by Dean Hughes
“Then why did they get shipped to the mainland?” Afton asked.
“No one knew what to do with them. They were in the military, but no one wanted to fight next to them. The government hid them away for a long time, and then President Roosevelt finally told the army to give them a chance.”
“I don’t understand,” Afton said. She leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees, and looked closely at Ishi. “Why were the AJA in California arrested and the ones over here left alone, or even drafted?”
“There were too many of us here. If they arrested all of us, there wouldn’t be enough people to work. Everything would have been shut down.”
“It’s too bad President Roosevelt stepped in,” Bobbi said, and she laughed. “Daniel could have sat out the whole war.”
“I know. That’s the way I look at it. But it would have killed his pride. The only problem now is, every AJA in the army thinks he’s got to be a hero—to show everyone that he’s loyal to his country. Daniel’s the same way. He’s a teacher—just a very nice man—and now he thinks he has to be a warrior.”
“And that scares you, I’m sure.”
“Of course it does.”
Ishi was friendly but not one to reveal her feelings easily. This was the first time she had expressed her concerns so openly. Bobbi had been fighting her own worries all day, and Ishi’s words seemed to turn her anxiety into a kind of ache. She wished so much that she’d had more days with Richard, that they had made the best of their time together—sooner. She had also been thinking all day about her family, and she felt her homesickness come on again as the mood changed.
On the way home that evening, neither Bobbi nor Afton had much to say, and it wasn’t until they were back in their quarters that Bobbi quit thinking about herself long enough to realize that Afton was having a hard time. She had lain on her bunk as soon as the girls had come in, and now she had turned away.
“What’s wrong, kid?” Bobbi asked. “A little homesick?”
“Yeah.”
Bobbi walked over and sat down on the bed next to her. She patted her shoulder. “Me too,” she said.
“Oh, but Bobbi, you have someone to wait for.”
“What’s going on with you and the doc? Isn’t he willing to convert?”
Bobbi was trying to keep things light, but Afton began to cry. “Don’t even mention that . . . ape . . . to me,” she said.
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
“I slapped his face. That’s what happened.”
“I don’t have to ask why.”
Afton rolled onto her back and looked up at Bobbi. “He is so smooth, Bobbi. He just kept telling me how much he respected me, but he was always pushing for more than I would give him. And then, the other night, he decided to get what he wanted—whether I liked it or not.”
“Really? I can’t believe he would do that.”
“Darn it to heck, Bobbi, don’t say that. You told me he would. Just go ahead and say ‘I told you so,’ and get it over with.”
Instead, Bobbi said nothing. She was actually surprised the guy would get that aggressive.
“I should have hit him with something harder than my hand.”
“Yeah. Like a bedpan.”
Afton was still crying, but she suddenly grinned. “That’s a good idea. I might do it yet—in front of a whole ward full of patients. Then I’ll announce to everyone, ‘This guy has rushin’ hands and roamin’ fingers.’”
Bobbi laughed, and finally Afton did too.
“Hey,” Bobbi said, “at least you didn’t make any mistakes you could be regretting now.”
“Yes I did. I trusted him, and now I’ll never trust anyone again.”
“Yes you will. Just watch out for Romans and Russians.”
And the two laughed again. But neither one could make the laughter last very long.
“Bobbi, I’m never going to find anyone,” Afton said, and she rolled onto her side again. But Bobbi wondered which would be worse—not to find anyone, or to lose the one you had found.
***
The Stoltzes prepared a nice Christmas dinner to share with the Rosenbaums. Little Benjamin was gloriously happy to have Peter home all day. But everyone was tired and rather disheartened. Throughout the night, on Christmas Eve, another massive Allied bombing attack had kept them awake.
In recent weeks everything had changed in the Stoltz household. The Allies had finally targeted Berlin for all-out destruction, and bombing raids had come with increasing frequency and intensity. “Carpet bombing” had replaced the usual raids, and little was left of central Berlin. A thousand airplanes would strike the city, sometimes continuing both day and night, and dropping up to two thousand tons of bombs. The area near the Tiergarten and the Unter den Linden section of the city were almost entirely flattened. The Stoltzes lived on the edge of town, and so their neighborhood had been hit only three times. Their own row of apartments had so far been little affected. Still, with each new raid, it seemed likely that their luck would run out.
The bombing had been a mixed blessing for the Rosenbaums. Brother Stoltz had had to take a chance; he told his neighbors that the Rosenbaums were the Glissmyers, a refugee family from central Berlin. Refugees were everywhere now, with over a million Berliners homeless, and neighbors knew that Brother Stoltz worked at a job where he might well meet such a family and bring them home—as he claimed. The change in identity meant that the Stoltzes could bring the Rosenbaums to the cellar during bombing attacks. The chaos in the city also lessened the danger that anyone was bothering to look for hideaway Jews.
At the same time, both the Stoltzes and the Rosenbaums had to watch every word they said, and little Benjamin had to be kept under control. To speak his name might well tip someone off. The bombs, the firestorms, were enough of a fear, without the constant worry of detection.
