Laura couldn’t shake this unsettled feeling. She wondered about the future of the country. How did President Truman feel now that he was the leader of the nation? Like she did sometimes when she was in charge of the class meetings and selling the war stamps?
“Face your fear,” she said aloud. She prayed that God had been with President Roosevelt when he died and that He would be with President Truman now.
CHAPTER 11
The Balloon Bomb
Laura read everything she could about the new president. She and the other students in Mrs. Jamison’s class listened to Harry Truman’s speech to Congress the day after President Roosevelt had been laid to rest in New York.
“He’s asked the country to help him and asked for God’s help,” Maude told Laura after school. “Can’t ask for more than that. Besides, he’s from Missouri, right next door to Oklahoma. That means he’s got common sense.”
Later, on the newsreel at the movie, Laura, Miyoko, and Yvonne saw Harry Truman being sworn in as president. The newsreel was also full of pictures from the death camps in Germany. The pictures of half-starved people in Buchenwald and Belsen made Laura sick.
Yvonne leaned over Laura and whispered to Miyoko, “It wasn’t like that where you were, was it?”
“Oh, no. We were in small quarters, and the food was not very good, but it was nothing like that.”
“I’m glad German descendants weren’t sent to relocation centers or internment camps,” Yvonne said.
Laura was, too.
“My relatives didn’t do this to those people,” Yvonne said and motioned to the screen, where pictures of the concentration camps still flickered.
“Or mine,” Laura said.
“And mine didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor,” Miyoko said.
What a mixed-up time, Laura thought. Countries do horrible things to each other, yet ordinary people wouldn’t do such bad things.
Mrs. Jamison had the students bring in newspaper clippings about the United Nations Conference that started at the end of April in San Francisco. The class talked about how many nations would likely join and how this would be a way to keep the world at peace.
“The United Nations might be a ‘melting pot,’ just like the United States,” Mrs. Jamison said, and Laura hoped that would be true.
Troops were closing in on Berlin, but the war effort on the home front continued as the paper drive came to a close.
Eddie and Kenny and the girls carried a load of scrap paper to the collection center on Saturday after they finished morning chores. They’d been carrying paper forever, it seemed. And every time they went to the center, Eddie’s and Kenny’s accounts went up fifteen or twenty pounds.
“What does this make it?” Eddie asked after the paper was weighed in.
“Almost there. Just another twenty-two pounds,” the collection worker said.
Kenny’s load was weighed in and came to twenty-four pounds. He still needed eighteen more.
“Monday’s the end of the month, boys. This place will be a madhouse then. If you can, bring more paper this afternoon.”
“We’ve already been to all our collection sites. Where else can we go?” Laura asked as they made their way to the hotel.
“We haven’t been back to the burlesque house,” Yvonne said. She’d told her mom about that collection place and had been forbidden to return. “That woman probably has tons of old programs for us.”
“But we can’t go there again,” Eddie said. “None of us is allowed to go near that place.”
“I have an idea,” Laura said. “Maybe under the circumstances, my mother and Mrs. Wakamutsu would give us one-time permission to go there, just to get the paper. It is for the war, after all.”
“What do we have to lose?” Kenny asked, and the group raced off to the hotel.
To their relief, both Mama and Mrs. Wakamutsu were home. As soon as Eddie explained the problem, the two women looked at each other. Laura held her breath.
“Because this is for the war,” Mama said slowly, “you may go this one time.”
Laura started breathing again.
“But,” Mama continued, “it is not a good place for you to be, and you are not to go near there again. Is that understood?”
Laura and Eddie nodded.
“Miyoko,” Mrs. Wakamutsu said, “you may also go. It will be a way to help your father win the war. But be careful.”
The five friends walked briskly toward the hotel, but when they approached the burlesque house, they slowed their pace and looked nervously at each other.
“Who’s going to knock on the door?” Kenny asked. No one answered him.
“I will go ask,” Miyoko finally said. She walked to the door and knocked softly.
A man answered. “What do you want, little Jap?” he barked.
Miyoko stepped back.
“Scrap paper collection for the Boy Scouts.”
“You don’t look like no Boy Scout.” He looked at Laura and the others. “You with them?”
“I am collecting for my father, who is a soldier.”
“I’ll bet. For the emperor!” he said and slammed the door.
Laura marched to the door and pounded on it.
“Hey, mister!” she called.
The man opened the door. “I thought—what’s this?”
“My friend’s dad is in the United States Army in Europe. Now do you have any scrap paper for the drive? Any old programs?”
“What is it?” a voice called from behind the man. The woman Laura had seen before came to the door. This time she wore heavy makeup and a glittery dress. She looked at the kids, and Laura saw recognition in her eyes when she spotted Yvonne. “Oh, I wondered when you’d come back for the papers. They’ve been piling up. Hurry up, kids. In a few minutes we’ll be opening the ticket booth for the afternoon show. I want you out of here before then.”
Laura led the way and motioned for the others to follow. She strained to look around, but they were led down a closed hallway, so she couldn’t even see the stage.
