June 24th, 1945, 14:30 hours. Lawn of the First Methodist Church, Neos, Missouri. The heat lay flat over the grass, thick with the smell of cut clover and charcoal. A khaki canvas GMC SEI Giddy 2 one two-tonon truck idled at the curb. US Army MPs and steel M1 helmets watching from the shade. Carbines slung low.

 

 

 On the lawn, folding tables were lined with enamel pictures, paper napkins, and most alien of all to them, long soft rolls split to hold pinkish tubes that hissed faintly with grease. Nurse Lieutenant Sato Haruko of the Imperial Japanese Army, prisoner cereal, marked freshly on her denim dress, stood with eight other Japanese women under supervision.

 Her wrists were free, but felt bound anyway. She could still smell the ship’s metal and disinfectant in her hair. Now in front of her, an American woman in a floral dress squeezed a yellow line of something sharpsented over a hot dog and smiled as if this were the most natural ritual in the world.

 “No ketchup here,” the woman said, teasing the deacon next to her. Laughter rippled from the church ladies. Someone added, “Mustard’s the proper way.” A tall Methodist pastor, collar loosened, looked at Haruko and said softly, careful with his English, “Please enjoy.” It was disarming.

 This ordinary picnic in the same country that had burned her homeland from the sky. Her training had not covered this. If you ever hear stories like this from another country, tell us where you’re listening from. 7 weeks earlier, Central Pacific aboard US Navy transport. The ship’s hull shuddered every time a wave slapped against it. A deep iron thump that ran up through the steel bunks.

 Diesel and salt and disinfectant mixed into a single gray smell. Lieutenant Sato Haruko sat on the lower bunk of the compartment allotted to the nine Japanese women back straight despite the role hands folded in her lap as she had an officer school in Tokyo. Her khaki field uniform was gone. In its place a laundered shapeless work dress issued at Guam marked with black stenciling she could not read. prisoner stenciling.

 Across from her, Kiomi, the youngest, a civilian volunteer nurse from Naha, swallowed hard and pressed a hand to her mouth. “I’m all right,” the girl whispered in Japanese, eyes glassy. Haruko gave the smallest nod. “Do not vomit. Not in front of them.” Outside the open hatch stood two US Navy sailors in dungarees, white hats tilted back, Thompson’s submachine gun hanging ready from a sling.

 Their posture was lazy, but the weapons presence said what words didn’t. The Americans had won enough to be casual. The ship rolled and the overhead lights flickered. Somewhere farther forward, a boatsman’s pipe shrieked. Then English orders echoed. Fast and bored. Haruko listened for words she recognized. Doctor, prisoner, Japanese, but caught only secured and mess. America still sounded like noise.

Then the third figure stepped into the hatchway. US Army khaki, garrison cap, Asian face. He knocked lightly on the bulkhead out of courtesy. Sachui, he said, using her rank correctly. his Japanese carrying the faint roundness of California. “May I speak?” Haruko’s spine stiffened. “Hi.

” “In a few hours, we reach Pearl Harbor,” he said calmly in Japanese. “After that, you will continue to the mainland, the United States. You and the other women are to be processed as special prisoners.” His English term special landed like a weight. the mainland, not a prison stockade ringed with tanned marines and coral dust, but the enemy’s own soil, a place she had only seen on propaganda maps with arrows stabbing toward it.

 “Why?” she asked, and heard in her own voice the dryness of too long restraint. The sergeant, his name tag read Morimoto, met her eyes without hostility. Because you are rare, he said, and because America wants to show it is proper. Proper. She thought of the wards on Okinawa, the men coughing blood, the artillery walking closer. Proper. The ship rolled again. Behind her, Kiomi whispered, “Mainland.

” In awe and fear both. Haruko looked at her women, tired, hollow cheicked, still carrying the posture of a defeated army, and understood that if she showed alarm, it would ripple through them. She inclined her head as if being sent to America was merely the next assignment. “We will comply,” she said.

 Outside the Pacific stretched, green and endless, carrying them toward a country she had only hated from afar. The intake room on Aahu was too bright. Sun hammered the tin roof outside and inside the army had added electric lamps so that no detail on a form could be missed. Haruko stood in a slowmoving line of prisoners that contained only her women, not the male Japanese enlisted she had glimpsed earlier being marched elsewhere.

