And there on the banks of the Seine, even now, even after so many years, he imagines a woman strolling along. Her head turning with curiosity as she notices this floating lantern. Bending down to grab it before it floats past. A smile slowly lighting upon her lips.
Alex, she whispers, a glow in her face, a fire in her eyes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks to Susan Chang, editor par excellence, who has believed in this story from the start and guided it with wisdom and generosity. Thanks also to my agent, Catherine Drayton, for her continued support through the years.
I am grateful to those who helped shape the manuscript in myriad ways: Matthew Bird, Elizabeth Vaziri, Perri Lin, MaryAnn Johanson, and Augustin J. Farrugia.
My friends in Japan have impacted this book in ways large and small, and I am grateful for their lasting influence on me: John Blocksom, ChaCha Goss, Pat and Betty Kwan, Paul Miller, Chris Momose, Takashi and Kayoko Sano, Debby Sukita. Psalm 16:3 (ESV).
And as always, John, Chris, and Ching-Lee. L’amour d’une famille est quelque chose merveilleux.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Whenever I’m asked where I get my book ideas from, the question usually leaves me stumped. But with This Light Between Us, there’s a simple answer. The book was born when I learned, within days of each other, two independent historical facts.
The first: Anne Frank had an American pen pal.
The second: A subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp was liberated on April 29, 1945, by a segregated all–Japanese American military unit.
These two facts bumped about in my head for quite some time. I researched historical time lines and pondered creative possibilities. Ideas began to churn and spin. Gradually, two characters emerged from the thicket of my thinking, and I realized I had a story to tell.
This Light Between Us is primarily a work of fiction, but I’ve tried to stay true to historical actualities as much as possible. While the main characters are fictional, others, such as Major General John E. Dahlquist, Ned Campbell, Harry Ueno, James Kanagawa, James Ito, Sergeant Ben Kuroki, and Second Lieutenant Marty Higgins, are historical. Most of the key events—the Bainbridge Island evacuation, the Manzanar riot, the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, the Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the rescue of the Lost Battalion, to name a few—are drawn from the pages of history, and depicted here with restrained artistic license. In other minor instances I’ve exercised less restraint in order to maintain narrative flow. A high school football game being played in March is one such example.
Many thanks to my college professor, Dr. Gary Y. Okihiro, who in a classroom many years ago first introduced me to the history of the internment camps. His tempered anguish about their injustice resonated in me and left a mark that never went away. It is a history always threatening to repeat itself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
RECOMMENDED READING
In my research for this novel, I drew upon a number of reference works. Those listed below were especially helpful.
Asahina, Robert. Just Americans: How Japanese Americans Won a War at Home and Abroad. New York: Gotham Books, 2007.
Berr, Hélène. The Journal of Hélène Berr. New York: Weinstein Books, 2008.
Duus, Masayo Umezawa. Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.
Gordon, Linda, and Okihiro, Gary Y. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki, and Houston, James D. Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1973.
McCaffrey, James M. Going for Broke: Japanese American Soldiers in the War Against Nazi Germany. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.
Rees, Laurence. The Holocaust: A New History. New York: PublicAffairs, 2017.
Reeves, Richard. Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II. New York: Picador, 2015.
Rosbottom, Ronald C. When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940–1944. New York: Back Bay Books, 2014.
Williams, Arthur L. Reflecting on WWII, Manzanar, and the WRA. Victoria, BC: FriesenPress, 2014.
I am especially grateful for Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, whose extensive digital collections online (https://ddr.densho.org/) proved to be invaluable. The thousands of photographs, journalistic articles, and letters available on their website enabled me to gain a fleshed-out feel for this time period. The many detailed personal interviews with former internees and 442nd veterans were essential to my research. I hope their collective voices are always heard.
ALSO BY ANDREW FUKUDA
Crossing
The Hunt
The Prey
The Trap
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Manhattan and raised in Hong Kong, ANDREW FUKUDA earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Cornell University and worked as a criminal prosecutor for seven years before becoming a full-time writer. Fukuda’s experience volunteering with the immigrant teen community in Manhattan’s Chinatown led to the writing of Crossing, his debut novel that was selected by American Library Association Booklist as an Editors’ Choice, Top Ten First Novel, and Top Ten Crime Novel. He currently resides on Long Island, New York, with his family.
Author website: www.andrewfukuda.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Facebook: andrew.x.fukuda
Twitter: @AndrewFukuda
Instagram: @andrew_fukuda
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prelude
Chapter 1
Part One: Bainbridge Island, Washington America
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Two: Manzanar War Relocation Center
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Part Three: War
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Part Four: Charlie Lévy
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Bibliography
Also by Andrew Fukuda
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THIS LIGHT BETWEEN US: A NOVEL OF WORLD WAR II
Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Fukuda
Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Euan Cook
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Lesley Worrell
Cover photographs: girl © Jill Hyland/Arcangel; boy © Jonathan Barket; planes © Shutterstock.com; background © Lee Avison/Trevillion Images
A Tor Teen Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fukuda, Andrew Xia, author.
Title: This light between us / Andrew Fukuda.
Description: First edition.|New York: Tor Teen, 2020.|“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2019041410 (print)|LCCN 2019041411 (ebook)|ISBN
9781250192387 (hardcover)|ISBN 9781250192370 (ebook)|ISBN 9781250762573 (international)
Subjects: United States. Army. Regimental Combat Team, 442nd—Fiction. Pen pals—Fiction. Friendship—Fiction. Prejudices—Fiction. Japanese Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945—Fiction. Jews—France—Paris—Fiction. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.F9515375 (print)|PZ7.F9515375 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041410
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041411
eISBN 9781250192370
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First Edition: January 2020