by Karin Tanabe
“I’m going to sleep,” said Christian, standing up and heading to his soggy sleeping bag, feeling that sleep would never come easily to him again.
As he lay awake, the only man in his tent, he pictured the Japanese soldier’s face. He could see it perfectly—young and terrified. Did he think about his parents before he’d died? About a girl? Or had he just prayed that Christian might miss? Did he feel any pain when the bullet entered his body? Christian started sweating under his regulation blanket and kicked it off. Trying to calm down, he reached inside his bag for his paper and wrote a letter to Inge, as he’d done many times since leaving Crystal City.
“Tell me only good things, little kraut,” he wrote. “I am feeling unwell.” He folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and addressed it to Texas. He didn’t know when he’d be able to send it, or if it would make it before the ship left for Germany, but it made him feel better to have written her name. Somewhere in the world, he told himself, there were children, alive and well.
He slid his left wrist under his pillow to hide the time and tried again to fall asleep. He wondered about Inge, about his parents, and where Emi was at that moment. Maybe she was working as a nurse for the Japanese after her training in Crystal City. He pictured her in a white uniform, like the one she wore in Texas, easing the suffering of others, just as she had done for him. But that made him jealous, the idea of her tending to wounded young men. Or maybe she was taking shelter from American bombardment, hiding in a basement with her mother. He hoped she had somewhere safe to go, where American bombs dropped by men like him couldn’t touch her. He hoped Emi thought about him, too. Just sometimes. He hoped she missed him and, despite what she was living through, that she was happy. He put his arms under his head, looked up at the peak of his tent, and lay awake for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 29
EMI KATO
FEBRUARY–MARCH 1944
It was at the end of February, when Karuizawa was enveloped in a bitter cold—negative 15 degrees Celsius in the hills near Mount Asama—that Emi began to notice that Jiro Mori’s already fragile health was declining rapidly.
In the late afternoon, leading into dinner, Emi often sat with him in the small wood-paneled kitchen and they spoke about the war and the world. The world before the war was what Emi preferred to discuss, but inevitably, they would move on to the present war. She was intrigued by Jiro’s unwavering affection for America, a sentiment she had never quite developed.
“The Americans didn’t have such hate for us in the 1920s; there was intrigue, perhaps on par with what you experienced in your beloved Vienna,” Jiro explained on a particularly cold afternoon in early March. Though his body was frail, and his clothes closer to blankets than garments, he still had an elegance about him—a head of thick gray hair, expensive metal eyeglasses, and a refined way of speaking—that reminded Emi of the men currently in the diplomatic corps. “This country was devastated by the Kanto earthquake when I was there. But America—it was a country on fire,” he said, his limbs crossed for warmth. “Everyone was still rejoicing the end of the Great War and there was a film of happiness over everything. The Roaring Twenties they called it. And I loved driving those great big American cars. I found an illegal track south of Washington and would race the Italian embassy staff on Sundays—and beat them flat.” He and Emi were sitting in the kitchen, enjoying the coal in the iron stove that they had received in their monthly ration, but they only dared burn it by the handful.
“That sounds better than Catholic school and a series of internment camps,” said Emi.
They listened to the rhythmic tap of a Japanese green woodpecker that hovered around the Moris’ trees while eating their meager dinners as slowly as possible. Yuka Mori had forgone dinner, instead going into town with a neighbor to see if she couldn’t barter carrots for meat, a very unlikely prospect unless someone took pity on her. The Moris had just run out of the ham that Emi had brought from the German party—rationed to just a few bites a day—and it had whet a craving for sustenance that they were all trying to extinguish.
“I don’t know how you can say nice things about America now,” said Emi. “Now that they’re attacking us.”
“I don’t know that I’m saying nice things. I think I’m just expressing fond memories. A country can change. This country certainly has, don’t you think?” asked Jiro, coughing into his hand, unable to get the food down very easily.
