This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

At school on the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Alex tries to blend into the background. He is a loner and prefers reading books and drawing art to making friends, but among his white classmates and teachers on today of all days, he is acutely aware of his Japanese heritage. He is ignored by the gym teacher at the front of the school, and his homeroom teacher, Mr. Hanford, goes on a hostile tirade against the Japanese after reading a message from the principal calling for the school to remain inclusive of Japanese American students. He vows that America will send all the Japanese back to Tokyo. These displays are only the beginning, for Alex faces escalating incidents of bullying throughout the day. Someone writes on his locker and orders him to go home, using the same racial slur as Mr. Hanford. For safety reasons, Frank and Alex walk home together for the first time in years.

Three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Alex writes to Charlie about all of the new restrictions in the lives of Japanese Americans. Mr. Hanford has forbidden the nisei students from “defiling” the flag by reciting the pledge of allegiance; Alex rebels by saying it under his breath. When he finishes his letter, it is three in the morning. Frank, who uncharacteristically has trouble sleeping these days, checks in on Alex.

Alex asks Frank what he thinks will happen to them. Frank is confident that nothing will change. Alex asks if he is weird for having feelings for Charlie. (Before this conversation with Frank, Alex wrote a long letter confessing his feelings to Charlie, and when her reply finally arrived after six weeks of silence, she called him an “idiot” because they are too young and too far apart to act on their feelings. They let the topic drop after that.) To Alex’s surprise, Frank says that he envies his brother for having a friend that close. However, Frank advises him to stay grounded.

Early the next morning, Alex finds his father in the kitchen. He has been drinking, and when he drinks, he gets sentimental. Mr. Maki originally immigrated to the United States out of a sense of adventure. Like other issei, he first worked in a sawmill on Bainbridge Island, then became a farmer. His mother wrote to him twice a year until her death. Although Mr. Maki is an authority figure to his son, Alex’s respect for his father is diminished by his memories of Mr. Maki’s meek endurance of racist ridicule from a school bus full of out-of-town children years earlier.

When Alex and Frank return home from school that day, they find that the FBI has taken Mr. Maki and many other issei men away as part of a search for Japanese spies in the community. Alex has never before seen Frank so disturbed, and together they burn everything in the house that appears Japanese, particularly anything written in Kanji. Not even the letters from Alex’s grandmother are spared.

In a letter dated December 24, 1941, Charlie begs Alex to make friends. She is worried that he has nobody to connect with in his everyday life. She immediately sends another letter apologizing for her tone, explaining that she is angry about the recent restrictions that have been placed on her life for being Jewish. Alex is her only friend; her Jewish friends have fled Paris with their families, and Charlie does not want to have to leave. She wishes that she could have a magic door to visit Alex, but she worries that they don’t truly know each other, and that their letters only allow them to present false, idealized versions of who they really are.

Alex responds on January 16, 1942. Mr. Maki’s absence has left a void in his family, and even Frank is moody and gloomy. Alex assures Charlie that all he needs in life are comics, art supplies, and her. He wants Charlie to be less negative and to try to make friends, too.

Four FBI agents search the Makis’ home. They try to provoke Frank and confiscate some innocuous items. Alex asks when their father is coming back, and Frank chases them down and attempts to stop their car from leaving when they refuse to answer. Alex and Mrs. Maki stop him, and the agents speed off, leaving Frank in a quiet rage.

Alex writes to Charlie on January 19. He confesses to her that he lies to his father in letters, telling him that things are fine at home so that he will not worry. Alex has discovered Wonder Woman comics, which he likes, especially because this particular heroine fights Nazis and reminds him of Charlie. He encloses some pages torn from a Wonder Woman comic.

Charlie responds on Valentine’s Day. She is not very impressed with Wonder Woman, but she does like that the character has dark hair and eyes like her. Jewish people have been so demonized in Nazi-occupied France that it sometimes affects her self-image. In her next letter, Charlie laments that Paris is losing its vitality and says that her parents are arguing about whether or not to leave the city.

Alex writes back. Things have changed in a similar way on Bainbridge Island, and people are awkward around him. He describes having to catch and boil a frog for biology class to see if it will leap out of the pot, but he does not have the heart to kill it. He explains the experiment to Frank, who responds that they are just like the frogs because they take the abuse that society gives them and do not fight back. Frank is enraged by a racist political cartoon by Dr. Seuss. Ignoring his mother’s concern, he decides to write a petition for Mr. Maki’s release.

Alex finds his mother asleep, holding the only photograph of her and Mr. Maki. She had been a mail-order bride, and although he was much older, she grew to respect her husband. She once drunkenly told Alex that she let Mr. Maki touch her in the night because of the miraculous way he brought life into his farm in these foreign lands. Alex takes the photograph and stands it up on the table, staring at it for a while before covering his sleeping mother with a blanket.

Charlie’s letters from February 22 and 24 describe how Paris has become a hostile place. She is being discriminated against more and more for being a Jew. When a conductor tells her to leave a train car because she is Jewish, she worries that the Parisians have given up resisting the Nazis. Alex expresses his anger over the conductor’s treatment of Charlie, enclosing a drawing of himself punching the conductor in the face.

