American Triumph: 1939-1945: 4 STORIES IN 1

by Susan Martins Miller, Norma Jean Lutz, Bonnie Hinman

  “It’ll be different living in a house again,” Laura said. There had been many times that she’d wanted to go back to a time before the war, but now she could hardly remember a time when she didn’t live at the hotel. She struggled with memories of the house they had lived in before Dad and Mama had purchased the hotel. They certainly had had more room than the current arrangement with the Wakamutsus. And there had been homemade ice cream and cookies. There had been no sugar rationing before the war, so she had taken desserts for granted.

  With the move, Laura would be out of a job. Her time in the office would be over. She had come to love that job. Sitting at the hotel desk had made her feel important. What would they do during the summer in their own house? There would be no hallways to scrub and no linens to change. No bustle of people on the street below. No Maude to talk to. No Yvonne. No Miyoko. No Mrs. Lind. A move would mean changing schools again and giving up her position as president of her classroom, the only girl president in the entire school.

  She could hardly stand it until the meeting was over. As soon as Dad had finished answering questions, she scurried out the door and down to Maude’s apartment.

  “What’s wrong?” Maude said the minute she opened her door.

  “We’re moving!” Laura wailed and rushed inside.

  “Yes, your mother told me. I’m glad you could finish the school year here, but it’ll be nice for your folks to be back in a home of their own.”

  “But when will I see you?” Laura asked, following Maude to the tiny kitchen. “And what about Yvonne?”

  “I can’t answer about Yvonne, but you’ll see me.” Maude got out two glasses and the ice trays. “I have Jerry’s car, you know, and I can drive anywhere I want. Electric buses will likely run near your house, and they could drop you off at the corner here, so you could come for the day for next to nothing.”

  She poured iced tea and handed a glass to Laura, who took a big gulp. It was unsweetened, of course. After the war, Laura could go back to drinking sweetened tea. There had to be good things about this if they would be able to have sugar again.

  “Things will be different,” Maude said, “but change is usually good. Look at how you’ve changed since you moved here.”

  “How?” Laura asked. She hadn’t noticed change. She’d always been the same Laura.

  “You and Eddie have become friends instead of being so competitive. And you’ve been very responsible in the office. You should work for the post office when you get older.”

  “I want to be a politician,” Laura said and was surprised that she’d said that. She hadn’t given her future any real thought, but she liked being in charge of things.

  Maude nodded. “I believe there will be a time when women will be candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate. Why, look how Frances Perkins was on President Roosevelt’s cabinet all these years. It’s just a matter of time until women will be elected.”

  “Maybe there’ll be a woman governor,” Laura said.

  “Could be. Anything’s possible. But you didn’t have any idea of running for classroom president before you moved here. See how you’ve changed? And you’ll keep changing.”

  “Until I’m grown up.”

  “No, you’ll keep changing even after that.”

  Laura finished her tea and walked down the hall, her head spinning with thoughts of the future. Eddie intercepted her in the lobby.

  “What do you think about moving?” he asked.

  “It’ll be a big change, and there’ll be a lot of things I’ll miss, but there’s bound to be some good things, too.”

  “Like what?” he asked and fell in step with her as they headed to the apartment.

  “We’ll probably have a big backyard, and maybe Dad or Gary could build us a tree house.”

  “You’re right. I might try to talk Mama into letting me have a dog. I wonder if Kenny …” His voice trailed off.

  “Maude thinks electric buses run from here to there,” Laura said. “Kenny can ride out and play with your dog.”

  “And we could come downtown some days.”

  “Sure. See, there are good things,” Laura said as she opened the door to the apartment.

  The next day at school she repeated that same phrase as she told Yvonne about the move. She’d given it a lot of thought and had several options, she called them, a word she’d seen politicians use in the paper.

  During the summer, they could form a friendship club. On Tuesdays Yvonne and Miyoko could ride out to Laurelhurst, and on Fridays Laura could come downtown. Or on Mondays she could come to town, and on Thursdays they could come to her house.

