This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

“Enough, boys!” Mother says. “Both of you stop fighting.”

But Alex isn’t done. “And by the way, she’s also doing her part to help get Father released! Breaking her back at the camouflage-net factory while her oldest son’s doing nothin’ but making pretty speeches—”

In two strides Frank is looming over Alex, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket. He hoists him up. “You want to tangle, huh? You think you’re suddenly a tough guy just because you’re enlisting—”

“Daisuke!” shouts Mother.

Frank lets go of Alex’s jacket, dropping him into the chair. He glares down with raw contempt at Alex. “You don’t have what it takes to last out there on the battlefield, little kid,” he mutters through gritted teeth. “You won’t last an hour.”

He storms out, his words echoing off the walls.

Alex doesn’t know this now, but those words will haunt him terribly. This last awful scene with Frank will be replayed in his mind over and over, in countless sleepless nights for months and years to come.

42

APRIL 10, 1943

Alex and Mother walk slowly to the bus, Alex with a duffel bag slung over his shoulders. All the other enlistees have already boarded, having said their goodbyes to mostly mothers who are now huddled together. It’s a small group of enlistees. Not nearly as large as the army had hoped for, not even close.

Alex and Mother stop just outside the door. The bus engine humming, its windows steaming up.

He looks past her shoulder. Maybe he will yet see Frank sprinting over to say goodbye, swallowing the remnants of his breakfast, a gee-whiz look of apology on his face. But he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Say bye to Frank for me,” Alex says.

Mother nods. She’s stooped against the wind, swaying slightly. She seems a thousand years old. “I wanted to give you a senninbari,” she says, referring to thousand-stitch belts that many Japanese mothers made for their sons heading to war, six-inch-wide white sashes with a thousand ornamental French knots, each sewn in by a different woman and worn under the uniform. “But you gave me no time. So I made this instead.” She reaches into her pocket, and withdraws an omamori, a simple amulet made of wood. “Keep it close to you always, Koji-kun.”

He rubs the freshly cut wood. “I will.” He looks at her. I’m sorry I’m leaving you, Mother. I’m sorry I can’t be here for you. Those words mired in his throat, choking him.

She reaches up to place her hand over his cheek. The first time she has ever done this. “You be safe. You come home alive.” Her eyes well up.

“I will, Mother.”

She smiles, sadly. “All those camouflage nets I made at the factory. I hope one of them finds its way to you. I hope it hangs over you. Because then it will feel like I’m with you. That it’s my hand over you, protecting you somehow.”

He nods. “I have to go now.”

They look at each other. So much left unsaid.

He finds an empty seat at the back as the bus pulls away. He stares out the window. She is standing by herself, removed from the group. So small. So alone. The farther the bus pulls away, the more she seems to unspool, the more she disintegrates.

He wonders what it must be like around the country when young men head for war and leave their hometowns. He imagines a joyous affair, a festive mood. Crowds of well-wishers lining small town streets, the waving flags, the ticker tapes, the signs lofted high, the children jumping up and down, mothers dabbing their eyes with tissue, the pep band playing, the final kisses between lovers. A celebration, a rally. For these soldiers, their chests burn with an uncomplicated, pure patriotism that is a lava of red, white, and blue as they leave to fight for the land of the free and the home of the brave.

But not so for Alex, not so for the other young men in the bus. This instead: a churning. A mix of sadness, guilt, inner conflict. Their patriotism convoluted. They stare somberly back at their mothers and family who are already fading into the distance, who will soon be as small and inconsequential as the dust that gathers around them and blows them away.

PART THREE

WAR

43

On April 13, 1943, just as Alex Maki and thousands of other Japanese American men arrive at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, to begin military training for the all-Nisei 442nd Regiment, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt speaks before the Congressional Subcommittee on Naval Affairs in San Francisco.

“A Jap’s a Jap,” he declares. “They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty. It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen; theoretically, he is still a Japanese, and you can’t change them. You can’t change him by giving him a piece of paper.”

APRIL 13, 1943

CAMP SHELBY, MISSISSIPPI

The young men exit the steam locomotive with loopy grins and stiff legs. On the station platform, two train porters, old black men in white coats, attempt to assist them. If these two porters are surprised to see this stream of Japanese Americans pouring out of the train, they don’t show it. They’ve learned through hard decades in the deep South to mask their emotions. They only extend their arms, offering to help with luggage. But no one gives up their overstuffed duffel bags. The young men—or soldiers, as they now regard themselves—hoist their bags onto their shoulders, and, with necks crooked and backs stooped under the unwieldy load, head down the length of the platform to awaiting army trucks. Though their legs are weakened from days cooped up in the train, excitement hastens their strides.

No sergeant yells at them, no lieutenant directs them. It’s self-explanatory enough: climb into the beds of the awaiting GI trucks. Hurriedly, as if the trucks might at any moment depart without them, they rush over and climb aboard.

Alex is the first to jump in. This truck is not so different from the one that transported him from his farmhouse to the ferry pier on Bainbridge Island. The same overhanging canvas, the same dark green, the same cloying stink of gasoline. But this time there are no soldiers with bayoneted rifles escorting him. This time he is the soldier.

The trucks lurch forward, and those sitting in the rear are almost thrown out of the opening. Hey, we almost had our first fatality. They chuckle, they grin. Give that kid a Purple Heart, he survived. The laughter, echoey under the thick canvas, is full of camaraderie. Thick smoke chuffs out of the mud-splattered trucks. There are big stars painted on the doors of the front cab, another on the rear tailgate.

Alex stares at these stars. He thinks of Charlie, of the yellow star she’d said she was forced to wear. He wonders, as he does almost every day, where she is. He wants to believe she is safe, hiding in a secret room in Paris, or perhaps already escaped south. But perhaps not. Perhaps she is somewhere horrible, the place of his visions, a prison where the cold air is filled with ash—and this is the point when Alex always turns off his mind, refuses to think any further.

The ride is bumpy. The men stare out the open back. They point at road signs, town names, anything that might give them a clue where they’re headed. When signs for HATTIESBURG, MISSISSIPPI pop up, someone says, “I told you all along it was Camp Shelby.”

Camp Shelby is set out on a spread of flat land: mostly boxy barracks laid out in a grid, not unlike Manzanar or the nine other Japanese American internment camps around the nation. But there the resemblance ends. These surroundings are less desolate or harsh. Thick, lush vegetation surrounds the camp, even encroaching into it in places, lending a warmer, homier feel. Tall trees stand interspersed between the smaller barracks, and break up the monotony of the layout. A water tower stands regally in the center of camp, like the church steeple of a small quaint town.

And here there is no barbed-wire fence surrounding the camp. No guard towers with machine guns pointing inward. No searchlights at night sweeping across the barracks. There are rules, yes, to be sure; and there are consequences if you break them. But here if you walk past the perimeter without permission, you will not get shot. You might be forced to do an overnight

fifteen-mile march, but you will not be gunned down.