 A sergeant at a metal desk typed the typewriter bell dinging every few seconds. An MP with a clipboard watched the line without speaking. When it was her turn, the smell of carbolic and sweat thickened. A US Army nurse, white sleeves rolled, motioned her to sit. Blood pressure, the nurse said. Then to the MIS interpreter, note previous occupation.

 The interpreter, Morimoto again, translated. Haruko answered, Rkugun Kangu, Army nurse. The nurse’s eyebrows lifted slightly. She wrote faster. A corman checked her mouth, ears, pulse. Another woman was sent behind a screen for a chest check. It was efficient, impersonal, not learing, yet it stripped rank and nation away with the same clinical hands.

 On the table beside her lay a stack of buffcoled forms stamped in purple, PW Japanese. Below that, in smaller letters on hers, someone rolled a separate stamp and pressed down, “Female Med Aox.” She watched the ink bloom, not just prisoner, a specimen. Behind her, Kiomi tried to claim she had been only civilian, the word in halting English.

 The intake sergeant looked up, frowning, and Morimoto had to untangle it. civilian attached to military hospital. The sergeant tapped the form. “Must match,” he said. “All must match.” His tone said that mismatch stories became problems. Haruko felt a prickle at the back of her neck.

 “If one of them was cast into a general P draft, they would lose the relative protection of being a rare group.” She leaned slightly toward Kiomi and said, quiet but firm. Answer as we taught. When the typing was done, Morimoto handed her a copy to glance over. You will continue to the mainland, he confirmed. War department wants you kept together. It looks better.

 Looks better. So that was it. They were to be an example. Outside, trucks were already lining up, canvas tops flapping in the trade wind. The forms in the sergeant’s outbox had decided their next ocean. The train that took them inland was old, the kind that rattled at every joint in the track. Cold smoke trailed past the high windows and drifted inside whenever the MP opened the vestibule door.

 Haruko sat on a hard bench with the other women, facing forward, handsfolded. Across the aisle, two MPs in khaki and steel helmets watched them without menace. M1 carbines upright between their knees. Outside the window, America unrolled. Flat fields, windbreaks of trees, farm houses with white paint, and flags nailed to porches. At small towns, the train slowed.

 People stopped what they were doing to look. A girl on a bicycle stared openly at the guarded car. At one depot, a bywar bonds poster flapped against the wall. Smiling gis, blue sky, none of it like Okinawa. Haruko searched the faces on the platform for hatred. She found mostly curiosity and something like satisfaction. The enemy here contained.

 By late afternoon, the air changed. Heavier, humid, full of grass and river. The train shunted onto a siding near a low spread of army buildings and antenna masts. Camp Crowder. Trucks waited, engines idling. An officer in suntan uniform checked the manifest. The women were counted again, herded down onto Missouri soil.

 The heat struck her, carrying cut grass scent and tar from the road. They were led not to a barbed wire pen like the men she’d glimpsed earlier, but to a smaller fenced compound with wooden barracks, a pot-bellied stove, screened windows. An American flag cracked in the breeze. A chaplain cross on his collar, sleeves rolled like any other officer, stepped forward with the camp agitant.

 His voice was slower than the Pacific officers, vowels long, Missouri in it. These women are to be kept together, the agitant said to the MPs, per war department. Then to the chaplain, lowering his voice only a little. You wanted to see about community outreach, that sort of thing. Haruko caught the words church and supervised.

 The chaplain glanced at her, not unkindly, as if she were someone’s guest and not a prisoner from an empire at war. It was so far from the bayonet and camp stories spread in Japan that for a moment she wondered if this too was a weapon. Community, church, undergard. She filed it away.

 Whatever this America was, it would require a different posture than the one she had worn on Okinawa. They gathered in the dayroom of the small barracks after morning roll. Sun came through the screened windows and made squares on the pine floor. An MP stood just outside the door, rifle at sling, looking bored, but present. On the wall was a blackboard where an American sergeant had written in blocky chalk hours latrine, no leaving area, no talk with male PWs.