  “Or we could meet halfway and have lunch,” Yvonne said with a high-society accent, when she heard Laura’s plan.

  Laura laughed. This might work. She’d just have to make the most of it. Probably as the new girl in school next year, she wouldn’t be elected classroom president, but she wouldn’t worry about that. Right now she had the last-day-of-school picnic to plan and money to collect for the gift the class would give to Mrs. Jamison.

  The picnic went off well, with races, tug-of-war, and other games. It was almost time for the class to go inside to get their report cards. That was when they’d give the teacher her gift. Laura was standing by the outside door when Keith walked by.

  “Keith, can I talk to you a minute?” He stopped and eyed her suspiciously. “Are you part Indian?” she asked. Laura figured she’d never see him again after this day anyway, but she had wondered since that time she’d almost hit him for making bad comments about other people’s ancestors.

  He stared at her with dark eyes for a long moment, and she didn’t think he would answer her question. “I’m part Eskimo,” he finally said. “So what?”

  Laura shrugged. “I think that’s neat. Why’d you hide it?”

  Now he shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’m part English, too.”

  “We’re both Americans,” Laura said. “It doesn’t matter where we came from.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Do you want to present the gift to Mrs. Jamison?” she asked impulsively as a gesture of peace.

  “Okay. Sure, I’ll do it.”

  Laura called the last class meeting to order when everyone was in from the playground. She gave a report on how many war stamps they had bought during the year, the highest amount in the school. Then she called Keith to the front to make the teacher presentation.

  Mrs. Jamison looked stunned as she opened a card that all the students had signed and the gift—some hard-to-get perfume. “This is heavenly,” she said. “Such a nice fragrance. Thank you all so much. This is a class I will never forget.”

  One by one, Mrs. Jamison called her students to the front to receive their report cards. Then the final bell of the year rang, and the class was dismissed. Everyone rushed to the door with shouts of joy about summer vacation.

  “Laura Edwards, could I see you for a moment?” Mrs. Jamison asked before Laura could leave.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Laura couldn’t imagine what her teacher wanted. She didn’t think she had done anything wrong at the meeting.

  The teacher waited until the other students had left; then she turned to Laura. “It’s been a real pleasure having you as the classroom president. You’re a smart girl. I’ve known that all along, but today you showed one more sign of it. You read people very well. You can see when they’re hurt and when they need help. Now tell me, why did you let Keith give me the card and perfume?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it was my way of saying I was sorry for the way I almost attacked him that one day. I’ll never see him again, since we’re moving next weekend, but I didn’t want to leave it bad between us.”

  Mrs. Jamison hugged her. “You’re going to go very far in life. Make all good choices, Laura.”

  “Think I can be governor someday?” Laura asked with a grin.

  “I don’t know why not. Be sure and invite your old teacher to your inauguration.”
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  The others were waiting to walk home, but Laura couldn’t share her teacher’s good-bye with them. It was personal and would sound like bragging. There was a time when that wouldn’t have stopped her, but Maude was right. She had changed.

  CHAPTER 13

  The End of the War

  The week between school being out and the family’s move to Laurelhurst was filled to the brim with work, packing, and saying good-bye.

  Maude had a good-bye party for them in the lobby on Friday night. It reminded Laura of the Christmas Eve party when Mr. Arnold had been there.

  Since Miyoko had grown attached to Shadow, and it had been the Wakamutsus’ cat originally, Margie gave it to Miyoko at the party.

  “Shadow’s home is at the hotel,” Margie said. “It wouldn’t be right to make her leave.”

  “You are very kind,” Miyoko said. She held the cat close to her heart.

  Minoru presented a pen-and-ink drawing of the hotel to the Edwardses. “So you will remember your time here,” he said.

  Laura knew that she would never forget it.

