The Distant Land of My Father

  Once food and supplies were on the way, Barrows and Kelley assigned jobs to everyone in camp. The jobs were classified as specialist and nonspecialist jobs. Specialist jobs included tasks like carpentry, electrical repair, plumbing, medical and sickroom duty, and cooking. Nonspecialist jobs were the everyday, not-an-option chores like kitchen detail, which involved cleaning and picking the worms out of the uncooked cracked wheat that had been left to stand too long.

  The internees were fingerprinted repeatedly, and they were required to fill out form after form giving personal information and history, all of it on Municipal Council forms, as though these had been legitimate arrests. Photographs were taken for propaganda purposes, my father guessed, and the camp was often inspected by high-Gendarmerie officials. Internees were forced to bow to all Japanese officers and sentries, and to Colonel Odera when he arrived at the camp each morning. When, after one of the camp’s first attempts at bowing, the colonel was displeased with the result, Lieutenant Honda began conducting bowing practice just after roll call, forcing the men to bow a dozen times or more before they were permitted to line up for breakfast.

  During the first week of December, the colonel said it was reasonable for the internees to expect visits from their families eventually. In addition, each internee would be allowed one parcel and one letter a month from families in Shanghai. This was good news until Lieutenant Honda set out the specifics. Visits would be limited to one ten-minute visit per year, with the supervision of the guards. Letters were limited to two twenty-five-word letters per year to families residing outside of China, and one letter per month to families still in Shanghai. All correspondence would have to be approved by the camp censor. My father was pessimistic about a letter actually finding its way to South Pasadena. Besides, what was there to say? What good news could he pass on? And so he didn’t write.

  The only news the camp received was from the Japanese-controlled Shanghai Times and a shortwave radio that got scratchy reception of the Russian station in Shanghai. Those two sources kept the camp vaguely informed concerning the war in Europe, but they knew very little about things closer to home. Only news of Japanese victories was let through; any Allied progress against the Son of Heaven was censored both in print and on the air. In early December, the camp was barred and blockaded for air raid warnings, and Barrows and Kelley were informed that the camp was to be blacked out. Barrows protested strongly and explained to Honda that the blackout of an internment camp was absolutely contrary to international law, especially since the Swiss Consulate had not even been informed of the existence of the camp. Honda replied that two lighted Japanese hospital ships had been sunk by Allied planes and that it was the colonel’s solemn intent to protect the camp to the last man against the angry Chinese mob.

  But the most galling of the colonel’s edicts had to do with money. Lieutenant Honda informed Barrows and Kelley that the internees’ home governments would be billed for all supplies that were brought into camp, including coal, wood, and food. My father and others were appalled. It was unthinkable that Japan would not provide for its prisoners, and the idea of home governments being forced to repay Japan for their internment was deeply upsetting. But the colonel was determined. Home governments would even be billed for heat, he said, and a portion of the amount billed would go toward heating the Japanese administration building at the camp. Many men said they would far rather be cold than do anything to provide heat for the Japanese.

  At the start, there seemed to be only three circumstances in which a man would be permitted to leave camp: if his wife was critically ill and death seemed imminent; if his wife died, in which case he would be allowed to attend the funeral; or if the man himself was so ill that he required medical care beyond what the camp doctors could provide, a matter that the colonel and Lieutenant Honda would decide. An American banker suffered a heart attack, a Greek seaman contracted meningitis, and one of the bishops developed what the camp doctors were certain was a malignant growth. Each of those men was taken to an outside hospital, and each time it was a long job to convince the Japanese that he was truly ill, and that an ambulance was needed. And each time the man died soon after he reached the hospital.

  But in early December, when they had been at Haiphong Road for a month, they learned that there was a fourth reason to leave camp. Early in the day on December 5, Lieutenant Honda sent for Barrows and my father and asked them to bring an American journalist named Peter Young to him. Young should bring his overcoat, the lieutenant added. When Barrows asked why Young was wanted, Honda replied only that he was being taken out for questioning by the gendarmes. Barrows then asked if Young was being taken to Bridge House, and Honda’s scowl told him he was correct.

