Summary

Ichiro comes home and tells his mother he will be going to Portland with Kenji, which makes her furious. Ichiro thinks about how his mother has tried to be a good mother to him in the only way she knows how. Ichiro talks to his father, and thinks about what life was like for him as a young man. His father reads a letter from his wife’s sister in Japan to Ichiro’s mother. Despite the personal details of the letter, describing the family’s postwar desperation, Ichiro’s mother chooses to believe it is a fake. However, it disturbs her greatly, and she goes to her room and won’t talk.

Ichiro begins to think about moving to Portland to get a fresh start. He thinks about all his parents’ troubles, and thinks his father should have been a woman because of his weakness...