The sword was suspended in the basement rafters with a message from 1945 still secured to its fittings. My grandfather and I were sitting one floor above it at his kitchen table when an email arrived. It was 9:17 A.M. on Christmas Day in 2021, the Chicago weather too mild, the ground too much of a defeated brown, and the gathering too small to suggest that anything festive was about to happen. A notification lit up my phone with the subject line “Merry Christmas and a letter from Umeki-san.
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