“?‘Since you asked in your last letter, I’m still doing just fine, though the house is silent without you. It misses you very much, just like I do. I will write more soon, but I just wanted you to know that even the architecture is longing to see you.’?”
John looked at Christian and smiled even more broadly. “It’s from her father, of course,” he said, pointing at the name at the bottom of the letter. “This says ‘father.’ Or more like ‘papa.’ That’s a better translation.” John put the envelope on top of the letter and pointed to the sender’s information. “Norio Kato. That is her father. And it looks like he’s sent the letter from the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo. Probably increased its chances of arrival here. Though certainly of being read by censors, too. Looks like they were humane with this one. Didn’t black out a thing.”
“Does it really say that?” said Christian, grabbing the letter back, barely hearing John’s last words. “It says that? Love? About me. Are you sure? To her father? Can you check again?”
“It does,” said John, keeping his grip on the envelope. “Looks like you made a bigger impression on Emiko than you’re aware of. But that’s how it is with women like her, a reserved Japanese woman from a certain echelon of society. She probably kept her feelings closer to the heart than you did.”
“Could you write down the translation?” said Christian, holding the letter more carefully, afraid to crease it, the words on the page starting to float under his gaze. “I don’t want to forget what it says.”
John went inside to fetch a pen, then jotted down his translation of the contents on the back of the white envelope. On the front he translated the address of the Ministry and Emi’s father’s name.
Christian read what John had written. “Very much in love.” He knew he would think about the letter every day until he saw Emi again.
“What will you do with it?” John asked.
“I don’t know,” said Christian, smoothing it. “Keep it, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. Stealing a letter about oneself is not really stealing.”
Christian put the piece of paper back in the envelope and said, “Maybe one day I’ll get to Japan. When the war is over and the world is normal again.”
“Who knows if that will ever happen?” said John. “And what if the world is even harder to travel around in after the war? If I were young and in love like you, I’d try to do something now.”
“I have to repatriate with my parents to Germany,” said Christian. “And even that’s not happening anytime soon. They keep saying end of ’44. Maybe ’45.”
“There is a way you don’t have to go to Germany,” said John, gazing at the Katos’ former house.
“Which is?” said Christian surprised. His heart started to beat faster as he watched John, still poker-faced.
“It’s simple,” said John, turning his attention back to Christian. “Enlist.”
CHAPTER 14
EMI KATO
SEPTEMBER 1943
Emi looked out the window of the train that was humming along from San Antonio to New York. Four hours into the journey and she had already grown tired of looking at desolate landscapes and the run-down houses that lined the tracks. She thought about what she used to see from the train windows when she lived in Austria: the artfully constructed buildings, picturesque villages, the imposing mountain range near Vienna. She hoped that at the end of the war, some of that beauty would remain.
After two nearly sleepless nights, kept up by crying, snoring, and other people’s motion sickness, Emi finally saw hints of New York in front of her and felt the sting of longing for her former life. What a way to come into the city, she thought. She had made the trip many times from Washington with her parents before the Pearl Harbor attack, as there was a Japanese consulate there. She had always worn new clothes for the trip, and they traveled in first class. Now that lifestyle was gone. Emi and her mother were arriving in New York as part of a trainload of people the Americans hated—even though many were American themselves—ready to be traded for 1,340 people the country deemed far more important.
In Japan and Germany there were Americans that the government cared for, that they wanted returned safely: Missionaries, teachers, journalists, POWs. Japanese-Americans and German-Americans would go in their places, even though many had never lived in their so-called mother countries. The government found their heritage suspicious, and that was enough to send them into war-torn nations to get the more valuable Americans back.
It was September 2. The ship they would soon board—the MS Gripsholm, the same Swedish vessel her father had traveled on—was not expected to reach Japan until November. The Japanese passengers, including 169 from Crystal City, would be traded in the port city of Goa in Portuguese India, switching ships in the process. They would transfer to a smaller Japanese ship, the Teia Maru, and the Americans coming from Japan would board the Gripsholm. But before the Gripsholm reached Goa, it would travel to Brazil and Uruguay to pick up more Japanese who had not been interned in America but were still being traded. After the trade in Goa, they would make stops in Singapore and the Philippines before finally reaching Yokohama.
As New York City came into focus, Keiko passed Emi a bowl of rice with pickles on top that she’d packed for the journey. She handed her two chopsticks, which were wrapped with a few other utensils in a white towel, and told her to eat. She was no longer wearing the homemade dresses she wore in the camp or on the first days of the train journey, but one that she’d worn to embassy lunches in Washington. Emi eyed the pretty scalloped neckline and Keiko said, “I couldn’t bring myself to wear rags for our arrival in New York City. I haven’t lost myself just yet.” She ran her left hand across the stomach of her dress and pushed the food toward Emi again.
“All we’ve eaten the whole year is rice,” said Emi, reluctantly accepting the bowl. “My body feels like it’s made of small white grains.”
“You should be thankful,” said Keiko. “The people in Japan are starving, some to death, and that’s where we’re headed. The boat, the Gripsholm, it won’t be the way you’re used to traveling. Who knows what kind of food we will have? It could all be spoiled. So eat the small white grains while you can.”
“I’ll try,” said Emi. She put the bowl down on her lap and turned away from her mother, listening to the conversations around her instead. Two women appeared to agree that they weren’t nervous to return to Japan since the country was winning the war.
“What do they know?” said Emi, rolling her eyes at her mother. “Our access to the news is severely restricted. No one really knows how well or badly Japan is doing. If you listen to the Americans gossip, the Japanese are losing, and fast.”
“Don’t think of speaking like that around your father,” said Keiko, looking disapprovingly at Emi. “The government is sure that Japan won’t lose.”
“Everyone loses sometimes.”
“Not this time.” Keiko took Emi’s bowl and said quietly, “Since you’re already so combative, maybe this is the right time to finally talk about that American boy. Christian.”