Disclaimer: Not mine.

Father had been of the line of Samurai, or so he said and I was always taught that who I was, who the family was, was based on our honor. Even if we had no money, no status, no power, as long as we had our honor even the richest of men could not count us as poor. To shame that would be the greatest sin I could ever commit. If I learned nothing else from my father before he died, it was that.

I grew up as an American boy, with a Japanese face and name, Japanese principles, and the thirst to always keep my honor, my very being, pure and clean.

Then on December 7, 1941, the Japanese air force attacked Pearl Harbor, and the Honor I had striven to keep so clean was tarnished beyond all repair.

Honorable Son

I remember that we woke up that morning like every morning before that. We sat around our kitchen table, ready for a leisurely slow Sunday. Mother had made fresh rice and some miso for the morning, and as I sat down at the tableItachi came in with the newspaper for our father. Every morning Itachi would go get the paper before breakfast, and when my father was ready to leave I would fetch his hat before he went out to go and sell groceries at our store down the street. It was a ritual, and one that our strictly firm father expected us to adhere to every day. Except on Sundays Itachi and I would usually go with him to the store and help him stock the shelves. There was no deviation – not in my entire fifteen years of living.

Except today already seemed to be different As Itachi entered the kitchen with the newspaper in hand, he was pale in bad way. The grey bundle – darkened from the damp fog - of paper was being held loosely in his fingers, and his mouth had fallen open ever so slightly as he inhaled a barely heard breath. Black eyes – Jap eyes was what the kids at school called them – were practically flying over the front page of the paper, and as Itachi paused in the doorway of the kitchen I felt a moment of discomfort. Itachi didn't usually react to things in the paper. He called the aggressive style of writing that many newspaper articles had a 'Crude transport for fear propaganda and bigoted opinions of the masses'. He would usually glance at the front page, but he never bothered to read anything else. Our father said that Itachi was just arrogant with youth and intelligence. This always irritated Itachi, which made him hate the newspaper even more.

So I was suitably shocked – and a little bit worried – when Itachi finished reading what was written on the front page of the paper and immediately opened the paper to continue reading. I didn't have time to dwell on his actions though, because when he opened the paper – still frozen in the doorway into the kitchen like he was – I could read what headline had made my usually stoic, verging on cynically apathetic older brother act like he actually cared about what the newspaper had to say.

JAPS BOMB HAWAII

Declare war on U.S. and Britain!

I promptly dropped the rice I'd been holding with my chopsticks, my mouth falling victim to gravity, and I let out a strangled sound of horror.

"Itachi," I said with a strained voice, "Is that-,"

"Shut up!" he hushed me harshly, in only the way he could. Instead of arguing the matter like I usually would havethough I just kept goggling at the front page, my heart sinking in my chest from horror as my mind immediately started to jump to what this meant for my family. Mother on the other hand, who had just looked up to scold Itachi for his crude words to me, was not as silent. The lacquer rice bowl that she'd had in her hand and the rice paddle she'd been scooping the rice into it with fell to the floor with a high pitched 'tokk!' sound against our newly installed linoleum floors, I looked up to her – tearing my eyes from the provocative headline – and swallowed.

She had both of her hands pressed against her mouth her face looking washed out against the fabric of her pale pink dress, and her eyes were bright. She shook her head, and I could hear her whisper against her hands in Japanese, "It can't be…"

We knew that this did not bode well.

Ever since the war broke out, since it was known that Japan was steadily making its way into mainland Asia, there had been fearful eyes following us everywhere we went. Business had dropped at our family store, and the strained relations with our white neighbors grew even more tense. Though America was not at war, they knew that across the Pacific was a nation of slant eyed people who were invading another country with unparalleled brutality and success.

Itachi said that it only bothered them because Japanese people looked so different from them. The German American citizens looked just like everyone else, so they were never singled out in suspicion. The Russians were tolerable, the Italians were ignorable, and the Jews were pitiable. People could forget that they hadn't lived in America for very long, could allow themselves to wallow in ignorance for them. We were too different to ignore… we were fair game. I remember getting shivers from the look in my brother's eyes when he said that. He looked so calmly full of hatred and disgust. I had wanted to prove him wrong back then, but now... this new development meant that our world would soon be full of fearful reactions and hatred rather than the mostly ambivalent and harmless caution we had gotten used to. We all knew it, and I felt that part of me that yearned to prove my older brother wrong fall back behind an even more urgent feeling of nervous fear.

"Itachi," Mother said in a small voice, "Put that somewhere else," the words were followed by a flinch as we heard the second step from the top of the stairs creak. Father was on his way down, and none of us wanted him to see this paper right now, "Don't let Father see that," she demanded, already taking steps to keep our family together and safe for the tumultuous hours ahead. Itachi looked around for a moment, trying to find a place to stow the paper, but there was nowhere that he could really put it that our father wouldn't see it after a few moments in the kitchen. Finally his eyes landed on me and the chair I was sitting on, and his eyes grew sharp.