 Below that, in neaterhand, Morioto had added Japanese words. Haruko sat near the front because the chaplain had asked to explain opportunities. He wore the same khaki as everyone else, only lighter in manner. “This is not like Germany here,” he said to Morimoto, who rendered it cleanly into Japanese. “You are women and our people here.

 They will want to show charity.” “Charity?” The eldest of their group, Nakahharasan, once a matron in a Nagoya clinic, made a small disapproving sound in her throat. Charity implied unequal footing. The chaplain continued, “Any visit will be supervised.” You may accept food. You may refuse if religious reasons.

 You should be courteous. That will reflect well on your on Japan. He chose that last word carefully, as if it might cut. Haruko listened hard. Except food, courteous, supervised. That was the American code. After the chaplain left, Morimoto lingered. His cap was off, revealing hair cut in the army style. Very American. Satui, he said more softly. You should know.

 People in Washington, they like to show pictures. Japanese even treated right. It helps. It helps who? she asked. Them, he said without apology. And maybe you if they see you as civilized, they keep you together. Maybe better rations. So it was theater. She and her women were to stand on an invisible stage framed by MPs while smalltown Missouri proved its goodness to itself.

 Behind her, Nakahharasan said in low Japanese, “We must not bow too low. They must not think we forgot who we are. Haruko looked from the chalk rules to the open door with the MP. Between American Mercy and Japanese Pride, she would have to find a line thin enough for all of them to walk. They were brought to a small recreation hut just inside the camp perimeter, its screen door propped open to let in June heat. Two MPs stood outside, sleeves rolled, weapons slung.

 Not menacing, just present, reminding everyone who owned the space. Inside, the air was different from the barracks. Soap, starch, and overwhelmingly baking. Three American women waited by a table covered with a flowered cloth. Their dresses were neat, but not extravagant, 1945 thrift, and each wore a church hat, as if to mark this as proper.

 On the table sat a plate of soft white rolls, still faintly warm, and a jar of something golden butter. Haruko felt as if from a great distance the memory of rationed rice and barley, of Okinawa’s hospital kitchens stretching fish broth. Here in the enemy’s middle, bread was soft, plentiful, offered to prisoners.

 “Good afternoon,” the tallest woman said, smiling at them all. Her eyes rested on Haruko. Rank recognizes rank. We’re from First Methodist. We thought, she glanced at the MP who gave a small nod. We thought you ladies might like something fresh. Morioto translated. Nakaharasan’s jaw tightened, but even she could not pretend the smell wasn’t good.

 At that moment, a small American girl, someone must have brought a daughter, peeked from behind her mother’s skirt and stared unabashed at the Japanese faces. Her gaze landed on Kiomi, whose eyes immediately filled with water. The child was about the age of the patients Kiomi had bandaged on Okinawa. Haruko saw the tremor start in the girl’s throat.

 She stepped slightly forward, intercepting. “We thank you,” she said carefully in English, bowing just enough. “You are kind.” The tall Methodist woman brightened. “Oh, she speaks.” She picked up a roll, split it, and with the slow declarative movement of someone teaching, spread butter across the soft interior.

 “Please, war is nearly over. We can share a little,” she added almost apologetically. Sugar still rationed, though. That last line was so ordinary, so domestic that it cracked something. Hunger one. Haruko accepted the role with both hands. Around her, the other Japanese women followed suit, watching her for permission.

 The Americans exchanged pleased looks. “We should invite them,” one murmured. And just like that, the next larger encounter became inevitable. The summons came in the late morning when the heat was already pressing on the barracks roof. An MP wrapped on the frame and said, “Chaplain.” And Haruko rose, smoothing the front of her issued dress.

 Inside the small camp office, the fan turned lazily, moving hot air from one corner to another. The chaplain stood with the camp agitant and Morimoto. A calendar on the wall showed June 1945, Sundays circled. “We had good reports from yesterday,” the chaplain began, smiling as if to put her at ease. “The ladies from town were very touched,” Morioimoto translated, matching the warmth. Haruko inclined her head.

 “We were grateful.” Well, the chaplain went on, “This Sunday there will be a little church lawn social. Families, soldiers on pass. We think it would be a nice thing if your group came. It shows we can all He searched for the word respect.” Nakaharasan’s warnings rang in Haruko’s ears.

