Rosebud and Other Stories

McNisei

 0F1LVHL Our tribe is fast disappearing, the Nisei, the first generation of Americanborn Japanese. They called us the “quiet Americans,” the “model minority.” Silence is being unseen, invisible—not to invite anger or envy. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered” is a saying more familiar to us than, say, “The squeaking wheel gets the oil.” Now, we Nisei are in our seventies and eighties. We did well after the camps. Most of us with Depression era experience set out immediately making up for lost time. We went to school, learned a trade, and salted away or invested our wages so we should not have to be poor and powerless again. Well, it wasn’t exactly like that with me. My typing and office skills were poor to middling, and I spent a lot of productive years in factories on my feet. My big ambition was to get a job that required a lot of sitting. I didn’t stash away a mattress full of money, but thanks to lucky timing, social security, and some clever budgeting, I got by. So I cannot be included in the “most” that lined comfortable nests for later. But that’s all right because now, in our retirement, we have no need to be so competitive among ourselves: to get better grades than thee; to work at that upscale job, drive the flashy car, have more money, to be more “white” than thee. Without our jobs (sure, we still have our prestige cars; that car thing is hard to shake), but in our sweatpants and walking shoes, we are all one of a bunch—all Nisei. At last, we are comfortable with that. Our cultural foods are widely accepted, and our language is seeping into everyday English: sushi, sukiyaki,