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Show 56 "Eleven?" he said, hoping the second question would imply a "yes" to the first. Still she made no answer, and he became aware that this was the critical moment. Here, in the rain, on a street-corner in a war-desolate town on the backside of Japan, he was waiting for a signal. She know it too. The young or the inexperienced might think the choice easy, but she had seen too much lately to hide the truth. In theory the American army permitted interracial marriages, but practically it raised a host of barriers; nor was Japan essentially more tolerant. As a conquered nation it could hardly oppose union with its conquerors, but it had an even longer history of discrimination than the United States, and made its wishes known in subtle ways. Seldom did it let a foreigner into the heart of its culture, especially a Westerner. America, she had heard, included a host of alien elements, so many that certain mixtures (not blacks, she had been told; they were still out) were permitted, but except for a handful of educated Chinese, Japan had few outsiders. The Koreans they locked into a social ghetto, like the Ainu or tha Eta, and as for Westerners. . . if you married a Westerner you became whatever he was, he didn't become Japanese. And yet she was Japanese, and she loved Japan. Not only did she not want to become a part of this group whose beerier aspects she witnessed each night at the club, but she could not conquer a certain resentment. The Americans, she had been told, |