Otsuka Quotes

Women are weak, but mothers are strong.

We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.

And if anyone asks, you're Chinese. The boy had nodded. "Chinese," he whispered. "I'm Chinese." "And I," said the girl, "am the Queen of Spain." "In your dreams," said the boy. "In my dreams," said the girl, "I'm the King.

Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.

We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God. We developed a coldness inside us that still has not thawed. I fear my soul has died. We stopped writing home to our mothers. We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.

It's all in the way you breathe.

But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger's backyard, our mother's rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light.

Summer was a long hot dream.

She remembers that she is forgetting. She remembers less and less every day.

A Japanese can live on a teaspoonful of rice a day. We were the best breed of worker they had ever hired in their lives.

Or maybe, it's just gone. Sometimes things disappear and there's no getting them back. That's just how it is.

Etsuko was given the name Esther by her teacher, Mr. Slater, on her first day of school. "It's his mother's name," she explained. To which we replied, "So is yours.

She remembers that everything she remembers is not necessarily true.

Up there,” she says, “I’m just another little old lady. But down here, at the pool, I’m myself.

We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God. We developed a coldness inside us that still has not thawed. I fear my soul has died. We stopped writing home to our mothers. We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.?

Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place. That's not him, we said to our mother, That's not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us..."Did you..." she said. "Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms...

Don't touch me," said the girl. "I want to be sick by myself." "That's impossible," said her mother. She continued to rub her back and the girl did not push her away

We didn't know. We didn't want to know. We never asked. All we wanted to do, now that we were back in the world, was forget.

{We] glide serenely through the water, safe in our knowledge that we are nothing more than a blurry peripheral shape glimpsed in passing through the foggy, tinted goggles of the swimmer in the next lane.

It would be autumn, and our fathers would be out threshing in the fields. We would walk through the mulberry groves, past the big loquat tree and the old lotus pond, where we used to catch tadpoles in the spring. Our dogs would come running up to us. Our neighbours would wave. Our mothers would be sitting by the well with their sleeves tied up, washing the evening's rice. And when they saw us they would just stand up and stare. "Little girl," they would say to us, "where in the world have you been?

Above ground, many of us are ungainly and awkward, slowing down with the years.... Down below, at the pool, we are restored to old youthful selves. Grey hairs vanish beneath dark blue swim caps. Brows unfurrow, limps disappear.

There was a man of the cloth—Reverend Shibata of the First Baptist Church—who left urging everyone to forgive and forget. There was a man in a shiny brown suit—fry cook Kanda of Yabu Noodle—who left urging Reverend Shibata to give it a rest.

That night our new husbands took us quickly. They took us calmly. They took us gently, but firmly, and without saying a word. They assumed we were the virgins the matchmakers had promised them we were and they took us with exquisite care. Now let me know if it hurts. They took us flat on our backs on the bare floor of the Minute Motel. They took us downtown, in second-rate rooms at the Kumamoto Inn. They took us in the best hotels in San Francisco that a yellow man could set foot in at the time. The Kinokuniya Hotel. The Mikado. The Hotel Ogawa. They took us for granted and assumed we would do for them whatever it was we were told. Please turn toward the wall and drop down on your hands and knees (...) They took us violently, with their fists, whenever we tried to resist. They took us even though we bit them. They took us even though we hit them (...). They took us cautiously, as though they were afraid we might break. You’re so small. They took us coldly but knowledgeably — In 20 seconds you will lose all control — and we knew there had been many others before us. They took us as we stared up blankly at the ceiling and waited for it to be over, not realizing that it would not be over for years.

Because the only way to resist, our husbands had taught us, was by not resisting.

They learned that some people are born luckier than others and that things in this world do not always go as you plan. STILL

She remembers that today is Sunday, which six days out of seven is not true.

She remembers that she is forgetting.

Or was their guilt written plainly, and for all the world to see, across their face? Was it their face, in fact, for which they were guilty?

It keeps us centered and focused, it slows down the aging process, it lowers our blood pressure, it improves our stamina, our memory, our lung capacity, our general outlook on life itself.

Nakata understands completely. But you know, Mr. Otsuka, people don’t work that way. We need dates and names to remember all kinds of things.” The cat gave a snort. “Sounds like a pain to me.