 A public gathering meant music, children, men, too many eyes, too many ways for grief or shame to surface. We do not wish to trouble your people, Haruko said carefully in Japanese, letting Morimoto carry the nuance. We are prisoners. The agitant, who had been quiet, spoke. Then there’ll be MPs, all proper. Washington likes to know we’re doing our part.

 That last sentence was for Morioto to pass. And he did, eyes flicking to hers. This is policy. He shifted to more formal Japanese. Satui, they request your attendance. It will reflect well on them and on you. There it was. The pressure of being rare. If she refused, she would mark the group as difficult.

 If she accepted, she would have to expose them to American abundance and laughter. She measured the room, the chaplain’s expectant kindness, the agitant’s bureaucratic firmness, Morimoto’s almost apology. An officer knew when an order was disguised as an invitation. We will attend, she said. Relief softened the chaplain’s shoulders. Wonderful. Sunday, 1400 hours, there will be food. He grinned. American food.

 When she stepped back into the glare, the women looked up from their sewing and sweeping. “What did they want?” Kiomi asked. Haruko said. “We are to be seen.” And already in her head, she began arranging hair, hems, and hearts for battle of a different kind. The day before the social, Haruko asked the MP for extra time in the barracks. He allowed it. “Just keep the door open, ma’am.

” and leaned against the frame, carbine at ease. Inside, the women laid out their possessions on CS, the blue denim work dresses, a few civilian blouses salvaged at Guam, two handkerchiefs embroidered in Japanese style, a single small mirror with chipped silvering. It is also flat, Kiomi said, holding up the US dress like a factory.

 We will make it not flat, Haruko said. She pinned her own hair first, setting the example. Black hair coiled and secured with what few pins they had, neat at the nape. Not a full Nihongami, but disciplined. We will show we are not peasants, Nakaharasan sniffed. And we will not laugh like school girls. We will not, Haruko agreed, though she knew laughter might come unbidden in the American sun.

 They washed collars in cold water from the barracks basin, ringing them out and hanging them over the back of chairs. The smell of GI soap rose, sharp and clean. One woman used a spoons bowl as a makeshift mirror to straighten her part. It was like preparing for inspection.

 Only the inspecting eyes would be foreign, untrained in their standards. English, Haruko said. Then we will not chatter, but if they speak, we answer with ease. Thank you. She said it slowly. The room echoed her. I am well. Again, the women repeated, tongues testing the roundness of well. It is hot. That drew a few smiles from the doorway. Morimoto watched, expression unreadable. You rehearse? He asked.

 We do not wish to offend, Haruko said. He nodded once, approving. They will like that. As she turned back to her women, smoothing a wrinkle from a sleeve, Haruko felt the unfamiliar prickle of wanting to meet an enemy’s eyes and not be found lacking. She pushed the thought down. This was strategy, nothing more.

 arriving in order in dignity, so that whatever waited on that church lawn could not claim they had come shabby from defeat. Tomorrow they would step into America’s gaze. Tonight they made themselves ready. The truck dropped them at the edge of the church property, not far from the white clabboard building with its modest steeple.

 The sun was high and blunt, pressing heat onto the shortcut grass. Ahead, under shade trees, towns people moved among folding tables set with pictures and enamel bowls. A photograph somewhere played a soft swing tune. Children darted. It was unmistakably a peacetime ritual happening in wartime.

 Two MPs climbed down first, scanning, carbine slung. Then Haruko and her women stepped off, each in her laundered dress, hair pinned as best as circumstances allowed. She had told them, “Walk in order, eyes forward, neither defiant nor meek.” Still, she felt their collective intake of breath at the sight of so many American faces at once. Conversation slowed.

 People turned. They were looked at openly, curiously, without spit or stones. A boy in a two large navy t-shirt whispered to his friend. A GI on Sunday Pass tipped his cap half smiling as if he didn’t quite know the etiquette for enemy women. The Methodist pastor, collar loosened against the heat, came toward them with the same chaplain from camp.

