Sleeping on Potatoes
A Lumpy Adventure From Manzanar to the Corporate Tower by Carl Nomura
Excerpts from Chapter 2,
"GROWING UP"
Stealing, A Mortal Sin
The third grade teacher in my Twenty-eighth Street School had a great influence on me. First of all, she found my name difficult. "I can't pronounce your name," she said, "so I'm giving you the name Carl." I've had a life-long dislike for that name. I don't feel like a Carl. But it stuck.
Still, she did something wonderful. One October day, in 1930, she took the entire class to the library to get library cards. With these amazing cards we were allowed to check out any of the books they had in the library for two weeks. This was a marvelous discovery for me.
And then I found out that we had a branch library on East Twenty-third Street-only half a block from our store.
I devoured every book in the children's book section. The series that filled me with joy were the Doctor Doolittle books. I read them several times.
Then I discovered the best of them all: Chippy Chipmunk. This children's book was written by David Cory and published in 1920. I checked it out every two weeks and read it over and over again. When I came to the last page, some irresistible force drove me back to the first page to read the story again. From a lifetime of reading, no other book has captivated me to this extent.
One day I walked over and looked up at the top shelf where the book lived when I didn't have it checked out. On an impulse, I stuck it under my shirt and, when the librarian was looking the other way, I sneaked out. I ran home and hid the book under my mattress. This felt strange to me, for normally that book would sit on a table or chair for all to see. I was filled with fear. I couldn't eat or sleep for fear of being caught and put into prison. Like Adam and Eve, I became aware that I was naked for having committed a mortal sin. After a week of agony, I had wasted away. My mother thought I must be terribly sick. She wanted me to stay home from school.
That's when I decided to redeem myself by returning the book. Once again I put the book inside my shirt and waited for the librarian to become busy with several people checking out books. I sneaked in and put the book in its rightful place.
But I never checked out that book nor did I ever read it again. The good news was that I didn't have to go to confession, for I reasoned that my last act just canceled my mortal sin of stealing.
During the past several decades, I looked for that book but have never found it. I told this story at a number of social gatherings. Friends, recalling my love of the book, searched for it and finally found several copies. I now have three. After reading the book again, I wondered why it appealed to me because Chippy was a rascal. The first chapter is an account of how Chippy was in mortal danger because Little Jack Rabbit dropped a cork down Chippy's throat. The Rabbit screamed, "And he'll swell up and bust in just a few minutes. Oh, dear, oh dear. It's all my fault." Dr. Heron came around and thrust his long beak down Chippy's throat and plucked out the cork and saved the chipmunk's life. The doctor said, "That will be five." But Chippy left the bill unpaid. Did I get the idea of stealing from the library from Chippy?
The Inventor
As a child I had a passion for all things mechanical. Wheels, bolts, levers and wrenches were my friends, and I wanted to invent something. I looked around constantly for problems that needed solutions. When I was ten, a bolt of lightning struck me. I had a great invention. I attached a protractor to a level so that it pivoted about the center of the protractor. I used it for measuring the angle between the bottom and horizontal sides of stairways. I also measured roof pitches and the angles of stars.
I was proud of this invention, and figured that it had to be patented. So I answered ads I found in Popular Mechanics. To my horror, a patent cost between $15 and $150. One devastating bit of news compounded my money problem. While thumbing through a dictionary, I happened to notice a picture of a device that looked like my invention. A careful reading revealed that it was identical to my brainstorm. It was called an "Archimedes Level."
Since I had never heard of him, I didn't realize I was in good company or that this Greek was a famous inventor and the greatest mathematician of antiquity. Later, I learned that I was too late by twenty-three centuries. So I moved inventing onto a far back burner.
Archimedes entered my life once more when, as a graduate student, I was a teaching assistant. My job was to correct exam papers for a professor who taught physics to pre-dental, pre-medical and pre-nursing students. On the first exam, they were asked to write about the contributions of Archimedes, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton.
One young lady wrote:
"When Archimedes, the Greek, was sitting in a bath tub, he looked down into the water and made a discovery so wonderful that he jumped out of the tub and ran down the street stark naked shouting, 'Eureka! It floats'."
We gave her an "A" for creative writing.
Nothing happened for the next thirty-five years. Then I suddenly began having a dream in which I was trying to screw a nut onto a bolt. The dream always ended before I found out if they fit.
