This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

“Hey, braddahs, we make sure this kotonk’s glass never goes empty tonight, yeah?” Mutt shouts in the crowded Ritz Café on Main Street. He smacks Alex on the back, with a loopy, relaxed grin, his face, even through his dark tan, flushed with alcohol.

A few of their unit mates laugh back. Kash Kobayashi refills Alex’s mug, the overflowing suds spilling over his hand, soaking his sleeve.

“Ain’t got money for this, Mutt,” Alex says. He burned through his cash in the first hour. But somehow the beer has kept flowing.

“You don’t worry about that,” Mutt says. “Us boys from Hawaii, we got you covered, braddah.”

Alex leans back against the bar counter. Mutt’s not lying or merely boasting. These Buddhaheads, for all their faults, are tight-knit. They have each other’s back all the time.

“Look at this,” Mutt says, pulling out his wallet. He slides out a small black-and-white photograph, its edges frayed. A short, stocky girl, eighteen or nineteen, is standing on a beach wearing a muumuu dress, a floral headdress, and ankle bracelets made of whalebone. She has an average face, if not downright homely, a bit wide with a stubby nose. A radiant smile, though.

“The most beautiful girl, don’t you think, braddah?” Mutt says.

“Your girlfriend?”

Mutt grins. “Since we were like ten.”

Alex smiles back. “What’s her name?”

“Belinda. Belinda Tomo. I’m gonna marry her one day.”

Alex looks Mutt in the eyes. Only one way to respond. “She really is beautiful. Killer smile. You lucky bastard.”

Mutt laughs proudly, claps Alex across the back. “What about you, bruh?” he says, putting the photograph carefully away. “You got a main squeeze?”

“Nah.”

Mutt holds his gaze, studying him though his damp drunk eyes. “There is someone, isn’t there?”

“No. There really isn’t.”

Mutt grins, nudges him gently with the elbow. “Come on. Where is she?”

Alex raises the mug to his lips, takes a long drink. “I don’t know.”

“Ha! So there is someone!”

“It’s not like that. It’s … complicated.”

Mutt laughs. “You’re not sure or she’s not sure?”

Alex doesn’t answer.

“You got a picture of her? Let me see how pretty she is.”

Alex shakes his head. “She never gave me one.”

Mutt laughs again. “Then she’s the one not sure.” He grabs a pitcher, refills Alex’s mug. “Drink up. We’ll make a man out of you yet. You come back from war a warrior, and she won’t be able to resist you.” The beer overflows, suds and foam dripping onto the floor.

Mutt turns back to the group. In seconds he has them laughing with that carefree, easygoing Hawaiian camaraderie that Alex envies. Alone again at the end of the bar, Alex sets his mug down on the counter.

It’s been over six months since the last time Charlie “appeared” to him at Manzanar. Enough time has passed for him to think rationally about the appearances. And this is what he now fully accepts: it really was just his imagination. Nothing more than that. A fantasy fueled by boredom and worry and guilt and loneliness. He’d been such a sad little pathetic boy back then, so clueless and afraid of the world, clinging to fantasy.

And yet.

He still thinks of her all the time. While his comrades snore away, he gazes at the sketch of her he drew back at Manzanar, his eyes drifting over the pencil lines, her jawline, her eyes.

Even now, during a march or while doing army maneuvers in De Soto National Forest, her voice will break into his mind with a bell-like clarity that startles. Just three whispered words.

Find me, Alex.

Three words that sometimes feel like a clarion call.

It’s Alex who finally hauls the group out of the bar. They stumble to the bus stop, arms slung over one another’s shoulders, taking up the whole road as they drunkenly sing a Hawaiian native song. Zack Okutsu, the shortest and now drunkest, is in the middle, almost being carried between the taller Mutt and Shig, his boots barely touching the ground.

