San Jose

I was about twelve when I first understood what the “camps” were about. By then, I was an awkward middle school kid, struggling with an identity crisis as one of only a few Asian minorities in an all-white parochial college prep school – one that Mom wanted so much for me to attend. 

Growing up, I would hear casual mentions of “camp days” spoken in hushed tones. Sometimes, the grown-ups would switch to broken Japanese when they talked about things they didn’t want us kids to understand. I never questioned why our parents never encouraged us to learn Japanese. Mom wanted me to study French. She often shared her fantasy of us going to Paris together – shopping, eating decadent pastries, and dancing through the streets like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. Mom was a beautiful dancer and fashionista; she would have fit right in with Audrey and Fred on the Boulevard Saint Germaine.

At twelve, I was nothing like that – just a fat awkward kid – but I loved the fantasy. I actually did study French from the time I was nine until I opted to take the GED at 16. I left high school before finishing my first semester of eleventh grade, for no other reason than no one thought to stop me.    

Years later, I ended up in Paris, studying photography at the American College the Summer before my Junior year of art school. Mom didn’t join me on that trip. By then, we wouldn’t have made good travel companions. Criticism, judgment, and resentment became the language of our relationship – tension so thick that not even the romance of Paris could have softened it.

But I’m glad she encouraged me to study French instead of going to J-school, although there was a consequence to not learning Japanese during those formative years. I didn’t develop an appreciation for my heritage. I was a bona fide “banana” – yellow on the outside, white on the inside – a term that fed both my identity confusion and flourishing rebellion during adolescence. 

When the grown-ups spoke Japanese, I simply tuned it out. It was their private language, used when they didn’t want us to understand, to keep us at a distance.  

“Camp days” was one of those phrases I heard often, interspersed with Nihongo gibberish that I ignored. In my mind, I pictured carefree summers – campers on a beach, sitting around a fire pit with a pot of clam chowder, foil wrapped perch grilling after a long day of surf fishing. Or pitching tents in the Redwood Forest with all the cousins, roasting marshmallows under the stars.

This was what I imagined when I heard the words “camp days”.  

Until one Summer, my brother John and I were visiting Auntie Molly, Mom’s younger sister, in San Jose. We often spent the Summers there, staying with my grandmother in her two-bedroom apartment, while my parents traveled to far-off places – Europe, Israel, South America, China, or wherever else struck their fancy.

Dad was a high-powered executive at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, working under massive pressure to run one of the largest municipal utilities in the country. When he had time off, he wanted to travel, to escape, to leave the daily grind behind. Those were the times John and I were left with Obachan, our grandma, in San Jose. 

I loved those Summers. We had so many cousins there, about 15 of them, and they were wild, or at least they seemed to be. Most of them were older, so their world felt untouchable, rebellious, exciting. My older brother Paul had his own experiences that were very different than ours. I hardly remember him being there because he was always off with the older cousins, playing football in the streets, joyriding, shooting pool.  

John and I mostly just wandered. We bounced between Grandma’s apartment, Auntie Laurie and Uncle George’s house two blocks away, where we spent most days with Gary and Rodney, the two youngest of their seven kids. They were closest to us in age. We also ran in and out of Auntie Molly and Uncle Bob’s cozy home, mostly for food and snacks. They lived next door to Grandma, and four of our older cousins lived there, too. They were supposed to be the ones looking after us. They did their best.   

We spent those long Summer days roaming the streets of San Jose’s Japantown, no grown-ups setting schedules, no one driving us to planned activities. I became a smoker on those streets. I smoked my first cigarette at nine, on a dare from one of my older cousins. That Summer of 1970, behind Dobashi’s grocery story, I coughed my lungs out and went on to smoke for nearly 25 more years, eventually working up to a pack a day.

What I remember most about San Jose is the feeling of freedom. It was liberating to own our time, our space, without restrictions, without rules. I loved hanging out at Hashimoto’s Drug Store, sitting on the floor by the magazine rack for what felt like hours, flipping through Teen, Tiger Beat, and Mad Magazine. And then there were the rare times I was alone, without John and the cousins, when I could slip into Kay’s Shiseido Cosmetics store.

