This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Some head straight to the communal restroom. It is an abhorrence. They hold their breaths as they walk in. The floor flooded. Pieces of excrement floating about the concrete slab, dark and stringy like seaweed. Twelve toilet bowls run down the center of the room: side by side and back-to-back without any partitions. Close enough to touch skin if you lean back or spread your legs too wide. Along the far wall are the urinals and across from them a row of spigots over a trough. When they flush, the pipes clank ominously. Excrement suddenly erupts from the toilet bowls, spewing out of them and splashing onto the floor.

They spend the day like shell-shocked scavengers. Following every rumor, watching other internees like hawks. Who is carrying wood? Or more blankets? Or even oil for the stoves? Their immigrant survival instincts, lying dormant for so many years, spring to life. They chase down every lead, usually just wild-goose chases. In the midafternoon, a man is seen scurrying away with planks of wood. Go to Block 3, he says. There’s some discarded scrap lumber lying around.

But by the time Alex and Frank get there, it’s almost all gone. Only a few ends of lath and rolled paper. Back in their room they use the lath ends to plug up the gaps between planks, and stuff the rolled paper around the doorframe.

“Good,” Mother says, nodding. “That might help.”

“This sucks,” Frank mutters. “Livestock have it better than this.”

And right on cue, five gongs sound. But this time it’s not from the mess hall. It’s from the infirmary. Typhoid shots next.

But they get sidetracked along the way. A convoy of buses arrive. Everyone rushes over to the main gate, curious to see who has arrived. Almost a dozen buses unload hundreds of dazed passengers.

Frank cannot help himself: his natural leadership skills spring forth. He at once drops everything and makes a beeline for them. He helps carry their things to the registration table, points them to their assigned block, or in some cases, even walks them over. He smiles, thumps teens on the back, helps the old with their luggage.

Alex tags along, glad to see some spunk in his brother again, even if it is for just a day. Of late, all he’s seen of Frank is the gloom and anger eating him up inside.

For these bewildered arrivals, he’s a godsend. Though he’s been here less than a day, Frank gives advice with the wisdom of someone here much longer (inflate the number in your family to get extra blankets; don’t unpack your clothes until you’ve plugged up the knotholes, or they’ll get covered in dust; when the mess hall gongs start ringing, run before the line gets too long) and because he comes across as knowledgeable and friendly, people are asking his name, shaking his hand, remembering his face.

20

JUNE 1942

The short spring ends and summer sets in with a vengeance. The heat clamps down on you, turning every day into a slog. You wake up in the predawn stillness, and gaze up at the rafters overhead. You hope for quiet in this predawn hour, but the air is full with the wheezes and whines and coughs and murmurs of twenty-plus people in various stages of slumber. Sometimes the newlyweds will be up, and at first it’s a form of entertainment (or education) to eavesdrop on them, the creaking bed, their stifled sounds. But soon enough, quickly, it leaves you feeling like a dirty louse.

But most mornings, you wake up to the sounds not of lovemaking but of phlegm and snot being cleared. Or the piss trickle of an illegal bedpan. You kick aside the scratchy army blanket and sit up, the wires of the old iron army cot creaking under you. You swing your legs and plant your bare feet on floorboards that are rutted with knotholes and again coated with dust. The air inside is stale and musty and will, by noon, become hot as an oven.

Weeks and months pass. More internees arrive, hundreds at a time from Los Angeles, from San Bernardino, from Stockton. They come aged and bent, muttering Japanese; they come clutching their mothers’ hands; they come blinking away dust, in disbelief at this city of tar-papered barracks. They come, the tired, the poor, these huddled masses yearning to break free.

There is nothing to do. Later, jobs will be assigned, rudimentary classrooms built, clubs organized. But for these first few months, the day stretches long, the nights longer, and the boredom, especially for older teens, is unending. All their innate energy, along with any vestige of altruism, melts away under the harsh sun and the slow tick of time. The desert burns everything to a crisp.

Even Frank. Unbelievably, even Frank. Alex sees his brother’s natural life force slowly drain away. He is slow to get up in the morning. He pouts around in the evening, sighing constantly. He curses all the time, even in front of Mother. His posture, usually ramrod straight, begins to slouch. Sometimes Alex sees him with a group of other young men. They all look the same. Bored. Restless. Angry.

21

* * *

July 17, 1942

Dear Charlie,

I still haven’t heard from you. I tell myself there must be a simple explanation, and that you’re fine. You are, aren’t you, Charlie?

