American Triumph: 1939-1945: 4 STORIES IN 1

by Susan Martins Miller, Norma Jean Lutz, Bonnie Hinman

  Laura heard her talking to Mrs. Wakamutsu.

  “What did she say?” Laura asked once Mama had hung up the receiver.

  “She’s all right about it. Her sister lives in Tokyo, and Miyoko’s relatives live in Nagasaki.”

  Laura breathed a sigh of relief. At least her friends were not directly affected by the bombing.

  But a few days later, the newspaper headline screamed about another bombing. This time Nagasaki was hit. Laura and Eddie took the bus to the hotel even though it was Thursday and the girls would be coming to their house the next day.

  “How are you?” Laura asked Miyoko.

  “I am okay,” she said, but she had tears in her eyes. “I don’t know if my relatives were killed or injured. I never met them, but my father did. He is still in Germany. I received a letter from him yesterday. I know he must be grieving for his family.”

  “The Japanese have to surrender now,” Eddie said, “or we’ll keep bombing their cities. They have to give up. Then your father will come home.”

  The papers were full of the peace talks. American soldiers stopped bombing while the Allies considered Japan’s surrender terms. At the same time, Russian troops invaded Manchuria in Asia, and news reached Seattle about the sinking of the Indianapolis, which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine at the end of July. The ship had sunk in minutes, leaving many sailors adrift in the shark-infested waters for days before rescue ships had arrived. Many sailors had been eaten alive by the sharks.

  Laura could hardly imagine such horror. With peace so close, men were still losing their lives in such hideous ways.

  Days passed, and Laura and the others hardly dared to breathe, waiting on tenterhooks.

  On Tuesday afternoon, Yvonne, Kenny, and Miyoko were walking Laura and Eddie to the bus stop when a yell like Laura had never heard before came out of the labor union office. Men rushed out of the building.

  “It’s over!” One man’s voice could be heard above the cheers.

  “Japan surrendered!” another yelled.

  Laura screamed. Tears of joy flooded her eyes.

  The kids ran back up the sidewalk to the hotel and found people pouring on to the street from every building and business. Church bells rang. Factory whistles shrilled an end to the war. Firecrackers exploded in the alley. Women cried, and old men whooped. Children shouted and danced around on the sidewalk, twirling until they were so dizzy they fell down. The place was in chaos, and it didn’t let up. It just got wilder.

  Laura tried to call home from the office phone, but she couldn’t get through. The lines were jammed.

  “Stay here,” Maude said. “Your folks will know where you are.”

  Laura couldn’t stay in the hotel when there was such excitement outside and the crowd was growing bigger and bigger. She rushed down the stairs and out on the sidewalk with the others.

  From above, it rained feathers like confetti. Laura looked up in time to see Mrs. Lind shaking a pillow’s contents on the joyous crowd below.

  “It’s over!” Laura shouted. “It’s over!”

  CHAPTER 14

  The Homecoming

  Mama, Corrine, Gary, and Ginny arrived at the hotel on the bus.

  “What a wild ride!” Gary told Laura and the others. “Everyone was crying and shouting and carrying on. It was great!”

  Dad and Margie went home after their work shifts, read the note Mama had left, and wound up at the hotel, too. What a party! What a celebration!

  “Jerry is coming home!” Maude shouted, hugging everyone in sight. “My son made it through the war.”

  “Mine, too,” Mama said. “I don’t think he ever got moved to the Pacific. But we’ll find out soon.”

  Mrs. Wakamutsu smiled but was rather quiet compared to the others. Laura cornered Miyoko and asked her about her foster mother.

  “She told me,” Miyoko said, “that there is a line that cuts her in two. She loves America. It is now her home. It has been so good to her, and her children are American. Yet her people are in Japan. She feels sorrow for her homeland, but she has no wish to ever return there.”

  “What about Mr. Wakamutsu?” Laura didn’t know him nearly as well as she knew his wife.

  “Long ago in the camp, he told me that he felt like a child whose parents were arguing. He didn’t care who won as long as the fighting stopped.”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s over,” Laura said.

