Dear Major Davies,
I have a friend who says it’s best to start out communications with a compliment when possible. So let me say that the Fort Snelling letterhead is appropriately impressive without being gaudy.
On to the bad news. I regret that I must decline your offer of a translator position in Ironside Lake. Must emphatically decline.
My program of study here at the University of Minnesota is much too demanding to allow for any break. I had intended to take summer courses as well, so it would be impossible for me to spend nine months in a prison camp. Besides that, the scholarship donor allowing me to be here would not look kindly on a long leave of absence.
Peter Ito is quite right that I am qualified for the position. (I’m assuming he was the one who spoke to you.) Probably overqualified, since I am also fluent in French, Danish, Greek, and Latin and have begun studying Japanese. But I’m afraid you’ll need to find someone else. Might I recommend asking in New Weimar? It’s a forestry town, and most of their population emigrated from Germany only a generation or two back. I used to pick up phrases when my family stopped at a filling station on our annual trip to Duluth, which is what prompted my interest in the language.
As for my being a godsend, I hope this won’t shake your faith, but God already sent me here. To Minneapolis. And here I will stay until I’ve gotten my degree and can start the work I’ve dreamed of all my life, hopefully in Oxford, England, and certainly not in Ironside Lake.
Again, I appreciate being considered, and the stationery really is striking. I wish you all the best in finding a better-suited candidate.
Sincerely,
Johanna Berglund
From Johanna Berglund to Peter Ito
January 27, 1944
Dear Peter,
You’ve really done it this time. I can’t decide whether to upbraid you for your treachery or to thank you for the misplaced compliment. So I’ll do both, and you can decide which one I mean more.
Why in heaven’s name did you make Major What’s-His-Name think I’m the perfect candidate for the translator position? Skills, I’ll grant you, though you’re taking my word on my fluency in German since you don’t speak anything beyond gesundheit and Sauerkraut. But temperament? Were you joking? You’re too kind to say it, but we both know I’m a disaster when it comes to relating to people, nothing at all like Olive or Mother or even my sister, Irene.
It’s difficult even visiting Ironside Lake. Dad and Mother are happy to see me, of course, but I always time my visits so they fall over as few Sundays as possible. Church in a small town is more to see and be seen than it is to actually worship, and I’m no longer a precocious ten-year-old in a sailor dress, singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”
Why were you even at Fort Snelling? I thought you’ve been so busy at the language school that you barely have time for sleep.
Regardless, if the major contacts you again, tell him to go away. Or, since you probably wouldn’t be that blunt, change the subject. Or better yet, recommend someone else for the translator position. Anyone, in fact, who isn’t me.
This was my parents’ idea; I’m sure of it. Mother is always writing me teary, guilt-inducing letters about how empty the house seems now that Irene’s married and I’m off at school, when they probably barely noticed me when I was there. Even Dad never fully approved of the linguistics program, although I do think he admired the way I gathered the money for it. I know he and Mother would be perfectly happy if I came back to Ironside Lake, got swept off my feet by an industrious banker’s son like Irene did, and gave up this nonsense of Oxford altogether.
I’ve spent all evening working on a tactful reply to the major, and now writing to you. Consequently, my poor volume of Ovid is entirely neglected in the corner. Real life is dreadfully tedious, the way it interrupts reading.
But enough about me and my woes. Are you finding teaching these new recruits any easier?
Your friend,
Jo
Appendix: Would you like to make a bet on when the last snow will be? I’m not as much of a weakling as you when it comes to winter, but even I might sing for joy and toss my gloves in a bonfire once it gets to fifty degrees for the first time.
From Peter to Johanna
January 31, 1944
Dear Jo,
You’re a regular prophet. Major Davies did seek me out again, asking about you. I had to interrupt my class to run to the office to take his call, and the first words of it were, “Mr. Ito, why didn’t you tell me that Berglund girl was so blasted difficult?” Only he didn’t use blasted.
Honestly, Jo, what did you say to him?
What’s so bad about taking a semester off, two at most, to use the skills you’re learning? I know you dream of a life in England translating Beowulf and the tragedies of Euripides, but in case you haven’t tuned in to the radio lately, the Germans are trying to bomb it into oblivion. Even if you finish your bachelor’s, you won’t be able to get over there just now.
But I shouldn’t be too hard on you. Probably everyone else is saying the same sort of thing, and I know you love your cozy apartment and teakettle and study desk in the Modern Language section of the library. I want you to be happy, Jo. But at least think about it.
On how I came to be speaking with Major Davies: Great news, there’s so much interest from Nisei around the country in joining our training school that they’re considering moving the program to Fort Snelling. Now that some of our graduates have gone into the field and proven themselves, it’s starting to dawn on the military brass that our true loyalty is to America, not Japan. (Which is exactly what we’ve been telling them all along.) It would mean a lot to get official recognition instead of being segregated away at the slipshod facilities here. We’re at full enrollment—over a thousand now—and bursting at the seams. Since all the bunks are taken, some of the boys are sleeping on mattresses on the floor.
The latest new arrivals are a younger crowd, averaging around twenty. All of them are eager to learn, though it’s interesting interacting with the Hawaiian students, who speak a different dialect of English. The government finally allowed them to apply, and we’ve got the cream of the crop from the hundreds who did.
Most of the mainland students signed up primarily to get out of the internment camps, but they work hard, knowing time is short and there’s a huge demand for translators in the Pacific. We’ve even caught a few studying in the privy after ten o’clock, since it’s the only building with a lit bulb after lights-out.
The trouble is, we had to lower our requirements to fill our quota, from high-school equivalency to third grade, so our Beginning level is much more crowded than Middle and Advanced. At least total immersion seems to be helping them. (Did I tell you I dream in Japanese now? I sometimes have to struggle for the right English word when writing to you.)
There still aren’t quite enough instructors for the number of students we have, so the hours are long. Most of us aren’t Ivy League faculty, for sure—there was a reason I was studying accounting at the University of California—but we have good motivation to learn quickly so we can teach the students army jargon, cryptology, basic military tactics and maneuvers, and, hardest of all, cursive. (I’m not joking. Most of them have never seen writing in sousho before, much less tried to read it. Very difficult to master. That’s why I haven’t showed it to you yet.)