Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

they were all Japanese, so none of them would be asked to leave because they weren’t Americans. But they would all be moving on soon, to different relocation camps.
    One day, one of the guards told Roy some friends had come to see him—the other members of the Jivin’ Five. Roy was surprised, because gas was being rationed. Each family was allowed only a few gallons of gasoline each month. Roy said he liked it that his friends used some of their gasoline to drive to the racetrack to visit him.
    “Can I come with you?” Tomi asked.
    “Nah, this is just for guys,” he said.
    She watched him hurry away, then was surprised when he returned not more than thirty minutes later. He looked angry, and Tomi thought his eyes glistened with tears. “What’s wrong? How come your friends didn’t stay longer?” she asked.
    “I told them to go on home. I don’t want them to visitanymore.”
    “Why? Is it because you’re Japanese?”
    Roy shook his head.
    “Were they mean?”
    “No, they were all right. They brought me some sheet music.”
    “Then what happened?”
    Roy took his sister’s hand. “It was awful. I had to talk to them through a barbed-wire fence !”

1942 | CHAPTER FIVE
    TALLGRASS

    FINALLY , in August, after four months of living in the racetrack, the Itanos received an order to move again. Mom didn’t want to go. She wondered how Pop would ever find them.
    Tomi was glad, however, because she was tired of living in a smelly horse stall and playing in the dirt of the racetrack.
    “Where’s our camp going to be?” she asked Roy, who only shrugged and said nobody knew. The guards would tell them when they got there, he said, as they boarded the train with other evacuees. Tomi had never ridden a train before and was excited. But the train was as hot as the stable at Santa Anita. People weren’t allowed to get off when the train stopped at stations or even go out onto theobservation platforms. And they couldn’t open the windows. In fact, they were told they must keep the shades pulled down for the entire trip.
    “Are they afraid people will see us or we’ll see people?” Roy asked a guard. Just like Santa Anita, the train was filled with guards carrying guns. The soldier only shook his head. He didn’t know. After Roy talked with another guard, he came back to his seat and whispered to Tomi, “He thinks we’re going to Tallgrass. That’s the camp in Colorado.”
    “I’ve read about Colorado,” Tomi said. “They have mountains and rivers and big pine trees, and it snows there.” None of the Itanos had ever seen snow. “I wouldn’t mind Colorado,” she added. Her spirits lifted, and for the first time since she left her house in California, Tomi thought the relocation might be an adventure.
    After days, the train stopped and the evacuees were told to gather their belongings. They were at their destination. Tomi was so excited that she pushed to the front of the car so that she could be one of the first ones off. She jumped down onto the platform and looked around, then stopped. The station was in a dusty town set in the middle of the prairie. Dirt blew across the streets, and everythingwas brown. Where were the mountains? The snow? The tall pines? “This can’t be Colorado,” she told Hiro when he caught up with her. She squinted in the harsh sunlight.
    “What is this place?” a man called to a crowd of people who had gathered to see the evacuees arrive. Like Tomi, the other Japanese stared at the land around them, blinking in the bright sun.
    “Ellis, Colorado,” came the reply.
    Ellis, Colorado, wasn’t anything like California. There were no strawberry beds or lettuce fields. Tomi looked over at the crowd of people who had gathered at the station. Some of them stared curiously, but others were angry and called out mean things. “We don’t want you Japs here,” one man yelled.
    “Go on back where you came from,” called another.
    Mom, who stood next to Tomi, whispered,