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Nisei Christmas
…Men speak of them well or ill; they themselves are silent.”
– Stephen Vincent Benet, Ode to Walt Whitman
One Christmas near Granada, Colorado in 1942 two soldiers sat in a dark cafe watching the snow come down. Snow was not a familiar thing to these two who would be shipping out for Italy in a few days. There was no visible sun in the sky and the windows of the cafe looked as if they hadn’t been washed since the First World War concluded some 25 years ago. One of the soldiers, Private Thomas Okamoto, would go on to be one of the most decorated fighting men in the European Theater. The other, also decorated, would serve for two years in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and see action at Salerno Bay, at Naples, at Cassino, and at Anzio. His name was Kiyoshi Nakamura. He was killed by a German sniper near Saverne, France in November of 1944.
It was in late summer, 1943, just north of Naples, that Nakamura met my uncle Cliff, and shared the following story.
We were staring out the window onto the soggy Colorado street. Private Okamoto was talking about his uncle’s strawberry garden back in California. We were not afraid to go to war but we were afraid of what may happen to our families behind barbed wire at camps like Granada. A tall, thin rancher stumbled into the cafe, ordered coffee and sent a bone chilling stare in our direction. It wasn’t a hostile look, more one of astonishment, of lassitude. He turned tiredly away from us and asked the walls and ceilings if we were spies.
Then, without warning, he approached our table. We thought he must be drunk.
“Looks like snow,” he said. “How long you been in?”
Private Okamoto answered him, followed by a crisp sir. He sat down.
“I’ve heard a lot of you pups were joining up,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to stare but you two are the first I’ve seen in uniform. Where they sending you?”
“North Africa, sir,” I answered, “for the time being. Then Europe.”
“You won’t see much snow in Sicily either. Where are you boys from?”
“Santa Ana, California, sir. We are only here to visit our families at Granada. They were moved here in October,” I answered. “We brought them Christmas presents.”
“My name is Walters, Frank Walters. I remember spending a cold, wet Christmas at Cambrai, in France in 1917. I was at Belleau Wood as well, and with the Brits at Chateau-Thierry after the Germans broke through in 1918. I survived. A lot of us didn’t.”
“My uncle Joe was killed in the Argonne Forest,” I said. “His father and mother had only moved to the California in 1895 and they has Joe three years later. They were very proud of their American son. They were presented his Silver Star at the VFW in Santa Ana.”
“And now our government is involved with another war with Germany…and this time with those bastards, the Japanese,” said Walters, catching himself. He looked at the floor.
“You got a lot of family interned at Granada?” he asked.
“Most of them,” I frowned. “The others, a cousin and Private Okamoto’s brother are in the army. They are Americans, you know.”
“I know,” breathed Walters. “Good farmers. I don’t think they deserve what they’re getting. Somebody’s up to no good but the country’s in a panic.”
“After Pearl Harbor it’s not hard to believe,” said Okamoto.
Walters returned to his previous state, not saying anything for a few minutes, just staring out the window and then to the door as if expecting a visitor.
“How old are you boys?” he asked, returning to the present.
“I’m 19 and Kiyoshi is 20,” said Okamoto.
“The same age as my Tommy,” said Walters. “He was lost when the West Virginia went down at Pearl Harbor last December. War does not discriminate, heh boys?”
We sat there in shock. After three days visiting Granada and 14 weeks training to kill Germans and perhaps even Japanese, we thought we’d reached a certain sense of numbness. Now we were sitting here with a World War I vet who had lost a son to the Imperial Navy, to young men his age who looked like us.
“My name is Tommy,” offered Okamoto, stumbling over his words in some attempt to ease the pain that all were feeling by now.
“You’re all just children,” said Walters, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “We were children too and it’s another Christmas. Children with guns and tanks and planes. Germans and Japanese and English and French. Dead because of power hungry leaders without the right answers. It’s insane,” he shock his head methodically from side to side. “They put your families in camps and yet you volunteer.”
“No matter how bad things seem we must retain our honor,” said Okamoto.
“Honor,” answered Walters, gathering his emotions. “You boys had better drop back a few notches on the honor and hold on to a little common sense when you get over there,” he said. The Germans are entrenched all the way up the peninsula. It’ll be no picnic.”
“We’re not afraid to die for our country,” said Okamoto.
Walters smiled a shell shocked smile and changed the subject to the wine he had drank and the women he had met in France during his war. He then took us totally off guard and asked us to write him a letter saying that it would get to him in Lamar without an address.
“Just send it to Frank Walters,” he said.
We told him we’d send him a postcard from Rome and asked him to watch out for our families if he could.
“I’ll do that,” he said, getting up and disappearing into the snowstorm.
– Kevin Haley
LOW-CAL CHRISTMAS STAMPS RELEASED
(Denver) The United States Postal Service has announced plans to release some 400,000 low calorie Christmas stamps in time for the holidays. The stamps, featuring Santa Claus and other celebrated Yuletide icons, will be first-class and available at the window on December 10.
The stamps are a colorful bit of Americana, appropriate to the season and contain less than three calories. Customers who prowl the post office hallways have for long complained about health considerations when purchasing stamps. Of course, the benefits of the low-cal stamps are only apparent when one licks the back of them. A self-adhesive batch, mistakenly produced last month, will be saved for emergencies.