  On Saturday, Mr. Wakamutsu drove to the front of the hotel in the borrowed truck. Gary, Minoru, and Kiyoshi carried the furniture the family had brought with them down the stairs. Kenny and Yvonne came over to carry boxes, and Ginny, Corrine, Laura, Miyoko, Mrs. Wakamutsu, Mama, and Maude struggled with household goods and boxes of clothes.

  Sitting in the office chair was none other than Mrs. Lind. Laura had suggested to Mrs. Wakamutsu that Mrs. Lind could watch the office while the others helped with the move. Laura had remembered how Mrs. Lind had liked it when she’d done that one other time, and right now Mrs. Lind needed something to take her mind off her nephew’s missing-in-action status.

  Laura was feeling pretty smug. If there was one thing she had learned recently, it was that turning old enemies into friends was a way of helping herself feel good. Not that Mrs. Lind or Keith Rhodes were enemies, but there had been friction between Laura and them in the past. Now that was eased.

  Mama, the older girls, and Maude had spent all day Friday at the house getting it cleaned and ready. As soon as everything was loaded, everyone piled into the truck or Maude’s car to drive to the house. More of the family’s belongings, including chests of drawers and beds, had been stored elsewhere when they had first moved to the hotel. Once those things were loaded onto the truck and brought to the new house, too, the boys wrestled them into the rooms Mama pointed out.

  Laura thought her bed-making and sweeping was over with the move from the hotel, but she and Yvonne were put on that detail before they knew it.

  “First thing is to make the beds,” Mama said. “Then when we’re too tired to unpack one more box, we can fall into bed.”

  Laura and Yvonne went from room to room, carrying clean linens.

  “This is a great house,” Yvonne said once they were in Laura’s room.

  “I know. I especially like my room. You can look down at the backyard from the window. Eddie wants to build a tree house in that tree there.”

  The place buzzed with activity. Maude and Mama worked in the kitchen. Mrs. Wakamutsu helped the girls hang clothes in the built-in closets, and the boys toted box after box from the truck.

  “Dad and Margie will be shocked when they see this,” Laura said. The living room looked homey with the old familiar couch and chairs facing the fireplace.

  At noon, the Wakamutsus departed to return the truck and get back to their work at the hotel. Maude took Mama to the grocery store, and after the food was unloaded, she left, giving Yvonne and Kenny a ride home.

  “Well, kids, it’s just us,” Mama said, looking around her with obvious pleasure. “Seems quiet, doesn’t it?”

  It almost seemed lonely to Laura, but she still had lots to do, so she worked in her room, getting her things arranged. The smell of baking chocolate drew her to the kitchen.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Chocolate cake. Maude’s been saving the chocolate, and I spent my ration on sugar for our first night here.” Mama said it with such pleasure that Laura realized the years they had spent at the hotel had been a real sacrifice.

  Although there were no pictures on the walls or knickknacks out on the small lamp tables in the living room, the house looked like a home by the time Dad and Margie came to the house from work. Dinner was a festive occasion, and the chocolate cake was cause in itself for celebration.

  That night as she lay in bed in the strange room decorated with familiar things, Laura wondered what was going on at the hotel.

  On Sunday after Dad and Margie had gone off to work, Laura and the others rode the electric bus downtown to church and then returned to the house. Never had a Sunday afternoon dragged out so long. Sunday afternoons had been family times before the war, but now they weren’t a whole family. Dad and Margie were working, and Bruce was gone.

  By late Monday morning, everything was in its place in the house, and Laura was at a loss for what to do. Eddie had worked on Gary’s old bicycle, but it needed a new tire, and there weren’t any available. Ginny’s bike was in just as bad shape. When the war was over, he could fix them both up, and maybe he and Laura could ride around in the neighborhood.

  Mama called on the neighbors, and Laura and Eddie walked around the area, becoming familiar with places. Eddie’s limp seemed more pronounced. Laura wondered if his weakened leg bothered him more in the summer than in the winter, but she didn’t ask. She didn’t want him to know that she’d noticed.

