San Diego

San Diego matters as a place Krause deliberately avoided, not as a setting he visits in this episode. The possibility of encountering Evelyn there, or hearing fragments of gossip about her, helped drive his request for Atlantic service and linked the geography of his posting to the pain of their marriage’s collapse.

Place in Krause’s Decision

Krause could not face the prospect of seeing Evelyn in San Diego or nearby Coronado. He therefore asked to serve on the Atlantic seaboard, putting distance between himself and the reminders he feared. His retreat was bound to the news involving Evelyn and a lawyer: the same painful turn that drew him away from the Pacific also left him on the Atlantic during the war.

Narrative Significance

San Diego stands in the passage for a feared return to personal loss and unwanted knowledge. Krause reflects that, without the lawyer, he might have died alongside many of his friends at Pearl Harbour. That counterfactual does not make his present sadness a relief; instead, it shows how a decision shaped by marital pain also placed him in a different wartime circumstance. The city’s significance is thus indirect but consequential: it is the place he could not bear to face, and its avoidance helped determine where he served.