The Friendship Doll (22 page)

“How did you end up in Seattle?” Mason asked.

“When Pop passed, he left me enough money that I could finally live by the water.” She chuckled. “Never dreamed I’d live
on
it! That’s something for a little old Okie gal.”

Emma wandered in, holding a piece of paper, as Seal was telling about picking hops in Yakima for a penny a pound.

“Hey, Seal,” Emma said, “is this letter really from Eleanor Roosevelt?” She brought it over to the bed.

Seal stroked the yellowed paper. “I must have written her a dozen letters. Never dreamed she’d answer me.”

“That’s you?” Emma asked. “Lucy?”

“For Lucille.” Seal handed the letter back to her. “I outgrew Lucy, and then, when I met Clarence, he called me Seal.”

Mom got up from her chair and went to stand by the bed. “I never knew that was how you got your nickname.” She took Seal’s hand in hers.

“I like this part,” Emma said, pointing to the letter. “Where she says, ‘What one has to do can usually be done.’ ”

Mom looked over Emma’s shoulder. “We should get it framed. And put it over by the mirror so you’d see it every day.”

Seal sighed. “That’d be real nice.”

The afternoon felt like Christmas to Mason, with each one of Seal’s stories—stories he’d never heard her tell before—like a gift that had been forgotten under the tree and newly discovered. He felt like he had his old Seal back. When he thought about it, it had started when he brought in that worn-out doll. It wasn’t until she saw Miss Kanagawa that Seal really got to talking.

Mason shook his head at such a crazy thought. How could that old thing have made a difference? It was like Mom said. Seal was going to have good days. And bad days. They lucked out that today was one of her good ones.

Seal shifted in the bed, to face Mom. “Gloria Jean, you said you were going to help me with my arithmetic,” she said. “You promised.”

Mason and Emma exchanged glances. As quickly as she’d slipped out of her confusion, Seal had slipped back into it.

Mom pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose quietly. “Well, I always keep my promises,” she said. “But maybe you should get some rest first.”

“I am feeling tuckered out. I guess I’ve a right to be. I picked thirty-two pounds of beans this morning.” Seal settled back, head on the pillow, and tucked an arm around Miss Kanagawa.

Mason turned off the bedside lamp and tiptoed out of the room behind Mom and Emma. He turned back to look at Seal resting there, that doll in her arms. The dark must have been playing tricks on his eyes. It looked like there was a tear rolling down the doll’s cheek.

Seal said something as he was about ready to step over the threshold. “What?” he asked.

“See you tomorrow?”

He thought about that line in the Eleanor Roosevelt letter. That what a person has to do can be done. He patted his hand on the door frame.

“I’ll be here,” he told her.

I may be showing signs of age, like my friend Lucy—my kimono frayed, my joints stiff, and my gofun face cracking—but the nerve of that boy to think that because I am old and worn out I cannot help people!

I will be faithful to the task for which I was created until I am so far beyond repair that not even one such as Master Tatsuhiko could mend me.

Until then, there is a boy with a lesson to learn.

And no one better to teach him than I.

Belle Wyatt Roosevelt did indeed accept Miss Japan on behalf of the children of New York in a ceremony at City Hall, attended by Mayor Jimmy Walker. One story has it that the doll
did
wobble in her arms when the envoy handed it to her. The dolls really were on display at Lord & Taylor for ten days when Mr. Reyburn was the company president. Though
Town Topics
was a 1920s periodical, I created the news story “Little Envoys Arrive in Town,” but I can’t take credit for the delicious expression “Fifth Avenoodle,” which I found in an issue of the magazine. I am also grateful to have discovered Eric Homberger’s
The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History
, which helped me imagine the New York City that Bunny moved around in.

I am certain that the real Belle Wyatt Roosevelt, granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth president of the United States, was a lovely child; however, since I invented Bunny, I also invented Belle’s less-than-pleasant personality to add tension to the story.

It’s hard to imagine that the city of Chicago would dare host a World’s Fair in 1933, smack-dab in the middle of the Great Depression, but it did. And the fair was such a hit it was extended into 1934. Thanks to an engaging website,
www.cityclicker.net/chicfair
, and a lovely book called
Chicago’s 1933–34 World’s Fair, A Century of Progress in Vintage Postcards
, by Samantha Gleisten, I was able to find out a great deal about the exhibits, the fairgrounds, and the Sky Ride. Neither Miss Kanagawa nor any of the other dolls I describe was actually displayed at the fair, but I reasoned that if the organizers allowed such novelties as the Mills Freak Show, alligator wrestling, and something called the Great Beyond, they would have readily welcomed an exhibit of dolls from around the world.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was a lot about creating New Jobs. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration, or WPA (renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939, and sometimes called We Poke Along, by skeptics), was created to help put people to work. One of the jobs created was that of packhorse librarian, which you can read more about in Kathi Appelt and Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer’s wonderful book
Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack
Horse Librarians of Kentucky
. Willie Mae’s brother worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, as did 250,000 other men, eighteen years old and older, helping to plant trees and build dams, fire towers, and park trails, in addition to many other public projects.