Most days Brother Stoltz still traveled into the city, although some days busses and trolleys couldn’t get through, and he would have to walk long distances through the rubble. His building had been struck by bombs twice, with the upper floors mostly destroyed, but the offices didn’t close, and the work went on. Berliners seemed almost like ants in a disturbed ant hill; no sooner would the destruction stop than they would scurry out to set things right again.
Today was Christmas, and that should mean a reprieve, a little peace, but Anna wondered whether the bombs would begin to fall again, even today. Terror had become so much a way of life that she had become fatalistic, expecting the worst and relieved each time she survived another pounding. At night, when the thudding sounds of the bombs were distant, she took comfort that she and her family were safe, but as she made her way to work, she often saw the results: the fires; the buildings in smoking ruins; the wide-eyed children clinging to their parents; and sometimes the bodies being carried from the buildings or lying under blankets in the street. One morning she had crossed through a bombed-out area, hiking because no transportation could get through, and she had seen a little arm protruding from the fallen blocks of an apartment building. The arm had haunted her ever since, and she found herself struggling to forgive the Allies, no matter what their justification might be.
And yet she and her family, and the Rosenbaums, made
the best of things. Peter had bought Benjamin a wooden train for Christmas with cars that could be disconnected and rearranged. He got down on the floor with Benjamin after dinner, and the two pretended to be engineers. They drove the train about and stopped to load and unload it. Peter, in his deep voice, pretended to ask for various items he wanted loaded on his train, and Benjamin would giggle each time and pretend to fill the order. Anna felt sure that Peter was having as much fun as Benjamin. He was far too old to play on the floor with toys, but Benjamin provided him an excuse to do so. Besides, Peter was always alone, and this was his chance to have a friend, and an adoring one, even if he was just a little boy.
Anna
had watched what was happening to the Rosenbaums over the past few months. It was what she had known during her months in hiding. The tedium and purposelessness, combined with the horror of the bombing raids, was wearing them down. Brother Stoltz always tried to get war news, and in some ways it was encouraging. According to German radio, all was going well: The Germans were winning great victories in Russia and Italy, and the Japanese were dominating in the Pacific. But British radio, played softly and carefully, told another story. The Germans were bogged down badly in Russia, suffering terribly from cold and cut-off supply lines. Many thousands had been taken captive. Kiev had now been retaken by the Russians. And in Italy, where the Italians had already bowed out of the war, German troops were being pushed steadily back, up the peninsula, in hard-nosed mountain fighting. It was discouraging to think of all the German boys being killed, all the agony and exposure they were suffering. At the same time, to Brother Stoltz it was becoming ever more clear that Hitler could never win. Ultimately, that had to be good news for the Rosenbaums, but it was hardly anything to find much joy in.
In the Pacific, battles were taking place in the Solomons, the Marshall Islands, and the Gilberts. Raging battles in little places like Tarawa Atoll or Bougainville left thousands dead, but American and Australian troops always won in time, and Japanese control of the Pacific was slowly giving way.
What Anna wondered was whether Alex was in one of those places: Italy perhaps, or on one of those islands. With so many dying, could she hope that nothing would happen to him? She was caught by this war, with no way to feel any sense of victory, no matter what happened.
Anna had received a pretty, cloth-bound diary for Christmas, and that afternoon, while Peter and Benjamin played and her mother and father talked with the Rosenbaums, she started her first entry. She wanted to say everything, express all her feelings, and then someday share it all with Alex. But the trouble was—and her father had warned her about this—she had to be very careful what she recorded. If someone were to get hold of it somehow, a document of that sort could be dangerous for all of them. She couldn’t tell who she really was or where she had come from. She couldn’t record her genuine fears and worries, even her hopes for the future. And so she wrote about her testimony of the gospel—without explaining why she couldn’t go to church—and she wrote about the man she loved, without saying who he was and where he lived. She tried to say as much as possible, in hidden, careful ways, but she was soon frustrated, and she set the diary down. The Nazis had a way of controlling everything; they were not even allowing Anna to be Anna.
***
Alex ate at the mess hall—a nice Christmas dinner of canned turkey and reconstituted potatoes. Actually, the meal tasted pretty good, but as usual Alex was alone. He and Curtis had spent some time together that morning, but in some ways Curtis wasn’t a true kindred spirit. Their conversations always came back to the same topics and then wore thin rather quickly. Curtis had finally lain down to take a nap, and Alex was actually glad for the peace—but he was still very lonely.
Alex had been in a camp in Aldbourne, England, since September. Aldbourne was a little town about eighty miles west of London, and the men of his regiment were living in Nissen huts set up on a “football” field. Some of the men had passes and had gone to the city. A couple of them asked Alex whether he wanted to go along. But for Alex that would have meant spending long hours in some London pub with men who had no interests other than drinking and chasing skirts. The amazing part was, these young guys seemed to have a lot of success with British girls. English troops complained that the Yanks were “oversexed, overpaid, and over here.” They resented the way Americans threw their money around and used their brash confidence to charm the local women. In response, the Yanks told the limeys, “You’re undersexed, underpaid, and under Eisenhower,” and then, if everyone was in a good mood, a rousing fight might follow.
