B14, Tomomi Yoshida ‘86, Mr Ishikawa, Neighbor, 1929, Mie, Miyagi
In May 1985, I interviewed Mr Ishikawa, who lives next door. He is now 56 years old, and he had experienced combat since he was 16 years old. During this interview, my mother interrupted and talked about herself and her father (that is, my grandfather).
Q: Mr Ishikawa, what comes first to your mind about World War II?
A: Let me see. All of the young men were divided into three categories. First were those who were physically able to fight immediately. Then were the yōbigun (preparatory soldiers) who would go when the Army needed more men. The third group included those who were not eligible to go to war.
Q: Why not?
A: They did not have enough strength to fight or they had physical problems.
Mother (M): Your grandfather was one. He was too short and too weak, so he didn’t have to go to war. Instead, he continued with his job as a dressmaker.
Q: Please explain the second group again.
A: They were men who would go to war after many soldiers had died, so they were preparing to go next. Horses and dogs were valued more than people. Men were forced to fight for 1 yen 20 sen per month. That would be about 20,000 yen now. But horses or dogs were more valuable. Gun’yōken (military dogs) took messages from one place to another where soldiers could not go.
Q: When did you go to war?
A: At sixteen. I was a shigan-hei (volunteer soldier) who wanted to go, because people like me wanted to fight for the Emperor.
Q: Where were you when the Emperor announced that the war was over?
A: I was in Mie prefecture, waiting for September 1st, the date when I had been ordered to report to Okinawa, to join the tokkōtai (kamikaze suicide pilots).
M: They were supposed to fly their planes into the enemy ships in order to sink them, and of course they would die at the same time. But most of the American ships did not sink completely.
Q: So why are you here today, Mr Ishikawa?
A: Because the war ended on August 15, and I was saved, fortunately. But I flew over the city of Hiroshima to see the damage from the bomb. I was in the plane, so I wasn’t exposed to radioactivity.
M: The Japanese government had no idea about an atomic bomb until after it was dropped.
A: We didn’t know that it would explode in the area before it reached the ground. And white things were not damaged as much. White things reflected the bomb blast, but black things absorbed it. That’s why the bomb was dropped on a bright sunny day. It was raining in Kokura (Kita-Kyūshū), so they did not drop the second bomb there.
Q: So Nagasaki was not the original target of the second bomb?
A: No, it was the alternate. Other events during the war were the fire-bombings of Tōkyō and Yokohama and other cities.
M: A bomb was dropped on our house in Tōkyō. We went to Ishinomaki [Miyagi] to evacuate, but your grandfather stayed in Tōkyō because our house was there. The house was bombed, but we had already sent all our belongings to Ishinomaki. Your grandfather was outdoors, so he was saved, and then he came to Ishinomaki to join us.
Q: Was Ishinomaki safe?
M: It was in the countryside, so it was safer. Sometimes a bomber plane called B-29 flew right over our heads, so close that we could have stretched out our hands and reached it. But it was just passing over on the way to another city.
A: In the end, war was only about killing people. We thought that the fighting was for the Emperor.
Q: Why?
M: The military leaders and politicians who started the war in order to make themselves more powerful. The ordinary people were told that they were fighting for the Emperor.
A: The Emperor was thought of as a god. All of this fighting benefitted the leaders who thought that they would become heroes of the country, but they told people that they would die for the Emperor.