Page 1 of Starlight & Dark Nights

Prologue

DECEMBER 1941

“You aren’t safe here.This is no place for an American girl. Not right now.”

Judith Nagasaki looked up at her mother as she stood in the doorway to the bedroom that they shared. Judith, seven years old and unaware of anything other than a lot of hushed talk amongst the adults, was playing with a tiny doll she’d gotten as a birthday gift from her grandmother that year.

“Why, Mama?” Judith asked, wide-eyed and afraid. “Why is this not a place for me?”

Keiko Nagasaki walked over to the bed with her hands clasped together; she was small, delicate, and her dark hair was combed smoothly against her perfectly round head. She sat on the edge of the low bed that she shared with her only child, looking at Judith with so much love and wonder that it seemed she might cry.

“Mama?” Judith tried again. “I’m not an American girl. I’m Japanese,” she said in English.

This made Keiko smile wanly. “Oh, my baby,” she said, sliding from the bed to the floor so that she was sitting knees-to-knees with her daughter. She reached out and took the doll from Judith gently. “It’s not safe here because Japan did something to America two days ago, and now America has declared war on Japan.”

Judith’s eyes darkened. “What did Japan do to America?”

Keiko demurred, looking down at her hands, which were holding Judith’s small, dark-haired, dark-eyed doll in its tiny red kimono. “They did something very cruel when America wasn’t expecting it, and now America is very angry.”

“And they’ll come here and hurt us?”

Keiko looked right into Judith’s face. “They might.” She bit her lip, considering the possibilities. “I think you should go and stay with your father.”

Judith’s face crumpled the moment the words were out of her mother’s mouth.

Her father? She barely remembered him! He was a stranger to her!

Judith’s mother had met him in Hawaii as a young, beautiful Japanese girl with waist-length hair and a soft demeanor. Michael Harper, Judith’s father, was there with the Navy, relaxing and enjoying the tropical lifestyle. He’d seen Keiko across a restaurant and been drawn to her like a moth to a flame—or so the story went. But Judith did not remember him, and the photographs of her father that she had made her shy away in fear. He was big-boned, tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, and Judith took after her mother, coloring-wise. She was pale and tiny, and Michael Harper seemed to seven-year-old Judith like a giant from a children’s story.

“No,” Judith said softly, shaking her head. “No. I don’t want to. I want to be with you. I can protect you in case the Americans come.”

Keiko’s smile came then—thin, watery, sad—and her eyes softened. “My darling,” she whispered in Japanese, reaching over to touch her little girl’s forehead, brushing her black hair away gently. “I’ve already spoken to him. You have to go. He’ll protect you there.”

And because Judith always did what her mother said, she nodded and stared at the doll that sat on the floor now. She willed herself to be tough and unafraid, but deep down, she was scared.

“Okay?” Keiko asked her daughter, taking her hands in her own. “Okay?” she asked again.

Judith nodded, but she could not look at her mother. She could not say okay. She could not be unafraid.

* * *

The boat left Japan after midnight, and Judith was on it. Keiko was not. She had explained to her daughter that a Japanese face arriving on the shores of the United States shortly after the bad thing that Japan had done was a one-way ticket to danger and disaster. Though she pretended to understand, this made Judith more, and not less, fearful.

As the boat pulled away from its port, the dark sky blanketed the ship and a million twinkling stars watched it slip away into the ocean like a thief in the night. On shore, several small fires burned hotly, flames licking the sky. Judith overheard two American men talking about the hellfire that was about to rain down on Japan, and she wondered whether the fires she could see had something to do with hellfire.

Her chaperone on the boat was the wife of a member of the Navy and was known to Michael Harper, which had assuaged Keiko’s concerns a little bit. Not a lot, but enough for her to decide that this passage was the best and safest option for her young daughter. The woman was named Esther, and her blonde hair was curled into sausage rolls and pinned to the sides of her face. She wore painted-on red lipstick and she held herself upright, shoulders back. Judith was sure she’d never seen anyone so glamorous.

“Your father will be waiting in Los Angeles,” Esther promised, sweeping Judith’s dark hair away from her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. It was comforting, the way that Esther mothered her, but it also made Judith sad; she wanted her own mother, not someone else’s. And Esther was already someone else’s mother: a twelve-year-old boy called Chester, who Judith hated on sight. The feeling seemed to be mutual, as Chester ignored her as much as possible, and whenever his mother left them alone in their stateroom, he called Judith words she didn’t understand, like “half-breed” and “slant eyes.”

After he’d said those things the first time, Judith had locked herself into the tiny bathroom and stared at her face for nearly an hour, inspecting her eyes to see if they really did slant, and wondering whether being a half-breed was something that she could see on her skin or in her own smile. She’d decided that she had no idea what she was looking for, and she finally let herself out of the bathroom.

Esther had gone to play cards with some of the other Navy wives on the ship, leaving Chester in charge. Judith said their names over and over in her mind: Esther and Chester. Chester and Esther. The words made her think of chestnuts and chests of drawers and undergarments and small, furry brown animals—though she didn’t know why. None of it made perfect sense to her, but she let her mind wander as she stared out at the vast expanse of ocean beyond the porthole windows of the ship.

“Esther and Chester,” she whispered to herself, picking at a loose thread on her dress. “Esther and?—“

“What?” Chester slammed the door of their room, startling her. “Are you saying my mother’s name?”

Judith turned to him and stared. She clamped her lips together, as she’d grown accustomed to doing in Chester’s presence.

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