“What?” said Emi, trying to look shocked.
“Oh, Emiko. Let’s just speak plainly, please,” said Keiko leaning tiredly against the window. “You know that I was aware of your relationship with him since the night it started. I was just polite enough to let you do as you wished. You’re twenty-one years old; too old to be policed. Besides, when he came to Crystal City, you were finally happy and I was sick of having such a sad child. I should have thanked him before I left.”
“I appreciate you not saying anything all these months,” said Emi. “Not intervening.”
“I know you do,” said Keiko, gently. “But you do realize it was the talk of the camp, don’t you? At least on our side. I tried to silence the rumors, even if they were true. Mostly, I just didn’t want it all to get back to you and ruin your joy.”
“You think it was true? What people were saying about us?” said Emi, wondering why she had waited for so long to confide in her mother. She forgot that when her father wasn’t around, her mother could be decidedly more modern.
“I know it was true,” Keiko replied, gesturing to Emi’s food again. “I’ve seen you in love before.”
“That was a long time ago,” said Emi.
Keiko moved seats and sat next to her daughter. “Was it? Only for someone so young would that seem like a long time ago.” She smiled and readjusted one of the hairpins struggling to hold her hair in place.
“Christian, he was nothing like Leo,” said Emi. “He was really just a pleasant distraction.”
“I don’t think so, Emiko,” said her mother, still looking out the window and away from her daughter. “I think you’re lying to yourself if you really believe that.”
“Perhaps,” said Emi, leaning against her mother, bending her neck to an uncomfortable angle. “I didn’t think I had the capacity to feel anything for anyone but Leo. Ever. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Our hearts aren’t built like that,” said Keiko. “It’s a romantic notion to think so, but for the most part, they have a large capacity to love.” She reached over and fed her daughter a bite of rice, as Emi still hadn’t touched her food. “Many of our neighbors, they suggested I interfere. And if he had just been a distraction, a nothing much, I might have. But I could tell he meant something to you. That he was bringing you a joy that no one else had been capable of since Leo. I couldn’t bring myself to rob you of that.”
“I did finally feel happy,” Emi admitted. “He was different.” She looked at her mother and smiled. “Christian, he managed to pull me out of my—what did you call it?”
“Ungrateful haze,” said Keiko laughing.
“Yes, that’s it. He pulled me out of my ungrateful haze. The one I’ve been in—according to you—since we left Europe. But Christian doesn’t matter now. We are going back to Japan, he will go to Germany in a few months—”
“No. They say the German repatriation voyage won’t be for another year,” her mother corrected. “He’ll be in Crystal City much longer than we were. Well into 1944.”
“Well, I am not convinced that we’re headed anywhere better. At least bombs didn’t fall from the sky in Texas.”
“Tokyo will be safe for us,” said Keiko. “Your father said we shouldn’t be afraid. Like I said, people are starving, but we won’t be. The government will take care of us.”
“He would say that if there were corpses falling from the sky. He knows how you are. He doesn’t want to scare you and he wants us home.”
“Emi, your father has a high position in Prime Minister Tōjō’s government. That will give us preferential treatment. Haven’t we always had preferential treatment?”
“Yes. We will get to eat the day-old rats instead of the week-old rats. How wonderful. And I don’t know why you think father is so loyal to the government. I don’t think he even believes we should be fighting.”
“Watch what you say!” Keiko hissed at her. “You’re not in an internment camp anymore. You’re on your way back to Japan, a country you will be loyal to when you arrive.”
“Of course I’m loyal,” said Emi. “But that doesn’t mean I think we are right. Any country that aligns itself with the German Reich can’t be right.”
“Emiko, we’ve gone over this,” said Keiko, exasperated. “You are Japanese and you will act like it starting right now. You will be as loyal a patriot as the soldiers fighting the war as soon as your toe is on that boat.”
When the train finally chugged to a labored stop in New York and disgorged its passengers, Emi and Keiko took a walk along the platform to stretch their legs and revel for a moment in the absence of barbed wire.
“It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it?” said Keiko. “To be almost free.”
“I don’t feel free,” said Emi, looking out at the New York skyline. One of the armed guards helping to herd them to the port pushed her shoulder and told her to move up and join the line. They had to be questioned and searched before boarding the massive ship.
They all piled into a row of buses that blew gray smoke and seemed to have only a few miles left in them. “This is a prison bus,” she heard a man say, pointing to the words “Correctional Facility” painted inside. Emi gave them a quick glance but the bus turned a corner, jostling the passengers, and there it was, the boat that would transport them to a country at war.
When they had lined up again on the dock, Emi stared up at the enormous freighter with the words GRIPSHOLM SVERIGE printed on the side and DIPLOMAT written above that, all in bold block letters. This boat, it was clear, was not to be blown up. Sweden was a neutral country and the boat was to sail fully illuminated at night, a Christmas tree of the sea. O’Rourke had told them not to fear for their safety on board, that as long as they took care of their health, they would arrive back in Japan in good shape.
“Only to be killed there,” one of the Japanese-American teenagers had said, loudly, but O’Rourke had ignored him. What happened to them once they were on Japanese soil was not his concern.