F04B, Miya King ‘97, Shigeko Hoshikawa, Grandmother, 1920, Tōkyō, Aichi, Yamagata
My maternal grandmother was born on August 3, 1920, and she is now 75 years old. I interviewed her in December 1995
Q: Could you describe your life when the war started?
A: I was attending Kyōritsu Joshi Tandai [a women’s junior college] in Tōkyō. I was nineteen years old when the war started in Europe. I learned about the war at school, and I was also informed by radio and newspapers.
Q: How did you feel about Japan entering the war in 1941?
A: I did not really feel anything then. I never thought we would lose, because Japan never lost any of the previous wars. Anyway, women were not informed about military matters, so often I had no idea what was happening.
Q: What were you doing during the war?
A: I made clothes for injured soldiers and visited them in hospitals. When I was living in Nagoya, I practiced how to put out fires, in case a fire broke out after houses were bombed. This was in August 1944. However, there was no bombing until December 1944, when B-29 planes began to drop incendiary bombs on Nagoya. So I returned to my parents’ hometown of Sakata in Yamagata prefecture. It was just as dangerous in Sakata, so I went back to Ichinomiya, just outside Nagoya, where my husband lived.
Bombs were dropped on Nagoya all the time, and I saw the city go up in flames. In July 1945, for the first time our town of Ichinomiya was bombed. First one bomb was dropped in the middle of the city; then more bombs were dropped all over the city. The whole city was in flames, but since my house was located near a river, we were able to put out the fire. While the bombing continued, people came to our house, and they hid underground in our bomb shelter.
The next day, I went outside to wash the baby’s diapers in the river. Everything was burned, and while I was washing, an airplane was flying overhead. It was very low, and I’m sure I was able to see the pilot’s face. It was an American, wearing flight goggles. I thought that he was the one who burned down our city, and anger filled my heart. I really detested that pilot.
Q: How was the food supply during the war?
A: It was really not so hard for me. After the bombing, all of the people whose houses had burned down received food supplies. Our house was not burned, so we did not get those supplies, so I cooked soybeans. However, since my husband was a high-ranked official, whose job was to dispatch troops to different places, we were able to get twice as much food as others.
Q: What worried you most during the war?
A: When I had to be separated from my family, I did not feel sad. I expected it because it was inevitable during wartime. What worried me the most was close to the end of the war. I was talking to my husband a few days before he had to go to Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture. He told me that after the U.S. troops landed in Japan, he would probably have to kill himself, because it would mean that Japan had lost. When he was in Kanazawa, the enemy troops landed. I was worried that my husband would kill himself, but four days later, he came back, with his sword behind his back, saying “We lost.”
Q: Did you hear about the end of the war from the Emperor?
A: No, because there was no electricity, so we could not listen to the radio. Some girls from a nearby school told me that the war was over.
Q: How did you feel?
A: I felt relieved, but life after the war was even worse compared to during the war. On August 20, 1945, I went back to Sakata. It took 20 hours on the train, and I was standing the whole way, carrying my son.
Q: How was life different after the war?
A: Most of our food was potatoes and sweet potatoes. I got food by selling my kimono. I made clothes and shoes for my children. Yet I still think I was lucky, because I did not have to look for food myself; someone sold my kimono for me.
Q: What else do you feel about the war?
A: It’s something that I would never want to experience again. I don’t want any future generations to go through that either. War is something that brings despair to everyone, whether they win or they lose. It is something that should never happen.