On my end nothing much has changed. People continue to pour into the camp. Thousands upon thousands. On Bainbridge Island there were about two hundred of us. But here, almost ten thousand, I heard. Everywhere I look, there are people who look like me, usually lining up. We’re always lining up. For clothing. Food. Wood. Sometimes you see a long line and you don’t even bother asking for what, you just get in line.

Now that it’s hot, those lines can get pretty stinky. People need to take more showers but there’s always a line for that too, even late at night. Some of the older men have resorted to taking baths in the laundry tubs. So disgusting.

The food remains terrible. We call it SOS—Same Old Slop. The mess halls are hot and awful: babies crying, children screaming, adults yelling, teens shouting, grandpas slurping, grandmas chewing, pans clanging, workers yelling. Families don’t sit together anymore. Teens sit with other teens. The family structure is breaking apart. Not just in the dining halls, but over the whole camp. Teens roam about everywhere by themselves, and parents have lost control over them. I’ve seen fathers explode with rage, lashing out at their sons. And mothers crying, worried and upset. I feel bad for these parents. First they lost their homes, their jobs, their freedom. Now they’re losing maybe their most precious possession. Their own children.

And Frank’s no different. He’s altogether disappeared at mealtimes. He used to sit on the other side of the mess hall, but recently he’s been going to a whole other block. Sometimes I sit with my mother so she won’t feel so lonely, but she always asks where Frank is. Even when I tell her he’s probably at a different mess hall, she holds a spot at the table for him.

He’s changed, Frank. A lot. In the beginning, before camp life really got to him, he had more spunk. But now all he does is hang out with a bunch of other guys. They’re all bored and restless and spend their time griping about this and that. The stale food. The communal latrines that stink and offer no privacy, the boredom, the heat so intense that some people have taken to lying under the barracks in dug-up holes.

The only time I see Frank is late at night for curfew. I barely recognize him. Sometimes he even scares me.

Please write. Please?

Alex

At the post office, Alex slides his stamped envelope over the counter. As usual he asks, “Any mail for me? The Maki family, Block Sixteen Barrack Four Apartment F.”

“I know who you are, Alex. You’re only here every day. Give me a sec.” The postal worker disappears into the back. Alex is not expecting her to return with anything. He’s already half turned when she reappears. An envelope in her hand.

Alex’s heart springs awake.

Fingers trembling, he reaches for the letter. Instantly, his heart drops—it’s not from France. Or Europe. It’s from Crystal City Internment Camp, Texas.

22

JULY 8, 1942

That night, as the sounds of slumber lift up into the rafters, Alex hears the door creak open. Wind gusts in, chilly even in the middle of July. Boots stomp

across the floorboards. Frank’s cot creaks as he lies down.

Even in the darkness, Alex knows Mother is awake. She will not allow her heavy eyelids to close, or her body to drift off to sleep, until Frank is back in the barracks and asleep. Ever since Frank first started staying away for the whole day, this is the only time she sees him.

Tonight it is Mother who falls asleep first, her snores ragged and wheezy.

Alex pads quietly over to Frank’s cot. He’s lying slumped on his side, facing the wall.

“Frank.”

No response. Alex prods him on the shoulder. “Frank.”

“What is it?” Annoyed.

“I need to tell you something.”

Still facing the wall: “Go ahead.”

Alex pauses. “We got a letter yesterday. From the prison facility in Texas. Crystal City.”

Frank’s back stiffens.

“It’s about Father.” He pauses, wishing Frank would turn around and face him. “His release petition was denied.”

Alex waits in the darkness, willing his older brother to speak. Please say something, please tell me what’s going on inside your head, tell me what’s going on inside that heart of yours that used to be as big and open as the endless blue sky, please …

Alex breaks the silence himself. “How long will they keep him?”

Frank shifts, the springs of the cot complaining squeakily. “I don’t know.”

He stares at Frank’s back. Hard and impenetrable as granite. “Will they send him back to Japan?”

No response.

“If they do, we won’t ever see him again. Will we?”

“There’s nothing we can do, okay? It’s out of our control. Now let me sleep.”

“You need to tell Mother.”

“No. It’ll break her.”

Frank is right. Alex hears her praying every morning over her Bible. For Father’s health. For his return. Her voice weaker with every passing week, her back more crooked, her very cartilage disintegrating. Without him she’s crumbling like a piece of chalk.

“Still, Frank. She should know.”

“You tell her then.”

“You’re the oldest—”

“I said you tell her.”