Against All Odds: the Story of Elinor Powell and Frederick Alber
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 13: The Story Lives On
Elinor lived until 2005, long enough to see the world change in ways she’d never imagined possible. Mixed-race marriages were not only legal but increasingly common. The idea of a German POW falling in love with an American nurse—that part still raised eyebrows, but the racial aspect? It mattered less with each passing year.
But she never forgot what it had cost. She never forgot the restaurants that turned her away, the officers who beat Frederick, the landlords who slammed doors in their faces, the schools that tried to segregate their children.
She also never forgot what they’d won: two sons she loved beyond measure, a lifetime with the man who’d walked across a mess hall and declared his intention to marry her, and the knowledge that love—real love—was stronger than hatred.
Chris Albert, in his seventies, still played trumpet. And one day, he shared his parents’ story with a journalist named Alexis Clark.
The story that emerged—researched, documented, and eventually published as “Enemies in Love”—captured something profound about America, about World War II, about race, about love, and about the human capacity to connect across every imaginable divide.
Frederick had been right, that first day in the mess hall. He’d known, somehow, with an artist’s intuition, that Elinor Powell was the woman he would marry.
What he couldn’t have known was that their story would matter to people decades later. That it would stand as testament to what two people could achieve when they refused to accept the limitations others tried to impose on them.
Elinor and Frederick didn’t set out to be heroes or pioneers. They simply fell in love in the middle of a war, in a place where such love was forbidden by both nations they belonged to, and they refused to let go.
Sometimes, the most revolutionary act is simply choosing to love.
Epilogue: Reflection
The story of Elinor Powell and Frederick Albert forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about America during World War II. While we fought against Hitler’s ideology of racial supremacy abroad, we maintained our own system of racial oppression at home.
Black nurses who volunteered to serve their country were restricted by quotas, segregated, and ultimately deemed good enough only to care for the enemy—POWs who, by virtue of being white, were treated better than American citizens with darker skin.
German prisoners could eat in restaurant dining rooms where black American officers could not.