J02GN, Elina Fachtmann ‘01, Juliana Yamaguchi, Grandmother, 1930, Yokohama: Naka-ku
I interviewed my grandmother, Juliana Yamaguchi, who is currently 69 years old, at her house in November 1999. I would like to share with you her experiences during World War II. She talked to me in Japanese while I took notes. I would like to translate this into English.
I remember the dates ever so clearly. It was December 8, 1941, when the Americans and the British declared war on Japan. I was still eleven years old. I didn’t really understand what was happening until December 10, 1941, when the Netherlands also declared war on Japan. My father, who was a Dutch citizen, was interned by the Japanese immediately, that very morning. He was taken away to a prisoner of war camp. Do you know the ruins of that horse race track near Negishi Park, Elina? Well, your great-grandfather was taken there. We only got to see him once a month. I couldn’t hug him because of the barbed wire between us.
About a month or so later, my dog was taken away. Her name was Grace, and she was a hound, a very big one. The police said that they had to inject medicine into all dogs, because they thought that the dogs would go wild, since food was scarce and they weren’t fed enough. But she was a very patient dog; she would have never gone wild, so I didn’t let her go, until I was forced to let go of her.
We only ate two meals a day. It wasn’t decent food either. We couldn’t get any food rations, since we were not Japanese citizens. Once, your great-grandmother tried to go to the place to get some food for us because she looked Japanese, and she thought no one would realize that she wasn’t a Japanese citizen. But the official who handled foreign affairs stopped her from entering the food distribution center right away. She told her in a brutal way that she would be arrested and never be able to come back home if she ever tried putting that idea into action. So we thought of other ways to get food. There was a farm right next to our house, since our neighbor was a farmer. He lived about two blocks away from his farm, whereas we lived right next to it. So what we used to do was, we went to the farm at night, and stole some potatoes. We were really desperate for food. The funny thing, though, was that the farmer trusted us. He thought we weren‘t the ones stealing the food, and he asked us to guard the farm. This made it easier for us to steal the potatoes even more. He often asked us if we saw anybody stealing potatoes, and we’d always tell him, “No, nobody at all.”
On May 29, 1945, the Americans started to bomb us in Yokohama. Until then, there was no bombing of residential areas. Our only problem had been the scarcity of food. Since the bombing started, we had to worry if our house would be burned. Every night, we had to sleep in our clothes. We also left a small bag on the side of our bed with emergency supplies, and we slept with fear every single night. I don’t think my mother ever slept. Yokohama was wiped out very quickly in two or three hours. Eventually our house was burned too.
We had a small backyard behind our house. Here, we grew, for some reason, onions. I remember that when the house was burned, we dug the onions out and ate them. They were hot, juicy, and really delicious. I remember how my brothers and I just sat there, chewing on our tasty onions. They were really amazing. We were so happy eating these delicious onions that we forgot about our burned house for a while.
One month later, my father was so sick that we had to go pick him up from the prisoner of war camp. The Japanese government wanted him to leave the camp, because they didn’t want anybody to die there. That would have caused problems. I was really happy to be able to hug him again, but I was so upset to see him in such a weak condition. He looked really unhealthy and very pale. Half a year after the war ended, he died.
Even after the war ended, everybody was very tense. There were always rumors about the Soviet Red Army invading the vulnerable Japan. Everybody stayed inside the house and wouldn’t even try to even take a step outside when such rumors spread. We were all scared. Nobody was convinced that the war was over. We had a hard time, especially because we were not Japanese. Our neighbors were good people, but many others were absolutely horrible sometimes.
I hope that you will never experience something like what I have experienced. War was nothing but painful, and it does no good to anybody. The reason that I become very annoyed when you leave food on your plate is because it makes me remember that food was so scarce in those times. Can you believe that some were even eating the grass growing on the streets? I got used to looking at dead bodies and people covered with blood. It was just too much. I wish that peace will continue in Japan, and that other countries will stop fighting each other based on their own greed.