“When you’re married!” said Norio. “Until then, I decide. You will be going to Karuizawa and you can thank me at the end of the war when you are still alive. Many people are leaving.”
“Your father has made up his mind,” said Keiko. “Now go and change that dress. That internment camp clothing all needs to be burned. Throw it in the garbage.”
“We will come there to see you,” said Norio. “We are allowed to travel and will visit you. Perhaps not often, but we will see each other, I promise. You will not endure the war alone, but you will not endure it here. You will see. People are going to start sending their children away as fast as they can when they realize what is to come.”
“But you don’t know what is to come,” said Emi angrily.
“Emiko, from where I am standing, I have much more of an ability to gauge the temperature of our country. Our government. Let’s just agree that what I say goes.”
“I don’t know why you are acting like an oracle of the war,” said Emi angrily. “You do not have a direct line to the emperor.”
“Emiko! How dare you speak to your father that way,” said her mother, shaking her daughter by the shoulders.
“It’s been you and me stuck together for the last year and now you can be rid of me so quickly?” Emi said to her mother, taking a step back. “Why don’t you seem more upset? Won’t you miss me?”
“You have to trust me on this,” said Norio, calmly. “The army controls every aspect of the press. What you are reading in newspapers here, hearing on the radio—that is not really what’s happening in this country. Even if the men in charge of running the newspapers haven’t been brainwashed, they have no choice in what to write. Normal citizens like you do not have the opportunity to hear what I’m hearing. The failures of war are being suppressed to a point that causes panic in me, Emiko,” he said, raising his voice. “Panic.”
“But you usually tell me everything,” said Emi. “You haven’t spoken to me about this—not to this extent—since I returned.”
“I am speaking to you about it now. With a candor that scares me. But everything scares me these days. I scare myself. The way this country is feeding lies about our war efforts and causing these innocent people to follow in their dangerous mentality. That terrifies me.”
“But I want to stay. I don’t care about the risk. I—”
“It was my idea,” said Keiko, cutting off her daughter. “Sending you away was my idea.” She shook her head, her frustration apparent. “Your father hasn’t wanted to alarm you, but he hasn’t been so kind with me. And with the small advantage we have getting to the truth also comes a tremendous responsibility to try to get you to safety. We don’t know with absolute certainty that Karuizawa will remain unharmed, but your father tells me that it is without a doubt safer than Tokyo, or anywhere else in the country, so you are without a doubt going.”
Emi could tell that her mother was angry with her, disappointed in her tone, but also very worried about her.
“Why don’t you come with me, then?” Emi asked quietly.
“Your father needs me here,” said Keiko, looking at her husband. “And we aren’t worried about ourselves, we are worried about you.”
“This is upsetting for you now,” said Norio. “But if you were to see more of this city, of what this place has become, you would be thanking us. The blind patriotism in this country . . .” He sighed and pushed his chair away from the table. “I love Japan. I have made myself a servant of it. But I don’t recognize my country. In the streetcars, people bow every few blocks. They bow at the Yasukuni Shrine and at the palace. There are soldiers everywhere, fancy Western clothing on women is frowned upon—we have no more freedom. And the limitless power of the military . . . it’s just . . . it’s a very changed place.”
“I won’t know, will I?” said Emi. “I’ll be alone in the middle of nowhere.”
“You don’t want to know!” Norio shouted. He was not quick to anger but was used to a great deal of respect from his daughter. “Haven’t you noticed that every night we have to black out the windows, that there are air drills constantly, and the thought of bombings colors everything we do in our daily lives? We now have cement water tanks that we are required to keep full so we can help put out a fire caused by a bombing.”
He stood up and walked to the kitchen, coming back with a long pole tied with strips of faded blue cloth. “This is to put out a fire on the roof, and you’ve seen the piles of sandbags behind the house in case a bomb falls in our vicinity. Do you understand, Emi? We are going to be bombed here. You’ll have to be trained to do a bucket brigade and learn how to climb a ladder and pour water on the roof in case of fire. All the women here are trained for that. Is that how you want to live? In constant fear?”
“And due to those annoyances, I am being sent away. Because you’re worried about me having to bow when I take a streetcar.”
“No,” said Norio, closing his eyes. “I’m worried that you will be killed when you take a streetcar.”
CHAPTER 22
LEO HARTMANN
MAY 1943
We treat you good, Jewish! Hurry up. Don’t scare! We treat you good!”
Leo heard the insistent, Chinese-accented voice call after him as he hurried to keep up with his parents.
“Don’t scare, Jewish!” the voice came again. Leo looked back to see a man hauling a rickshaw pursuing him doggedly along the crowded street. Long splinters flared from the vehicle’s handles and the wheels wobbled, but the operator was in worse shape. His hands and bare feet were brown and calloused from years outdoors in the grime of Shanghai. The wind was whipping through the alley where the Hartmanns were walking in Hongkew, one of the poorest corners of Shanghai, but the rickshaw puller was in thin rags, his unrelenting physical effort the only thing keeping him healthy enough to stay alive.