G12U, Amy Tomalavage ‘99, Makoto Sendai, Family friend, 1932, Kanagawa: Kawasaki-shi
On November 16, 1997, I interviewed a family friend named Makoto Sendai, who lives in Yokohama. He was nine years old at the start of the war, and he lived in Kawasaki then.
Q: How did you react to the beginning of World War II?
A: When we heard the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we were all quite happy about it. We all had the feeling that we were the first to make a move, and that was favorable. We had heard of the Axis Powers and knew that Japan was on the same side as the Germans and the Italians. Other than that, as children we did not get much information about the actual fighting itself. We were never fully aware of what was going on. Civilians in Japan were only informed of the good things that Japan did and the bad things that the enemies did to Japan. If I think about it now, even though Japan was a member of the Axis, the country was a loner.
Q: What kind of hardships did you have to face?
A: Food was the biggest problem. Not at the beginning of the war, but during the last two years of the war, there was a big shortage of food. People were told that they must give up luxuries for the soldiers who were fighting. There was a slogan: “We shall not want until we win.” Children could not have the sweets and candies that we all wanted. We were told that we must give them up so that the soldiers fighting the war could have them. So all of those luxury food items that we had to give up went to the soldiers. In Japan we all had to support the soldiers. Their needs came before ours.
We were not affected that much during the early years (1942-43), because Japan was winning many battles. It wasn’t until 1944, when we started losing, that we began to feel the effects of war. The air raids began, and the nights became more frightening. We couldn’t sleep at night. There were “guard watches” beginning from 6:00 pm. Then from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm the air raid watches. It wasn’t until 11:00 pm that everything was over and we could sleep, but we could never sleep well because of the constant fear of the air raids. We never wore our pajamas at night, because we never knew when we would have to make a run for it.
Q: How did you feel when you learned that Japan had lost the war?
A: I had two feelings: one was relief, because I felt that now I could sleep at night. The other was uncertainty and fear of the U.S. Occupation. We had been told that the Americans were merciless people, and there were rumors that the Americans would come into Japan and kill every single man and boy and leave only the women. My father, who was in China at the time on business, told me that the Americans were not at all like that and that I shouldn’t believe the rumors. Even before the war ended, my father told me that Japan would probably lose because we had no natural resources to support ourselves. He said that Japan might win at the beginning, but if the war went on for long, then Japan could not provide its own resources. He was right.
Q: Were any of your family members directly involved in the war?
A: No, the closest person to me was my older brother’s classmate. He was drafted into the Army in Hiroshima but was killed in the atomic bombing. He wasn’t killed immediately; he died about a week later from severe burns.
Q: Do you remember the American Occupation?
A: I remember the day the Americans arrived in Yokohama. I went to Yamashita Park to see all the ships sail into the harbor. It was August 20, 1945. The ships actually came right up to the shore! It was the first time I had seen anything like it. I remember that a sailor or soldier threw me a box of something. It dropped to the ground, so I looked at it curiously, and seeing that there was nobody else around me to whom the box might belong, I took it home with me. I opened the box when I got home, and I saw that it contained food items and cigarettes and chocolates. My mother told me not to eat the chocolates, because they might be poisoned. But my father told her that Americans were not like that, and he told me to go ahead and eat them. It had been a long time since I had had sweets. I remember savoring them. I kept the wrapper and stuck it between the pages of a book, so that every time I opened the book, it would smell sweet.
In September or October of 1945, the military police (MP) captain came to our house carrying a gun, accompanied by another soldier, a driver, and a translator. Our house was pretty big. The garden was 2000 square meters. The MPs came to claim our house, but since it was a Japanese-style house, in the end they did not confiscate it. My mother and sister served them tea when they came. It seems that they were very grateful for the hospitality, and the MP captain asked if he could visit us every so often. Of course, we did not refuse, and so he began paying regular visits to our house. He came once every two weeks, and he always brought us treats and other good things from the military base. We became friends. He was a very nice person. Because of him, I decided that Americans were not that bad. But the soldiers who came directly from the U.S. mainland were very arrogant and treated us like losers. I did not like those men.
Q: What did your neighborhood look like during the Occupation?
A: We lived in Kawasaki city, and there were not many U.S. military facilities where we lived. Most of them were in Yokohama. I think that Yokohama changed the most after the war. I remember that many of us were infected with lice, and so at Sakuragi-chō Station, there was DDT insecticide sprayed on us before we got on the train. I detested that, so I always avoided riding the train from Sakuragi-chō. Also the train cars were segregated. There was a section near the front where the seats were reserved only for Americans. Those seats were very nice. The seats at the back where the Japanese had to sit were made of hard wood.
Q: Do you remember the impact that the war and the Occupation had on your friends?
A: Since I always got sweets like candy and gum from the Americans, my friends were pretty jealous. I came into contact with soldiers often, and I wasn’t really scared of them. Often I would go to them and trade something I had that interested them for chocolate or gum. It was pretty easy to get the sweets because there were so many things that interested the Americans. After I got the sweets, I would take them to school, and my friends would beg me to sell them to them.
Q: What else do you want to say about the war?
A: I think it was good that Japan lost the war to the Americans. If it lost to the Soviet Union, things probably would have been much worse. The U.S. did not treat Japan badly. I think that they helped rebuild Japan. Even though there are problems concerning the U.S. military bases in Japan, I don’t think that Japan would be where it is today without the Americans. Of course, I believe that war is never good. Just like the Americans have the slogan “Remember Pearl Harbor,” Hiroshima and Nagasaki should never be forgotten.
I learned a lot that I did not know through this interview. Contrary to my previous assumptions, I learned that not everyone in Japan hated the Americans. But there were many hard times during the war, when people could not sleep peacefully at night. Now that this has been passed on to me, I can pass it on to another generation, hoping that by learning the mistakes of the past, we can avoid mistakes in the future. I truly hope that we will never have another war like World War II.