  “Me, too,” Miyoko said. “I am a loyal American. I want you to know that is true.”

  “I know that,” Laura said.

  Laura’s family left the hotel after midnight. The next morning, although Dad and Margie went to work as usual, the rest of the household dragged around, tired but happy.

  “When will Bruce get to come home?” Laura asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mama said. “Dad says the army takes awhile to discharge soldiers, and some will be kept overseas to enforce the peace. We’ve waited this long; I suppose we can wait as long as it takes, now that we know he’s coming home.”

  Exactly a week later, the phone rang. Laura picked it up, expecting Yvonne to be on the other line, but instead a woman’s choked-up voice asked for Corrine.

  Laura covered the receiver with her hand. “Mama, it’s for Corrine,” she whispered. “It sounds like a woman crying. I think it’s Mrs. Palmer.” This was the call that Laura had dreaded for so long.

  “Oh, no,” Mama said. “I’ll get her.”

  A moment later Corrine walked into the living room with Mama on her heels. Corrine took the phone and said timidly, “Hello?”

  She listened for a second, then sank slowly to the floor. She said something that Laura couldn’t make out because of her sobs. Tears poured down her cheeks, and her breath came in giant gasps. Finally Laura could understand. “Thank You, God. Thank You, God,” Corrine said over and over.

  “Is he alive?” Mama asked.

  Corrine nodded, and still more tears came. Laura plopped on the floor and hugged her sister.

  Mama took the phone. “Mrs. Palmer? Mrs. Palmer? Neil’s all right?” She looked at Laura and nodded her head up and down.

  Laura wiped her own tears. “Where is he?” she asked, but Corrine could only shake her head.

  “Eddie!” Laura yelled toward the stairs. “Eddie!”

  He ran down the stairs. After one look at Corrine’s face, his mouth flew open, and he turned and yelled, “Gary!”

  “Neil’s alive,” Laura said and found she was having difficulty speaking, too. Both boys came into the living room and hugged Corrine.

  Mama hung up the phone and joined the group on the floor. “He was in a prison camp in Manchuria. He’s in a hospital in China now.”

  “Hos … pi … tal?” Corrine had the hiccups now.

  “He’s very weak. Prisoners weren’t fed very well, but he’s going to be all right,” Mama said. “He’ll be flown to a stateside hospital.”

  “Thank … God,” Corrine said.

  “Yes, let’s thank God right now,” Mama said and led her children in prayer.

  Ginny came home from a friend’s house, and the tears of joy started again as the story was retold. Mama called Dad and the hotel, and Laura called her friends, and the news spread.

  Laura still couldn’t believe it. As more details were known, she was amazed that Neil had survived. A few days later, he cabled his parents and Corrine and wrote that he’d made it through the Bataan Death March and then was taken to Manchuria from the Philippines, but now he was all right and would be coming home soon.

  The days dragged by as August turned into September, and the family waited. A triumphant letter arrived from Bruce. When the news of the atomic bombs had reached his unit in Germany, the troops had celebrated. Their orders for the Pacific were canceled, and Bruce knew he’d be coming home soon.

  School started, which helped the waiting to go faster. Laura and Eddie were put in the same classroom, which dismayed Laura. Wouldn’t Eddie want to run for classroom preside
nt or vice president just as she wanted to? And could she run against him?

  She didn’t have to decide. This school didn’t have classroom presidents. Disappointed, she settled down to regular schoolwork and looked forward to Saturdays, when she could ride the bus downtown to the movies or to the hotel and watch all the action on the street. Servicemen returned to Seattle every day, and many drifted to the labor union office near the hotel.

  The newsreel showed the surrender of the Japanese on the USS Missouri, which was anchored in Tokyo Bay. Laura stayed after the feature movie to watch it again. The Japanese officials wore top hats and tails, as if they were dressed for a fancy ball. They were giving up in style. That fit with the way the Wakamutsus acted and even Miyoko. They had grace and manners that had to have come from their Japanese heritage.

