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and they are good to know. But look for the other people, even if it takes some effort. They are the ones who are worth finding.”
    —Christopher Blasdel, grant administrator

JUNE 30, 2001
    “ Moshi, moshi . . . uh, Professor Katayanagi-san wa . . . ”
    Is it “wa” or “ga” I am looking for, and how do you say “gave me your name”? The ridiculous part is, I know this person speaks English, but somehow I’ve gotten it into my head that it would be more polite to begin in Japanese.
    That is, if I knew Japanese.
    “Would you like to speak in English?”
    That’s her, not me. I introduce myself, and my project, and tell her the professor gave me her name because I’m looking for Nisei like her, Japanese Americans who would be willing to tell me what it was like to be “the enemy” in wartime Japan.
    “Ah,” she says. “Isn’t it hot?”
    It turns out that she is busy. Very busy. She has lots of family visiting in the summer. They are not coming soon, in fact they have just left, but still somehow, she slides away from me. I can’t get a direct answer—yes or no; she won’t give me anything to push against or respond to. I ask her to suggest a date when it might be more convenient for me to call, and she tells me about her grandchildren. I ask her to suggest a more suitable month and she wonders aloud why so many Japanese American children don’t know Japanese. She’s beyond slippery, she is completely ungraspable. Then, when I finally accept that she has rejected me completely, she tells me where she lives and offers, “But come by for tea
any time you’re in the neighborhood.” And I don’t know what that means.
    “ Moshi, moshi . . . ”
    It’s variations on the theme two more times. By the third call, I give up the notion of speaking Japanese, but English doesn’t seem to help my cause. I speak to a gentleman who is ill and doesn’t feel like he can help me. I speak to a woman who’s not well either, and who also feels that it is perhaps too hot at the moment to have a conversation. She is not an exceptional person, she doesn’t really have an interesting story, and would surely waste my time. But all I have is time. I try to channel the flow of the woman’s response, to assure her she can help me immensely, that I can see her any time of any day of any month in any place she finds convenient. I can arrange a meeting well in advance; I can do it on ten minutes notice; it will be air conditioned; I will feed her . . . I am grasping, groveling. I want a yes, but any answer, even a no, would be better than this sliding maybe.
    She invites me to call her back in a month.

FAITH
    IF I MADE A LIST of the things I am, the word “capable” would appear on each line. I am the writer and also the scientist. I don’t free write; I don’t waste time. I have faith in
this self who would never strike out in a direction without knowing where she wants to end up. Why then, in Japan, can I get nothing done?
    I am browsing books in the stacks of the library because I can’t find anyone to agree to an interview. No one seems to understand my Japanese, which is to say that my Japanese is not understandable. I’ve become a writer who cannot read, cannot decipher the signs—those conveniently posted train schedules, the menus, the headlines. I am a writer who cannot write: I cannot copy down the word for something I want to show to a clerk. I am not fluent in the dual life of kanji characters; I am not fluent even in the usual hour for lunch. I have called the two organizations I had contact information for and am still waiting for a live voice to answer the phone at the World Friendship Center. While I wait, I’ve spent three days in a row sprawled on the vinyl floor between the sliding stacks in the Peace Museum library, writing things down. I’m collecting facts I never could have found in New York, facts I will surely need. I’m filling pages, plugging coin after coin into copy machines—surely