He was a good man, her husband, but he was hardly a man to face a challenge head-on and in fact practiced a kind of active avoidance that she often found maddening even as she envied the skill. When they had first heard news of the ­Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hiro’s response had been to nod sadly, lift his coat from its hook, and set out on the path to the ­Wilsons’. She expected something from him in the morning at least, some acknowledgment that the world had changed, but he went out into the orchards as he always did and it was up to her to remove the little shrine, the photographs, the images and accoutrements of the life from which they had come, actions that she knew to be futile and yet what else could she do for her family but try to cover them in the pale paint of the country of their birth?

At certain times she had come to think of Hiro’s steadiness as a kind of special power, for no matter what the situation he seemed unperturbed, perhaps even unperturbable. Even as they readied for departure to Tule Lake this was the case, his quiet sadness turning into simple resignation and to single-minded focus—they were leaving and had to prepare—a power that was constant during all the years she had known him, right up until that first September at Tule Lake when it broke all to pieces. It was the final communication from the Wilsons that did it, a letter not even from the family itself but from a law firm neither Hiro nor Kimiko had ever heard of before.

Hiroshi Takahashi, the letter began. Your lease on the property of Homer Wilson is hereby terminated effective immediately. Furthermore, your personal goods stored at said location have been sold at auction to cover expenses and rent past due. The net owed is zero. You are hereby forbidden to contact Homer Wilson and his family in any way, shape or form. All communication should be conducted through this office at the address listed. Sincerely, Walter E. Shettley, Attorney-at-Law.

Hiro did not tell her the contents of the letter the day of its arrival nor the next nor the next, and he did not tell Ray until the war was coming to an end and his return from Europe was imminent. Even then he only relayed that Ray would not find them in the hills of Newcastle but in Oakland, Hiro’s own incredulity and confusion having been slowly evaporated until what remained was simple endurance, gaman.