One of the many things I remember my beloved grandmother telling me was that she hoped I would never have to live through a depression, as she had in the “Dirty Thirties,” when millions of people were out of work. During the Great Depression, people lost everything—their businesses, their homes, and, like Lucy’s Pop, their pride and hope. While I grew up hearing my grandmother’s stories about those hard times, I got a specific picture of the plight of the Okies from
Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp
, by Jerry Stanley. And giving truth to the saying that one picture is worth a thousand words, I found the photographs in
Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field
, by Anne Whiston Spirn, and
The Depression Years: As Photographed by Arthur Rothstein
(published by Dover Press) invaluable.

Like Lucy, thousands of people, adults and children alike, wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression. They asked for money, clothes, and even bicycles. Between 1933 and 1940, she received nearly seven hundred thousand letters. As often as she could, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote back. I’m sure she would have answered Lucy’s letter had she seen it, but the reply in this book was written by me, not Mrs. Roosevelt.

The Friendship Dolls did indeed travel around this entire
country. According to Dr. Gulick’s own report (
Dolls of Friendship: The Story of a Goodwill Project Between the Children of America and Japan
, Second Edition, Sidney L. Gulick), “Between January and July [1928] welcome receptions were given the dolls in every state but two of the Union. The towns and cities visited … numbered four hundred and seventy-nine.” I found no record, however, that any Friendship Doll visited Klamath Falls, Oregon. That was another of my inventions for the sake of the story.

In November of 1927, fifty-eight Friendship Dolls arrived in the United States as a gift from Japanese schoolchildren. The dolls were about three feet tall, with black human hair—cut into a bob with bangs—and handpainted faces. Their pearl-white “skin” was not porcelain but
gofun
, a material made from crushed oyster shells. Each doll was dressed in an elegant silk kimono and was equipped with dozens of accessories, including lacquer chests, tea sets, parasols, and even a passport.

The dolls were feted and admired as they traveled around the country, eventually finding homes, primarily, in various museums. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, many of them were removed from display, sold, lost, perhaps even destroyed. Only one doll remained on exhibit during World War II. That was Miss Kagawa (not the Miss Kanagawa of this story), at the North Carolina State Museum. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, she was turned to face the wall, and a sign was placed next to her. It began: “Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Mad.”

I learned about the Friendship Dolls when I was in
Montana, conducting research for
Hattie Big Sky
. In the basement of the Montana Historical Society Museum in Helena, I came across a photo of a blond farm girl in overalls standing next to a remarkable Japanese doll, nearly her size. They came from such different worlds—that hardscrabble girl and that elegant doll—I couldn’t imagine how they got together. I had never heard of these dolls before, and when I returned home, I set to learning as much as I could about these diminutive ambassadors of peace and goodwill. I have seen two of the dolls: Miss Tokushima, who is housed in Spokane, Washington, at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (thank you, Laura Thayer and Rose Krause), and Miss Shizuoka, in Kansas City, Missouri, at the Union Station Kansas City Museum (thank you, Lisa Shockley). I am not embarrassed to say that these dolls spoke to me, delivering a loud and clear message: Tell our story! I hope that through this book I can, in some small way, pass on their message of friendship and peace.

Since 1980, many people have worked to keep the spirit of the Friendship Dolls alive. Sidney L. “Denny” Gulick III, grandson of Dr. Sidney Gulick, the initiator of the doll exchange program, and his wife, Frances, continue the Friendship Doll tradition in their own way. Bill Gordon (
http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/dolls/japanese
) maintains a complete and informative website that describes both the American blue-eyed baby dolls first sent to Japanese schoolchildren and the Torei Ningyo—“return gift dolls” or Friendship Dolls—sent to America in return. Many others, especially Michiko Takaoka, Rosie Skiles, and Rosalie Whyel, have worked tirelessly to educate others about these amazing dolls.

Though this story is based on actual historical events, this is a work of fiction. I have created news articles—for example, the one on
this page
—and places—the museums in Lexington, Kentucky, and Klamath Falls, Oregon—to help make this story real.

One thing is completely true: to date, thirteen of the original fifty-eight dolls, including the Miss Kanagawa of this story, are still missing.

Thank you to my first readers, Bonny Becker, Kathryn Galbraith, Sylvie Hossack, Dave Patneaude, and Mary Nethery; to my agent, Jill Grinberg; to Rebecca Short; and to all of the people who generously shared their knowledge and expertise as I researched this book. My biggest thanks are reserved for my editor, Michelle Poploff, a woman with the patience of Job.

Though she tried hard to keep her mind on track while researching her previous book,
Hattie Big Sky
, when Kirby Larson ran across a 1920s photo of a Montana farm girl in overalls standing next to an exquisite Japanese doll, she couldn’t keep her imagination quiet. What brought the two together? Kirby did some initial research to satisfy that curiosity, but it would be five long years before she could turn her full attention to the Friendship Dolls’ story.

A passionate writer of historical fiction, Kirby also collaborates with her dear friend Mary Nethery on nonfiction picture books, such as the award-winning
Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival
.

Kirby Larson lives in Kenmore, Washington, with her husband, Neil, and Winston the Wonder Dog. You can visit her at
kirbylarson.com
.