We loved them. We hated them. We wanted to be them. How tall they were, how lovely, how fair. Their long, graceful limbs. Their bright white teeth. Their pale, luminous skin, which disguised all seven blemishes of the face. Their odd but endearing ways, which ceased to amuse - their love for A.I. sauce and high, pointy-toed shoes, their funny, turned-out walk, their tendency to gather in each other's parlors in large, noisy groups and stand around talking, all at once, for hours. Why, we wondered, did it never occur to them to sit down? They seemed so at home in the world. So at ease. They had a confidence that we lacked. And much better hair. So many colors. And we regretted that we could not be more like them.

Wie Sie darüber denken, ist natürlich Ihre Sache", sagte Otsuka und leckte sich wieder die Pfote. "Aber Sie sollten die Angelegenheit mal aus der Sicht des Schattens überdenken. Vielleicht fühlt er sich klein. Also, wenn ich der Schatten wäre, würde ich nicht ... halbiert sein wollen.

You will see: women are weak, but mothers are strong.

They learned that they should always call the restaurant first. Do you serve Japanese?

One must not get too attached to the things of this world. AS

the last complete sentence she ever utters is “It’s a good thing there’s birds.

Later, your mother says, "Didn't everything used to have a name?

Up there I'm just passing as me.

Is it a blessing in disguise, or is it just a disguise? And if it's just a disguise, then what is it disguising?

And remember, it's easier to bend than to break.

The night of his arrest, he asked me to go get him a glass of water. We'd just gone to bed and I was so tired. I was exhausted. So I told him to go get it himself. 'Next time I will,' he said, and then he rolled over and went right to sleep. Later, as they were taking him away, all I could think was, 'Now he'll always be thirsty.' Even now, in my dreams, he's still searching for water.

the shock of the water—there is nothing like it on land. The cool clear liquid flowing over every inch of your skin. The temporary reprieve from gravity. The miracle of your own buoyancy as you glide, unhindered, across the glossy blue surface of the pool. It’s just like flying. The pure pleasure of being in motion. The dissipation of all want. I’m free. You are suddenly aloft. Adrift. Ecstatic. Euphoric. In a rapturous and trancelike state of bliss. And if you swim for long enough you no longer know where your own body ends and the water begins and there is no boundary between you and the world. It’s nirvana.

The pool is their sanctuary, their refuge, the one place on earth they can go to escape from their pain, for it is only down below in the waters that their symptoms begin to abate. "The moment I see that painted black line, I feel fine.

Overnight, our neighbors began to look at us differently. Maybe it was the little girl down the road who no longer waved to us from her farmhouse window. Or the longtime customers who suddenly disappeared from our restaurants and stores. Or our mistress, Mrs. Trimble, who pulled us aside one morning as we were mopping her kitchen and whispered into our ear, "Did you know that the war was coming?" Club ladies began boycotting our fruit stands because they were afraid our produce might be tainted with arsenic. Insurance companies canceled our insurance. Banks froze our bank accounts. Milkmen stopped delivering milk to our doors. "Company orders," one tearful milkman explained. Children took one look at us and ran away like frightened deer. Little old ladies clutched their purses and froze up on the sidewalk at the sight of our husbands and shouted out, "They're here!" And even though our husbands had warned us--They're afraid--still, we were unprepared. Suddenly, to find ourselves the enemy.

We praised them when they were kind to others but told them not to expect to be rewarded for their good deeds. We scolded them whenever they tried to talk back. We taught them never to accept a handout. We taught them never to brag. We taught them everything we knew.

In early autumn the farm recruiters arrived to sign up new workers, and the War Relocation Authority allowed many of the young men and women to go out and help harvest the crops. Some came back wearing the same shoes they'd left in and swore they would never go out there again. They said they'd been shot at. Spat on. Refused entrance to the local diner. The movie theater. The dry goods store. They said the signs in the windows were the same wherever they went: 'No Japs Allowed.' Life was easier, they said, on this side of the fence.

She said she didn't want rice. She didn't want anything anymore. Not a thing. But every once in a while she got a faraway look in her eyes and he knew she was thinking of some other place. A better place. "Just once," she told him, "I'd like to look out the window and see the sea.