I first discovered this special store when Grandma asked me to pick up her face powder. “They’ll know what I want,” she said. The shop was on the corner just a block away from her apartment, on Jackson Street. I must have been about eight or nine the first time I stepped inside, and it was one of the transcendental moments of my life.

The scent hit me first – a blend of flowers, forests, citrus. To this day, I can walk into a Shiseido store anywhere in the world and be transported back to that little cosmetic shop in San Jose.

It was the most beautiful, magical, mysterious place I had ever been. Shelves and glass display cases filled with pastel-colored boxes, powders, tubes, jars, compacts – it felt like a treasure trove of secrets. I didn’t quite understand its purpose; I only knew it felt like a kind of magic.  

Visiting Kay’s became my secret ritual. Whenever I could sneak away, without the boys, I would pop in, feasting on the sight of the delicate products, testing lotions, and dabbing myself with Zen Eau de Cologne from the sample bottles. The girls behind the counter never questioned me, never made me feel unwelcome, even though they must have known I wasn’t going to buy anything. Sometimes, they would even take the time to dab a little eyeshadow, lipstick, and blush onto my pudgy cheeks.

I loved those moments – staring at myself in the mirror, imagining I was pretty, imagining I was the daughter Mom had always wanted. But before I stepped back into the real world, I would wipe it all away. The cousins would have teased me if they ever saw me trying to look like a girl.  

Most of our time in San Jose was spent at the Mandarin Restaurant on Jackson Street, the local Chinese Noodle House in the heart of Japantown. The place was always busy, packed with regulars crammed into booths, slurping up made-to-order Chinese dishes or their famous barbecue pork noodles.

The Mandarin was once Grandma’s business. Mom helped her purchase it not long after they resettled in San Jose, following their release from the camps. At the time, Mom was newly married to Dad, living in Los Angeles, but she still found a way to support the family – buying the building, which had an apartment above the restaurant. Grandma ran the place, and hired a Chinese cook from San Francisco who made the best Pork Noodles south of the city. The dish became a local legend.

A decade later, Mom’s younger sister Auntie Molly, and younger brother Uncle Bill, took over the restaurant with their spouses. They became co-owners and operators, keeping the Mandarin thriving for decades.  

During those long Summer days, when we weren’t roaming the street or hanging with our cousins, we worked at the restaurant. There was always something for us kids to do – washing glasses in scalding hot water, loading the cooler with ice cold soda and beer, snapping the ends off green beans and pulling out the stringy spine. But my specialty was sweeping the floor, a badge of honor I fought hard to prove.  

I was about ten when I got the lesson of my life.

One evening, after a large party vacated the banquet room at the back of the restaurant, the kids were summoned to help clean up. I grabbed a broom and took it upon myself to sweep. I must have been fumbling with it because I caught the attention of Uncle Bill.

With his booming, military-like voice, he barked, “Who taught you how to sweep?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, and continued his accusatory snarl, “I know you’re a spoiled, rotten city kid – probably never had to lift a finger to clean. Your mom spoils you with those maids who pick your snotty nose for you.”

He grumbled on, and I wasn’t sure if he was joking or truly resentful. Later, I learned that most of my San Jose relatives viewed me and my brothers as spoiled, privileged kids – exactly how Mom wanted them to see us.  

Uncle Bill yanked the broom from my hands. He grabbed my left hand and positioned it at the top of the handle, his fingers tightening around mine to show me how to grip it properly. Then, he adjusted my right hand halfway down the broomstick and demonstrated long, smooth strokes along the floor.

When I followed his lead, I felt an instant difference – control. Power. I stood motionless for a moment, taking it in, until he growled, “Well… get on with it then.”

My humiliation quickly turned to determination. From that moment forward, I became the best damn banquet room sweeper the Mandarin Restaurant had ever seen. I also made sure to clean more beans than anyone, scrub the dishes and glasses until they were squeaky clean. I was on a mission to prove to my San Jose relatives that I was not the princess Mom wanted them to believe I was.

