by Karin Tanabe
Feeling like she was made of nothing but worry, Emi reversed her route, deciding to walk out of town, past the Mampei Hotel, in what she surmised was the direction of the German farm. She knew Evgeni was right to warn her against it. The German military may have been keeping to themselves in Karuizawa, but they certainly wouldn’t if their food was stolen, and the Kempeitai was always there to punish with very harsh methods. She had heard stories about their torturing Japanese as well as foreigners.
As she walked, and the hours passed, Emi tried to remember what she had eaten that month. What the Moris had eaten. It was enough for a week, not four, she decided, thinking of the small pickled plums, the leathery squirrel meat, dried fish, and homemade cheese that Claire had brought them.
When Emi had been walking uphill for nearly four hours, she passed by a shrine with stone foxes guarding the entrance. About a half mile later, she saw only farmhouses in the distance. Her body feeling frozen solid, she waved down a truck on the road, which pulled over. She asked the elderly man driving it for a ride to Kazuko Takahashi’s house, the only landmark she knew of in the area. To her relief, the driver, who lived on a farm nearby, knew the house.
He dropped her in front of it, the rusted door of his truck creaking as Emi jumped out. She looked at the small wooden house—the roof covered in a snow that hadn’t made it down the mountain to town, thick blankets draped over the windows from the inside. She considered knocking but thought, the fewer people who had seen her near the German’s farm, the better.
Evgeni had said that the fence was visible from the Takahashi house. Looking around, Emi could see nothing but wild grass, frozen on the ends, and farmland, still retaining the square shapes it had been bundled and tamed into. She moved around the house until it was several yards behind her, and looked again, toward the dying daylight. She thought she saw something metal glinting in the orange sun and ran in its direction until she was out of breath.
A hundred yards, then two hundred, five hundred, before suddenly she saw it. Barbed wire, coiled like it had been above the fences in Crystal City. It looked like it went on for a couple of miles, at the top of a meticulously built fence. It wasn’t the style of low wooden fence that was used to pen animals in Karuizawa, made from long split logs. These were made with horizontal wires, attached to heavy wooden posts. The wires were taut and about four inches apart. It looked to Emi, even from a fair distance, impenetrable.
Moving closer to a line of trees, Emi thought of Drexel’s hand on her back at the party, of Leo being taunted in the chemistry room, of the destruction of Vienna during Kristallnacht, and of Jiro Mori, so weak that he could barely find his words, and she kept walking toward the farm. A hundred yards away she spotted dozens of chickens, and goats, and though she couldn’t see them, she could hear the grunting of pigs. When she noticed a guard making his way around a corner, near the large barn, she rushed back behind the trees. She waited until he was close enough to her so that she could see his face and confirm that he was German. Then she stayed hidden until he was around the other side of the building, as she tried to muster the courage to get closer. The chickens were moving to the edge of the fence, and she thought that maybe, she might be able to reach her hand in and take one. But if it clucked loudly, she would certainly be caught.
She was about to try to run to the fence when she saw a boy rush out from east of her and crouch down close to where a chicken was. The sun had almost completely set but she was sure it was a young boy. Without thinking, she ran up and grabbed him by the coat.
“Hey!” the boy hissed, trying to squirm out of her grip. When he realized that she was a young Japanese woman, he stopped moving and stared at her. She was about to say something when he leaned down and bit her hard on the hand, the only part of her body that was exposed. He scampered to his feet as Emi looked at his childish face—she was sure he wasn’t older than nine or ten—and tried to keep from screaming out in pain. “Who are you?” he hissed, his body and most of his face hidden under the puff of black winter clothing.
“You’re stealing food,” she said, looking at both him and the barn to see if the guard had come around again.
“I’m going to get that chicken,” the boy said pointing, no longer seeming to view Emi as a threat. “See how it keeps coming to the fence, away from the others?”
