This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

* * *

And then.

As they round the bend and walk toward the serpentine wall of the ferry landing, something in the air changes. The faint stink of Murden Cove is replaced by the scent of recently cut cedar. But it’s more than the smell that changes.

Alex looks up. He hears a low murmur coming from around the bend. Those in the front are walking faster, their backs straightening, their strides longer and faster. Alex sees some of their arms rise, their hands waving back and forth.

Those in the back, curious now, walk faster.

“What’s going on?” Mother asks, but neither Frank nor Alex answer. Laughter sounds from up ahead, squeals of delight. Some children race ahead, and it’s only as Alex approaches the bend that he sees.

People. Scores of them.

They’re standing on sidewalks behind a barricade. For a moment he thinks another Japanese American community—possibly from Terminal Island or Vashon—has been brought here to join the Bainbridge Island group. A collection point before shipping them all off together to who knows where.

But these people are white. With blond and brown and auburn hair, and blue and green and brown eyes. Bainbridge Island friends and neighbors standing on tired legs, having waited for hours, now smiling, now waving. They’ve come out in droves to bid them farewell and good luck and Godspeed.

“Yo, Frank, yo, over here!” Frank’s head whips around faster than Alex has ever seen it turn. It’s Preston Wilcox, a senior in high school and one of Frank’s closer friends. Frank does a “no way!” face and walks over to the sidewalk, grinning ear to ear.

“What are you doing here?” Frank says, play-punching his friend in the chest. “You’re supposed to be in school.”

“Had to say goodbye, bro.”

“Any excuse to cut class, eh?” Frank says. Two others run over. They talk, joking, smiling. When a soldier slowly ambles toward them, Frank gives them quick hugs, and breaks off.

They walk on. Every once in a while someone will call out for one of the evacuees, and there will be laughter, and hugs, and tears. Whenever Frank hears a friend yell out his name, he’ll wave back and say something witty, his face beaming, his magnetic charisma rolling off his square shoulders.

Halfway down the street, Alex elbows his brother lightly. “Look. It’s Principal Dennis.”

Frank doesn’t waste a second. He walks over to the sidewalk, taking his hat off and holding it against his chest. “Principal Dennis?”

“Frank Maki. Good to see you.”

Frank pauses. “I want to thank you. For letting my friends cut school to see me—to see all of us—off. It means a lot.”

Principal Roy Dennis grips Frank’s shoulder. “It’s the least I could do. Because this is a terrible injustice, and we’ll never live it down as a community, as a nation. It’ll be a blight on us. I’m so very sorry.”

“You needn’t be, sir,” Frank says, shaking the principal’s hand. The moment is broken up by a group of boys, maybe a half dozen, running over, all of them wearing varsity football jackets.

“Here’s the lughead!”

“Oh, the chumps are here,” Frank jokes back, smiling broadly. “How the heck did you guys blow the game? Didn’t I leave you with a big enough lead? Don’t say you don’t need me.”

“It’s the lousy replacement quarterback, he’s to blame,” someone jokes, and Alex is surprised to see that it’s Ernest Schwinn. The replacement quarterback.

There’s laughter, more joking. Then someone shoves a varsity jacket in front of Frank.

“Eight, that’s your number, right, Frank?”

Frank is stunned. He swallows hard, his eyes welling up. “Fellas…”

“Just take it, Captain.”

He looks at his teammates for a long moment, then puts the jacket on. A perfect fit. He runs his fingers over the team emblem, over the embroidered lettering of the school.

“I’ll wear it with pride,” he says, all choked up.

“You’ll wear it after you pay us back. That jacket cost us an arm and a leg, you dolt.”

Frank laughs, then turns around before they can see the tears in his eyes.

They are everywhere, small groups of people breaking off to say goodbye. Smiling, squealing, dabbing at tears, lots of You’ve been great friendses and See ya laters and Come back soons.

They reach the wooden ferry dock. Now it is just the evacuees, and the soldiers, of course. Their boots clocking on the gangplanks, hollow drumbeats. The gentle tide of the sound lapping against the wooden beams of the dock. The waters sparkling in fractals of reflected light.

By now the soldiers are doing what they were specifically instructed not to do. They are helping out. They are carrying suitcases and duffel bags and belongings wrapped in tablecloths. They are carrying in their arms small children whose mothers, their husbands long whisked away, are burdened down with luggage. Many of the soldiers, themselves far from their New Jersey homes, gaze off into the distance, eyes damp. In front of Alex, a soldier walks with a rifle slung over his back while holding the hand of a toddler. That’s America for you, Alex thinks. An absurd contradiction.

By eleven twenty, all have boarded the Kelohken. The gangplank is raised with a loud clang, and the ferry pulls away from the pier, churning the waters. Almost all of the 227 evacuees stay on the deck. They wave and shout their last goodbyes across the waters. Soon enough, as the ferry leaves Eagle Harbor and crosses into the sound, the inland voices wane and the people grow smaller until they, and the island, are gone.

17

MARCH 30–APRIL 1, 1942

The ferry crosses Puget Sound and enters the dock in Seattle. The evacuees might as well have crossed an ocean. Here on Colman Dock the throng of onlookers on an overpass shake their fists and spit down on the group. Scruffy men armed with shotguns shout, “You Nips go back to Japan!”

The evacuees enter an old Pullman train, glad to be away from the leering onlookers. Seating is assigned by family, and crammed. The children, most riding a train for the first time, are excited; but even this initial wave quickly gives way to restlessness. To placate them, grandparents unwrap candy they’d meant to give on the second or third day (or the fifth or seventh, for they still haven’t a clue how long the jo

urney will be).

Teenagers swivel their heads about like submarine periscopes, looking to see where their friends are seated, and are disappointed to find themselves alone, or elated when they find the pretty girl they never worked up the nerve to speak to is sitting across the aisle and now they are thinking with stupid optimism that this train trip could be the luckiest thing to happen to them.

What will we do about food? the parents wonder as the train takes off. An unlucky few are seated in facing bays of four or six seats, and already territorial struggles over legroom and suitcase storage have, politely for now, begun. Where will I put my dentures at night? What happens if we get sick? Will they give out blankets at night when the temperature drops? Where is the toilet? Where are we going?

* * *

Dusk arrives. Soldiers walk down the aisle. “Close the shades.” At first, no one complies. The soldiers must be joking—why pull the shades down at night? “Just do it,” a soldier gruffly orders.

By eight o’clock, most evacuees have fallen asleep, exhausted by the long day. The train has traveled only a few dozen miles inland, crawling at a snail’s pace. Stop and go, stop and go, the axles groaning, the couplings straining, stopping on side rails to let pass other trains carrying war materials and supplies. “The Victory Trains come first,” someone intones.

Only a single portable gas lamp, hanging in the center of each train car, illuminates the interior. The faint light falls like a disease on the ghostly, slumbering occupants. Children lie sprawled over their parents, feet dangling into the aisle. Those still awake sit with heads hanging, the constant rocking motion and lack of fresh air making them nauseous. A few play cards in the weak light, the usual rummy or Goofspiel.

An old man screams out in his sleep, a garbled mix of both English and Japanese. An elderly woman coughs over and over, unable to extricate the ball of phlegm stuck in her throat. A newborn in the row behind Alex whimpers, becomes hysterical. Then the faint sound of a mother cooing, followed by the rustling of clothes. Then wet sucking sounds. A few minutes later, a small burp.