J07, Aya Onouchi ‘01, Mitsuru Onouchi, Grandfather, Aichi, Manchuria
In November 1999, I interviewed my paternal grandfather. Here are his memories of World War II.
My name is Mitsuru Onouchi. I was born and raised in Okazaki, in Aichi prefecture. When I was 14, when I left middle school, I went to China. Since I was the third son, my parents didn’t need me to stay with them, so I decided to go. The reason why I went to China was because of my friend, who had gone to China and earned tons of money and became rich. I wanted to be rich too, so I decided to work there. First I worked at a pharmacy. I learned the basic background knowledge for working there. But the laws weren’t that strict, so people didn’t have to have qualifications to work. I worked in the northeastern part of China, which was called Manchuria at that time. In 1943, I joined the Japanese Imperial Army and became a soldier. I learned how to use guns to protect myself.
Then the war began. I was lucky. Since I was already working at the pharmacy, I didn’t have to go into combat. I was assigned to work at the Japanese Army hospital. I had to take care of the equipment, to make sure that it was clean and sterilized. When I was working at the hospital, I saw many injured people. The hospital where I worked was big, so soldiers with serious injuries came to this hospital. I saw people who had no legs or arms and many bloody people. My first reaction was that soldiers who came back from combat were all red and black.
While I was working at the hospital, I had enough food to eat, enough water to drink, and also enough clothes to wear. I didn’t suffer anything during the war, while people in Japan and other countries which got involved suffered a lot from lack of food and medicine.
A few years later, in 1945, the war had ended. I said that I had learned how to use a gun, but I never used it, because I was safe in the hospital. But even after the war, the Russian [Soviet] Army invaded Manchuria and fired at us. I couldn’t believe it, because I thought the war had ended. I still didn’t have any injuries, so I was lucky.
After the war ended, I decided to go back to Japan, but it took eight years. In 1953, I came back to Japan at last, by ship. From Manchuria, I went to Keijō [Seoul] in Korea and got a ship to go back. People who were injured were on the ship too, so they could go to hospital in Japan. The ship had a flag with a red cross on it, so nobody could fire at us. I took a lot of food, water and clothes from Manchuria. After I arrived in Hakata, I sold food, clothes, and water that I had taken from the hospital. I was amazed that I was able to sell the rice for 500 yen. I earned money and went back to Okazaki.
I asked my wife, Hideko, what she was doing during the war. She said that when the war began, she was still an elementary student, but when she entered middle school, she had to work in a factory, building airplanes. I was surprised when I heard that.