This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

“...you’re an idiot, Alex. Because you don’t say these kind of affections now. Not at 14 years old, not when we don’t have a chance of seeing each other for many years period no: you say it when you are 18 or 19, when you are old enough to travel to Paris and see me. When you are old enough to—maybe as a university student!—live here. That is when you say ‘I love you.’ You are an idiot!”

Charlie’s response to Alex’s confession that he loves her indicates that far from rejecting his feelings, she actually reciprocates them and shows her passionate, fiery personality. Alex initially misinterprets her feelings, and he will never have the opportunity to tell Charlie in person how he feels about her. Thus, these early childhood fantasies echo through the years and the tragedies that both pen pals endure, making their failure to find each other all the more tragic.

“But I am angry at the unfair things. All the nonsense I face because of who I am. Because I am Jewish. Our radios and bicycles taken away. Our phone lines turned off. We can’t use the public street phones, can’t enter parks or theaters or swimming pools or music halls or cafes, can’t borrow books from public libraries. Can’t even cross the Champs-Elysees.”

Charlie explains that the anger and frustration in her prior letter are derived from the increasingly hostile conditions she faces in Nazi-occupied Paris. Charlie’s description shows a vivid snapshot of the untenable situation that French Jews were being forced to endure: a direct parallel to the plight of Japanese Americans in early 1942.

“INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL JAPANESE LIVING ON BAINBRIDGE ISLAND.

All Japanese persons, both alien and nonalien, will be evacuated from this area by twelve noon, Monday, March 30, 1942.”

The official order for the removal of all people of Japanese descent from Alex’s hometown demonstrates the government’s official rhetoric concerning Alex and his family’s status in America. Issei are no longer just immigrants—they are seen as “aliens” who are deemed to be potential threats. Nisei are likewise called “nonaliens,” a sly bit of phrasing designed to bypass the protections that they should enjoy as full American citizens.

“I wish I could be more like you. I wish I could have the courage to fight back. To be a leaping frog. It’s too late for me now. I sat at the bottom of this pot for too long, naively hoping things would improve on their own. But I know you won’t make the same mistake. You’re a fighter, with spunk. You’re a leaping frog.”

Alex is impressed with Charlie’s small act of resistance against the Nazis in the movie theater. The leaping frog metaphor acknowledges the gradual buildup of evil that occurs when average people do nothing to stop it. Alex feels complicit in his own situation because he has not had the will or courage to resist the mistreatment of Japanese Americans.

“‘I just wanted to feel...normal. Like a regular American teen. Not a Jap. Not a nonalien. Just a normal teen boy getting to dance with a pretty girl at a school dance. And tonight, was my last chance. One last gasp before we go under.’”

The impending “evacuation,” coupled with the growing racism toward Japanese Americans has forced Alex to mature. Trying to go to the dance was his one act of rebellion before the family is moved to the concentration camp. In this quote, he deals with the painful realization that he and Frank will never be able to live as normal teenagers again.

“That’s America for you, Alex thinks. An absurd contradiction.”

When the Japanese Americans of Banbridge Island depart, they are greeted by a huge crowd of their white neighbors, all of whom are sorry to see them go…but none of whom stood up for them at any time before their forced removal from their home. Alex recognizes that this tragically absurd contradiction stands at the heart of America, a country simultaneously capable of accepting immigrants but also of subjecting them to tremendous acts of discrimination.

“More internees arrive, hundreds at a time from Los Angeles, from San Bernardino, from Stockton. They come aged and bent, muttering Japanese; they come clutching their mothers’ hands; they come blinking away dust, in disbelief at this city of tar-papered barracks. They come, the tired, the poor, these huddled masses yearning to break free.”

Over 10,000 ethnically Japanese people from the West Coast were imprisoned at Manzanar, and here Fukuda deliberately echoes the famous line from Emma Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus,” that stands inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. But here, Fukuda reverses the meaning of the original poem and conjures up an image not of immigrants welcomed to a new beginning, but of wretched, unwanted throngs “yearning to break free” of the injustices to which their country is subjecting them. The metaphor of freedom is thus subverted to one of imprisonment, highlighting the bitter irony of America’s decision to lock its own citizens away without the due process supposedly guaranteed by law.

“In the faint moonlight, Frank’s face seems harder than Alex has ever seen it. His eyes, which once glowed warmly, are as cold as the stark nightly searchlight beams that sweep across the barracks.”

Frank has changed since the Maki family was taken to Manzanar. His faith in America and his patriotism have been shaken, and he has become increasingly bitter and distant with Alex and their mother. While Frank’s bitterness is entirely understandable, his change of heart comes as a huge blow to Alex, who worshipped Frank as a hero and now must break free of his family’s expectations and follow his own convictions to forge a new path for himself in the world.

