H05, Yukika Furuya ‘00, Ayako Suzuki, Grandmother, 1928, Nara
On Saturday, November 14, 1998, I went to my grandparents’ house in Zushi and interviewed my maternal grandmother. Her name is Ayako Suzuki, She was born in 1928. She is now 70 years old.
When I went to visit, my grandmother did not know that I was going to interview her about her experiences during World War II. But when I asked if she would tell me about it, at first she hesitated and didn’t know what to talk about. But once I started asking her questions, she was able to keep talking.
My grandmother was 13 years old when World War II started. She lived in Nara with her mother and her four younger sisters. Her father had lived in Manchuria as a soldier in the Japanese Army ever since the Japan-China War broke out in 1937.
Her family was quite wealthy at that time. She was attending a jogakkō, which is like a middle and high school for girls now. But her school became a gakkō kōjō (school factory) during the war. She worked and studied at the same time. They still had some homework, but during the nighttime, she did her homework under a light bulb covered with a black cloth to prevent light from leaking outside. They feared that if any light emerged, the American planes would bomb their house.
At her school, they would not allow students to use words that came from English, or any songs in English. That is why my grandmother sometimes still calls basketball rōkyū and volleyball haikyū. She had to learn “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do” as “ha-ni-ho-e-to-i-ro-ha.”
As I wrote before, my grandmother’s family was wealthy. They had a telephone, which was rare at that time. But during the war, they were not allowed to use the phone. This was because the phone lines (cables) were taken down for military use. Although they were wealthy, they didn’t have enough food. Because my great-grandfather was a soldier, they received sweet potatoes from the government. But because the potatoes were soaked in water, my grandmother described it as “garigari” and not good at all. She said that she was made to plant rice in the paddies, but she was always bitten by many leeches.
When I asked about food, she kept repeating that they didn’t have enough. But because she lived in Nara, she was able to eat watermelons and buri (yellowtail). In Nara they grew lotus of watermelons, and in Wakayama, the prefecture next to it, they caught lots of yellowtail, so the two prefectures traded their food.
After the war, things got worse. Farmers sold food which was worth about a hundred yen for ten thousand yen. She called them yamabushi (山伏, bandits). Even if she was able to buy food from the farmers, sometimes on the way home, she would meet American soldiers, and they would tease her and take her food away.
I asked my grandmother what was the scariest thing about the war. She answered, “To see people die and think that next time it will be your turn.” When she said that, her eyes started to water. She explained that she could hear the B-29 planes fly over her house and fire their machine guns and also drop bombs. One B-29 dropped an incendiary bomb (shōidan), but it failed to explode (fuhatsudan) and landed in the shed next door. The unexploded bomb gave out a terrible smell, and she remembered being in a panic. She told me that after school, when she and her friends were walking back home, P-51 planes started firing guns at them. She ran and hid under the first shelter that she found. She saw her friends die right in front of her.
After a bomb was dropped, she often went to the location where it landed, because usually there would be helmets and boots lying around which could still be used. But when she picked up the boots and helmets, many times she found parts of human flesh still inside them.
After she had talked for about an hour and a half, she concluded that there was nothing good about war and told me not to forget that many innocent people died because of the war. And then she whispered to herself, “kowakatta” (I was so scared).