My interpretation was that a second great invention in my subconscious was trying to break out. Progress was very slow because I dreamed only about twice a year, but I persisted for ten more years. Then I explained my dream to Dr. Olson, a psychologist.
"That's not a dream about an invention trying to bust loose," he sputtered. "It's a sexual dream of high frustration."
Dr. Olson might be right. Nonetheless I continue to be enchanted by the idea that an invention is trying to break through. Though more than sixty-eight fruitless years have slipped by, I am still poised, waiting to be struck again by that inspired "Eureka!"
The Davises
It was in 1932 that the Davises started hawking the Los Angeles Herald in front of our grocery store. There were two of them. Jim, the father, was seventy-five. Like so many people during the depression, he had lost all of his teeth, and his ragged clothes hung loosely on his gaunt body. People in the neighborhood said he was an "Okie" although I never heard him say a word about his background, Oklahoma or otherwise.
Obed, his son, was twelve. He had dark hair, a winning smile and charming manners. He addressed everyone as "Sir" or "Ma'am," and was a polished businessman. It had been Obed who started the paper business. His father helped by selling papers until Obed came home from school. In fact, Obed really was the sole family income provider.
Obed was charming, but everyone really enjoyed his father. He was a colorful character who entertained his customers by doing a jig while drooling and waving a newspaper with one hand. He also told them Civil War stories.
His wife, Hettie, was only thirty-five, but they must have been hard years because she and Jim looked like contemporaries. Hettie was always cold. She enveloped her tiny body in a shawl made from a blanket she had torn in two. And she wore this shawl every day, even in the hot Los Angeles summer. Like Jim, she was toothless and, when speaking, she was hard to understand. Her graying hair never looked combed. Nevertheless, Jim was very proud of her. He was always careful to let people know that she was an Ohio woman.
Jim and Hettie's second son, Billy, was as different from Obed as night and day. Where Obed was solid and dark, Billy looked skinny and faded-his freckles were colorless, his thin, reddish-blonde hair stood high on his head and waved about like a field of grain, his mouth was always hanging open, and he rarely smiled. Obed had started the family business, but Billy never helped out. He was lazy. So lazy that he used to pee out of his second story bedroom window rather than walk down one flight of stairs. His room smelled like an outhouse, and his screen window frame was a rotting yellow.
I knew Billy the best because we were in the same grade at San Pedro Street School. But where I was a good student, Billy was barely passing. Nobody-teacher, parent-except me, ever paid any attention to him, which suited him fine. Therefore it galled me that, though I practiced the penmanship exercises, I could not get a Palmer Writing Method certificate, but Billy did! He received one even though he spelled "have" as "hove." Billy really was a marginal kid, but even so he was my friend. We had great times wrestling.
Once Billy asked me, "Do you know how to jack-off?""No," I replied. "What's that?"
"Let's go up to our hiding place and I'll show you."
We climbed the giant pepper tree in his yard. The tree was so huge that even at thirty feet we were able to sit and even lie down on its branches. I watched as Billy stretched out comfortably, took out his tiny penis and began to stroke it with ever increasing vigor.
Finally he collapsed from exhaustion. "I've come!" he said. "See that stuff? It's jism."
"No kidding," I said, looking at the tiny drop of glistening liquid. "It looks like piss to me."
Who would have guessed this bland blob was an exhibitionist and a sexual athlete?
Though we had tried to keep our store running on a "Cash and Carry" basis, there were creditors. It had started with one solid customer, then two, and eventually, as people were unable to find jobs, twenty-five of them. And the Davises were among them.
One evening, Jim came in and confided to my mother that they didn't earn enough from the paper business to pay us. They owed for past due rent and other expenses, so they had decided to escape in the middle of the night and go back to Ohio. My mother appreciated Jim's honesty and wrote off his debt. Then she gave him two bags of groceries to sustain them for the long drive.
The toothless man wept and thanked my mother for the only kindness he had seen since coming to California. The next morning their house was empty.
Blondie And the Sewer Pipes
A few months after the 1933 earthquake, Los Angeles County began putting in a sewer system under Maple Avenue. It was a W.P.A. project (Works Project Administration), one of FDR's attempts to put people back to work on worthwhile public works projects. This program drew many onlookers including me. I was fascinated with all the equipment, manned by workers, but the machines appeared to be doing very little work. Steam shovels dug a trench about seven feet deep and six feet wide. A crane lowered concrete pipes-five feet in diameter-into their resting places. Meanwhile, other workmen shaped the ditch with shovels so that the pipes fit properly.
