This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

He is fading. Disappearing into the night the same way she faded on him in the past.

“Charlie!” He tugs on his uniform, points to his 442nd patch. “Charlie, I’m coming. I’m on my way to Europe! Tell me where you are!”

And she is fighting back the tears; they are running down her hollowed-out cheek, cutting through her grime-caked face.

He reaches for her arm, the numbers 14873 tattooed on her arm, a triangle tattooed below those numbers—

She is gone. No gradual fade-out. Just gone. The brick barracks, the icy ground, the black snowflakes. All gone. In their place: the rumble of the Johns Hopkins under him, the glittering skies overhead, the endless, bottomless ocean surrounding him.

49

JUNE 1, 1944

ITALY: BARI, NAPLES, CIVITAVECCHIA

The Johns Hopkins, more than four weeks after leaving Hampton Roads, Virginia, finally arrives in the port city of Bari, Italy. The soldiers, many filthy after refusing to shower in the disgusting salt-water stalls, are elated to be on dry land again.

“Buon pomeriggio!” Mutt shouts to local residents on the dock. He bends over the army’s Pocket Guide to Italian Cities. “Mi chiamo Mutt Suzuki, Monsieur Mutt Suzuki. Fammi un prezzaccio!”

“Yo, Mutt, you sure you’re reading that right?” Alex asks.

He peers closer. “Oh, dog it. Wrong line. I mean, Piacere di conoscerti!” he shouts, arms raised high in greeting.

But the Bari residents don’t wave back. They glance with idle curiosity at all these Asian faces in military uniforms, perhaps thinking they are Japanese prisoners of war.

“Heck, could these people be any colder?” Teddy says. “Crikey, we’re here to liberate them. They couldn’t fake being more excited?”

“Like every girl you’ve ever slept with?” Zack says.

“Shut up, Zack,” Teddy snaps back.

Shig pipes in. “Yeah, shut up, Zack. Teddy’s never even slept with a girl.”

They soon learn the reason for the cold reception. Back in December, Allied ships had docked here. One of them—the SS John Harvey—was secretly carrying two thousand mustard-gas bombs as part of a contingency plan in case Germans initiated chemical warfare. But when the Germans struck the port in a devastating air raid, seventeen Allied ships went down, including the John Harvey in a huge explosion. It released mustard gas over the defenseless city and surrounding countryside. Military and civilian casualties numbered over a thousand, with close to a hundred, likely more, dead. The German air raid was so devastating, it was dubbed Little Pearl Harbor.

“Great,” Teddy says on learning this. “Pearl Harbor happens and America hates us. Now Little Pearl Harbor happens, and all Italy hates us. Man, us Japanese Americans, we can’t catch a break, can we?”

They’re not in Bari for long. They load up into forty-and-eight boxcar trains—so named for the forty people or eight horses that can fit in each carriage—and ride westward across the boot of Italy. Through the open doors, they see farmlands and towns passing by with names that mean nothing to them. Barletta. Tressanti. Buonalbergo. Sant’Agata Dé Goti.

The picturesque Italian countryside offers little evidence—except for the occasional overturned mule cart or car or burned-down farmhouse—that the world is actually at war, or that an evil enemy lurks. They play cards. They talk until they’re sick of the same regurgitated jokes, the same stale stories of sexual conquests. They cradle their rifles, tap fingers on their helmets. They wonder if they will ever actually fight, if war is actually a real thing.

* * *

At dawn they arrive in Naples. And here, in this crowded city of slopes and narrow stone stairs, the first signs of war. Bombed-out buildings reduced to empty husks. Upturned cars, tires gone, the metal frames blackened and twisted by some explosion. Building walls pitted with bullet holes, entire sections charred black. An air of desperation everywhere.

But it’s the squalor that’s most telling. Only men wear shoes; the women walk around barefoot, their blackened, calloused soles looking hard as black leather. And the children, God, the children. Scrawny, desperate, dirty. Constantly flitting about, asking the soldiers for handouts. For candy, for gum, cigarettes, anything. Joe, Joe, chocolate? Cigarette? Joe? Joe? Their darting, gnatty hands everywhere, pulling on cartridge belts, tugging on jackets, digging into pockets. If one raggedy kid gets something, a whole crowd comes swarming.

“Buzz off, maggots!” Zack Okutsu finally shouts. He’s barely taller than most of the kids.

No Life magazine photo op here, of beaming GIs surrounded by friendly, smiling children, arms around each other.

