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like helping
    each other out when we can.
    We’ve been talking a lot
    about what it means
    to be an American. I wrote
    an awful essay for Miss Straub,
    then we debated about it for months.
    And slowly, I’m beginning to understand.
    America tells us
    you’re not American
    but the country also asks us
    to fight and maybe die
    to protect it.
    We say the Pledge,
    we buy the war
    bonds, we help
    with the war effort,
    and men like my brother
    have enlisted
    and are fighting.
    But we do it
    because we love our home.
    Because home isn’t just
    our family, but it’s something bigger,
    it’s everything and everyone,
    and even when we fight,
    even when we hurt each other,
    we are family, no matter what.
    Maybe that’s what America is for me.
    I almost feel like this is home.
    Your best friend, Mina Masako

September 1944
    When an old person
    goes into the hospital,
    they go in to die. I see it
    whenever I go to
    the hospital with Grandpa
    for his check-ups.
    The hospital is full of
    old people, with their eyes
    dull like three-day dead
    fish on the market stall,
    the kind of fish
    no one would eat
    except for flies.
    The hospital is full of
    old people, with their bodies
    giving up on walking and talking.
    Grandpa’s eyes
    are still bright.
    He has not given up yet.

October 1944
    Barracks that used
    to be full
    like beehives
    are now empty.
    Families, one
    after another,
    are leaving
    with crisp letters
    of permission to
    relocate to Chicago
    or to the East Coast.
    Mother looks out
    the window,
    counting how many
    families are left.
    Father looks down
    at the article
    he is writing.
    The rose garden
    in front of our room
    is resting.
    This is our home.

November 1944
    5 Men killed, 15 Wounded
    in Southern France
    the first page of the Minidoka
    Irrigator screams.
    I scan for Nick,
    for anyone we know.
    We only see Shig
    “slightly wounded,”
    but it’s a different Shig.
    No mention of Nick.
    Mother sighs with relief,
    and Grandpa doesn’t say
    anything. Please, God,
    make him come back alive,
    I don’t care if he gets
    medals, I don’t care
    if he makes us proud,
    just let him come back
    to us alive.

December 1944
    I do not want to see Grandpa lying
    on the hospital bed, his arms thin and spotted
    as if he has all the sun in the world on his skin.
    I do not want to see Grandpa lying
    on the hospital bed, his eyes closed
    like he is dreaming,
    like he doesn’t care about us anymore.
    I stand by the doorway of the dark room,
    I tiptoe over, not to wake him.
    The western corner of his lip curls
    into a smile and he says, without opening
    his eyes, Toshio wa buji darou ka?
    —I wonder if Toshio is all right?
    I go over. He is so pale, he almost seems
    to melt into the sunlight if not for
    his bones still beneath the skin,
    if not for the suns swirling on his arms.

January 1945
    Masako,
    Grandpa speaks,
    his voice like a candle
    about to flicker
    out, Masako, don’t
    forget that you are
    an American, and you’re
    Japanese. You have
    two halves in one
    soul, one that is
    America, like this land,
    and one that is
    Japan. You are Masako,
    but you’re also Mina.
    I can’t offer
    you an answer,
    but your job is
    to learn to live
    with these two
    broken pieces
    and to make them one.
    He raises his arm
    slowly, then fingers my necklace,
    the half-broken heart.
    Just like this heart,
    he whispers,
    just like this.

February 1945
    My grandfather lies shrouded on his bed,
    but his soul does not live in his body
    anymore. Incense burns. Mother has been keeping vigil,
    reciting the psalms, then the only Buddhist sutra
    she knows. “He is Japanese, his last journey
    should be in Japanese, too. How will he find
    his way to heaven without Japanese?” she says.
    Father sits on the porch step outside
    quiet, quieter than the time Nick left, quieter than the time
    he came back from Montana. He smokes
    one cigarette after another, exhaling smoke from his
    half-opened mouth as if he is sending off
    Grandpa’s soul toward the sky.