As night fell, Emi was surprised to see that none of the stations the train chugged through were properly illuminated. Instead of electric lights, there were only fragile white paper lanterns, held by railway officials on the platforms. But the train did not stop at the smaller stations, steaming steadily ahead to the mountains and Yokokawa, where they would switch to electric power.
When she was just drifting off to sleep, the soldiers came stomping back into her car, jarring not only for the noise they made, but because they were the only people on the train who smelled clean. In their moss-green uniforms, their armbands stiff and proud on their biceps, they made it clear they were looking for anyone suspicious and that they alone defined what the term meant. Luckily for Emi, it didn’t mean her. They walked by without a look in her direction and she pressed her face against the window, listening to her ears pop as they climbed higher.
Two and a half hours after the train left Tokyo, it reached the large station of Yokokawa, gateway to the Kiso Mountains. Though the passengers were not let off the train if they were not disembarking there, the enterprising locals knew they would be bored and hungry. Roaming vendors sold hot tea and rice balls wrapped with seaweed to the passengers, who awaited them with open windows, despite the exorbitant prices.
Worried about how much she’d get to eat in Karuizawa, especially without her father to help her, Emi bought five rice balls and put them in her traveling bag. She looked out at the town, where if the streets hadn’t been bathed in only soft lantern light she knew she would have seen a large statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. She closed her eyes and prayed to her for safety.
They were in Yokokawa longer than Emi had expected, to allow for the change of track and the switch from a steam engine to an electric-powered one, the train officials explained. The children had their heads hanging out the windows, despite the cold December weather, to watch the engine swap, craning their little necks as far as their mothers would let them.
As Emi finally slept, the train raced through the mountain towns, navigating more than twenty narrow brick tunnels before slowing to pull them up thousands of feet to the resort town of Karuizawa.
Emi’s father had told her that it was Western residents that had made the town so popular as they fled there in the summer months to escape the heat of the cities. The altitude kept it cool, and according to Norio, Westerners found the active volcano picturesque. But it wasn’t anywhere near as glamorous as some of the resort towns they had visited when in Austria and Germany, like Marienbad and Baden-Baden, he warned. There were a few hotels that catered to the rich, but the town was mostly dotted with modest summer cottages. The main draw was the weather, and the beauty of nature, not the architecture. Norio had drawn Emi a map, which showed that the town was originally a resting place for travelers going southeast to Tokyo and Yokohama or going west to Matsumoto Castle and Nagoya.
Emi’s eyes were just blinking open when the train eventually glided to a stop shortly after midnight.
A porter arrived to help the women with their suitcases, a man too old to be doing such a job, while Emi stood and watched the groups of women—mothers and daughters, sisters—feeling, for the first time in many years, terribly alone. Her mother had been her companion ever since the war broke out, but here she was by herself. They didn’t see eye to eye on everything, and they had gotten into arguments that they would not have dared engage in around Norio, but Emi could not have imagined her last few years without Keiko’s companionship. She leaned against the open door, wishing she was leaning against her mother, and didn’t move until the conductor warned that the train would be leaving.
When Emi stepped onto the platform, her lungs filled with fresh mountain air and she felt immediately calmer. Her parents had sworn she’d been to Karuizawa as a young child, but looking around she had no recollection of the station.
Emi stood for fifteen minutes on the dark platform, now nearly deserted, before walking to the entrance and waiting by the ticket counter instead. Her father had said Mrs. Mori was to meet her, but since Emi did not know what she looked like, besides an older Japanese woman, she would just have to wait and let herself be found.
After thirty minutes, it was clear that she was not going to be collected by Mrs. Mori or anyone else, and all the taxis that had been lingering in front of the station when the train arrived—the last train of the night—were gone.
The Moris, Emi concluded, had forgotten about her.
Emi knew very little of the Moris, besides the fact that Jiro had been a diplomat in London and Washington. His wife, Yuka, had gone to grade school in America. They didn’t seem like the worst people to be dispatched to, sounding like older versions of her parents, but that made the reality even more preposterous to Emi. Standin parents when she could have just stayed with hers.
Emi had the Moris’ address, but since it was very dark outside, she didn’t trust herself to start wandering the town searching for the house. And even though she had been forced to live in it in America, Emi wasn’t comfortable in the countryside. She looked at the address—which was no more than the house number, as was typical for Japan, as very few streets had names—and considered her options.
Emi took a few steps away from the station, turning onto what felt like the town’s main road, the ginza. In the dark she could just make out a few small stores, some with signs outside in English. A photographer’s store, a furniture store. Perhaps some proprietor would be open late and might know the Moris. She was about to pick up her suitcases and head to a shop where a light still burned when she heard a voice ask in heavily accented Japanese if she needed any help. She turned and saw two soldiers approaching—Germans, she knew immediately from the swastikas on their armbands. They walked up to her with interest.
Out of instinct she shook her head no.
“Are you sure?” the other one asked in German, gesturing that he was happy to pick up her bags.
Not thinking before she spoke, Emi responded in German that she could handle her luggage alone, but thank you. They both stopped short.
“Who are you?” the thinner of the two asked. “A Japanese woman speaking German?”
Emi guessed that the soldiers were not used to being treated with hatred or fear by the Japanese. Her father had warned her that she would be one of the only people in Japan who had seen, who understood, that the Nazis were torturing the Jews. Information was extremely controlled in Japan, Norio warned. When he had told their neighbors in Tokyo about Kristallnacht, what they had seen in Vienna, they did not believe him. The average citizens knew nothing about what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Europe. All they knew were that the Germans were on the side of the Japanese, and that they were going to win, they were quite sure of that. Japan was a hierarchical society, her father had reminded her when she’d come back, and no one dared question what was proclaimed from the top, except those familiar with America and Europe. Men like him.