If she was going to be there to help him through his nightmares, they were going to have to get married fast so she'd be there during his nights. She grinned to herself. She hoped Paul would realize the good that would come from their being wed as quickly as they could arrange it.
Debbie looked out the window of her second-floor bedroom. Snow was on the ground and she wondered if it would still be there when Paul returned. She hoped it would. That would mean they'd be together soon.
Chapter 86
Mitsu Okimura walked over to the bunk where the young man who was now her good friend sat propped up and reading a book. When he saw her, he dropped the book on his lap and smiled.
Mitsu shyly returned the smile, but decided to be a nurse before succumbing to the pleasure of his company. She pulled back the covers and checked the wounds on his leg. The infections had almost all but disappeared, and the color of the surrounding skin was healthy. In a way, this dismayed her, as it meant he might be well enough to move on.
"Will I live?" Joe Nomura teased her. She was so serious, he thought, but so pretty.
"Very likely," she answered primly, but the twinkle in her eye betrayed her.
It was an easy thing to say now. Earlier, it had not been so definite. Nomura had shown up at the hospital almost delirious with fever and with a leg swollen to twice its normal size. Dr. Tanaka had considered amputation but decided against it because the young man had already lost an arm. Tanaka, with Mitsu assisting, had spent hours probing the infected flesh for the pieces of shrapnel that had caused the problem. Against all odds, they had succeeded through a combination of Tanaka's skill, and American sulfa and penicillin. There would be scars, but they would recede over time. When he was fully healed, Nomura wouldn't even limp.
Mitsu dropped the blanket back over his legs. "I have a question for you."
"Ask it."
"Several times I have had night duty and come by to see how you were. On a couple of occasions, you were thrashing in your sleep and speaking words I didn't quite understand."
Joe was touched that she would single him out for such care. Peace had brought a dramatic reduction in the number of patients, which meant she was free to indulge in him if she so wished. That she so wished was a pleasant thought.
The American field hospital he'd been trying to reach had closed up and moved for the same reason- no more customers. But now, what did he tell her? Well, he would begin with the truth, at least a little of it.
"It was probably English, Mitsu. I speak it very well."
Her eyes widened. "I thought so. I have learned a little of it here, and I thought I recognized some of the words. Have you been to America?"
He laughed. She said it as if it were some sort of holy place. "Yes. I spent some years in Hawaii."
"I would like to see America someday," she said solemnly. Mitsu eased him out of the bed and up to a standing position. He put his arm around her slight but strong shoulders, and she put hers around his waist. It was time to strengthen his legs so he could walk unaided. Already she suspected he didn't need to have his arm about her, but it was rather pleasant so she did not comment on it. So too she liked the feel of his body under her hands.
"Wouldn't you be afraid of all the Americans?" he asked.
"No," she said firmly. "At least not anymore." Proximity to the American hospital had shown her that the GIs were nothing but little boys who were as normal as Japanese men, just larger and louder.
"But what about the war, Mitsu? Weren't they your enemy?"
Mitsu was puzzled. Why had he said your enemy rather than our? "Once I hated the Americans. Now I realize that the whole war was an evil wrong that should never have happened. Now I realize too that the Japanese people were duped by warlords. No, Jochi, the Americans are not my enemy. They never were."
They stepped outside. It was chilly, but far from unpleasant. Besides, he could feel one of her small breasts against his side, and that was definitely keeping him warm. In the distance, he saw a car coming down the road.
"Mitsu, did you hear about American-born Japanese who helped the Americans invade Kyushu by spying on the Japanese and performing acts of sabotage?"
She nodded against his shoulder in such a way that he couldn't see her face. "And you're one of them, aren't you?"
Joe took a deep breath. At least that's over with, he thought. "Yes. Will you hate me for that?"
Mitsu looked up at him. Her dark eyes were clear with understanding. "You served your country. How could you be hated for doing that? Tell me, did anything you did truly help end the war?"
He laughed, surprising her. "Yes, Mitsu, it definitely did."
She smiled and squeezed him. "Then that was good and you are good." The car was drawing closer. Probably more American doctors looking for possible radiation-sickness victims, she thought. They couldn't quite believe there weren't any at the hospital.
"Jochi, when you leave, where will you go?"
"Back to Hawaii."
"I wish to go with you."
He was stunned and thrilled. She felt as deeply as he did. He hadn't been imagining it. They'd only known each other for a couple of weeks, but it felt like forever.
"What about your family?" Mitsu's mother and sister had been located in the north. There had been a brief reunion and a parting that had left Mitsu unsettled.
"They will soon move to Yokohama to be with cousins. I have no desire to be with them. They are rooted in self-pity and the past, while I wish to live in the future. Now, will you take me with you to Hawaii?"
"Of course." He pulled her closer to him. The car had stopped almost directly in front of them. "It won't be a problem. I think I'm owed some pretty big favors by some very important people."
The car doors opened. OSS agents Peters and Johnson stepped out. They grinned happily and waved when they saw Joe. Joe laughed. "What the hell took you guys so long?"
Chapter 87
"Gonna miss you, Jim," President Harry Truman said as he reluctantly accepted his secretary of state's letter of resignation. "You did a helluva job under some rotten conditions."
Byrnes shrugged, but the compliment pleased him. He had hoped to give it another year or so at State, but the pressures of the job in the past several months had accelerated the overall deterioration of his health. All his ambitions were now behind him.
"Harry, if I want to live to enjoy my retirement, I'd better go now. At any rate, General Marshall will do an outstanding job as my replacement. Sometimes I get the feeling Marshall's been prepping for this all his life. He's the man to shepherd the new world as it develops."
After a few minutes of small talk, Byrnes departed, leaving Truman with his many thoughts.
First and foremost, World War II was over and now the world was learning the true nature of nuclear warfare. Scientists from many nations were examining the ruins of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, and the residue of the straits bomb. Radiation, so casually dismissed as a factor in earlier calculations, was being redefined as a deadly killer that never stopped killing.
Truman knew that a portion of the world's population would forever castigate him for using the terrible weapon, but he had done so with a clear conscience and the hope that the bomb would bring an early end to the war. That the war had not finally concluded until the early months of 1946 was sad, but not as awful as it could have been for either side had it dragged on even longer.
In the war's beginning, many predictions had called for fighting the Japanese until the latter part of the 1940s. "The Golden Gate in '48" had been the GIs' sarcastic lament. It meant that they themselves did not figure to get home until 1948. Truman considered himself responsible for doing much better than that.