“But you’ll be punished if you’re caught,” Emi said, watching the boy. “Won’t you?”
“Punished? I’ll be killed,” he said, not taking his eyes off the bird. “Everyone knows that. Why do you think there are still chickens to steal here?”
“Then leave,” Emi whispered into his ear. “You think one chicken is worth dying for?”
“You think starving is better?” he said, pushing Emi to the side. “You’re stupid for coming here. Especially if you don’t want food.”
“Who says I don’t want food?” she said, listening to the snort of the pigs. It sounded like there were a hundred of them.
“You don’t look like you know what you’re doing so you must not,” the boy said, his voice muffled from his coat.
“I don’t,” said Emi. “Know what I’m doing.”
Suddenly, Emi felt someone touch her shoulder and then slam her body to the ground. Her breath knocked out, she looked up to see the face of a Caucasian teenager. As she was on the ground, she saw the Japanese boy slip to the side of the fence, put his arms in between the wires, grab the chicken, which had just waddled close enough, cut its throat, and pull it through, all in a few seconds.
“Who are you?” the boy on top of her asked in Japanese, pinning her down. He was older than the Japanese boy, but still a teenager.
“I’m Emi Kato, I live in Karuizawa, and I came here to steal food, just like you,” said Emi, trying to push him off her.
“If they see you here, they’ll kill you,” the teenager said, moving off her. “Get back, away from the fence,” he said, motioning to the dense trees. “You’re as tall as a telephone pole; they’ve probably seen you already.”
Even though Emi was not used to being insulted and ordered around by some gaijin teenager, she was happy to step out of the line of sight.
With the Japanese boy back next to them, his hands covered in the chicken’s blood, the teenager motioned for them all to follow him, and they ran to where there was a car hidden half a mile away in the trees.
“You want a ride back or what?” the boy asked as Emi stared at his car, pretty sure he wasn’t old enough to drive. “You can sleep out here if you want. Why don’t you give a nice firm knock on the farm door.”
“I’ll take a ride,” said Emi, opening the passenger door to the car.
“Thought so.”
“Won’t they see that a chicken is missing?” Emi asked as she shut the car door. “They aren’t going to think it flew away.”
“They might,” said the teenager. “But they won’t know who took it. Like I said, stick around, maybe they’ll blame you.”
The boy started the car and when they were a safe distance away from the farm, Emi asked how long they had been stealing from the Germans.
“Not long enough,” said the gaijin expertly handling the dark, frozen roads.
“I’ll come back with you tomorrow,” said Emi as they wove down the hills.
The boy started to laugh. “Why would we want you?” he asked in his accented Japanese.
“Because unlike you, and him,” she said motioning to the backseat, “I speak German. He’s Japanese and you’re . . . ?”
“Polish.”
“Right. I don’t think the German guards speak Polish, nor much Japanese or English. I’ll come back with you and find out when they’re doing their rounds, when is a safe time to take more than just a chicken.”
“Say something,” said the Polish boy, swerving to miss a deer. “Say something in German.”
Emi started to tell her story with Leo, going on about how proud he would be of her right then.
“Fine,” the t
eenager said, interrupting her. “We won’t come back for a month. When we do, you can come, too,” he said, putting his hand on Emi’s thigh and sliding it down. She rolled her eyes and placed it back on the steering wheel.
“Don’t even think about it, Polish. I’m twenty-three years old,” she said, eyeing him.
“Oh, really?” he said smiling. “My favorite age.”
CHAPTER 30
CHRISTIAN LANGE
AUGUST–DECEMBER 1944
When Jack rolled over and looked at Christian on a hot Hawaii morning, he mumbled, “You look sick, kraut,” and threw him his metal canteen.
Christian opened it, as he was sure his was dry from his night of nursing it, desperate for hydration to counter his alcohol intake and the August heat.
