B08, Kyōko Murata ‘86, Mother, 1941, Manchuria, Chiba
My mother was born in 1941, so she was still a little girl when World War II took place. I interviewed her in May 1985.
Q: How old were you when World War II ended?
A: I was four years old, so I have little memory of the war. Since my family was living in Manchuria, I had to come back to Japan. In Manchuria, where the war had started in 1931, many Soviet soldiers invaded (they were called “Rosuke”), and they tried to take everything that we owned: our land, houses, furniture, everything.
Q: How did you feel about those soldiers? I know you were too small to remember the details.
A: The only feeling that I can remember was fear. I was afraid of them. But I knew that my mother would protect me.
Q: Were you always hungry?
A: Yes. We didn’t have enough food to survive. My brother, my little sister, and I were lucky, because our parents didn’t leave us in the middle of China. There were some parents who buried their children up to their necks so that they wouldn’t be able to follow them. You have heard of Chūgoku zanryū koji (Japanese children who were abandoned by their parents in China), right? They became orphans because of that. My mother even shaved her hair off to survive. Why? Because if the “Rosuke” found a woman, they would take her for their entertainment. My mother wore men’s clothes and smoked cigarettes in order to disguise herself as a man.
On the ship to Japan, I was starving. There was hardly any food. My mother sometimes skipped her own meals in order to give food to us. I was scratching my body every day.
Q: What was it like when you returned to Japan?
A: Even though Kagoshima was in the countryside, the food supply there was limited too. My parents had to work from dawn until nightfall to earn money, so that we could buy food. I ate sweet potatoes every day, since so many were grown in Kagoshima. When we returned to Chiba, it was terrible there too. My obentō (lunch box) was called Hinomaru Bentō. It was supposed to be cooked rice with just a Japanese plum, but at that time there was not enough rice, so it was replaced by wheat. When I went home, dinner was suiton, a soup with dumplings, but no miso.
Q: What about clothing?
A: I wore the same clothes every day. I couldn’t buy clothes at any store. We had to wait until the government distribution rations came. Then there was a lottery in our class at school to see who would be able to buy clothes. But they were so expensive. Even if you won the lottery, you still couldn’t afford to buy any. Your father had to wear his older brother’s military uniform for the graduation from Chiba Middle School. [In the pre-war education system, middle school lasted for five years, from Grade 7 to Grade 11.]
Q: That sounds terrible.
A: It’s because all of the men had been drafted into the Army. There was no one to work in the factories, so no products were made. Also the farmland was burned by American bombs. I really wanted to read books, but there wasn’t enough money to buy any. I went to Chiba Central Library and read all of the books in the library. I even went to a book rental shop and read the books there without paying.
You are so lucky to have everything. But I really thank my parents who took care of us and didn’t abandon us in China. I hope there will never be another war like World War II. Any kind of war is terrible.