N04K, Jun-Hee Lee ‘07, Yōko Itō, Friend’s grandmother, 1930, Hokkaidō
I interviewed Yōko Itō, who is the paternal grandmother of my friend Noboru. She now lives in Machida, a city in Tōkyō. Thanks to the Itō family, I was able to meet both of Noboru’s grandparents and have lunch with the family on October 26, 2005.
Having finished eating lunch, I began the interview while Noboru’s grandfather, Eihiko, was there as well. He also told his story or made comments, which helped me in understanding the interviewee’s story more deeply.
Yōko Itō was born in 1930 in Sapporo, where she lived until her marriage. She was 11 years old when the Pacific War broke out in 1941, and she was attending elementary school. She also remarked that the Japanese education system was different from that of today; for instance, boys and girls went to separate schools, and compulsory education was only up to sixth grade.
To provide a warm atmosphere, I started the interview by asking her what the happiest moments were in her childhood. She said, without any hesitation, there were lots of things she enjoyed during her childhood, especially skiing, which, according to her, was pretty much like a “compulsory subject” in Hokkaidō.
Then, even before I asked to do so, she moved on and began talking about the years during the war. As she graduated from elementary school, she had to take an examination for entrance to middle school. It was, however, not a written examination but an oral examination; there was not enough paper as all the necessities were spent on military purposes. Eihiko remarked that it was the same for him, and had to take an oral examination. Yōko passed the examination and began attending middle school which, to my astonishment, taught English. She explained to me that it was possible partly because compulsory education at the time was only up to elementary school, and therefore middle schools, if inclined to do so, could teach English. This, however, did not mean that there was no government interference in teaching English. In fact, English was one of the subjects for which the textbook was inspected by the government, even if the subject was taught in middle school. She gave some “nationalist” examples that were reflected in the textbook she was using at the time: Kyūjō instead of the Imperial Palace, Fujiyama instead of Mt. Fuji, and Sumida-gawa instead of the Sumida River.
Shortly before the Second World War ended, when Yōko was in the third year of middle school (equivalent to Grade 9 in the American system), she and other students were sent to farms to assist farmers, as almost no young males were available at the time because of the war. Ishikari was the place where she was sent, and she would work there for some time. In addition to farming, she and others were also instructed to cut down trees to build dugouts. Although she spent her days in hard labor, she reminisced about the most beautiful starry heavens she had seen while she was away — it was as if her eyes were telling everything.
After Japan surrendered to the U.S., everyone was expecting to return home soon; in reality, it took a while for them to return, because there was a shortage of fuel for trains: When finally she returned home, she encountered tragic news: her eldest uncle did not return from Manchuria (until years later, when he was liberated from a Prisoner of War camp in Siberia), and her cousin sank to the bottom of the sea along with his Navy cruiser.
As she finished speaking, I went on to the next question, as to the change that she saw during the war period. She answered, much to my surprise, that living conditions did not change much even after Japan entered the war. She explained further that the reason for it was because Hokkaidō was a remote rural area in Japan and was not bombed as many times as Tōkyō was. Both Yōko and Eihiko remembered exactly how many times Hokkaidō was bombed: only once, and the place that was bombed was Naeba in Sapporo, where provisions for the Army were kept.
Furthermore, thanks to cooperation between the local farmers and inhabitants, she was able to get necessary foodstuffs. According to her, it was after the war when things got really severe. One of the reasons for this was the inflation that prevailed in Japan right after the war. A rather ironic example is that when Yōko sold her kimono, each piece was sold at five hundred yen, which, for her relatives who grew up in Japan during the pre-war period, looked like an enormous amount of money that could afford to buy a house — but in reality, of course, it was such a small amount of money, considering the fact that Yōko, who received pocket money of twenty sen before the war, now received one hundred yen each time. (Before the war, one yen was made up of 100 sen. Before the war, one could do a lot with just one yen; Yōko told me that she could afford to buy a 500-gram bag of salt, crab, and so on, and she still would be left with ten sen.)
Eihiko also told me his story, when he was so eager to buy a flute. After he graduated from university, he became an office worker, earning a monthly salary of 4,800 yen.When for the first time he went to a music shop, the price of a flute was 5,000 yen. Eihiko could not afford to buy it, of course, but he visited the music shop time after time until he had earned enough money to buy the instrument, but each time he came to the store, the price of the flute went up, and ultimately he had to satisfy himself with a toy flute.
In a time like this, there is no wonder that everything was literally running out — even textbooks were not printed properly. Not only were they badly printed, but they were also printed in a bunch, slightly bigger than a newspaper, and one needed to cut everything apart and put pieces together to make them look like textbooks. Moreover, since the resources were insufficient, Yōko had to make her school cap out of her father’s cap. Selling her kimono was another business that had to be done, however low the price she would get, to make money to buy food. As she ended the story, she expressed her feeling that the years in middle school were fun, but not everything was so — there certainly were hardships.
The next question that came to my mind was “When did conditions get better?” She said that she could see Hokkaidō recovering as new buildings, including a shopping center, were being rebuilt, and old buildings were being removed. Another profound change was that concerts started to take place, which was highlighted by the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin’s visit to Japan. People were so fascinated by his visit that many of them were eager to buy tickets, which cost one thousand yen, an extraordinary price for a concert ticket. (I happened to have read an article about Menuhin’s visit to Japan in the October 2005 issue of Record Geijutsu, which featured a CD that contained his studio recordings made in Japan. Menuhin visited Japan in 1951, six years after the end of the Second World War, and performed throughout Japan for five weeks.) Eihiko also had a valuable memory, that when he went to the performance of Swan Lake, the ticket price was five hundred yen, half the price of Menuhin’s concert.
Then it occurred to me that when Yehudi Menuhin visited Japan, a neighboring country was at war: the Korean War. What I have learned about Japan during this period is that the Korean War was a decisive factor that revived Japan’s economy and decided its future. Thus I asked the interviewee whether she had such a feeling during that time. She said she did not, as she still lived in Hokkaidō, where life was very much based on agricultural society, and the industrial areas were still very small in size. Still, both Yōko and Eihiko told me that if they were to choose a prosperous business in Hokkaidō at the time, it would be the coal mining business which prospered after the Second World War and during the Korean War, as coal was an energy source. A Mitsubishi Mining employee earned 15,000 yen a month.
Feeling satisfied with the information I acquired, I thanked my interviewee and told her that I learned much more than I had expected, and that I would be able to write a good report. Both Noboru and his mother were present in the room, and they, too, looked to be moved by the stories that they had been hearing, which they “would not hear in an everyday conversation,” as Noboru’s mother said. And I, of course, was very much moved by the stories that may be gone and forgotten in a couple of decades — that is how valuable memories are for us later generations.