Dolls of War
Page 18
She put one hand over the doll. “I want to keep Miss Tokyo so she can share her message about friendship with people who come to see her.”
For the first time in more than a week, she let the doll’s pretend voice speak silently in her head. I knew you would save me, Macy-chan.
I think I knew it, too, Macy answered just as silently.
Somebody was clapping, the sound so loud it startled her. Macy glanced around, but it wasn’t Chris or Uncle Emory and Aunt Ida or even Mr. Oakes clapping. She looked beyond them all to a tall man in blue and shrieked, “Nick!”
Her brother stood near the Farrells’ gate, leaning on crutches with Papa nearby, both of them wearing wide grins.
Macy flew across the gravel and hugged Nick so hard she nearly knocked him off his crutches. “Nick! They told me . . . I thought you . . . Oh, Nick! You’re alive!”
Laughing, he hugged her while Papa steadied them both. “I didn’t hear about all the drama until we got here,” Nick said. “Pop told me you didn’t know about the ship going down. I wanted to surprise you by just showing up.”
Chris came over to stand near Macy. “How come you didn’t go down with the ship?”
Macy saw the Farrells looking as if they’d like to tell Chris to shut up, but she wanted to know the answer, too. “This is my friend Chris,” she told Nick. “So how come? Why didn’t the Jap sub get you?”
“It nearly did.” For a moment, Nick’s eyes got dark, as if he was thinking of friends who were lost. “I was on deck when the torpedo hit. It knocked me into the water, and I played dead among a lot of stuff blown off the ship.”
“Did someone find you?” Macy asked.
“Not right away. I dragged myself into an empty raft and floated for two or three days, then Japanese fishermen took me in. It’s a long story. Basically, they patched up my leg and hid me until they could get me to safety.”
She hugged her brother again, weak with relief but so happy she couldn’t stop smiling. “I’ll bet those men had fishing nets held up with rose-colored floats.”
He looked at her in surprise. “As a matter of fact they did. How could you know that?”
Macy sighed and leaned against him. “One of those floats got loose, and the currents brought it all the way here to me. Like a message that said you were safe and coming home.”
“Sunlight after rain,” Chris murmured.
Papa said, “I remember that haiku, your mother’s favorite. But I would change it a little. I’d have it say this:
“My sweet Macy glows.
Her warm smile holds forgiveness.
Sunlight after rain.”
Macy hugged him fiercely. The war with Japan and the Evil Axis might go on for a long time, but Nick was home. She felt Mama near, and she didn’t feel guilty anymore about loving Miss Tokyo.
Aunt Ida had warned her that Uncle Emory didn’t believe in Christmas festivities while our boys were fighting overseas. It didn’t matter, even if it turned out to be her second Christmas without a tree. Mama and Hap would be with her in spirit. She knew they would. And with Nick home, she didn’t need a decorated tree. This was going to be the best Christmas ever.
Can an exchange of dolls prevent war? Hope was strong in January of 1927, when American children sent more than twelve thousand dolls to children in Japan. The same hope for peace rose through Japanese children who welcomed the American dolls and helped send fifty-eight thirty-three-inch-tall Dolls of Return Gratitude to the children of America.
Unfortunately, fifteen years later, war broke out. In both countries, the dolls became symbols of the enemy. In America, the Japanese dolls were shoved into storage. In Japan, soldiers were sent to schools to smash the American dolls.
Macy’s story in Dolls of War is fiction, but the background facts are true. In addition to extensive research, I’ve called on my own memories.
I was very young when World War II took place. I lived in Rockaway, Oregon, on the northern coast where fear of invasion was real and constant. Whenever we heard the drone of blimp engines, my younger sister and I ran out to watch the huge silvery aircraft fly low over the sea to search for submarines. My family kept a bucket of sand by the front door to put out fires if bombs should fall. Blackout curtains shuttered every window.
Ration stamps became part of shopping. For Christmas and birthdays, we were given savings bonds. Across America, people learned to “make it do or do without.” Our country had been attacked, and everyone sacrificed to support the war effort.
World War II ended in 1945. Eventually, the United States and Japan became friends again, but the dolls had been forgotten. Then in the 1970s, surviving dolls were rediscovered. Forty-six of the Japanese dolls sent to America have been recovered from storage, with thirty-eight restored and placed in museums. In Japan, approximately three hundred of the American dolls were saved from destruction and are now on display in schools. (In my writer’s heart, I believe that someone brave saved fictional Emily Grace, the doll from Ship of Dolls and Dolls of Hope, and that she stands among the survivors.)
Shortly after the publication of Dolls of Hope, I had the opportunity to fly to Japan and visit Iwasaki Shoten, a company that publishes children’s books, including Japanese translations of my series of bear picture books and the Friendship Dolls books. It was a joy to meet Mr. Hiro Iwasaki and his staff and later to tour their beautiful country. It’s good to remember that at heart, people are much the same.
For pictures and information on the Friendship Doll Exchange, including current locations of recovered dolls, please visit www.bill-gordon.net/dolls.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2017 by Shirley Parenteau
Cover illustration copyright © 2017 by Kelly Murphy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2017
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
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