But no matter how loudly we called out for our mother we knew she could not hear us, so we tried to make the best of what we had. We cut out pictures of cakes from magazines and hung them on the walls. We sewed curtains out of bleached rice sacks. We made Buddhist altars out of overturned tomato crates that we covered with cloth, and every morning we left out a cup of hot tea for our ancestors. And at the end of the harvest season we walked ten miles into town and bought ourselves a small gift: a bottle of Coke, a new apron, a tube of lipstick, which we might one day have occasion to wear.

A memory from before: his sister arriving home from school with her new jump rope trailing behind her on the sidewalk. "They let me turn the handle," she said, "but they wouldn't let me jump." She had cut the rope up into tiny pieces and tossed them into the ivy and sworn she would never jump rope again.

Every few days the letters arrived, tattered and torn, from Lordsburg, New Mexico. Sometimes entire sentences had been cut out with a razor blade by the censors and the letters did not make any sense. Sometimes they arrived in one piece, but with half of the words blacked out. Always, they were signed, "From Papa, With Love.

If we did something wrong, we made sure to say excuse me (excuse me for looking at you, excuse me for sitting here, excuse me for coming back). If we did something terribly wrong we immediately said we were sorry (I’m sorry I touched your arm. I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I didn’t see it resting there so quietly, so beautifully, so perfectly, so irresistibly, on the edge of the desk. I lost my balance and brushed against it by mistake, I was standing too close, I wasn’t watching where I was going, somebody pushed me from behind, I never wanted to touch you, I have always wanted to touch you, I will never touch you again, I promise, I swear…).

The ads in the papers all said 'help wanted, will train,' but wherever she went she was turned down. "The position's just been filled," she was told again and again. Or, "We wouldn't want to upset the other employees." At the department store where she had once bought all her hats and silk stockings they would not hire her as a cashier because they were afraid of offending the customers. Instead they offered her work adding up sales slips in a small dark room in the back where no one could see her but she politely declined. "I was afraid I'd ruin my eyes back there," she told us. "I was afraid I might accidentally remember who I was and ... offend myself.

Mostly, they were ashamed of us. Our floppy straw hats and threadbare clothes. Our heavy accents. Every sing oh righ? Our cracked, callused palms. Our deeply lined faces black from years of picking peaches and staking grape plants in the sun. They longed for real fathers with briefcases who went to work in a suit and tie and only mowed the grass on Sundays. They wanted different and better mothers who did not look so worn out. Can't you put on a little lipstick? They dreaded rainy days in the country when we came to pick them up after school in our battered old farm trucks. They never invited over friends to our crowded homes in J-town. We live like beggars. They would not be seen with us at the temple on the Emperor's birthday. They would not celebrate the annual Freeing of the Insects with us at the end of summer in the park. They refused to join hands and dance with us in the streets on the Festival of the Autumnal Equinox. They laughed at us whenever we insisted that they bow to us first thing in the morning and with each passing day they seemed to slip further and further from our grasp.

As the days grew longer our father began spending more and more time alone in his room. He stopped reading the newspaper. He no longer listened to Dr. IQ. with us on the radio. "There's already enough noise in my head," he explained. The handwriting in his notebook grew smaller and fainter and then disappeared from the page altogether. Now whenever we passed by his door we saw him sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands in his lap, staring out through the window as though he were waiting for something to happen. Sometimes he'd get dressed and put on his coat but he could not make himself walk out the front door. In the evening he often went to bed early, at seven, right after supper - 'Might as well get the day over with' - but he slept poorly and woke often from the same recurring dream: It was five minutes past curfew and he was trapped outside, in the world, on the wrong side of the fence. "I've got to get back,' he'd wake up shouting. 'You're home now,' our mother would remind him. 'It's all right. You can stay.

They ate at the table like grown-ups. They never cried. They never complained. They never left their chopsticks standing upright in their rice. They played by themselves all day long without making a sound while we worked nearby in the fields. They drew pictures in the dirt for hours. And whenever we tried to pick them up and carry them home they shook their heads and said, “I’m too heavy” or “Mama, rest.” They worried about us when we were tired. They worried about us when we were sad. They knew, without our telling them, when our knees were bothering us or it was our time of the month.

