H03U, Denise Eilers ‘00, Grandmother, 1928, Tōkyō
On November 11, 1998, I interviewed my maternal grandmother about World War II. She is about 70 years old and was about 19 years old when she experienced this tragedy.
Denise (D): Where did you live during the war?
Grandmother (G): I lived in Tōkyō. We lived in a fairly big house. I lived with my father, who couldn’t go to war because he was already too old, my mother, and my two sisters.
D: What is one thing that you can remember about your house?
G: I remember that we had to tape all of the windows in the house. This is because every time a bomb dropped nearby, the windows would shake and sometimes shatter. This was something that really terrified me. It felt like each time a bomb dropped, it was getting closer and closer. And I thought that even though the bomb might not hit us, it might be dropped on other people, and those could be among my friends. Sometimes I couldn’t even sleep because of these thoughts.
D: How was your food supply?
G: Well, luckily for me, my family was fairly wealthy, so we lived in a big house that had its own bomb shelter and other things that some people couldn’t afford. I remember that my family did not suffer from a food shortage. Many people from farms sold their crops to us, and we kept those crops in storage. Actually, we had so much food supplies that at night, many police officers would sneak over and eat dinner with us. They had to keep this a secret. At the time, I didn’t understand why, but I remember them always appearing at the back door at about 1:00 in the morning. They would eat and go. Sometimes they told us what was going on, but mostly they just ate their food and left.
D: Were you ever injured?
G: Amazingly, no one in my family got hurt. We were almost all killed, though. One day, my mother, out of nowhere, just said “It’s time. We must go away. We must leave.” She had this mysterious look and tone of voice. I knew that we had to believe her. Just a week after we moved, our whole area was bombed, and our house burned to the ground. My mother had an instinct that saved our lives I’ll never forget that.
D: Did anything special happen during the war?
G: Actually, I got married to your grandfather towards the end of the war! He wasn’t in the Army, because he had bad vision. Our families were both wealthy, and it was an arranged marriage. Both of our families went to a ryokan (inn) where we had the ceremony. I remember that outside we could hear the sound of bombs dropping and planes flying by, but for that moment, when I was with your grandfather, I felt safe and forgot about all the horrifying thoughts of war.
I remember once, when I was walking with your grandfather, we were stopped by a policeman. He told us “not to walk together at a time like this.” He thought we were a young couple on a date, so we told him that we were married, but I was only 20 years old, so he didn’t believe us. In other words, we weren’t supposed to have fun while soldiers were off at war.
D: Speaking of horrifying, what was one of the things that scared you the most?
G: I hated it when the U.S. planes flew overhead. It sounded like a bomb dropping right next to you. Every time I heard a plane, I remember thinking “This is it.”
D: How was your house built to protect you?
G: We had a small underground room that we stayed in at night or when planes flew nearby. This was not like a separate basement, since we could still see everything on the first floor, but it was as cold as a basement. We had a big cover over the light, so that it would not leak out the windows or door, but we could still see underground. If the light did leak, though, the police could spot us and confiscate all of our property, or we could have gotten bombed from the planes.
D: How was life for you after the war?
G: The war ended only a short time after I got married. We lived with my parents for a while until everyone got back on their feet.
D: What did you do to recover from the war?
G: Many people had to ride on packed trains carrying kimono and other valuables to barter for food. They took their possessions to farm owners and traded them.
D: How does it feel to have been afraid of Americans at that time, but now your son-in-law and grandchildren are Americans?
G: I never thought of America as an enemy. I was afraid of them, but I didn’t hate them. I guess this is because I didn’t lose any of my family members during the war. I also wasn’t affected directly because of the war. I wasn’t hurt or anything.
I learned a lot about my grandmother because of this interview. I also learned that not everyone was hurt or lost someone. My grandmother had it much easier than other people, but still it was very hard on her to have to go through the war in the first place.