  They talked about the different people they saw in the neighborhood as they passed house after house, and soon their steps led them to a school. The playground was bigger than the one at the school downtown.

  Laura’s stomach churned a little at the thought of meeting all of the new kids, but she tried to remember how good it felt to befriend Mrs. Lind and Keith Rhodes and determined to be her friendliest when school started in the fall. Maybe she wouldn’t be elected classroom president, but she might be vice president. That hope made her step a little lighter.

  They walked home and found only Gary and Ginny there. “Maude called, and Mama and Corrine took the bus downtown. Mrs. Lind was notified that her nephew was killed in action,” Ginny said.

  “Does that mean they found his body?” Eddie asked.

  “I guess it does. Mama said they might not have been able to identify it before,” Gary said.

  Laura wanted to go to the hotel, but she obeyed Mama’s orders to stay home and help with the yard work. After all, she was going downtown tomorrow to meet Yvonne and Miyoko for their first friendship club meeting. Eddie was going, too, since Mama thought the two ought to ride the bus together.

  Gary pushed the mower, and Laura and Eddie picked up fallen sticks and pulled weeds out of what had been a Victory garden with tomato plants and onion sets planted by the previous owners.

  “I know this garden doesn’t look very healthy, but the plants are still little,” Laura said. “By the end of summer we could have juicy tomatoes.”

  They finished the work and waited on the small porch for Mama to return. When she came home, she reported that Mrs. Lind was doing as well as could be expected.

  The next afternoon, Laura picked a small bouquet of roses from the climbing bush in the backyard and took them to Mrs. Lind after she and Eddie rode the bus downtown. The girls traded news about what they’d been doing, and Laura was a little annoyed that Yvonne was continuing last summer’s habit of visiting the hotel each afternoon. She felt left out but tried to push down that feeling.

  Laura visited with Maude a few minutes before the time came for her to meet Eddie at the bus stop and go back home. She also picked up a letter from Bruce that had been delivered to the hotel.

  The summer fell into a pattern. Yvonne and Miyoko came out to Laurelhurst on Friday afternoons, and Laura introduced them to some new friends in the neighborhood. Bruce’s letters started coming to the house, and although the war news continued to dominate the newspaper, La
ura didn’t keep up with it as she had when they’d lived in the hotel.

  She seemed more removed from it now that school was out and they lived in a house again. There still wasn’t much sugar, Mama continued to ride the bus down to the ration board, and Corrine and Ginny continued their volunteer work with the Red Cross, but Laura knew it was just a matter of time now until the war with Japan would be over.

  She read of President Truman going to the Potsdam Conference at the end of July and saw his picture in the paper with the Russian and English leaders. Out of habit, she got the atlas off of the bookshelf and found Potsdam right outside of Berlin.

  Then the unimaginable occurred. Shortly after eight o’clock one August morning, Dad called home from the Boeing plant. He rarely called, so Laura knew something important had happened. Mama turned white and motioned for Eddie to turn on the radio. The newscaster was repeating a special war bulletin from the president.

  “Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima…. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe….”

  “What does that mean?” Ginny asked.

  Laura had no idea. She listened to a vague explanation by the newscaster about destroying Japanese docks, factories, and their power to make war.

  “It is a most terrible bomb.” Mama wrung her hands as she talked. “Dad said it destroyed the entire city.”

  “Could that happen here?” Laura asked. She had no idea how many balloon bombs had been sent or if any more had landed since her teacher had talked about them to the class. No one talked about them.

  “I don’t think Japan has the atomic bomb, but this is the place they would drop it if they did. They’d want to destroy the Boeing plant. Dad said it was one of Boeing’s B-29s that dropped the bomb.”

  “Does that mean the end of the war?” Gary asked. “If it destroyed Japan’s factories, they can’t make airplanes.”

  “I don’t know,” Mama said. “I imagine the end of the war is closer. Maybe Bruce will be coming home soon.” She reached for the telephone and called the hotel.