This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

The brief Prelude of This Light Between Us foreshadows a scene in Chapter 35, when Charlie appears to Alex as a vision while her pen pal is imprisoned at Manzanar. The tone of this scene is one of mystery and longing, for Alex believes the vision to be “nothing more than a figment of his overripe, yearning, lonely imagination” (9). Alex’s loneliness is highlighted in both the Prelude and Chapter 1, and Charlie is immediately established as being his only true friend: the only person he is comfortable opening up to. While Alex does sometimes open up to his war buddies in Part 3, his loneliness remains constant throughout the novel and is borne partly of the remote relationship he has with Charlie. Although the two never meet (except during the brief, almost magical scenes exemplified by the Prelude), Fukuda’s storytelling emphasizes the importance of words by showing how Alex and Charlie fall in love through their letters alone.

Chapter 1 establishes the organization of This Light Between Us as a partially epistolary novel and explains the foundation of Alex and Charlie’s relationship through the letters they begin writing at age 10. Alex’s letters evince a sense of deepening shame as the persecution of Japanese Americans intensifies in Part 1. He confesses to Charlie, “I may have told you that I have blond hair and blue eyes. Well, that’s not quite true” (16). Alex is 13 or 14 at the time this letter is written, and this deception reveals that Alex does not match the phenotype of what he considers to be a “real” American. Likewise, Charlie is angry at his lie and extrapolates that his shame in his own “otherness” may also extend to shame in hers, for in her furious response, she says, “Maybe you are disappointed in me, yes? Because I am not a ‘real’ French pen pal? Because I do not have yellow hair? [...] Because I have a Jewish name, and Jewish face?” (17). Thus Charlie, like Alex, is marked as being other due to her lineage, and this exchange foreshadows the Parallels Between the Holocaust and Japanese American Imprisonment that are explored throughout Parts 1 and 2 of the novel.

Alex’s deception causes a brief schism in their friendship and sets up a minor, but enduring source of conflict in the plot; Alex and Charlie never exchange photographs, so for a long time, neither knows what the other looks like. However, Chapter 1 firmly establishes their characteristics. Alex confesses, “I don’t see how any girl—especially a Paris girl—could find me interesting, all I do is read and daydream at home all day, my head in the clouds” (18). In a subsequent letter, he sends a sketch representing himself as a turtle boy with his head in the clouds. Charlie is legitimately concerned about her friend’s isolation and tells him, “I think you need even one friend on Bainbridge Island. It is not healthy to be all alone!” (19). The tone of Charlie’s letters establishes her as an outgoing, fiery girl who is passionate about life and her beliefs. From age 10 onward, she fantasizes about attending Sorbonne University, a dream in which she will later include Alex while she hides away from the Nazis in German-occupied Paris.