The Diplomat’s Daughter

by Karin Tanabe

  He smiled, his cheekbones newly sharp, and commented that he wasn’t the only one who looked as if he could use a good meal.

  “The boat was dreadful,” said Emi when they were in the car. She tied her hair back with the twine she had been using on the boat. “Like an animal transport. I’ve been sleeping on straw, Father, like a goat. I can’t wait for my bed.”

  “You do still have a bed,” said Norio. “But I’m afraid we don’t have much else. We are all on rations here, as I’m sure you’ve heard,” Norio warned.

  “We’ve been told,” said Keiko, “but what does that mean? What are they rationing? It can’t be all the food?”

  “What it means is that you won’t ever eat enough to stay full. The fish especially is severely rationed. Mostly we eat dried squid. The rice ration is shrinking every month and things like sugar and vegetables have to be purchased on the black market, which as a diplomat I should not be touching.”

  “But are you?” whispered Emi.

  “Of course,” said Norio. “While I can. I don’t want my women to starve.”

  “But aren’t there other ways? Don’t we have any money left?” asked Emi, surprised.

  “We do. But it doesn’t make much of a difference here now if you have money. There is just a shortage of food. Money won’t make it grow.”

  As her first week in Tokyo sped by, Emi remained glued to her parents, staying by her father’s side when he was home, which was only late at night, and spending her days in the kitchen and running errands in the nearly empty shops with her mother.

  They were in the only house that Emi remembered living in in Tokyo. When she was a baby, they had lived in a smaller house, but ever since she was a mobile toddler and Norio’s career felt more certain, they had lived in the spacious house in Azabu. Before they had been stationed abroad, it had been decorated in a typically Japanese style, with tatami floor mats, low tables, and futons. But after the family’s four years in England, the house had changed. They slept on tall Western beds and brought back much of the furniture and art they had amassed in Europe. It continued to gain European influences with every one of Norio’s postings, Emi and Keiko insisting that they could never leave anything behind.

  The Kato women had not been to their house in Tokyo since before they’d left for Washington at the end of 1939. And still, they had only been in the city for a few months after arriving from Vienna. When Emi first walked through the door of the two-story wooden house, the smell of her childhood shocked her. As it was only her father there for the last year, she was sure that it would smell differently, but somehow, the scent of her past had permeated the rooms. Besides the smell, it looked quite the same, though with much less furniture, and Emi wondered if her father hadn’t sold some of it in the years they were away. Her room, she was happy to see, with her large Western bed and deep purple quilt, was untouched. Right on her glass side table, where it was when she left, was a photograph of her and Leo at Prater amusement park, the Ferris wheel right behind them.

  To her surprise, the picture made her think not of Leo, but of Christian. She did not have a photo with him, as cameras were forbidden in the internment camp. She would have to think of his face every day, so that she’d never forget it. Emi was happy that her father hadn’t changed too much since he came back in 1942. But the house felt a little too still. As if only one or two rooms were lived in. He had a cook that made him every meal and another woman who kept the house tidy, but they too, it seemed, barely stepped through the parts of the house that were Keiko and Emi’s domain.

  As the days passed in Tokyo, and Emi started to feel the stark reality setting in of a country at war, her mother encouraged her to spend time with people her own age, to make it feel more like the Tokyo of her youth. Emi still had a few friends in the city, her childhood friends, but she had learned when she had been back in 1939 that there was a distance between them that she could never close, because she had lived throughout the world and they only in Japan.

  During that sojourn in Tokyo, she had heard the father of her closest friend from childhood, Kiyo Ono, say that his daughter should approach Emi with suspicion now that she had spent so much time in Europe. When Emi had told her father he had tightened his lips and said he was growing more and more weary of the lack of individual thought in their country.

  Keiko had suggested to Emi that she stop by the Onos’ house when they’d gotten settled after a few days but Emi shook her head and said she preferred to stay with her parents.

  “In Crystal City I barely saw you,” Keiko told her daughter as they collected their rice ration a mile from their home later that day. “Now you are like my second skin.”