  The last Saturday of September, Laura and Eddie made their usual trip downtown. As they walked from the bus stop to the hotel, Laura saw Maude’s car pull out from the curb and head their way.

  Maude was nowhere in sight. “Somebody’s stealing her car!” Laura shouted. She waved her arms at the car, and the man driving pulled over.

  “Something wrong?” he called out the window.

  The face was oddly familiar, although she didn’t know the man.

  “Jerry Bowers?” Eddie asked, and Laura knew immediately that he was right.

  “Yes. Do I know you?” Jerry asked.

  Laura introduced them, and he explained that he’d returned the night before. “Mama’s up in the apartment. We stayed up nearly all night talking, so she’s slow getting around this morning.”

  They stepped back so he could move on, and then they rushed up to Maude’s apartment to hear all about Jerry’s return.

  The second week in October, Eddie and Laura were walking home from school when three soldiers got off the bus at the corner ahead of them.

  “There are more soldiers around here than you can shake a stick at,” Eddie said.

  The men had slung huge duffel bags over their shoulders. One man pointed toward their street, and the men turned that direction.

  “Ooh!” Laura screamed and ran toward the men. “Bruce! Bruce!” The men stopped. One of them turned, and then he dropped his bag and ran toward them. Laura looked back and saw Eddie limping along as fast as he could move.

  Of course, she reached her oldest brother first. Bruce hugged her and swung her off her feet. Then he put her down and rushed toward Eddie and gave him the same treatment.

  “We didn’t know you were coming,” Laura said. “Why didn’t you call us?”

  “I thought I’d surprise the family.” He introduced his friends, who had a few hours to spend with the Edwards family before catching the train for their homes, one in Montana, and the other in Idaho.

  “Mama will be so surprised,” Laura said.

  When they got home, no one was there. Laura found a note from Mama on the refrigerator.

  “She won’t be home until five. She and Margie went downtown.” Since war production was over, Margie had been looking for a different job. Laura’s dad had been right; Boeing didn’t need so many workers. He still worked there, but now he had Sundays off and only worked eight hours a day.

  Gary and Ginny came in from school, and the reunion continued. Corrine walked in from the neighbors’ and hugged Bruce. She told him all about Neil, who had called several times from a hospital in California.

  While they waited, Bruce and the other soldiers lounged in the living room and entertained them with tales about the lighter side of life in the army. Bruce moved over to the couch beside Laura.

  “Every morning and every night, I read your bookmark,” he told her. “It carried me through the bad parts of the war.” He pulled the bookmark from his wallet. It was well worn and creased, but Laura’s carefully printed words from the Twenty-third Psalm were still legible.

  “God was with me,” Bruce said. “I constantly reminded myself of that and of the little girl who wanted to see me in one piece after the war.” He tickled her sides. “You have sure grown up in the last few years.”

  Laura grinned. She was the shortest in her family, but at that moment she felt six feet tall.

  “The home front kept us going,” one of the soldiers said. “The Germans were running out of planes and bullets, but our supplies kept on coming.”

  “We sold war stamps at school,” Eddie said.

  “All your efforts brought us home,” Bruce said. He looked up at the commotion at the door as Mama and Margie carried packages inside. “Hi, Mama,” Bruce said as casually as if he’d seen her just that morning.

  For an instant, Mama froze. “Oh, Bruce!” she wailed, and it was almost a repetition of the day that Corrine found out that Neil was alive. Mama was still wiping tears of joy when Dad came home.

  He shook Bruce’s hand and then pulled him close in a bear hug. “Son, we’re so glad you’re home.”

  Laura called Yvonne and told her. Yvonne seemed happy, but there was a moment when Laura’s happiness was erased. While Yvonne didn’t say anything, her tone of voice reminded Laura that Yvonne’s brother wouldn’t be coming home.

  Bruce’s friends left that night, and Bruce said he was going to do nothing for a week except sit on the front porch and look at the world from a peaceful view. Eddie tried to get him to talk about D-Day, but Bruce said he couldn’t talk about that yet. He wanted to look ahead, not back.