There had to be a ton of paper in the huge pile in the back room. The five friends loaded up until they could carry no more and trudged to the front door. Before they left, Laura turned to the woman. “Miyoko’s father is fighting in the 442nd. He’s a war hero. Tell that man.”
“I’ll tell him, honey, but I doubt it’ll do much good.”
“Thank you for the papers,” Eddie said as they filed out of the burlesque house and headed to the collection center.
Laura walked alongside Miyoko. “Sorry about that man.”
“It is not your fault,” Miyoko said and shrugged. “I am used to it.”
The kids struggled along under their loads in silence, an oddity for them.
“We’re back,” Eddie said fifteen minutes later when they dumped their loads on the scales.
The man looked at the programs and then said, “I guess paper’s paper no matter where you got it.”
Between the five of them, they had fifty-seven pounds. The man divided the number between Kenny’s and Eddie’s accounts and proclaimed them both winners of the Eisenhower medal.
“Wow!” Eddie exclaimed. “When do we get it?”
“Your troop leader will award it,” the man said.
The kids walked with light steps back toward the hotel. As they neared the burlesque house again, Kenny said, “It took guts to knock on that door, Miyoko. You earned part of the medal.”
“I will take a corner piece,” she said.
“What?” Kenny said.
Miyoko giggled, the first time Laura had ever heard her laugh. “It is a joke,” she said.
“I’ll let you wear it sometime,” Kenny said, and Laura vowed silently to hold him to that promise.
During the following week, tension mounted in the hotel as news from the European front gave hope that the end of the war was likely to occur at any moment. With the news of Hitler’s suicide, Laura rejoiced. Surely that meant that the war couldn’t go on any
longer. But the Germans held out for another week. Finally the official announcement came from President Truman. The Germans had unconditionally surrendered.
Laura’s first reaction was that Bruce would be coming home, safe and sound. Miyoko’s father would come home, too.
But President Truman’s V-E Day broadcast that she heard before she went to school and again in Mrs. Jamison’s room made Laura rethink the situation.
“Our victory is but half-won,” the president said. “The West is free, but the East is still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese. When the last Japanese division has surrendered unconditionally, only then will our fighting job be done.”
Mrs. Jamison made the issue crystal clear when she followed the announcement of the victory in Europe with a secret warning to the students.
“I’m going to tell you a story, and I want you to take it to heart. It’s very important that you know this, but in a way it’s a secret,” she began.
“Last Saturday the Reverend Archie Mitchell, his wife Elsie, and four boys and a girl from their church went on a picnic in the south part of Oregon. It’s unclear exactly what happened. Reverend Mitchell was parking the car when his wife called out for him to come see what they had found. There was a loud explosion, and Reverend Mitchell found the five children dead and his wife barely alive and her clothes on fire. He burned his hands trying to put out the flames, but his wife died within minutes. The children had found a Japanese balloon that held bombs.”
Gasps echoed around the room, and Laura looked at the wide-eyed stares of the other students.
“I suspect that someone touched the balloon or one of the bombs itself, and it exploded,” Mrs. Jamison said. “It made a hole three feet across, and there was shrapnel everywhere. If any of you see such a balloon, you are to run away from it and report it immediately to the police.”
“How many are there?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they coming from?” Keith asked.
“The authorities are unsure. It could be that a Japanese ship has released them, or it could be that they have been released from the island of Japan itself. Perhaps there are no more of them, but the government doesn’t want the Japanese to know that any balloons have landed here.
“That’s where the secret comes in. The government wants no mention of this on the radio or in the newspapers. If the Japanese find out they have been successful, they may send more balloon bombs. But be sure to tell your parents and your brothers and sisters and others that you trust. They should be warned.”
“What do the balloons look like?” a student asked.
“I haven’t seen one, but the principal told us they were made of rubberized silk or layers of paper and string. The balloon part is thirty feet across, and the bombs hang below it. They can be pearl gray in color. Don’t touch them! Remember, there will be no reports of this in the newspapers or on the radio. We don’t want the Japanese to know the balloons are reaching us.
“What’s the motto? ‘Loose lips …,’” Mrs. Jamison started.
“‘Sink ships,’” the class said in unison.
“Three of the children killed were thirteen. One boy was fourteen, and one was eleven. Be careful and be watchful, boys and girls. I don’t want to lose any of you. Now, you can go out for recess a little early.”
The students filed silently out of the room and headed for the playground. There was no laughing and poking each other, like the boys normally did when they went outside.
As soon as the other classes had recess, Laura and Kenny found the others. “Did your teacher tell you about the balloon bomb?” she asked.
“Yeah … one boy was my age,” Eddie said quietly.
That night Laura told both families about the balloons.
“President Truman is right,” Dad said. “We have reason to celebrate tonight, but the war is only half-won. I wonder if Bruce will be sent to the Pacific.”
Laura hadn’t thought of that possibility. Now she murmured, “God be with him.”