  “I’m sorry if I abandoned you there,” said Emi, helping to strap half of the rice allotment onto her mother’s back. “I didn’t mean to.” There was a tear in the thin paper sack and she tried her best to fix it by tying her scarf around it. She never in her life thought she would be anguishing over a few grains of rice.

  “You were happy,” said Keiko, shifting her weight to make the package sit straighter. “And I was happy for you. I knew what was awaiting us here. At least, I had an idea.” She sighed and helped Emi tie the rest of the rice to her back. “Look at us now, trudging through the city like peasants, carrying rationed rice that is probably crawling with insects.”

  “But like you reminded me in Texas, we’ve seen much worse,” said Emi.

  It wasn’t just rice that was rationed in Tokyo, but clothes and shoes and medical supplies like needles and bandages. Even cooking oil.

  “Which is fine,” said Keiko, “since we have no food to cook.”

  They sat around the table together that night, as Norio had promised to eat with them before going back to the office. Emi passed the limp vegetables to her father, which smelled closer to rotten than fresh, and asked him about his work.

  “All I can say is that I spend far more time there than I do here, and I wish that wasn’t the case.” He put his chopsticks down on his plate and looked at his daughter, sympathy creeping into his face for the first time since she came home. “Emi, before I go back to the office we need to be frank with you about the future here,” he said, looking at her from across the polished table. He stood in front of his chair after his wife poured him more tea. Emi got up from the table and walked to the large living room wall. She put her arms against it and said, “I have missed this house terribly. I have missed living in it with you. I feel somehow very young again being here. The last time I was here I was only eighteen.”

  “Did you hear me, Emiko?” said Norio loudly, banging the porcelain teapot on the table. “I said we need to talk about your future here.”

  “What?” she said, finally looking at him.

  “You’ll only be spending one more week here, Emiko,” he said. “You can’t stay in Tokyo.”

  “Are we moving?” she asked, letting her arms drop.

  “Not forever,” he said. “And not we. You. You are leaving Tokyo. I’ve made plans for you to stay with the Moris for the remainder of the war. Do you remember them? Yuka Mori and her husband, Jiro. Yuka is your mother’s cousin.”

  “An older, distant cousin,” Keiko chimed in from her seat.

  “Yes, but still family,” said Norio. “They lived in Tokyo but have a summer home in Karuizawa. A small one— a cottage—but perfectly decent conditions. You went there once when you were a child, perhaps fifteen years ago, twenty at most. Do you remember?”

  “No,” said Emi curtly, trying to understand what her father was telling her. She shook her head vigorously. “Karuizawa? Are you saying that I just spent eighty-three days on a boat so that we could be reunited as a family and now you’re sending me away after just a few weeks to live with our distant family? Don’t you want me with you? Haven’t you missed me?” she finished, tears falling.

  “Of course I have missed you, and yes I want you here with us,” Norio said, moving around the table to her. “But more than that, I want you
to stay alive. I can’t have you living here with us in Tokyo. The city will be bombed. It’s not a question of if, it’s when. Emiko, if anything were to happen to you, I, your mother, we would die with you. If not in body, in everything else. You will be much safer in Karuizawa. Many foreigners from neutral countries are there—the Swiss, South Americans, Hungarians. The foreigners from Allied nations were interned in a camp near Kobe but those who weren’t deemed threatening are allowed to live in Karuizawa in relative peace. There are many Jews there as well. And embassy staff. The entire Soviet delegation works in a hotel. Other embassies—the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Turkish—are in town. Over two thousand foreigners from neutral countries are living in Karuizawa now. Because of that, it’s the safest place you can be in Japan. The Americans won’t dare drop bombs there.”

  “But why would I go there? I’m not a foreigner. I’m not a Jew. No, Father,” she said shaking her head. “I won’t leave you. I won’t go through this war without you. I’ve been without you for too long. And if I go, everyone will label me a traitor. No one is leaving Tokyo—please don’t make me.” She ran back to the table and threw her arms around her father’s neck. “Let me stay with you here, I beg you. Please!” she said, looking at her mother.

