B11P, Lina Ritchie ‘86, Father, 1932, Hyōgo
On Wednesday, May 22, 1985, I interviewed my father at home after supper about his experiences in World War II. He was born in 1932 and is 53 years old now.
Q: Where were you during World War II?
A: I was in Kōbe when the war began. I was a nine-year-old schoolboy when it started. In the early stages, our way of life was not affected, as far as I can recall. One day, when I came home late from St. John’s Institute, an English-language primary school run by Catholic brothers, I heard from my older brothers and sisters that the war had begun, between the Axis powers, including Japan, and the Allied powers, led by the United States.
Q: How did you react to the news about the war?
A: As I was still a small boy, I did not feel any differently than before, except for a vague uneasiness and fear that the war would affect the lives of my family and friends.
Q: Did your vague fears come true?
A: On the very first day of the war, the screening of all English-language movies was stopped by the order of the Japanese government authorities. My older sisters were very disappointed, because the American movie Gone With the Wind was scheduled to be shown in the major cinemas on that day, but it had to be cancelled. My sisters had been planning to go and see the movie that very night.
A few days later, the police ordered all the young girls and ladies to stop wearing Western-style clothes and instead wear monpe, baggy pants, and a loose Japanese-style blouse. The women were also told to stop getting a “permanent” for wavy hair. Soon after that, rice and other provisions began to be strictly rationed. Clothes also became increasingly hard to buy. All the cinemas began to show patriotic Japanese movies, such as the ones about the Imperial Army soldiers conquering Southeast Asia and other regions.
Gradually, all of the foreigners like us became increasingly aware of a growing hostility towards “enemy” races among the Japanese people. In one case, a Japanese policeman slapped a red-haired woman whom he had stopped for questioning, claiming that she rudely ignored him. Then news reached us from other Japanese cities that all “enemy” school teachers, such as those with American or British nationality, would soon be rounded up by the police and either deported from Japan or otherwise put into concentration camps for the entire duration of the war. Also the Japanese “thought police” (Kenpeitai) came to our school and asked each one of us which of the two deities we thought was greater: God, or their Emperor. We answered that we respected the Emperor as a great man, but also that we adored our God as a spiritual being who was not of this world.
That is how I remember the first few years of the war. Except for an increasing shortage of food and a growing dread of being overheard and reported to the police for speaking English, the “enemy language,” my life continued to be rather dull and uneventful.
Q: What happened in the latter stages of the war?
A: If I remember correctly, the war suddenly turned more ugly and personal by the spring of 1943. It was then that air raids by the American B-29 bombers on all of the major cities, including Kōbe, increased in frequency and ferocity. Even then, we had not yet become fully aware of the terror and agony that we would soon experience from these raids. At that time, only a few of the bombers would fly over the city at very high altitude, and all we could see of them were tiny specks. I remember feeling very excited each time the bombers flew over Kōbe, and I thought that they were beautiful spectacles to behold. Only a few bombs were dropped each time they came, and the targets were mostly industrial areas far removed from the part of town where our house was located.
It was only in the last few months of the war that all of us began to realize that the air raids were not just romantic and exciting events but were a terrible and deadly nightmare to experience. From the beginning of 1945, the enemy planes flew at very low altitudes over the Japanese cities for better bombing accuracy, and also hundreds of the bombers used very effective incendiary bombs. The first low-level bombing raid of Kōbe, by approximately 170 B-29 bombers, was carried out on the night of March 17, 1945. Within a few hours after the raid began, almost the entire city was engulfed in flames. Thousands of Japanese people and also many of the foreigners were killed. The entire city of Kōbe was reduced to ruins. It was then that I began to fully realize the horrors and destruction of war.
The second massive incendiary bomb air raid of Kōbe was carried out in the early morning of June 5, 1945. Food had become scarce, and all of us were half-starved and feeling miserable. We felt that nothing could ever make us more miserable and frightened than we were already. But we were wrong . . . oh, so wrong!
The first wave of B-29 bombers began to attack Kōbe at a very low level as usual, and left the entire port area in a sea of flames. Then more and more bombers arrived over the city and began to attack in a criss-cross pattern that ultimately destroyed over 95% of the city. It lasted for about four hours, and after it was over, hundreds of thousands of dead bodies were found strewn in the streets and lanes. The supply and distribution of food rations became completely disrupted, and the survivors of the raid, including ourselves, almost died of starvation, before food distribution was finally resumed a day or two later.
Then on August 15, 1945, we were informed over the official radio that Japan had finally surrendered to the Allied forces. I was in tears when we learned that the terrible ordeal and agony of the long war had finally ended. Those tears were shed in sheer relief and joy and being spared from further suffering.