This Light Between Us: Part Two

A cordon of these soldiers is lined up along the road.

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.

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.

His curiosity piqued, he scans the bulletin for a job.

None pay well, barely a pittance for the hard, unglamorous labor.

Papa read the tract with a deep frown.

“Alex,” Ueno says patronizingly. “Babies don’t die for no good reason. There’s always a reason.”

“And it’s not just sugar he’s stealing. He’s filching meat as well. And milk. And kitchen knives. Then selling it on the black market outside the camp. Making a pretty dime while our babies die.”

Over the next few days at work Alex keeps his head down, completes his tasks, waits the tables with his usual decorum.

They are solicitous. They seem happy. The children are mostly well behaved.

He imagines he can feel against his fingertips the dips of her handwriting, and in the most tenuous of ways, it feels like he is reaching out and touching her.

The newspaper circulated around Manzanar internment camp, four pages of mimeographed reporting on mostly camp affairs: sports results, weddings, births, deaths, important events, a reminder of rules.

Angry diatribes against the camp administration, accusing them of stealing meat and sugar for the black market.

When the MPs move into the camp, the first inkling that something awful might happen—perhaps even tragic—flits into his head.

A meeting is called by the de facto leaders for 1 P.M. in a mess hall in Block 22.

They’re supposed to be compliant and polite, these people who are told what to do and unquestioningly do it.

A tense standoff ensues. Minutes pass, the two groups glaring at one another.

From the other side, a small contingent of internee representatives steps forward.

Alex feels the raw visceral energy of the crowd more than ever.

Yet the tension is palpable.

A rock is thrown at Captain Hall. It whizzes by his head, almost hitting him. His eyes are wide with indignation.

To think [he] would have the temerity to throw a rock at him—

Searchlights cutting manically left and right, making shadows dance in macabre fashion.

Old men and old women dream of hot public baths where steam rises from the water like ghosts and ciphers.

But at night the worst thoughts—that she is in prison somewhere, languishing—keep him awake.

It is accurate but it is clinical. There is nothing of her spirit.

There are moments of lucidity. When the absurdity of all this slams home. When he accepts that her appearance was merely a trick of light.

This last thought surfaces only in his nightmares, where every night he roams the empty Parisian streets, searching for her in café after café filled only with Nazis who bark out in haughty German demands for more beer, more Camembert, and he walks past them with head tucked down, walking all over Paris until his feet blister and the cobblestones rub his tender soles raw.

Ray Takeda wasn’t lying: news about the plight of Jews in France—or in Poland or the Netherlands or anywhere—is scant. A sentence here and there.

He doesn’t ingratiate. His voice is soft, not with timidity but with an easy confidence. Like he doesn’t have anything left to prove.

I was a dorsal turret gunner on a B-24 Liberator. Which means I sat in a glass bubble on the underside of the plane. Completely visible, completely vulnerable.

The lieutenant sniffs with contempt.

A barrage of questions are yelled out.

“Even so,” Frank says, “there will be some idiots who’ll still enlist. And that’s stupid. That’s foolish. They’ll think it’s patriotic. But it’s not. It’s being gullible. And they won’t realize this until it’s too late, until they’re lying on the battlefield, their guts oozing out of them, and finally thinking, Oh boy, I'm an idiot, America's just used me as cannon fodder, and America doesn't care, America won't even remember me.”

Tonight there is no color emanating from her.

Her cheeks sallow, her eyes sunken.

Even he knows the odds of finding Charlie, assuming he’s even sent to Europe, are so infinitesimal as to be negligible.

Frank’s face blanches with shock.

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.