Nothing’s changed, we said to ourselves. The war had been an interruption, nothing more. We would pick up our lives where we had left off and go on. We would go back to school again. We would study hard, every day, to make up for lost time. We would seek out our old classmates. “Where were you?” they’d ask, or maybe they would just nod and say, “Hey.” We would join their clubs, after school, if they let us. We would listen to their music. We would dress just like they did. We would change our names to sound more like theirs. And if our mother called out to us on the street by our real names we would turn away and pretend not to know her. We would never be mistaken for the enemy again!

Who am I? You know who I am. Or you think you do. I’m your florist. I’m your grocer. I’m your porter. I’m your waiter. I’m the owner of the dry-goods store on the corner of Elm. I’m the shoeshine boy. I’m the judo teacher. I’m the Buddhist priest. I’m the Shinto priest. I’m the Right Reverend Yoshimoto. So prease to meet you. (…) I’m the one you call Jap. I’m the one you call Nip. I’m the one you call Slits. I’m the one you call Slopes. I’m the one you call Yellowbelly. I’m the one you call Gook. I’m the one you don’t see at all—we all look alike. I’m the one you see everywhere—we’re taking over the neighborhood. I’m the one you look for under your bed every night before you go to sleep. (…) I’m your nightmare…

She remembers her name. She remembers the name of the president. She remembers the name of the president’s dog. She remembers what city she lives in. And on which street. And in which house. The one with the big olive tree where the road takes a turn. She remembers what year it is. She remembers the season. She remembers the day on which you were born. She remembers the daughter who was born before you – She had your father’s nose, that was the first thing I noticed about her – but she does not remember that daughter’s name. She remembers the name of the man she did not marry – Frank – and she keeps his letters in a drawer by her bed. She remembers that you once had a husband, but she refuses to remember your ex-husband’s name. That man, she calls him. She does not remember how she got the bruises on her arms or going for a walk with you earlier this morning. She does not remember bending over, during that walk, and plucking a flower from a neighbour’s front yard and slipping it into her hair. Maybe your father will kiss me now. She does not remember what she ate for dinner last night, or when she last took her medicine. She does not remember to drink enough water. She does not remember to comb her hair. She remembers the rows of dried persimmons that once hung from the eaves of her mother’s house in Berkeley. They were the most beautiful shade of orange. She remembers that your father loves peaches. She remembers that every Sunday morning, at ten, he takes her for a drive down to the sea in the brown car. She remembers that every evening, right before the eight o’clock news, he sets two fortune cookies on a paper plate and announces to her that they are having a party. She remembers that on Mondays he comes home from the college at four, and if he is even five minutes late she goes out to the gate and begins to wait for him. She remembers which bedroom is hers and which is his. She remembers that the bedroom that is now hers was once yours. She remembers that it wasn’t always like this...

His father had promised to show him the world. They'd go to Egypt, he'd said, and climb the Pyramids. They'd go to China and take a nice long stroll along that Great Wall. They'd see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Colosseum in Rome and at night, by the light of the stars, they'd glide through Venice in a black wooden gondola. "The moon above," he sang, "is yours and mine...

Their old life seemed far away and remote to him now, like a dream he could not quite remember. The bright green grass, the roses, the house on the wide street not far from the sea -- that was another time, a different year.

And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this: I'm sorry. There. That's it. I've said it. Now can I go?

Vi kastade oss in i vårt arbete och blev besatta av tanken på att dra upp ett ogräs till. Vi lade undan våra speglar. Vi slutade kamma håret. Vi struntade i smink. [...] Vi glömde bort Buddha, Vi glömde bort Gud. Vi utvecklade en köld inom oss som ännu inte har tinat upp. [...] Vi slutade skriva hem till våra mödrar. Vi gick ner i vikt och blev magra. Vi slutade blöda. Vi slutade drömma. Vi slutade längta. Vi bara arbetade, det var allt (s. 52-53).

