S04, Yūjin (Eugene) Ōharu ‘18, Hiroshi Yamamoto, Grandfather, 1937, Kyōto, Manchuria, Siberia
On November 7, 2016, I interviewed my maternal grandfather, Hiroshi Yamamoto. He was born in 1937 and is 79 years old. My mother and my grandmother also joined me for this interview.
Yūjin (Me = M): Grandpa, where and when were you born? What was your father’s job?
Grandfather (G): I was born in Kyōto on January 7, 1937. He was a kimono dealer.
M: Tell me about how you went to Manchuria.
G: My father’s friend was in business in Manchuria, and he asked him to become the manager of the shop, so we went.
M: When was that?
G: That was perhaps three years before the end of the war, so around 1942. Instead of dealing in kimono, he was in a business which was more like a department store, called Nankai Yōkō. His friend from Okayama was the president. He worked in this department store, and then he moved up further north as the branch manager in a city called Songo.
M: Tell me about your family when you went to Manchuria, and your life there.
G: I went with my father, my mother, my older sister and two younger brothers, Masasuke and Shōhei. We were a family of six when we went there. When we went to Manchuria, we first lived in a city called Peian, where there was a department store. Great-grandpa was like the branch manager there, and later he received recognition from the department store, and was put in charge of a branch in a city called Songo. It was a small city. He started a business selling Japanese food. My father used to take me with him to the remotest part of Manchuria on a truck to purchase stocks for his store.
That was around the time when I had Teikō, a German Shepard. He was named after the Manshū Teikoku (the Empire of Manchuria). I used to run around all the time with Teikō. He was later taken away by the Army to serve as a war dog during the war. There, we spent a few years, perhaps one or two years. The war worsened.
M: What was Manchuria like when you were growing up there?
G: Manchuria was a vast flat land, and the Japanese settlers came to farm and harvest crops.They thought that they would be the basis of the Manshū Teikoku. Because Japan established the Manchurian state, the world powers criticized Japan, and Japan was isolated. With the vast land, Japan established this new puppet state, appointing the former Qing dynasty monarch as the emperor.
We had a normal life. As I said, I took Teikō to buy supplies on our truck. We bought potatoes and onions and brought them back to our store and sold them.
Mother: You were helping out in the store? Weren’t you an elementary schooler or a kindergartener?
G: Yes, it was before I went to elementary school.
Mother: Didn’t you go to a local kindergarten?
G: No, I spent time with my parents at home. Great-grandpa made me a dogsled, and we used to play with it.
M: Was life in Japan and life in Manchuria any different?
G: Not much, just that Manchuria was cold and snowy. Half the time it snowed.
M: There must’ve been many local people living there in Manchuria.
G: Most of the people living in Manchuria were Chinese, but we Japanese were the rulers. We established the Manchurian Empire, so Japanese held all of the major government posts.
M: How was the attitude of the local people?
G: I think they were friendly.
Mother: Do you remember any of those local people around you? Like Chinese or Russians?
G: There were no Russians, only Manchurians. Because the Japanese ruled the country, the Manchurians worked as employees.
Mother: Do you have any memory of you playing with the Manchurians? Did you have any Manchurian friends?
G: No, that didn’t happen. The places where Japanese lived were different from where the local people lived. I didn’t know how those people lived. at all.
M: Where were you when the war ended?
G: I don’t remember exactly, but we were withdrawn from Songo to return to Peian, where the Japanese people in Manchuria gathered together for safety. At the time, there were riots because Japan had lost. If you were living alone, Manchurians would’ve broken in and sacked any property you had. There were periods like that, so we stayed in the big department store in Peian, because there were plenty of resources stored there. By that time, the Soviet Red Army had already come into Manchuria, and they confiscated Japanese stores and vandalized the area. But because we were living in a department store and had plenty of resources, we gave some of them to the Russians so we could be friendly and not get plundered. That’s how we survived.
After Japan lost, we were talking about how we could go back to Japan. We heard news that the Japanese people had gathered at Shinkyō [now renamed Changchun]. After we arrived there, we waited to go to Korotō (Huludao). But we had to wait in Shinkyō for around a year, waiting to board a ship back to Japan.
There was chaos when we were evacuating from Manchuria. The Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Japanese Army, and the Russians were all fighting each other. The arms and equipment of the Japanese Army were taken by Russians, who had promised not to fight but fought nevertheless. Japanese soldiers were demilitarized and were sent to Siberia as slave labor.
As Japan had lost the war, we had to leave Manchuria. The Japanese government sent repatriation ships to various cities like Korotō and Pusan. From Manchuria, the closest port was Korotō, and luckily, we were able to take the ship, even though we had to wait for some time. We finally arrived in Maizuru. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Japanese people lived in Manchuria. Some were unable to escape and died there. It was the same with the Korean Peninsula, and because Japan had colonized Korea, many Japanese also died there.
Mother: What were you doing in your wait at Shinkyō? How did you make your living?
G: We did nothing. I wonder now about how we survived. Somehow we were able to eat, but there is no way that the resources we brought from the department store could’ve lasted. I guess Great-grandma should get the credit for that. She managed with three children, plus our newborn sisters. Unfortunately, they died on our way back, Renko-chan and Eiko-chan. Great-grandma was alone to take us all back to Japan. Great-grandpa was drafted and was later detained by the Soviets in a labor camp in Siberia, and he couldn’t come back. So Great-grandma took us all by herself. I guess we made our living by selling what we owned. When we heard that there was a ship at Korotō, we headed there. At Shinkyō, we gathered as much information as we could.
