Time Drifters

I’d like to say that things were better. And they were, in some ways.

After my screw up with timing in getting to the Drift Station, I wasn’t totally sure that I was going to make it back either alive or to my own year of 2001. My parents and grandparents would sometimes go on and on at boring lengths about how thankful they were that everyone had safely made it back from a trip. I couldn’t share with any of them how relieved I felt about completing the Drift, of course. But I think it was the first time I remember hearing my Grandma Van Kier’s words in my head, “Be thankful for small mercies,” and really agreeing with them.

That feeling was magnified big-time when Mom finally got a flight back from Europe. The airports were closed to visitors and we couldn’t even go to meet her at baggage claim, let alone at the gate. She told us she’d take a shuttle to the carport of a nearby hotel, but even that place felt completely foreign with everyone suspecting that terrorists could strike anywhere and at any time.

The moment that Mom appeared through the doors of the van, I had a feeling that everything might be alright again. The two of them were so happy to be together and so happy that all three of us were reunited. It almost felt that they were defensively happy and desperate to be happy, but I tried to ignore those feelings, figuring that I was still feeling hurt about them splitting up in the first place. Plus, everyone was off of “normal.”

As I started to check back in with the details of life, I realized that it was very much the same reality that had felt stained and shifted by the events on the 11^th of September and what the media was beginning to call 9/11. I found myself second-guessing what Calico and Thomas and I had done. Did we really succeed if this world was still the same? Was there more that we could have changed?

It got worse when the President declared war on Iraq.

I had re-read Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous speech about December 7, 1941 being, “a date that will live in infamy,” knowing that it was part of the United States’ declaration of war against the empire of Japan. That had been when the US entered the second World War and it wouldn’t stop for another four years. So was this declaration of war going to involve the entire world? Was it going to last as long as four years? That would mean it wouldn’t be over until 2005 when I would be 16 years old. I’d still be Drifting, unless something happened.

I wanted to go and ask Mr. Danby to tell me what was going to happen, but I was pretty certain he wouldn’t budge, any more than he had before.

Being a Future One to the other kids, I couldn’t tell them what was to come. For Capucine, there was going to be a Civil War very soon. For the twins, the Great Depression would be followed by World War II, and for Calico there was going to be the Vietnam War. The more I thought of it, the more I realized how war was like a set of bookends on so many of our life stories. But it was the not-knowing that was driving me kooky—how long would my story be? It was frustrating to know so much about others’ history and not to be able to help myself.

On the flip side, seeing what I’d seen didn’t help me score points socially.

“But nothing like this has ever happened before,” Suzanne Legon said, slumping on her elbows and then laying her head on the cafeteria table during lunch one day. She and Tarika were talking about how scary everything was, and how other countries should watch out for our retribution.

“Yes it has,” I said.

I’d sat down one table over, so I could steal looks at Suzanne while I ate. Instead of having a chance to exchange a smile, I was getting angry when I heard her talking. Still, I don’t know why I didn’t keep my mouth shut.

“What did you say?” Tarika asked, turning around on the bench. Suzanne barely lifted her head, still misty eyed and sad looking.

“This has happened before,” I said. “The US has been attacked before.”

“When? Like, two hundred years ago?” Tarika scoffed.

“No, in 1941,” I said, defensively. “Heard of Pearl Harbor? The planes of the Japanese empire bombing the Navy shipyard to hell? It started us into the Second World War.”

‘That’s totally different,” Suzanne said, rising up and frowning. “I was just saying, I don’t think any country’s been attacked like this. With so much death.”

“I think that’s completely wrong,” I said. I felt like I was watching myself from outside of my body, wondering what the heck I was doing. Here I was, fighting with the cutest girl in the school all because of a comment she was making about world politics and history. Stupid! And yet, I’d been there. I was in it and Pearl Harbor was more real to me that even 9/11. For as close as the Towers had been to the south of us, I had only seen that happen on television.

“Oh my God,” Tarika said, sneering. “Are you, like, a terrorist sympathizer? A jihadist?”

“What? No!” I said.

“I could totally see that,” Tarika continued. “Loner kid becomes traitor.”

“Probably,” Suzanne said, shaking her head and slouching back to the table.

My heart sunk even as my face started feeling hot, and I swore I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples. It was as though Suzanne had just tossed me into the “useless” bin. There was no point in making it worse, and I’d completely lost my appetite.

I walked away from it right then, but the accusation really bothered me. It got under my skin and stayed there for days, gnawing away at me. I couldn’t figure out why it seemed so wrong, being labeled as a traitor, like Major Andre and Benedict Arnold. I so badly wanted to tell someone what we did in 1780 and then again recently with Sam Taniguchi. But as I thought about it, I started to wonder if we might have helped the wrong guy. Sam was Nisei. Born an American. Would Suzanne say that we should have let him die? I didn’t think that was right, but I had no real way of knowing.

About a week later, during English, I finally found a way to get an answer.

The assignment was to write a 500-word biography of someone who was alive for at least 60 years; in other words, someone born in, or before, 1941. The date instantly triggered me to think about Sam.

“You’re all going to play the part of a journalist,” said Mrs. Wales, our teacher. She had been expressing her concern about how the media itself was being targeted with the threat of anthrax, which she said was a threat to free speech itself.

“And you must pick someone who is living so you can interview them, either in person or by the telephone,” Mrs. Wales explained. “Your finished piece has to incorporate quotations from them so we have the sense of them speaking directly to us.”

Most of the kids said that they were going to interview their grandparents or neighbors. But I knew that I had to see if Sam was alive. I took a shot and called 411 for Honolulu.

“I’m sorry but there is no residential listing for a Sam Taniguchi,” the operator said.

“That’s okay,” I replied.

“But there is a collection in his name at the U of H archive,” she continued. “Would you like that?”

I wrote down the number and called there. The librarian informed me that Sam had contributed to their historical files, which is why I was referred to the University of Honolulu. He went on to say that Mr. Taniguchi had had a successful law practice in social work, that he was alive and living in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.

“He doesn’t mind talking to people about his time during the war,” the young man told me very casually. “Do you want to try his home number?”

I wrote it down and then stared at it, realizing that I finally had a way to reach back in time and get my answer. And I wouldn’t even have to Drift to get it.