“I suppose,” said Emi, offering Jiro water and taking a small bite of brown rice with an unidentifiable dried river fish cut on top. She had learned to eat slowly, to put fewer than ten grains of rice on her chopsticks and in her mouth at a time, all to make her food last. Perhaps it was having the rich German food and then going back to scraps, but Emi had started to feel real, painful hunger for the first time that month.
She had thought often about what Chiyo and Naoko Kuriyama had said to her on the boat to Japan. That the Katos’ money, their position, would make no difference in a country at war. In many ways they were right. Emi still wasn’t receiving mail from either Christian or Leo, and from what Claire Ohkawa had told her, they were likely not receiving her attempts at communication, either. When she mentioned that her father had been able to write to her in Texas, she suggested Emi send her letters from the foreign ministry in Tokyo, or through an embassy, where they’d have a better chance of making it onto foreign shores. Not wanting her father to read her letters, or know a thing about Christian, Emi instead asked Evgeni’s friend at the Soviet Embassy, housed in the Mampei Hotel, to help. Two letters were mailed to Christian and Leo, both devoid of any sentiment or words of war, but still, after almost two months, she had no response. That silence was as physically painful to her as a lack of food.
She reached down for another bite of fish and checked to make sure that Jiro was finishing his meal. He had been complaining about sharp stomach pains and she was worried that they might prevent him from eating even their scant portions.
“Japan has changed dramatically,” said Jiro, who still had fish on his plate. “I will speak frankly with you because Yuka is out of the house and your father told me that he always tells you the truth.” He put down his bowl of rice, his hands unsteady, and said, “Japan is going to lose this war. I’m sure of it, your father is sure, and I think the leaders of the Japanese Navy are, too. It’s just the Imperial Army that keeps the propaganda machine running. They were the ones so desperate to enter the war and now they refuse to end it.”
“Lose the war?” Emi said, shocked that Jiro would dare voice such an opinion.
Her pulse picked up. Her country, the country she was in, was going to lose the war. What would it take for that to occur? How much devastation? And what would happen after? “But why can’t rational men—men like you—use their influence?” asked Emi. She suddenly felt like her nervous system was under attack, her body begging her to escape her dire circumstances. She knew her father had his doubts about the war but it was the first time she had ever heard anyone declare so assuredly that Japan would lose. Emi always thought that despite it being a terrible conflict, and her disagreeing wholeheartedly with her country’s alliance with Nazi Germany, that somehow Japan would prevail. Because that was what Japan taught her to believe.
“Not this time,” said Jiro, asking Emi to put another three briquettes of coal in the fire. “Any government or military man who has spent significant time in America knows that we shouldn’t have entered to begin with. But now that we have both feet in the conflict, both feet are going to be shot off.”
“My father is frank with me,” said Emi, the conversation and her hunger unsettling her greatly. “But never like this.”
“I apologize,” said Jiro. “Perhaps it’s my age, that I have been out of the service for so long, or that I am just very frustrated with Japan. The way they are forcing the citizens to be grateful that we are at war, convincing them that they should give their lives, their sons’ lives—it’s an indoctrination from t
he highest level. The newspapers only report on battles won, never lost, and we are all expected to believe them.”
“But like you said,” Emi replied, wiping her charcoal-stained hands on her thick pants, “if there are men against it—who know we will lose—men who still hold important government positions, can’t they exercise some influence and end the war now?”
“Men have been trying since the beginning,” said Jiro, his voice laced with frustration. “Admiral Yamamoto, the commander of the navy, whom I admired very much, he tried. He was against it from the start, before Japan entered the conflict, but Yamamoto died last year, shot down by the Americans over Bougainville. They were desperate for his head.”
“Isoroku Yamamoto?” Emi asked, saying his famous name slowly. She’d heard many stories about him from her father. “But wasn’t he integral in the bombing of Pearl Harbor?” she asked. “I remember my father saying so when we were still interned in America. He used to tell me quite a lot then, in the confines of the hotel—though I’m sure he wasn’t supposed to. I think he just liked that I was interested in the diplomacy behind the tragedies.”
“Yes, Yamamoto was,” said Jiro, moving his chair closer to the stove, which was already emitting the last of its heat. “But only because his superiors had already decided on war. He said that a prolonged war would mean defeat for Japan, and he was right. I don’t know when this war will end, but I know that when it does, we will have been defeated. The army has blinders on, and they have ensured that most citizens do, too. I suppose they had to, to keep the country from rebellion and chaos, but it’s unfair. America is too big a country, with unlimited resources, and too powerful a military. We are outmatched.”
“Still,” said Emi, loathing the fear that was taking her over, “I don’t see how you can admire the mastermind behind Pearl Harbor. Especially liking America as you do.”
“Emiko, you’re not understanding,” said Jiro patiently. “He was very much against war, but once he had no choice, then he did his job. In 1940, Yamamoto was adamantly opposed to the Tripartite Pact. That should earn your respect, no?”
“Yes,” said Emi. “I may have some disdain for the Americans after being locked up, but I—as my parents seem to have told you—hate Nazi Germany much more.”
It was then when Emi noticed that Jiro’s usually spare face looked swollen, and by mid-March it was so swollen that Yuka insisted he stay in the living room, never moving far from his thick futon.
“If you don’t mind,” said Emi, stopping Yuka as she came into the hallway after checking on her husband, “I think Jiro-san is suffering from malnutrition.” Yuka, a stoic woman, didn’t change her expression as Emi continued. “I worked as a nurse’s aide when we were interned in America and it was something we treated. A swollen face,” said Emi. “It’s not a good sign. It means the malnutrition is advanced. Rest is good,” she said assuring Yuka, whose body had grown rigid, “but he needs food. Real, nutritious food. Rice is not enough.”
“I will give him mine,” whispered Yuka, her frail body, like her husband’s, wrapped in homespun wool. “Whatever I can give. I’ll be the one to subsist on rice.”
“No,” said Emi, knowing how weak Yuka herself had become. “That’s not the solution.”
The following morning, with Jiro’s health and their need for sustenance on her mind, Emi went into town looking for either Claire Ohkawa or Evgeni and Ayumi. They had, in just two months’ time, become her lifeline in Karuizawa.
Walking to the machi at 9 A.M., Emi wasn’t surprised when she saw Evgeni by the road. He had taken to sitting outside his shop, even in the still dangerously cold weather.
“Outside again?” asked Emi when she’d reached him.
“I have a theory that perhaps if people see me, they might remember that my shop is here,” said Evgeni in his fluent Japanese. “That they might want to buy something.” The town’s housewives milled around the main street, not coming anywhere near the shop as Evgeni tried to make eye contact with them.
“What are you selling today?” asked Emi, who knew that the inventory of Evgeni’s shop changed according to what was available for him to sell.
“I have metal buckets, men’s shoes, hibachi, and monpe, of course,” he said. “Kazuko Takahashi makes the monpe for me. She lives alone in the hills, near Mount Asama, so you wouldn’t have met her yet. Her husband is in the Philippines and her two sons also in the fight. I make the journey up the hills every few weeks to pick up what I can. It’s hard to live here, but it’s harder to live up there alone.”
“I could certainly use another pair of monpe,” said Emi cheerfully, knowing that she did not have any use for new clothes. What she needed was food, but with two children and Ayumi, Evgeni didn’t have any more than she did, and none to sell.
“You have no use for them,” said Evgeni, who had already sold Emi five pairs since she’d arrived in Karuizawa. “But I can’t say no to your generosity.” He motioned for her to follow him into the nearly empty store.
“Am I your first customer today?” asked Emi as Evgeni turned on a light.
“My second,” he said, pulling a pair of pants down from the wall for Emi. “Tom Tóth was here just after I opened.”
“Tóth?” asked Emi, shaking her head and handing her money to Evgeni. Sugar cost six hundred yen on the black market, if it could be found, but handmade pants were nearly free. “Too many gaijin to get to know in a few months,” she said of the foreign name.
“He’s a Hungarian . . . Jewish,” Evgeni explained as he went to package the pants. Emi stopped him and took them unwrapped and folded them under her arm. “He’s a photographer, a very talented one. Too bad he’s not allowed to photograph anything right now. All his cameras were taken away by the Kempaitai. I wonder what they are doing with them. Taking pictures of each other’s disagreeable faces.”
Emi laughed, but stopped short as she noticed that a group of German soldiers and officers—some of whom she recognized from the party—were walking on the ginza. She moved back from the large front window, out of sight.
“Avoiding the Germans? Not after you played at their New Year’s party. You need to get used to seeing them, as there will be many more coming this year,” said Evgeni.
“Why aren’t they fighting their own war at home?” asked Emi incredulously.
“Not soldiers, but citizens,” Evgeni clarified. “The government is rounding them up. They are no longer allowed to live freely in Japan but must either go to Hakone or come here.”
“It’s not the citizens I want to avoid,” said Emi, relieved, watching as one of the officers spit on the ground. “This photographer you mentioned,” she said. “Do they know he’s Jewish?” she asked, motioning with a tilt of her head to the men outside.
“Of course they do,” said Evgeni. “They know who every Jew is, even if they aren’t forcing them to wear a Star of David. It’s quite obvious, and besides, the Kempeitai keeps watch on all foreigners, Jew or not.”
“They don’t care? They never harass the Jews, more than the others? The Germans or the Kempaitai?” Emi had been told many times that it was the case in Karuizawa, but she still had trouble believing such behavior was possible.
“The Jews here live in peace,” said Evgeni with finality.
“I doubt that will last.” Emi looked longingly at the hibachi, wishing she had something to cook on them.
“Then no more piano playing for Hans Drexel?” asked Evgeni, appearing happy to give Emi a difficult time for her indiscretion.
“Never again,” said Emi, though she knew how much Jiro would have been helped by a fattening German meal in his state. Hesitating before she left Evgeni’s shop, Emi asked, “Do you know about the farm? That the German military has its own farm?”
“I know something about that,” said Evgeni after a pause. “Claire Ohkawa mentioned it before. It’s out that way,” he gestured, his voice uneasy. “North of the hotel. It’s not far from Kazuko Takahashi’s house. I saw
it before, the fence, when I was helping her outside. But best not go anywhere near it,” said Evgeni, in a warning tone. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Emi’s face gave away that it was exactly what she was thinking.
“They may be different here toward the Jews, but they’re not entirely different from the men you encountered in Austria,” he warned.
“Jiro Mori is ill,” said Emi, her hand on the doorknob. “In the past few weeks, I think his hunger has developed from an annoyance to malnutrition. Where else is there to get food besides the Germans? Our rations are getting scanter. Even if you line up before the sun is out, the food they are providing is nearly spoiled. There is almost nothing to buy on the black market. I bought butter for an exorbitant price and it was extremely bitter. Nearly inedible. We had to cook it down until we could only use it for browning mushrooms and potatoes.”
“More goods might be available soon,” said Evgeni, not one to lose hope. “Until then we have hunting, a barter with friends, making do with rations like we’re supposed to. Ice fishing,” he added. “You might learn to ice fish.”
“I don’t think that will be good enough,” said Emi, thanking Evgeni for the pants and leaving the store.
Emi had complained many times to Christian about the food in Crystal City, but what she would have done for it now. She had written to her parents, finally explaining the food shortage in Karuizawa, but still not mentioning the Moris’ ill health. They had written back to say it was the same in Tokyo. They had given her what they could when she was home, but the situation had become dire in the capital city. They insisted that she was still better off in the countryside, where she could forage for food.
Emi walked slowly back to the Moris. Ahead of her she saw two young foxes scampering across the dirt road and she sped up to see them better. They were hidden in a thick grove of Japanese larch and white birch trees before she could catch up to them. Of course catching a fox with her bare hands was not an option, and she wondered if she should learn how to shoot a gun, if that was something that could help save Jiro Mori from declining. Like most of the able-bodied Japanese women in Karuizawa, she was working for the women’s volunteer labor corps, as was encouraged by the government, but they certainly hadn’t armed her or shown her how to shoot.