H16Ir, Sinead O’Keeffe ‘00, Norberto Sequeira, Family friend, 1928, China, Yokohama: Naka-ku
Norberto Sequeira was born in 1928 in Yokohama. His nickname is Nori. He grew up in Yokohama, attending Saint Joseph College, as well as in Shanghai, where his father was a wealthy merchant of Portuguese origin, although he had never lived in Portugal. His mother was Japanese. Like many of the Catholic merchant families of Shanghai, he spent some years at Saint Joseph College in Yokohama as a boarding student, since the level of education was higher and the environment healthier than Shanghai, especially as war approached. This is the description of his experiences before, during, and after the war, which he shared with me in November 1998.
I lived a very good, full, joyous life in Shanghai. I lived in the British sector and attended a Catholic school there. After school, I often went with my friends around the various extraterritorial settlements, including the French and former German and Russian areas. I always found these interesting, because there were events such as bar brawls, haggling on the streets, and all the clashes of culture that would be expected in a port city in the Orient in 1941.
It was after such a lively evening that my life changed completely on Monday, the 8th of December, 1941. I was 13 years old, and I was awakened by the sound of the Japanese Navy shelling the shore. There was one British warship in the harbor which was surrounded. It refused to surrender, but it was blown out of the water, and all hands were lost.
After the Japanese Army took control of Shanghai, all non-Chinese and non-Japanese residents were rounded up and brought to a detention center. We were treated well and fairly. We were allowed to bring any possessions we could carry. Meals were provided daily, but many of the detainees refused to eat. Much food was wasted during the first few months. The Japanese camp commandant wanted to remonstrate with the detainees about their cavalier attitude towards the waste of food.
For reasons not completely clear, the commandant refused to use any of the foreign men who were fluent in Japanese as interpreters. Instead, the commandant insisted that my mother, who was a Japanese married to a foreigner, do the interpreting. She suffered a lot of stress as a result of being the intermediary at the camp throughout the war, but it meant that she understood both points of view. Even after the war, she didn’t fully recover her health.
I considered my time in this camp as, on balance, good, as I had the best teachers in the world. Many of the men and women detained at the camp were doctors, lawyers, merchants, professors, and other such professions. None of these people would ordinarily teach a high school student. I benefitted from their knowledge and experiences, learning a lot of the ways of the world and the countries that they had left behind.
After the war, I returned to Yokohama. As I looked from the Bluff across to Chinatown, all I could see was an ocean of ashes. Only a few buildings were left standing. I finished my education at Saint Joseph College, and I have lived in Yokohama ever since, working at first for the U.S. military in the motor pool. My wife is a Futaba graduate. Eventually I worked in an import-export company, from which I retired.
I wish I had had more time to talk to Mr Sequeira. I would have been able to hear a more detailed description of his life. I cannot say that he had a very bad life, even though I would not have desired it for myself. He was fairly wealthy before the war began, and he was treated well as a PoW, even though he was a prisoner. He had many interesting experiences in the detention camp. He learned about subjects that he wouldn’t have been able to study at school. However, the decreasing health of his mother brought him great pain. It must have been one of the worst aspects during the war.
I would not have wanted to see the British ship go down so quickly and bravely. When Mr Sequeira told me this part of the story, I almost felt like crying. It must have been extremely scary to have been trapped on the ship, continuing to fight with no chance of winning.
I also admire the agility of Mr Sequeira in moving back to the place where he had been born, to the country of his mother, to the country of those who made his mother suffer more than he did. Also the sight of the sea when he returned to his birthplace must have been horrifying. To see the town where you had grown up burned and destroyed must have been very discouraging. Still Mr Sequeira carried on to become a very successful exporter and importer, and he remains well and healthy into his ripe old age now.
I hope I have as many interesting experiences as Mr Sequeira, although not as horrifying. It seems like he learned a lot from them. They have shaped his strong character, which I have been privileged to experience. If I have the chance, I would like to hear in more detail the story of Mr Sequeira’s life.