“So we went. And at the end of the movie, after the last credit rolled, neither of us was able to move. We just sat there. My mom could not rise up out of her seat. The lights came on and the other patrons wandered out, but the two of us stayed. No one came down the aisle to ask us to leave, which was a good thing because I don’t know how my mom would have reacted. I believe she was physically incapable of standing during those moments. She showed no outward emotion. We just kept sitting. I’d never seen her like that before. Her feelings about those memories were so deeply hidden.

“After a long silence, my mom spoke, but she did not turn in my direction. She was staring straight ahead. ‘I know some of those people,’ she said. She motioned with her chin in the direction of the dark screen. ‘People in that movie. Actors, extras in the crowds—do you remember the part? When the families were forced to leave their homes? Some of the people who acted in this movie were in the camp with our family. I recognize them even after all this time. Part of it was filmed in Canada. It had to be. One of the scenes was Greenwood; I know that place, old mining town. We moved there for a short time after we left the Fraser Valley at the end of the war. I think one of the boat scenes, too, was filmed in Canada. Did you see how helpless those families were when they were taken away? What were they supposed to do? They had to follow orders, just as my parents did when I was a child. We were ordered out of our home. We were allowed to take only what we could carry. That was British Columbia, where I was a Canadian citizen. But this is an American film, what we just saw, ne?’”

Chiyo stopped there. The credits had run up the screen quickly; she hadn’t been able to spot every filming location. She looked up the information later. Her mother was correct: several Canadian locations were used. But her mother had looked so helpless sitting in semi-darkness in the theatre. Reliving what her parents had gone through. Reliving what she had gone through as a child in the camps. Small and helpless.

Addie had seen the film, as had Tom. He remembered the year, 1999. He and Ida took the train to Toronto and managed to get tickets for several films at TIFF. They were both moved by the film. They had read Guterson’s book in advance. Tom had never met anyone directly related to someone who’d lived in one of the camps, and he was interested in what Chiyo had to say about her mother’s reaction.

Hazzley picked up the war-movie thread.

“Hope and Glory. I watched that in Ottawa with my daughter, Sal. The setting was the Second World War, and the film was pretty darned accurate about capturing the experience of children in London—some children, anyway. I was young during the actual war, but for me the film evoked the years that followed, when there was so much rebuilding to do. Parts of Hope and Glory were amusing, downright funny, despite the seriousness of the times. Ian . . . Ian . . . the grandfather?”