E20C, Mami Yamamoto ‘94, Hideo Kawamata, Grandfather, 1917, Yukie Kawamata, Grandmother, c 1920, Manchuria, China, Taiwan, Tōkyō
My maternal grandmother and grandfather are Yukie and Hideo Kawamata. In 1941 (Shōwa 16), they were not yet married. My grandfather went for a government inspection when he turned 20 years old, as all men did at that time. If they passed the examination, that proved that they were physically strong, mentally capable, and have the other qualities to become a soldier. This was called the Chōhei Seido (conscription). My grandfather passed, and on February 1, he entered the Japanese Army. He started training in order to go to war. He took an accounting test to become a paymaster, who calculated the payments for all of the lower-ranked soldiers. He also had to handle the fund to buy food and clothes for the soldiers.
When he was all set to go to war, he and other men went to Manshū (Manchuria), in the northeastern part of China. He stayed there for over four years. He told me that there were times when food was scarce and soldiers went hungry. At first they were fighting against China, but the Japanese Army was much stronger, and there were more soldiers, so the situation was calm overall. They didn’t fight very harshly. He also told me that soldiers were not supposed to feel fear or think about their difficulties.
When he moved to Taiwan, World War II had already started, and he heard about all of his friends who died or were injured. The most significant memory that he had was about a friend whom he had known since when he was very small, who died in Okinawa. This friend was an officer, and all the soldiers under him were also killed by bombing. He remained in Taiwan for about a year and a half.
Then I asked my grandmother about the war. She told me that she was in Shanghai for ten years before and during World War II. She was quite young and was enjoying the best time of her life, from childhood up to about 24 years old. When she came back to Japan by ship and lived in Tōkyō, she had hard times. Her family of five to six people lived in Nakano. It was during the war, so there was so little food. Every day the military came and handed out food to the people. Even though they had many people in the family, they got the same amount of food as everyone else. For example, they got half of an onion and 100 grams of rice. Also the rice was not washed clean like we usually see now, so they had to put the rice into a bottle and stir it with a stick, so that the dirt came off. Of course they also washed it thoroughly with water. Nakano, where my grandmother lived, was miraculously saved, and it was not bombed and did not burn down.
My grandmother is such a lucky person! During the Great Kantō Earthquake [in 1923], she was in Seattle. She thinks she is fortunate because she didn’t experience either of those tragedies. I know she is not purely Japanese, even though she has been a Japanese citizen since the time of those tragedies. She feels that she should have experienced it, so in other words she feels left out. She doesn’t say that she wanted to be in that situation, but she really feels sorry for all of the victims. I appreciated them for talking about those events, even though I’ve heard them talk to me before. To tell the truth, I couldn’t understand what life was really like during the war, but I think those experiences of my grandparents were very worthwhile.