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Back Phantoms
Chapters (16)
  1. Title
  2. Chapter 1
  3. Chapter 2
  4. Chapter 3
  5. Chapter 4
  6. Chapter 5
  7. Chapter 6
  8. Chapter 7
  9. Chapter 8
  10. Chapter 9
  11. Chapter 10
  12. Chapter 11
  13. Chapter 12
  14. Chapter 13
  15. Acknowledgments
  16. Also by Christian Kiefer

My wife sometimes finds me in my chair, asleep, my cigarette an ash column between my fingers. She rouses me and sometimes we return to bed; other times, if my daughter is awake, we all head downstairs and pour our bowls of cereal and begin our day. Suzie is six years old and she is filled with questions and I try to answer them as I crunch my Chex and sip my coffee. Later the three of us will walk through the oaks and the last peaches and plums and despite everything I have done and all the guilt I carry both inherited and earned, despite it or perhaps because of it, I know that I am lucky, not only to be alive, but to have found in my life a measure of grace, or rather for that measure to have found me. There are days—many of them—when golden light seems to pour forth from the very soil. That I am here to meet that light continues to amaze. Somewhere phantoms yet blaze the sky. And yet what I think of most is this:

Sweet life. Have you not been with me all the while?

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I GREW UP IN PLACER COUNTY AND LIVE, NOW, IN THE TOWN I have fictionalized herein. It has been a singular honor, therefore, to be trusted with the recollections of the various Placer County citizens who gave me their time, attention, memories, photographs, and reference materials. Thanks to Ray and Irene Yamasaki (and Denise Yamasaki for helping me connect with her parents); to Shig Yokote of the 442nd, whom I was fortunate enough to speak with just a few months shy his one hundredth birthday about his experiences before, during, and after the war (and double fortunate to join him later for the birthday party); to Stu Kageta, who shared his own experiences and those of his father, Frank, a machine gunner in the 442nd; and to Claire Camp (née Tsujimoto) for inviting me into her home and for her input and comments and her loan of some essential books on Tule Lake. Ken Tokutomi provided early guidance and contacts and made a rough sketch of the old ­Newcastle Japantown so I could begin to get my bearings around that vanished topography. Further to that study, Bill George’s documentary film Newcastle, Gem of the Foothills provided context and narratives of a lost time.