“Things in Paris have become much, much worse. A few days ago, all Jews were ordered to wear a big yellow star on our clothes. Maman says we must wear this star with pride. But I don’t agree. This is a badge of shame, a thing of disgrace, a bright yellow target on our chests.”

Charlie and Alex are mutually relieved to finally receive each other’s letters, though Alex’s relief is tempered by the increasingly dangerous situation that Charlie faces. The shame Charlie feels at having to wear the yellow Star of David parallels the shame Alex feels due to the persecution he has faced in America. Thus, the parallel stories of these two protagonists allow Fukuda to launch a sophisticated subtext that critiques many aspects of the injustices perpetuated on both the Jews and the Japanese Americans during World War II.

“Yesterday, she showed me these small slips of paper. I think she said they are magic pieces of paper: if I write a person’s name on the slip, I will appear to that person. Like a ghost (!), she said.”

After surviving the horrors of the Velodrome roundup with the help of Monsieur Shäfer, Charlie goes into hiding with a Sinti (Romani) family. The pieces of paper are the only example of an element of fantasy in the novel, but a necessary one, for after a certain point in the novel, they represent the only means by which the two can ever meet.

“He gets off his knee. Stumbles along. Dark barracks drift by like ghost ships on a cold dark sea. He is chased by words (purged, Judenrein), by numbers (nearly two million already slain), by phrases (there is burning alive... asphyxiation by carbon monoxide... starvation... embolism...), by a horror he cannot outpace; it chases him down. The good old-fashioned system of standing the victims up, very often naked, and machine gunning them, preferably beside the graves they themselves have been forced to dig. It saves time, labor, and transportation...”

The Nazis attempt to hide the atrocities of the Holocaust for as long as possible, but news gradually spreads, and this quote conveys a barrage of brutally visceral images designed to jar readers into a deeper understanding of the true horrors faced by the prisoners in the concentration camps. The reality of Charlie’s precarious situation devastates Alex, and it is a primary motivation for his decision to enlist in the army.

“Frank lets go of Alex’s jacket, dropping him into the chair. He glares down with raw contempt at Alex. ‘You don’t have what it takes to last out there on the battlefield, little kid,’ he murmurs through gritted teeth. ‘You won’t last an hour.’”

Frank views Alex’s choice to enlist as a form of betrayal; however, his anger is actually self-directed, goaded by his own sense of shame. Regardless, this is their last interaction for several years, something that Fukuda foreshadows will haunt Alex while he is away at war.

“Something about this man: a no-nonsense muscularity about him, a sincerity that is pure. Not a hint of patronage. A man who—Alex senses this in his gut—would be giving the same speech in the exact same tone to an assembly of white soldiers. Alex closes his eyes, lets the man’s words sink into his bloodstream. It is the first time he feels less like a tossed piece of rag and actually a soldier.”

In the army, Alex finds a level of acceptance he never felt in American society—just as the Japanese American Sergeant, Ben Koroki, promised when he addressed the assembly at Manzanar. Colonel Pence’s address to the new recruits is the first example of equal treatment Alex experiences, and this description infuses the scene with a sudden sense of hope, the idea that maybe, just maybe, Alex might have found a way out of his situation—a way to leap out of the boiling pot.

“Sweat trails down into his eyes. He blinks. And in that brief blink, he is back on Bainbridge Island. In his bedroom gazing down at Frank out back throwing the football. The high arching flight of the ball landing in a trash can set at ten-yard markers. Thirty yards. Fifty yards. Sixty yards.”

In the pressure of this battlefield moment, all the years that Alex spent watching Frank from the sidelines finally pay off, for he now possesses a superb ability to accurately estimate distances, making him an ideal candidate for the important field observer position: a role that—if performed well—can save lives and help to determine the success of a campaign. This is another yet example of the army allowing Alex to come into his own in a way that his civilian life as a Japanese American prevented him from doing.

“‘I have to say, I’m highly disappointed. After all these hard months of training, I expected more out of you.’ The corners of his mouth twitch into the faintest suggestion of amusement. ‘Next time,’ he says, looking at Mutt, ‘have the sense to beat the driver out of sight.’”

Captain Ensminger proves to be a progressive leader. Though he is white, he reacts to the all-Japanese American unit’s attack on the prejudiced white bus driver with wry amusement, an act that strongly implies that he is opposed to the racist treatment of the Black recruits for which Alex, Mutt, and the others attacked the driver.

“‘That’s what I’m most scared of. Not the dying part, not really. But when the billets start flying, I’m afraid I’ll, you know, freeze up.’

‘That happens, I’ll kick you forward.’ Mutt gives him a sideways glance. ‘Besides, your brother can shut up about you. The last I checked, there’s only one Maki brother fighting in this war. You’ll be fine.’”

