We Sail to America

October 1946

I itch all over.

If it wasn’t for Lena, the girl confined to the ship’s infirmary in the bed next to mine, I do not know what I would do. Her mother, a fellow passenger on the Marine Falcon, has knitting as a hobby. Earlier, at my urging, Lena persuaded her to lend me a set of needles. When Dr. Hoke and Nurse Pat aren’t watching, I slide them down as far as I can between my skin and the plaster cast that girdles my midsection from the top of my rib cage to my tailbone to scratch the most persistent itch. But it provides only momentary relief.

My father is at my bedside. “Here, darling, the pad I promised you.” I flip through it. Each sheet is unlined and without margins. “It’s just like the diary we gave you for your twelfth birthday. You wrote in it almost every day.” That diary, full of my writings, had been ruined in a mudslide that nearly destroyed our home in Japan. “It’s time to start writing again,” father says. “You’ve a fascinating story to tell.”

“I’m not so sure I do,” I say.

He smiles. “Nonsense! Think about it! You lived in Berlin for twelve years. You travelled through, how many were there, thirteen, fourteen countries? You lived in Japan for a decade. Now, you’re on your way to America! Who can say they’ve experienced what you have in their first twenty-two years?”

Lena looks at me. “Is all that true?”

“Yes,” I moan. “I’ll think about it,” I tell my father.

“We won’t arrive in Seattle for another week. You’re bedridden. What else is there for you to do while you wait?” he teased.

As usual he’s right.

And so, I write. Each page is blank, no boundaries or constraints. I decide to write whatever is of interest that I can recall. Some memories are clear and precise. Others are like objects in the fading light of dusk, certainly there, but indistinct and out of focus. I’ll do my best to tell the story as it occurred, giving names and places when I’m sure of them. I may wander in and out of time and place, and if I do, then I’ll go back at a later date to remedy what I can.

This is what I remember.