This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

The evacuees finally exit the train, then board buses. They are in a wasteland near the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, and they still do not know their fate. The bus takes them to the barbed-wire compound of Manzanar War Relocation Center—a concentration camp. Alex and his family are among the first of thousands of Japanese Americans to arrive. They register with a guard and are assigned to “Block 16 Barrack 4 Room F” (132). Soldiers keep shouting at them to hurry up, and Frank’s temper reaches a boiling point.

The barracks are barebones and lack insulation, plumbing, and privacy. The evacuees have to stuff sacks full of straw to make mattresses, and the food in the mess hall is dismal and soon coated in sand and dust from the wind. The barracks are freezing. Alex is struck again by the injustice of the situation. People cry in the dark barracks.

In the morning, everyone is covered with dust that blew in through cracks in the wall during the night. The bathrooms—communal, with no division between toilets—are dismal. Amongst the evacuees, the older immigrants’ survival instincts kick in, and Alex and Frank help to plug some of the cracks in the walls of their barrack.