The Japanese government sent repatriation ships to various cities like Korotō and Pusan. From Manchuria, the closest port was Korotō, and luckily, we were able to take the ship, even though we had to wait for some time. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Japanese people lived in Manchuria. Some were unable to escape and died there. It was the same with the Korean Peninsula, and because Japan had colonized Korea, many Japanese also died there.
M: Did you hear anything from Great-grandpa about his confinement in Siberia?
G: He was saying he had a very hard time there. When he woke up every morning, several people were found dead from the severe cold, and he had to bury them. Perhaps he was forced to do something like a death march. He was moved from here to there, and cut down trees as ordered by the Russians. After three years in Siberia, he was finally released. He came back when I was in elementary school.
M: Would you say that the immediate cause of the withdrawal from Manchuria was Japan’s loss in the war?
G: Yes. We were told to get out of the country, so we left all our property and left. The Russians took the weapons, and what was left was plundered. It happened everywhere at the time. But where Great-grandpa worked was a big company, and there were many people to protect the place. In addition, there were local Manchurian employees who took care of us and protected us from being harmed. Because there was a big warehouse and plenty of resources, and the branch at Songo was closed due to great-grandpa being arrested, we moved back to the Nankai Yōkō and stayed there for a few months. I remember at the time seeing Russian fighter planes strafing the city from the windows. I remember that vividly.
I felt afraid, but I was interested, so I looked at it nevertheless. They didn’t drop bombs, because they were fighter planes, but they strafed with their machine guns and killed people. We couldn’t go outside; it was too dangerous. The Nankai Yōkō group stayed and we protected ourselves in the store, because we had things to eat and wear. When we moved from Peian to Shinkyō, there was a place where refugees heading back to Japan gathered. How did we make our living there? I can’t remember: there wasn’t any food there. But I sold cigarettes. We had a box hooked on our shoulder with some cigarettes in it, and we sold them on the corner of the street, to Japanese people and the Manchurians, I guess.
M: How did you escape from Peian to Shinkyō?
G: I think there was a steam locomotive. It took a few days for us to move from Peian to Shinkyō. I guess we had some transportation, a train or a truck, to escape. It was like a mass evacuation. Because Nankai Yōkō was a big organization, it was possible for us to get some trucks for ourselves to go to Shinkyō. We stayed there for around a year, but I really wonder how we managed to live there. I guess great-grandma hid her money somewhere.
Mother: She knitted money and valuables under her clothes.
Oh, yes, she used to do that, so she could use it when something happened. But the Japanese currency would’ve been impossible to use by them. I guess she had valuables like gold or wristwatches, which she could trade. Or else we would not have survived for a year in a foreign place. I guess we lived in a safe shelter with everyone else. Somewhere like a public hall.
M: Do you have any memories of your life there?
G: I was young after all. I only remember my sister being “The Little Match Girl” with me. We sold cigarettes together, and I guess we made some money.
M: From Shinkyō to Korotō, we took an open-wagon train. It must’ve been awful, especially the toilets. I wonder how we got through it. The Japanese settlers didn’t have money or food, and they had come from farther north, so many of them died on their way to Shinkyō. It cost money to go to Korotō from Shinkyō, but the Japanese currency was worthless by then.
We were packed in the open wagon train, and after a few days, we arrived at Korotō. From there, we waited for our turn to take the ship.
When our turn came, we took a ship called Peian-maru or Heian-maru, heading to Maizuru on the north coast of Kyōto. The journey from Korotō to Japan only took a day. I remember when I arrived back in Japan. When I looked down from the ship, there was the blue ocean, and mullets were swimming. I thought, oh, I finally came back. But I didn’t have any memories of life in Japan before we had moved to Manchuria.
When we arrived in Maizuru, there was a medicine called DDT sprinkled on all of us, because we had lice. We couldn’t enter the country unless all of us and our luggage were treated with DDT.
Grandmother: The mother-in-law of Great-grandma said that when Grandpa and his family arrived, they all looked like ghosts, because they were so thin and sunburnt.
From there, we took the steam locomotive to Gōtsu [in Shimane prefecture], which was Great-grandpa’s hometown. We lived there for a few years after that. Great-grandpa was released from the Soviet prisoner of war camp and came back to Japan around three years after the end of the war. He then started his own business, a shop in Gōtsu City. I spent my middle school years there and I then went to Hama-kō (Hamada High School) after that.
It was heaven there in Gōtsu, because the ocean was nearby, and we had food. I was four when I went to Manchuria, and seven when I came back. I repeated first grade, because I couldn’t go to school. None of us, including my sister, received any education. It was as if we were detained; we couldn’t go anywhere. My sister also had to take a class one grade lower than her age.
Grandmother: Most children who came back from Manchuria did so.
M: You said that you lost two younger sisters on your way back, but why did that happen?
G: Diseases like measles spread, and small children couldn’t survive, because there were neither doctors nor medicine, and they were in the state of malnutrition. Eiko-chan, who was just born, died first. She died in Shinkyō. It must’ve been hard for Great-grandmama to raise four children while she was pregnant. Renko-chan was the child between Eiko-chan and Shōhei. Both of them died early. Renko-chan died when she was one or so. They would’ve lived if it weren’t so chaotic back then. We couldn’t treat measles, and children who caught it had no choice but to die. It was tragic.
M: I heard that Uncle Shōhei was also in a critical situation.
G: Yes, Shōhei didn’t receive enough sunlight, and had rachitis. His legs have been crooked ever since then. We couldn’t go out, and we didn’t have enough nutrition. Manchuria was cold and dark.
Grandmother: Because there were too many children, Auntie Itabashi [Grandfather’s older sister] was once left behind to a Chinese family. Auntie cried so much that she was given back. Because of this, she was able to come back to Japan without being left behind.
M: Thank you, Grandpa!