The day starts optimistically. Frank is convinced that his petition is working in Mr. Maki’s favor, and Alex finds a newspaper editorial calling for better treatment of the Japanese Americans on Bainbridge Island. However, on the way to school, Alex sees flyers around town announcing that all people of Japanese descent will be evacuated from the island on March 30. In addition, the town passes a curfew for people of Japanese descent, a decision that blocks Alex and Frank from attending the school dance even though it could easily be rescheduled to accommodate the curfew. They only have six days to get their affairs in order, including finding someone trustworthy enough to run the farm and someone to take care of their dog, Hero. Alex feels a deep, bitter shame for his race and heritage growing within him.

Alex is apprehensive in the days leading up to Frank’s big football game because it is scheduled to take place during curfew. Frank claims that he will be allowed to play and he forbids Alex from trying to attend, but Alex sneaks out anyway, for he looks up to Frank and has never missed one of his games. Sneaking through town on his bike and accompanied by Hero, Alex thinks of Charlie’s words: “Even the familiar places somehow feel threatening” (90). He watches the game from a distance until he realizes that the quarterback is not Frank. He hears Hero barking and turns to see Frank dressed in his football uniform and being escorted into a police car.

Alex follows the police cruiser. The cops let Frank out down the road from their house; they seem sympathetic. Frank is angry to see that Alex disobeyed him. Alex learns that the opposing football team called the police to say that Frank was breaking curfew, and the cops had to act. Looking more defeated than Alex has ever seen him, Frank forbids Alex from mentioning this incident ever again.

Charlie writes on March 28. Tired of feeling like a slowly boiling frog, she performs a small act of resistance by going to the cinema and whistling loudly during the Nazi propaganda reel. Many other people in the crowd join in, and the Nazi soldiers in attendance cannot discover who started it. She has heard of a Jewish teenager resistance group and wants to join them so that she can be the frog that leaps from the pot. Alex writes back to say that he is proud of her, and that it is too late for him to leap. He sends a drawing of a frog leaping from a boiling cauldron.

Alex, Frank, and Mrs. Maki pack their belongings and store them in the basement. Mrs. Maki strains from the labor of cleaning the house. A white man comes and offers to buy some of their belongings at outrageously low prices. Furious at his offer of one dollar for the family’s special, expensive China dinnerware, Mrs. Maki smashes the plates one by one. The man knocks the rest of the dishes over and tells them that the Japanese are getting what is coming to them and had better not ever come back to Bainbridge Island.

It is the last day before the evacuation. The Japanese American community is exhausted from the preparations, from packing, and from having to lease or sell their land and businesses. Alex is in a state of disbelief and wonders if their absence will even be noticed by the white community. When Alex has to return to the church after service to get his scarf, he comes across Jessica Tanner, who is genuinely remorseful that Alex has to leave. Alex spontaneously tells her that he plans to go to the school dance; if he leaves at 7:40pm, he can make it home before curfew. Jessica agrees to dance with him.

Alex changes into nicer clothes and some fashionable shoes that Charlie sent him years ago. He arrives at the dance right on time, but he is dismayed to find that nobody is there yet. Alex waits until after curfew, but Jessica does not show up. Frank arrives to take Alex home. He had a feeling that Alex would be at the dance.

Frank admires Alex for breaking the curfew, and Alex tries to explain to Frank why he went. He is worried that they will never get to feel like normal teenagers again. Back home, Alex daydreams about Jessica showing up at his house. He does not sleep that night.

While the family waits for the evacuation to begin, Frank finds a letter from Charlie in the mailbox at the last minute, and Alex saves it for the long journey ahead. They get into a military vehicle. This is the last time that Alex will see his family home. It does not seem real that his homeland can be so cruel to him when his family has done nothing wrong.

The military vehicle stops to pick up the Tanaka family and then continues on to the pier, where a crowd of detained Japanese Americans await the ferry that will take them away from the island. Suddenly, they are met by a crowd of white Bainbridge residents who have come to say goodbye to their Japanese American neighbors. Frank is greeted by his classmates and the football team, who give him a letterman jacket. Principal Dennis apologizes to them, saying the nation will never live down the shame of this injustice. Soon, the soldiers help them all onto the ship—something they were instructed not to do. Marveling at this display of kindness amidst the injustice, Alex thinks, “That’s America for you […] An absurd contradiction” (119). Most of the 227 evacuees stay on deck, exchanging goodbyes with the crowd across the water, and the ferry departs.

In Seattle, the evacuees are loaded onto a train. They still do not know how long the journey will be or even where they are going. Unable to sleep that night, Alex decides to read Charlie’s latest letter. Charlie tells of breaking curfew to look for the Eclaireurs Israelites, the Jewish teenage resistance group. Paris is empty at night, and she sneaks into the Luxembourg Gardens in the moonlight, thinking of Alex. She wishes that she could pull him closer to her so that they might walk around Paris at night together.

Two days pass on Alex’s train. Alex sees two young white boys at a slow crossing and flips them off before he realizes that they are waving hello. That same night, “the first train carrying 1,112 French Jews arrives at the Auschwitz concentration camp” (125).