Alex and Mutt become close friends, almost brothers, forming a close bond until Mutt’s death. In this quote, Mutt emphatically reminds Alex of his worth by telling him that he had the courage to do what Frank could not: to stand up in the face of injustice and enlist in the war effort.

“But these guys: they bleed red, white, and blue. Most of them are from Hawaii and they were never put into camps. Too many of them, and locking them away would’ve wrecked the local economy. So these Hawaii boys have no reason to distrust America. They love this country with a patriotism that is pure.”

Alex sends Frank V-mails (army mail), though Frank never returns his letters. Alex has overcome his initial prejudice against the Hawaiian recruits and now sees them as exemplary soldiers, comrades, and deeply patriotic Americans whose fervor is rubbing off on him and healing the long bitterness that he has held against his country in the face of the injustices perpetrated upon the Japanese American citizens. Thus, his battle comrades help to change his opinion of his own country and allow him to find some sense of forgiveness and move forward in his life.

“They thrust their blades over and over into the enemy’s chest, stomach, face, neck, as curses are thrown out in German and English and pidgin in a bloody tangle of arms and hands. One German spit out what must have been a curse as Mutt sinks his blade slowly into his throat, Ich habe zwei Tochter, Ich habe zwei Tochter, Ich habe zwei...”

This passage, as the 442nd Battalion fights the Germans on “Suicide Hill,” exemplifies the hellish and chaotic conditions of the battlefield. Language and understanding are broken down on all sides, exemplified by the misinterpretation of the German soldier’s repeated plea (“I have two daughters”) as a curse. This brief portrayal of the fear and desperation of soldiers on the opposite side of the conflict also serves to humanize the enemy combatants, who at their most basic level are just as terrified as the Americans they are compelled to fight on the battlefield…and with just as much to lose.

“The explosion is no more than a little pop. Not loud at all. A misfire, it must have been a misfire. He almost expects to see Mutt picking himself up, dusting off the ice and dirt, laughing.”

After the protracted chaos and violence of the battle he and Alex survived, Mutt’s death is almost mundane, an ironic, random casualty of war. Mutt had no way of knowing the Germans rigged the bodies of the fallen American soldiers with explosives. Though he had Mutt’s back throughout their many battles, Alex suffers the injustice of war in his helplessness and inability to save his comrade from becoming yet another casualty of a battle that has already concluded.

“You‘re the hero Alex. The leader, the real quarterback of this family, while all I‘ve done is warmed the bench. And it‘s been really tough for me to accept that. And I guess that‘s the true reason why I never wrote back to you. Because, yeah, I‘m pretty ashamed of myself. There, I said it. Ashamed. I feel like I let you all down these last two years. Some days, I can barely look father in the eye.”

After years of silence, Frank finally responds to Alex’s mail with an effusion of praise that has been bottled inside him throughout his long years of ashamed silence. His reluctance in getting in touch with his brother was borne from a deep feeling of shame due to his own inability to defend his family. In an ironic reversal of roles, he, the tough older brother let the weak younger brother take on the role that he should have accepted. Frank now looks up to Alex in the way that Alex used to look up to Frank.

“All these places in the city I love, Alex. I can almost feel myself already there with you, the sun warm on my face, the gentle breeze in my hair, the smells of boulangerie surrounding us, the sound of a street musician in the background, and your presence next to me, your hand in mine. It will be so good to be warmed under the same sunlight as you, to later lie under the same moonlight.”

In Charlie’s tragic and incomplete final letter to Alex, she fantasizes about the places in Paris she wants to show him, and the life she envisions for them together once the war is over. Although this is primarily a means of escape from her confined life in hiding, it is obvious that she means what she says, and that in some other reality, the two of them might have had a chance to make a life together based on the passion of their feelings for each other.

“He thinks of all those hundreds of letters over the years, for almost a decade. Thousands upon thousands of words scratched into existence. Her stories, her jokes, her thoughts, her hopes and fears. Written for him. Just for him. No one else ever read them; they were meant just for him. For a lonesome skinny American boy halfway across the world on a place called Bainbridge Island. Lonely Turtle Boy.”

It is not until Alex visits Charlie’s miraculously preserved room that he realizes that she is truly gone. Charlie’s faithful preservation of all of Alex’s letters and illustrations wordlessly demonstrates just how much she cared about him. The details Fukuda presents in Charlie’s room make her loss more concrete, humanizing her—and, in a way, all victims of the Holocaust—as more than just a statistic.

“He’s returned as something he never imagined he would become: a bona fide war hero, a member of the 442nd.”

The 442nd Regiment was one of the most decorated regiments in World War II, although Alex does not seem to care for battlefield accolades. The trauma of battle, and the loss of Charlie and Mutt far eclipses any sense of honor or accomplishment that might be gleaned from one’s battlefield actions. However, Alex is relieved to see that despite all he has been through, his beloved home of Bainbridge Island remains largely unchanged.