Finally the ditch reached our store. It was that day that I first became aware of a young woman with blond hair piled high on her head. She arrived carrying a basket and looking like a movie star on her way to a party. Though an unusual beauty, the best thing about her was her perfectly formed legs that tapered into high heeled shoes. Wow! In an instant, at the advanced age of eleven, I became a hopeless and lifelong "leg-man."
All the workmen noticed the lady right away. They stopped working and exchanged flirtatious banter with her.
Daintily, she tiptoed to the center of the plank that forded the trench and announced, "I made cookies to sell to you. The price is ten cents."
Men scrambled over one another to get under where she stood. They jostled each other like baby birds in a nest demanding attention. They chirped, "Hey, Blondie, take my dime. I want a cookie. I'm next."
As one man bought his cookie, others shoved him aside and proffered their own dimes. I could tell that when they had worked their way underneath her, they were looking up into her loosely hung skirt. I exploded with envy.
That dime equated to about one-tenth of a day's wage for each of those WPA workers. At our grocery store, we sold one and a half pound loaves of Wonder Bread for five cents. When the bakery ran a special, we sold the second loaf for only one cent. Blondie's sales technique commanded the extortionate price of ten cents because, in addition to delivering a cookie, she played:
I see London,
I see France,
I see someone's
underpants.I was enthralled. Each day, as soon as I got out of school, I dashed over to see Blondie's lovely legs and her show. She sold out her cookies every day. On the third day, I learned one of her sales secrets. One man, after peering up her skirt, shouted, "Hey, Blondie, how come you're not Blondie down there?"
She answered him with a smile and kept hauling in the dimes.
While the men were having a howling good time, the women who watched this spectacle clucked and hissed their disapproval with, "That hussy!" and "Those stupid men!"
I always figured that Blondie didn't slow down the work much since most of the men seemed to lean on their shovels while watching somebody else work. In fact, she may have increased the productivity by getting their hormones all charged up.
The next day was Saturday, and nobody was working. Without beauty and her show, my day was shot, so I climbed down into the ditch to look at the big pipe. Curious as always, I walked in and kept going. Suddenly I rounded a curve and everything turned dark. I panicked and started to run before I realized that I wasn't sure which way I was going. Finally I sat down to collect my senses. I visualized starving to death right there on the spot. When the County turned on the sewer, my bones would wash out to sea unnoticed, and my family would never learn what had become of me.
And then I pulled myself together and came up with a plan. I decided to walk in one direction, counting my steps, turn around and walk past my starting point, going a little farther each time. By oscillating back and forth with ever increasing excursions, I knew I'd eventually get out.
I went through several iterations of counting and turning back and, eventually, after going 450 steps, I saw a dim light ahead. I ran to it and found an opening leading to a grate on the sidewalk. Now I knew which way was out: if I kept walking with that opening on my left side, I would reach the end of the pipe. Seven hundred steps later I rounded the curve and saw the opening.
How good it felt to get out of that concrete coffin and walk on dirt again!
It was totally dark when I walked in the house. Everyone was yelling at me: "Where were you?" "We looked all over for you." "We had dinner hours ago."
I glowed as I listened to these abuses, for it was a joy to be among the living.
The next Monday, at 3:30 P.M., I was back once more to ogle my star and to listen to the men's bawdy but appreciative comments. And I continued those visits until the sewer line ended a couple of miles from home.
Blondie disappeared, and I never saw her again. But on my eyeballs, I have a permanent imprint of those gorgeous legs.
"INTERNMENT"
Pearl Harbor
Van Nuys, California
By 1941, my immediate family had been living in the United States for forty-three years. My brother Henry managed to buy a truck and started his own hauling business, called "Nomura Bros. Trucking." I became one of his drivers for which I was paid five dollars a month. That was enough to support me at Los Angeles City College where the fees were only thirteen dollars a year. I worked from 5 P.M. to 1 A.M., then went to college during the day, majoring in physics. I was the only student out of 6,000 who majored in that generally detested subject.
Then, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In disbelief, we saw our world come to an end. The "Hate the Japs" propaganda became intense. Our lives were a misery. "The Enemy" was portrayed with slant eyes, buckteeth and a sinister yellow face.