To this day, I love sweeping floors.  

Auntie Molly was seven years younger than Mom, but she seemed to belong to a whole different generation. She was a vivacious woman, talkative, and flirty with everyone. She’d greet each of her dozens of nieces and nephews with open arms, flashing her big, crooked grin, shouting “My favorite!” before wrapping us in a warm embrace. And she talked to us like we were adults, like we were her good friends, her conversations gossipy, colorful, and full of life. I always loved conversations with Auntie Molly. My older cousins would sometimes scold her for being too candid in front of us kids, for telling dirty jokes, or for asking wildly inappropriate questions.

As bright and cheerful as Auntie Molly was, Uncle Bill was the same amount of grumpy and dour, always barking orders and grumbling under his breath. As different as two siblings can be, they were opposites in every way – except for one thing. They both resented Mom. Whether it was envy or something else, it manifested as a cold, lingering resentment.  

Auntie would tell me stories about Mom. “Oh, she was such a beautiful girl. All the boys were in love with her. But your Mom was always so, well, you know… koshkoi.”

The word in Japanese literally means clever, but the way Auntie used it, along with her subtle smirk, it was clear she meant something closer to Mom being a snob. She knew I got a kick out of hearing about Mom being uptight, so she milked the opportunity whenever she could. 

From Auntie Molly’s stories, Mom had been the princess of the family, the shining star adored and doted on by their elder siblings. Whenever I pressed for more, Auntie would sigh dramatically, shaking her head.

“Oh, your mother! Always the star, the one everyone adored. Our parents, all our brothers and sisters—they treated her like she was made of gold. And not only was she beautiful, but she could sing! So graceful and charming,”

She’d motion delicately in the air, pinky raised, punctuating “graceful and charming” with an exaggerated flick of her wrist. And I’d laugh whenever she would tease about Mom.

Auntie Molly was the eighth child in the family, second to the youngest, seven years younger than Mom. She had been the tomboy among the five sisters, the troublemaker, always seeking attention in mischievous ways. Mom never seemed to have the time of day for her.  

One summer afternoon, we all ended up in Auntie’s tiny, cozy kitchen –John, my cousins Gayle, Alan, Chris, Robbie, Auntie Mollie, Uncle Bob. It was rare for us all to be in the house together like that. Auntie and Uncle were always at the restaurant, and our teenage cousins were rarely home at the same time. But that day, we were all crammed in the tiny kitchen, some sitting around the square Formica table, others were sitting up on the kitchen counters.

That was when I first learned about the camps.

It started innocently enough, with Auntie Molly’s usual nostalgia.

“This reminds me of the camp days,” she said, clasping her hands, her big crooked grin spreading across her face. “This is how it was for us kids – the whole family cozy in a small room like this. I just love it when we’re all squished together like this.”   

John and I smiled, nodding. We understood what she meant. We were feeling it, too – the warmth of being surrounded by family. It was rare for us. Dad was always working, Mom was busy running her businesses, and John and I mostly spent time with our nannies, Mariah and later Ella. We never had big family moments like this one, and for that moment, we were really feeling the family love.

Then, with a sudden slap of his hand on the Formica table, Uncle Bob shattered the mood.

“Shit, man! Don’t go believin’ that crap,” he snapped. “Nothing good like cozy times happened in camp. Don’t go tellin ‘em it was all good times! It was shit, man. It was HELL!”

I never heard Uncle Bob say more than a few words at any one time, and when he did, it was usually with a laugh and a smile. But this was different.

Auntie Mollie tried to brush past it, waving a hand. “I was just saying how this is like… “

Uncle Bob slammed his hand down again, cutting her off, “NO! This is not like that!!”

Then he stood up and walked out of the room.

I sat there, stunned, frightened. “What just happened?” I blurted.

I looked around, but no one else seemed phased. That confused me even more. Uncle Bob had just exploded, but everyone carried on like it was nothing.

“Why is Uncle Bob so mad? What happened?” I demanded.

