“Okaa-san! Tadaima!”

“Okaerinasai, Masao-chan! Why did you go out without your jacket? It’s snowing.”

“Gomenasai. I needed to get medicine for Dad. The dispensary runs out so quickly.”

The frigid Wyoming wind seeped through the wooden planks of their barracks. Old rags and newspapers stuffed in the cracks barely dulled the draft. Even with the coal stove glowing, their breath still fogged in the air.

This was Heart Mountain.

Masao was ten when his family was deported here, ripped from their farm and grocery in Alhambra, California. They were all American citizens, living the dream—until Pearl Harbor. Executive Order 9066 made them “threats.” Their rights vanished overnight. Their home sold for pennies. Their lives reduced to cots and rations.

Masao cried. His father’s answer was one word: Gaman. Suffer in silence.

“Otoo-san, I need to get help for your foot.”

“Urusai! Silence!”

Masao held out the medicine he had managed to get. Within months, infection spread. His father’s left foot was amputated. Within a year, he collapsed of a heart attack, dead before fifty. Masao said nothing—expressionless, except for the twitch above his left eyebrow.

When the war ended, freedom was hollow. Their farm was gone. In St. Louis, graffiti on their apartment door read, “Get out, Japs.” His mother stitched clothing to survive. At fourteen, Masao mowed lawns and pushed groceries for a family whose patriarch was a Jewish judge.

The judge saw his grades. “Masao, have you thought about college?”

“I have, but we can’t afford it.”

The judge placed both hands on the boy’s shoulders. “My wife and I left Germany in 1931. The rest of our family died in the camps. When we saw America put its own citizens in camps, we were appalled. You and your mother are family to us now. We’ll help you. Promise me you’ll pay it forward.”

Masao bowed. “I promise.”

The judge whispered in Hebrew, Ometz lev—courage of the heart. Masao answered in Japanese: Yuuki.

College. Medical school. The U.S. Army paid his tuition, a bitter irony—serving the same country that had caged his family. Gaman. Betrayal swallowed in silence.

The blare of the hospital intercom pulled Nomura back to his office at ULS. He realized he was gripping a glass slide so tightly it shattered in his hand. Blood seeped into his palm, dripping across requisitions.

He thought of his father: blood shed for family, for a country that never wanted him. And now himself—bleeding for a contract, for a corporation that had already marked him expendable.

He wrapped his hand with a handkerchief, staring at the red stain spreading through the cloth. How had he missed the warning signs? Always the peacemaker. Always the quiet one. Was this where gaman had led him?

He remembered the admissions committee meeting when he’d fought Haas over James Deetan’s acceptance. Had that been the tipping point? Or the vasculitis case with the administrator’s wife? Or was it simpler—an elephant he still refused to name? Racism.

Nomura’s gaze drifted to the single red spider lily on his desk, its petals curling like tongues of flame. In Japan, it symbolized death, the soul restored to innocence.

Which was he?

After a lifetime of proving himself, of carrying others’ burdens, of mentoring, of never once complaining—was he still that obedient boy at Heart Mountain?

The twitch above his eye pulsed.

Gaman.

Suffer in silence.

Next Chapter: Chapter 33-Deposition