In the afternoon, a general stink rises above the city, of rotting fish, stray dogs, raw sewage flooding the street gutters. The locals jostle in the city plaza, selling their wares to foreign soldiers: American, British, New Zealanders, even French Algerians. A potato for fifty cents. A loaf of bread for one dollar. A pen for fifty cents, which Teddy buys after bargaining it down to twenty cents. He still writes to his mother every day. An egg for three dollars. A signorina for two dollars, a very nice girl, they are promised.

Alex walks to the outer edge of the plaza where it’s less crowded. Here, tortoiseshells and cameos and other pilfered jewelry are being sold. A young boy is displaying broken crockery on a slab of fallen concrete. The items—cups, bowls, plates—have been glued together with mortar. They remind Alex of Japanese kintsugi pieces that his mother loved to make and collect: broken ceramic bowls sealed back together not with mortar but a gold-dusted lacquer. The result is a bowl whose delicate cracks are highlighted, not concealed, with gold. Beauty in all the broken places.

When they return from town, the GIs get doused with some kind of insecticide. Because of the lice in town, they are told, because of the disease, because of the filth of war. That night, when Alex opens his rucksack, he finds the small bowl he bought shattered into five pieces.

After Naples, Rome. Then, in a caravan of jeeps and trucks, they head to Civitavecchia. Next a little Tuscany village of Belvedere. Where, at last: war. In all its senseless, unspeakable, insatiable brutality.

50

JUNE 26, 1944

BELVEDERE, ITALY

In the hour before dawn, a few soldiers walk through the bivouacked camp, quietly waking up the battalion.

There are no grumbles this morning, no mouthing off at the assigned soldiers tasked with this thankless job. Everyone rises efficiently, quietly, lips pressed into thin white lines. Boots thrown on, bladders emptied.

Alex, like many of his fellow soldiers, is already awake. Has been for hours, his sleep fitful through the night, grabbed in brief, fractured snatches. But he is not tired. He is more alert than he has ever been. Is this the last day of my life? Are these my final hours?

A quick breakfast. K rations opened up. Everyone is forced to eat two packs. “You don’t know when you’ll eat again,” Captain Ralph Ensminger says. To Alex, it sounds like: You don’t know if you’ll eat again. They eat sitting against tree trunks. Squatting on the ground. By the ridgeline, staring off into the distance, chewing somberly on gummy pork loaf and stale crackers, thinking of first kisses and last letters.

After breakfast, Captain Ensminger gathers E Company along with Alex’s artillery team. Alex, as front observer, will be on the frontlines with the E Company infantry team.

“Listen up.” This morning there’s no need to shout to get their attention. Ensminger has their eyes, their ears, their undivided attention. “The Nazis are beating a retreat northward up Italy. And they’ve established a southern line of defense, starting with the town of Belvedere just over that hill. They’ve set up an SS battalion command post there. It’s well fortified, and the Krauts will fight to the death to protect it.” He taps on an X scrawled on the large map. “It’s on an elevated position. Which puts them at a distinct advantage over us. Also in their advantage: they’ve got more troops, more weapons, more equipment, more vehicles, more tanks.”

He paus

es; everyone’s heart is beating, faster, faster, fasterfaster.

“They will not give in. They will fight to the death to protect it.” He gazes at them, his pale blue eyes staring evenly at their brown ones. Now is the time to give the rah-rah speech, the And we will fight them to the death, too! speech. But he doesn’t. He has never been that way, never really raised his voice even back at Camp Shelby in all their months of training together. He treats them as comrades, with respect. That’s a big reason why they are so loyal to him, why many will fall on the sword for him. He only says, “Remember everything we learned together back at Camp Shelby. We do that, and we do it well, and we will prevail today, gentlemen.”

The soldiers have a few minutes before they set off. They check their weapons and supplies. Some scribble hurried last letters, which they put not in their jackets but leave behind in their tents. In case they are blown apart.

Alex is staring over a ridge, into the distance. He takes out his drawing of Charlie. The paper is now smeared and in danger of crumbling away; but her face, her eyes—they seem as alive as ever.

He hears someone approaching. He slides the drawing into his pocket.

It’s Mutt. He saunters up next to him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Doing good?”

Alex nods.

They stare at the Tuscan countryside.

“They don’t ease us into war, do they?” Alex says.

Mutt cocks a grin. “Baptism by fire, baby. The only way to do it.”

Alex hesitates. “Yo, Mutt, I’m afraid.”

Mutt turns to look at him. “Hey, we’re all scared, braddah. I puked twice already.”