Starting from Loomis and Other Stories

Swimming in the American

KL 91 Swimming in the American Swimming was our principal form of recreation in the summer. As kids, we could not go swimming unless the temperature hit 90 degrees or above—so we put the thermometer out in the sun, sometimes shaking it impatiently, and barely waited until it reached 90. Then we rushed off with our swimming trunks to our favorite swimming hole in the American River, about four miles away. How exciting it was, going to the river, standing in the back of the pickup truck. I learned to swim the summer I was eleven and in the process nearly drowned. After three Sundays of practice, I thought I was ready to do the crawl stroke across the river, a distance of about ten yards; others were doing the dog paddle. I had learned the stroke from an older Nisei boy, Hal, who was visiting from Sacramento. He called it the “Australian crawl,” a rather showy style with elaborate arm movements. I hadn’t learned to breathe properly, so I held my breath as I made the plunge. I was doing fine for five or six strokes, then for some reason I stopped; maybe I needed air or thought I had made the crossing. I hadn’t. I was vertical, and my eyes were full of water. I couldn’t touch bottom. I panicked and cried for help. Hal, who was watching me, tossed me an inflated tire tube, but I was blinded and couldn’t see, so he dived in and pulled me to shore. It was a scare I never forgot. It was my first real challenge DOI: 10.5876/9781607322542:c14 swimming in the american 92 in life and my first failure; I felt foolish, but mercifully no one faulted me for trying. Recently, I related the incident to Hal’s widow, who was completely unaware of it. She and I shared a moment, remembering Hal, appreciating the kind, selfless person he was. Father, who was downstream and had observed the entire scene, said later, “I was waiting to pull you out when you came downstream.” I couldn’t understand his remark; I thought it was callous considering that I had nearly drowned. But Father was a strong, confident swimmer ; his dives from a high boulder were spectacular. KL Mother, too, was a fair swimmer, with rather busy sidestrokes. She had grown up near a river, where she and her brother used to swim in the summer. In 1989, six years after Mother’s death, my wife and I visited my uncle and aunt in Wakayama. Uncle hired a taxi, and we drove about an hour to the old homesite. Mother always said she came from deep in the inaka (country). It was rural all right but beautiful. I wish I could have convinced Mother of that. To the north was a forest of trees, and to the west on a hill was where my grandfather had worked his crops. The land had been sold after my grandmother’s death, and the house was gone, but down to the south was the river where my uncle and mother had played in the summers. “I can still picture us swimming in the river,” my uncle said, recalling the happy days of their childhood. KL After coming out of the concentration camp in early 1946, I spent 100 days at a labor camp cutting asparagus. We didn’t work all of the 100 days, only when the weather got warm and the “grass” began to sprout. But when we did work, it was absolutely backbreaking. I have never swimming in the american 93 worked that hard since. Still, we were free, free to come and go; after over three years of confinement, there was no feeling like it. Besides, we were paid well for our work. My brother, myself, and three others were a team of five. When the season was over, we each walked out with a check for $1,000. This was after deducting our board, taxi fares to town, recreation costs—games of pool and movies—and maybe a gift for the lady cook who worked at the labor camp, a very important person for workers. After the asparagus season, we returned to Loomis, where Mother was sharing a cabin with two other families. That summer we worked picking plums for the owner of the ranch and cabin. One Sunday on our...