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As summer gave way to fall, mail service was almost back to normal in Stuttgart and I started waiting for a letter from Mariko. Surely now that the war with Japan had ended, she would write to me again. Every weekday when my father came home from work, I looked to see if he had any mail under his arm. He’d told me I should wait to send the tablets of my unsent letters to Mariko—I had two of them now—until after I had heard from her. It could be that her family had been released from Crystal City and were on their way home to California. While I waited, I reread the pages I had written to her, so that I could send them as soon as I’d received word.
I added to the pages a little bit each day, only happy things, like how lovely it was when Lieutenant McDermott left Max and me the sticks of Juicy Fruit and how much fun it was to have Herr Bruechner for a pet. I was ready at a moment’s notice to send the enormous letter to her.
In late October, the Americans who had been living in our building were billeted to accommodations closer to the former German military base that was now the Americans’ makeshift army post and that was being renovated and repaired for what would be a permanent stay. Major Brown told us to take the second floor, which was twice as big as our flat on the first floor, and to act as if we had always had it. Our building had belonged to the felled German government. A new housing authority was in the forming stages, and at some point, a newly appointed official would certainly be at our door to assess the property and tally its occupants. Until that happened, we would just stay.
A provisional school had been cobbled together for Max and the other children his age still in Stuttgart. There were many families who had left the city for the countryside when the worst of the air raids started and who had not yet come back, as there was not much to come back to.
I continued with my own studies in the morning, with both the German textbooks Papa found for me and American textbooks that Major Brown somehow got ahold of. But I really wanted to get a job for my lonely afternoon hours. Mommi was back at the tailor shop and now had American servicemen coming to her to sew on their patches and mend their torn seams. I didn’t just want to earn my own money; I wanted to have other people to talk to besides my parents and Max. I was sixteen and a half and nearly fluent in German now. Papa was not in favor of my getting a job; he was still worried for my safety. But I continued to plead with him, figuring that at some point he would relent, and in the meantime, I waited for a letter from Mariko.
In the third week of November, the Nuremberg trials began, which I might not have heard much about if Major Brown didn’t have a hankering for Mommi’s Apfelstrudel and Papa’s conversation. He still frequented our flat with copies of Stars and Stripes and surplus C rations. Major Brown was very interested in the trials, and so was Papa, because a great many of Hitler’s men, both military and party leaders, had been arrested and were awaiting their fate.
The first time Major Brown came over to talk about them, the trials were just about to start. I had to ask Papa after the major left what they were. He told me the Allies had agreed to hold individuals of the defeated nations responsible for their actions, and they’d decided on three categories of war crimes: those crimes that violated international peace agreements, those that violated the rules of war, and those that were considered crimes against humanity, which included the deportation, enslavement, and murder of civilians and prisoners of war. Nuremberg had been chosen as the location for the trials because its Palace of Justice was still standing, as was its prison. It was only two hundred kilometers from us, a two-hour drive by car. I was glad those who’d been carrying out the most monstrous of Hitler’s plans were being held accountable for them. I wanted justice, as any reasonable human being would, and the trials were evidence the tilted world was being righted.
Three days after the first of the trials got under way, on the twenty-third of November, what I’d been hoping for for weeks upon weeks finally happened. Papa came home with a letter from Mariko.
He was smiling from ear to ear.
I nearly sank to the floor in relief when he handed it to me, but I did a double take when I saw the return address. Tokyo. The letter was posted the third of October.
I looked up at Papa. I’m sure my surprise was evident on my face. “She’s in Japan.”
Papa shrugged, as if to say he, too, was surprised and could not guess why Mariko was in Tokyo and not Los Angeles. “Kenji got his wish, I guess.”
In our new flat on the second floor, I had been given the second bedroom because, my parents had told Max, I was a young woman who needed privacy. Max had made a room for himself in the dining room, which we never used, as we always ate in the kitchen. I took Mariko’s letter to my room and closed the door, and for several long seconds I just looked at the address on the envelope.
I turned the envelope over and gently ran my finger through the thin closure. It wasn’t a long letter, and I was a little sad to see that it was only two double-sided pages, but my disappointment was quickly swept away as I began to read:
Dearest Elise:
I so very much hope that you are still in Stuttgart and this letter finds you. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since I saw you last. Sometimes it seems like yesterday we were looking for shade in the heat of a Texas summer; sometimes it seems like a lifetime ago.
I know the last few months of the war were terrible in Germany. I hope you are all right.
We were repatriated, just like you, in September, after Japan surrendered. I don’t know why my father still wanted us to come here when the war was over. Someone I met on our ship told me we’d all had no choice.
Tokyo was a shattered city when we got here; I’ve never seen such devastation. We were living with my grandparents for a little while, but now we are in our own place again. I wish I could say everything is fine here now that the war is over, but it’s not. I suppose it’s not any better there.
The worst part for me is that in all the moving we’ve been having to do, my parents found all my old letters from Charles and they figured out he is not a girl from Los Angeles named Charlotte. Papa took all those letters and burned them. I can’t even tell you how mad I was. I said things I shouldn’t, and now my father is very angry with me. I should have kept my mouth shut and realized I don’t need Charles’s old letters. I have them all memorized anyway. What I need is to be quiet and compliant and just mark off the months until we’re both eighteen and can make our own decisions.
The family business was destroyed in the bombing, but my father has a longtime friend who is also in clothing manufacturing. Mr. Hayashi had gold and silver hidden away during the war, a lot of it, so he still has money and his business wasn’t bombed. He’s hired Papa as an assistant manager, which is why we have our own place. Papa is making a decent wage again, finally. I think he misses working outdoors among the cabbages and herbs, maybe even the bees, but he’s relieved to be making money again, even if there’s hardly anything to buy with it.
He is not talking to me right now, and my mother is on his side this time. So I spend a lot of time imagining our future life in New York.
I haven’t been able to write a word in Calista’s book since you left. I think her story is something we need to finish together, in Manhattan. That will be the perfect place to write “The End,” anyway. That’s where all the book publishers are.
I want you to write back to me, I do, but I’m afraid if my father sees a letter from you, he won’t give it to me. You’re too American, he thinks. Bad for me. I’ve tried to tell him you’re German, but I know you’re not, and apparently so does he.
So maybe you could send a letter to my grandparents’ house. That is the address on the envelope. My grandmother is my mother’s mother, not my father’s, so she might have pity on me and let me read a letter from you.
I miss you very much. And I miss Twinkies. We will be eighteen before you know it!
Your best friend,
Mariko
I read the letter over and over, savoring the words. I pictured packing my suitcase, kissing my parents and Max good-bye—there’d be tears, of course—and boarding a ship bound for America. I was more convinced than ever that I had to get a job so that I could start saving money for my passage. I was going to have to find a way to convince Papa to let someone hire me.