A girl on North Fremont is discouraged by the postman, who tells her that only a traitor would dare exchange letters with the Japanese. NEW

If you stay in your place they’ll leave you alone—and did our best not to offend. Still, they gave us a hard time. Their men slapped our husbands on the back and shouted out, “So solly!” as they knocked off our husbands’ hats. Their children threw stones at us. Their waiters always served us last. Their ushers led us upstairs, to the second balconies of their theaters, and seated us in the worst seats in the house. Nigger heaven, they called it. Their barbers refused to cut our hair. Too coarse for our scissors.

illegally double-parked near the entrance to the school playground, drones its slow maniacal song.

The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of our town. And every time, when she gets to your face, she looks as if she is about to speak.

For many women with ADHD, we may be able to sit still but we can’t stop moving through our never-ending thoughts.

When we finished with our laps we hoist ourselves up out of the pool, dripping and refreshed, our equilibrium restored, ready to face another day on land.

They had a confidence that we lacked. And much better hair. So many colors. And we regretted that we could not be more like them.

You keep it,” he said.

Soon we could barely recognize them. They were taller than we were, and heavier. They were loud beyond belief. I feel like a duck that's hatched goose's eggs.

Not once did we ever have the money to buy them a single toy. AND

BEYOND THE FARM, they’d heard, there were strange pale children who grew up entirely indoors and knew nothing of the fields and streams. Some of these children, they’d heard, had never even seen a tree.

MOSTLY, they were ashamed of us.

SOME SAID that the men had been put on trains and sent far away, over the mountains, to the coldest part of the country. Some said they were enemy collaborators and would be deported within days. Some said they had been shot. Many of us dismissed the rumors as rumors but found ourselves spreading them—wildly, recklessly, and seemingly against our own will—nonetheless. Others of us refused to speak of the missing men by day but at night they came to us in our dreams.

Surely there must be something they had said, or done, surely there must be some mistake they had made, surely they must be guilty of something, some obscure crime, perhaps, of which they were not even aware.

Was it their face, in fact, for which they were guilty? Did it fail to please in some way? Worse yet, did it offend? IN

Many of us had lost everything and left saying nothing at all. All of us left wearing white numbered identification tags tied to our collars and lapels.

He put down his suitcase and looked at her. "Did you..."she said, "Every day,"he replied.

A fortune begins with a penny.

ladies began boycotting our fruit stands because they were afraid our produce might be tainted with arsenic. Insurance companies canceled our insurance. Banks froze our bank accounts. Milkmen stopped delivering milk to our doors. “Company orders,” one tearful milkman explained. Children took one look at us and ran away like frightened deer. Little old ladies clutched their purses and froze up on the sidewalk at the sight of our husbands and shouted out, “They’re here!” And even though our husbands had warned us—They’re afraid—still, we were unprepared. Suddenly, to find ourselves the enemy. IT

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. — ECCLESIASTICUS 44:8–9 Barn

And at three o’clock in the morning, as they lie beside us peacefully slumbering away, we wake up in a cold sweat, cheeks flushed, teeth clenched, hearts pounding, wondering: How many more laps do we have left? One hundred? One thousand? Six? Ninety-four? Isn’t there somebody out there who can give us a clue?

People to watch out for: aggressive lappers, determined thrashers, oblivious backstrokers, stealthy sub-mariners, middle aged men who insist on speeding up the moment they sense they are about to be overtaken by a woman, tailgaters, lane nazi's, arm flailers, ankle yankers, pickup artists - we're not that kind of a pool - the peeper, a highly regarded children's TV host in his life above ground, who is best known below ground for his swift lane change.

But we never say, "the pool". Because the pool is ours and ours alone. "It's my own secret Valhalla.

If too much time is spent up above, we become uncharacteristically curt with our colleagues, we slip up on our programs, we are rude to waiters, even though one of us (lane seven, little black Speedo, enormous flipper like feet), is a waiter himself. We cease to delight our mates... and even though we resist the urge to descent, it will pass, we tell ourselves. We can feel our panic beginning to rise, as though we were somehow missing out on our own lives. Just a quick dip and everything will be alright. And when we can stand it no longer, we politely excuse ourselves from whatever it is we're doing: discussing this month's book with our book club, celebrating an office birthday, ending an affair, wandering aimlessly up and down the florescent lit aisles of the local Safeway, trying to remember what it is was we came in to buy, (Mallomars, Lorna Doones), and go down for a swim, because there's no place on earth we'd rather be than the pool. Its wide roped off lanes, clearly numbered 1 through 8, its deep, well-designed gutters, its cheerful yellow buoys spaced at pleasingly predictable intervals, its separate, but equal entrances for women and men, the warm ambient glow of its recessed, overhead lights, all provide us with a sense of comfort and order that's missing from our above ground lives.

