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On her way to her apartment, she asked the vendors, pedestrians, and anyone she encountered about the fire, but no one seemed to know. Matthew turned on the radio. There was only music.

The next day, a grave man’s voice delivered the news that Kai Tak Airfield, which the Royal Air Force used, had been bombed; the Japanese had attacked Kowloon.

“I told you. It’s happening,” Matthew said. “What will happen to us?”

“You heard the news. The British in Kowloon will fight back, and there will be a bloody battle before they land on Hong Kong Island. But we’ll be out of here by then. Mother and Father will come back, and then we’ll leave for Macau.”

“When will they be here?”

“Soon.” Anyu didn’t show her worries on her face. It had been a week since Esther left.

“Are the Japanese going to kill us all?”

“No, you’re an American. They’ll leave you alone.”

“The radio said the Japanese were also at war with the United States, and we are also their enemies.”

She had heard that, too, and hoped it was a rumor. “We’ll stay in the apartment to be safe, Matthew.”

Every day, there was news of looting on the streets in Kowloon, shop ransackings, and robberies of trucks driven by hospital employees. Anyu was glad she had saved enough rice and beans for several months.

Ten days passed; Esther didn’t come.

Anxious, Anyu left the apartment to find Esther.

Had she and Mr. Dearborn found a ferry to Macau?

She should have heard about the bombing of Kai Tak Airfield by now, and if she had not found a boat, they needed to hurry.

Once the Japanese crossed Victoria Harbor, they would be trapped.

She went to Esther’s apartment in Central, but no one was home, and Mr. Dearborn’s shop was closed.

Anyu decided to go to the department store where Esther worked. Matthew insisted on coming along.

Walking toward the department store, Anyu could hardly recognize the streets that she had crossed every day: the bombing of Kowloon had spooked people in Hong Kong.

There were no street vendors or people pushing strollers, the buses and trams were not running, and the taxis were out of sight.

She realized with a shiver—the Japanese were invading Hong Kong Island any minute.

“Stay with me, Matthew. You hear? Do not leave me.”

She rushed to the stately Lane Crawford building and pushed through crowds of people holding bundles of clothing, lamps, and even bedding. They were not regular shoppers, she realized; they were looters, their faces glazed with hysteria.

And then she heard it—a faint whir like a mosquito buzzing. She looked up. A warplane. Then another. They cast long shadows ahead of her like two dark creatures under the sea.

“They’re bombing the island, Auntie,” Matthew said.

“Let’s go find Mother. Go.”

They dashed inside the department store; it was a scene of unspeakable frenzy.

Men were smashing the glass counters, fighting for furs and bags and clothing, while others groaned on the floor, clutching their bleeding heads.

Anyu found a clerk wearing the store’s uniform sitting on the floor with a bleeding face.

“Esther Mandelburg?” he said, his voice barely audible. “She left the store to check on her husband a few days ago. I hear they were arrested by the Japanese.”

Arrested? “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

A thunderous roar rocked the building. The roof collapsed; the second floor toppled. Bricks crashed down.

Anyu lunged to cover Matthew. “We have to go, Matthew. Let’s go.”

She grabbed Matthew’s hand and dove out just as the balcony caved in.

In a mad dash, hand clasping Matthew’s, she rushed out of the building and raced down the street.

She was only a few feet away from a church when another bomb struck, and the steeple collapsed with a groan.

She stopped, heart pounding in her chest, looking around her.

In desperation, she sped toward a café near a palm tree, holding Matthew’s hand.

She had just taken two steps when a stray bullet whizzed past her, and a man holding a heap of hats sagged beside her.

She shivered; in a few short minutes, they had escaped death three times.

“I want Mother! I want Father!” Matthew shouted, his face streaked with tears.

“We must get out of here first.” She pulled him along.

The streets were shrouded in a dense fog of dust and smoke, deafening with the sound of shelling, and the ground trembled.

It was hard to see where she should go, but her mind was clear.

