“Don’t you mean the Three Alls policy-burn all, kill all, loot all?”
“Bakatare!” My mother spat out the most insulting form of stupid.
My parents stopped speaking to me for two weeks after that. Hideo and Yori, my brothers, steered clear of me too. “You were born to be bad,” Hideo told me one day, sounding like a gangster he’d seen at the picture show in Honolulu. I wasn’t particularly bad, but I did have my own opinions. As a result, I was komaru ne-an embarrassment and an annoyance.
Worse, I liked boys and boys liked me, which made my parents crazier than bedbugs. Mom may have encouraged me to dance, but she hadn’t properly thought it through. More than three thousand Japanese-Issei, Nisei, and Sansei-lived on Terminal Island, but the sailors at the naval reserve shared the island with us. By the time I turned fourteen, I knew where I liked to spend my time. So, yes, my pop wanted to fish in Hawaii and my mother wanted to go back to Japan, but they were really getting me out of trouble before I got in trouble. But they hadn’t thought this through either. The trade winds blew away all orders. White teachers came to school with hibiscus behind their ears and picked them for me to wear. Ocean waves dashed my parents’ culture against rocky shoals. Rustling palm fronds whispered freedom and choice. Smooth-skinned local boys spoke with even smoother voices. And more sailors! They couldn’t tell if I was Japanese, Chinese, or Hawaiian, and they didn’t care.
“Shikata ga nai,” my mother moaned. “It cannot be helped.”
Mom said I was a moga-a modern girl. That was not a compliment. My parents couldn’t figure out what to do with me. When my aunt and uncle offered to take me in, my parents gladly let me return to the Land of Rice-mainland America-and I most happily went. And guess what. They lived and worked right next to the naval air station! Shikata ga nai! And how!
I’d shattered the mold for a typical Japanese girl. So what? I wasn’t like Grace, Helen, or the other girls either, worrying about opinions or dwelling on past disappointments. My desires in life were simple: float above the noise of the world, live in my body, and be seen as anything other than just Japanese.
ON A FRIDAY at the very beginning of February, I walked down Market Street, stopping in every shop and café, asking if they needed help. I got the usual brush-off: “We’re sorry, but the position has been filled,” meaning they wouldn’t hire me because I was Oriental. I passed a theater with girls going in and coming out. Curious as a cat, I went inside to find a shapely blond woman of a certain age, interviewing girls for a job at the Golden Gate International Exposition. I filled out an application and took a seat. When my turn came, the woman looked me up and down.
“Are you shy about getting naked?” she asked.
“I’ve never thought about it before,” I answered.
“Think about it now,” she said.
Warm days and nights in Hawaii, where I didn’t own a sweater, let alone a coat. Humidity so sticky that my parents, brothers, and I would peel down to our underwear and sit in the shallows of the ocean outside our home. Bathing naked in a wooden tub with my mother after my pop and brothers had their turn. The girls in my school, who taught me the hula and told me that their mothers and grandmothers never wore tops when they danced and relied only on their hair and homemade leis for modesty.
“I have nothing against it,” I told the woman.
“Nudity is very natural. Consider it art.”
If she’d been a man, if the setup had seemed slimy at all, if the job had been for anyplace other than the exposition, I would have skedaddled right on out of there. But when she said, “I could use a Chinese girl,” I felt like a big fish caught in one of my father’s nets.
“How much you paying?” I asked, trying to sound cheeky.
The woman gave a cunning nod. “Thirty-five berries a week.”
That was fifteen dollars more than Grace and Helen made!
“Where do I sign?”
Rehearsals-such as they were-started the next day. I kept what I was doing a secret for now. Grace was a good kid, but she was so wet behind the ears it was flooding back there. And even though I could tell Helen had been around some, she acted much too prim to hear the truth. Besides, with my track record, I still might get fired. I’d have some good stories to tell Grace and Helen then.
GRACE: Pistols and a Cowboy Hat
I went ahead and accepted one of Helen’s old prom dresses, which I wore until the gown I bought on layaway at the Emporium was paid off. (I sure as heck wasn’t going to sneak into my envelope with my fifty dollars. That money was the barricade between me and going home.) At night, between shows, we looked as pretty as spring flowers in our long dresses as we passed through the velvet curtains and into the dining room. Charlie directed us to particular tables by whispering in our ears. It all seemed innocent enough, so we sat with total strangers. If we still had more shows to do, we’d sip ginger ale or fairy-water tea, which was tea served with a fancy name and a fancier price, but we also ordered the most expensive drink on the menu-a Singapore sling for forty cents-so the customer had to pay.
All we really wanted to do was eat. Most customers ordered for us off the Chinese menu. But me? Given a choice? A steak, of course! As soon as dinner was over, I’d announce I needed to leave for the next show and thank them for their generosity. And that was that… at least for Helen and me.
“You girls are so green,” Ida ribbed us one night. She was a tiny thing, and she reminded me of a chipmunk-twitchy in her movements and reedy in her speech.
“Look who’s calling who green!” Helen shot back. “At least I grew up in a city. The city.”
“Besides, being green is nothing to be ashamed of,” I added, but I wasn’t as green as when I’d first started at the Forbidden City. Back then I’d never heard of a no-no girl. Now I knew those were the types of girls Donaldina Cameron rescued. I knew that a free Coca-Cola could turn into something else pretty fast, and I could recognize the particular worried look a girl got when her time of month approached or she was late. I vowed to follow Helen’s advice: Guard your body like a piece of jade. But I also learned it was easier to spend my salary than to save it. I developed a fondness for lingerie-corsets constructed with Lastex, brassieres made from lace handkerchiefs (which admittedly didn’t do much), and cami-knickers in pink or peach crepe for day or black satin or lace for evening. With each passing day, I became less frightened that my father would come searching for me, and my nightmares receded. I no longer had to act like I was carefree because I was sincerely happy, and I didn’t have to pretend bravery because I had no one to be afraid of.
After the last show, many ponies met stage-door Johnnies and disappeared into the night; Helen and I met Ruby. Every evening she came to the club, sat at the bar, and let men buy her drinks until Helen and I were free and we could all be together again. Sometimes Helen and I were still so high from performing that we needed to shake things up, so we’d take Ruby to the Pitt Club or the Variety Club, which catered to entertainers after hours, to listen to Harry James blow “All or Nothing at All” when he passed through town, and it was a long jam session with boozing and gambling until six in the morning. Or we might visit the Sky Room for the club’s special drink. “What girl doesn’t like an angel’s tits?” Ruby asked. (And, really, what girl didn’t? It was made with white crème de cacao, cherry liqueur, cream chilled in layers, and topped with a maraschino cherry.) Sometimes we just wanted to dance. Jitterbug. Conga. Rumba. And sometimes Ruby bought each of us a gardenia-“So we match”-which we wore over our left ears, showing everyone we were true friends. We found strength in being together, which allowed us to be daring and adventurous. We flirted with men and giggled when they flirted back. We shared clothes-a hair ribbon, a scarf, a sweater, a dress, a gown-and we promised never to let a man come between us like we’d seen happen to girls in high school.