“Don’t worry about a thing,” he said, repeating what he’d told Ruby earlier. “This is Hollywood. We’ve got makeup for that, and with the right lighting I can make anyone look good.”
“I’m feeling pretty woozy too. Do you think I could have a couple of aspirin?”
“Aspirin? Betty will get you something a lot stronger than that.”
Mr. Butler handed me Ruby’s wig and robe, and sent me to Hair and Makeup. When I got there, I put in a quick call to Max Field, the agent Helen, Eddie, and I had used when we were in Los Angeles. He agreed to reschedule his day, come to Paramount, work out a quick contract, and watch the filming so he could book me elsewhere. I forced myself to push away thoughts of Ruby and Joe and handed myself over to the nice ladies. They began by pulling apart my hairdo and then pinning the strands as close to my head as possible to fit the wig over my skull. When they were done with me, I was transformed. For the first time, I wasn’t just a China doll. I was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Mr. Butler studied me and decided against new gardenias.
“You don’t need them,” he pronounced. “You’re exquisite as you are.”
With that compliment lifting my spirit, I found my mark. This was my dream, but working on a soundstage is not the same as working in a club. You don’t have an audience, wanting to be entertained. You don’t have the feeling that people are with you. You want to express yourself and sell the number, but you’re basically playing to an empty room-with cameras aimed at you-and it’s very, very difficult. No matter what I did, Mr. Butler didn’t like it. He asked me to use Ruby’s fans. She’d always said that what she did was a lot harder than it looked, and she was right. I was naked except for a patch, and I had to walk around for three choruses, which is a long time in music. At least one rib was broken or fractured, and those feathered fans were heavy. I was also scared silly, because I’d never done anything like that. I lost my balance and heard a couple of men on the crew snicker.
“Let’s try the bubble,” Mr. Butler suggested.
But it wasn’t easy to turn with the bubble and not have my fanny flash in front of the camera. I heard “Cut! Cut! Cut!” too many times to count. I was humiliated and ashamed of my poor performance.
“Do you have anything else?” Mr. Butler asked in frustration.
“I might,” I said. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll come up with something that will work with your music. I can show your audience the world,” I promised.
I went to a corner of the soundstage and began to count in my head. One, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight. Mr. Butler had just made his first Road picture, which probably meant he wanted something “exotic,” so I took hand gestures from Siamese and Burmese dance routines I’d encountered at the exposition on Treasure Island, hula I’d learned from Ruby, and bits of Chinese opera movements I’d seen with Monroe, and then brought them into ballroom styling. When I showed the dance to Mr. Butler, he said, “Perfect! I love it! Let’s shoot it!”
Someone slapped some very long false fingernails on me, powdered me for shine, and blotted my lipstick. Since I needed a last-minute costume, they tied me into a sarong like Dorothy Lamour and had me take off my shoes so I could dance barefoot. I performed the routine several times as Deanna Durbin and another actor wisecracked their way through a scene in the foreground.
I was going to be a motion-picture star.
RUBY: Whirlpool Valley
“Who’s going to win the war?” Agent Parker asked in a harsh voice.
“The United States,” I answered.
“Are you pro-Japan?”
“No.”
“Then why did your father and brothers go fishing on a Sunday?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were they sending signals from their boat to the Jap planes as they flew into Pearl Harbor?”
“I’m sure they didn’t,” I answered.
“Are you aware that your mother made her language students sing the Jap national anthem before every class?”
“Yes, but you’re making it sound worse than it was. Her students learned Japanese faster when they had a melody to follow.”
Agent Parker exchanged glances with his partner, Agent Holt. We were in a windowless office somewhere in L.A. I was angry at myself for being caught, livid that my big Hollywood chance had been lost, and more furious at whoever had reported me than I was scared of the men, but I was working overtime not to let them see my emotions.
“This is the first time I’ve heard about my parents since the attack on Pearl Harbor,” I volunteered, flashing Agent Parker my pearly whites. “Where are they? And what about my brother? His name is Yori Fukutomi-”
“We’re the ones asking the questions, sweetheart,” Agent Holt notified me.
How I would have liked to have biffed him one right then, but I needed to keep my head about me.
“Did your parents take food or oil to Jap ships at sea?” Agent Parker resumed.
“No.”
“Did they hide any Japs in their house?”
“No.”
They grilled me for two days. They asked the exact same questions, and I gave the exact same answers again and again and again-always with my best Princess Tai smile. My inquiries, on the other hand, were met by stony silences, flip ripostes, or threats. When I asked if I could go to the powder room, they pursed their lips and looked away. When I asked who’d turned me in, Agent Holt quipped, “Lies, betrayals, and disappointments. That’s what friendship’s all about, sweetheart,” which narrowed the field down to… who? Ida? Charlie? Eddie? One or all of the Lim Sisters? A band member? Maybe Monroe? One of the many men I’d dated since becoming Princess Tai who’d gotten suspicious about me and made a lucky guess? When Agent Holt got tired of my answers, he warned me: “There are people a lot tougher than us. You want to be in a room with them?” Was the threat real? I didn’t want to find out, so I tried to elaborate a little bit. When Agent Parker pressed me on why my family had always lived near naval facilities, I replied, “No one else wanted to live in those neighborhoods, so the rents were cheap.” He didn’t like that response. “Just how long have you and your family been spying on America?” he bellowed only inches from my face.
At night, I was locked in a cell and given a tray of food. I wasn’t allowed to telephone anyone. I wasn’t given clothes, a toothbrush, or a hairbrush. I didn’t cry, because inside I was boiling. Someone had given me up and robbed me of my opportunity for real fame. I kept going over and over it in the night. When I got to the end of my loop, I’d repeat something my mother used to say to me. Sakki naita karasu ga mo warau. The crow that was crying a few minutes ago is already laughing now. In Japanese, Mom explained, the word for crying sounded like birds making noise even though the written characters were different. “Crows are smart, stubborn, tough survivors,” she told me. “But also remember, Kimiko, that the gaijin-the white foreigners-can’t hear the difference if we are crying or laughing because they don’t see us as human. You will forever trick them. And tomorrow you will fly and laugh your way across the sky again.”
On the morning of the third day, I was brought again to the windowless room. My body-my mouth especially-felt foul. I prepared myself for another day of questions. The agents entered-all business.
“We’re going to lay it out for you straight,” said Agent Parker. “We’ve got a special internment camp in Arizona called Leupp. It’s where we keep Japs we suspect are traitors to the United States. Two of those internees are your mother and father.”
“They’re alive?” I was incredulous and grateful but also wary.