  “You do not have a choice in the matter,” said Keiko, standing up and removing Emi’s arms from Norio’s neck. “The Moris are fascinating people. They used to live in England; he even raced luxury cars there. You’ll like them fine.”

  “I have no desire to live with an aging race car driver,” said Emi, angrily.

  “He was a diplomat first,” said her mother, matching her daughter’s frustration. “And that’s beside the point. Your safety takes priority, Emiko, and we have a train ticket for you already. You leave in a week.”

  “But I don’t even know them,” Emi protested, fear in her voice. “What if I go to Sapporo instead,” she said. “To stay with Megumi. If you pay her, I’m sure she will take me.”

  “We did think of that,” said Keiko, who cared for Emi’s former amah as much as she did, “but she already has her own family to look after. You would be a burden.”

  “And there is no guarantee that Sapporo will be safe from the Americans,” said Norio. “Karuizawa will be unharmed. They won’t target a town filled with foreigners.”

  “I’ve spent my life following you,” said Emi, trying not to let her voice break again. “For the past year, I was a prisoner in America because of your job, Father. Because of you. And now you’re sending me away? I am twenty-one. When will I be able to make my own decisions?”

  “When you’re married!” said Norio. “Until then, I decide. You will be going to Karuizawa and you can thank me at the end of the war when you are still alive. Many people are leaving.”

  “Your father has made up his mind,” said Keiko. “Now go and change that dress. That internment camp clothing all needs to be burned. Throw it in the garbage.”

  “We will come there to see you,” said Norio. “We are allowed to travel and will visit you. Perhaps not often, but we will see each other, I promise. You will not endure the war alone, but you will not endure it here. You will see. People are going to start sending their children away as fast as they can when they realize what is to come.”

  “But you don’t know what is to come,” said Emi angrily.

  “Emiko, from where I am standing, I have much more of an ability to gauge the temperature of our country. Our government. Let’s just agree that what I say goes.”

  “I don’t know why you are acting like an oracle of the war,” said Emi angrily. “You do not have a direct line to the emperor.”

  “Emiko! How dare you speak to your father that way,” said her mother, shaking her daughter by the shoulders.

  “It’s been you and me stuck together for the last year and now you can be rid of me so quickly?” Emi said to her mother, taking a step back. “Why don’t you seem more upset? Won’t you miss me?”

  “You have to trust me on this,” said Norio, calmly. “The army controls every aspect of the press. What you are reading in newspapers here, hearing on the radio—that is not really what’s happening in this country. Even if the men in charge of running the newspapers haven’t been brainwashed, they have no choice in what to write. Normal citizens like you do not have the opportunity to hear what I’m hearing. The failures of war are being suppressed to a point that causes panic in me, Emiko,” he said, raising his voice. “Panic.”

  “But you usually tell me everything,” said Emi. “You haven’t spoken to me about this—not to this extent—since I returned.”

  “I am speaking to you about it now. With a candor that scares me. But everything scares me these days. I scare myself. The way this country is feeding lies about our war efforts and causing these innocent people to follow in their dangerous mentality. That terrifies me.”

  “But I want to stay. I don’t care about the risk. I—”

  “It was my idea,” said Keiko, cutting off her daughter. “Sending you away was my idea.” She shook her head, her frustration apparent. “Your father hasn’t wanted to alarm you, but he hasn’t been so kind with me. And with the small advantage we have getting to the truth also comes a tremendous responsibility to try to get you to safety. We don’t know with absolute certainty that Karuizawa will remain unharmed, but your father tells me that it is without a doubt safer than Tokyo, or anywhere else in the country, so you are without a doubt going.”

  Emi could tell that her mother was angry with her, disappointed in her tone, but also very worried about her.

  “Why don’t you come with me, then?” Emi asked quietly.

  “Your father needs me here,” said Keiko, looking at her husband. “And we aren’t worried about ourselves, we are worried about you.”

