This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

“Will they separate us?” Mother asks.

“No,” Frank says, taking her arm.

“But this place is so big. Maybe men and women will be housed separately. Maybe they will take you boys from me.”

Frank’s voice grows resolute. “I won’t let them, Mother. Now stop speaking in Japanese.”

The soldiers continue to yell. Keep moving, don’t dawdle. You can collect your luggage from your designated location later. Proceed to the registration tables.

It’s the wind you notice first. Then the dust. It comes sweeping across the open plains, a gathering force that catches you unawares. Too late, you shut your eyelids, turn your back to it. But it’s already there, the thousand prickly grains under your eyelids, grating against the wet of your eyeballs; too late you close your mouth but the dust is already coating your tongue, dotting the wet roof of your mouth, slipping in between your teeth. Already it has sieved through the tiny sleeve openings of jackets and necklines of sweaters until you feel it crawling all over your body.

Dust, sand, everywhere. For the rest of your life you will never feel rid of it. You will slap at your clothes unconsciously, you will be forever flapping out towels and hats and scarfs. When you cough, even fifty years later, you will think you can still feel a few grains of dust rattling around in your lungs, refusing to be dislodged.

Alex glances around. Past the cordon of soldiers, past the flood of internees moving toward the registration tables. He stares at the square mile of what will eventually become thirty-six blocks of tar-paper barracks. Enough to house over ten thousand men, women, and children. But for now, the Bainbridge Islanders are the first group to arrive at this still-unfinished compound. The Issei grandparents are pioneers yet again, but this time unwillingly, in a harsh land they want no part of.

“Name.” The soldier sitting before the opened registration book doesn’t even glance up.

“Maki.”

“Spell it.”

“M-A-K-I.” Frank looks down at the book. “No. I said I not Y. And there’s no E.”

“God, these Jap names. Spell it again.”

“M-A-K-I.”

They are handed a piece of paper, told where to go. Block 16 Barrack 4 Room F.

“Where is it?” Mother asks.

The soldier impatiently thrusts a thumb backward. An action that could mean That way or Get lost.

Frank and Alex, with Mother between them, join others trudging along the road. Everyone walks in a state of shock. The road is lined with soldiers, their bayonets pointing inward. The soldiers yell continuously at them, urging them to move faster, and the new arrivals stumble along, hurrying.

“Why are you rushing us?” Frank yells back at the soldiers. “We’re in the middle of nowhere! With nothing to do and nowhere to go. So what’s the damned hurry?”

Mother, waddling beside him, tries to calm him. But when the next set of soldiers yell the same instructions, Frank explodes. “Go to hell! Just shoot me, why don’t you!” His neck is flushed, his face beet red. The soldiers leer back at him, some laughing, some gripping their weapons. An acne-riddled soldier tells him to be quiet. “Or what?” Frank snaps back. “Or what? You gonna throw me in prison? Look around, you lugheads, I’m already in prison!”

“Frank,” Alex says. “Frank!”

Frank doesn’t answer. He moves along, face hard as flint.

* * *

The camp isn’t finished yet. They walk across planks of wood over open trenches and ditches to get to their barrack. It sits on concrete footings, the flooring raised about two feet off the ground. Crudely constructed, the rough pine paneling sided with tar paper left exposed. A shack, by any other description, identical to the hundreds of other barracks laid out in regimented formation.

Never judge a book by its cover. This is what they tell themselves.

But once inside, their worst fears are confirmed. The book is worse than the cover. The walls are just wood sheeting, splintery and thin. No paint or insulation or plaster covers them. The floor is composed of wood planks with large knotholes slapped together. No linoleum covering.

Placed around the room are seven army cots, metal skeletons. None with a mattress or a pillow. An oil furnace in the corner, standing cold as a tombstone. No desk, no chair, no running water, no toilet. Only a single bulb, unlit, hangs from a cord dangling from an overhead beam. Beneath it, coarse army blankets are thrown in a pile. Frank walks to the far side. The wall—no more than a thin partition—doesn’t reach the peaked roof, leaving a three-foot triangular space.

“What the hell?” Frank says.

“At least we’re together,” Mother says. She gazes at the seven cots. “You think they’ll make us share the room with others?”

“Probably,” Frank says, dejected. “I say we take this corner.”

A few minutes later, another family moves into the barrack. Not into this room, but the adjacent one. Their voices sail over the thin wall, through the three-foot space between the top of the wall and the peaked roof, their words as clear as if there were no partition at all. Privacy will be nonexistent here.

They speak of rumors about a mattress pickup location. At another block. But when Frank and Alex get there they’re only handed three sacks and told to go to another building. There, a crowd is already knee-deep in a huge pile of straw and ticking, stuffing their sacks.

Alex and Frank jump right in. They ignore the jabs of pain as splinters pierce their skin. But there’s no need to rush or jostle for position. There’s an ocean of ticking, enough for the ten thousand or more internees expected to eventually fill this compound in the coming months.

Frank stops. “Listen. What’s that?”

They all hear it, then. Gong. Gong. Gong.

“What should we do?” an older man asks Frank.

Frank sees everyone looking at him. “We go to it.” He steps forward and starts walking, never once turning around to see the crowd following after him.

The gongs ring out from a mess hall. Outside, a line has already formed. Everyone hugs the lee side of the mess hall, still only partially built, faces turned away from the wind.

Dinner is slopped into metal containers. Canned, cold food: string beans, Vienna sausage, apricots. The rice—perhaps the only food many Issei might have otherwise eaten—

is ruined by the apricot syrup poured over it. The internees, with nowhere to sit, squat against the walls. They stare glumly at the food, trying to conjure up the will to eat. A gust of wind materializes out of nowhere, catching everyone by surprise. Sand and dust coat their food. Some still gamely try to eat, their stomachs rumbling with hunger, only to have to spit it out.

Back in their barracks, there is nothing to do but sit. The single light bulb does not work. Nobody unpacks: it is too dark to see. They lie down in the same clothes they have worn for three days. Every few minutes, light from the watchtower slashes through the room, a cold invasive stark white. A scalpel.

Alex, like everyone else, finds sleep elusive. He is freezing. He is shaking. He should be safe and snug in his own bed on Bainbridge Island, an all-American sixteen-year-old living life to the hilt. Going out on dates. Hanging out in soda shops. Mastering the Lindy hop, or dancing in a zoot suit with a bobby-soxer. Doing homework, falling asleep in church pews. Discovering first love, learning to kiss, driving jalopies in the backcountry. Thinking about prom, Yale School of Art. But instead he’s lying on a cot in the middle of the desert surrounded by strangers.

The wind howls outside, whistles through gaps in the floor and walls.

He turns to the wall, mashes his face against the unsanded plank of pine. From the other side, another gust of wind thumps against the barrack.

Around him, the stifled crying begins.

19

APRIL 2, 1942

They wake up early to find themselves blanketed in dust. Dust that during the night gusted in through knotholes and slats. Now it covers their hair, faces, floor. Most of the internees rise gamely, ready to face the day; a few sob on their cots, unable to rise, covered in dust like prophets of old in sackcloth, repenting in dust and ashes.