 “Welcome,” he said not loudly but clearly enough for those nearby to hear. “We’re glad you could join us.” Morioto rendered it into Japanese, but the tone needed no translation. Haruko bowed slightly. “We thank you for your kindness,” she said in English, the rehearsed sentence emerging steady. Nearby, she heard Nakaharasan exhale, relieved that at least the opening had gone as practiced.

 Then the smells struck fully. Grilled meat, sweet relish, coffee. On a long table sat rows of split rolls and pale sausages still slick from cooking. Foods without Japanese analoges. Children were already squeezing bright yellow mustard onto theirs. The color was almost violent. People kept watching, not hostile, expectant.

 This Haruko understood suddenly was the performance. America displaying mercy. The prisoners displaying civilization. The pastor gestured toward the table. Please enjoy. Eyes went to her, her women’s eyes, and the Americans both. The next move would define the day. A woman in a floral dress reached for a roll, split it with practice thumbs, and with the other hand took up a glass bottle with a yellow cap. No ketchup here, she said to.

 The man beside her teasing. Mustards the proper way. They chuckled. an inside rule of their world. The bottle made a soft wet sound as she drew a line of bright yellow along the sausage. Haruko watched every move committing it. This was the correct ritual. When the woman offered the plate toward her, Haruko felt heat along her neck.

 The smell was strong, vinegar sharp, meat, salty, yeasty bread. Not bad, just foreign. behind her. She sensed Kiomi go very still. The Americans were leaning forward without moving, measuring whether the enemy could do such a simple American thing. She took the plate with both hands as if it were tea service. The sausage was hot through the bread.

 For a half second, she considered asking for salt, for soy, for anything to link it to home, but that would only magnify difference. Instead, she glanced sideways at the floral dress woman, raised the hot dog the same way, and bowed her head minutely in thanks. “Please enjoy,” the pastor repeated, kinder now that the moment was almost over. Haruko opened her mouth and bit.

 Bread first, soft, yielding, then the snap of casing, the rush of hot seasoned fat, and over it all the bright sting of mustard. It was summer and wheat and industrial abundance utterly unlike the thin broths of a besieged island. For a beat her mind threw up images that did not match. Okinawa’s burned wards her brother somewhere in Manuria incendiaries over Tokyo.

 And here she was, enemy officer chewing. Behind her, she heard a small surprised laugh from one of her own women, or from an American girl, she could not tell. The tension on the lawn loosened. A second Japanese woman stepped forward, emboldened, and accepted hers. The floral dress woman grinned, victorious in hospitality.

 On the perimeter, the MP shifted his weight, satisfied nothing bad had happened. Haruko swallowed, eyes dry, face unreadable. She had just crossed a line as real as any front. Later, she would have to explain to her women what it meant. That night, the barracks was dim, lit only by the single bulb over the center aisle and the wash of moon through the screens.

 The day’s heat had bled off, leaving the wood cool under bare feet. Outside, an MP’s boots crunched on gravel as he made his round. The shape of his helmet passed across the window like a clock hand. The women sat on their cs or kneeling on blankets, hair let down from the tight daytime coils. Someone was still licking a fingertip, remembering the tang of mustard.

 Kiomi said almost guilty. It was good in Japanese. Soft like before the war. Nakaharasan clicked her tongue. We are prisoners. We do not speak of enemy food like festival. The room tightened. This was the moment it could split between those who’d felt comfort and those who clung to severity. Haruko sat straight on her cot.

 The US Army blanket folded with officer neatness behind her. The taste still lingered at the back of her throat mixed with the memory of sunlight on American faces. She could pretend it had meant nothing, but they had all seen her eat. The pastor said, Haruko began, pitching her voice calm, “Please enjoy.

” She repeated the English carefully as he had said it on the lawn. Several heads turned. That was for his people to hear, to show them he is merciful, even to enemies. We allowed him to show that. “So we were.” Props? One of the older women asked. Yes, Haruko said. And we did it with dignity. We bowed. We spoke well. We did not beg.

 She let that settle. We showed them Japanese women are proper. Kiomi relaxed a fraction. Even Nakaharasan’s shoulders eased. She could live with being a dignified exhibit. Haruko looked at their faces, tired, thinner than American women’s, but clean and ordered, and felt the smallest pang.

