Miniature Giant

--February of 2015

With thoughts of my grandfather, I stood in the room of a place that was the equivalent of the Versailles for the elderly. I looked into the faces of generations of experiences, and instantly felt outclassed. Like a clumsy librarian tasked to oversee an archive bigger than herself. All there was to me was my notebook and an honest curiosity. I hoped that was enough. The Aegis assistant and my professor paired us off to begin the interviews. Where after introducing each resident, we would raise our hands for the individual who interested us.

I raised mine for a gentleman named Fred. And although his hand was no larger than mine, I soon found that he had more character in one finger than I did in my entire body.

Fred Shiosaki served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II, which included the campaign that saved the Lost Battalion. I found out he saved more than just Texans from the peril of Germany, he also saved a genius brother from undue coercion at the risk of his life and what seemed like conflicted love for his parents.

Complicated family, war and discrimination drew me deeply into his story.

“Do you mind if I take notes?” I uncapped my pen. We made a quiet place out of two armchairs by a bright window.

“Oh, please do,” he said, sitting back. “Unless you’re the type who can remember everything.”

I shook my head and we shared a laugh. I had lied. My memory is photographic.

His words were going to be important to me, but I wanted to see his face too. I wanted to witness a veteran’s experience through words and through the lines that drew across his face as he articulated them. I wanted as much of the landscape as I could get, because my grandfather died stoic and asleep with a blackened heart.

Fred grew up east of the Cascades in Spokane. Oh crap, I thought. What a place to be during World War II! To this day, Spokane has the highest Caucasian population, at approximately 89 percent in Washington state. It was at about 99 percent in his day.

His fondest memories were of him playing with his siblings, and of helping out at their family business: Hillyard Laundry, a business his father built up after "working for a good nothing" running tables and laboring away under the Oriental Trade Company.

Naturally, a majority of his friends were Caucasian—until the war.

“I wasn’t really affected by evacuation and relocation because of where we lived…it was more social,” he said slowly, “all my friends were gone because they were drafted.”

My shoulders had tensed, anticipating discrimination with the loneliness.

As a high school graduate of 18, he told me he went down to the draft boards with the hopes of serving his country.

“I found out I was a ‘4-C’, I asked them, ‘what does that mean!’ it meant that I had been classified as an enemy alien. I told them, ‘I was born here! I’m an American!’" After that rejection he opted for college, enrolling in Gonzaga, which was an all male school at the time and like Spokane’s population, the school’s student body was sparse because of the war.

“I must have flunked every class,” he glanced at me over his glasses, “Gonzaga had the Navy officer training program…watching the guys run up and down the street in uniform and there I was,” a 4-C, Japanese, “God, it was so painful!” Fred groped his knees, sitting forwards and backwards in his seat. He might as well have been back at the draft boards again.

Glancing at my notes, I thought of the Aegis assistant and what he said when he introduced Fred to my class. This is Fred, he was apart of the 442nd in World War II. He is an American.

I found a title like that moot. Specifically with how Asian-Americans are positioned as white adjacent yet still the constant foreigner, evidenced in my own life and Fred's.

I have rarely felt only American, always blank dash American, on my scholarships, my papers. I knew how much power there was in that. There was power to withhold rights, to turn an entire nation against a group of people, and to make an elderly man look back and feel pained.

I underlined American on my page, making sure he couldn’t see that my pen was leaking because I pressed down so hard.

“The military was recruiting translators,” he went on, “I looked the part, but I realized, beyond a couple swear words and ‘Mom, I want rice’, I didn’t know that much Japanese,” he laughed. Another failed to prove he was a patriot.

Another opportunity arose in 1943, an all Japanese-American unit, named the 442nd was put together and he signed up for it.

“I…I couldn’t even tell you how my parents reacted when I went home and told them what I’d done,” he said distantly, touching his chin. “God, I couldn’t, my father had never been so angry…and my mother cried harder than she ever did,” he laughed again.

On my notes, beside a scribble that said "telling parents", I wrote anger—why? I concluded that they were concerned for him.

But his older brother’s shadow cast itself across the Pacific.

“My brother and I were both in the military…we were both wounded in the war, and God, my mother was worried about him,” George, the genius sent off to Sendai, one of the most prestigious universities in Japan, “it was so painful…!”

I stopped writing, stopped coming up with conclusions and connections to my own life and looked at him. What does one say to someone who faced resistance from his own country, and from his own family? One could lie down and contemplate the paths of warfare and bloodlines and never get up again because of the complexities.

“We didn’t hear from my brother for years,” he said, gathering the scraps of his composure, “when the war broke out, the Japanese government could not touch him. He was an American Citizen.” He looked out at the lobby. “They cut off his rations and he was coerced into renouncing his citizenship.”

I frowned. There it is again, I thought. American.

“My father was sick, when we finally located him," he recalled. “‘I’m not going to die until I see my son,’ he said.” Fred paused. “My sister and I sued through our governor for a special bill to be passed, so that my brother could get his citizenship back in America. It was a long and involved process, and we won it. My father died happy.”

I sat back a little when Fred repeated, “My father died happy."

The words were entrenched in sadness. Through them, though, I recognized a level of honor that I lacked. With my acceptance into university, and a driver’s license, I disappeared from my own family for reasons I kept to myself. I could not love them in such a way, much less comprehend being shipped off to Italy and France to fight and take shrapnel to the ribs for a country that was unable to recognize Pearl Harbor as an isolated incident, and not something representative of a whole group of people.

“I’m not bragging,” Fred said briefly, glancing at me who was already impressed, “the 442nd is the most decorated unit, we were apart of the rescue of the ‘Lost Battalion’,” an infantry outfit that had been cut off by German forces, “the year was 1945, we were in the Vosges; we initiated an attack against the Germans, broke their front, snuck around and won in 15 minutes.”

I underlined the number. I knew that they were up against men who were excellent shots, men who were considered gladiators.

“The Germans retreated like scalded dogs, we chased them into Milan. Their unit was to be relocated afterwards, but the war in Europe had ended.

“So, what other BS can I tell you?” Fred smiled.

I didn't know what else to ask for. I was returning from east of the Cascades, from Gonzaga, Japan, the Vosges. I was figuring out my national identity and failing. I was figuring out my love for my family, avoiding bullets and suing for special bills through state governors. I was drawing together how I could thank someone for being more than a nation deserved.

“Are…are those yours?” I sputtered, quickly flashing my eyes at a booklet and a copy of Riding the Bomb beside him. He was on the covers.

Maybe, before I had to leave, we could look through his vast history once more. His history, that had all the purple hearts and ribbons that it did.

"Oh, yes,” he said softly, and turned them towards me.

The sunlight dappled his glossy image, and as I took the small pile into my lap and memorized the titles, I waited for him to tell me everything again.