink; warm incandescence descends. 

I shut my eyes and inhale.
-
A colleague– another sentinel–  walks up to me. “Hey. Newbie. When your shift ends, you’re eligible to leave.”

I nod in a small hint of acknowledgement. 

Returning home waits for later. I linger, by the edges of the camp, for the presence of an old comrade from the war. 

Gavin comes to find me. He rests, lean and tall, against the walls of the guard station. “How’s it going, Gray?” 

I laugh. “Fine. And you?”

“Watching’s boring, but… it’s good to know I’m still doing a service for our country.” His gaze shifts. “Guarding this race. My cousin died at Pearl Harbour, you know. They deserve this, the whole lot of them. Hell, all of them are probably spies. I bet even the kids are in on it.”

There’s a sharpened anger in his voice, full of disdain bordering on repugnance.

“Maybe,” is all I can say.

May 25th, 1945.

Sliver 2.

On rare occasions, I patrol the camp’s outskirts. Never trespassing close to the center, we don’t disturb their peace. They don’t cause unnecessary trouble. 

They know I am different from them. My skin, my soul, the emblem on my chest. And so they keep their distance, and typically, we keep ours.

Yet I find myself on this day, walking closer, my curiosity guiding me; there’s a barrack in the distance. The window is split into nine by a frame; sunlight streams through. I don’t know where I find it in me to peer, one-eyed and alien, through the glass awash in gold.

It’s cramped inside. Two beds, rickety, unstable. No closets; the room isn’t large enough for them. There is no shower. I was told the incarcerees shared them, scattered around the camp.

But I look behind me, past the fence. Heart Mountain is a green desert in its emptiness. 

The camp, I recall, was built haphazardly in a short period of time. There is an evident lack of electricity, let alone hot water. 

I step away from the window. I've peered into the privacy of a living space, as temporary or detested as it may actually be. It’s merely a second, but I feel a pang of shame throb in my chest.

An elderly woman nears the barrack, cane clacking against sandy ground. Her eyes slant at me, sharp anger, promises of hurt, as she registers my presence.

I steel myself. I am not intimidated by her stance. I know I am imposing, but she must know, it is necessary for her and her people to be confined here. It would cause irrevocable damage to our country if such camps hadn’t been created. 

She is captive. I am captor.

She must know. 

June 8th, 1945

Sliver 3.

Brown comfort, syrupy warmth. Home envelopes me in a pleasant embrace. 

Alfred is the one who opens the door. His face splits into a grin as he whips around and yells, “Mommy! Papa’s back!”

My wife stands by the kitchen, waiting. She laughs, and I fall in love all over again. “You look so tired. Like you’re about to pass out.”

I smile. “That’s because I am.”

Dinner is never an irksome affair. The savory fragrance in the air never fails to awaken hunger. 

Beside me, I notice an empty seat; my wife has vanished up the stairwell. She reappears, a tiny hand clasped in hers, and there is maternal warmth in her gaze.

My only daughter, youngest child. Sasha. 

She waddles up to her brother, face full of short bared teeth, and giggles. Alfred matches her grin.

Moonlight sifts gently through the open window. 

June 20th, 1945

Sliver 4.

Draft physicals begin.

The process runs quickly. The incarcerees are tested in terms of their reflexes, stamina and strength. Physicians rush around, yelling instructions in rapid-fire.

  All my duty demands is to stand guard.

Gavin taps me on the shoulder. I blink– slightly taken aback– but settle once I notice the professional severity encumbering his face.

 “Gray. I have something to tell you,” he says, no breaths of air in between. “Confidential.”

He pulls me away to a discreet corner, and tells me that twelve prisoners have refused to attend the physical.

I process the information unblinkingly.

“Direct the Marshals to these barracks.” He thrusts a sheet of paper into my hands. It’s a bird’s eye diagram of the camp.

“I don’t need this,” I say. It’s true. I am familiar with Heart Mountain now, all its arteries and rivers of flowing red. 