“I’m worse than sick. I’m green,” said Christian, doubling over and putting his feet on the ground of their concrete bunk. “And I’m never going to that slum again,” he said, trying to block out the images of their long night at the Hula Hula. He took a swig from Jack’s canteen and immediately spit the contents on the floor.
“What is this?” he said, smelling the bottle. “Vomit?”
“Whiskey!” said Jack, laughing at Christian’s contorted, pale face. “Or actually,” he said, sitting up, “maybe I did puke in it. I can’t remember. What a night, kraut, what a spectacular night we had at the splendid Hula Hula,” he said with a hip shake. “That place is heaven on earth.”
“Because you slept with a prostitute in a car?” asked Christian, getting up to spit outside.
“Did I?” asked Jack. “That sounds divine, too. I wasn’t thinking of that, kraut. I was referring to our walk on the beach, brother-to-brother, man-to-man. How far we’ve come since the infirmary in Wisconsin.” He laughed and ripped off the white shirt he was wearing. August in Hawaii had inspired Jack to wear as few clothes as he was allowed, his wiry body having gone from Wisconsin white to bronzed or red, depending on the week. “I never thought I’d take a shine to you when you came into the home like a dejected family pet, but you’ve grown on me, kraut.”
Christian had a vague recollection of walking on the beach with Jack in the dark while he sang some sort of schmaltz by Bing Crosby at the top of his lungs and tried to get every girl in their sight line to join them.
“I’m sure it changed my life for the better,” said Christian, the content of Jack’s canteen lingering painfully on his tongue.
“’Course it did!” said Jack. “I should charge you for our conversations. I’ve added a lot to your life, kraut. Even if you can’t see it.”
“Was the car better than the monarchs?” Christian asked, feeling an ache of longing for the simplicity of their days in Milwaukee. Everything there, in one way or the other, was about childhood. Everything in Hawaii was about being a man before your time.
“Nothing will ever be better than the monarchs,” said Jack.
“Poetic,” said Christian, spitting and telling Jack to get him some water before he fainted.
“You are one of the weakest bastards I have ever known,” Jack said, kicking Christian’s foot on his way out the door. “What did your parents do? Let you sleep on a bed of roses in River Hills?”
“Pretty much,” said Christian. He watched Jack as he headed off, his pants rolled up at the ankles, and knew that it would somehow take him an hour to fetch water. En route, he would find a dozen people he had to speak to, and then take a few cigarette breaks before showing up back at the bunk not remembering why he had left in the first place. Christian spent a lot of time waiting for Jack, or being dragged into something he was reluctant to do, like a liquor-fueled night with prostitutes at the Hula Hula. But he knew that without Jack, the nightmares of war would be winning over his sanity, which he’d pulled a little closer in during his R&R months back in Hawaii.
To Christian’s surprise, Jack returned to the bunk after only thirty minutes, his arms full with a large jug of water.
“Is this from the toilet?” Christian asked, pressing his face against the cool glass before knocking it back.
“No, kraut!” said Jack gleefully. “It’s from beautiful waterfalls. The best we have on base. I wouldn’t poison you twice in one day,” he said, reclining on Christian’s bed. “Especially after all your dramatics last night. I really did feel sorry for you when you nearly cried talking about how you still haven’t received a letter from Emi. The intriguing enemy, so pretty, yet so far away.”
“I should cry,” said Christian, not able to eradicate the fear that Emi had never made it to Tokyo, or that if she had, she hadn’t lasted long. “But I’m trying to blame the war. An American’s letters to the enemy nation, the odds aren’t good, right?”
“Kraut, your odds haven’t been good since you got dragged by the ear out of River Hills. But yes,” said Jack, pointing to his watch. They had to be across base in ten minutes and Christian wasn’t dressed yet. “I doubt the Japanese post office is prioritizing mail from lovesick American boys. They’re probably using it as kindling, laughing as your lust goes up in flames.”
