A04, Tetsuko Iwasaki ‘85, Manabu Iwasaki, Grandfather, 1929, Tōkyō, Yokohama: Tsurumi-ku, Shizuoka
The experience of a world war naturally occupies a large part of a person’s memory. Each day was a struggle to keep on living. Soldiers were in danger of being shot to death at any moment. The constant fear of death over three years is something one cannot easily forget. For most of us with no actual experience of war, it is very hard to imagine what it was like just by staring at a textbook. Probably the most effective way of feeling the experience of a war is to hear someone’s actual memories. So I interviewed my paternal grandfather in May 1984.
My grandfather, Manabu Iwasaki, was 12 years old when World War II began. He was one of many pre-teen boys who probably preferred to play baseball, soccer, and sumō outdoors, rather than watching houses burn, seeing people killed or injured, and feeling their stomachs stick to their backs with hunger. He certainly has much to tell us and is overjoyed to share some of his meaningful memories, although not pleasant ones.
Like most people, especially children, the lack of food was the most gruesome experience. All of the food, and tickets to enter the public bath, were rationed and distributed by government officials—supposedly on an equal basis to all citizens. The food that families could get included sweet potatoes, corn, wheat, and small amounts of vegetables and fish on some days. There was absolutely no meat at all. That was basically the entire menu. Young boys were told not to complain, but that did not prevent them from starving.
At school, lunchtime was tense. Each student ate privately, at his desk with his obentō lunchbox in front of him, like a barricade. Mr Iwasaki feels like he went to one of the best schools in the world, even though the students hid their lunches. Teachers and students always helped each other. The teachers were very strict but kind. If a student forgot his lunch, the teacher would roar at him, yelling that that was the worst insult any boy could make to his mother who had prepared it. After the stern lecture, he would smile and share his own lunch with that student. One particular student had lost his father in the war, and his father fell very ill. He always came to school with an empty obentō box. The classmates knew this, and they gladly shared their lunches, even if they were starving themselves.
Like most other schools, Mr Iwasaki’s school had military practice. The school was located in Ōmori, Tōkyō, and when Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku’s cremated remains came back to Japan from New Guinea, the students participated in the parade along Aoyama-dōri avenue in his memory. Mr Iwasaki was the chief of his own junior regiment, and he was responsible for making them all salute as the parade passed in front of them. He intended to take out his long sword [out of its scabbard] at the beginning of the salute. Unfortunately (and hilariously), he couldn’t, due to the length of the sword. He still considers this the most embarrassing moment of his life.
After some years, the family moved from Tōkyō to Tsurumi-ku in Yokohama, due to his father’s work. That is where he experienced the most terrifying moments of his life. One of these was when he just barely boarded the train from Kamata to Tsurumi. Due to the poor quality and quantity of food, he and his mother had gone to a large market in Kamata to find what was probably the last of the good food. After buying whatever they could, they rain for the train heading back to Tsurumi. It turned out that the next train was bombed, and no one reached Tsurumi alive. If they had been a few minutes late, they would have lost their lives. He feels that that was when he realized that Death was hiding just around the corner, ready to claim him and the rest of his family.
During the American bombing attacks, his nice, comfortable, large house was set on fire. Just as soon as the family heard the air raid sirens roar, they saw a swarm of B-29 bombers cover the sky. Almost as quickly, they saw the whole town turn bright orange from west to east. The whole family dropped everything and ran away from the fire, from Death. Mr Iwasaki recalls that the P-51 fighter planes were flying so close to the ground that he could have touched them with his own hands. While they were running away, they saw many people die right before their eyes.
He particularly remembers the plane which dropped its tail practically right on them. The nose of the plane on fire continues to fly through the air like a gigantic comet. Everywhere incendiary bombs were being dropped, and the sound of them was like the sounds of Hell. Another plane crashed into an air raid shelter (bōkūgō), killing everyone who had been seeking refuge in it. The Buddhist monks of Sōjiji temple kindly took proper care of the remains, including the corpse of the American pilot. This was very unusual, since most dead Americans were put on display for people to mock. After the war, the Sōjiji monks received a symbol of appreciation by the American Army for their kindness.
The Iwasaki family were always aware of the disasters that haunted everyone’s future. Yet they did not think that their own house would turn into ashes, until it did. After the fire settled, the family went back to their house, only to find the black ugliness that the bombs had created. This was the most shocking disaster. Feeling sorry for yourself does not solve problems, so they decided to dig up the futons and other possessions that they had buried, in case of any disaster. This seemed like a reasonable action. But as soon as they dug them out, everything caught on fire. The ground had been burning, and so when the material was exposed to air, it burst into flames and turned to ashes. The family had nothing left and had to move away from Yokohama after living there for two years.
They moved to Kōriyama-machi in Shizuoka prefecture. Here they found white rice, which was worth more than its weight in gold in the cities. Yet rice was just rice, and there was nothing else to eat with it. The migrants (like in the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck) were not given a warm welcome from the local people. There was much discrimination, but there was no alternative but to stay there until conditions improved in Yokohama.
Mr Iwasaki saw one of the ugliest sides of human behavior in this small village—a man killing another man. One day, an American pilot crashed into the village with his plane, miraculously surviving, but not for long. There were many anti-American villagers. Some of them decided that this was their chance to make the villain suffer at their own hands. They tortured him and ended up crushing the breath of life out of him. At the time, the villagers were satisfied by their actions. They saw no evil in taking revenge on the enemy. The epilogue of this episode is that, after the surrender, all of the villagers who participated in it were taken away to be killed by American troops.
This village was a farming one, so Mr Iwasaki had a few experiences that were not common for townboys. One of them was being eaten alive by fleas. Spraying insecticide was strictly prohibited in order not to harm the delicate silkworms raised in the area. Another experience was eating the potatoes that the farmers kept for the new planting. They were stored under a pile of fertilizer for the new season. Ravenous as he was, Mr Iwasaki went with his friends to eat them, and they sure got a scolding for that.
The end of the war, on August 15, 1945, came during his stay in Kōriyama-machi. Along with everyone else in Japan, the Iwasaki family (except for his father, who was in Yokohama for work) all sat in front of the radio listening to the Emperor officially announce his nation’s surrender to the Allies, including the United States. The truth is that no one in the village could actually understand what the Emperor was saying. They could hardly catch any of his words, due to the bad reception of the radio. Even if they could have heard them, they wouldn’t have understood anything. The only way that they learned that Japan had surrendered is that they knew that the Soviet Red Army had invaded Manchuria, and American planes dropped leaflets notifying people that Japan would have to surrender.
Two months later, the Iwasaki family moved back to Tsurumi. Fortunately none of the family members had been killed, except for one cousin. Their aunt had to run away from the burning town, carrying her dead son in her arms. It was so hot that flies began getting to the boy almost as soon as he departed this life. The nightmare of the war was finally coming to an end.
Mr Iwasaki feels that there is nothing fun or pleasant about war itself. He was given the chance to see what humans were really like. He is just angered by the fact that everyone in Japan had wanted to go to war. It could not have been avoided because the greed and anger of some people was so large. He had always thought that the American soldiers were going to kill all of the Japanese people after the surrender. Yet the Americans did not even ban the Japanese language. He feels that it was very generous of them to spare the people. That is primarily the reason why he does not resent Americans and came to be able to speak English quite fluently.