He sighs, and chuckles, the sound wrought with exhaustion. “Just take it, okay?”

–

The arrest goes quickly. We find some of the men; they’re all shackled within moments. 

Sunlight refracts through a window built into the slanted roof. Cascades hit their cuffs, and beneath the waves of gold, it’s as if the metal is dripping with the venom of a snake. 

Which side possesses the silver tongue?

The Marshals drag the men out into the grounds of the camp. One of them snarls, “And here I thought our country was one of free speech.”

“Our? You’re not a part of our country,” Gavin rebukes. 

The Marshals split into two – one squadron, which I follow after, lingers with the prisoners outside of the mess hall, waiting for the Marshals that are searching for the rest of the offenders. 

I take a handful of steps back.

There’s a scuttle behind me. 

Two children peak their heads out from behind a neighboring barrack. One of them is young, a teenager; the other, a small toddler.

“Why are you men trying to take Yoshiyuki-san away?” the elder of the pair demands.

I blink, startled. “Have you children been watching the entire time?”

The teen– a male– stands, his posture defiant. “So? Are you going to put me and Tomiko in those chains too?”

The toddler, Tomiko, clutches the ends of the boy’s sleeve. “Nii-chan,” she whispers. She must be little more than three years old.

“It’s okay, imouto,” the boy murmurs. He stares back up at me with all the sharpness and none of the killing intent of a flourished knife. “Yoshiyuki-san is the father of our friend. He treats us very well. He is not a bad man.”

I sigh. The Marshals combing through the mess hall must be nearly finished. “Where are your parents?”

The boy says, unflinching: “Dead.”

Any following questions expire in my mouth. 

I examine the boy a little more closely; fourteen, perhaps, and thin for a kid his age. I glance down at Tomiko and come to a crashing realization.

She looks so much like my Sasha. And the other– if he were younger, if his eyes were less discerning than light– would resemble Alfred.

I blanch. “I see.”

“They died. Yoshiyuki-san is one of those who care for us. He treats us like one of his children.”

“Listen, kid.” There is no denying what the criminal has done for the pair standing before me, but the boy doesn’t understand. “This man, Yoshiyuki, committed a felony and he knows it. Okay?”

The boy doesn’t respond. His sister clings closer to his legs. 

Nearby, I hear the second group of Marshals exiting the mess hall. “Go,” I tell the children. As I turn and stride away, the boy speaks.

“You believe that we track the ground with filth while we’re outside this fence. Only inside are we purified.”

Chills run down my spine. 

June 21st, 1945

Sliver 5.

Tonight, generous sprinkles of the galaxy slather the sky.

It’s raining. 

The camp is no more than a flat plane of stone-gray on the horizon. I reach my truck in two steps, and lean against it. The metal is cool.

The boy’s words echo. Inside, we’re pure.

They should know to remain in there, for their safety and ours.

And who said that?

President Truman.

Ah. So the president always knows best, you say?

The rain grows from a light shower to a heavy pour. 

August 11th, 1945

Sliver 6.

“Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima…”

I crouch by the radio, listening intently to the presidential announcement. The audio crackles– President Truman’s voice distorts.

“…now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city…” 
–
Three days later, another bomb falls onto the city of Nagasaki.

I return to Heart Mountain with a chest heavy with emotion. A man and an elderly woman pace side-by-side, faces ashen. I catch the word bakudan in their conversation.

The camp is deathly silent. Grief weighs as heavy as a sword on fire, positioned headily before the barbed fence gallantly defending paradise. 

–
Lunchtime. I stand near the door in the fence and bite listlessly at the food in my hands. The door is crooked on its hinges from the onslaughts of wind brought on by a rainstorm that hit the camp two days earlier. 

Suddenly, there’s a distilled shout. My eyes flick up from the ground.

And then there’s another. I move towards the source of the sounds; they are close by.