  Young was returned from Bridge House sixteen days later. The gendarmes said he was only submitted to gentle questioning, but when my father opened the door of the gendarmes’ car, the sight of Peter Young was terrifying. He was emaciated and could not walk. He was filthy, his hair and unshaved beard as matted as dead weeds. My father carried him directly to the internees’ clinic and the camp doctors.

  My father had known Young before they were interned, and so the two camp doctors, Anderson and White, asked him to help with Young’s care. My father observed a changed man. He bathed and shaved Young, then fed him warm rice and gave him hot drinks, and although Young was incoherent for most of that first night, he did seem to know that he was being helped and was grateful. In the morning, after his clothes had hung on the line overnight, they were covered with hundreds of dead lice.

  Young was at first hesitant to speak. The gendarmes had made it clear that he was not to talk about what had been done to him. But his silence was so anxious, and the look in his dark eyes so wild and panicked, that my father thought talking about it was the only way to calm him down. What happened in Bridge House had been a mystery for years, and it was with dread that my father listened to Peter Young for two days, gritting his teeth during the worst of it, trying not to react, giving Young fluids and trying to get some food in him, and to make him believe the lie that he was safe now.

  And as he listened, he developed a new theory about why they were here. Maybe Young was not an isolated case. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who was wanted for questioning—he was just the first. Because perhaps that was what all these men had in common: they were all wanted for questioning by the Gendarmerie, and it was just a matter of time before each man’s turn came.

  That winter was particularly cold. In a pile of trash in one of the rooms, my father found a thermometer, which he hung outside the office window. When he checked it each morning, he found the outside temperature was often below twenty degrees. For the first month there was almost no heat, but even when there was, it was inadequate, and a cold winter’s afternoon might find as many men as would fit sitting close together in the old greenhouse, where it was a few degrees warmer than the barracks. Many of the internees had chilblains, their hands and feet raw and red and inflamed from the cold and wet. But despite that and the freezing temperatures, the whole camp was often made to stand outside for half an hour or more for roll call, the quartermaster insisting that they remove their hats as a sign of respect as the Rising Sun was raised on the flagpole left by the U.S. Marines.

  By January, when a man was told that he was to be taken to Bridge House, my father and others lost no time in filling his coat pockets with whatever they could imagine might help: biscuits, cigarettes, toilet paper, coins. Those who were returned were always in the same condition, emaciated and weak, with haunted expressions that made my father want to look away. Each of them was cared for in the same way that Young had been: a bath, a haircut and shave, something to eat, lots to drink, and the chance to tell someone who could be trusted about what he had been through. It all became routine, even in February, when nine men were brought at the same time.

  Once again, my father worked at adapting. He learned to think about other things when Colonel Odera talked about the internees’ wives being ab
le to visit soon, and he learned to smile and clap his friends on the back when they cheered at the possibility. He learned to eat fish he wouldn’t have touched a few months earlier, to force himself to choke it down no matter how it looked or smelled or tasted. At least it was food—protein at that, hard to come by. And he learned to make believe, for just a moment when he needed it, that my mother and I were close. In the pocket of one of the pairs of trousers he had packed on that hurried November morning, he had placed a photograph of us, one he had taken years earlier at the beach at Tsingtao. I was a toddler, gleeful and triumphant as I stood on sturdy legs on the sand next to my mother, her arm supporting me. I grinned wildly at the camera, and at my father holding it. My mother knelt on the sand next to me, giving me balance. Her wavy hair touched her shoulders, and she wore a tight long-sleeved sweater and a long full skirt that was tucked around her legs, except that the curve of one of her calves showed, lovely and graceful. The fitted sweater revealed the round fullness of her breasts, and the expression on her face as she stared hard at that camera, laughing and trying to hold me still, was all confidence. My father had carried the photograph in his wallet for as long as I could remember, and though as a child I did not know the words to describe my mother’s look, I knew it when I remembered it: she was sexy and young and beguiling in that photo, a woman any man would find appealing.