  “This is upsetting for you now,” said Norio. “But if you were to see more of this city, of what this place has become, you would be thanking us. The blind patriotism in this country . . .” He sighed and pushed his chair away from the table. “I love Japan. I have made myself a servant of it. But I don’t recognize my country. In the streetcars, people bow every few blocks. They bow at the Yasukuni Shrine and at the palace. There are soldiers everywhere, fancy Western clothing on women is frowned upon—we have no more freedom. And the limitless power of the military . . . it’s just . . . it’s a very changed place.”

  “I won’t know, will I?” said Emi. “I’ll be alone in the middle of nowhere.”

  “You don’t want to know!” Norio shouted. He was not quick to anger but was used to a great deal of respect from his daughter. “Haven’t you noticed that every night we have to black out the windows, that there are air drills constantly, and the thought of bombings colors everything we do in our daily lives? We now have cement water tanks that we are required to keep full so we can help put out a fire caused by a bombing.”

  He stood up and walked to the kitchen, coming back with a long pole tied with strips of faded blue cloth. “This is to put out a fire on the roof, and you’ve seen the piles of sandbags behind the house in case a bomb falls in our vicinity. Do you understand, Emi? We are going to be bombed here. You’ll have to be trained to do a bucket brigade and learn how to climb a ladder and pour water on the roof in case of fire. All the women here are trained for that. Is that how you want to live? In constant fear?”

  “And due to those annoyances, I am being sent away. Because you’re worried about me having to bow when I take a streetcar.”

  “No,” said Norio, closing his eyes. “I’m worried that you will be killed when you take a streetcar.”

  CHAPTER 22

  LEO HARTMANN

  MAY 1943

  We treat you good, Jewish! Hurry up. Don’t scare! We treat you good!”

  Leo heard the insistent, Chinese-accented voice call after him as he hurried to keep up with his parents.

  “Don’t scare, Jewish!” the voice came again. Leo looked back to see a man hauling a rickshaw pursuing him doggedl
y along the crowded street. Long splinters flared from the vehicle’s handles and the wheels wobbled, but the operator was in worse shape. His hands and bare feet were brown and calloused from years outdoors in the grime of Shanghai. The wind was whipping through the alley where the Hartmanns were walking in Hongkew, one of the poorest corners of Shanghai, but the rickshaw puller was in thin rags, his unrelenting physical effort the only thing keeping him healthy enough to stay alive.

  Leo glanced back again, struggling to hold on to the pile of still-damp sheets and blankets he was carrying, and shouted in Chinese, “I’m sorry! No money!” He quickened his pace to catch up with his parents, who were almost out of sight ahead of him. During his first year in Shanghai, Leo had found it impossible to hurry past the begging children with rotting teeth and rashes on their faces, the men missing arms and legs, and other destitute souls of Hongkew, but by 1943 he had learned to focus on his own survival. It wasn’t something that came naturally to him, given both his temperament and his comfortable upbringing, and he still gave what he could to those worse off than he was. But he could move through the city speedily now, a skill he’d found was a key to staying alive in Shanghai’s slums.

  He passed insistent vendors hawking stolen goods, women washing tattered clothes in rusting metal buckets in the street, messengers running to deliver the building materials tied to their backs, and then he stopped short before a post on which a number of identical signs had been pasted. He had passed such signs many times since February, when the signs started going up, and he had memorized their message. But they still never failed to chill him: the Japanese authorities who governed Shanghai were forcing all the Jews to move into the city’s restricted area in Hongkew and they had just three months to evacuate their homes and relocate.

  Rumors had circulated since 1940, when Japan formally joined the Axis powers, that the Germans were putting more pressure on the Japanese to isolate the Jews in Shanghai, but in the three years that the Hartmanns had lived there, no significant steps had been taken. The Jews in Shanghai knew that while the Japanese could be very cruel, their fury was mostly inflicted on the Chinese and that anti-Semitism was not something the Japanese authorities believed in.