CHAPTER 12
Good-Bye, Hotel
I’m worried about Jerry,” Maude confessed to Laura one afternoon while she was working in the office alone. Eddie and Kenny were at Boy Scouts, and Mama and Mrs. Wakamutsu were cleaning out another empty room for some repair work.
“Why?”
“It’s been over a month since I heard from him. I’m afraid he’s been sent to Okinawa.”
Laura got out the atlas, and they looked at the distance from Guam to the bigger island. The United States had already taken Iwo Jima from the Japanese, and the newsreel showed it had taken heavy fighting to win. Japanese soldiers hid artillery guns in caves and rained bullets on Americans. Radio reports from the Pacific talked about hand-to-hand combat.
“There isn’t an American airfield on Okinawa yet, is there?” Laura asked. Since they’d learned from the code that Jerry worked at keeping planes flying, it made sense that he would be at an airfield. “Maybe he’s been sent to Iwo Jima.”
“Maybe.”
“Face your fear,” Laura reminded her.
“I know, but the Japanese fight until they’re killed. And I don’t know what to think of the kamikaze pilots. Those men know they’re going to die before they climb in their airplanes.”
“They must be crazy,” Laura said. She’d seen a picture in the newspaper of a wrecked kamikaze plane burning on the deck of an American ship. She and Yvonne had talked about how insane those Japanese were to ram their planes into ships in the hopes of sinking them. They had been careful not to talk about it in front of Miyoko. Her entire heritage was from Japan, and she observed some of their customs. Laura didn’t feel comfortable talking about the Pacific war in front of her.
“You know what I think, Laura?” Maude said in a low voice. “I’ve started looking at each one of these men as someone’s son. For every one killed, there’s a mother out there who will never be the same.”
“But we’re at war,” Laura said. “It’s our country against their country. If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us.”
“I know, but that doesn’t make it right,” Maude said.
“Mail here?” Mrs. Lind called from a little way down the hall.
“Yes, ma’am,” Laura said. “You have a letter.”
Mrs. Lind didn’t get a lot of mail, and what she got was usually postmarked from Atlanta. Laura handed over the letter and the afternoon newspaper. Then she turned her attention back to the map.
“American troops are getting closer and closer to Japan,” Maude said. “It’s just a matter of time before they invade, but if the little islands have caused such fierce fighting, I can’t imagine what the soldiers will face on Japan.”
“Nooo!”
Laura looked at the couch when she heard the groan of anguish. The letter fluttered to Mrs. Lind’s lap. Tears streamed down her face.
“Mrs. Lind!” Maude reached her first. “What is it?”
Mrs. Lind motioned to the letter, and Maude picked it up and quickly scanned it.
“Is this your sister’s boy?”
Mrs. Lind nodded.
“Laura, get your mother.”
With wings on her feet, Laura ran to the room where Mama and Mrs. Wakamutsu were working. “Hurry, it’s Mrs. Lind,” Laura said and fled back to the lobby. Laura felt helpless, just as she had when Mr. Arnold’s Dale had been killed. The end of the war seemed near with victory in sight, but still men were dying.
Mama, Mrs. Wakamutsu, and Maude took Mrs. Lind back to her apartment. Mrs. Wakamutsu came to the office and told Laura that Mrs. Lind’s nephew was missing in action on Okinawa. To Laura that meant he was dead, just like she knew Neil Palmer was dead.
Supper was a quiet affair with the news of Mrs. Lind’s nephew hanging over the two families. Mama had helped her call her sister from the office and later had taken a tray of food to her apartment.
“Will she go to her sister’s?” Eddie asked.
“She could have a long wait,” Corrine said quietly.
Laura looked at her sister, who had tears welling in her eyes. When would it all be over? When would they know the truth about Neil? Someone at school had told her it was seven years after a war before a missing-in-action person could be declared dead. Corrine was twenty-four now. In seven years she’d be thirty-one, an old maid. Laura doubted she would go out with any man on a date during that seven years. She sure hadn’t gone out since Neil had been sent to the Philippines.
Dad called a family meeting in the living room after supper dishes were done.
He started with a prayer for Mrs. Lind and her nephew and, of course, remembered Bruce, Neil, Jerry, Leonard Ito, and all the soldiers fighting the war.
After prayer, Dad cleared his throat. “Your mother and I have decided something,” he said slowly. “Although the war isn’t over yet, I think it will be soon. When that happens, not as many jobs will be needed at Boeing—especially for the women—and when Bruce comes home, we’ll need even more room as a family. Money isn’t as tight as it has been, and I’d like for us to have a fresh start.” He paused. “We’ve decided to sell the hotel and move to a house in Laurelhurst, away from the city,” Dad finished.
“We’re moving?” Eddie asked.
Mama nodded and continued, “We’ve found a buyer for the hotel, and he has offered Mr. and Mrs. Wakamutsu the job of running it. Now, with school letting out next week, you kids will have time to help me pack our belongings. The new house is just right for us—with lots of room and places to play…. There’s even a garden in the back. And the house is still close by for a day trip back here.”
“I’ve already arranged for a truck to move our things. Moving day will be on Saturday, June 2,” Dad added.
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