“I hope so,” said Christian. “Because if she made it back to Japan only to—”
“Don’t think that way,” said Jack, interrupting him sternly. “Worry about staying alive in the Philippines. You’ve started to break out of your gutless state of terror since we’ve been back on American territory, but I worry about you on Leyte,” he said of the Pacific island they were heading to in two months. “You could snap again.” He threw Christian’s shoes at him and said, “You scared the soul right out of me on Kwajalein. Don’t think about doing it again.” Helping him up, he said, “Come on. Let’s go pretend to pay attention in training drills today. It might keep you alive in October.”
By the time the Seventh was ready to ship out that fall, Christian had gone from thinking the Japanese mail service didn’t deliver letters from boys like him, to believing either that Emi had died, or he had died for her. Not in flesh, but in her memory.
“It doesn’t sound like invented, unrequited mumbo-jumbo to me,” said Jack, a week before they were to leave Hawaii again. “Everything she said to you naked in those orange trees. Plus that letter? She’s not blind to you, kraut,” said Jack. “It’s just the mail service that’s against you. That’s pretty obvious. But you’ve got to get your mind off it—off her—now. This isn’t poetry camp we’re going to.”
“I wish it was,” said Christian, pushing away a plate of pineapple that they were eating at dinner. Pineapple, he had learned, was the Army’s version of meat and potatoes for the boys in the tropics.
“Don’t fall down the rabbit hole yet,” said Jack, looking at Christian’s somber face. “The first campaign is the hardest. Now you’re already a murderer, so the Philippines will be different. You’ll find your backbone. Maybe a little patriotism.”
“Patriotism isn’t the problem,” said Christian, watching Jack eat pineapple hungrily, like he hadn’t just had it for breakfast and lunch. “I love this country, and I would give my life for it. Obviously I would. I’m still here. But this war: killing strangers because some men we’ve never met decided we should. It just doesn’t lay right with me anymore.”
“Even if those strangers are trying to destroy the world?” said Jack, reaching his arm out like a Nazi soldier.
“Even if,” said Christian. “There should be another way. They shouldn’t just send out boys with weapons.”
“I’m going to start calling you the Dove, too,” said Jack, and true to his word, that’s what he yelled at Christian two months later as they landed in the small coastal town of Dulag on October 20. They began moving inland as soon as Dulag was secure, heading for Japanese airfields after they’d already been attacked by American planes.
On the twenty-eighth of October, Christian, Jack, and Dave were lined up with the rest of their unit outside a Japanese pillbox captured the night before, Christian’s moral compass still spinning.
“It’s snipers and bunkers today
, boys!” Perko shouted. “Remember, tend to the wounded but get them to the water fast. There are hospital boats right offshore. You know the drill. Don’t sit there wondering if someone is going to die. Move him out of this cesspool to guarantee that he won’t.”
It was on that day that Christian and his unit saw kamikaze pilots for the first time, crashing their Zero fighter planes into the giant U.S. ships floating in Leyte Gulf.
“Jesus Christ,” said Jack, looking up at the Japanese planes falling out of the sky. “It’s like they’re crashing on purpose. Killing themselves.”
“That’s exactly what they’re doing,” said Perko, looking up, too. “We’re going to take a major hit on the water.”
But it wasn’t just from the sky that the Japanese came at them with apparent disregard for their own lives. It was on land, where Christian’s unit was, too.
“I could never be that brave,” Christian said to Jack, wiping the sweat out of his face as they squatted down in a bunker. “I’ve already gotten sick just thinking about grounding the nose of a plane like that.”
“That’s not bravery, what the Japanese are doing, kraut. That’s stupidity.”
They heard gunfire immediately above them and Jack yelled for them all to hit the dirt, but Dave wasn’t fast enough. Christian and Jack could hear him scream even over the din of the shooting.
Christian reached Dave first and saw bleeding from his chest.
“Jesus Christ!” Christian cried out, turning him over. Blood was also trickling from his mouth.
