My brother and I were transported in a cattle car to Nagoya.
We arrived at the southern half of the city, in a concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.
"Don't call me Takumi anymore." I said to my brother. "Call me 73496."
I had to dye my hair black to avoid being mistaken as an American counterpart, and hence, a rival, though I in reality was half British. I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator.
I, too, felt dead. Hardened. I had become a number.
Soon, my brother and I were sent to Aomori, one of Nagoya's sub-camps.
One morning, I thought I heard my mother's voice.
"Son," she said softly but clearly, "I am going to send you an angel.
Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream.
But in this place, there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a girl with dark, dusky, black hair. She was half hidden behind a dried, lifeless plum tree.
I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in Korean. "Do you have something to eat?"
She didn't understand.
I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Japanese. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her deep amber eyes, I saw life.
She pulled an apple from her woollen jacket and threw it over the fence.
I grabbed the fruit, and as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat-a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.
We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both.
I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Japanese. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me?
Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.
Nearly seven months later, my brother and I were crammed into a coal cart and moved to Toyohashi.
"Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving."
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apple.
We were in Toyohashi for three months. The war was winding down, yet my fate seemed sealed.
On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.
On the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
But at 8 AM there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every way through camp. I caught up with my brother.
American troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. But I knew the key of my survival wasn't the end of the war, it was the girl with the apple. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none.
My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived fates nastier than me, and trained in medicine. I was starting to settle in the common life.
One day, my friend Sid who studied with me, called me. "I've got a date. She's got a Japanese friend. Let's double date."
A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me.
But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed to pick up his date and her friend Misaki.
I had to admit, for a blind date, this wasn't so bad. Misaki was studying law. She looked firm and smart. Beautiful, too, with hair, dark as the night sky and auburn eyes that sparkled with life.
Could be a coincidence, right?
The four of us drove off to the countryside. Misaki wasn't easy to initiate a conversation with, but then I managed it to be well. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too. We were both just doing our friends a favour. We took a stroll in the barley fields, enjoying the slight smell of mud, and then had dinner in a neighbouring cottage. I couldn't remember having a better time.
We piled into Sid's car, Misaki and I sharing the back seat. As Japanese who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, "Where were you during the war?" she asked softly.
"The camps." I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss I had tried to forget.
She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in Japan, not far from Nagoya." She told me.
I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.
"There was a camp next to the farm." Misaki continued. "I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day."
Was it a coincidence that she had helped some other boy?
"What did he look like?" I asked. "He was tall, skinny and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months."
My heart was throbbing within my chest. This couldn't be.
"Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Nagoya?"
She looked back at me in surprise. "Yes, but how do you know?"
"That was me." She was filled with awe, and I was flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel. The Key to my survival. In person. Right in front of me.
"I'm not letting you go." I said to Misaki. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed her.
And ended with a swollen cheek.
"You're crazy." She said. But, she invited me to meet her parents for dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Misaki, but the most important thing I always knew, her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst circumstances, she had always come to the fence to give me hope. And now that I'd found her again, I will never let her go.
Based on the true life story of Mr. Herman Rosenblat.