L01, Miyu Arai ‘04, Tsuneko Nakagawa, Grandmother, 1932, Shizuoka, Yokohama: Naka-ku
This interview with Tsuneko Nakagawa (who is now 70 years old) was held on November 9, 2002, at the Nakagawa house in Miyamaedaira in northwestern Kawasaki. Nakagawa Tsuneko is my grandmother.
A= Miyu Arai
T= Tsuneko Nakagawa
A: How old were you when the Second World War started? And what was the most shocking event for you during the war?
T: I was still only nine years old when the war began. May 29, 1945, when I was 12, was the day of the air raid in Yokohama. All of the houses were burned down, including mine. I was in terrible shock, but my mother told me| to run away into the forest in the hills, so I did what she told me to. I ran and ran and ran, but the sky was full of B-29 bomber planes, and shell bombs were dropped from them, like rain pouring from the red sky. I was very afraid, but what made me more scared were the machine guns on the P-51 fighter planes. They tried to shoot me down, but I hid in the bushes, and fortunately, I was saved with no injury.
A: What did you do after the planes left?
T: I went back to where my house had been, but nothing was left. All of my neighbors’ houses and everything were gone. I searched for my mother, sister, and grandfather, but we were all separated.
A: Were you unable to see your family again?
T: Well, I was never able to see my sister and my grandfather again, but I met my mother. When I went to an elementary school used for shelter, she was there, with some injuries on her head, but she was fine.
A: What about your friends, neighbors, and relatives?
T: Most of my friends died, and my neighbors as well. I saw many dead bodies on my way to the forest and back. I also saw many people getting killed right in front of me. That was when I first realized the preciousness of life, and how grateful I am to be alive right now.
A: It must have been a great shock for you, seeing all that. What did you do with all the dead bodies?
T: We cremated them. We put the dead bodies in one line, put wood on top of them, and burned them. I still can remember how terrible that smell was!!
A: Oh, that sounds terrible. What happened to you after the war?
T: We were evacuated to Fujinomiya, in Shizuoka prefecture. I went to an elementary school there. Actually, there wasn’t any school at all. There were just classes outside called “Aozora Kyōshitsu” (open-air classroom). I also feel blessed that I was able to go to school, because many children my age couldn’t go, and had many problems with food shortage.
A: Did you have problems with food?
T: To tell you the truth, not at all. After the surrender, my father worked at a job for the American soldiers, so I never really had problems with food. He brought us home butter, sugar, margarine, and everything.
A: What about during the war? What kinds of food did you eat?
T: Oh, that was a different story. Yes, we had problems with food shortage. The most common food was suiton. We fished in the river near our home, and mixed wheat flour with the fish, and kneaded it, and then made it into a soup. I found it quite tasty.
A: Well, at least you liked it!
T: But we still had to go around to our relatives, to ask for some wheat flour, since we didn’t have enough.
A: What were your feelings towards the war?
T: I believed that Japan would win. The radio always announced that Japan was winning, and we were leading all the way up to the end, when really, we were losing. I prayed for peace all the time. I thought the military regime was formidable.
A: What else frightened you?
T: The shell bombs. It was awful. There was never a night without the loud frightful sounds of them. The dead bodies frightened me as well, but I got used to seeing them after a while, and I felt so ashamed to be used to seeing such things.
A: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
T: War should never happen in this world. Peace has to be maintained, and I am able to say this because I experienced the horror of war. If you compare people’s lives nowadays to the wartime period, there was no freedom whatsoever, so I believe our freedom nowadays is a sign of peace. We must all be aware of how fortunate we are.