  Only a few days had passed before Bruce was applying for temporary work until it was time for the January semester to start at the university, where he could attend on the GI Bill.

  “If Uncle Sam wants to pay for my education,” Bruce said, “I guess I’ll take him up on it.”

  A few days later, Miyoko received a letter from her father. “He believes he will not be home for some time,” she told Laura on the telephone. “But he has received many medals for his bravery. I am honored to be his daughter.”

  Fall days passed, and October turned to November. With no battle news to report, the newspapers and radio focused on the upcoming war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany. Laura was stunned by the charges against the Nazi leaders.

  “I’m not going to read the paper ever again,” she said after reading about the horrible things they had done. It made her feel that same awful pain in her stomach she’d felt when she saw the concentration camps on the newsreel.

  “No need to bury your head in the sand,” Bruce said. “We must learn from this so it can never happen again. That’s what we fought for.”

  Dad agreed. “It’s fitting that a court settle up the end of the war. That’s a civilized way to deal with a disagreement.”

  Two days before Thanksgiving the Nuremberg Trials began, and the radio newscast was filled with nothing else. But at Laura’s house, the trials took a backseat to Neil Palmer’s arrival.

  Corrine had gone with the Palmers to meet Neil’s train, and then they all stopped by the house before taking him home.

  He was not like Laura remembered. A very thin man came to the door with his arm possessively around Corrine’s shoulders, as if he would never let her go. They sat beside each other on the couch. Corrine smiled and kept her gaze on him even when his parents or someone else spoke.

  “He may look a little different, but he’s the same man who left here,” she said. “I can see it in his eyes.”

  He lifted Corrine’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “You’re more beautiful than ever,” he said very softly, but Laura, who was sitting on his other side, heard it plainly.

  “Tell us about the Bataan Death March,” Eddie said.

  A cloud passed over Neil’s face. “I’d rather we talked about the future than the past right now.”

  “Okay,” Eddie said quickly, and the others respected Neil’s wishes, just as they had Bruce’s. Talk turned to Thanksgiving, and the Palmers agreed to come to dinner. The Wakamutsu family had been invited to come, as well.

  For two days, Laura and the girls cleaned and helped Mama cook.
On Thursday morning the family rearranged the Edwardses’ living room.

  By moving furniture to the edges of the room and putting tables together, Bruce and Gary created one long table. The girls set up the wooden folding chairs they’d borrowed from the church. Mama draped several cloths over the tables, and Laura and Eddie made place mats out of brown construction paper with horns of plenty on the left side. On the right side, they wrote a name, so everyone would know where to sit.

  After Mr. and Mrs. Palmer and Neil, Maude and Jerry, and the Wakamutsus and Miyoko arrived, Mama and the girls carried the turkey and all the trimmings to the living room.

  “Shall we have grace?” Dad asked. They all took their seats and joined hands. “Father, thank You for another Thanksgiving and this special one when we have so much to be thankful for. We are proud to be Americans and thank You for the freedoms we enjoy. Thank You for keeping our loved ones safe as they faced battle and for bringing them home to us. Amen.”

  “Amen” echoed around the table.

  Laura looked around at her reunited family and added quietly, “God bless America.”

  AMERICAN TRIUMPH: BONUS EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

  ROSA TAKES A CHANCE: MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE DUST BOWL YEARS

  VOCABULARY WORDS

  adobe—a type of brick made from sun-dried mud and straw

  Papá told the story of how he and Rosa spent the night in the old adobe hut.

  burlap—a strong, rough fabric often used for making bags

  Rosa was horrified. “You wouldn’t really make me wear burlap, would you?”

  clambered—climbed awkwardly

  Finally she just pulled off her shoes and clambered around the outside of the house in her stocking feet.

  contribution—something given to help or participate

  “Rosa is a pleasure to have in our class. She makes wonderful contributions to our class discussions.”

  crusade—a major work to cause a change

  Mrs. Madden had been successful in her crusade for equal education.

  drought—a long period of time with little to no rain