Anti-American sentiment abounded, even among the most innocent. Two decades earlier, American schools had donated 12,700 dolls to Japanese schools in a gesture of goodwill. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, elementary schools nationwide were ordered to immolate them, the dolls’ glassy blue eyes melting in crackling bonfires. Some dolls were impaled with bamboo spears. Only two hundred would survive. In the neighborhoods Frank ran through, young children played war, complete with backpacks, helmets, and bayonets. Instead of playing house, the girls acted as nurses at the front. The enemy was always
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