Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh

My dear Lord!” Miss Ruth’s voice caught in her throat.
    “Miss Ruth, I’m sorry. I just can’t talk right now. Please ma’am, just you go on home and listen to the radio yourself. Please,” Sophie added again.
    And Sophie was ever so grateful when Miss Ruth started moving toward the door.
    “Japan,” Miss Ruth muttered, and then she stopped right in her tracks.
    “You better stop spending time with that Chinaman of Anne’s, right away, Sophie. He’s a stranger—a foreigner—maybe even a spy! ”
    Sophie couldn’t speak a word.
    “You better stop !” Miss Ruth warned again in a terrible whisper. And then she was gone.
    On her way back through the kitchen, Sophie turned the radio off. But the words and their terrible images still remained in the room:
Sneak attack!
Bombs falling!
    Ships burning!
    Sophie went back to the sun porch, where she had been sitting so peacefully. She stared silently at the chair she had been sitting in, the book she had been reading, the cup of tea on the table—all things from what felt like a different world, with everything now divided into before and after .
    And Grover. What about her dear friend Grover?
    “No,” she whispered. “Not Grover, but just Grove —a peaceful, green place.”
    A stranger? No.
    A foreigner? No—an American.
    A spy?
    Never!
    Of Japanese ancestry? Yes, “But only Grove and I know about that.”
    A good, gentle man? Yes.
    And the Sunday mornings of painting together and talking? What would happen to that?
    His face seemed to appear before her: the deep, kind eyes—the color of the finest garden soil; the gentle smile; the clean-sunshine aroma of him.
    And then Miss Ruth’s mean face appeared and her bitter words sounded in Sophie’s ears. “You better stop spending time with that Chinaman of Anne’s, right away!”
    “No, Miss Ruth. No,” Sophie said aloud. “You sound like maybe we have something to hide, but we don’t. You make it sound dirty , but it isn’t! We’re simply friends, and I will not give up my friend!”
    It isn’t like that, Mama. He’s a very nice man.
    In the cottage at the back of Miss Anne’s garden, Mr. Oto poured himself a cup of tea with hands that shook so badly, he almost spilled it.
    What insanity! he was thinking. A sneak attack? How dishonorable! How enraged the Americans will be—we will be! We are!
    And he wondered if Miss Anne was right about people in the town taking out their rage on him . Even if they all thought he was Chinese, not Japanese, wouldn’t the sight of his oriental features be enough to send them into a rage?
    The people of the town—how to tell what they would think or do. Because in the two years he had lived there, even though no one said anything unkind to him—except for Matilda, who was always somehow resentful toward him—he felt the chill behind their polite manners and their half-frozen smiles. And he also knew that even though he and Sophie could quietly meet to paint and talk on Sunday mornings, if they had been brazen enough to walk down the street together, even the half-frozen, smallest of smiles would stop, and the eyes would be hostile and accusing. That is, unless he walked behind her and carried her packages, as if he were a servant.
    My dear Sophie! What is to become of our friendship now?
    And the full grief came upon him at that moment. The loss would be unbearable!
    But what am I thinking? Here will be war, and all I can think about is losing the Sunday mornings with my beloved. What kind of a man does that?

Chapter Twelve
     
    Miss Anne said:
     
    Oh, it was a terrible thing, I tell you! The whole world turned upside down, it seemed like, so that the little things I had been worried about—like making sure Mr. Oto planted the pink dogwoods in a straight row—suddenly seemed completely unimportant.
    And another thing: The weather had turned unseasonably warm—made me feel like the whole world was getting ready to explode!
    Our town was in such a state of