  On winter afternoons at Haiphong Road, my father stared hard at that photo, and he learned a trick to bring us closer: if he rolled up a piece of paper and used it like a telescope to stare at the picture, we seemed very near, and he could, for a moment, imagine himself on that beach with us, the reason for our smiles.

  In June an American engineer died of a heart attack, and my father and three other Americans were permitted to leave camp to attend the funeral. The summer of 1943 was the wettest and coldest one that my father could remember in Shanghai, and when he returned to camp two hours after the funeral, he was soaked through and as chilled as if it were winter. But he didn’t care. When he hurried into the office to find Barrows, he was elated. At the funeral, he had been able to talk with an acquaintance who worked for the American Association, who whispered good news when the gendarmes weren’t looking: there was pretty sure talk of American repatriation, and it was rumored that British negotiations were in the works as well. He said some even thought repatriation was possible before year’s end.

  Barrows stared hard at my father and finally allowed himself to smile. He slapped my father on the back and laughed, and told my father to tell him the whole thing again.

  By the first of August, repatriation seemed imminent. Several of the men wrote letters to their wives and made bets with themselves: they wanted to see if they could beat their letters home. Rather than trusting the Japanese for delivery, they tried to smuggle their letters out of camp by addressing the letters to contacts in Chungking, the seat of Free China. Then they bribed one of the truck drivers or cooks to mail the letter to Chungking, where a contact would re-address the letter to its real recipient. Rumor was that a letter sent like that had a good chance of making it.

  Richard Fletcher was one of those men. Shortly before dinner on an evening in early August, Fletcher and another American, Edward Martin, were talking with a Sikh guard named Amar. My father was in the office, and he glanced out of the window at the three men talking and thought it strange that Amar, a man who kept to himself, would be even civil to Martin and Fletcher. Martin walked away after a moment, and as he passed my father’s window, he nodded to my father, and they exchanged a thumbs-up. They were of the same build and both had very short blond hair and they were often mistaken for each other.

  And then there was shouting, and my father looked back at Fletcher and Amar. Amar was yelling at Fletcher, who shook his head and tried to walk away. But when he turned, Amar grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, then pushed him roughly toward the Japanese administration building.

  An hour later, my father was in line for dinner when he saw Barrows heading toward him, his expression pained, his jaw tight. When Barrows reached my father, he said, “Honda wants to see you. You’re to bring your coat.”

  It didn’t register, and when my father didn’t react, Barrows shook his head and seemed impatient. “Get your coat, Joe, and we’ll get over to Honda and we’ll see what’s what. Standing here won’t help you out.”

  My father nodded without speaking, then followed Barrows to the office, where he grabbed his coat. Barrows dropped a hard roll into the pocket, then led my father to Honda’s office.

  Fletcher was there, sitting in a chair in front of Honda, whose sword lay across the desk. The lieutenant sometimes used its flat edge as a club, and it was clear from the lump on the side of Fletcher’s head that he had just done that.

  Amar stared hard at my father. “This man was a witness,” he said. Then he looked at Honda. “He must be punished for not volunteering this information.”

  My father felt Honda watching him, and for a moment, no one spoke. Then Amar began to speak furiously, telling of the wrong that had been done, and how it must be righted, and how these prisoners seemed to do as they pleased, was there no justice? This man Fletcher had asked him to disobey the colonel by smuggling a letter out of camp, and this other man, this Schoene, had been witness to the wrongdoing and had said nothing.

  And then my father understood: Amar had confused him with Edward Martin, and at first he felt a wave of relief. This would be cleared up. Honda was focused on Amar, and my father saw Barrows look hard at Fletcher and asked his question by nodding toward my father. Was it him? Barrows’s look said. Fletcher shook his head.