We were placed under martial law and told to stay within a five-mile-radius. In the meantime, the FBI rounded up all persons who had shown any kind of leadership abilities or who had done business with Japan. This left only the followers, women and children, to fend for themselves. Worse yet, the wives were not told why or where their husbands were imprisoned.
On January 15, 1942, the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, made a hurried trip to Hawaii. While there, he made an unofficial comment: "I think the most effective fifth column work was done in Hawaii, with the possible exception of Norway."
This remark gave the American press carte blanche to have a field day at the expense of all Japanese-Americans. Subsequent investigations, which have been carried on for over forty years, have not revealed one instance of the fifth column activity suggested by Knox. But this didn't stop public pressure to incarcerate the "Japs" from mounting, as people of high influence, including Attorney General Earl Warren, later Governor and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, voiced their fears based on hearsay.
On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066 into law. This Order interned all people of Japanese ancestry-aliens and citizens alike. FDR did this even though the top Army and Navy Commanders believed that an invasion by Japan was highly unlikely.
This evaluation of the situation was revised to a certainty after Japan's devastating losses in the battle of Midway.
Whether needed or not, ten camps were built in barren places in California, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Arkansas. It is noteworthy that, because these camps were built in such uninhabitable wastelands, all but one remain barren to this day.
Evacuation
Shortly after the Executive Order was signed, notices began to appear in public places. These notices said that we of Japanese ancestry must dispose of our businesses and belongings because we were going to be evacuated. Since all Japanese American leaders and other people of ability had been jailed, the rest of us floundered, trying to find ways to dispose of our belongings. Hoodlums walked through our homes and took whatever they wanted. We had the choice of selling things at one-tenth of their value or giving them away.
Some of us had a month to settle our affairs. But those who lived near military operations or aircraft facilities were given only a week. My brothers, Sam and Henry, were sure this madness would soon blow over. They packed up everything we owned and put it into storage along with the trucks and cars. Little did they know that, when they were finally allowed to return home four years later, everything would be gone.
People with the good fortune to have supportive neighbors fared much better. This country was blessed with many good people who opposed this policy of the government, the Quakers being chief among them. And some of those people took responsibility for watching over the possessions of their neighbors who had been incarcerated. In some cases, friends took care of houses, even farms, so that, when the evacuees returned home they found things almost as they had left them. These were the lucky ones who were able to pick up the threads of their normal lives.
But at the time, we were sure this was only a temporary situation; that American political leaders would soon come to their senses. So, when the appointed day arrived, we assembled, as required, in designated areas. By "we" I mean everyone of Japanese ancestry. This included children from orphanages, advanced senior citizens from intensive care homes, and patients with tuberculosis. Did someone really believe those helpless people were capable of sabotage?
The only people who were excused from evacuation were single-parent Caucasian women and their half-Japanese children. Mixed marriages were thus put under great stress because only one was required to go.
Ralph Lazo, a teenage youth of Mexican/Irish descent was so incensed by what was happening to the Japanese that he turned up on evacuation day and went to camp with his friends. Lazo was subsequently drafted and was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism in combat. Later he became a successful sociologist, but he remains a hero to us for his personal stand.
We were allowed to take only what we could carry. A few of the ten newly constructed "Relocation Centers" were ready for occupancy. Some of us were taken directly to one or the other of those centers. Those with no place to go were taken to temporary quarters. The U.S. Army took some of the evacuees to the Santa Anita and Tanforan horse racing tracks. Here, these poor people were forced to stay in horse stalls where horses had lived just hours before. There had been no attempt to clean up the dirt and manure on the floor. They stayed in those stables until their camps were ready for occupancy. Others were taken to impromptu barracks at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds at Pomona.
My family was given only hours to leave our home. Then we went to the bus station where we were given numbered tags. We had with us only the hand baggage we could carry. Then we boarded a bus to this hell on earth they called Manzanar.
Carl Nomura earned his bachelor's degree in 1948, his masters in 1949 and a doctorate degree in physics in 1953. What makes this so extraordinary was that he began his university education at a time when schools were still excluding Japanese-Americans. When World War II broke out, he and his family were forced to leave their home for relocation in Manzanar. Sleeping on Potatoes is the story of how one internee rose to become an American visionary leader in the field of semiconductors.
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