With the Diamond of Life, she would evade death, and as long as she held Matthew’s hand in hers, he would survive, too.

“We need to find them, Auntie.”

“We will. As soon as the bombing stops. Let’s go back to our apartment. You stay with me, Matthew.”

“You’re crushing my hand.”

“Sorry.” She loosened her grip, just a bit, then sped up, racing down the street filled with the cacophonous noises of buildings exploding and people screaming.

She tried hard not to glance at the warplanes roaring above her, tearing her gaze away from the people with bleeding faces and the bodies slumped over the stone stairs.

Hong Kong was descending into hell.

For six days, the sky exploded.

The trees lay flat, the hills shuddered, the buildings moaned. The screeches of humans blended into the shrill cries of gulls above the water. Clouds of charcoal smoke surged and surged across the sky, throttling a black sun.

On Christmas Day, the island was quiet, like an empty cage.

In the air, cinders from the fires floated, spinning like snowflakes, the bare hills the color of desert sand; in the harbor, hulls of junks drifted, and broken sails bobbed.

On the radio, a voice said that Governor Young had surrendered.

He had taken a motorboat to Kowloon across from the harbor, where the Japanese had set up their headquarters inside the Peninsula Hotel, and signed an unconditional surrender document.

The exchange had been friendly, and he was back at his governor’s manor, holding his Malacca walking cane with a gold band.

The radio didn’t mention the treatment of the American hostages, who were declared the enemy of the Japanese.

All day, Anyu stood at the top of a hill near her apartment, hoping to see Esther’s return, observing the activities on the streets.

Then later in the afternoon, she saw a parade of officials on horseback and in jeeps, trundling along the shelled buildings, with soldiers carrying the Japanese flag heading toward the Wan Chai District, where a massive crowd had gathered in Statue Square.

The foreign civilians, the Royal Army Medical Corps, and the surrendered Royal Scots were taken to the square, waiting for orders, one of her neighbors said.

Orders?

She could imagine what orders they would be. The Japanese 23rd Army had won the war, and the moment of reckoning had come for the foreigners, who would likely be sent to internment camps.

“Quick, quick.” Anyu took Matthew’s hand and raced downhill.

They wove through the streets to the west, to Statue Square in Central.

It was a short walk, but it took them a long time to climb over rubble and reach Chater Road.

Then they couldn’t go any farther, blocked by an army of Japanese soldiers.

Standing on a stair, she could see the red canopy of the Queen Victoria statue but nothing else.

After some searches, she finally found a ledge near a stone lion.

She beckoned Matthew over and climbed onto the pedestal, craning her neck.

Then she saw them—around the fence of the statue were the defeated British soldiers, the bleeding Indian policemen, and a bit farther, in front of the towering HSBC building, with their backs to the harbor, looking at the street, was a neat line of unkempt foreigners.

There were so many of them, men in black silk coats, women in skirts.

“Do you see them?” Matthew’s eyes were glazed.

Anyu shook her head, and then she was still. In front of the arrested foreigners was a figure in an officer’s uniform, carrying a sword—Kawashima.

“Mother should be there. Do you see her?”

There. Anyu finally spotted Esther, her hair blooming like brilliant golden trumpet flowers. She was thirty-nine years old, Anyu remembered, a loving mother, a likable saleswoman, and a caring wife.

“I see her! There she is! Will they release her? Will they send her to a camp, Auntie?”

Anyu couldn’t see anything through the crowd. Standing on tiptoe, she craned her neck and caught sight of the tips of the rifles in front of the neat row. She shivered.

There was a loud shout in Japanese and the rifles were lifted.

“What are they doing?”

Anyu felt her heart shatter into pieces. Tears gushing out, she turned Matthew toward her and held him tight. “Don’t look, don’t look.”

And Esther was looking upward, to the sky, perhaps searching for Anyu, asking her to look after Matthew.

Then there was a blast and the golden trumpet flowers faltered. The entire row fell backward. The gunshots, deafening, shook the square, echoing above the statues.

The harbor bled blood.