  “Lieutenant,” Barrows said evenly, “it is possible that there has been a misunderstanding here. With your permission, I will question one of the other internees.”

  Honda regarded Barrows skeptically. “I will question this one,” he said, and he pointed to my father.

  And then Honda turned to my father. “You,” he said. “You witnessed this betrayal?”

  My father hesitated. He was about to explain what he’d seen, and that he and Martin were often mistaken for each other, but something stopped him. Suddenly it didn’t make any sense. It didn’t do any good for someone else to go instead of him. Martin had done nothing wrong—he’d only been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d sent his wife and three small children home early on, and he’d had every intention of following soon. Why should he be punished?

  Everything seemed clear, and my father nodded at Honda. “I was there when they were talking, and what Fletcher was doing wasn’t so bad. He only wanted a letter to go to his wife, was all. It’s all your regulations that are the problem here, not us.”

  Honda looked stricken, and my father braced himself for whatever was next. Honda took a large volume from the corner of his desk and began to leaf through it. “‘For disobedience to an officer, ten to twenty-five years’ imprisonment,’” he read. He flipped forward. “‘For disrespect to an officer, ten years’ imprisonment or death. For incitement to mutiny, twenty-five years’ imprisonment or death.’” He slammed the book shut and stared hard at my father. “Do you understand?”

  My father nodded silently. Barrows started to speak, and my father turned to him. “For God’s sake, shut up,” he said. Barrows looked as though he’d been hit. He looked at my father for a long moment, stunned. My father nodded and Barrows said nothing more.

  Fletcher and my father were led outside, where the black Chevrolet used by the gendarmes sat waiting in front of Honda’s office. First Fletcher was shoved roughly into the backseat, then my father. And then the car pulled away from the building and through the main gates.

  When they arrived at Bridge House, my father and Richard Fletcher were immediately separated. My father was led to a large wooden desk, where the gendarme behind it handed him a printed form and told him to fill it in completely. My father did, writing in his nationality, his place and date of birth, and details of his personal history,
including education and the names and addresses of family and friends. He signed the form, and he was fingerprinted, then stripped, searched, and given a cotton coat and trousers to wear. A guard led him downstairs to the ground floor, which had been designed for shops; Bridge House had originally been a modern apartment building. But the shops were cells now, and he followed the guard down a long dark hallway to the chief jailer, who sat at a desk at the end of the corridor. On the wall next to him were rows of metal pegs, and on the pegs were small wooden tags, each with a prisoner’s name on it in Chinese characters on one side and in English on the other. There was also a heavy metal ring with a number of keys, everything from small Yale keys that anybody could have, to huge, cumbersome things that were six or even eight inches long.

  He was put in a room that was perhaps eighteen feet by twelve. It was very crowded, and the stench made him gag. Once his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, my father counted and found that twenty-five people, mostly men but a few women and one child, sat cross-legged in rows on the concrete floor. A box in the corner was the toilet. There was no room to lie down, no faucet to wash with, no heat. They had been given a bundle of blankets to share, and when the lights went out an hour later, my father watched as the prisoners formed groups of two to six and huddled close together, sharing a blanket. He felt the vermin and lice under his clothes. He heard the rats moving around the cell.

  In the morning, he was given a bowl of boiled rice. Next to him was a Korean man who whispered stories to him: he himself had been jabbed in the leg with a bayonet, he said. My father guessed he was dying of blood poisoning. The Chinese woman weeping in the corner had been taken from her professor husband, the Korean said; now she had no idea where he was. A White Russian woman held her three-year-old son in her arms, awake or asleep. Several of the inmates had typhus, but the Korean told him that the only medical care consisted of visits by a female Japanese nurse accompanied by two petty officers. The nurse handed out aspirin for a fever or any other ailment, including boils, swelling, or VD.