"Stand up," he commanded me, and I glanced to the stairs that opened up into the kitchen quickly obeying. Usually I hated it when Itachi used that voice; it was the 'I'm the oldest son – obey me,' voice and I tended to ignore it on principle. This time though, I felt the gravity of the situation and did as he told me. He folded the paper quickly and stuck it on the seat of the chair, before pushing me down on it quickly. I jolted as the cool paper pressed against the thin pajama pants that I wore. It really was quite damp from the foggy weather we'd been having lately, and it was probably the most uncomfortable thing I'd had to do in quite awhile. I didn't protest though, and held my peace as my stern father entered the room.

"Good morning." My mother spoke her words softly and weakly bent down to pick up the bowl and rice paddle she'd dropped moments ago. My father grunted and sat down at the head of the table, taking the bowl of soup that my mother handed him with a nod towards her hard work.

I watched him do this with my back stiff against my chair, and swallowed nervously as I turned my attention to Itachi with wide eyes as he sat down at his place across from me at the table. The damp paper on my chair felt more like a burning hot brand as I realized that my father wouldn't have to look very hard to find the paper if he really wanted it. I hesitantly cleared my throat and looked down at my bowl of rice searchingly, "I…itadakem-masu," I said, wishing that my voice hadn't broken at this moment of all moments. Father would surely know that something was wrong, and he would find out about the paper, and then he would…

…I didn't actually know what it was he would do, but I just had this gut feeling that it would be bad. Father just raised his eyebrow at me, "Your voice is still changing?" he asked rhetorically before starting to eat methodically. He didn't expect an answer – he never expected me to respond when he spoke to me. In fact, I was pretty sure that if I did respond he would be more insulted than if I ignored him, so I just kept quiet, and kept eating my breakfast. For once, I didn't gripe about having a Japanese breakfast instead of eggs, bacon and toast like other kids and the absence of it was a little strange.

"Where's the paper?" Father asked Itachi as he ate his breakfast stoically. My seventeen year old brother stiffened at the question uncomfortably, and looked down at his rice as he answered.

"It hasn't come yet." Father nodded at the answer, spoke something degrading about American work ethic in gruff and masculine Japanese that I didn't quite catch, then continued to eat. The room was painfully silent, broken by the occasional sound of someone chewing, or a slurping at their soup. Usually Itachi and I would be bickering at this point, and our mother would try and calm us patiently until our father lost his temper and demanded our silence. Logically, my father would have to realize something was wrong just because of the silence.

It was uncomfortable, sitting so tense against the paper, and though it was warming up from my body heat, I still couldn't quite relax and swallow my food properly. It was just sort of getting stuck in my throat as I tried to ea—

"Sasuke," my father said, and I jumped in fright at the interruption of the silence. I wished that I hadn't. The movement I made on my chair from the jump rustled the paper beneath me, and the sound was almost heart stopping. I think that the horror in my eyes spoke even more than the sound of the paper did, and Father slowly put down his rice and chopsticks, this time spoke to me with the expectation of an answer, "Sasuke," he said again, making me flinch, "Where is the paper?"

I looked quickly at my father, and then looked at my brother in panic. I met an identical pair of horrified dark – no they were Jap eyes, weren't they? – eyes. He didn't know what to do either, and I bit my lip as I very slowly looked at my father again. He looked at me expectantly, anger starting to build behind a deceptively calm face, and I very slowly reached down and pulled the paper out from underneath me and handed it to him.

His face showed no reaction to the headline as he took the paper from me and read, "Go open up the store boys," he commanded, and I quickly stood up, ready to obey.

"But father," Itachi started to say, perhaps ask him what he was thinking, but was instead stopped dead in his tracks.

"I said GO!" the man yelled, and before I knew it, Itachi and I were all but running from the room. Our father never yelled, and we both knew then that he was just as horrified by the news as we were. We also knew though, even as we were putting on our shoes and fumbling out of the door, that our father's honor in his home country was irreversibly tarnished. There was only one thing to be done at that point, and we knew that Fuugaku Uchiha would react like a Samurai as he'd always done before this.

Father's funeral was held three days later, and I knew even when we were passing his bones chopstick to chopstick into an urn – a proper Japanese funeral tradition - that things would only get worse before getting better. Itachi agreed with me, we knew that something was happening, and we lived the next two months just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then finally, on February 19 1942, it happened.

Executive Order 9066 was signed.

So this is my attempt at an original AU fic for this genre. I've seen some World War two fics out there, but I'd never seen them set in an internment camp. Any readers have an opinion on what Camp I send them to? I was thinking Topaz myself, as that was where I had family interned at.

As always, reviews are loved, I'll especially love a review with constructive criticism. Also, I'd loveto add thanks to ruenruen and strawberries and napkins for working with me so extensively with plot detailing as well as beta work. You guys rawk.

Whew, that was kind of emotionally draining. I hope that the rest of the story isn't this difficult to write D: