The Diplomat’s Daughter

by Karin Tanabe

  “For a Jewish refugee? They’re not going to want to touch it,” said Evgeni. “Do you know how many foreigners the Kempeitai have tortured and killed already? The Swiss are not going to get involved with them.”

  “The Polish Embassy?” asked Emi, her guilt and desperation building like a disease.

  “Not here. It was in Tokyo but was forced to shut down in ’41,” said Evgeni. “Emi,” he sighed, “Ernst was there before you, yes? You did not force him to steal the food. He would have been caught with you there or without you there. Don’t put your life at risk to help his father.”

  “But I should have been caught, too,” said Emi. “I should have been the one at the fence.”

  “You weren’t,” said Evgeni firmly. “Stop trying to get yourself killed now.”

  For the next six months, Emi, Kenji, and Ernst shared the streets of the town, but never a conversation. All were focused on finding enough food for their families, but it was becoming so scarce that people in town were dying by the dozens from malnutrition. Evgeni and Ayumi’s youngest daughter had become very ill, not strong enough to even stand, and Jiro’s swelling had come back. He was bedridden again, and like everyone else in town, this time Emi did not know what to do to help. The forest had been pillaged of all things edible, so much so that Emi never saw deer or even fox in the woods anymore. There were no mushrooms, no watercress, daikon, or carrots, and even the milking goats were being slaughtered out of desperation for meat. The government rations had practically stopped and the black market was wiped clean.

  Just before the new year, Emi was headed to the shrine on the way to the German farm, to pray for a different outcome for 1945, when Evgeni stopped her with a shout.

  “Is it your daughter?” she asked, when he was close and she saw the grief on his face. She knew they were afraid that Kiko would not last the winter.

  “No,” he said, his hands on his thighs, resting and trying to find his breath. “The Kempeitai brought Oskar Abrus home this morning. They marched him through the street, holding him up like a marionette. He was so beaten, Emi,” he said, looking at the ground. “I didn’t even know it was him until someone screamed out his name.”

  “But he’s home!” said Emi, relief overwhelming her.

  Evgeni shook his head. “He died just hours after coming home. He told his family that they’d tortured him every day for the last six months. They put a water hose down his throat then kicked his stomach. They burned him all over his body with hot irons. They even hung him by a rope before cutting it down moments before he suffocated.”

  “And then he died? Right after they released him? How do you know all this?” she said, wanting to run to the Abruses’ house.

  “Ernst told me. He came to the store. He’s looking for you.”

  “For me?” said Emi, taking a step back. “His father just died. Why is he looking for me?”

  “He didn’t say,” said Evgeni.

  “Do you think Oscar said anything about me? About Kenji?” said Emi, whispering.

  “I don’t know,” said Evgeni, his frustration with Emi still apparent. “But if you’re being tortured by the Kempeitai, anything is possible.”

  CHAPTER 32

  CHRISTIAN LANGE

  FEBRUARY–JUNE 1945

  I’ll eat it,” said Christian as Jack eyed him suspiciously during a particularly animated dinner in the Philippines at the end of February. Leyte had been secured by the Americans at the beginning of the month and the Seventh was staying on the island, training for their next Pacific campaign. No longer being riddled with gunfire, and eating food cooked by Filipino families, the men were high on the fact that they’d made it through two Pacific campaigns without dying. Before they’d shipped out, there had been a nervous silence all over base, a shared frisson of fear. That was now replaced by a shared relief and occasional pulsating joy.

  “Damn it’s hot here but I love this weather,” said Jack, slipping on a pair of sunglasses, even though they were inside. “Do you remember Wisconsin in February, kraut? Cold. Painfully, freezing cold. But how ’bout it here? Beautiful . . . where are we?”

  “Leyte,” said Christian. “Still Leyte.”

  “Right, Leyte. Beautiful island. Warmer than a virgin’s—”

  “Stop!” said Christian, cutting him off.

  “Still so innocent,” said Jack, laughing. “I love it. I’m glad you forced me to enlist, kraut. Because it turns out, I may have nine lives after all.”

  “Fine, it’s decent here,” said Christian laughing. He’d never minded the weather in Wisconsin, but Southeast Asia in February, for boys who had escaped death yet again, was a much-needed opiate.

  “I even appreciate this disgusting pineapple,” Christian said, putting several slices on his plate. “We’re in an entirely different country and they’re still giving us pineapple.” He smiled at the Filipino woman who was serving them lunch and held out his plate for more.

  Jack and Christian bounced off their joy for the next week, constantly buoying each other up. There was news that the Red Army had pushed into Germany, gaining unstoppable momentum. And though their unit was training much farther south than Manila, they were told that the units stationed in the north had almost liberated the Philippine capital from the Japanese military. But on a day when their elation felt as if it would go on forever, the realities of war brought it crashing down.

  On the morning of February 24, Perko appeared in their bunk before they had left to hit the showers, which were little more than a bucket with a string. He looked right at Christian and said, “Lange, Jesus Christ. I have terrible news.”

  “My parents are dead,” said Christian, sure that there was no other reason that Perko would approach him that way. “My mother,” he said, his voice cracking at the thought of Helene Lange as dead as her baby girl.

  “No,” said Perko as he gestured for Christian to follow him outside. He stopped Jack from following them out the door and walked with Christian a hundred feet away from the bunk. “Your parents . . . they might be dead,” he said clearing his throat. “I’ve never given news this way. It’s always the reverse. Sending the dispatch to the parents that their son has died, not telling the son that the parents have died. Could have died,” he said, correcting himself. He looked to Christian for an emotional reaction, but Christian stood there stoically, listening, holding tightly to the word could.

  “We got news over the wire this morning that the British bombed Pforzheim late last night,” said Perko. “Similar to the campaign on Dresden.” That aerial assault had taken place just weeks before. “They won’t talk of casualties in the papers, and besides, we don’t get papers out here anyways. But I remembered your parents are in Pforzheim and I got some specifics over the wire. They’re saying a quarter, maybe half the population of the city was killed. Are your parents right in Pforzheim?” he asked, his usual gruffness gone.

  “Not in the inner city,” said Christian, trying to picture his grandparents’ house, which he’d only been to once. “But not far.”

  “That could make the difference,” said Perko, clearing his throat.

  “When will we know who died?” asked Christian. “Will they release a list of names?”

  “Since it’s Germans who died, we won’t be getting a list of names at all. Meaning the Army, America, anyone. I’m afraid you’ll most likely have to wait until the war is over to find out about your parents, unless there is someone in Germany who can write and tell you. But even if there is someone, a relative, the chance of them getting a letter through is low. Especially with you being out here. It will be tough.”

  “Thanks for your honesty, sir,” said Christian, saluting his officer and walking away.

  “I’m real sorry, Lange!” Perko called after him.

  As soon as Christian turned toward the barracks, he saw Jack running toward him.

  “They bombed Pforzheim last night,” said Christian as Jack grabbed his arm. “The Royal Air Force. Perko said
maybe half the town was killed, maybe less, though. They’re not sure, and they’re not going to be sure for a long time.”

  “Jesus, kraut,” said Jack. “Your whole goddamned family is holed up there.” He paused and then let go of Christian’s arm, backing away. “Kraut,” he said again, stunned. “Inge is there, too.” His stoic face fell and he started screaming and punching the side of their makeshift bunk until every knuckle was bleeding.

  Christian watched him, wishing he could do the same thing, feeling the terror building up in him, but he just stood there, stock-still, just as he had when he was fired upon, or when the FBI had walked into his house.

  “Am I an orphan at nineteen?” he asked Jack flatly, once he’d stopped assaulting the wall. “Or am I just some sad bastard whose parents died.”

  “You don’t know that they died,” said Jack, wiping his hands against his pants. “But you can always feel like an orphan. Just because I’m over eighteen now doesn’t mean I went from being an orphan to being an adult man whose parents happen to be dead. I still feel like the world wronged me too early.” He fell silent and closed his eyes in exhaustion. Christian had never heard him speak with so little bravado.

  “I’d be angrier than you are,” said Christian, looking out at the spot where Perko had just given him the news.

  “You don’t think I’m angry?” said Jack, lifting his bleeding hands, his eyes still shut.

  “I don’t,” said Christian. “I think in every way, you’re above us all.”

  A month after the bombing of Pforzheim, a cousin in Berlin managed to get a letter to him in the Philippines with the help of the INS, who had kept tabs on Christian’s whereabouts. Helene and Franz Lange, along with his grandparents, had died.

  Three days after Perko gave Christian the telegram, he was on a boat from Leyte to Okinawa, Jack trying to hold him together, the American flag cracking in the wind behind them.

  * * *

  Meat and potatoes. Good meat—a thick, bloody steak—and mashed potatoes with butter. That’s what Christian and Jack ate on the boat the night before they landed on the main island of Okinawa in April.

  This time, Christian was not scared of the fight. After a week on the island, tired from pulling a trigger so many times, he looked down at his hands and realized he had become numb to killing Japanese soldiers. It would come back to haunt him later, he was sure—the stunned faces, the rows of black eyes staring at him, peering at death. But for now, he felt as lifeless as the bodies he’d leveled.

  On May 8 came the news that Germany had surrendered. On Okinawa, and everywhere the American and Allied soldiers were stationed, victory was celebrated. Now, Perko reminded them, pausing their revelry, they just had to defeat Japan.

  By the beginning of June, the Seventh had been fighting in Okinawa for more than two months. Somehow, Christian was still alive, Jack was next to him, and they were both still fighting in the intense heat, through a weight of despair.

  On their seventieth day of fighting, Christian and his unit were hit by yet another onshore assault.

  “You want to stay alive?” said Jack, as Christian crouched down in his foxhole. “Stop bobbing your head out of the bunkers like a dolphin doing tricks. My hand is gonna get blown off because I have to shove you down every single day.”

  “For someone who didn’t plan on enlisting, you sure have taken a liking to this soldiering crap,” said Christian.

  “I know,” said Jack, shaking his head, soaked in sweat. They’d all agreed that the hellish heat in Okinawa was the worst they’d ever experienced. The pounding sun of Leyte felt like winter compared to the jungles of southern Japan. “It’s disturbing. Maybe I just need people telling me what to do, like in the Children’s Home. Over ten years in that dump, and I can’t think for myself anymore.”

  “You’re a much better soldier than I’ll ever be,” he said, remembering what he’d done in the Philippines.

  “That is definitely true,” said Jack. “Because you’re awful. But right now, I won’t hold it against you. Losing your parents, not knowing about Inge. It’s total shit. So I’ll keep pushing your head down, and you just keep on going.”

  Christian nodded and felt for the piece of wood in his pocket—the toothpick that Jack had made from the cross that Dave put up on Kwajalein. Jack’s shoe had become too big a good luck charm. In battle, he traded it for a crudely whittled toothpick.

  “But if you’re like this wherever we end up next,” Jack warned, “I’m just going to let you die.”

  “Where we end up next?” said Christian. “How long have we been in this shithole? Over seventy days? The war is ending soon. It has to.”

  “That’s what we said after Leyte,” said Jack. “So is this the end?”

  “The end of us, probably,” said Christian, starting to fire, the first in his hole to pull his trigger.

  When 3 A.M. rolled in that morning, the tenth of June, Christian and Jack were still awake. Christian, as he’d done every night in Okinawa, spent the quiet hours thinking about his parents. His little family had been flattened by the hell of war. And why? Because the FBI thought his aunt was a Nazi and his father’s colleague turned out to be a power-starved liar. Meanwhile, the people of Okinawa were dying simply because they lived in the wrong place at the wrong time. Christian wrestled with his thoughts, wishing he had Emi to confide in, even by pen and paper. He let the hard ground provide a few moments of cool until he felt Jack’s kick.

  “Kraut,” Jack said, as he had every morning since they reached Okinawa. “It’s time.”

  The tenth marked the seventy-first day in Okinawa for Christian, Jack, and the rest of the Seventh. Shellfire had become their soundtrack and they’d seen men in their unit start to go mad from it, shutting down, no longer speaking, barely able to pick up their guns and return to the trenches. Other men were weak with malaria; more still were dead, their lifeless limbs propped up in waist-high mud. But by June, the Americans’ position was very strong and so were their numbers. Hundreds of ships had kept up their amphibious assault on the island while Christian and Jack and thousands of others pushed overland toward Okinawa’s southern end.

  On June 10, the division, facing severely weakened Japanese troops, was closing in on Yuza in the south. Knowing that the Japanese had lost far more men than the Seventh had, the division’s commanders didn’t expect the barrage of firepower that came suddenly from behind Yuza-Dake peak. Perko screamed for his men to get behind the rocks as the tanks plowed forward. As they scrambled for cover, Christian heard Jack’s voice behind him.

  “Watch out to your left, kraut!” Jack yelled. “They’re in the caves! To the left! Get down!”

  Christian felt a bullet nick his helmet, but they all made it behind the rocks, the air around them already reeking of dead flesh.

  As they reloaded their guns, with Perko bent over his map but still hollering orders, they heard someone howling behind them. Christian looked back to see one of their men, his face turning white. A bullet had gone through his hand. He looked at it, at the place where his fingers had been, and collapsed, but there were not enough men to tend to him. Jack and Christian stared for a few seconds, then resumed firing.

  As soon as they were ordered to move again, they ran for a dense cluster of palm trees, hoping to escape the offensive fire raining down from the peak. When the whistle of shells finally slowed, Christian moved to another tree, and Jack waved to indicate that he should run past him a few more feet. He did, but with the sound of gunfire starting up again, he pivoted to his right and began firing back at random. In the next instant, he saw that in his haste, he wasn’t firing at soldiers. He had fired into a group of terrified women. One fell to the ground, a child on top of her, his legs moving, still alive.

  “No!” Christian screamed, falling to his knees. He crawled out from behind his cover, making for the women, but Jack grabbed him and pulled him back. Christian turned and rested his head against the palm tree, Jack’s hands still on hi
m. “I didn’t see her. Jesus Christ. I just killed that woman. Did you see? Did you see her child?”

  Jack grabbed his arms from behind his back and said, “How many women have we already killed? Get over it and keep going!”

  Christian had never imagined anything like Okinawa. It had been a year and a half since he enlisted. He had fought in the Marshall Islands and spent five months in the Philippines. But until Okinawa, he hadn’t known such horror could exist in the world. And in such a tiny corner of it. Since they’d come ashore on Easter Sunday, he’d seen families running into shelters for safety only to burn alive seconds later; civilians who had been living in trenches gunned down, their insides spilling out of their kimonos; mothers clutching their babies and drowning themselves, throwing their bodies from cliffs without a look back; children blown up as they ran toward their parents for help. He’d held his fellow soldiers as they died and seen dozens of young women limping from rape. But this was the first time he’d fired a bullet into a woman’s body at such close range. A civilian. Someone’s mother. He lifted his hand to his mouth and tasted the blood.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said, shaking his arms free and stepping back from Jack and his gun.

  Jack picked it up and thrust it into his chest, ramming him back until he was pinned against a tree. “Just because you’re the only fool on this planet who joined the Army for love doesn’t mean you can give up now,” he said through gritted teeth. “Or maybe you can,” he said, pointing to Yuza-Dake peak. “Walk into the open right now and take the bullets. Then Emi can marry some Japanese soldier and this whole mission of yours will be for nothing.”

  “It wasn’t just for Emi,” said Christian, finally wiping his hands on what was left of his shirt. “I didn’t want to die in Germany.”