At the bus stop, a handful of soldiers from the 273rd Infantry Regiment are waiting there. The two groups stare at each other. Early on, there’d been fights between the whites and Niseis. The white boys, although they’d been told about the 442nd, were unaccustomed to seeing Japanese faces in American uniforms. Some of them had brothers fighting in the Pacific theater. Some had brothers killed by Japanese. At USO events at camp and in bars here in Hattiesburg, there’d been more than a few brawls.

But that was months ago. The 442nd has since gained the begrudging respect of most everyone at Camp Shelby. Because they’re damn good soldiers. The average setup time for a heavy machine gun is sixteen seconds. The 442nd does it in five. They scale the obstacle walls and finish eight-mile marches in full gear faster than any other unit, even with feet blistered from too-large, ill-fitting boots. In challenge after challenge, they’ve proven themselves quicker, slicker, better than virtually every other unit.

The bus arrives. It’s packed at this time of night with soldiers trying to make curfew, and local black laborers, exhausted after long shifts, returning home. Alex and his unit mates sit in the whites’ section up front, while the black passengers ride in the rear. Here in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the Nisei soldiers are considered white, not black. They can eat in the nicer restaurants, sit in the front section of buses, use whites-only restrooms and drinking fountains. In movie theaters, they sit with the whites below the balcony otherwise known as “nigger heaven.”

The bus doors groan shut.

“Yo, yo, hold up, mister!” Mutt shouts to the bus driver. “We got three more coming.”

The white driver is rotund and sweaty, his belly jutting into the bottom of the large steering wheel. He glances down the street. Three black soldiers are sprinting for the bus, their arms waving. He grabs the crank for the door, starts closing it.

“Hey, what you doing?” Mutt quickly rises, stepping into the way of the closing door. He holds it open with his foot. “They miss this bus, they miss curfew.”

“We got no more room for them,” the bus driver snaps. “Now git the hell outta my doorway.”

“There’s plenty of empty seats.”

“In the front half only. But the nigger half is full. No more room for them three.”

“You stop the bus.”

The driver turns his head to Mutt. “You Japs be riding with them niggers, I had my druthers. Now you git outta my door.”

Mutt leans out of the doorway. “Come on,” he shouts to the three running soldiers, waving them on. “Hurry up!”

The bus driver curses. Steps on the accelerator pedal, lurching the bus forward. Mutt is almo

st thrown out of the doorway.

The Nisei soldiers stand up, rush forward, all of them, even Teddy. Alex is the first to the driver, and he grabs the driver’s arm—it’s like sinking fingers into a tub of lard—and kicks his foot off the pedal. The others are pulling the brake crank, causing the bus to screech to a stop.

“The hell you doing!” the driver curses. “I’m calling the police on you.”

“Sit your white ass back down,” Zack shouts.

But the driver is irate. He stands, jiggling his belly past the steering wheel, pushing Alex out the way. The guy is all fat and no muscle, but there is a lot of it, and he is using it to his advantage. He shoves Alex backward, reaches down for something by the seat. Pulls out a blackjack, which he swings at Alex, narrowly missing his head.

“Yo, cool it!” someone shouts from the back.

The driver rears back for another swing, down at Alex’s ducked head, and this time there’s nowhere for Alex to retreat.

A body, massive and graceful at the same time, slides between bodies, grabs the driver’s heft arm.

“Drop it!” Mutt shouts, his hand grabbing the pasty, flabby wrist.

The driver stares back. Then tries to wrest his arm away, and swing at Mutt.

Big mistake. Mutt yanks the man’s considerable body out from behind the steering wheel, and through the opened doorway. By the time Alex jumps out, Mutt is administering a beatdown on the driver. The others join in, kicking the man. It’s the three black soldiers who finally pull Mutt and the others away.

46

AUGUST 14, 1943

CAMP SHELBY, MISSISSIPPI

The next morning, Captain Ralph Ensminger gathers the men. Alex, severely hungover, can barely keep his balance. Everyone else in the unit, even Zack, seems none the worse for wear. Their backs are straight, their eyes alert. Perhaps fear of punishment has sobered them. Because there’s going to be hell to pay.