Ruby didn’t seem concerned. “I’m not an enemy alien. I was born here, and I’m an American citizen.”
I was scared for her.
GRACE: Dancing on the Edge
Our lives changed quickly in those first few months of the war. We still had air-raid sirens and blackouts, but the curfew was abolished and the immediate danger dissipated. San Francisco became a liberty port, and the whole city buzzed with activity. In Chinatown, the world rushed in. Servicemen moseyed up and down the streets, going from bar to bar. They jammed nightclubs. They spent money like there was no tomorrow, and for some maybe there wasn’t. No one wanted to stay home-although business at the Forbidden City went up and down, as it did in nightclubs across the nation, depending on news from the war front, whether in Europe or the Pacific. A writer for Variety called this phenomenon “escapology.” Clubs like the Forbidden City gave people a place to blow off steam, celebrate, share experiences and trade stories, and laugh away their staggering dread of what might come. Charlie had a hard time keeping ponies, because soldier boys-total strangers-married our girls on what seemed a lark. The fear of death is a powerful aphrodisiac.
Helen and Ruby were tied together by tragedy, yet remained wary of each other. Often I’d find the two of them sitting together in a corner of the club before we opened, conversing in low voices about who knows what. Now that Helen’s secret was out, her deep-seated distrust and hatred of the Japanese could spark on occasion. Ruby responded to Helen’s rare outbursts the same way she did when one of our boys talked about going overseas to kill Japs-by accepting another drink, jitterbugging until she exhausted her partner, and sleeping around. Unlike the rest of us, she was not only dancing on the edge of a volcano, she was looking down into its fiery center. I don’t know if she was afraid, thinking about jumping into it, or daring it to erupt. Maybe all three.
One evening in early ’42, I sat at a table with some Navy officers stationed on Treasure Island, listening to them talk about how the place had changed since I’d last been there. The band was playing “The Japs Won’t Have a Ghost of a Chance” when Joe entered the main room and spotted me. The sureness of his gait and the way he held his shoulders told me he’d enlisted. I thanked the sailors and walked toward Joe, meeting him in the middle of the dance floor.
“The United States Army Air Forces,” he said in greeting.
Of course! What had previously been called the Army Air Corps was now the most active service of the military in recruitment, because Japan had large reserves of pilots, and we did not. The air forces wanted and needed educated men, and Joe was a college graduate, with two years of law school under his belt. The air forces was considered the elite service, and it was meant for him.
“When do you report?” I asked.
“Not for another couple of weeks,” he answered.
Charlie gave Joe dinner and drinks on the house. All the girls came out to congratulate him. Ida sat on his lap like she belonged there. Joe nonchalantly accepted the attention like the glittering flyboy he’d become just by signing his name to a piece of paper. Ruby regarded him with an expression I recognized. Glitter attracts glitter, and no one was more entranced than Ruby. The heat that was always between them-even during these past months, when it had been reduced to mere embers-once again ignited. In minutes, Ida was out on her ear, and Ruby had Joe completely in her thrall. Even after all this time, it was excruciating for me to see because once again the game had changed. There was something about the way he reacted to her that was elemental, primitive, sexual.
That very night, Joe proposed to Ruby, and I couldn’t help but wish he’d chosen me instead. None of it made sense, but we were all scared of the future and hanging on to “normal” life in whatever way we could. I think-I believe-Joe mistook Ruby’s seductiveness, and how it made him feel, for love. And, of course, he was caught up in the moment as so many boys were. For Ruby’s part, Joe was a possible bridge to safety. That she would even consider marriage was the first dent in her armor-the rash fearlessness with which she faced the hatred around her. We were now at war, and my heart seemed insignificant compared to what Joe and Ruby were each facing. That didn’t mean they could get married in California, though.
“Let’s drive to Mexico to tie the knot,” Ruby suggested.
Joe vetoed the idea, saying it would be foolhardy to leave the country now. Instead, he wrote to the State Bar of Nevada, asking if he could marry an Oriental girl there, and received a letter denying the request on the basis that it was a crime for a Caucasian to “intermarry with any person of the Ethiopian or black race, Malay or brown race, or Mongolian or yellow race.” He next wrote to the second nearest state, Utah, and was informed that “marriage between whites and Mongolians, members of the Malay race, mulattos, or quadroons” was prohibited there as well. Each rejection infuriated Joe and further demoralized Ruby.
“You’ve got to tell him the truth,” Helen insisted one night as the three of us sat together in the apartment on Powell, with our blackout curtains trapping all light within the four walls of our living room, Tommy asleep in a basket on the floor, and the radio playing in the background.
“That I’m Japanese?” Ruby whispered the last word. “Not possible.”
“What will happen when he finds out you’ve lied to him?”
“If anyone told him, he’d be snowed under,” she admitted. “But who’s going to tell him?”
“Oh, honey, you don’t want to live a lie,” Helen said, but she didn’t sound all that sincere to me. “It’s not worth it. If he loves you, your ancestry won’t matter.”
If true, this was a stunning leap for Helen, who was always so against mixing. Or maybe she was just trying to comfort our friend. But Ruby’s case was different even from those of other Nisei. Her family had been suspected of signaling to Japanese bombers, her older brother was killed on a fishing boat in the minutes after the attack, her parents were accused of being fifth columnists. She was in a terrible and dangerous spot. That she hadn’t been picked up or reported already seemed miraculous.
“Joe is so American.” Ruby spoke haltingly, as though she were afraid to reveal her true motives. “He’s the most American person I’ve ever met. If I marry him, won’t that prove I’m American too?”
But wouldn’t Ruby still have the same black mark against her as her parents? Wouldn’t she seem especially suspect because she’d masqueraded as Chinese, dancing in a nightclub frequented by servicemen? If she were caught, wouldn’t that reflect badly on Joe as well? Maybe even ruin his chances for flight school?
On February 19, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the secretary of war to designate certain areas as military zones and said that he could exclude any or all persons suspected of being enemies from those places. The next day, 250 enemy aliens, mostly Japanese, were rounded up in San Francisco and sent to Bismarck, North Dakota.
“Where the hell is Bismarck?” Ruby asked, sassy as could be.
On March 2, General DeWitt issued instructions that all people of Japanese ancestry living in San Francisco would be wise to voluntarily evacuate inland. Instantly, posters appeared on telephone poles-even in Chinatown-addressed “To All Japanese.” The instructions didn’t distinguish between alien and nonalien. (It hit me then: alien and nonalien. Whether citizens or not, all Japanese were now considered alien.)
“Why should Princess Tai move?” Ruby asked.
The next day, we went with Joe to the Port of Embarkation in Oakland. He was going to the newly opened Santa Ana Army Air Base for basic training, which would last for nine weeks. He chucked my chin and said, “Keep your nose clean, kid.” I blubbered like nobody’s business. Then he turned to Ruby. “I’ll get our marriage problem ironed out,” he promised. They kissed right in the open.