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

“Don’t they understand? We want to go back, but we can’t. We don’t want to be here.”
    Tomi saw a girl looking at her brown-and-white saddle shoes, and Tomi stared back at her. The two of them might have gone to the same school and been friends, she thought. But maybe the girl hated her for being Japanese. Maybe if Tomi was her classmate, the girl wouldn’t allowher to be a Girl Scout. Dirt blew into her face, and Tomi took out her pink silk scarf and put it over her long black hair, tying it at the back of her neck. Then she joined Mom, Hiro, and Roy as they climbed onto one of the buses waiting near the train—buses that would take them to their new home.
    They rode a mile down a dirt road, past fields of what a man said were sugar beets. Then they turned in at a gate. Tomi could tell from the barbed-wire fences and the guard towers that this was a prison camp, even though it was called a relocation camp. There was a sign over the gatehouse: “Tallgrass.”
    She could see that the camp wasn’t ready for the evacuees. The barracks weren’t finished. Many were missing doors and windows, and the ground was littered with lumber and wire. Nothing had been painted. There were no gardens or sidewalks, only dirt. Tomi listened to the sounds of the carpenters, the talk of the people as they got off the buses. She looked at the long rows of barracks and the dirt streets. The camp wasn’t pretty.
    But it would be, Tomi thought suddenly. The Japanese she knew in California had been good gardeners. They would plant trees and flowers and vegetablegardens. Some would create rock gardens. The women would hang curtains in the windows. There would be schools and shops. Before long, Tallgrass would be a regular town, and each person in it would be like her, an American whose ancestors were Japanese. Tallgrass really was going to be an adventure, she thought. She turned to Hiro and said, “It looks like we’re home.”

    If Mom was upset by their living space, she didn’t show it. Their “apartment,” as it was called, was just one room, sixteen by twenty feet. That was only a little larger than their living room in California. The unpainted walls were so thin that Tomi could hear people talking in the apartment next door. There was just one window, and a single lightbulb hung from the ceiling. A coal-burning stove stood in the center of the room. Except for cots with thin mattresses, there was no furniture.
    Roy bit his lip as he dropped two suitcases on the floor. “They expect us to live here, all four of us?”
    “Better than the horse place,” Mom said.
    “But this is permanent, Mom. We might be here a longtime,” Roy argued.
    “I like it,” Mom said, although she didn’t sound so sure.
    Shikata ga nai , it can’t be helped, Tomi thought. Mom smiled at Tomi and took a deep breath. “A small place, not so much cleaning to do.”
    “Plenty of dusting,” Roy told her, rubbing his hand across the window sill, then examining it. Dust was already blowing in through a crack in the wall onto the suitcases. Roy slapped his hands together, then grabbed Hiro’s arm. “Come on, let’s get out of here and find out where the mess hall is.” The two of them left, Roy slamming the door so hard that the walls shook.
    Mom stared at the door, then straightened her back. “Good. They won’t be in the way. Let’s set up our new home, Tomi. First thing, find a broom. Too much dust and sawdust on the floor.”
    They hadn’t brought a broom with them, of course, and Tomi didn’t know where to look for one. She went outside and searched until she spotted a pile of lumber—with a broom on top. One of the workmen must have thrown it away, because the top half of the broomstick had broken off. Still, Tomi was as excited as if she’d found a silver dollar lying on the ground. She snatched it up and returned tothe apartment.
    “Such good luck!” Mom said when Tomi showed her the broom. “With the stick broken, the broom is