Cousin Robbie leaned toward me. “It’s okay, Mary,” she said gently. “He’s just remembering the camp days. And it still makes him mad.” 

“The camp days?” I echoed. I looked at John. He shrugged.

Auntie Molly glanced between us and then looked at my older cousins. A realization settled over them that John and I knew nothing about the camps. 

“You mean,” Auntie Mollie asked, her voice quieter now, “your Mom and Dad never told you about the camps?”  

I’m sure Auntie Molly already knew that Mom wouldn’t have told us about camp. Mom never talked about unpleasant things – ever.

To those who didn’t know her well, Mom was elegant, charming, and gracious, always choosing her words carefully. But to those who knew her best, she could be evasive, which often felt like she was keeping secrets. It took me a lifetime to understand that she wasn’t trying to hide things out of deceit, but rather, she refused to sacrifice hope for the future by dwelling on the past. She was always focused on what needed to get done, always pushing forward. Believing in the positive was both her superpower and her greatest flaw.

For those closest to her, the refusal to confront pain or ugliness sometimes felt heartless, like she was unwilling to empathize with pain or weakness. Auntie Molly’s openness, and her blunt honesty, was too much for Mom to deal with, and the two never quite got along. The resentment between Mom and her young siblings, Molly and Bill, ran deep.

Auntie’s openness about Camp, knowing Mom would have never talked about it, reminded me of the time she casually let slip that I once had an older sibling. A sister named Carla.

A sister who would have been twelve years older than me but died at birth.

Auntie tossed that little fact at me as if she were mentioning a long-forgotten pet chihuahua Mom might have once owned.  We were at Denny’s, eating blueberry pancakes with John and a few cousins, none of who were paying attention. So I pretended to shrug it off, as if I already knew, as if it didn’t mean much to me.

I ended up crying for days after.

I never told Mom that I knew. And she never told me about Carla either.  

When we returned home from our summer trip, I hounded Mom with questions.  

“Auntie Mollie told me about camp. Why didn’t you ever tell me? What was that all about?”

Mom avoided my questions, deflecting with vague, unrelated answers. 

“Mom, Auntie said you lived at a racetrack. That you were in a horse stall. That there were days when you had no food, and sometimes no water. Did that really happen?”   

She brushed me off, “Oh honey, that was a long time ago. I don’t even remember. It was during war time – everyone had to do their part.”  

“But Mom, Auntie said there were guards. Barbed wire fences. Like you were in prison. Were you in prison?”  

She laughed, “No honey, we weren’t in prison. The government was just trying to protect us?” 

“Protect you? From what?”  

“Well, it was war time, dear, so that’s what happens in war time.”  

I pressed on because I didn’t buy it, “You mean the government rounded up families and locked them in a camp in the desert with barbed wired fences? Isn’t that what the Nazis did to the Jewish people? That doesn’t sound right, Mom. Why didn’t I ever know about this? Why don’t you ever talk about it?”

She sighed, finally giving in. Setting down her sewing and sat with me on the bed, “Oh, for goodness sake. Okay. I’ll tell you about camp.”

I leaned in, eager, waiting.

“It was so long ago, during the war. I was just a teenager, but our family, well, we were lucky – we  were together. We took care of each other. And after about four years, my best friend Sunki and I left the camps to work at a cannery in Pennsylvania. That’s where I met your Dad.”  

As much as I love hearing the Mom and Dad stories, I was not about to let go of camp.

“And what else? What happened in camp? What did you do for four years?”  

Mom smiled. “Oh, we had lots to do. I taught dance. Odori dancing. It kept us very busy. I had many students from all over the camps. We put on elaborate performances. Your Obāchan loved Odori dancing, and it gave the children something to do. So, we were very busy in camp.”

That was all she ever told me.

But I understood more than she wanted me to.  

I had spent time in San Jose, surrounded by those who remembered, those who had lived it. I understood that buried deep within my family were hidden stories – of pain, of shame, of resilience.

Stories that were locked away beneath a shroud of silence.