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enemies. Tanya and Moishe came in and sat on the bed. “They’re called enemy nationals now. They’ve got red armbands with the initial of their country.”
    I sat beside Tanya, so Moishe jumped away and hid under the table. “Dovid says in Europe, Jews must wear yellow armbands.”
    â€œYes, yes. Just like us Jews at home, now the enemy nationals aren’t welcome in restaurants or theaters. Not even in parks. Now their stores are being shut down. I love it! Finally, thank you, Emperor Hirohito, we Jews have it better, can you believe this?”
    How could things change so fast? The winter of 1942–1943 was as bitter as horseradish. The piercing cold wasn’t helped a bit by the Japanese soldiers who burst into our apartment one day and yanked out our radiator pipes as scrap metal for their war effort. Without heat we froze, even with Molly O’Toole’s ugly wool socks, which we darned and saved from year to year, knobby in our thin shoes. The few pipes left in our building froze and burst, sending water streaming through the ground floor.
    For once I was glad we didn’t have a kitchen or bathroom in our apartment. The people downstairs were squishing through icy water that oozed under their doors. The bathtub was useless, the toilets—well, I couldn’t even describe that part. Imagine the worst.
    One day Mother came home from the bakery pale and jittery. “They’re going to round up the so-called enemy nationals and send them to internment camps. Brits and Americans.”
    Could they do that to Americans? To the rich Iraqi Jews, who were now British citizens? They’d practically ruled the foreign settlements before the Japanese came.
    â€œAt least we don’t have to worry about that,” Erich muttered. “One advantage to being a stateless refugee.”
    â€œErich, I have told you a hundred times, we are not—”
    â€œFace the truth, Mother.”
    I believe that day she finally did.
    Tanya and I had patched up our argument, and I promised never to say another word about her mother’s Japanese visitors. In the winter our long walks to school were miserable enough without fighting. I rubbed my hands and stomped my feet to keep the circulation going, scared of frostbite as much as I feared the Japanese bayonets.
    I longed for the hot, steamy days of July, seven months away.
    At last winter began to give way to spring, and with spring would come more daylight and a few fresh vegetables. It was easier not to despise the Japanese as the weather warmed. At first we’d thought that since they were allied with the Germans, they’d hate us Jews; but they didn’t. They didn’t love us, either. We were just foreigners to them, like any others.
    â€œWe can live out the war this way,” I told Erich.
    He spit out his response: “Like hell I will.”

CHAPTER TEN
    1943
    News! Erich used the cover of his screechy violin practicing to tell me all about my role in the Underground, called REACT. “I’m the go-between. It would look too suspicious for a girl to hang around down at the docks. Ask me, and I’d say you shouldn’t work with us at all, but Gerhardt says you’re plucky. God, my sister, plucky. He also thinks you’re useful for our purposes.” The bow slid back and forth across the remaining strings, and the sound was terrible.
    â€œAnd what exactly are our purposes, Erich?”
    â€œSimple. Doing anything, great or small, to flummox the enemy. Jam communication, supply lines, toilets, whatever. Smuggle food and supplies and, most important, information to our comrades.”
    â€œWho are?”
    He shook his head. “Not our business to know. All I’ve been told is that the head of our division is Madame Liang.”
    â€œA woman?”
    â€œKeep your voice down.” Erich arched his head toward Father, who was reading across the room. “Maybe not a woman. Maybe