I halt.

My eyes dilate with shock. The Sansei boy, whose words, brilliantly phrased and word-rocking, fumes before me. He hurls daggers in the form of Anglicized consonants. To my further surprise, I find that the statements he screams are actually sound. He makes sense.

His fury is directed at a colleague– Robert, I recall– who is computing his cries with a sword-edged glare.

“You Americans ruin our country with your destruction, leave hundreds of thousands of deaths in your wake, and not once do you show remorse!” The boy’s fists clench. 

There’s a shaking statuette glued to his side– Tomiko, his sister. Her bottom lip trembles.

The boy seeths. He is a mass of emotion; his eloquence dips under the force of his anger. He stomps his foot into a small puddle. Water flies. “Here, you see? Mizu! There’s none of that in my hometown! None! You know why–”

“We had to do that!” Robert shouts. His patience has burned to a close. “Are you too stupid to get this through your undeveloped brain? It’s all because you blood-craving bastards longed for war. We stopped your war.”

 The boy snarls, “You’re the fool here! How many have lost their lives? My aunts and uncles lived in Nagasaki, and their parents and my cousins who are no more than seven! They do not live there anymore! They are dead!”

I watch their exchange, feet rooted to the ground until something propels me to snap out of my stupor. It is my responsibility to stop–

The boy cracks. I hear the sound of a taut rope snapping. “You’re just some stupid racists that were paranoid and thought this camp was part of some grand idea!”

I curse under my breath. 

Robert is furious. “Shut it.”

“Murderers,” the boy hisses.

The sentinel takes a step. His arm extends; in a moment Tomiko is in his grasp. He tugs her towards him in small, shaky steps. She cowers beside his tall stature.

He says it again. “Shut it.”

“You–” The boy’s eyes widen. “You dare? Coward! Give her back!”

“Not till you close your little rambling mouth,” Robert shoots back.

I’m at his side in two steps, but I don’t pull Tomiko out of his hold forcefully lest I injure her. “Let go of the kid.”

“Piss off, Gray.” Robert doesn’t look at me. “I’m just punishing a brat.”

I cannot stand for this. “She can’t be more than five. C’mon. She’s just a kid.”

“I said piss off, Gray.”

His tone is definite, so I have no choice but to reach for Tomiko’s other hand. Robert deftly moves her away.

The commotion has drawn attention now as a small crowd gathers before us. Some are prepared to step in and defend the children, but shrink before two fresh presences.

A pair of guards have stepped into the tumult. One pushes me away, and retrieves Tomiko; the other takes hold of the boy’s shoulders. 

He is shaking wildly. Tremors rack his frame. “Bakemono! You deserve nothing, you hear–”

I step toward Tomiko, who has rapid tears flowing down her cheeks– the guard that’s carrying her pushes me away with a warning in his judging stare. Robert’s somewhere behind him – the boy is writhing. The sentinel is struggling to keep him under control. He leans forward and screams.

“Give her back! She’s my sister!” Turning towards her, his face and tone soften: “Tomiko, you’ll be okay, your nii-chan is here–”

Turmoil begins. A handful of Japanese rush forward. The guard, frustrated by Tomiko’s bawling, lets her into an elderly woman’s arms and doesn’t spare her another glance.

The boy howls. The sentry keeping him in place smacks him across the face. 

The child evidently does not stand for this. He whips around, irises lit with glowing embers. “Akuma! Every last one! Curse you all to Hell!”
August 12th, 1945

Sliver 6.

Aftershocks ripple through my body.

What is justice but subjection? What is duty but a curse? 

They were reunited, the violent children, one of my colleagues had said to me in a scathing voice. He judged me for defending Tomiko. 

I responded with a nod. There had been nothing to say.

I cannot envision returning to the camp tomorrow morning.
– 
My hand trembles as I write.

This letter expresses a formal request for the transfer of Gray Michael Abner to–

Silent tears wet the paper.