 She could frame the event politically, but she couldn’t unknow the ordinariness of the enemy’s kindness. The line, “Please enjoy,” was now part of her memory of America, alongside ships and guards. Outside, a train whistle blew far off in the Missouri dark. Tomorrow, she knew more news of the war would filter in, and all of this, food, mercy, defeat, would have to fit together somehow.

The next week, the heat deepened. Cicas buzzed in the trees beyond the camp fence, and the barracks smelled of warm pine and laundered cotton. After morning count, an MP left a folded newspaper on the end of the mess table. Joplain Globe, as if by accident, but it was in full view. The headline was large enough for anyone to see, even without English.

Japan bombed again. Haruko picked it up, careful not to seem too eager. News from home for prisoners always came this way. Through the victor’s lens, columns of black type marched down the page beside a grainy photo of smoke boiling up from low buildings. The caption in English named a city she knew, not the Tokyo she had expected, but another still Japanese.

 The article below spoke of tightening noose, fanatic resistance, final blow. Kiomi hovered near her shoulder. Is it bad? It is the enemy’s newspaper. Nakahharasan said from her cot. They celebrate. Just then, Morioto came in with the chaplain carrying a clipboard. He saw the paper in Haruko’s hands and nodded. Okinawa is finished, he said in Japanese.

 Matter of fact, American forces now can strike your home islands more. Some people here think, he shrugged. Maybe your government will surrender soon. Surrender? The word landed heavy in the room. For women who had been taught to serve unto death. It was almost obscenity. Haruko looked back at the photo. Blackened blocks, fire crews like insects.

 She could smell across the ocean in memory the same burned cloth she had smelled on Okinawa. Yet only days before these same Americans had handed her a hot dog and laughed about ketchup. So she said slowly, “They can burn our cities in the morning and feed our prisoners in the afternoon.” Moramoto’s mouth tightened. Not disagreement, not agreement, just the recognition of a hard truth.

 America is big, he said. It can do both. Around the room, reaction splintered. Kiomi’s eyes shone with homesickness. Nakaharasan murmured a sutra under her breath. One woman stared at the wall, seeing perhaps Nagoya under incendiaries. Haruko folded the newspaper with care, edges aligned.

 If Japan fell, these women would return with stories of enemy mercy. If Japan did not fall, they would still carry the image of that Missouri lawn. Either way, the old simple hatred would be harder to teach. The next Sunday passed without another invitation. Perhaps the church ladies felt they had done enough. Perhaps the camp commander didn’t want to tax the town’s curiosity.

Life returned to its pattern. Roll call, chores, English voices outside, the distant clank of mess gear from men’s compounds. The Missouri summer ripened, heavy with insects and sun. Haruko sat on the steps of the barracks in the late light, where she could see the perimeter road.

 An MP walked it slowly, helmet catching gold. Beyond the fence, corn stood high and green. It was a peaceful scene, the kind that would have fit in a 1930s agricultural magazine, not in the closing months of a total war. She thought of the newspaper burned blocks. She thought of Okinawa, and she thought sharply, vividly, of the hot dog snap and the pastor’s careful, welcoming English. Please enjoy.

 The words no longer felt like pure kindness. They felt like the gesture of a nation so certain of its power that it could afford to be gentle to the vanquished. Behind her inside, Nakahharasan was instructing two younger women to keep their uniforms neat for when we go back. There was an assumption there that they would live, that the Americans would honor the Geneva rules and put them on a ship someday. Haruko found herself believing it, too.

 Kiomi came to the doorway. Satui, she said softly. Do you think uh they are good people? Haruko considered the easy answer. No, they burned us rose first. So did its mirror. Yes, they fed us. Both were too thin. They are people, she said at last. They can burn cities and still tell prisoners to enjoy a meal.

 They can laugh about mustard while our island starves. We must remember both. Kiomi nodded slowly as if storing the line for the voyage home. A warm wind moved across the camp carrying cut grass smell and faintly church bells from town. Haruko looked past the fence toward the country that had defeated hers.

 She did not forgive, but she would bear witness accurately. If in some future Japan someone asked her about America, she would say, “They watched us. They fed us. They destroyed us. And on a hot day in Missouri, they said, “No ketchup here.” And smiled. And for a moment we were simply women in summer eating what was offered.