Displacement

Content Warning: This section deals with wider issues of racial discrimination and injustice, including unjust incarceration and inter-generational trauma.

Now back home in Seattle, Kiku lies on the grass while her mother sits inside watching more news about Donald Trump. As Trump shouts that he will ban immigration and “make America great again” (48), Kiku finds herself once again surrounded by fog and displaced into the past. This time, she sits at a station with many other Japanese people, as an armed guard stands by and a man with a clipboard calls out numbers for people to board a bus. Every Japanese person in the station wears a paper tag with a number on it.

Kiku sees her grandmother, Ernestina, and her family in the crowd but does not speak to them. On the bus, everyone is quiet and somber. The bus drives out into the country. Kiku tries to comfort herself that these displacements are temporary and she will go home at any moment, but she is terrified and wonders if these displacements will follow her forever.

Finally, the bus arrives at their destination: Tanforan Assembly Center, a large horse racetrack that has been converted into a waystation for the displaced Japanese population before they are sent to permanent camps.