If the promotion is a success consumers should expect to be assaulted by a grand array of theme stamps throughout the year. Next up: Heart-shaped stamps for Valentines Day and 50-cent stamps for April Fools.
ANOTHER GROPPO APOLOGY
We have grown tired of extending these seasonal apologies to Groppo the Elf and his battery of attorneys but in the spirit of the holidays we will reach deep and try to un-ruffle a few feathers once more. First of all, allow us to set the record straight.
The short piece appearing in the November issue lambasting the elf and his heritage was, admittedly in bad taste. Moreover we really never had lewd photographs of Groppo dancing with local politicians. The prints, as it turns out disappeared the night before this issue was to be put to rest.
We were forced to substitute a story about the much maligned Spar City de-lousing effort and some color pictures of Melvin Toole hanging Christmas lights at the one of our burgeoning number of local prisons.
Repeated references to Groppo’s alcohol abuse were presented only in context so as not to endanger the reputations of thirsty citizens who often imbibe with elves, gnomes and fairies over the holidays.
Accusations that the elf’s physical stature and mental capacity are the result of his diet of chocolate-covered bombardier beetles, hoarded crawfish Twinkies and strained swamp grass digested while growing up south of the airport in Kenner, Louisiana, is true. Our further deductions can be verified by consulting the sister-in-law of his late dietician, and therefore shall not be introduced in this piece.
Feeble attempts at collecting damages from this publication by the family of Groppo are unfounded and backstabbing . We never said that his immediate family are drug addicts, only that the current climbers on his squalid family tree were pathetic junkies and weak substance abusers. We never really said they were “juicers” either since most no doubt distill their own juniper, corn, potato and barley juice and swill on the porch, thus their public behavior, although suspect, cannot be chronicled.
Never mind all that. Let’s shake hands and part as friends, Groppo. After all you’re really no worse than most of us, especially when viewed through the rose-colored filter of the Yuletide. – Editor
WAL-MART GIRL (to the tune of Surfer Girl)
Little Wal-Mart, consumed one
Credit cards come all undone,
Can you hear me
Can you, Wal-Mart Girl?
I have watched you from afar
drag you fat butt from your car
Don’t you get it,
Don’t you Wal-mart Girl?
Saturdays, we shop together
at the Super Store
In my pickup I will take you
straight to aisle four.
What you buy is no one’s business
on your shopping rounds
Better that you skip the check-out
and loose twenty pounds.
Now I say from me to you
I will make your charge card due
You don’t need it
You don’t Wal-Mart Girl.
– Kevin Haley, with apologies to the Beach Boys
Kids Must Declare Gifts
(Ogden, UT) Children are no longer exempt from service at the hands of Internal Revenue Service. As of midnight, December 24 all kids receiving Christmas presents must determine a fixed value to the gifts and declare them on the appropriate IRS form.
This departure from past considerations comes as a result of increased defense spending under the heading War On…(fill in the blank). Gifts that are appraised at over $100,000 fall under tax relief bill #49939928-QP and require no new tax. Expenses incurred by those in the top 2% in annual income are fully deductible.
Juvenile evaders are warned that cash gifts fall under the category of tips and must also be declared. Children returning or exchanging presents will be liable only for the highest priced item. Coal, like last year, is a flat 10% deduction.
Barking Jingle Bells Dog Retires
(Crested Butte) The hound who for years has entertained hundreds with his rendition of barking Jingle Bells has retired and moved to Crested Butte. The carol, which can be heard over and over on mainstream radio during the holidays, was formatted in 1962 by a group of expatriate veterinarians allegedly looking to get back at society for cutting them out of the lucrative dog food market.
Back in the Sixties pet foods had not yet made up 30% of the GNP and the industry allowed upstarts to compete. Then, in just months, the giant conglomerates began to control the flow of kibble and cornered the market leaving people like the these angry veterinarians in the dog house.
The tune, barked in cords to the popular Jingle Bells, has been accepted as part of the Yuletide hype right along with Deck the Halls and Silent Night.
“We don’t appreciate crude animal sounds interrupting the flow of our holy Christmas,” said Rev. Phil Pharisee fondling his collection basket. “It’s irreverent at best. Besides, nobody in Bethlehem remembers Jingle Bells in the manger.”
Many holiday revelers say it is quite appropriate to have a dog barking Jingle Bells since there were lots of animals hanging out at the manger at the famous birth. Others say the whole concept of a Christian holiday was stolen from the Pagans who has celebrated the Solstice for thousands of years before the Catacombs.
The dog, named Sparky due to his obsession with fire trucks, will reside at an undisclosed duplex on Maroon Avenue between the fire house and the marshal’s office. Although is retirement is said to be ample he has already passed the Colorado real estate test and hopes to catch on with a local agency after the holidays.
He has promised to perform a holiday duet with either the Dali Lama or Dolly Parton whichever comes to town first. Other town dogs, craving attention at all times, were reluctant to comment on the celebrity dog’s arrival. Some concluded that he was a pampered mutt while others sized him up as an activist fighting against the present leash laws in the town. – Small Mouth Bess