For us, swimming is more than a pastime. It is our passion, our solace, our addition of choice. The one thing we look forward to, more than anything else. "It's the only time I feel truly alive." It keeps us centered and focused. It slows down the gain process, it lowers our blood pressure, it improves our stamina, our memory, our lung capacity,

And now here you are, sitting in your chair by the window, gazing out urgently, raptly at “your” tree—its shapely green canopy, its black velvety shadows, its sinuously curved trunk, its barky brown bark.

She does not remember saying to you, the other night, right after your father left the room, He loves me more than I love him. She does not remember saying to you, a moment later, I can hardly wait until he comes back.

One of us continues to swim back and forth in her lane long after everyone else has gotten out, and when we call out her name - "Alice, time's up!" - the lifeguard lifts his hand and says, quietly, "One more lap.

Ci ammiravano perché avevamo la schiena forte e le mani agili. Per la nostra resistenza. Per la nostra disciplina. Per il nostro carattere docile. Per la nostra insolita capacità di sopportare il caldo, che nelle giornate estive poteva sfiorare i cinquanta gradi nei campi di meloni di Brawley. Dicevano che la bassa statura ci rendeva perfetti per un lavoro che imponeva di stare sempre chini a terra. Dovunque ci mettessero, li facevamo contenti.

Quella notte i nostri nuovi mariti ci presero in fretta. Ci presero con calma. Ci presero dolcemente, ma con decisione, e senza dire una parola. Sicuri che fossimo le vergini promesse dai sensali, ci presero con squisita premura. [...] Ci presero con bramosia, con cupidigia, come se avessero aspettato di prenderci per mille anni più uno. Ci presero anche se avevamo ancora il mal di mare e il terreno non aveva smesso di oscillarci sotto i piedi. Ci presero con violenza, usando i pugni quando cercavamo di resistere. Ci presero anche se li mordevamo. Ci presero anche se li picchiavamo. Ci presero anche se li insultavamo e gridavamo aiuto. [...] Ci presero con frenesia, sopra lenzuola macchiate di giallo. Ci presero facilmente, e senza troppe cerimonie, perché alcune di noi erano già state prese molte volte. [...] Ci presero pensando ad un'altra donna - lo capimmo dal loro sguardo perso in lontananza - e poi ci maledissero quando non trovarono il nostro sangue sulle lenzuola.

You see, we’re not hyperactive, just otherworldly energetic. We’re not distractible, just incessantly curious. And yes, we can be impulsive, but some experts believe that creativity is simply impulsivity gone right (and one reason why many believe that Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso all had ADHD).

Ricorda che una volta amò qualcuno più di chiunque altro. Ricorda di aver partorito due volte la stessa bambina.

They learned that some people are born luckier than others and that things in this world do not always go as you plan.

Breaking a chain letter from Juneau, Alaska.

SLOWLY THE BOY SPUN the dial. He heard organ music playing on the Salt Lake City station. Then rhumba music. A swing band. An ad for Dr. Fisher’s tablets for intestinal sluggishness. “Folks,” a man asked, “do you feel headachy and pepless in the morning?” “Nope,” said the boy.

Every week they heard new rumors. The men and women would be put into separate camps. They would be sterilized. They would be stripped of their citizenship. They would be taken out onto the high seas and then shot.They would be sent to a desert island and left there to die. They would all be deported to Japan. They would never be allowed to leave America. They would be held hostage until every last American POW got home safely. They would be turned over to the Chinese for safekeeping right after the war. You've been brought here for your own protection, they were told. It was all in the interest of national security. It was a matter of military necessity, It was an opportunity for them to prove their loyalty.

„Niekas nelaimi karo.Visi pralaimi

high honors in Latin. She remembers how to say “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Veni, vidi, vici. She