Her father curled a hand around a bar and reassured them that they weren’t bars so much as gates people could close when parachutes dropped from the sky. “It was the safest place. Like wearing a magic cloak and armor.”
But it wasn’t remotely like that; Luna could see the ghostly knuckles powdering the bars. In a dark this dark, someone could still be huddled there, unseen, waiting for bombs and parachutes to fall from the sky. “What if we get trapped?” she asked.
Her mother squeezed her shoulder. “No one will get trapped. The war was a long time ago. Air raids don’t happen like that anymore.”
“Actually,” her father said, inspecting a remnant of a latch, “wars are happening all the time. In some places, children like you and Katy make themselves into bombs.”
“Bombs?” Katy said. “Like how?”
Luna glanced back at the daylight shimmering behind them; diminished to a patch, it was now equal in size to the one ahead of them. “I won’t be a bomb. I refuse,” she said.
“Sometimes we don’t have that choice,” her father said.
“And other times we do,” her mother said. “Come on, that’s enough.” She grabbed their arms and pulled them toward the light.
Her father trailed along, running his hand over the wall’s depressions. “You know your ojīsan and obāsan lived through it. They survived, but it was a scary time. All the lives lost. Soldiers and civilians. To say nothing of the colonial conscripts.” His voice vanished in the cackle of the tunnel.
Her mother swiveled. “Really? This is why you dragged them here?”
Her father’s shoes scraped to a stop. “This is important. It’s their history.”
“For god sake.”
“Everyone should know their roots, Say.”
“Come on,” their mother said, prodding them forward.
“They’re half mine too.”
His words bounced off the wall and chased each other through the tunnel of Luna’s own ears. She’d never considered herself this way before—half—like something mashed together and pulling apart, like the dogs she’d once seen, joined by their bums and scrabbling in opposite directions. There had been a blind woman on the sidewalk too; disturbed by the mewling scuffle, she’d cried out. Luna’s mother had tried to explain, but the dogs, ever more panicked, yipped and tumbled, knocking the woman’s cane. Her mother rushed to help, and in that moment the woman, lost in the sudden vastness of space, had looked straight at Luna, her milky-white eyes darting behind her skewed sunglasses.
“Mom?” Katy said. “Luna’s going to cry.”
Her mother drew her in. “It’s okay,” she said, but Luna twisted away and ran, her plugged ear echoing like the tunnel, her whole being yearning for the sunlight, where she’d be able to see their faces and feel her father’s fingers work their way through her hair. And when she thought about that, she couldn’t control her tears.
* * *
—
DINNER WAS quiet that evening. Despite Obāsan’s hopes, Ojīsan couldn’t be discharged, and an eerie absence emanated from the spot Obāsan had set for him. Katy couldn’t understand why anyone would set the table for an absent person. “It’s creepy,” she said, watching her grandmother arrange a small plate for Ojīsan.
“Your obāsan misses him. This way, it’s like he’s here with us,” her mother said.
Her father ladled soup into their bowls, a consommé Obāsan thought their mother would like. “It’s a gesture of respect, Katy. Your grandmother wants you to know how much your ojīsan wanted to come.”
“It’s still creepy.” Katy took the piece of sweet tamagoyaki Obāsan was holding out to her.
Luna sat on her hands, eyeing the crock of osekihan. “Katy didn’t say arigatō,” she said.
“Loser,” Katy said.
“Well?” her mother said.
Katy mumbled her arigatō.
Obāsan nodded, folding back the sleeves of her perfectly pressed blouse. Even alone in her own home she dressed this way—a generational propriety, her mother had explained; a side effect of the Depression and the war, her father had explained. Obāsan held out a heaping plate. “Yakitori?”
“Thank you, arigatō,” their mother said, accepting the skewers and distributing them among their plates. “Girls?”
They said their arigatōs.
Obāsan’s eyes lit with pity. “Kawaisō ne.”
Luna looked at her father, who, for once, was uneager to translate. “What do you say before you eat?” he asked.
“Itadakimasu,” the sisters chimed in unison.
Their father reached for the dish of pickled cucumbers, his favorite. After a moment, he said, “Guess what I learned the other day.”
Luna dipped her chopsticks into her soup, chasing elusive slivers of carrots and onions.
“I found out I was adopted.”
“You were an orphan?” Katy said.
“What’s an orphan?” Luna said.
“It’s when you have no mom or dad,” Katy said.
Luna frowned at her father and her grandmother.
Her father brushed a dot of rice from her chin. “Katy’s right. But, luckily, your obāsan and ojīsan adopted me right away, after my mother died, just after the war. She was very sick, isn’t that right?” He spoke to his mother in Japanese.
Obāsan nodded wearily. She explained through him that food and access to medicine were limited. She said something else with “America” in it, but he chose not to translate it.
“Did she live in the tunnel?” Luna asked.
“Honey, no one lived in the tunnel,” her mother said.
“Actually, she did,” her father said. “Not the tunnel we went to, but a bigger one in a town called Matsushiro. The tunnels there were built to form a huge underground maze, designed to hide the Emperor. Many people died during the construction. Most were Korean, forced to work there by the Japanese.”
Her mother scooped a mound of sesame spinach. “How about we talk about this later? Your mother is already sad.” She smiled at Obāsan.
Luna peered at her grandmother, who did seem sad.
Her father lowered his chopsticks. “One day it’ll matter to them. They deserve to know.”
“So we’ll talk about it later,” she repeated.