Most of the stories adults remember from their childhood almost always opened with, “Once upon a time…” That beginning loosed the wonderful world of make believe, a realm made of the dreams and hopes of wide-eyed children. The story shared here began that way but in a world fraught with terrible danger: one the story of the coming of age of a young girl in an America torn by war; the other of a boy of Japanese heritage growing up as an American in a nation transformed by a single event.

Nina and Gordon were born the same year in the small-town hospital in Merced in the Central Valley of California. It was just before Pearl Harbor and they grew up living not far from each other.

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor brought war directly to the doorstep of the nation. It brought about severe changes for Nina’s and Gordon’s individual families that sent them to very different places in the country under very different conditions. One family followed a father who volunteered for the Army Air Corps to various training camps and billets before returning to Merced when he shipped out to London, England; The other family was forcibly removed by the military to a concentration camp in a desolate corner of Colorado because they happened to look like the enemy. What happened then against the backdrop of a world at war was the shadow play of a generation of children who in large measure are the main characters of this story.

Everything changed in a dramatic way for the country. Many of its men – fathers, brothers, and uncles – went off to fight the nation’s enemies. Many of them would not return. For those who stayed at home – those men considered too old to serve, the women who were the wives, sisters, and mothers of the men who did go, and the children – they endured the strain of those who stand and wait. In spite of the turmoil, stress, and uncertainty, everyone rose to the occasion. They gave what they could out of what little they had, and everyone did their very best. They did it for the war effort and the men who went off to fight. They did it for love of country. They did it for family, and especially they did it for the children.

The story shared here is about Nina and Gordon as children during this eventful time, and the amazing things their mothers did to protect them in the safety of the cocoon they called home. They were the guardians at the gate holding back the violence and darkness that was the war, while making sure the preciousness of freedom was safe, that the children were safe. They created a world that was sheltered through clever manipulations and gentle lies, with protective measures and tricks and cover-ups that helped Nina and Gordon to feel free, stimulated and innocent with their dreams intact. In the face of a very dark world mothers across America kept alive a safe world to maintain their childhood innocence.

In the end this is a story of two friends, one white, one of Japanese descent, who maintain an unlikely friendship in a time of war.