Alex wanted none of that, of course, so now he sat in an almost empty barracks, listened to Curtis snore, and wrote a letter to his parents. All day he had been thinking about Christmas at home. He imagined his family, his grandparents and uncles and aunts, gathering and talking about all the cousins who were now spread around the globe. No one in the Thomas or Snow family had been killed or wounded so far, but the ones Gene’s age were still in training, and before long several would probably be in harm’s way. Rumor in England was that a landing in France would happen that spring. Alex’s unit, the second battalion of the 506th Regiment, had now been attached to the 101st Airborne Division—the “Screaming Eagles,” as they were known—and there was little question that the whole division would be part of it. So the coming year would be the telling time, and chances were not good that all the family would make it through. It was chilling, that thought, just the consideration of the odds.
Alex didn’t talk about any of that in his letter, however. There were some things he wasn’t allowed to write home about, and many things he didn’t want to say. He hesitated to let his family know how lonely he was, and he wasn’t anxious to have a censor read that information either. And so he wrote a few upbeat things about his health and his commitment to the cause, and he joked about the miserable weather in England. He wasn’t allowed to say he was in Aldbourne, or even that he was in the southern part of the country. He only mentioned that he’d had a chance to visit London and found it very interesting.
When he was finished with the letter, he decided to write to Anna. It was a pointless thing to do since he had no way to post a letter to her—not even any idea where she was. But he liked the idea of telling her his feelings and giving her a few details about his life. It was something he had done a few times before. If he ever saw her again, he would give her all these letters, and she would at least have some sense of this time in his life. Otherwise, it would all be lost to them.
But the attempt was quite unsatisfying. He knew he was writing to some future Anna, not to the Anna he longed to see. At times like this he chided himself for even hanging on to such a hope. He got out her picture and looked at it, but it was no longer easy to bring back the powerful feelings he had once known. He looked at her pretty face but saw it like some picture in a magazine. He was losing his sense of her. So he got out that one letter he had from her, and he read that. He knew every word of it, but he told himself that their promises to each other still meant something, that those feelings couldn’t be killed by the tedious ticking away of time. And yet he wondered whether she still felt the things she had said in the letter. By now she must have passed through some terrible ordeals.
He lay back on his bunk and looked at the chipped paint on the open rafters. He wished the day would move by more swiftly. A training exercise, or work, or almost anything was better than all this time. It would even be nice to admit to someone other than Curtis that he had a girl in Germany; but the men would not have taken kindly to that, and so he never spoke her name.
***
Gene was at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. He had completed his boot camp, but now he was taking training in amphibious assault. Time and again he had heard about the huge losses units would take when they hit the beaches. And there were plenty left to land on. Most of the guys bragged about all they would do to the Japs, but Gene wasn’t one to talk that way. He tried to focus on the training, do what he had to do, and not worry too much about what lay ahead.
Gene still dreamed of liberating his brother, but he knew the truth. The Philippines would be a target before too much longer—probably before he got there—and even when the Philippines were taken, the war would still be far from over. He had grown up considerably in the past few months, was seeing the realities ahead with clearer vision.
One of the problems for Gene was that he felt so lonely in his platoon. There was another Utah boy, a fellow named Floyd Jeppesen from Tooele, who might have been a pretty good friend. He was a Mormon, but he seemed to have forgotten it already, and he was doing a lot of drinking. He was worse than anyone for giving Gene
a hard time about being a “Sunday School boy.” The fact was, Gene had not had a single chance to go to church since arriving in Virginia, and Floyd, in one sense, was right: Gene would have loved to go to Sunday School if he could have gotten the chance.
Gene enjoyed a better-than-usual dinner at the mess hall, but by evening he was having a hard time. Everyone had five-day passes, and most of the guys from the East and the South had headed home. Those who were still around the base had taken off and gone into town, or were at least gone for the day. Gene thought about writing some letters, but he was in no mood for it. And so he did something on impulse—even though he was worried his dad might be upset with him. He walked to a pay phone near the headquarters building, dropped a nickel in, and told the operator he wanted to make a long-distance call to Utah—collect.
By the time the phone rang, he was scared to think what the call might cost. But the first person to pick the phone up was LaRue, and she squealed, “Oh, yes. Yes. We’ll accept the charges.” And then Gene was actually saying hello to her, hearing the wild excitement in her voice.
“Mom, it’s Gene. It’s Gene,” LaRue screamed, and then, just as loudly, she shouted into the phone, “Are you all right? How are you doing?”
“You don’t have to yell. I can hear you all right,” Gene said, laughing. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you, too. Did you get the stuff we sent you?”
“Yes. I liked the pictures best. And the articles from the paper about East High football.”
“We sent a package to Wally, too. The Red Cross said they might be able to get it to him this year.”
“That’s good. You haven’t heard from him, have you?”
“No. But we got a package from Bobbi—grass skirts and leis and all this other stuff. It was nifty. And we got a letter from Alex. He’s doing just fine.”
“Is everyone there?” Gene could hear all the noise, the cousins, all the family gathered for the big Christmas dinner.