By BILL WATANABE
I had a brother that I never met and never had the chance to get to know as I was growing up. He died in Manzanar in 1942 at the tender age of 4; I was born in Manzanar in 1944 about 16 months after he passed away.
Because I never knew him, I never felt any grief over his death although I did know how his illness and death affected my mother and I did grieve for her pain at the loss of her young son.
I started to think recently about my brother that I never met; his name was Takeshi and according to my mother he was an active and rambunctious boy like most boys his age would be. I began to wonder how he might have been had he grown up as one of my older brothers and it made me feel a sadness and melancholy – and I rarely ever feel melancholy.
When I was growing up and becoming more curious about life, I asked my parents how and why did my brother Takeshi die. My parents didn’t seem to want to talk about it so I only raised the question once or twice. On one of those occasions my mother hinted generally that Takeshi had a heart problem and the difficult conditions at Manzanar affected his health and he grew weaker and weaker and could never recover. I left it at that for many many years – never raising the question again.
After my father died in 1990, my two older brothers and I would take turns to visit my mother and check in on her. One night, I was talking to my mother and we started to talk about Manzanar and she shared some new recollections about life there.
She said it was very windy and the gusts were so powerful they could blow pebbles and small rocks along the ground such that if it struck you on the ankle bone it was very painful. She described how people on a windy day who were in line for the mess hall would have to jump up in the air to let the rolling rocks pass under their feet! She said sometimes the people in the queue looked like pistons going up and down and I remember telling her, “Boy – that is windy!” and we both laughed.
Then my mother grew melancholy and told me something I had never heard before as she spoke in a very soft and serious tone, her face looking down as her mind gathered an old memory.
She remembered the day when there was a wind warning in the camp and no one was allowed to be outside; this meant she could not take her daily walk to the hospital to visit with Takeshi, who was being treated for his deteriorating health. She thought about her sweet 4-year-old child and how he must have cried because his mother did not come to see him that day.
And as she told me this story she started to sob and cry as she once again relived the 50-year-old memory of poor Takeshi all alone in the hospital. My heart ached for my mother as I thought about my own daughter and how it would feel to have lost her at the age of 4.
As I ponder these words, I actually feel some grief and loss for the brother I never knew and as I approach my own eventual demise sometime in the future, I hold out a hope that perhaps we will meet in heaven and together we can comfort our mother.
Bill Watanabe writes from Silverlake near downtown Los Angeles and can be contacted at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those ofThe Rafu Shimpo.